by Freya North
Fen was blazing through 1956 when the phone in the Archive rang. She scrambled up from 1942, 1958 and 1979 (all found in the 1956 box – despite it being the only box without a question mark on the label, for goodness’ sake), and grabbed the receiver.
‘Barnard Castle?’ she asked hopefully.
‘It’s Otter. Ed and I are ready for our lunch. Come to our room in five minutes. Next to Acquisitions.’
My God, lunchtime already.
Only Otter isn’t in the room. Just the overfamiliar courier.
‘Oh,’ says Fen, ‘still lost?’
‘Hullo,’ says the courier, ‘again.’
She makes to leave. ‘Are you looking for someone?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘Otter and Ed.’
‘I’m Matt,’ he says.
Fen nods somewhat cursorily at him.
As she made to leave a second time, Otter came in.
‘Fen!’ he greeted her. ‘Meet Ed.’
Fen was starting to feel a little exasperated and she glanced from Otter to the Man With Two Names. ‘Who?’ she shrugged. ‘Which? What?’ Otter looked worryingly nonplussed at Fen’s confusion. But the courier came to her rescue.
‘I’m Matt,’ the courier persists, ‘I edit Art Matters. Hence “Ed”. Although I hasten to add that it is only Otter who calls me Ed.’
‘You’re not a courier?’ Fen asks, frowning first and then blushing, much to Otter’s delight and Matt’s surprise.
‘No,’ confirms Matt generously, ‘just an editor. Sorry to disappoint you. Hullo.’ He held out his hand which Fen took. They shook hands just a little gingerly.
‘Hullo, Matt, then.’
‘Thyu.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Matthew. I edit Art Matters and anything else you want to know you can ask over lunch. I’m starving.’
‘Hangover?’ Otter said not so much presumptuously as from experience.
‘Worse than,’ Matt groaned and hoped that Otter wouldn’t pry or comment.
Otter, however, was now near-obsessed with his self-crowned role as matchmaker. ‘Matthew Holden is a modest sod,’ he said as the three of them walked along John Islip Street to the sandwich shop, ‘he’s twenty-nine, he is a brilliant editor – if a quite dastardly cad. He’s relatively solvent and comes with car and mortgage.’
Fen backtracked and ground to a halt as she did so: ‘As in Henry?’
‘Henry Moore-gage?’ Otter quipped.
‘Holden,’ Fen stressed, staring at Matt.
Please please please! Please let it be so! I’ll cook and clean and perform base acts for him. I’ll marry him and bear him an heir. But please please please!
‘Any relation?’ she said, with hastily employed nonchalance.
‘Father,’ Matt confirmed without fanfare, ‘late.’
‘How fantastic!’ Fen said, wincing as she did so. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … I’m sorry for your loss. But I’m a huge Julius Fetherstone fan, you see, and your father was such a wonderful patron.’
‘I applied under a pseudonym,’ Matt said almost defensively, ‘and anyway, most of his Fetherstones were already bequeathed to national art institutions.’
Fen touched Matt’s arm. He felt firm. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …’
Matt reassured her by laying his hand fleetingly between her shoulder-blades.
Otter noticed the physical contact with satisfaction.
‘Did you say “most”?’ Fen asks, as they take their sandwiches into the little gardens opposite the Trust. ‘Did you say most the Fetherstones were bequeathed?’
Matt nods because he has a mouthful of pastrami and ciabatta.
‘Can I marry you?’ Fen asks, all wide-eyed and winsome.
‘OK,’ he confirms through a muffle of bread and sausage.
Otter is delighted with their exchange.
‘It’s not an April Fool,’ Fen stresses, glancing at Matt’s profile and liking it so much she has to cast her eyes away, alighting on his legs instead; feeling suddenly a little light between hers.
Oh God. Not on my first day at work. Not a colleague. Not after so long without. Not after landing my dream job after so long doing mind-numbingly boring placements. So he has great cheekbones, milk-chocolate-coloured eyes and funky this-way-and-that sandy hair. So what. OK, so he’s not too tall, not too beefy but fit. Big deal. And he has good teeth and a gorgeous smile. Well la-di-bloody-da.
So, he’s charming and handsome and he’s Henry Holden’s son.
