‘They do know that. Apparently, Emery did come back last night, but late. Mum heard him pack a bag and leave, and he hasn’t turned up to work today.’
‘I didn’t know I was capable of speaking up like that. I’ve never fought back, not really.’
‘I think it’s the dawn of a new age for you – for us.’
He nodded, biting his lip as if vexed.
‘What else are you thinking about, Grayson?’
He picked a long straw of grass from the verge and wound it around his fingers, fidgeting. ‘I’m thinking about my job and how happy you make me, how much I enjoyed this morning . . .’ He blew out slowly through pursed lips.
‘Wow! You weren’t joking – lots of things!’ Thomasina beamed up at him. ‘It was nice for me to see you cooking. It made things feel a bit permanent – not that I’m suggesting . . . Not at all. I mean, I’m not . . .’ She stopped talking, flushed hot, and reached for Buddy.
‘I know what you mean: me too. I have never cooked in the flat.’
‘Never?’ she asked incredulously.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to,’ he began, ‘but you’ve been there . . .’
‘Yes, I have.’ She blinked quickly, trying to imagine cooking in the kitchenette under his mother’s watchful gaze.
‘What did you think of the place? I’m interested. You’re the only non-family member to have spent time within its walls.’
‘What, no one over for tea? No birthday party? Nothing?’ The very thought saddened her.
‘Nothing,’ he confirmed. ‘I have never had a birthday party.’
‘Well, I thought it was small,’ she said, ‘but then I know most people don’t live with as much space as we have here. We’re lucky.’ She nodded over the wall at the ramshackle farmhouse, where any one room shared the proportions of the entire surface area of his London home.
‘Hmmm . . . small, not cosy.’ He recalled their conversation the day after their first meeting, which now felt like an age ago.
‘Constricted,’ she said, reminding him of his earlier, more accurate, assessment and holding his gaze. With this one word she told him that she understood. ‘Although, having said all that, for a long time now I’ve often felt hemmed in here, trapped, no matter how much space we have.’
‘And so what are you going to do about it?’ he asked straight out, stopping abruptly in the lane to look down at her.
‘Move away, I guess, teach, learn, all the things we talked about – and I think I might have figured out a way to get started. Something that’ll help me save and set me on the right track. It’ll build my confidence.’
‘Sounds intriguing!’
‘Can I show you something?’ She bit her lip.
He nodded and she peeled the postcard from her pocket, holding it up so he could read it. Written in a block print, neat and not too fussy, were the words:
THINKING OF KEEPING CHICKENS BUT DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START?
NEED A CHICKEN-SITTER WHILE YOU’RE AWAY?
CALL THOMASINA WAYCOTT, ‘THE CHICKEN EXPERT’
REASONABLE RATES.
‘This is brilliant!’ he enthused.
‘Is it?’ She pulled a face.
‘Yes, it’s great – a really good idea, and, as you say, it’ll get you started.’
‘That’s what I thought, and while we still have the farm I can work here, help out, like always, but also it’s like starting my own business, doing something for myself. I was thinking, one day, I could even get a van!’
‘You could! Where are you going to put the card?’ he queried.
‘I know just the place,’ she said with a smile. ‘Plus, it’s where we’re heading anyway.’
‘The flat rock?’ He looked at her quizzically.
‘The flat rock eventually, but first I want to buy you a present, Grayson.’
‘I don’t need a present!’ he protested, while his tone and the way he almost jumped up and down on the spot suggested he might be more than a little thrilled at the prospect. She suspected that a present was a rare and lovely thing – especially for a boy who had never had a birthday party.
‘Why do you want to buy me a present? What’s the occasion?’
‘No reason and no occasion. It’s a “just because” present.’
‘I don’t think I need a “just because” present,’ he said, beaming.
‘Well, that’s too bad, because I’m getting you one anyway. Don’t you want to know what it is?’
He shrugged, embarrassed.
