A Funny Thing Happened...

by Caroline Anderson

  She laughed uneasily. ‘He wouldn’t do anything stupid like that—and anyway, how do I know I’m safe with you?’

  ‘Of course you are. You always were—quite apart from which, you’ve made sure I’m too damn tired to be a threat.’

  She looked up at him for a few seconds, then gave a weary laugh. ‘OK. Just don’t see him off again, all right? He’s got a hydraulic shovel on a four-wheel drive tractory thing. It’s used for shifting silage and so on, and it makes a really useful snow plough. If you play your cards right he’ll get your car out for you and you’ll be able to leave.’

  ‘We’ve already had this conversation. I’ve said I’m not going.’

  ‘Ever?’ she asked in disbelief.

  Something strange happened inside Sam, something primitive and basic and elemental, and he turned away and dumped his mug in the sink. He would have to leave her some time, of course, and now he knew she’d be at the mercy of Owen the Ox.

  Hell.

  There was a sharp creak from overhead, and Jemima raised her head and peered at the barn roof. There it was again.

  ‘What’s that?’ Sam asked, peering up at the roof too.

  ‘I think the snow’s too heavy. I’ll have to get up there and try and scrape it off.’

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  ‘It can be arranged.’

  He grinned. ‘I’m sure. Nevertheless, I’ll go up there.’

  She felt almost weak with relief. She simply hated heights.

  They went outside and looked at the roof. On the side of the lane there was virtually no snow, but where the wind had carried it over the ridge it had settled in curls, like waves caught in the moment of breaking.

  ‘It must weigh tons,’ Sam said, eyeing it thoughtfully. ‘I wonder what’s the best way to get it off?’

  ‘Uncle Tom used to lift the bucket of the tractor up and make me scrape it with a broom, but—’

  ‘Since the tractor’s out of use, we can’t do that.’ He looked round. ‘Got a ladder?’

  ‘In the barn.’

  They fetched it, and Sam climbed gingerly up to the level of the eaves and peered at the snow. The roof pitch was a little steep to stand on, but the snow would provide some grip. Jemima followed him halfway up the ladder and handed him a broom.

  ‘Here, try this.’

  He took it, using it to steady himself as he stepped cautiously up onto the roof. He muttered something she was glad she couldn’t hear, then started tentatively prodding at the snow with the broom.

  It was useless.

  Jemima came down the ladder and stood at the side of the barn, knee-deep in the snow, and tilted her head back to watch him. ‘Try hitting it,’ she suggested.

  ‘Who’s doing this, you or me?’

  ‘I’m quite happy to do it; you know that.’

  ‘You stay where you are. I don’t want the barn roof to cave in. I can feel it shiftiig. Is the snow moving?’

  ‘Not from where I’m standing. I think you need to go a bit further up and thump it with the end of the broom.’

  ‘I’ll thump you with the end of the broom. Just let me try it my way.’

  ‘It won’t work,’ she sang, watching him brushing little patterns all over the top of the snow. ‘Just thump it—’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, woman—’ He hurled the brush down onto the roof and glared at her, then his face changed.

  There was a hissing, slithering sound and, almost in slow motion, the whole side of the roof seemed to slide in one solid mass down over. the edge of the barn.

  Jemima shrieked and leapt back, and with a wild yell Sam came hurtling towards her, arms and legs cart-wheeling wildly. She tripped and fell backwards, Sam crashed into her and then the snow poured down around them and almost smothered them.

  There was a second of stunned silence, then she said victoriously, ‘I told you you needed to thump it.’

  Sam looked down at her face, just inches away, and debated strangling her to get the triumphant grin off those impudent little lips. He went one better. He brushed the snow off her eyebrow, lowered his head and kissed the smile away.

  He’d wanted to do it twenty-two years ago, but he hadn’t had the nerve. Now, all those years later and with the threat of Owen looming over them like the north face of the Eiger, he suddenly found the courage.

