Spring Fever (Tales From Appleyard Book 2)

by Emma Davies

  ‘Yes, just the one. Her name’s Sian, but she and her husband live in Australia now. She comes home when she can, bless her.’

  ‘It must be lonely for you,’ said Merry, watching the expression carefully on Cora’s face.

  ‘At times,’ admitted Cora. ‘But I have Rupert. There’s never been a Mr. Evans I’m afraid. I was seduced by a flash ne’er-do-well in my youth I’m sorry to say, and he left us when Sian was a little over a year old, so there’ve only ever been the two of us.’ She took another sip of tea. ‘A child born out of wedlock didn’t go down very well in the small Welsh village where I was born, but here, people seemed to accept us, and so we stayed, all these years… Happy years though I hasten to add.’

  Merry could feel her nose beginning to smart, a sure sign that tears were on their way. Her pregnancy hormones were still playing havoc it would seem, although she’d always been a bit of a cry baby. She sniffed, blinking rapidly, pretending to read something on the still open page in front of her.

  After a moment she gave Cora a wide smile. ‘I’m sure Robyn would love to go for a walk with you, if you’re sure it’s okay?’

  ‘We’d be delighted to have some company on our walk wouldn’t we, Rupert? And you mustn’t feel like it’s an imposition, before you say so. I can see how busy things are for you at the moment, and if this helps in any way, then I shall be glad.’

  Merry, who had been just about to say exactly that, closed her mouth again.

  Fifteen minutes later, after changing and dressing Robyn warmly, Merry waved them off down the path, Cora smiling broadly, and Rupert walking neatly at the pram’s side, keeping pace with it perfectly. She felt her husband’s arms slide around her waist.

  ‘Are you okay with this?’ he asked softly, knowing how hard it was for any new mum to let her baby out of sight for more than a minute.

  Merry watched the little trio for a few moments more, before turning in Tom’s arms. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Absolutely.’

  Chapter 10

  It was the start of a beautiful friendship, and one that set a new rhythm to Merry’s days.

  Every morning, towards eleven, Cora would appear to collect Robyn for a walk, the sight of the three of them setting off down the path never failing to bring a smile to Merry’s lips. Robyn herself seemed more settled, her legs bouncing in delight whenever she caught sight of Rupert. She was feeding better, and Merry could hear her daughter’s contentedness in her steady stream of burbling noises.

  For Merry it brought a welcome couple of hours of unstructured time, and although she felt a little guilty, Cora’s admonishment soon made her put it aside and enjoy the opportunity it gave her to do whatever she pleased. Most days, this meant being able to help Tom more usefully, but on others she caught up on a little housework or did some baking.

  This morning, Merry stood in the more formal of their two living rooms and looked at the pieces of old furniture gathered there. The plans had come back on the new shop design, and with the actual building work beginning to get under way, she was keen to explore some of her ideas.

  Merry couldn’t explain her feelings about the shop, but whereas everything in their hotel had been of the highest quality and the last word on elegance, it was not a look that she wanted to replicate here. She’d always had a savvy eye for recognising a bargain or the potential in things that others might overlook, but she had tended to save these items for their own living accommodation. The shop was different though. She and Tom had trawled through brochure after brochure of shop fitments and bespoke units, and although she could see their practicality none of them drew her eye.

  If she had to pick one word to describe what was in her head, kitsch, was probably the best she could come up with, but even to her this sounded horrifying. However, she was beginning to have a very clear idea of how she wanted the shop to look, and now was as good a time as any to see whether any of this furniture would prove to be useful, or indeed would fit the space. She took out her tape measure and began to jot down some measurements.

  The desk was ideal; its surface a little pitted and stained, but once painted this wouldn’t matter one bit and, in Merry’s opinion would only add to the look she was trying to create. It had one large drawer that ran the whole width of the top and once in place, with the drawer pulled open, it would add to the overall display space. The desk itself wasn’t too deep, and she checked again with the tape measure. The drawer was locked, but she gave it a tug, feeling it move slightly, and then tugged again, just to be sure. They wouldn’t need the lock after all.