‘It’s a pair of wellingtons,’ she said, putting him out of his misery. ‘We can’t have you tramping all over the farm in your fancy lace-up London pavement shoes now, can we?’
Thomasina and Grayson drove over to the country store on the outskirts of Thornbury to stock up on chicken feed, place her card on the wanted-ads board and purchase a new pair of wellington boots for him. These were not only new, but his first adult pair, apparently, and ridiculously exciting.
‘ My very own pair of puddle-jumpers. That’s what my dad used to call them. I could only have been about three, but I can see myself holding my dad’s big hand and him swinging me by the arm along the path in the park, making sure I landed with a splash in the shallow puddles.’ He looked at her and laughed, and she loved that he was sharing his childhood with her. ‘I quickly sussed the game and tried to jump down hard, feet first in my little yellow wellingtons.’
‘I’m picturing you doing just that.’ She glanced across at him and smiled.
‘It’s these memories that are confusing for me,’ he said, and paused. ‘Such lovely moments, and I remember feeling loved, yet this was the man who ran away. Who just left, and that was it, all I got.’ He coughed. ‘I’d liked to have introduced him to you.’
‘I’d have liked that too,’ she said sincerely in return.
She swung the Subaru into the roughly paved car park. No sooner had they jumped down from the cab than she espied one of Thurston Buttermore’s contemporaries, loading sacks into the back of a van and wearing the khaki-and-mustard uniform of the country set.
He called out across the yard, ‘How’s things, Hitch? Heard you had a bit of trouble at home yesterday evening?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘no trouble, Randall. But thanks for asking.’
That would be down to Emery, the blabbermouth!
‘Righto. Well, give my best to your dad,’ he offered, his gaze lingering on Grayson before he jumped into the van.
Grayson caught up to walk alongside her. ‘How do people know what happened yesterday? It happened in the kitchen and we haven’t seen anyone!’
‘Welcome to country life. Everyone knows everything. If a farmer shits in Chepstow, we get the scent of it over in Austley Morton before he’s had a chance to wipe his backside.’
He laughed at her delicate turn of phrase.
Thomasina liked this place, had been coming here since she was a small child with her dad, and it always felt like a bit of an adventure. The store was actually more of a warehouse, with a concrete floor and metal roof, crammed with shelves and racks stacked high with plastic sacks of farm feed, compost, sawdust, tools, wooden stakes, fencing, wire, country attire and all manner of paraphernalia. It smelled like a cross between a garden centre and a sawmill. Thomasina watched Grayson taking it all in. ‘A bit different to your local corner shop, eh, Grayson?’
‘Just a bit.’ He smiled. ‘No crisps, magazines or energy drinks!’
She watched with something close to fascination as he ran his fingers over the long counter where gardening gloves, bolts, locks and, surprisingly, Kendal Mint Cake were on display – and then caught sight of Tarran leaning on one elbow, chatting to the girl behind the till.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
‘So, Hitch?’ he called out when he saw them, straightening with a look of glee on his face. It was the kind of smile given by someone who took joy in the misfortune of others and she felt a wave of dislike for this man and h
is despicable nature. ‘I heard Emery’s been chucked out?’
‘Did you now?’ she called back dismissively and, with her back to him, as she ran her fingers over the rack of wellington boots, some with fancy tartan lining, others in wild shades of grape and blue. ‘What size are you, Grayson?’
He smiled as he told her, seeming to like the way she took control, choosing something for him as if they’d known each other for years and she knew his taste. Thomasina concentrated on the job in hand, just as if they were any old couple.
Apparently, Tarran didn’t like being ignored and strode over. She felt her heart race.
‘All right?’ he said, nodding confidently at Grayson.
‘Yes, thank you.’ Grayson looked briefly at Thomasina and she knew he recognised the man from the pub, the one she had confessed to having slept with. Her mouth felt dry.
‘Come on, Hitch, what happened? Don’t be shy – that’s not like you. I heard you got your cousin thrown off his own farm in the dead of night, in the rain. Now that’s not something that happens every day.’
