A New Beginning

by A New Beginning (retail) (epub)

  She went to the stairs and took a few hesitant steps. She looked up. Rain was falling on to her face and the sounds had changed to a high-pitched wailing. The banging had changed to a constant rattling. The roof was gone.

  She had to get out, but to where? She couldn’t go into the farmhouse, which was always locked. There was the outbuilding, but that was more dilapidated than the house, although it did have a roof. She wrapped herself in as many clothes and blankets as she could, and, in a brief lull in the weather, she ran to the other building. The door was swinging and she closed it behind her with difficulty, then stood panting, as though she had run for miles, before slowly sinking to the floor.

  She had to find a safe place. This was a reminder that she couldn’t go on running away. The offer of Badgers Brook followed by the storm that had destroyed her temporary home must be a sign. Tomorrow she would go and find Connie and Geoff Tanner and, somehow, she would find a way of staying in Badgers Brook. She was frightened at the prospect, facing people and answering their questions would be hard. But once it was done she might find peace again. Peering through the hedge and finding the house, and within hours losing the cottage in the storm; surely it meant something was telling her it was time to end her isolation? She was frightened but she knew the time was right.

  Three

  People awoke the morning after the violent storm, with memories of air raids during the recent war painfully revived. The aftermath of that wild night, the anxious moments as daylight dawned and they checked their properties, and ran to make sure families, neighbours and friends were safe, were strong reminders of those terrible years.

  Bob checked their house on the lane near Badgers Brook while Kitty brushed away the rubbish gathered outside the house. Stella and Colin checked and found to their relief that no serious damage was apparent at the post office. Both wondered how their allotment had fared, but neither had time to go and look. Geoff checked on his stocks of wood, including plywood for boarding up the inevitable broken windows, and nails and screws, which he knew would be needed in large quantities as problems were revealed.

  On Treweather Farm the men went out and found the animals nervous but safe. A door had been blown off its hinges and the chickens were chortling happily as they wandered around the yard, freed from their night-time shelter earlier than usual but unharmed.

  Betty Connors spotted a slipped slate on the roof of the Ship and Compass and called to her brother to get in touch with the builder to get it fixed.

  ‘Later,’ he said, to her surprise and irritation. ‘First I’m going to see if Elsie needs help.’

  ‘Ed, I need you here. If that slate isn’t fixed others will follow it and—’ She was wasting her breath, Her brother had grabbed a coat and was heading for the door. She ran after him and called, ‘Ed, it’s here you work, not Elsie’s B&B!’

  ‘Then as an employee,’ he said sarcastically, ‘I’m letting you know I won’t be in today.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She was shocked by his attitude. What was the matter with him? He worked here, lived here and she should be able to depend on him. She reached for the telephone and irritably asked the builder to call and deal with the roof. Then she thought maybe she was being selfish – it was only a slipped slate and there would be plenty of others in more urgent need of help this morning. Then she remembered Sophie.

  *

  Sophie stayed curled up in a tight ball, wrapped in the bedding she had brought, close to the door of the building she used as a storeroom. She had ventured no further in as she was afraid of being trapped, with the wind lashing against the walls and the alarming sounds of large objects being thrown about outside.

  She must have dozed eventually, as she became aware of light defining the edges of the door and the silence beyond. She didn’t move for a moment or two, afraid of a revival of the storm, but it had blown itself out, and outside, where dawn was breaking, birdsong was a gentle chorus to greet the new day.

  She stretched and stood up. Then, still wrapped in the bedding, she opened the door and looked out. The yard was strewn with branches and several items she hadn’t seen before: boxes, empty paint tins, a bucket, a broken chair. A door stood propped at an angle against a wall, and she vaguely recognized it as being from one of the half-demolished outhouses. Then she looked up at the cottage and saw to her disbelief that it was a different shape. A large section of the roof had been lifted and tilted and was now leaning lazily against a wall of the house it had once protected. She went cautiously outside and looked around her. Nothing was where it should be; buckets and brooms and the small ramshackle shed housing her woodpile had all vanished.

  She was chilled and thirsty and went into what remained of the cottage, to the hearth where the previous day’s ashes were covered in a thick layer of soot. It would take ages to clean and it would have to be done before lighting a fire. There was no alternative as she desperately needed a hot drink. She put aside the bedding, rolled up her sleeves and began. Without a shovel or a bucket it was difficult, but she used cardboard to lift the soot, which she placed on to spread newspapers. An hour later she had a fire burning and the kettle was beginning to hum.

