‘You think you might change your mind about selling, Pops?’ Hitch stared at him, trying to imagine a world where this farm, this land, home to her beloved chickens, and where the Waycotts had resided for generations, came under the ownership of someone else, someone like Tarran Buttermore.
Pops looked at her briefly before turning his attention back to his pie crust. ‘I used to say I’d never sell—’
‘You have always said you’d never sell,’ she interrupted him. ‘You speak about it all the time: Jonathan coming home and maybe building a cottage in the lower paddock for you and Mum, just like you’ve always planned . . . It’d be weird, Pops, to have someone else living here.’
Her dad abandoned his fork on the plate and she shot a look at Emery, warning him to let her dad finish his food without him reaching over and helping himself to the old man’s fare. Emery held her gaze.
‘There’s many a vegetarian starving on a desert island who would eat his beloved dog,’ her dad said softly.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Hitch asked, with more aggression than she had intended, as unwanted images formed in her mind of herself and Buddy on a hot and desolate shore.
Her dad sat back in his chair. The creak of the hand-turned wooden spindles, fashioned on a lathe by her great-grandfather, rose up and filled the space above his head, warming the air before his words drifted upwards. He spoke slowly and with conviction, eloquent in a way that suggested this speech had been rehearsed in his mind, and that fact alone was enough to fan the flames of her fear.
‘What it means, my little love, is that selling Waycott Farm was something I could never conceive of. Never.’ He placed his roughened palm on the table. ‘My father and my father’s father and the one before that and before that . . . They all toiled on the soil, with some of the same tools that I use today. You and your brother were born here in the attic, and the room in which I sleep, the same room my parents slept in every night of their married life, is the room into which your mother walked as my bride and where we have lain together every night since. I’ve slept easy for all these years because I could see you here in your dotage and that brought me peace. This farm was built with Waycott blood and Waycott sweat. My family lie buried over yonder and there isn’t a brick nor stone nor blade of grass that I don’t treasure.’ The unmistakable catch to his voice matched the glisten of tears in his eyes.
The other three around the table stared at him. Even Emery stopped chewing and listened.
‘But here’s the thing, Hitch – needs must.’ The farm had not prospered as he had intended and, facing defeat, Pops raised his hands, as if this drastic solution was now a fait accompli. Hitch felt ashamed that, alongside her sorrow and unease, lay a golden sliver of joy that looked a lot like opportunity.
Her father adopted a hushed tone. ‘I’m not saying now, I’m not saying soon and I’m not saying for certain, but I’m saying that, if we can’t survive, then it makes no sense to starve within these glorious walls.’ He reached for his handkerchief. ‘Margins are tight and getting tighter and I’m tired of being so squeezed. No matter how hard, I have to think of all the possibilities.’ He blew his nose. ‘All the possibilities.’
Emery finished his mouthful, and her mum sat in silence, staring at her husband with a rarely seen expression that to Hitch looked a lot like love.
With a busy mind, she slowly cleared the table and piled the dirty dishes into the sink before taking a plate of cheese and crackers into Mr Potts – Grayson. There was something heart-rending about seeing him all alone at the head of the table with the empty bowl in front of him and a napkin tucked into his shirt collar.
‘How was your supper?’ She knew her tone echoed with the sadness of the knowledge she now carried, but reminded herself that this man was still a guest and a stranger and she should try and summon a smile.
‘Good.’ He folded his hands over his stomach.
‘I got you some cheese.’ She popped the worn breadboard on the table and pointed to the selection of cheeses. ‘This is a local goat’s cheese, and this one’s strong Cheddar, and—’
‘I’m very sorry, Thomasina.’ He stared at the offering, which she had daintily arranged with crackers and chutneys. ‘I don’t like cheese.’
She smiled at him, a genuine smile that she didn’t have to summon, not because of his dislike of what she had prepared, but merely at the novelty of being called Thomasina.
‘You don’t like cheese?’
‘No.’ Grayson shook his head. ‘I don’t,’ he said with a grimace.
She retrieved the board and spoke without too much forethought. ‘Do you like cider?’
‘To drink?’