‘Well, Tarran, firstly it’s not “his own farm”, it’s my dad’s, as well you know, and secondly, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear. He wasn’t thrown out. I think, more accurately, he went to the pub for the evening and then came back and packed his bag. Sorry there’s nothing more dramatic to add.’
‘Is that right?’ Tarran eyed Grayson with thinly veiled dislike, no doubt having been fed a line by Emery.
‘Yes, that’s right.’ She smiled sweetly, with a feeling close to triumph at how she felt able to stand up to him.
‘And I heard you were involved in the hostilities?’ Tarran now addressed Grayson directly.
‘In a way.’ Grayson nodded, giving the most succinct and harmless response he could.
‘What d’you mean, “in a way”?’ Tarran pushed.
‘I mean, I did tell him what I thought of him because I don’t like him – more specifically, I don’t like the way he treats Thomasina.’
Tarran’s smile faded and he bit the inside of his cheek. ‘I see. You don’t like the way he treats Thomasina,’ he repeated, with the hint of a mocking chuckle. ‘You do that a lot, do you? Throw your weight around when there’s someone you don’t like?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t be hostile to someone I did like, would I?’
Now it was Thomasina’s turn to laugh.
‘You trying to be funny?’ Tarran jerked his head forward.
Grayson shook his head but held his gaze steady. ‘No.’
‘You like guns?’ Tarran folded his arms across his chest.
‘No.’
‘You ever fired a gun?’
‘No.’
‘Because we’re big on guns around here, air rifles and shotguns. We like to go out and let off a bit of steam, practise our aim.’
Grayson narrowed his eyes in confusion, as if he could not tell if the man was trying to make polite conversation or was threatening him. ‘I’ve never had a gun, never held a gun, but my next-door neighbour had one.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Tarran hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and looked for all the world like a gunslinger in the Wild West with Stetson cocked and a muzzle resting in a fancy leather holster against his thigh. She wondered how Grayson, the novice, would fare in a duel. Not very well, she suspected. ‘What does your next-door neighbour shoot – clays? Targets? Rabbits?’
‘Erm, people, mainly. Well, one person for sure. He got twenty-six years, which is a very long time.’
She saw the swagger disappear from Tarran’s stance, along with the smirk on his face.
‘How about these?’ Thomasina held up a tiny pair of green wellingtons with little frog-eyes sticking up on the front.
‘Perfect.’ He smiled at her, his girl.
‘His face!’ Thomasina squealed with laughter as they drove back along the lanes with Grayson’s new wellingtons – a plain green pair without frog-eyes – nestling on the rear seat of the pickup.
‘I only told him the truth!’
‘Like you always do, Grayson.’
‘Like I always do.’
The atmosphere was charged with their joy and a tone of hope and new beginnings.
‘Think I’ll get any calls?’ Thomasina pictured her postcard, pinned centrally amid the advertisements for farm equipment for sale and leaflets inviting entries for the county show in all manner of categories.
‘I think you will.’ He looked out of the window.
‘I love being with you.’
He snatched her compliment from the air and returned it: ‘I love being with you, and I’m thinking about how to make it happen, how to be here with you every day.’
‘There are banks in Bristol, you know.’ She grinned as excitement rose within her like a fountain.
‘There are, and maybe that’s the answer, but I don’t know.’
‘Are you fed up with your puzzle-solving?’
‘Something like that. I need a change of scenery. I want to climb off the conveyor belt that carries me straight back to that flat every night. I’d certainly get to do that in Bristol – for some people, it might as well be the Bahamas or Borneo!’
‘So I’ve heard.’ She chuckled.
‘I don’t know – I like this fresh air!’ he said with a shrug, and she wished he could better articulate his thoughts.
‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘if my dad takes the Buttermores’ offer and sells the farm, we’ll all be doing something different. But I don’t fear it; in fact, I’m starting to think it might be quite exciting.’
‘The Buttermores?’
