‘My blanket unravelled,’ Doubler had said, tears pricking at his eyelids.
‘I know. Our stories are not the same, Mr Doubler. Sometimes when you drop a stitch, you can’t really patch it up – it just undoes. It’s awful. It feels like a waste of time, doesn’t it, to end up with a pile of loose wool where before you had something useful.’ Mrs Millwood had looked thoughtful.
‘But afterwards, when the pain stops, you can tidy things up a bit. You can’t ever make that blanket again, not out of that wool, but what you can do is wind the wool up into a really neat ball – and that in itself takes time and patience and a degree of love and generosity – and then you can store the ball of wool away somewhere safe. And maybe just look at it from time to time.’
‘I am so far from that time, Mrs Millwood. It is still just a knotted mess at my feet. It trips me up; it catches me out. I couldn’t even find an end if I tried.’
‘So don’t. Do what you’re doing. Walk around it, step over it. Ignore it. Sweep it into a dark corner if watching it is causing you too much pain. But one day, you’ll have the strength and the resolve to look for an end and then slowly, slowly you can tidy it away neatly. You’ll feel some peace then.’
Doubler had carefully stored the image away in his memory and then asked, ‘And the anger you felt when your husband was dying – did it go when he died?’
‘In my case, yes. Because we’d said all our hurts and we’d said all our “sorry”s and I was just so glad he didn’t have to suffer again and I was so, so relieved to sleep through the night. For the first week or so I just slept and slept. My daughter thought my doctor had medicated me, but, no, I was just catching up on the sleep that you can’t have when you’re caring night and day.’
‘Ours are very different stories, Mrs Millwood.’
‘They are chalk and cheese, aren’t they? I bet when you’re tripping over that mess of tangled wool, you can’t imagine it ever made a blanket in the first place. But it probably did – the pain is just hard to see past. It can blind you, that kind of sadness.’
‘I had no warning, no inkling. And yet she knew! She could have spared me the shock, couldn’t she? She can’t have loved me much if she didn’t even think I needed a bit of gentle letting-down.’
‘Love, Mr Doubler. It’s a funny thing. True love doesn’t go away, but the pressures of life can do things to people. Who knows why some people react so differently? Sometimes it’s just an ageing thing. Like wine. Some wines are best drunk right away, as soon as the wine is made. And then no amount of keeping it and nurturing it will make it any better. Others aren’t that great first of all, but they get better and better. But the really good wines, Mr Doubler, they’re good when you first drink them and there’s still room for improvement.’ She had looked at him, puzzled then. ‘Why “chalk and cheese”, do you think, Mr Doubler?’
‘Well . . .’
Doubler blinked his eyes open and looked around the room, expecting to see Mrs Millwood bustling into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Had he told her where the expression ‘chalk and cheese’ had come from? Almost certainly – it was the kind of information he enjoyed being able to furnish. And she would have logged it carefully to relate to her friends at the knitting circle or, perhaps, the animal shelter.
There were people who knew Mrs Millwood at the animal shelter, people who perhaps missed her as much as he did. And surely there were animals, too, animals that might even be suffering as a result of her sudden departure. He had something in common with all of them, if only his sadness.
Doubler thought about the copy of the Yellow Pages he had tidied away in the cupboard and wondered from where Mrs Millwood drew her strength. She had been blessed with so much courage while he had so little. She certainly had enough for the two of them, but if he were to borrow some of hers, what on earth could he give her in return?
He looked at his strong and weathered hands. Mirth Farm soil was so ingrained in them that the fine lines formed dark contours and he wondered if he studied them for long enough, he’d find, drawn there, the topography of Mirth Farm itself. His hands were generously calloused, and Doubler was grateful for these hardened areas that gave him protection from the tools he handled daily. He ran the rough tip of his right thumb over the armour of his left hand, thinking how clever those skin cells were to form here where they were most needed, as if they had learnt lessons from every knock, every blister, every small wound. His heart, though, had taken some hard knocks of its own but had failed, he now realized, to similarly protect itself from future injury. If anything, it was more vulnerable to hurt now than ever before.