  One side of the drawer had moved out much further than the other, and Merry dropped to her knees for a better look. She popped out to the kitchen, where Tom’s tool box now seemed to live more or less permanently, and returned with a long handled flat screwdriver. The lock was a little loose on one side, and Merry was sure that with a bit of help, she could persuade it to part company with the wood.

  She tucked her hair back behind her ears, and gritted her teeth, as she brought her weight down on the end of the screwdriver. She wiggled it from side to side, and pushed it further and further as the metal began to buckle. She didn’t want to damage the front of the desk but reasoned that a small amount of repair would be necessary anyway. Eventually the lock pushed away from its housing completely and Merry jiggled the drawer open.

  Packed almost to overflowing, it was full of huge sheets of paper, and bundles of notebooks secured with elastic bands. The tallest of these piles was wedged against the top of the drawer, so that Merry had to use the edge of the screwdriver once more, pushing down in order to totally free it. On one side was an old Oxo cube tin, and Merry lifted it out, a smile on her face. Her mum still had one just like it, where she kept her needles and threads. This tin was full of old keys, and Merry tipped them out onto the desktop in wonder.

  She lifted out one of the piles of notebooks, the band holding them falling away, long since perished. Thirty seconds later, her heart thumping in her chest, she ran through the house, shouting for Tom.

  She found him in the shop where his head bobbed up from behind the little pot-bellied stove in the shop, black smudges all across his forehead.

  ‘You have to come and see this!’ she exclaimed, breathless, reaching out for his hand. She stopped when she caught sight of it. ‘But don’t touch anything!’

  Tom followed her back into the house, trailing in her excited wake.

  One of the notebooks still lay on the desk top where she had left it.

  ‘Look Tom, look at these,’ she directed, holding it open so that Tom wouldn’t have to touch it with his sooty hands. ‘They’re sketches, designs, some of them just tiny details, almost doodles, but others cover the entire page.’

  Tom looked up at her flushed face, with dawning realisation of what he was seeing.

  Merry nodded. ‘They’re all Christopher’s work, pages of the stuff. And there must be… fifteen or so books in here. I haven’t looked at them all, but that’s not the only thing.’

  She gingerly lifted up the corner of one of the sheets that lay flat in the drawer, revealing its underside.

  ‘What are these, mock ups or something? Proofs?’ Tom looked at the coloured sheets, a long rectangle filled with vibrant colour, not painted like the canvases, but printed onto shiny paper. He glanced ruefully at his hands, and Merry knew he was itching to get a better look.

  ‘I almost daren’t lift them out.’

  ‘Just take out the top one, carefully,’ Tom suggested.

  Merry did as she was asked, holding her breath until the paper was safely down on the desk top again. She stared at it in amazement.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘We can’t keep these. What do we do?’

  Tom stared down at the artwork in front of him. ‘The sad thing is, Merry, that no-one will probably want them. I agree we need to find out though. I’m not sure if they have any historical significance, but what’re left of his family ought to know at least.’

  ‘
I can’t believe all this stuff was left here to rot.’

  ‘Well that’s families for you, especially estranged ones. I expect to them this is merely worthless tat.’

  ‘Do you think the family knew all this was here then?’

  ‘There was an inventory of sorts from the estate agents, but I can’t remember how much detail it went into; not much I’m guessing… Let’s put all this back for now and see what we can find out.’

  Merry took a deep breath. ‘I want to use this Tom – Christopher’s work. I want to use it in the shop, and this furniture. I can’t explain it but it feels right somehow. It’s the thing that’s going to make this place come alive again, I’m sure of it.’

  Tom took hold of his wife’s shirt, pulling her close until their noses were just touching. ‘Come and show me,’ he murmured. ‘And bring those keys.’

