by Anna Martin
“Okay.”
“You can be dismissed, or deemed ‘out’, in a few ways, but the main ones are either being caught out or if the bowler hits the wickets behind the batsman or if, while you’re running, a fielder from the opposing team throws the ball at the wickets and hits them.”
Paul leaned over the table and murmured to Ryan, “I’m going to get another round in.”
“With you, mate.”
As they shuffled out of the booth, they caught the end of the conversation.
“How do you know all this?”
“Henry, I’m Indian. Cricket is our second national religion.”
Chapter Seven
Henry ran into Ryan again within days, this time in the village. It was, as everyone kept saying, small enough that while Henry was walking back to the hotel from the bakery, he bumped into Ryan, who was on his way out of the bank.
After exchanging pleasantries, Ryan looked past him down the road.
“Do you want to stop into the pub?”
It was barely midday. Henry told him so.
“For some lunch,” Ryan said, laughing. “Stella’s not on today, so she can’t tell me off.”
“Yeah, okay,” Henry said. “Sure.”
The pub clearly welcomed a fairly brisk lunchtime trade, offering deals on hot and cold sandwiches with “crisps,” or “chips.” Although he was getting used to missing certain things from home (just when would this country get on board with the idea of good bagels?), the way the pub served up their chips was starting to convert him.
“So,” Ryan said, as they settled into one of the booths. He had a pint. Henry, due to the time of day, had ordered orange juice. For him it was closer to breakfast than lunch, but he appreciated that Ryan got up at the crack of dawn.
“So?” Henry echoed.
“You’re staying at the hotel, still.”
“Yeah,” Henry admitted. “I’ve sort of looked for somewhere to rent, but there isn’t exactly a huge variety of apartment blocks around here. And I don’t really want a house.”
“You’re not moving into Nell’s place, then?”
“No,” Henry said and sipped at his drink. “It sort of feels weird. The house itself needs too much work done to it. It’s not in any fit state to live in yet. And the gatekeeper’s cottage, where Nell’s lived all these years, it feels like her home. I wouldn’t feel right living there.”
“That’s fair enough. I was actually talking to Stella the other day.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. The farmhouse has a converted attic space. It used to be my room when we were kids. My parents stuck me up there to get me out of the way. Because of the way the house is built, it has its own entrance too, out the back of the house and down the side. Stella thought you might be interested in renting it.”
“You want me to move in with you?” Henry blurted before he could stop himself.
Ryan laughed. “If you want to put it like that. I’m not a great person to live with. I can’t cook at all. Stella makes meals for me and stacks them up in the freezer. It’s the only way I survive. And I love crap TV. And I have a furry bastard of a dog. But yeah. If you want to get out of the hotel, I won’t charge you an arm and a leg, and you can come and go as you please. And it’s closer to Nell’s house, of course.”
“Let me think about it,” Henry said, trying, and failing, to keep the hint of apology from his voice.
“Of course,” Ryan agreed. “Just give me a call.”
Henry lasted a day before making the call and saying “I’ll take it.”
It made good sense. Living in the little hotel was going to cost him a fortune in the long run, and he kept saying he wanted to settle, to find somewhere in this country to call his own. There really wasn’t anywhere locally where he was going to find a sleek, modern apartment—which would be his first choice of living accommodation.
“You should come over and have a look at it first,” Ryan said. It was easy to agree.
During his first visit to the farmhouse, they’d stayed on the ground floor, with the doors to various rooms shut. That made sense. He was there for business reasons, not personal ones. This time Ryan welcomed him in with a smile, Hulk sniffed around his shoes, then wandered off, and Ryan already had the kettle on to make him a cup of tea.
“How are you?” Henry asked.
“Not bad, actually. Been up since five, but not bad.”
“Five?” Henry echoed faintly.
“Yeah. ’Tis the life I chose.” He shrugged
Henry accepted the blue and white striped mug with thanks, and Ryan picked up the matching red and white striped one.
“Let me show you around.”
“Sure.”
“So, this is the kitchen,” Ryan started, smirking.
“It’s lovely.”
“Thanks.”
“We call that the mudroom,” he continued, gesturing to a small porch area that led out onto the deck at the back of the house. It was, appropriately, covered in mud, several jackets, boots, umbrellas, and coconut mats. There was also a scruffy dog bed and a range of multi-coloured chewy toys.
“That’s the dining room,” Ryan continued as they wandered through the house, mugs of tea in hand. “I only ever use it when my parents are home. Mostly, I keep the door shut so Hulk doesn’t get in there and shed dog hair all over the place.”
They passed a living room, which was all hardwood floor, big, sagging leather couches, a huge TV, and a real fireplace. Henry immediately loved it, but Ryan was already heading for the stairs, and he jogged the last few steps to catch up with him.
“I’ll take you up this way and down the back stairs so you can see both ways through the house,” Ryan said, as Henry tried not to stare at the other guy’s butt (which was waving seductively right in front of his face) and instead diverted his attention to photos of Ryan and Stella. The framed prints started at the bottom of the stairs with baby pictures and moved through school pictures as they ascended, ending with what Henry assumed was a rather recent picture of them both outside the pub. Ryan had his sister in a headlock, but she was laughing, her elbow digging into his side.