  For a moment she didn’t move, frozen under him, and he wondered if he’d misjudged the look in her eyes, but then her thigh shifted against his groin, her arms came up round him and with a groan of satisfaction he threaded his fingers through her hair, coaxed her lips apart and plundered that delectable little mouth.

  His heart jerked and then started to thunder, and there was a massive roaring in his ears.

  So massive that the earth seemed to move...

  He lifted his head a fraction, staring at her in amazement. Was Hemingway right? Good Lord! He was glad he hadn’t tried kissing her twenty-two years ago; it would have blown his brains out—

  ‘You all right?’

  His head snapped up. He glared over his shoulder at Owen and staggered to his feet, shaking off the ton or so of snow that had fallen on them. The earthshaking focused on a huge yellow machine at the entrance to the yard. Not Hemingway, then. Pity. His mouth tightened.

  ‘Fine, thanks. Aren’t you busy?’

  ‘Yeah—just clearing the lane. Thought you might want to get your things—your car’ll be out in a minute, so you can leave.’

  ‘I’m staying,’ he said defiantly, and met the challenge in Owen’s eyes with one of his own.

  Owen turned away. ‘We’ll see,’ he said softly, and stomped back out of the yard.

  Behind him Sam could hear Jemima struggling to her feet, and he turned to her and pulled her up. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘What—the kiss, or Owen?’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘I meant falling off the roof and landing on you.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She laughed, and banged at the snow on her jeans. ‘It needed to come down. Are you hurt?’

  ‘No. You?’

  He looked at her, so fragile and feisty, eyes sparkling, hair wildly tangled and filled with snow, and felt sick at the thought of her being injured.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I landed on you.’

  She smiled. ‘I noticed. You’ve got more muscles than I realised.’

  He felt colour brush his neck and stepped back before he did something stupid. ‘I’ll find my car keys. Can I put the car on the yard?’

  ‘Yes, but I should clear a space. On second thoughts I’ll ask Owen to clear it while he’s got the snow plough here.’

  She did, and Sam watched in frustration as his neatly cleared paths that had taken hours of back-breaking work were casually swept out of the way with a couple of swipes from Owen’s fancy gadget.

  Damn the man.

  She gave him a cup of tea, as well, after he’d towed Sam’s car out of the snow drift with a few well-chosen words and an effortless tug from the yellow monster.

  ‘Smart car,’ he said with a nod to the almost new BMW. ‘Be all right in the city.’

  Then he wandered off, hands in pockets, whistling, to have tea with Jemima while Sam struggled to reverse his car up the slippery lane and into the yard. There were flowers in the back seat for his grandmother, and he scooped them up. They’d brighten the kitchen, anyway, and it might put a spoke in Owen’s wheel.

  He locked the car, went into the kitchen and was greeted with huge enthusiasm by Jess, who came and sat beside him and growled at Owen.

  ‘Good girl,’ Sam said, fondling her ears, and Jemima gave him a dirty look. He smiled innocently. He could enjoy this. After all, he was one up on Owen. He’d kissed her this morning.

  He handed her the flowers he’d bought for his grandmother, producing them from behind his back with a flourish. Owen goggled, Jemima’s eyes widened and then went misty, and he wished he’d actually bought them for her.

  ‘You aren’t going to tell me y
ou just had these delivered,’ she said with suspicion, and he smiled wryly.

  ‘I could always lie. They were for my grandmother. I thought you might enjoy them.’

  ‘Whatever next? Daft bloody nonsense,’ Owen muttered. He got to his feet, put his mug in the sink and then, with a defiant glare at Sam, he bent over and dropped a kiss on Jemima’s startled lips.

  ‘Give us a shout if you need anything. We’ll give you a hand, you know that—and if you decide the herd’s too much, we can always take them up to ours and milk them. We’ve got the standby generator.’

  ‘We’ll manage,’ Sam ground out, furious with Owen for daring to defile Jemima’s lips.

  Jemima glowered at him, then turned a sweet smile on the other man. ‘Thank you, Owen, you’re very kind. I’ll think about it, if the power’s off for much longer.’

  ‘Of course, you could always do the sensible thing and sell me the herd.’