Perhaps, he wondered further, his heart had not hardened because that was not the place he suffered most when Marie went. It had been his head, not his heart, that had borne the brunt of the pain. His brain had ached with the inspection of her action and the replaying of the last months, weeks, days, looking for a clue, looking for a moment at which he might have changed their future. It was his brain that hurt from the constant examination and recrimination, and it was his brain that eventually stopped coping and had almost shut down altogether while he’d descended into the post-Marie chasm to escape the constant thinking. But the impact Mrs Millwood’s absence had on him was a very different thing. It hurt deeply in his ill-prepared heart.
He thought of her in her hospital bed and wondered whether she was strong enough in all the right places to recover. She seemed to be so much more resilient than he would ever be. Here he was, physically as strong as an ox, being propped up by Mrs Millwood, an invalid no less. Somehow, he would need to find some courage. He headed out to the potatoes to think.
Chapter 10
Having had no answer when she rang the doorbell, Midge rounded the farmhouse and crossed the yard, heading for the kitchen door, a bag full of groceries under each arm. Today, it was calm at the top of the hill, where normally the wind gusted, making it difficult sometimes to appreciate the silence that her mum so often talked about. She took a moment to inhale a lungful of hillside air and looked around her as she walked, observing her surroundings properly for the first time since she’d started to visit Doubler.
She popped the bags down in the yard, leaning them against a deteriorating stone wall. The yard was quartered by the back of the farmhouse itself, a locked garage and the first of some huge barns, which felt ominous in their stillness. The yard, nothing more than a turning circle really, was surfaced in gravel, and the bare fields she had driven through crept right up to each of the buildings so that, other than a briar-filled narrow flowerbed that circled the farmhouse itself, the grounds were devoid of anything that might be considered a garden. At the front of the house, to the right of the approach, there were a number of fruit trees – apple, she thought, and some others that might be part of an ancient fruit orchard – but their skeletal forms at this time of year lent little relief from the stark surroundings.
The roadside hill at the front of the farmhouse was quite steep for farmland but was furrowed in meticulous rows running the width of the fields. At the rear of the house, the field rolled more gently in all directions before dropping away to the boundary with that other big potato farmer Peele. Midge knew that the fields for as far as she could see were Doubler’s, and these in every direction were a deep, rich brown. The hedges that separated them were largely bare at this time of year, and the occasional coppice or small stretch of woodland boasted little that was evergreen. Midge had noticed Peele’s land as she drove past it on the way to visit Doubler and had acknowledged a discrepancy that she now realized she must enquire about.
As she stood looking, her sweeping gaze taking in the furthest reaches of the horizon as well as the immediate scenery, Doubler appeared from a narrow gap beside the first of the huge barns. Seeing Midge, he deviated from his planned circuit, hurrying across the yard towards her, waving cheerfully while briefly enjoying the thought that this warm interaction would be caught on film.
‘Have you never thou
ght of putting in a vegetable patch, Doubler? Seems such a shame that with all of this land you’re having to buy in your vegetables.’
Doubler grinned in recognition. This trait of launching into a conversation as if he had been party to the preceding, unspoken thoughts in her brain was definitely a characteristic he recognized from Midge’s mother.
‘I agree it is a shame, but my potatoes occupy my day quite fully. I’m not sure I could give anything else my full attention.’
‘But isn’t it monotonous? The bare soil and stone? All those potatoes! I think I might go mad up here.’
‘Here? Monotonous? Heavens, no. Barely two days are the same.’
‘What you need here, Doubler, as I’ve told you before, are some nice hens pecking at the yard’ – she nodded at the empty space around them – ‘and there, perhaps, in the lee of that barn, a veggie patch. That’s a great spot. It would be nicely sheltered.’ She pointed at a corner of the nearest field that ran right up to the garage.