‘Yes.’ She drummed her fingers on the edge of the wooden platter. ‘To drink!’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, I don’t know if you have plans this evening, but if you want, you could come with me to the flat rock where we sat earlier. The sky looks very different as the sun sets and I thought we could take some cider – only if you like. But I know I would like. I could do with a bit of cheering up.’
‘Yes,’ he said, looking at her. ‘I’d like to.’
‘Okay then. I’ll meet you out at the front in about fifteen minutes?’
‘Okay.’ He smiled at her.
She rushed back into the kitchen, wanting to scrub the worst of the pots, wash her hands and clean her teeth before they set off. Her mum and dad, as per usual, had gone outside to do the evening rounds of the animals. Emery leaned against the sink. ‘A little birdy told me you’ve been fraternising with the guests.’ He tutted loudly.
‘What, are you spying on me now?’ she asked, as she wrapped the cheeseboard and popped it in the fridge before plunging the scouring pad into the suds.
‘Don’t need to,’ he sighed. ‘You’re an open book. Anyone can see what you’re about just by looking at you. Did you have a nice time up the Barley Mow?’ He laughed. ‘I heard you made a move on Tarran.’
‘Why don’t you leave me alone?’ she asked through gritted teeth.
‘Don’t be like that! We’re cousins!’
Hitch whipped her head in his direction. ‘That’s right. We’re cousins. And yet the way you treat me is so mean, and I see the way you laugh at Pops, like he’s stupid! You’re the only one who gets properly paid and you still take advantage. It’s not fair, Emery. I hate you being here!’ She knew that having Grayson Potts sitting the other side of the wall gave her the strength to respond. Emery followed her gaze to the door.
‘Ah, so that’s it! You think that weird, lanky idiot is going to come to your rescue!’ He laughed loudly. ‘Christ almighty, you’re so sad. You’re worse than a dog, literally throwing yourself at anything with a cock. Tarran only the other night, and now that freak of nature in the dining room!’
She looked at the floor, her confidence evaporating under his quick-fire verbal assault. He wasn’t done.
‘You think I’m scared of him? Some dickhead banker from London?’ Emery spat his words with venom.
‘Just shut up! Shut up!’ She slammed the plates in the sink and whirled out of the room. Buddy barked, unhappy because she was.
Hitch grabbed the cider and a rug from the rack in Big Barn and went to say goodnight to the girls. They were quiet, settled, sitting on their perches and offering no more than a barely audible occasional cluck, reminding her very much of people on the verge of sleep who couldn’t find the energy or enthusiasm to chat.
‘Night night, my chickies! Sweet dreams, my lovelies. See you in the morning.’ She shook her head at the idea of having to say goodbye to them for good if her dad sold the farm. And therein lay her dilemma: while she dreamed of a different life, she just couldn’t see one, not really, not for someone like her . . . It might be selfish, but she wanted to see the world, wanted to walk the streets of New York, knowing that Waycott Farm would be waiting for her and Jonathan, just as it always had been. She couldn’t always see a future, but there was someth
ing comforting about knowing this place was full of her past.
‘It’ll be all right, girls, you’ll see. It’ll all be okay.’
Grayson stood in the middle of the lane in his trousers, navy sweater and lace-up shoes. His long fringe had fallen over his eyes. He turned to the left and right, looking out of place, like a person who had wandered off from a party of tourists or stopped to ask directions – a townie.
‘I heard what your cousin said about me being a dickhead banker from London,’ he said plainly.
She was a little taken aback, not only by the fact that he had heard, but also by his direct manner of speech. There was no sugar-coating his thoughts or disguising them in flowery words that might soften the message or spare them both the sharp spike of embarrassment.
‘Just ignore him. I told you, he’s a prick.’ She began walking along the lane, confident that Mr Grayson Potts would fall into step beside her, which he did.
‘You’ve already told me to ignore him, but I’d like to say something.’
She stopped and turned to face him. ‘What?’ Her brusque manner was born of nothing more than awkwardness about the topic in hand.
Grayson looked up the lane towards Waycott Farm and then back at her, as though checking that the coast was clear.