  She had cleaned the living room as well as she could and was sitting beside the now blazing fire hugging a cup of tea when she heard voices.

  ‘Sophie? Are you all right?’ Geoff called.

  Sophie went outside and waved her cup. She didn’t want visitors but knew that the previous night’s plan must hold. The time had come when she had to accept the hand of friendship when it was offered, before loneliness became an unalterable way of life.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ she invited, and went inside to wipe clean another cup and saucer.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Geoff repeated. ‘We were a bit worried, the storm was so fierce.’

  ‘I went into the outhouse as it seemed safer, but this room isn’t damaged, except that the fireplace was a mess of soot and it took an age before I could make myself a cup of tea.’

  ‘You obviously can’t stay here now,’ Geoff warned, putting the bread and milk Connie had sent on the dust-laden table.

  Suddenly in a panic Sophie revoked her decision to move. She needed the solitude and security for a while longer. She wasn’t ready. ‘I’ll be all right. Once I block off the stairs to cut out the draughts it’ll be cosy,’ she insisted.

  ‘Badgers Brook is empty.’

  ‘I don’t want to pay rent until I can earn some money. Savings soon disappear once the first few pounds are used.’ The main fear was not of her savings, which she had sworn not to touch, but the thought of becoming a part of a community; she still wasn’t prepared to cope with that. But, a voice inside her warned, how much longer can you wait to be ready? Time is passing and every day is making it more difficult, not easier. She knew she was running away from a problem that couldn’t be outpaced.

  Geoff helped her to clear away the worst of the outside rubbish, dragging branches away from the cottage, heaving against the roof to make sure it wouldn’t fall any further.

  ‘Are you able to work? Do you have any qualifications? Experience?’ he asked, and when there was no reply he apologized. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to pry.’

  Perhaps now was the time to make the break from her isolation. Perhaps these patient and kindly people were the sign for which she had been waiting.

  ‘I’m sorry if we’re interfering. Perhaps I should go.’ He looked out through the doorway and added, ‘I’ll just move the last of the branches away from your path then I’ll get back to the shop. Connie is bound to be busy and she’s only got young Joyce to help her.’

  Almost startled into the present, pulled away from her thoughts, Sophie hurriedly apologized. ‘Sorry, my mind was drifting. I know you don’t mean to pry. It’s just that I’m not ready yet, to work or to answer questions. Making a decision can be frightening.’

  ‘Or exciting. And sometimes the decision is made for us.’

  Sophie agreed. His
words were echoing her own thoughts.

  ‘We can give you a month before you start paying rent, but we’ll understand if you think we’re interfering,’ Geoff said after dragging away the final barrier to her path. ‘But think about it. We just feel that the house is the right one for you.’ He looked at her and saw that her face was troubled. He picked up his coat and stepped through the door. ‘You’ll find us at the hardware store on Steeple Street,’ he reminded her. ‘Just come when you’re ready.’

  She thanked him for his help and promised she would give consideration to the idea of living in Badgers Brook.

  She sat for a long time after Geoff had gone and she was so wrapped in her thoughts that she was startled to see a man standing in the doorway. She hadn’t heard him coming. He wore a well-fitting countryman’s jacket, and leather leggings confined his corduroy trousers. A gun hung over his arm, which he put down to rest against the door. Sophie didn’t recognize him; it wasn’t the farmer who had told her to leave. This man was larger, younger – and he was smiling.

  ‘You survived the storm, then?’

  ‘If you’ve come to remind me I have to leave, please give me a few more days. I have to find a new home and move all my possessions, you see.’

  His smile widened as he looked around the shabby room with its makeshift furnishings. ‘No van needed, then. A couple of wheelbarrow loads will suffice! But no, I haven’t come to ask you to move. I wanted to make sure you were unhurt. You aren’t doing any harm and there’s no one else wanting to live here in the back of beyond. But I do think you ought to find a better home. This one is no longer safe.’

  ‘But the other man told me to get out within the week,’ she said with a frown.