‘I’m sure you’re right. I have been meaning to be a bit more adventurous. But the day job keeps getting in the way. Perhaps in my retirement, eh?’ he joked.
Midge picked up the groceries and they entered the house together.
Doubler nodded at the bags. ‘I do OK, though, all things considered. These are probably grown locally, and I get by with the help of my friends.’
‘Your friends?’ Midge asked with an eyebrow raised and a hint of cynicism in her voice. The man in the farm shop had handed over the groceries without a word of greeting. Midge would have expected some sort of message of good wishes to pass on, particularly if Doubler hadn’t been to the shop in person for a few weeks.
Doubler chose not to answer and busied himself putting away the groceries.
When he returned from the pantry, Midge was already putting the kettle on.
‘Right, you. Mum is pushing for a progress report.’
‘From me? Well, nothing much to report and I spoke to her just yesterday.’
‘Nothing to report? That’s what we both feared. Have you arranged a time to visit Grove Farm yet? That’s what she really wants to know.’
Doubler looked at his feet and wondered how best to reply.
Midge looked serious, her hands now on her hips. ‘Have you even called them?’
Doubler shook his head apologetically, still unable to look Midge in the eye. ‘I’m afraid not. I lost my nerve.’
‘Oh, Doubler, that’s such a shame! If you don’t want to volunteer, I completely understand, but you need to tell Mum you’ve chickened out or you’ll just be letting her down. She really was hoping you’d get involved and help them out. Help her out. Besides, they’re expecting your call, so it will seem very rude.’
Doubler was appalled but unsure what he could do to right the situation, as recently he’d felt further away from making that call than ever before. ‘I’ve been very busy up here – there’s the normal workload to contend with, and I’ve taken on my domestic duties, too. There are already a great number of commitments to deal with. I’m quite stretched.’
Midge looked around at the immaculate kitchen. ‘I’m sure you’re doing a wonderful job keeping on top of it all, but I really don’t think it’s very healthy hiding up here all the time.’
Doubler protested, ‘I’m outside most of the day and I provide well for myself. It’s a healthy lifestyle – your mum would vouch for that.’
‘I’m quite sure you are healthy physically. That’s not what I’m concerned about. It’s your mental health that worries me. You must go days without seeing somebody up here.’
Doubler bit his lip and looked embarrassed.
‘Are you involved in any social activities? Golf? Bridge? A book club?’
Doubler shook his head and sat down heavily, resting his elbows on the table and putting his chin in his hands.
‘And what about friends? Do you get many visitors to Mirth Farm?’
Doubler shrugged.
‘When did you last go to dinner at a friend’s house?’ Midge still had her hands on her hips. She felt as combative as she sounded.
‘Gosh, I can’t remember. We used to go out a lot, Marie and I. She was very sociable. Drove me nuts, to tell you the truth. But after she went, I didn’t really feel up to much, so the invitations soon tailed off. Not their fault. I probably said “no” one too many times, so they eventually stopped asking.’
Midge, incredulous, came and sat down next to Doubler. ‘But that was more than two decades ago! You’re not telling me you’ve not eaten at a friend’s house for all that time?’
Doubler immediately pushed his chair back to stand up, continuing with the tea-making process that Midge had abandoned in her shock.
‘I suppose I haven’t. Amazing how time flies, really. But it’s not surprising. I’ve had my head down with my work, and your mum was always there to keep me company Monday to Friday. I never felt lonely.’
‘But, Doubler, that is not good enough! What about trips to the town? To the shops? How many times a week do you actually leave this place?’
Again Doubler fell silent. He had deliberately kept his isolation a secret from his children, but he didn’t think Midge would be so easy to fob off with a convenient version intended to pacify her. And besides, Mrs Millwood knew the extent of his solitary confinement, so there was little to gain by hiding it from her daughter. Still he hesitated, acknowledging his failure at life as if for the very first time.