‘I wanted to say that I didn’t like the way he spoke to you.’
She waited to see if he had more to add. He didn’t. And strangely, his words on the subject, no matter how limited, soothed the wounds where Emery’s barbs had landed. She took a deep breath, grateful for this unexpected support and kindness when it was most needed.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t like it neither.’
With a shrug, she continued along the lane, her pace now slowed. The two walked in silence until they came to the path that meandered down to the river’s edge and back to the rocky stretch of beach. With no one else around, the air was still, quiet, and the swollen river had calmed. Hitch made her way across the pebbles and sand to the flat rock and placed the folded blanket on the top before settling on it with her legs crossed.
‘You look like a gnome on a lily pad,’ he noted.
‘Good.’ She smiled at him. ‘That’s what I was going for.’
She patted the space next to her and Grayson sat down with his hands on his knees, sitting at a stiff right angle, as though waiting for a job interview.
She unscrewed the top from the bottle of cider and took a swig, letting the cold, sweet, honey-coloured liquid dance on her tongue before handing it to him.
‘What do you usually do of an evening?’ She was curious about life in the big city, picturing her two day-trips, when she’d been taken along by her mum, who wanted to visit Buckingham Palace, and of course their visit to the Chelsea Flower Show, where the tickets had come courtesy of Mrs Pepper, who had some vague connection, meaning the tickets came free. As darkness had drawn and they had boarded the Bristol-bound bus home, she had sat with her face pressed to the window, stealing glimpses inside flats and houses lit from within, capturing images of chandeliers, gilt-framed paintings and a woman in a turtleneck sweater dumping a grocery bag on a table. Londoners: sophisticated dwellers of this magical place where she would love nothing more than to spend the night. She had walked among the bright lights of Covent Garden, where people dined and smoked al fresco and glamorous girls, wearing the shiny, pretty, red shoes she could only dream about, walked with suited and booted boys, tripping arm in arm over the cobbles. They were to Hitch like no other species she had encountered. Neat, clean, glossy and artfully painted, with knowledge of what to wear, how to act and where to go, knowledge that was beyond her. These were not lessons she had learned in her twenty-odd years of living in Austley Morton with only her chicken girls for company and the odd evening spent up the Barley Mow.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ She found this most disappointing, having hoped to add to her mental repertoire with his tales, in the way she now stored an image of Mrs Silvioni and her dawtah on the streets of NYC.
‘I don’t do anything. I get home, I have my tea and I go to my room.’
‘It sounds like punishment!’ She laughed at this, not meaning any offence.
Grayson, however, looked at her with such anguish that she regretted the off-the-cuff remark, spoken half in jest. He took a large glug of the cider and wiped his mouth.
‘It feels a bit like that too sometimes.’ He drank again.
‘What are you being punished for?’ she asked softly, feeling a beat of compassion that resounded loudly in her chest.
‘I don’t know.’
She watched as he kicked the ground and let his shoulders sink.
‘You never go out with your friends?’
‘I don’t have any friends.’ He held her gaze and spoke without any edge, as if this was not what most people might consider a failing, but just a state over which he had no control.
‘I don’t have any friends either,’ she confessed, taking the bottle and sipping the cold cider that slipped in bubbles of joy down her throat. ‘I sometimes chat to Shelley up at the pub; she works behind the bar. I’ve known her since school, but we’re not really friends.’
‘I suppose I have Reggie, or at least I did.’
‘Reggie the murderer?’
‘Yep.’ He nodded.
‘I’ll be your friend, Grayson.’ She spoke in earnest and handed him the bottle, watching him drink eagerly, quickly.
‘I’ll be your friend, Thomasina.’
She put her hand out to retrieve the bottle, but instead Grayson Potts slipped from the rock and put the bottle on the ground. He walked around until he stood in front of her, quite blocking the view. She opened up her legs to let him come closer. And there they rested, she sitting and he standing so near to her.
She felt a flutter in her chest and a quickening to her breath as he stared at her.
‘I’m glad you’re my friend. I feel like I’ve known you for a very long time, as if I know you from some time before, some place I don’t remember.’