  Sam got to his feet.

  ‘Weren’t you just leaving?’ he said softly, bristling, and Jemima glowered at him again.

  Owen arched a brow, sketched a farewell salute to Jemima and went out, banging the door again. Jess growled, whined and ran to Jemima, licking her hands furiously.

  ‘I don’t think she thinks much of your suitor,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘I don’t think much of either of you,’ she retorted, dumping the flowers in a bucket of water to recover from their dry night. ‘Squabbling over me like a couple of fighting cocks. It’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You didn’t mind when you were six.’

  ‘I was a foolish child,’ she retorted. ‘I was impressed by your bravado—and anyway, your grandmother made better cakes than Owen’s mother.’

  He laughed. ‘I expect she still does.’

  ‘She does—but my judgement’s a little more sophisticated now.’

  Sam made a non-committal noise. Anyone who would allow Owen the Ox on the premises in his opinion was showing particularly poor judgement, but obviously only Jess agreed with him.

  ‘Haven’t you got something to do?’ he groused, mightily ticked off that she was still defending Owen.

  ‘Yes—the mucking out. Want to lend a hand—seeing as you insist on staying? You might as well make yourself useful.’

  He ground his teeth to hold back the retort and followed her out. He could think of plenty of ways of making himself useful around her, and mucking out wasn’t one of them...

  He was useful, she had to admit that. She could hardly remember him from twenty-two years ago, but she could remember that the summer he was there had been brighter than the others.

  They’d laughed a lot, giggling over all sorts of things, and she could remember Owen sulking and grumbling because she’d always been his exclusive preserve until Sam had come along.

  She’d forgotten all about it until he’d mentioned the fight with Owen. Then it had all come flooding back, and she wondered why she hadn’t remembered the animosity between them before.

  Come to think of it, she wondered why she hadn’t recognised him at first.

  Perhaps because after twenty-two years he’d changed?

  She laughed softly to herself. Of course he’d changed—outwardly, at least. He was still squabbling with Owen, though. Her smile faded, replaced by a frown, and she looked round at the plump, mottled brown cows that had been Uncle Tom’s pride and joy.

  Owen kept on offering to buy them, but she wasn’t sure if it was just an excuse to come and visit her or if he really wanted them. It was irrelevant, either way, because they were her livelihood and she had no intention of parting with them either for love or money—and anyway, she didn’t love Owen and never would.

  He just did nothing for her at all.

  Unlike Sam.

  She paused in the middle of forking up the fresh straw to look across at him. He’d cleared his half of the barn and was fossicking about at the far end, near the vacuum pump that powered the milking machine.

  His shoulders were broader than she’d realised, and he wasn’t soft. At least, he hadn’t felt soft when he’d landed on her. She thought of the kiss, so fleeting and not nearly long enough, and stifled a moan.

  He was just passing through. She didn’t need trouble like that. If he was right about Owen, and she had a feeling he was, she had more than enough on her plate already.

  ‘Jem? Come and have a look at this.’

  He was crouched with his back to her, fiddling with something, and as she watched he pivoted on his foot and beckoned to her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This Lister engine. What’s it for?’

  ‘What Lister engine?’

  She propped her fork up at the side of the barn and went over to him. He was using his sleeve to scrub at a little metal plate on the greasy, dusty pile of redundant junk that he’d found under an old tarpaulin.

  ‘One and a half horse power,’ he told her, and looked at the vacuum pump nearby. ‘It’s bolted to the ground. Do you suppose it used to be used to drive the milking machine?’

  She studied it, imagining it clean, and a memory stirred.

  ‘Could be. Do you suppose we could make it work?’

  ‘Don’t know. It needs a belt. The electric motor’s got a V-belt but this needs a flat one.’

  She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Got any spare belts about?’

  ‘Got one on my jeans.’

  He laughed and straightened up. ‘Not that sort of belt, Jem.’ He scanned the wall of the barn. ‘More—that sort.’

  He pointed to a flat, wide loop festooned with cobwebs, dangling on the wall with a handful of chains and old baler twine.

