by Dean Jones
“I need the house to be cleaned up. I lived in it for a long time on my own and didn’t really consider the essentials like electricity or running hot water and I thought you would be the person who could help me to get it right before Marcy and I move in.” He began, “I recognise it’s not really your area of work and I wouldn’t ask but I really need to keep things quiet, as you know, and you are the only person I would trust to make this happen for me.” he paused, letting the request settle with her. “I can make it worth your while if that’s any consolation?” he added finally.
“Don’t be fucking stupid, it would be my pleasure to get this sorted out for you and, might I add, I would be most keen to rekindle our business relationship as you are…how do I put this…a good luck charm so if you are happy with that then just let me know what you want?”
Before long architect’s drawings were arriving at their flat in Exeter and Marcy was enjoying the process of designing her new home.
“There are only two bedrooms, Seth?” Marcy mentioned as they were looking over the current revisions.
“Yep, don’t need more than that do we? Me, you and the baby in one and a spare for any visiting family who might make the trek north,” he replied absently.
“Well, the thing is Seth…We are going to need a room for the baby!” she smiled, “I don't really fancy the idea of sharing our room with our child…it would put me off doing certain activities…” she said.
“Hmm…perhaps but…” he looked up from the plans and caught the wink from his wife. He immediately blushed, “yes…well…I suppose your right…” he cleared his throat “It wasn't something we really considered when I was a child, we all shared one space, but you are right, I’ll send a note back and add on another room.” Marcy planted a kiss on his forehead and gave his arm a squeeze.
“Speaking of activities,” she giggled as she pulled him towards their bedroom.
***
The memory made Seth’s smile broaden and he made his way to the kitchen door and entered the warm house. The smell of cooking meat and vegetables hit him as he entered, and he kicked off his boots and walked up behind his heavily pregnant wife and wrapped his arms around her.
“Smells wonderful, just like you do,” he said as he cuddled into her neck.
“I must say homegrown produce is an easy ingredient to work with, you are an excellent Farmer Seth, the whole area knows it…although I dare say they’d be surprised with your methods.” She smiled and turned to face him, tenderly kissing his lips.
“Now wash your hands and sit down, dinner is almost ready.” She instructed.
They ate the lamb and vegetables and Seth savoured the flavours. Sitting there he couldn’t help but continue to smile. His life was perfect, and all the waiting had been worth it as now he had all he ever wanted. Soon they would welcome their daughter into the world and that would complete his journey.
Seth cleared the dinner plates away into the dishwasher and put the kettle on to make a pot of tea for them both. He was reaching up for the cups when he heard a crash behind him. Quickly he spun around to see Marcy clutching her stomach. He crossed the room in a heartbeat and was by her side panicking
Are you OK love, what’s the matter?” he asked.
“Shh, its fine it’s just…I think we need to get to the hospital…as soon as possible,” she grunted. “Our daughter is ready to meet us.”
Seth guided his wife to the car and set off towards Glossop as fast as he’d dare. The hospital was twenty minutes away, but he got there in thirteen. Marcy had called ahead to let them know she was on her way and when they arrived there was a midwife waiting in the maternity section to show them to their room.
Seth paced up and down next to the bed as he waited for the midwife to return.
“Will you sit down Seth, you’re making me nervous with all your pacing, and it’s me who has to get this baby out not you!” Seth did as he was asked and sat in the brown chair next to the bed.
“How long does it take to get some paperwork?” he asked, referring to Claire’s, the midwife, last comment as she left them to settle in.
Just then, the door open and Claire entered with a trolley in tow and a stack of documents.
“Now then my lovelies, comfy, are we?” She asked. Seth looked at Marcy who just smiled.
“We’ll just need to go through some questions, can you confirm your name and date of birth please?”
“Marcy Goodman, eleventh of June nineteen eighty-three” Marcy recited.
“Excellent, so we have the right documents and now if I could just examine you…” Marcy laid back and let Claire perform the examinations.
“Brilliant, you are moving along nicely is this your first baby?” Marcy nodded.
“That’s nice” she smiled, “well you are currently eight centimetres so shouldn’t be too long before we welcome your new addition into the world.”
Seth reached out and took Marcy’s hand and squeezed it. He knew all would be well but couldn’t help but worry. Marcy looked at him and winked.
“Not long now Daddy,” she said, and the name hit him like a hammer. A well of emotion stirred in his insides.
Forty-five minutes later and chaos had taken over the room, Marcy was grunting and screaming while Claire encouraged her to push and breath.
Seth felt like a spare part in the events and couldn’t help but think back to the stories his father had told him about his birth and watching it take place he thought his father had the better of it being in another room.
“One more push Marcy love and we’ll have the baby’s head…” Marcy growled as she pushed, and Seth could see the effort she was putting into the task.
There was a gush and Seth looked down between his wife’s legs to see the blood covered face of his child
“OK Marcy, just take some breaths and on the next contraction we’ll push the baby out…OK, sweetie?” Marcy nodded, and she looked exhausted. Thirty seconds later she was pushing again, and Seth watched as his baby came out and was lifted by Claire onto Marcy’s chest.