“My room is on this floor,” Ryan said dismissively and turned up the next flight of stairs.
The attic room was beautiful. There was no other word for it. Light spilled in through two windows that were set into the gently sloping roof, and the whole room was decorated in warm honey tones. Again, the floorboards here were stripped bare, there was a soft, shaggy rug in one corner, and the bed was a large double, wrought iron with white sheets.
“Wow,” Henry muttered softly. “You lived up here when you were a teenager?”
“Yeah, but my mum has redecorated since then,” Ryan said with a laugh. “The first thing she did was give it a deep clean to make it presentable. There’s a little bathroom over there—it only has a shower and a toilet and a sink, but it works.” He shrugged. “And that’s the fire escape route.”
Henry pushed the door open and leaned out. The stairs that led down the back of the house were steep and incongruous, but he supposed if he wanted his own entrance to the room, he could come and go without Ryan even knowing he was there.
The bathroom was pristine white, but a fine layer of dust prevented it from shining. Henry guessed it wasn’t used all that often, and decided it wouldn’t take much effort at all to clean up. There was a water glass next to the sink that held a lonely, brand-new red toothbrush, the only speck of colour in the room.
“I’ll take it,” he said again.
“Yeah?” Ryan said, his face breaking into a wide smile. “Cool. You can move in whenever. I’ll find the other set of keys for you. Stella has one set, but she hardly ever uses them. It’s more for emergencies, you know? Um… there’s Wi-Fi throughout the house. You actually get a pretty good signal up here. I’ll find out the passwords and stuff. And there’s a little TV in the second bedroom downstairs, I’ll find that and bring it up for you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
Ryan shrugged. “No one else is using it, so you might as well.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Moving in with Ryan was both liberating and strangely suffocating. There was no denying that there was something about him that Henry was strangely attracted to. Ryan had the whole deep, brooding thing going on. Plus, he worked outside. With his hands. On a farm, for God’s sake.
That did mean, though, that Ryan was awake at the ass-crack of dawn and was mostly done with his work by midday. He took a few hours off over lunchtime, napped for about an hour between two and three, then did other odd chores for the rest of the afternoon.
For Henry, who liked to keep late hours and considered five in the morning an excellent time to return from a night out, not the sort of hour he might want to get up to start work, it took some adjusting to. Ryan wasn’t particularly loud, but Henry was a light sleeper, and the sound of the boiler roaring to life and the pipes starting to clatter when Ryan took his morning shower nudged him out of sleep.
Still, the bed was exceptionally comfortable, and his room faced away from the sunrise, so most mornings he was able to sleep on for a few more hours. His long walk to Stretton House had been shortened, so Henry felt justified in spending a little while longer in the shower, making coffee, eating breakfast, before leaving and starting his own working day.
The immediate, fiery crush Henry had developed for Scott Castle had started to wane, although the embers were still there for stoking by Henry’s subconscious, mostly when it was a warm day and Scott stripped off his shirt to reveal his muscular, tattooed chest. For all of Scott’s obvious masculinity (which Henry’s subconscious definitely approved of) there was something about Ryan’s quiet, witty nature that was starting to be even more appealing. Even though his days were filled with interactions with Scott, his evenings were spent with Ryan, cooking and talking or watching TV.
Work on the house moved at a pace Henry hadn’t anticipated. It seemed like only weeks from when they started that he was able to begin ticking rooms off his list as complete. Or complete as far as the building work was concerned, anyway.
The kitchen was going to take the most renovation, just by the sheer nature of what he was trying to accomplish there. The dining room really just needed decorating, which would come after the building work was completed, and he took it upon himself to do the dirty jobs, sanding the woodwork and stripping the walls ready to be painted.
The library got a deep cleaning and a new carpet fitted, and the rooms Nell referred to as the “sitting room” and “parlour” again needed little more than cleaning and redecorating. These rooms, though, had high ceilings and intricate coving that needed specialist restoration. That too would be done once the dirty building work was complete.
Even though Stella had warned him about the locals being nosy, Henry was truly surprised at the number of people who turned up unannounced and uninvited, although not unwelcome, to introduce themselves and request a tour. He found himself not minding when one of the builders would come find him, usually rolling their eyes at the interruption.
“Nice to meet you,” Henry said, wiping his dirty hand on his jeans before offering it to Mrs. Brimble, head of the local Women’s Institute, who had brought with her a large Tupperware container full of cake.
“To share with Scott’s boys,” she had told him. “I know how hard they work.”
“They do,” Henry agreed. “Would you like to have a look at what we’re doing?”
He knew he was getting a reputation as a “charming young gentleman.” He’d heard one of the ladies saying so and didn’t mind at all. When he’d visited Nell, she’d called them all “nosy old hags,” and he’d been afraid, for a moment, that she disapproved. Then she waved it away.
“They’ll all see it sooner or later anyway,” Henry had pointed out.