‘Yep, Tarran and his dad with their flash farm and flashier cars. Idiots, the lot of them, as you just saw. They’re the ones who’ve made the approach to buy Waycott. They’ve been sniffing around for years, and we’re running out of options. I think not having Emery around to work with my dad might be the final straw. But d’you know what, Grayson?’ She took a deep breath, like someone galvanising herself for the battle ahead. ‘Getting rid of him and gaining freedom from worry for everyone, as well as giving me the chance to do my own thing – it just might be worth losing the farm. And I never thought I’d hear myself say that.’
She parked in the yard and reached over, plucking the wellingtons from the rear seat. ‘Here you are, Mr Potts, your very own boots – better than those lace-ups.’
‘Thank you. I love them – I really do.’
‘You all right, Grayson?’
‘Yes,’ he said, swallowing. ‘I’m just thinking of how to start. I want to say something, but I want to get it right.’
She placed her hand on her heart. ‘Just tell me – it’s nothing bad, is it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’re scaring me a bit,’ she whispered. ‘I think the world of you and I still can’t believe you like me back. I keep thinking that, at any minute, you will see me like everyone else does and run away, and even the thought of that makes my heart hurt. I picture you by my side, in my chicken-expert van!’ she added, in an effort to lighten the mood.
‘I want to be by your side in the chicken-expert van.’ He smiled at her and she felt her insides leap with joy!
They jumped down from the cab and Grayson stepped into his wellington boots, leaving his shoes in the footwell. He stood taller and walked with confidence, reaching out for her free hand. They now walked along the lane with the picnic basket, tripping along the twists and turns of the rutted path as they made their way down to where the River Severn bordered the land.
‘The thing is, Thomasina . . .’ he began.
‘The thing is what?’ She giggled nervously, still thinking, in spite of his reassurances, that this state of happiness was too good to be true. She was waiting for the sting in the tail, the dark consequence, the sledgehammer to fall, which would shatter their happy state into fragments of regret.
It turned out that neither of them had to wait too long.
As he opened his mouth to
speak, the phone in his pocket rang.
He glanced at the screen. ‘It’s my mum.’ Seemingly in no mood to talk to her, he ignored the call. With peace restored, he again reached for her hand.
‘The thing is, I want to ask you—’ The phone again broke the peace.
She looked towards his pocket. ‘Maybe you should get it?’
‘No. She’ll only want to shout or cry or both, and I don’t want her voice and her demands to dilute this.’
Again the phone fell silent and he smiled at her. Her heart beat quickly and she sensed that what might be coming was a proposal. Her spirits lifted at the very thought.
‘I want to ask you—’
The third ring in succession made them both jump.
‘Shit!’ he cursed, and let go of her hand.
‘It’s okay,’ she soothed, as he brought the phone to his ear.
She could hear the high and low notes of a woman’s voice, a lot like his mum’s but with the slightly deeper rasp of a roll-up addiction giving each word a sandpaper-like quality.
‘Auntie Joan, what’s wrong? It’s okay – calm down. You’ve got me now. What’s happened?’
Thomasina watched the rise and fall of his chest as he held the phone. The colour drained from his face as he stood with her on the banks of the river in their special place.
‘I’m . . .’ He looked up at Thomasina, who had heard, if not the details of the exchange, then certainly the tone of it. She stood with her knuckles pressed into her mouth.
‘I’m on my way. Try to stay calm. I’m on my way.’
He looked down at his feet, encased in his new wellington boots, which had taken no more than a hundred steps. ‘I’m on my way.’
I know I feel mentally free of Emery.
I know that Grayson Potts loves me.
I know that I love Grayson Potts.
I know we are heading to London, as his mum is very ill.
I know it doesn’t make me a very nice person, but I keep thinking how angry I am at her for robbing us of this happy time. We are just getting started with so many plans – and now this.
I know I will never tell that to a living soul.
I know these thoughts make me feel quite ashamed.
The Things I Know Page 23