Far from finding his statement comical or dismissing it as a cheap attempt to woo her, Hitch felt the intensity in his stare and his words and her heart raced accordingly.
‘I think you’re . . .’ He looked away and swallowed, as if searching for the right words – or having found the right words, was anxious about putting them out into the universe.
‘What?’ she whispered.
He gazed back at her, his hands grasping at the air in front of his chest as if unsure of where he should place them. ‘I think you’re beautiful.’
Hitch felt the swell of tears sting the back of her throat. This was the first time in her life anyone had said this to her.
The first time ever.
His words were a sincere balm that warmed her from the inside, making her feel happy and hopeful. This man! This man who she had known for no more than a few hours. Slowly, hesitantly, Grayson leaned forward and, taking his time, allowing, she suspected, time for her to protest or refuse, he drew closer and closer, until there were mere millimetres between them. And then Mr Grayson Potts, his actions chaste and considered, did something that no person, no man, had ever done in her whole life . . . He closed his eyes and very gently touched his lips to hers.
He kissed her mouth.
And the lips she considered ugly, the mouth a little misshapen, was the very thing that connected her to him. She thought her heart might burst at this gesture that seemed so natural and easy and yet was something she had doubted she would ever experience.
And she knew she would never, ever forget it.
Never.
‘Is that okay?’ he asked sheepishly.
‘Uh-huh,’ she whispered, from a smile so wide it made speaking difficult. His soft lips against hers had left the sweetest residue, like the feel of sun on skin after the rain. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, a little recovered, but still breathless, holding the moment in her heart, a thing so precious she feared t
hat the tiniest flutter and the essence of it might slip away.
‘Uh-huh.’ He too beamed and leaned in again.
Hand in hand, they walked slowly back along the lane. Hitch was almost in a daze and quite lost to the memory, which raced around and around inside her head. It made her happy and it filled her right up!
They parted on the upstairs landing and she danced along the hallway to her bed with her head spinning and her soul leaping with happiness! Diving on to the duvet, she pulled her jotter from the bedside table and wrote with a flourish . . .
I know this:
he kissed my mouth . . . he kissed my mouth . . . he kissed my mouth . . . he kissed my mouth . . . he kissed my mouth . . . he kissed my mouth . . . he kissed my mouth . . . he kissed my mouth . . . he kissed my mouth . . . he kissed my mouth . . . he kissed my mouth . . . X
SIX
Hitch felt torn, wriggling back under the duvet as morning broke – keen to rush from the room and see Mr Potts again, but also a little reluctant to rise and start the day, wary of a new dawn where any experience might corrupt the happy state in which she found herself. Touching her fingers to her lips, she felt the soft, bruised imprint of his apple-flavoured kiss, the memory alone enough to fire a fully charged bolt of joy through to her very core.
She lay back on the soft bolster and looked up at the beamed ceiling. The first, hesitant kiss they had shared made the drunken, rushed coupling she had shared with Tarran Buttermore pale into insignificance. Her head ached a little and her mouth was dry, but she was smiling on the outside and on the inside. With the thought of Buddy waiting for her in the kitchen, she kicked off the heavy bedspread and walked to the deep-set leaded window, where she stared out over the fields, where grass swayed in the morning breeze. Today the landscape looked particularly beautiful.
Looking out towards the shadow of the Welsh hills on the horizon, she replayed the kiss and the ones that followed. Like an observer, she saw herself sitting on the rock; Grayson stood in front of her with his feet slipping on stones, feeling for purchase, while his mouth was fixed to hers. Her gut bunched in a feeling hitherto unknown. It was a heady combination of joy, excitement and something that was similar to the first flickering of fear, but without the dread that accompanied it, as if she was aware of the edge of the abyss at which she stood, toes curled, back and arms straight, ready to dive. How was it possible that she could be this person? It was as if, when she was with him, she could shake off the suit of the broken, as if she were no longer damaged, but a girl who a man like Grayson wanted to spend time with. No, a woman a man like Grayson wanted to kiss!
The Things I Know Page 9