  They were standing in front of the row of wooden cupboards in the first of the storerooms, cupboards which appeared to be fixed to the wall behind them, and the ones that Merry had been working towards on the first day they started to clear out these rooms. There were three in total, each with two doors, and although neither of them had said as much, both thought that the cupboards would make excellent display units. It was such a shame to have them languishing unused in the store room, but as the doors were locked they hadn’t been able to investigate any further.

  ‘It’s a bit of a long shot, I know,’ said Tom, ‘but how about we try some of the keys? I thought about taking the doors off, but it would be much better if we could just open them.’

  ‘Do you suppose there’s anything still inside?’

  Tom gave his wife a wide grin. ‘Wanna find out?’

  He upended the tin of keys onto the floor.

  ‘Back into the tin if they don’t fit, right?’

  Merry snatched up a handful of keys. ‘I wonder if the same one fits all the locks,’ she said, trying the first of the little brass keys. ‘That would make life a whole lot easier.’

  ‘I’d say it’s probable, hardly high level security is it? Anyway I’m guessing that at one time there were cupboards like this throughout the main shop. It would make sense given the age of the place… It might also explain why there are quite so many keys,’ he added. ‘There must be fifty or so here.’

  The tin rang with the sound of keys dropping back into it, and Merry lost count of the number before Tom gave a sudden shout.

  ‘Bingo! A wee bit stiff but nothing that a can of WD40 won’t fix,’ he said, looking across at her. ‘So that was door number one, let’s try number two shall we?’

  Merry’s answering grin got wider as she saw the key turn in the second lock.

  ‘Go on, the last one’s yours,’ added Tom generously, handing her the key. ‘Let’s make it a hat-trick, shall we?’

  With a final shove the key grudgingly turned the last of the way. Merry gave Tom an excited glance. ‘You know they’re probably empty, we shouldn’t get too carried away.’

  ‘I know… but on three?’

  ‘One…two… three!’ yelled Merry, swiftly turning the handle of the door nearest to her.

  ‘Oh my God,’ came Tom’s astonished voice from beside her.

  Chapter 11

  ‘Why are you so determined to think the worst?’ demanded Freya, getting crosser by the minute. ‘It doesn’t help anybody, least of all you.’

  Stephen regarded her from over the top of the newspaper he was trying to read. ‘I’m not. I rather thought I was stating the obvious.’

  ‘But that’s exactly what I mean!’ countered Freya, her eyes blazing. ‘Why would a visit from your brother automatically lead you to think he was gloating? Couldn’t it just be a catch up visit; that’s what happens in normal families I believe. There doesn’t always have to be an agenda, Stephen.’ She snatched the newspaper from his hand, and plonked it down on the table. ‘This is just your guilty conscience talking here, you do realise that don’t you?’

  Stephen’s look was cool. ‘I didn’t invite you over here, Freya. If all you came here to do was insult me, you might want to consider leaving.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘What’s it to you anyway?’

  She gave him an exasperated look. ‘Because in case you haven’t noticed I’m marrying your brother soon; you’re going to be family. We’re neighbours, and I don’t want there to be any bad blood between us. It’s about time all this was put to an end.’

  Stephen opened his mouth to speak, but Freya ignored him and ploughed on. ‘I’d have thought that much was bloody obvious… and, I haven’t forgotten what you said before Christmas. I really thought you might have begun to view things in a different way… or was that just the booze talking after all?’

  ‘You really don’t like me very much, do you?’

  Freya dropped her head to the table and groaned. ‘Yes, I do. I do like you, Stephen. That’s why I’m here.’

  Jesus it’s like talking to a small child, she thought.

  ‘Okay, let me start again. Forget the fact that you and I were nearly married once upon a time, or that you’ve treated your brother appallingly for most of his adult life. That was all in the past, which is exactly where it needs to stay. I’m not bothered about that. What I care about is the here and now, and where we go in the future.’ She looked up to see if he was listening at all. ‘At Christmas you showed me the real you, not the puffed up act you put on for everyone, but the Stephen you can be, the rational adult who does things for the right reasons and who understands that what he has around him is all he needs to be happy. You told me you were going to put all this nonsense between you and Sam behind you and try being a grown-up for a change. You were going to make a go of your business too, instead of swanning around like the big I am, and leaving everyone else to do the actual work. And yet here we are only four months later, and pardon me, but what’s changed, Stephen?’