I am not going to have a flirtation, let alone a fling, with a colleague.
So says your right palm, Fen. What can you read on your left?
Egg-mayonnaise sandwiches never tasted so good. For Fen McCabe, Christmas has come early.
Pastrami on ciabatta is a taste sensation today. Matthew Holden has just appointed the role of rebound to the archivist. No one else need apply.
FIVE
‘A good day at the office, darling?’ Abi jested when Fen took a seat at Snips, the hairdressers, between her and Gemma.
‘Save any art for the nation?’ Gemma asked her.
Even with her hair sopping wet and the stylist’s clips parting it into strange configurations whilst he snipped, Fen looked quite elated.
‘I met a man called Matt,’ she said with a blush that neither Abi nor Gemma had seen for many many months.
‘Please not a frigging statue,’ Abi groaned, wanting to lean forward to clasp her head in her hands but finding her hair tugged back by her irritated stylist.
‘No no,’ Fen breezed, ‘but he is Henry Holden’s son.’
‘So he’s as good as a bloody statue,’ Gemma concurred, ‘God, you’re mercenary!’
‘Probably just your average office flirtation,’ said Fen.
‘Yeah right,’ Abi snorted, from experience, ‘you just try and stop it there!’
Matt hardly gave Fen a moment’s thought when he returned home. His ex-girlfriend was still there. Looking very comfortable. She’d cooked him supper. Some for Jake too, but Jake didn’t show. Matt didn’t have the heart to send her home. Or was it that he didn’t have the nerve? He let her sleep in his bed. Again. He felt somewhat defeated by it all. Exhausted. She entwined her limbs around his and gave his ear lobes sweet little kisses, his chest too; she tried her best to arouse his flaccid cock.
‘I have a headache,’ Matt said, turning away from her but staying awake for hours.
SIX
James Caulfield was woken by his lurcher, Barry, and, in turn, woke the labrador, Beryl, over whom he tripped on his way to the bathroom. He had a leisurely pee and then yawned at length, hanging on to the basin and staring vaguely at the mirror until the fog of reverie lifted and his reflection gawped back.
‘Christ,’ he groaned, stretching his chin to analyse bristle length, ‘reckon I can go another day?’ His dogs did not answer, merely observed him before glancing away in the approximate direction of the kitchen and their breakfast.
‘What’s today?’ James asked, this time not expecting an answer from his canine companions. ‘Thursday, I do believe. That means Mrs Brakespeare and as she’s rather short-sighted, the razor can wait until tomorrow.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully, sprayed a long blast of deodorant under each armpit and went downstairs in his T-shirt and boxer shorts to feed the dogs. He stood over them, hands on hips, as he always did, while they slurped down their food before staring at him imploringly as if they could eat the same again. ‘Come on, out you go.’ He opened the arched oak door and the dogs bounded out into the morning.
Standing barefoot on the stone steps of his home, he watched the dogs race each other over the lawn. ‘In-digestion!’ he called after them in warning, stopping them momentarily in their tracks, before they resumed their intricate chase in and out of the cedars. James looked over to the great house, the gables of which he could see through the shrubs and trees. ‘Morning all,’ he said quietly, ‘apologies, as ever, should my dogs shit in your shrubs.’
He shut the front door and went to change. It was ten in the morning and he was running late.
James Caulfield is forty-nine years old. He lives at the Keeper’s Dwelling of Delvaux Hall, near Bakewell, Derbyshire. The Hall itself is no longer lived in by Lord Delvaux, or anyone of remotely aristocratic lineage, however tenuous. Fifteen years ago the Hall was converted into ten luxury apartments, the stables, the keeper’s dwelling and the forester’s lodge into self-contained residences. James is a landscape gardener for whom an address as seemly as Keeper’s Dwelling, Delvaux Hall, Near Bakewell, Derbyshire, is essential to his trade. His clientele would be strictly limited if his van and cards gave some cul-de-sac in Chesterfield as his abode. James bought the building as a forsaken shell fourteen years ago, taking on most of the interior renovations himself. Consequently, though his mortgage is relatively small, the upkeep of the place requires a monthly input of funds that his landscape gardening only just about provides for. It certainly does not stretch to fixing the temperamental heating system, or the extensive roof repairs.