“Just make sure you charge them for the pleasure,” Nell told him.
Henry got the impression that Mrs. Brimble would have happily paid for the pleasure of the tour, despite the condition of the house, and paid even more for the information gleaned from meeting Nell Richardson’s great-grandson in person.
“So you’re from New York City,” she said as he concluded the tour and led her back to the front door.
“Yes,” he said politely.
“And Hettie said something about your being Jewish, but I saw you at Paul’s service the other week, so I know that can’t be true….”
He wondered where the hell anyone had found that particular bit of personal information. “My mother is Jewish,” he said diplomatically, “although she practices the culture more than the faith.”
“There you go, then,” Mrs. Brimble said, patting his hand. “You’re a good Christian boy, like your father.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, Mrs. Brimble,” he said on a laugh. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been to a Christian service.”
Her expression soured, just a little. “Well, I hope we’ll see you there again soon. Jesus loves you, Mr. Richardson.”
He wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, so he smiled politely and waved as she folded herself into a snazzy new Ford and roared back up the drive at an unadvisable speed.
That night, Henry cooked chili for dinner, enjoying the familiarity and ritual of preparing a meal. And Ryan seemed to appreciate eating something that wasn’t reheated in his microwave.
“How’s work going?” Ryan asked as they sat down on opposite sides of the table, the pot of chili between them, ready for second helpings.
“Good,” Henry said as he speared a bean, inspected it, and ate it. “Should be able to start decorating soon.”
“When will you open, do you know?”
He huffed a sigh. “Not sure. I want to say August, but it might be later than that. Scott won’t give me a date until he starts decorating, and he thinks it’ll take about five weeks from when the building work is done to get the whole ground floor painted and ready.”
“Are you taking bookings yet?”
“For weddings?”
“Yeah.”
Henry shrugged. “I’ve had a few inquiries. It’s difficult because we’re not licensed yet, and people want to be able to see the whole building as it will be on the day, and I can’t give them that. Once it’s done, or nearly done, then I can show people around.”
“I still think that’s where you’re going to make your money,” Ryan said around a mouthful of food.
“As a wedding venue?”
He swallowed. “Yeah. There’s nothing like it close to here. The nearest place is on the other side of the motorway. And, I mean, it’s a gorgeous house. When the restoration is done on it, then it’s going to be incredible.”
Henry nodded. It was the restoration he was most worried about. The sale of the land had given him enough disposable cash to be able to do the essential work to stop the house falling down. He was still concerned about being able to add all the finishing touches that would finish it all to a high standard and make the house truly spectacular.
And then there were all the other costs: staff, getting all the kit for the kitchen, maintenance, linens, tables, storage, silverware, plates… the list went on and on. His instinct was to dip into his inheritance money, but there was no way of doing that without his parents finding out what he was doing, and he wanted to keep them out of it. And he didn’t really want to go back to Nell and ask for more money.
Sighing, Henry helped himself to more chili.
“What?” Ryan demanded. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Henry said. “I’m just trying to balance the books in my head.”
“Ah. Are they particularly… unbalanced?”
“No,” he said. “It would be nice if a big wad of cash fell on my lap, though.”
Ryan snorted. “We all know that feeling.”
“I think I might take out a loan. To cover the rest of the renovation work.”
It wa
s a bold statement, and he knew that when he said it. Bold statements worked well when he wanted to gauge someone’s reactions.
“Oh.”
That wasn’t very helpful. Henry told him so.
“Sorry,” Ryan offered. “I suppose it’s not a terrible idea. It depends on how much you need.”
“A few thousand,” Henry admitted. “At least.”
“Can you use Stretton House as collateral?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Talk to Shenal,” Ryan advised. “You can’t go far wrong from there.”
Talk to Shenal…. Talk to Shenal…. All he’d done since landing in this back end of nowhere town was go to Shenal for every little fucking stumbling block. It was irritating, mostly because the woman really did hold most of the answers he needed, and he hated having to ask for help.
Self-sufficiency was something that Henry had learned late in life, the result of an overbearing mother who had a hard time cutting the ties. He’d started tugging at those ties while in college, pulled harder once he reached his mid-twenties and found a relationship with another man, one that lasted until he was on the cusp of thirty. Still, the smothering feeling of being watched never quite left him, and the thought of another female watching over his shoulder was more than a little forbidding.
Even if that female was younger than him. And nothing at all like his mother.
“Fucking hell, Henry, don’t you have your own work to do?” Shenal asked as he let himself into her office.
It was nice to be appreciated.
Shenal didn’t have a receptionist. She claimed she could keep her own diary and had an answerphone that diverted to her mobile when she was out. The office itself was squidged in between the only bank on the village’s high street and a small greengrocer that he was sure Ryan supplied.
Inside, there was a small seating area and an enormous dark wood desk that was possibly an antique, several filing cabinets, and a fish tank with brightly coloured fish swimming in lazy circles. Henry lifted the takeaway cup of green tea he’d picked up from the café, and Shenal’s eyes narrowed in suspicion as she took it.
