‘I would like you to consider moving into the farm with me. I mean, I’d like you to live with me.’
‘To live with you.’
‘Yes, as my wife.’
‘Your wife! Oh, Mr Doubler, you’re having me on, surely!’ Now Mrs Millwood sat bolt upright. Her raised voice was shrill but carried no weight, so failed to catch the attention of the other patients or visitors in the ward. It seemed to Doubler that the universe had the ability to shrink very small.
Nevertheless, he lowered his voice, encouraging Mrs Millwood to do the same. ‘No. I have never been more serious in my whole life. I miss you. I miss you every single day and I want you there beside me. I want to take care of you.’
‘Are you sure you haven’t lost your mind? What do you really miss? My cleaning? A bit of idle chit-chat on our lunch break?’
‘No, the cleaning is taken care of. The idle chit-chat? It’s irreplaceable. I miss it more than you can possibly imagine. I had no idea how full my life was until your absence emptied it.’
‘That’s a very nice thing to hear. But our conversations are still available to you. Haven’t I proven that these last few weeks? We must have talked most days. And what about all the new people in your life? You really don’t need to go marrying me. It seems a bit drastic.’
‘It’s not drastic. I’ve thought about this a lot. Non-stop, in fact.’
‘Well, I suppose that puts me at a bit of a disadvantage. I haven’t had time to prepare in the way that you have. You’re a little ahead of me in your thinking. Perhaps you need to give me time to catch up? How long exactly have you been thinking about proposing to me?’
Doubler considered this. How long? The thought had preoccupied him so greatly in recent times that he couldn’t recall when it wasn’t the first thing he thought about in the morning and the last thing he thought about at night. ‘Do you know, I couldn’t say. For ever, possibly. At least three months.’
‘Well. It would be only fair to let me have some time to get used to the idea.’
Doubler searched her expression. Her thoughts were far away. Perhaps she had already begun to get used to the idea. Some time to catch up with him was probably a reasonable request. His eyes drifted to her bedside table. To the little paper cups with her medication measured out.
‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t think we have time on our side. I can’t guarantee that I won’t just drop dead while I’m waiting for you to get used to the idea, and you’re certainly looking shaky on the prognosis front. We haven’t got time for a long courtship.’
‘But we haven’t had any courtship at all! It won’t just take time. It will take action. You’ll need to do all sorts of things to make me want to marry you.’
‘Things?’ His proposal has seemed so glaringly obvious and now Mrs Millwood seemed to have nothing but barriers for him. He tried to suppress his impatience. ‘What sort of things?’
‘Romantic things. Long walks by the river.’
‘Walks?’ Doubler briefly imagined a walk that didn’t involve his potatoes. It was an unlikely but not entirely distasteful image.
‘And the cinema. We’d probably want to go to the pictures a few times. Hold hands. Check we like the same sort of films. What sort of films do you like, Mr Doubler?’
Doubler thought hard, certain that there was a right answer to this and knowing instinctively that a First World War epic was probably not it. Cinema had never improved upon The Bridge On the River Kwai as far as he was concerned.
‘I like anything you like, Mrs Millwood. I’d like to sit beside you in the dark cinema and hold your hand. That would do for me.’
Mrs Millwood mulled this image over for a while. It was a good answer.
‘And restaurants? We’d need to go to some of those. Romantic ones are best.’
‘Well, I am a very good cook, Mrs Millwood. I don’t think we’d need to go to restaurants. We’d just find ourselves comparing the restaurant food with the food that I could cook for you and I’m fairly sure it would come up short.’
‘But that would be the point.’
‘It would?’
‘Oh yes! We’d go to a restaurant full of hope and expectation, and then we’d quickly find it wasn’t quite to our liking. The decor would be a bit fussy. The staff would be a bit condescending. They’d probably talk loudly and slowly to us.’
Doubler laughed at the idea.
‘And we’d spend the entire meal thinking about how much better the food would be at home so that by the time we left, we’d be racing out of there, not even ordering dessert.’
‘But eating cold apple crumble from the fridge instead?’ Doubler ventured, the image crystallizing in his mind’s eye as he spoke the words.