While most men his age dress in suits for the office or casuals for tele-working, James’s work attire consists of old khakis, a black cotton polo-neck (the polo part becoming unstitched at the neck), a quilted checked lumberjack shirt, thick socks and hiking boots, an old battered wax jacket slung over his shoulder but worn only in utterly antisocial weather. The whole ensemble, clothing as it does a strong six-foot frame, makes James look much more Ralph Lauren than he does Percy Thrower and that’s why most of his clients are female. His Italian mother bequeathed him a head of tenacious, dark curls that he keeps cut close to his scalp. Though his hairline has receded a little, it has not drawn back further since he was twenty-six, nor have the silver flecks which pepper the sides increased. Because he scrutinized it daily until he was thirty, and it didn’t creep back even a millimetre, James rarely looks at it now – he is more concerned with his torso. When he looks in the mirror, he is always unnerved to see that it is not the body of a man in his mid-twenties that he still fully expects to see. But there again, when he goes for his thrice-weekly run, he is always unsettled that three miles feel much more of an effort than seven ever used to. He fears that age is playing havoc with his memory and powers of logic. Saying that, he is blessed by good looks; working out of doors affords his skin a year-round healthy bloom and his olive complexion accentuates the glint of his nut-brown eyes. His teeth are good. His humour is excellent. His hands are anomalously fine and clean for his job. His self-sufficiency, however, is wholly exasperating.
James is a prime topic of analysis amongst the women he works for. Word of mouth passed him from client to client, and much conversation is devoted to hypothesizing on why such an eligible man is unattached. In their pursuit of the tiniest clue (they’ve given up on full-blown answers), they rarely allow James to garden uninterrupted. He is paid by the hour and if they choose to force him to spend lengthy periods at the kitchen table drinking tea, or juice, or sometimes, according to the season, Pimm’s or spiced cider, then that’s their prerogative. Most would love to object to the presence of his dogs, especially the lurcher with the lascivious glare and probing snout, especially the labrador who invariably digs up much of James’s work before he leaves; but none voice their concern. Whatever makes James happy. What is it that would make him happy? But is he unhappy? He can’t be happy all alone, surely. Do you know? No, do you? Any ideas? Any clues?
He’s an enigma. In Derbyshire, he is day-dream material, fodder for fantasy. He is Mellors. And Angel. He is Gossip. He’s the highlight of many a Matlock Mrs’s week. He knows it and he chuckles to himself amongst the hydrangeas. He plays up to it. He likes the attention. The company. And the control.
Once James had arrived at Mrs Brakespeare’s near Hassop, had been given a cup of tea, a bun and a run-down on her week, there was just time for him to do an hour’s work before lunch-time; a hearty affair of ham and eggs, orange barley water and the recounted ways, wiles and woes of Mrs Brakespeare’s daughters and granddaughters.
‘And you, James, what are we to do with you?’ Mrs Brakespeare declared quite brazenly, folding her arms in a motherly way, for emphasis and persuasion, while she observed him.
‘What do you mean, Mrs B?’ James asked, quietly enough to disguise his teasing tone.
‘Please, after all this time, and all my assurances, please call me Ruth.’
James nodded, though both knew he never would. All his clients begged him to be familiar but the closest he came was to abbreviate their surnames to the first letter. Mrs Woodgate, in Hathersage, one of his newest clients, longs for the day when she will finally be Mrs W.
‘James, James,’ Mrs B chided amicably, ‘we don’t like to think of you all on your own in Keeper’s Dwelling – it’s a grand place, perfect for a family. Well?’
‘Mrs B,’ James replied, clearing his throat and helping himself to an apple which he bit into and chewed for a tantalizing period before answering, ‘as far as I can see, the only way a family will live at Keeper’s is if I sell it on to one.’
‘But you can’t be happy, truly so, just you on your own?’
‘Oh, but I am,’ munched James. ‘Best to be with nowt, than with the wrong’un,’ he said in an accent that was a whole county north and not at all the Cheltenham-born, Cambridge-educated, Derbyshire-living gardener.
‘But you’re not getting any younger,’ Mrs B all but pleaded, ‘you don’t want to become too set in your ways. I mean, you really should shave regularly, too.’