“You have a beautiful Daughter, Congratulations” Claire announced.
Seth looked at his baby on his wife’s chest, the emotions overtook him, and he began to sob with happiness. He placed his head on Marcy’s shoulder and looked down at the blinking eyes of his little girl, at that moment he knew, more than he ever had, he would not allow anything to happen which caused her pain or upset…she was his and he had waited for this moment for over a thousand years.
“You OK there Seth,” Claire asked, “do you want to cut the cord?”
He nodded and wiped his tears before taking the offered scissors and cutting between the clamps. And that was it, she was now independent.
“Do you have a name for her?” Claire asked as she filled in some more forms
“Hope,” they said in unison.
A Family Trip
Marcy and Seth prepared the picnic basket for their planned trip to the lake district. Seth had promised Hope he would show her some of the places he used to visit before he met her mother.
Obviously, she was as excited as any seven-year-old girl could be and had been sitting on the doorstep of their house for twenty minutes waiting for her parents to pack up the car, so they could set off.
“How much longer are you going to be Mummy?” She called back into their house impatiently.
Seth looked at his wife and smiled before responding on her behalf, “a few more minutes, sweet pea, mummy is just wrapping the sandwiches and we can be off OK?”
The little girl thought for a second and clutched her teddy a little tighter before lifting it up and inspecting it closely. “You told me a few more minutes ages ago, I think we should leave now before the lake district closes.” Her tone had become very matter of fact.
Both her parents smiled, and Marcy placed the remaining food into the basket before closing it up and passing to Seth for him to carry out to the car.
Passing his little girl
, he tapped the basket on top of her head and stuck out his tongue as she looked up at him. Smiling, she quickly got to her feet and followed him out of the gate and down the narrow path to their car.
Seth put the basket down whilst he searched his pockets for the keys to open the boot of their black Jeep only to discover he didn’t have them with him. Just as he turned to head back to the house he saw his wife walking towards him holding a set of keys aloft and laughing as she waved them at him.
“Seriously, you’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on love!”
They finished packing and Seth placed Hope in her car seat and fastened her in ready to start the journey across the Pennines to Windermere.
Seth pulled out of the street and headed towards the M62 with Marcy putting on some music through her iPod connected to the car stereo.
As the first song kicked in with the first bars of ‘a spoonful of sugar’ from Mary Poppins, a favourite of both Hope and Marcy, Seth looked across at his wife and smiled warmly as he always did when they were together.
It was a warm Saturday in June and the traffic heading up the motorway was busy, so the going was slow, but they were all enjoying the sounds of the musicals from the stereo and even Seth was singing along to ‘it’s a hard knock life’ from Annie when Hope piped up from the back of the car.
“Daddy, how long ago were you last at the lake district?”
Seth looked up into his rear view mirror before answering. Naturally, Seth had been honest with Marcy when they had met and were falling in love. After all, he had waited a millennium for her to return to the earth and it made no sense to him to start any relationship with the woman who now carried the soul he had loved so completely long ago.
When Hope turned three they had spoken about telling her the truth but agreed there were some parts of Seth’s life she didn’t need to know about. In the end, he had explained he was special as he had lived a long time but not to tell anybody as he was embarrassed about his age.
Obviously, Hope then proceeded to tell all her school friends her Daddy was over one hundred years old! Parents evening was amusing as the teacher brought it up during their meeting as a quirk of Hope’s personality. “She insists you are over one hundred years old.” Mrs Brown had said.
Seth and Marcy looked at each other and laughed “well I am older than Marcy, but I didn’t think I looked that old!”
It became a bit of a family joke since then. They even ordered birthday cards with three-figure ages on for Hope to take into school.
As it was a small school they were happy to promote her imagination and when she began learning about the Saxons in year five Mr Pattinson, Hope’s teacher, suggested she ask her Dad all about it as ‘he was probably there in person!’
They would eventually tell her the truth, all of it, but for now, they were happy she thought they were always pretending and had recently begun to ask how old he was really.
“It was a long, long time ago sweet pea, probably around fourteen eighty I think,” he thought for a second. “Yeah around then, it was a very different place and I had gone as it was quiet and there weren’t very many people, in fact, the place we are going today was completely people free.” Hope thought for a moment and then shrugged and looked back out of the window.
“Why do you ask love?”
“Well, I was just thinking maybe you had left something behind like you did when we went to Tattenhall last year?” She replied.
Marcy smiled and looked at Seth with eyebrows raised in a questioning way and Seth found himself lost for a moment in her eyes which were so blue and clear he could imagine the heavens and eternity within them.
“So, has daddy left any surprises for us to discover on this trip then?” she asked him.
Seth laughed, “maybe, maybe not…it has been a long time and things have changed somewhat since I was last here.”
