by Jenny Colgan
The sun did its best to break through as she walked past fields of rape and sweet meadow grass, with the occasional friendly-looking cow and ugly-looking tractor. On one particularly sunny corner, she noticed, to her amazement, what turned out to be rosemary. She broke some off right away, delighted. Even though it was probably covered in diesel fumes, it would certainly do. She stretched her legs and straightened her back and breathed in the smells of the fields – well, the nice fields; some of them were awful – and as she passed the occasional little hamlet, she managed to stop herself from bursting into song with ‘I Love to Go A-Wandering’.
She thought about Chris and wondered what he was doing right now. If he was still at his mum’s, he’d be sullen, truculent; he often was there, the golden boy gone a bit wrong. He would have liked this, she thought. Then again, would he? She barely knew him any more. Anything she’d suggested in the last couple of years he’d shot down right away. The idea of a fresh, healthy country walk would have been met with scorn; the only thing he wanted to do when he wasn’t working obsessively was jog and drink, rather quickly and with only one objective in mind: getting as drunk as possible, whereupon he’d become self-pitying and repetitive, needing a lot of reassurance that everything was going to be all right, then instantly falling asleep wherever he was and waking up the next day in an even filthier mood than before. And Kerensa was not a country walk kind of person at all. Mind you, Polly wouldn’t have considered herself one either.
But now, the sun warming her back, Polly breathed in deeply and tried to make her brain focus on the future rather than the past. Yes, the future was a frightening place, but then where wasn’t?
In this slightly contradictory frame of mind – and wishing she’d brought her old iPod; ‘I Love to Go A-Wandering’ was getting a bit annoying in her head now – she was about to sit down for her lunch when she saw the sign.
Fresh wild-flower honey for sale.
A string of daisies hung round the wooden sign. Ooh, thought Polly. This must be the weird American the fishermen had mentioned. Maybe she should go and introduce herself as the other stranger just arrived in town. They obviously didn’t get that many, and it might help her next time Gillian Manse came round baring her teeth. It struck her that Mrs Manse would of course have a key to the flat, and this gave her the shivers. So. Reinforcements.
Normally the idea of marching up and saying hello to someone out of the blue would have been something she’d avoid at all costs; she’d spent enough time trying to network for the business, even though she’d hated doing it. But in Plymouth she’d known lots of people, which had made things very difficult by the time she’d left. Here, on the other hand, no one had any idea of – and not that much interest in – her situation. And he might need a honey marketing person.
She looked at the sign again. Okay, so that seemed extremely unlikely. But even so…
She started off down the rutted path. The trees met overhead, making it dark and oddly quiet. She felt her shoes clomp on the muddy ground.
‘I don’t like this,’ she said, after she’d been walking for twenty minutes and could see nothing apart from trees and fields stretching away in every direction. However, she didn’t fancy stomping her way back through all the mud. She had just stopped, hot and thirsty, not sure whether to carry on, when she saw in the distance a very thin stream of smoke. Could that be it? She struck out towards it.
‘If he isn’t home, I’m going to be very irritated,’ she said crossly to Neil. ‘I don’t even WANT honey that much.’
But she was intrigued; she wanted to try baking a honey loaf, and the more local and natural ingredients that went into it, the better she suspected it was going to be.
Quite suddenly, the trees thinned out, and Polly gasped. She was in a clearing, in front of a tiny thatched cottage that looked like something out of a fairy tale. Smoke was coming from the stone chimney, and the walls were made of grey slate, as was the path that wound through an enchanting cottage garden to the little white-painted wooden front gate. The windows were small and mullioned, and a careless tangle of rosebuds clambered over the walls.
‘Ooh,’ said Polly involuntarily. It was absolutely lovely. ‘I hope there’s not a witch inside,’ she whispered to Neil. ‘I’m SURE there isn’t…’
‘Hello?’ she said tentatively. There was no sign of movement, but with the smoke… It couldn’t be a man; it had to be an old lady here, with grey hair and a long dress and a frenzied appetite for the bones of children… Polly told herself to stop being daft and go and ring the doorbell.