  ‘That was quite some speech.’

  Freya could feel her cheeks getting hotter and hotter. Stephen’s eyes were on her, mocking her, and it was more than she could bear. She shot up from her chair, making for the door. She was such a fool for thinking things could ever be any different. She shouldn’t have come.

  Suddenly she felt a hand on her arm. ‘Freya, don’t.’ And then, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  She whirled around to face him. But his usual look of arrogance had been replaced by something else. A softening around the eyes, and uncertainty… even fear?

  ‘Please, come and sit down.’

  She let herself be led back to the table, where she sat watching Stephen, his eyes closed.

  He opened them after a minute and got up, moving across to a cupboard where he took down a tin and brought it back to the table.

  ‘Not the answer, but would you like a chocolate biscuit?’ He smiled hesitantly, and Freya returned it.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Stephen let out a long sigh. ‘Sam probably doesn’t even know you’re here does he?’

  ‘I thought I’d see how things went before I mentioned it to him.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Not going terribly well is it?’ He took a biscuit and broke it in half. ‘You’re a good person, Freya.’

  ‘So are you, you know… if you let yourself be.’

  Stephen looked up in surprise. ‘After all I’ve done, and you can still say that.’

  ‘I’m like the proverbial guardian angel, always willing to believe that there’s a spark of good in everyone, even if on the outside they behave like an arrogant prat.’ A small smile played around her lips.

  ‘You’re teasing me now, which isn’t fair.’ He regarded his biscuit for a moment. ‘It’s all true though… It’s just that it’s so hard, Freya, you know? All of it. I think I’ve been a prat for too long,’ he smiled ruefully.

  Freya said nothing, but merely nodded her encouragement.

  ‘I think I’ve spent far too much time in the pub, drinking and gambling. I’ve been doing business of another kind, and I’ve t
aken my eye off the ball with my own. I’ve lost touch with everything, our suppliers, our customers. Christ I even find it hard just walking the fields.’ He patted his rather round belly. ‘Some days, I don’t even know where to start.’

  ‘At the beginning is as good a place as any, I find,’ Freya smiled. ‘I know it’s hard doing this on your own, I’ve been there remember. The work is physical, it’s relentless some days, but this is all you’ve known Stephen, since you were a little boy following your dad around the orchard on your toy tractor. It will all come back to you, you just need to give it time. Get out there, breathe it in. Let the rain soak you and the sun warm you… feel the seasons, the rhythms again. You’ll get there.’ She took a bite of her biscuit and wondered how best to frame her next sentence.

  ‘It might not be what you want to hear right now either, but Sam would still help you, we both would. You only have to ask.’

  ‘That would go down really well wouldn’t it?’ Stephen replied glumly.

  ‘Better than you’d think probably. But you won’t know, if you don’t try.’ She glanced at her watch, and shoved the rest of the biscuit in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Look I need to go now, but think about what I’ve said, Stephen. Don’t let any more months go by without making use of the opportunity you’ve been given. You told me you wanted to sort your life out, let’s do it now shall we?’

  She was almost at the door before she heard Stephen’s reply.

  ‘Thank you, Freya, and I mean that. I know you’re right, but listen… don’t say anything to Sam will you? About today I mean. It should come from me.’

  ‘I won’t. You men and your bloody pride. I know you need to find a way to do this and still save face – just don’t leave it too long, okay?’

  Chapter 12

  Merry opened another door, and another. They were all the same.

  ‘Look at this lot!’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s like a museum.’

  She stared at the rows and rows of tins and packets. Breakfast cereals, boxes of tea. Washing powder and soap. Tins of soup and hot chocolate. Sweets galore.