‘Exactly! And that wouldn’t be the end of the experience either. We’d tell our friends; we’d talk to each other about it. For years we’d be saying, “Do you remember that time we went for that romantic French meal in that fussy restaurant and the staff thought we were simpletons?” And then we’d laugh. And nobody else would find it quite as funny because they’d have to have been there.’
Mrs Millwood thought a little more; her eyes shone.
‘And then there would be other occasions. The time we went for a fancy supper in that ponced-up pub everyone was talking about.’
‘And we didn’t like the food?’
‘We never even got to taste the food. There was a power cut!’
‘There was?’
‘Yes, and while everyone else waited patiently for the power to come back on, we scuttled out of there, giggling our heads off, and went to the chippie and got to the front of the queue before anyone had even realized they weren’t going to ever get served in the pub.’
‘We did?’ Doubler wondered at this moment whether Mrs Millwood was describing an event that had happened to her in the past, it was so vivid as she described it. But she didn’t look wistful; she looked excited; her eyes were bright.
‘And then the pub we stopped at after a long, wet walk and you insisted on showing them how to serve a ploughman’s. We thought the waiter was going to get angry and throw us out.’
Doubler half smiled here, more certain that this was a memory they could create together but realizing, with a dash of shame, how annoyingly certain he must seem at times.
‘And did he throw us out?’
‘No, love. The owner of the pub recognized you as the best potato grower in the county and gave us our lunch on the house!’
‘Oh good. Well, that seems like a nice story to tell again.’ Her use of ‘love’ was not lost on him, but he let it float in the air like a bubble, not wishing to try to catch it for fear it would burst.
‘So, cinema and theatre. Music and food. That’s what we want from our courtship.’
‘And how long will all of this last, do you suppose?’
‘The courtship? Oh, heavens only knows! You can’t predict these things, can you? However long it takes for you to pop the question and for me to say yes. And in the meantime, we’ll have enjoyed all of these things together and we’ll have created the memories that will sustain us when we’re not quite feeling up to making new ones.’
Doubler was doubtful. ‘It feels like a long shot.’
‘No! Not at all! We’ll probably love the same things. We’ve got a lot in common. I’ll tell you who would be delighted. My daughter, Midge. She’s grown very fond of you.’
‘Likewise. She’s been a great help. More useful than my own daughter in all of this.’
‘What would your son think?’
‘He’d think you were a gold-digger. After my potatoes.’
‘A gold-digger? Me? Besides, that old place is not exactly gold. But it’s a happy home and that counts for more than all the gold in the world.’
Doubler thought about the offer he’d turned down. Quite a lot of gold under the circumstances.
‘But then,’ Doubler said, with certainty, ‘he’d look at your recent health worries and figure yo
u wouldn’t be around for long and then he’d relax a bit.’
‘He would? Well, that’s pretty poor behaviour from my son-in-law.’
‘I know. Turns out he’s not a very nice person. Got that from his mum. But then we’d have a huge amount of fun proving him wrong and outliving them all.’
‘We don’t want to outlive your grandchildren. That’s not something to wish for. We’d not have our own teeth.’
‘True, and some of those grandchildren are OK. I think you’d like them. There’s always hope for the next generation. Kindness can be a recessive gene, I’m sure.’
While Doubler spoke, Mrs Millwood was reaching awkwardly into the bedside cabinet to retrieve her wool and needles. She pulled the partly knitted blanket out first, smoothing it and allowing Doubler to admire the work.
‘Oh blast,’ she said, collapsing back into her pillows, exhausted. ‘It’s all got into a bit of a tangle.’
Doubler leant down and pulled out the balls of wool; four different hues, all required at the same time, had wound themselves into a fantastic mess of colour. ‘Let me,’ he said. ‘You rest.’
Doubler calmly set to work unravelling the wool to the point that each pile could sit independently and then set about winding them back into neat balls that Mrs Millwood could use more easily. He was happy in his work, sorting out her little problems, tugging gently at the small knots and tangles. Mrs Millwood didn’t quite sleep but lay gently back with her eyes half closed, letting Doubler take charge for a while.
Doubler admired the knitting; the complex pattern was beginning to emerge, though she had a very long way to go before it could be called a blanket. He stretched it out so it formed an extra layer of warmth on top of her pale blue hospital blanket and she gripped its upper edge, pulling it even closer. Mrs Millwood was still resting very quietly. Doubler emptied his basket carefully, arranging the flowers beside her in a jam jar he’d brought for the purpose. He put the tin of shortbread beside the flowers, hoping they might tempt her to eat. He hesitated when his hand felt the jewellery box. He took it out gently and prised the lid open. The pretty ring shone softly.