‘Mrs B,’ James said in a voice that blended warning and flattery, ‘Lunch, as ever, was delicious.’ He kissed his fingers and threw them theatrically to the air, fluttering Ruth Brakespeare’s heart quite intentionally as he did so. Still she knew no more about him than she had six months ago. There’d be little to recount to Babs Chorlton, whom she’d promised to phone at tea-time.
‘James,’ Mrs B called from the back door. James looked up from the roses and cupped his hand to his ear. ‘James,’ said Mrs B, ‘promise me one thing – keep the door ajar, never let it close completely.’
James, who had understood her very well, nevertheless sauntered over to the garden shed, opened the door a little and gave Mrs B the thumbs up. Exasperated, she blinked skywards and then went in to phone Babs because it just couldn’t wait.
James had no more jobs that day and, after an arduous trawl through Safeways, and a demoralizing visit to the petrol pump (he was constantly bemused by the fuel gauge in his Land Rover always hovering at empty), he told the dogs he had spent over half the cash he had earned that day, that it was therefore Safeways’ own brand rather than Winalot Supreme for the next few days. After a run which hurt his legs, his lungs and his pride, he sat down to a bowl of Heinz tomato soup followed by a bowl of cereal: Cornflakes, Alpen and Coco Pops, all mixed together and saturated with full cream milk. The combination was delicious and satisfying – and eaten, as often it was, in gleeful defiance of Dawn.
Dawn, with whom James had spent most of his mid-twenties in a gracious apartment in Bath when he was working as a highly paid surveyor, had insisted on providing three courses at seven thirty sharp. With her predilection for well-cooked meat, overcooked veg and stodgy puddings, along with her need to have everything washed and dried just as soon as it was finished with, she made the evening repast about as enjoyable as the taking of cod liver oil as a child. James rebounded into a relationship with an American model so faddish about food that often supper was little more than herbal tea gulped down with air, egg whites blended in the Magimix or, as a rare luxury, liquidized frozen bananas. It was then, in his early thirties, that James decided all potential bed-mates must be dined on the very first date; their choice from the menu and the amount left on their plates determining the level of involvement he was willing to invest.
Ultimately, it cost him a fortune in restaurant bills and redundancy between the sheets. Aged thirty-five, James turned to dogs, Derbyshire and delphiniums for respi
te. He liked dogs. Dogs ate anything at any time and licked the bowls clean themselves. And Derbyshire was down to earth, with folk whose humour was as dry as their stone walls. And delphiniums? Ah! Delphiniums. The season would arrive soon enough.
And are the Derbyshire dames gems to rival those of the Blue John Caverns? Or are they Bakewell Tarts? Come on, James, don’t tell us you’ve been celibate for fourteen years.
Lord above, no! But you know what they say about discretion …
Do we?
Exercise it and you’re rewarded – lay after lay.
No one has scratched a little deeper?
No. If I’d been an idiot, I’d have married my childhood sweetheart at twenty-one. Anyway, my father had two wives, several mistresses and innumerable dalliances. I look on him as an example – albeit, one not to follow. Women are complicated. And they are expensive too. And noisy.
And you’re forty-nine now.
Yup. Stuck in my ways with my heart shared equally between two dogs and a draughty house. Not much more room in there. Anyway, I’m not that inviting a proposition. I had a couple of women last year, one in Glossop, one in Crookes, for whom I was the height of glamour on account of my age (I was at least twice theirs) and accent. Folk round here would love to see me set up in the Dwelling with a wife and the proverbial 2.4 – but they’ll be keeping their ripe daughters well away.
Why?
Because I think they feel if I’m unmarried and with sperm awaiting at forty-nine, there must be some reason for it, something wrong.
OK, what about their older daughters?
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that an unmarried man, at forty-nine, is far more attractive a proposition than an unmarried woman of that age.
But are you happy like this?
I’m used to it. Familiarity breeds content.
With a huge mug of tea and a clutch of digestive biscuits, James goes to the room he calls the study to divide his attention between three days of unopened mail and today’s Guardian. Bill. Bill. Bill. Bill Clinton. James does some hasty mental arithmetic and reckons that the amounts owing will swallow nicely both the amount earned last month and to be earned this.