  ‘I wonder...’

  He went and hooked it down, dusted it off and held it up to the machine. It was the right length. ‘Looks like a spare that never got used,’ he murmured, examining it.

  ‘Can you change it? Or get the engine started?’ she asked doubtfully, looking at the dusty, grubby engine with no great hope. It would be wonderful if he could, but she didn’t dare get her hopes up—

  ‘I’ll give it a whirl. I’ll need some petrol.’

  ‘In the tractor shed.’

  ‘What is wrong with the tractor, by the way?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps I could fix that?’

  She coloured. ‘I doubt it The engine block’s cracked—I forgot to put antifreeze into it.’

  ‘Oops.’ He hid the smile valiantly, but she knew it was there. She was tempted to kick him, but he was just about to try and fix the milking machine up to the little engine, and she wasn’t suicidally stupid.

  ‘I’ll get the petrol,’ she said hastily, and went out, hoping there was a good supply. There should be—she usually had a couple of cans just to be on the safe side, because the lawn mower ran on petrol and the old Fergie tractor had a petrol starter-but there was always the possibility she’d had to put it in her car and had forgotten to fill it up.

  She was in luck. There were two almost full cans, and she took them back to Sam.

  ‘Hopeful, aren’t you?’ he said with an arched brow, and poured some into the little tank. ‘Water?’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘It has a tank here for water,’ he explained, pointing to an oval hole in the top of the machine.

  She fetched clean water and he filled the tank. Then he stood up, grasped hold of the little crank handle and yanked.

  ‘Ah.’

  She eyed him, sitting on the clean straw, the broken handle dangling from his fingers, and hid a smile. ‘That’s a good omen,’ she said drily.

  He took a nice, deep breath and said nothing. She thought he was probably counting to ten before he spoke.

  ‘Got a crank handle for the tractor?’ he asked calmly, getting to his feet and dusting off his bottom.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does it work?’

  ‘Well, not at the moment. I told you the tractor’s out of action.’

  ‘I don’t want the tractor; I want the handle. I don’t suppo
se you could lay your hands on it?’

  ‘Do you think it will fit?’ she asked, amazed at his resourcefulness.

  ‘No—I was going to use it to club you to death—’

  She put her fists on her hips. ‘No need to get sarky,’ she chided.

  ‘I want the handle,’ he explained, patiently, as if he was talking to a particularly stupid child, ‘to replace this broken one.’

  ‘I’ll get it. It’s in the tractor shed.’

  ‘Got any tools?’

  ‘In the workshop. Uncle Tom had all sorts of things.’

  ‘Good. Right, let’s have a look.’

  She showed him where everything was, offered to help and then made herself scarce after the crank handle had slipped off the end of the shaft for the third time.

  ‘I’ll—ah—be in the kitchen if you need me,’ she told him, and, taking a bucket of fresh milk, she headed out of the barn and left him to it.

  She made a rice pudding, an egg custard, put some milk to stand to skim the cream off and then wondered if she ought to make clotted cream with all the stuff in the cooling tank in the barn. She’d never done it, but Mary might know.

  She rang her.

  ‘Oh, hello, Jemima,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Is Sam being useful, dear?’

  ‘Wonderfully. Thank you for giving him to me.’

  Mary laughed. ‘You’re most welcome. A little exercise will do him good. He spends far too much time indoors.’

  ‘Not at the moment. He’s struggling to fix an engine. Mary, I’ve got a problem. I’ve got gallons of milk all settling out in the tank, and there’s a huge thick layer of cream on the top. I was thinking I could make clotted cream with it, but I don’t know how. Got any idea?’

  She did, of course, and so Jemima prepared all the pans, fetched some of the cream from the holding tank and stuck her head into the barn. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Don’t ask,’ he growled.

  She retreated to her kitchen out of the way, skimming and scalding and potting and generally feeling terribly pleased with herself, and then while the cream cooled she made some fruit scones to have with the cream and dug out the last pot of Mary’s strawberry jam.