There was no bell, but there was a knocker in the shape of a bee, so at least she knew she’d come to the right place. She let it thud, the noise sounding ridiculously loud in the quiet murmur of the forest clearing, and stood back to avoid freaking out whoever came to the door.
But nobody did.
‘Hello?’ said Polly, louder this time. ‘HELLO?’
She really didn’t want to just turn round and head back again. In fact, she thought, slugging water, she was actually quite hungry now. Another half-hour tramp along such a boring track would be too much; maybe there was a way back to town through the trees.
‘HELLO?’
The slate path continued around the right-hand side of the cottage, so she followed it past a well and round the back.
There a sight met her eyes. The garden broadened massively behind the cottage, a long, wide green lawn, filled with heavily scented wild flowers, leading down to the bottom of a hill, where a stream ran through straight from the forest. On both sides of the stream she saw what at first glance looked like little blunt-nosed rockets waiting to take off. Closer examination, of course, revealed them to be beehives. There was a hum in the air, and she took an instinctive step back, then another, as one of the rockets moved and she realised that what she had taken for another hive was in fact a person clad in an astronaut’s outfit – or, rather, a beekeeper’s outfit. She had to stop being so jumpy.
She was about to retreat altogether – she was slightly at the limit of her capacity for bold exploits recently – when the figure straightened up and waved a hand at her. So it had seen her. Polly sighed, and reluctantly waved back, realising she felt nervous. This was completely stupid; of course it was all right to be nervous meeting people, but she wasn’t the one buried in the countryside talking to insects, right? And all she wanted was to buy a jar of honey; it wasn’t as if this was going to take very long or be a surprising thing to do.
The man – it had to be a man; he was tall and had very long legs – stepped over the stream with a practised hop and marched up to her with loping strides.
‘Wffgargh,’ he said, holding out a hand encased in a huge white gauntlet.
‘Um,’ said Polly. ‘Don’t you normally take your hat off?’
His huge white hat covered his entire head, except for his eyes, which were hidden by thick netting. He looked like a cross between a spaceman and an extremely coy bride.
The man brushed himself down quickly, checking his arms – Polly instinctively found herself checking her arms too – then apologetically removed his hat.
‘Yeah,’ he said slowly. ‘Yeah, I forgot. I get it in the wrong order. Not enough visitors.’
Now he was looking down sadly at his gloved hand, as if wondering whether to hold it out to be shaken again.
Polly glanced up at him. She was surprised; she’d been expecting a retired man, in his sixties probably, who’d decided to opt out of the rat race after reading a feature in an airline magazine, and who was rapidly regretting it.
This wasn’t the man standing in front of her at all; this man was young and tall and broadly built, with longish yellow hair pushed back out of blue eyes. He looked slightly alarming, in fact.
‘Shall we try that again?’ said Polly, putting out her hand formally. ‘Hello, I’m Polly.’
‘Huck.’
‘Excuse me?’ said Polly.
‘Huck.’
‘Oh,
that’s your name.’ Polly felt herself go red. She’d thought he was coughing.
‘Well, my mom calls me Huckle.’
‘HUCKLE?’
The man spoke in a very low drawl. Polly had known he was American, but he was obviously from the South. She wanted to hear him talk some more.
‘What I really like’ – he pronounced it ‘rilly laack’ – ‘about Inglin’ – Polly realised he meant England – ‘is the way everyone is just so polite and welcoming all the time.’
‘Sorry,’ said Polly, putting her hand to her mouth. ‘I was just a bit surprised, that’s all. I haven’t heard the name before.’
‘If you don’t mind, ma’am, you’re the one named after a parrot.’
‘Ooh, I like being called ma’am. It makes me feel like the Queen.’
Huckle smiled a slow smile. He had amazing teeth. Polly wondered if America had some kind of tooth factory for everyone when they turned thirteen, the same way her mother’s class had all had their tonsils taken out at the same time.