Seth had a ritual of leaving markers in locations where moments of significance during his time waiting for the soul of his beloved to be reincarnated. Last year they had visited Tattenhall in Cheshire where he had fought for Aethelbald against the invading Vikings.
He had left part of a bracelet he had taken from one of the fallen soldiers and buried it beneath a small oak tree as a mark of respect for his foe following a brutal fight which he had needed all his skills to survive.
Upon burying the trinket, he had passed some of his own energy into the young tree to protect it in the years to come. Obviously, back then, he didn’t consider this as a time capsule he would return to with his family a thousand years or more later, but it became something he did throughout the years and he had placed over one hundred items in places across Britain, where most of his time was spent. There were others in Australia and the Americas, where he had travelled with expeditions during which he made a name for himself as a no-nonsense sailor who was very handy when the natives became less than welcoming.
“Oh goodie, I love looking for the treasures you left Daddy!” Hope exclaimed.
“Well just be ready for there being nothing there sweetheart, as I said I was a long time ago and things have developed a lot there since then”
They arrived mid-morning and parked up their car. They had a full day planned, starting with a walk around the aquarium, where they had left their car. Hope loved wildlife and the collection of fish held here provided her with a couple of hours of enjoyment specifically the section housing the lake trout, which were huge.
After leaving the aquarium exhibition they headed back to the car and set off to Troutbeck on the other side of the lake for their picnic lunch. Seth carried the basket while Marcy carried the blankets. They found a quiet spot near the lakeside but far enough back, so they were not in the way of the other daytrippers walking along the banks.
It didn’t take long for Hope to bring up the hidden treasures and she asked following a bite of her ham sandwich.
“So, Daddy, where should we look for your treasure?” she asked with her mouth still half full of bread and ham.
Seth made a grand gesture of standing and turning three hundred and sixty degrees in a mock finding-my-bearings way before pointing towards a group of trees not far away from where they sat.
“I would strongly suggest that if there were any little girl explorers here today the trees over there look suspiciously old” he smiled at his daughter who was now bouncing with excitement and pushing the last of her sandwich into her mouth before washing it down with a gulp of juice.
“Will the little explorer need anything to dig with I wonder Daddy?” Marcy asked.
“I suspect there may well be the need to dig, yes,” Seth responded in his best David Attenborough voice.
They all finished their food and packed away the remains and rubbish before heading back to the car to replace the basket and collect the camping shovels which had been left in the boot for occasions such as these.
With tools in hand, they head back towards the group of trees ‘Seth had indicated. Hope rushed ahead with the shovel in one hand and ‘Buddy’ in the other. Upon reaching the trees they discovered the small copse had been fenced off by the landowner likely to stop tourists from getting any closer to the marshier part of the lake.
Seth had a quick glance around to ensure they weren’t being watched before picking Hope up and placing her on the other side of the fence quickly followed by his wife. Seth vaulted the fence and pointed towards a small stone wall poking above the grass between the trees.
“Perhaps, if an explorer was interested in such things, it may be worth investigating somewhere near that stone wall?”
Hope sprang into action immediately and giggled as she ploughed through the grass towards the wall.
Once there she immediately started to search each stone for any signs of a hidden treasure among them but after a couple of minutes, she turned back to her dad with resignation on her face.
“There’s nothing here Daddy, I’ve looked and looked but can’t see anything at all, not even
a loose stone or any clues.”
Seth smiled, “maybe mummy can help you look?”
Marcy moved to where their daughter was standing and looked back at Seth expectantly. Seth darted his eyes towards the base of the tree they were next to and she tapped Hope on the shoulder and pointed at the ground with the shovel she was carrying.
“Of course…. a tree, Daddy wouldn’t put any treasure in a stupid wall!” she cried excitedly before thrusting her shovel into the ground beneath the giant oak.
Seth made his way towards them as she dug through the grass and roots looking for any sign she had found the thing he had left behind.
As he stood over Hope clawing dirt from the small hole she’d dug he tapped the ground next to his wife’s feet. It was about two feet from where hope had started digging and he winked and then coughed to get her attention.
“you know what, I think I recall the blade of grass next to mummy’s feet. In fact, it looks very familiar indeed,” and he winked again, this time at Hope who quickly got the hint and abandoned the hole she had dug in favour of beginning a new one where her dad had indicated.
The ground was tough, so Marcy joined her daughter in digging until, after about ten minutes Hopes shovel blade hit something.
“If this is another stone I will be very cross Daddy.” Hope stated as her mum cleared the soil from where they had dug to.
A couple of seconds later they were all staring down at a small cloth wrapped parcel.
Anticipation hung in the air as Hope gently lifted the object from the ground and as the cloth fell away a glimmer of colour appeared beneath. Reverently Hope passed the ancient parcel to her mother who gently removed the now dishevelled cloth revealing the treasure Seth had left behind centuries ago.
“It was my mother’s” Seth recalled as they stared at the artefact in Marcy’s hand. She lifted the intricately carved band of metal and showed it to Hope who was open-mouthed.