She was insistent. ‘Doubler, how many visits to town do you make a week?’
Doubler poured tea for them both, took a sip and concentrated furiously on the lip of his cup.
‘A month?’ Midge tried.
Doubler finally raised his eyes to meet hers. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t leave here.’
‘What, never?’
‘No. Not since Marie went. I have an arrangement that covers me for groceries and it’s quite satisfactory. Anything else I need is delivered to me here. I only have to pick up the phone. It lets me get on with the work I need to do. My potatoes are actually very demanding and even in the winter there is so much to do. I have very little help, you know – just a few extra pairs of hands for harvest. Most of it I do myself and I just wouldn’t manage if I was always popping into town.’
‘I’m not talking about always popping into town. I’m talking about once or twice a week, say, getting out and about, having a conversation with somebody, anybody. You’re living as a recluse and that can’t be healthy.’
‘I’m OK,’ Doubler said quite firmly. ‘I don’t need anybody much. I mean, of course I relied very much on my lunchtime natter with your mum. That I miss dreadfully.’ His eyes filled up and Midge thought he might break down altogether, but he shook himself and drew himself up straight. ‘But I’m coping without those even. Conversation is overrated, you know.’
Midge shook her head sadly. ‘No, Doubler, it’s not. And if I wasn’t here trying to keep an eye on you in Mum’s absence, I hate to think what would happen to you. I’m going to dial the number for Grove Farm myself, but you’re going to do the talking – after all, you’re a bright, interesting individual and you are more than capable of engaging with these people. You’re going to volunteer immediately – and I mean immediately, tomorrow ideally. And just so you don’t get cold feet, I am going to drive you there myself the first time. I can imagine the shock to your system could be immense and I don’t want to feel responsible for you when your system goes into collapse because I’ve made you have a conversation with somebody other than my mother. Come on, I haven’t got all day.’
She led him to the telephone, looked up the number on her own phone, dialled it and handed Doubler the receiver with a look of impatience that Doubler feared much more than the sound of a stranger’s voice.
Chapter 11
The phone rang just as Doubler was sitting down to lunch. He had still not got used to the silence round the table, which was so much louder than any conversations
he’d ever had in there. Midge’s insistence that his lifestyle was unhealthy had unsettled him, and the vicious hilltop wind that rattled at the windows and occasionally shrieked as it tried to find a way inside only served to exaggerate the stillness in the kitchen.
Doubler had propped himself up on his left elbow, his hand supporting his chin while poking at his potatoes with his fork, pushing them round the plate with a disinterest that was quickly turning into dissatisfaction. He wondered, as he chased a potato from one side of the plate to the another, whether he would ever enjoy eating again. Mrs Millwood might have been consuming an inferior lunch all these years, but she had been consuming an inferior lunch with him and that small distinction was now having a disproportionately large impact on the flavour of his own food. He added this new slight to the growing reasons to be disgruntled by Mrs Millwood’s absence and he was so deep in this thought, crafting a list of complaints in his head, that he was shocked by the shrill ringing from the telephone.
He had just begun a quavering ‘Hello’ when that perfectly familiar voice cut through his mumbled greeting. ‘So, Mr Doubler, you know how you always sneer at my apple choice?’
‘I do?’ he asked, trying to force some indignation into his voice to compete with the warmth that was spreading from deep within him.
‘My apples. You sneer. Don’t tell me you don’t.’ Mrs Millwood paused, hearing a smile. ‘My Granny Smiths?’
‘Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be my first choice of apple, it’s true. Nor my second. Nor my third, for that matter. I doubt it would make it into my top ten. I doubt I could name a hundred apples, but if I could, I don’t suppose the Granny Smith would make it there either.’ Doubler luxuriated in the conversation, his mind casting itself out across the orchards of England. ‘Cox’s, the russets – all the russets – and, oh, I am partial to an in-season Bramley—’
Mr Doubler Begins Again Page 8