‘Well then, ma’am, what can I do for you?’
‘I think I’d like some honey, obviously,’ said Polly. ‘But first, would you mind if I had a drink of water? I’m really hot.’
The sun had risen high in the sky and was giving out a lot more warmth than she was expecting. Normally she’d have been delighted – it had been such a dreadful winter – but now she was conscious of being very pink in the face and of sweat trickling down the back of her neck.
‘Oh, sure. Water? I have some iced tea, if you’d like.’
‘I don’t know what that is,’ said Polly, ‘but I’ll try it. Is it just tea you’ve let go cold? I do that. It’s not very nice.’ She realised she was babbling. She had clearly gone too long without talking to another human being.
‘I don’t know ’bout that. Sit yourself down there.’
He indicated a little wrought-iron table and chair set that had been placed in the middle of a cloud of daisies. It had striped cushions on the seats and looked wonderfully welcoming. Polly sank down gratefully and Huckle went into the house.
Polly looked around. It really was the most ridiculously beautiful garden. The buzzing in the air undercut the soft warmth of the sun on her face, and she found herself, with two broken nights on top of months of worry and a long walk, letting her eyelids droop, just for a moment. Just for a second…
‘Yo.’
Polly jumped up, not sure where she was. She saw the tall blond man standing nearby and blinked rapidly. He had taken off his beekeeping outfit and was wearing perfectly normal Levis and a red lumberjack shirt.
‘Oh my God, did I fall asleep?’
‘I hope so. Either that, or it was quite a fast coma.’
Polly rubbed her eyes, hoping frantically she hadn’t let her mouth fall open and drool drip out.
‘How long was I…’
‘Well, it’s Tuesday,’ said Huckle, and it took Polly a moment to register that he was joking.
‘Here,’ he said, proffering a glass. There were ice cubes clinking in it, and fresh mint floating on the top. Polly took a long swig.
‘Oh, that’s delicious,’ she said. ‘So that’s iced tea?’
‘Yup,’ he said. ‘Not as good as the stuff back home, but…’
He sat down companionably on the other seat. Polly remembered that she was ravenous. She considered it for a second, then decided to press on.
‘Um,’ she said. ‘Would you like to share my lunch?’
‘What, now that we’ve slept together?’ said Huckle, with that same serious drawl.
‘Ha,’ said Polly. She realised that she didn’t expect Americans to be sarcastic; the ones she’d met tended to tell you exactly what they were doing and why. She reached down for her bag. As she opened it, Neil waddled out, complaining.
‘Hello, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have left you in there.’
He ignored her, pecking at the plastic bag that contained lunch.
‘Well, no,’ said Polly. ‘That’s why I put it in a plastic bag.’
She glanced up. Huckle was observing her with an amused look on his face.
‘What? Does this look weird?’
‘Er, I’m supposed to say no, right?’
‘Yes. Sorry. I guess it must look a bit odd.’
‘Is he a magic puffin? Can he talk?’
‘No, he’s just a normal one,’ said Polly.
‘Oh. Disappointing.’
‘I like him for who he is,’ said Polly stiffly.
Huckle smiled again. ‘Do you always keep a bird in a bag? Is this, like, a “thing”?’
‘Nope,’ said Polly, picking up Neil and displaying his bandaged wing. ‘We’re healing.’
‘In a rucksack?’
‘He likes company.’
Huck nodded and looked around. ‘So, here I am, just hanging out, not getting any lunch,’ he said.
Polly frowned, unwrapping the packaging.
‘You know it’s a British sandwich, not an American one, yes?’
She had been to New York once, with Chris. A long time ago. The quality and quantity of the food had amazed them both.
‘Do you mean I’ll be able to actually fit it in my mouth?’
‘You have quite a big mouth,’ said Polly. ‘Sorry, that came out wrong. Anyway. Here.’
She tossed him the package. He took one of the enormous doorsteps and handed the bag back.