‘I think I’ll leave this here, if you don’t mind – let you look at it while you get used to the idea. I’ll only forget it in the basket and it’s precious to me: it was my mum’s.’ All of this he said quietly, almost to himself.
Doubler wasn’t sure if Mrs Millwood was awake to hear him, but she answered equally quietly, barely more than a whisper, and her eyes remained closed and her breathing shallow. ‘That’s probably a very good idea. I will certainly look at it. And maybe I won’t need all that much time at all. Who knows how long any of us have? That’s something you learn when you hang around in this place. But just to be prudent, we’d better get working on those memories quick sharp.’
‘And this,’ he said, with a nonchalance he didn’t need to feign. He tucked the unopened letter from the institute under the biscuit tin. ‘You can have a look at this when you’re feeling up to it. When Midge is here.’
Mrs Millwood said nothing and her eyes remained closed.
‘It’s not the priority, Mrs M. If you’ve only got energy for one thing, use it to get accustomed to my proposal. That’s the priority.’
Mrs Millwood smiled weakly but still her eyes remained closed. Doubler’s heart tore and soared and tore again.
‘Cheerio, then. I’ll pop in the same time tomorrow, shall I?’
Mrs Millwood didn’t answer. Her hands were still lightly gripping her knitting wool, as if she were frightened somebody would wrestle it from her while she slept.
Without looking back, Doubler walked softly away.
Acknowledgements
Snatches of conversation overheard in passing (often in the most incongruous of surroundings) find their way into my head, take root, and eventually weave their way into their very own tales that will of course end up bearing no relation whatsoever to the eavesdropped snippets I first heard. Nonetheless, I’m hugely grateful for the inspiration provided (however unwittingly) by a proud farmer in the queue for the abattoir; an objectionable young man with absolutely no discernible scruples (who set my mind whirring about the occasional impossibility of familial love); and my gorgeous sister Pippa and her husband Al, whose chat over breakfast planted the very first seed for this book.
This book is entirely fictional, of course, and sadly so are both Doubler’s blight-beating potato and his gin with its magical properties. However, the book is peppered with non-fictional characters whose consequential lives have impacted many of us.
John Clarke OBE has not gone unrecorded by history. He received many prestigious awards in his lifetime and his home, Innisfree, was awarded its blue plaque in 2013. John Clarke is used here to provide the foundation for Doubler’s work and the motivation that inspired Doubler to believe he might leave a legacy. You will discover here nothing more than the bare bones of Clarke’s endeavours but if you’re interested in knowing more, you’ll find a much fuller account of his life and work within the pages of Maurice McHenry’s book John Clarke a Potato Wizard. There is now a festival in Northern Ireland celebrating the undisputed grandfather of the Maris Piper and whilst the number of attendees doesn’t yet match those that flock to the festival that celebrates Marie Ann Smith’s ‘Granny Smith’, perhaps it’s only a matter of time.
Mary Ann Brailsford planted the seed of the first recorded Bramley apple tree, but she was not an apple grower; at the time she was simply the child of a mother who encouraged such activity. In memory of both Mary Ann and her mother, Elizabeth, we shall always call the Bramley ‘the Brailsford’ in our house.
A neurosurgeon is briefly mentioned in a conversation between Mrs Millwood and Doubler. She is of course referring to Henry Marsh, whose beautiful and humble memoir, Do No Harm, serves as a thank you letter to all those brave and skilful surgeons who live consequential lives every time they go to work.
The Central Potato Research Institute of Northern India exists. I saw a sign for it, fleetingly, from a bus window as I wound my way up a steep hill heading towards Shimla, but whether or not they would have been the right institution to pronounce on the validity of Doubler’s discovery, I have no idea. I’m guessing they would.
And finally, my thanks to my gorgeous husband Jon, and my fabulous children, Eoin, Poppy, Millicent and Sonny. Between them all, they have taught me everything I know about love, a little bit about gin and almost nothing about potatoes.
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Mr Doubler Begins Again Page 36