‘I’d say this is not doing too badly in its efforts to be a big sandwich,’ he said, then took a bite. Polly did the same. It was surprisingly pleasant to be sitting in a lovely garden drinking iced tea and eating a sandwich with an odd giant. If her aim was, she reflected, to try new things in her new life, this was definitely a successful day.
‘Wow,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘That’s good. Where did you get this bread? The only stuff I can find round here is inedible; it tastes like plastic.’
‘I made it,’ said Polly, pleased. ‘Actually,’ she remembered, ‘I have something better than the sandwich. Try the focaccia first, I made it this morning.’
She unwrapped the other package and tore off some crumbs for Neil.
‘In fact, wait!’ She felt in her pocket for the rosemary. ‘Do you have some scissors?’
‘This is the worst honey-selling I’ve ever done,’ said Huckle, but he smiled as he said it, and got up. When he returned with a pair of pinking shears, Polly clipped little bits of the herb on top of the salty loaf. It smelled sensational and tasted even better. Huckle wolfed his half in about two seconds flat.
‘You are seriously good at this,’ he said, looking longingly at hers.
‘You can have it,’ she said, ‘but give some to Neil.’
‘I mean it. Do you do this as a job?’
Polly laughed wryly. ‘No. No, no job.’
She changed the subject.
‘So what about you and honey?’
‘Oh yes, let me get you some. It’s a shame it doesn’t go with focaccia.’
‘I’m sure I can make something it will go with,’ said Polly, hoping this didn’t sound flirtatious.
‘I’m sure you can,’ said Huckle in the same slightly silly tone of voice, so she had obviously failed.
He brought out a jar from a shed by the side of the wall, and a little wooden spoon with a winder at the bottom. The jar was prettily painted and had a sketch of the cottage on it, with ‘Huckle Honey’ written on the side.
‘Wanna taste?’ he said, proffering the wooden winder. She wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he took it back and showed her, shaking off most of the honey from the end so he could get it out of the jar.
‘Now this is apple blossom. You plant different types of flowers, you see, so you get different types of honey. I kind of experiment, move the hives around.’
Polly licked the honey off the winder. It was absolutely sensational. It had a warm depth and heart to the flavour that she’d never tasted before; not as sweet as commercial honey,
but gentler and more satisfying.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘That’s amazing.’
‘Isn’t it?’ His face looked animated. ‘Hang on, let me get some of the orange flower.’
That was just as good: light and fruity, and a pure golden colour.
‘So I don’t understand,’ said Polly. ‘Are you putting the accent on, or did you just pitch up on your horse like a cowboy and say’ – she tried to do his voice – ‘“Well hey, little missie, I’m a here to be a doing your honey”?’
Huckle laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t exactly like that. Are you from round here?’
‘I am not,’ said Polly. ‘I’m from Plymouth.’
‘That’s only forty miles away!’ said Huckle. ‘Trust me, where I come from, that’s local.’
‘Well where I come from, it’s a different world,’ said Polly.
‘Sure enough,’ said Huckle. ‘Well. Anyway. This is the old beekeeper’s cottage. They’ve been making honey here in some form or other for getting on for two hundred years. So they knew which flowers to grow and where to keep things and so on. It was just falling into disrepair when I found it.’
‘But what brought you here?’ said Polly. It seemed so unlikely.
Huckle glanced at his watch. ‘Ma’am, that is a bit of a long story.’
Polly waited for him to start telling it, then, when she realised he had absolutely no intention of doing so, she flushed and jumped up. She’d gatecrashed this man’s house, fallen asleep in his garden, and now was patently overstaying her welcome.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude.’
‘Not at all,’ he said, nonetheless getting to his feet. ‘It was an honour to meet you. And Neil.’
Neil pooed on some of the daisies and tried to eat some others.
‘Sorry,’ said Polly. ‘He’s only a toddler really.’
Huckle smiled. ‘It’s weird, it makes me miss my dog.’
‘Ha,’ said Polly. ‘You look like a man who’d have a dog.’
‘What, like I shed hair?’