  It was his turn to frown. ‘That was probably my cousin, Owen. I’m Ryan Treweather, by the way, my parents and my brother and I own the farm, and the big house next door was our home when we were small. Owen works for us. So I’m your landlord, I suppose. If you want anything, I’ll try to help – short of replacing the roof. It’s a miracle it’s lasted so long. It was an odd shape with the cottage tacked carelessly on to the farmhouse and the walls being only mud, and it wasn’t property secured.’

  ‘How long has this place been here?’ she asked.

  He looked at her, wanting to share the joke, head back, filling the room with his laughter. ‘Only a mere two hundred years!’ He looked at her more seriously and said, ‘But the place has really gone now. I can’t help you stay here, but anything else I can do, please ask.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Any tea in that pot?’

  Ryan stayed for a couple of hours, helping to clean the room and making it safe by fixing a door at the bottom of the stairs where there had been one long ago. Together they gathered wood suitable for the fire, which they put into a rickety shed, now lacking a door. He talked about his childhood, and Fred Yates, who had once lived in the cottage, seeming to enjoy the journey into his past. Sophie said little, just enough to start him off again when he fell silent. When he left he promised to call again. ‘And I’ll bring a wheelbarrow when you’re ready to move out,’ he said as he walked away laughing.

  First Geoff Tanner and now this smiling, kind-hearted farmer’s son. Life was certainly telling her something!

  She knew the laughter drifting back to her was friendly, and stood waving until he was lost to sight among the trees at the top of the field. The room seemed empty without him, the loneliness no longer appealing.

  Everywhere she walked that afternoon she saw evidence of the storm. As she approached the town she heard the sound of hammers and saws and imagined the activity as repairs were hastily carried out for fear of a return of the winds as night approached.

  Badgers Brook appeared to have survived unharmed. Some twigs had fallen from the ash trees near by. Late to leaf, early to fall, and always quick to shed small branches, they were never chosen by nesting birds. Beautiful but barren, she mused. Everything else about the solid-looking house seemed unharmed. The windows shone in the afternoon sun and she smiled as she looked up at the roof, sound and secure without even a slipped slate.

  She knew then that she would live there. From the first glimpse through the hedge she had dreamed of it being her home, yet at that moment it had been a ridiculous thought. Even now the idea was completely without logic. She could manage perfectly well in one room, so why was she even considering this large house? Yet she peered through the windows, imagining herself there. The rooms were large and quite a few pounds would be needed to furnish them. It would mean invading her bank account – money she didn’t want to use.

  She took a bus into town and stepped off near the hardware store. Through the window she saw Geoff serving a customer, and beside him Connie, writing something in a ledger. When she opened the door they smiled and waved a welcome, but neither seemed very surprised to see her.

  News travels, and the following morning Ryan Treweather arrived pushing a large, seriously rusted wheelbarrow.

  ‘I hear you’re moving,’ he said, laughing at her expression as she stared at the dilapidated barrow. ‘I’ve come to help.’ She smiled, enjoying the joke as he pushed it into the hedge from where he had taken it.

  He went inside and listened as she began to tell him of her decision to rent the house owned by Geoff and Connie Tanner, but he knew all about it.

  ‘Stella Jones at the post office filters all the news, and she heard it from Connie and spread it wide. It doesn’t worry you, does it? I’m afraid Cwm Derw is the sort of town that thrives on gossip.’ She looked serious and he wanted to make her smile. ‘There was the time the postman met my mother and told her I was coming home the following day. “Just delivered the card, so you’d better get some extra food to save you coming down again,” he told her. There isn’t much that goes on here that isn’t passed on, but in a caring way,’ he said. ‘A postcard came once for Elsie Clements confirming a booking for a group of cyclists arriving the following day and the baker and the milkman knew before she did.’

  ‘There are a lot of cyclists passing through, usually in groups. Heading for the youth hostel, I suppose. It must be a pleasant way to travel.’

  ‘Have you ever tried it?’

  ‘I had a cycle once.’ She thought of the happy holiday-makers and of the last time she had ridden. She and Daphne riding through ruined streets, so sure that her family were safe, protected by her confidence. She remembered them laughing, excited, on the morning of what should have been her wedding day.

  ‘Why the sad face?’ Ryan asked. ‘Sad memories?’

  ‘Just people I’ve lost.’ Hurriedly, anxious to change the subject before Ryan asked more questions, she smiled and said, ‘I think this is the right place for me to settle. I’ve been wandering around for years looking for a community to which I can belong. If I can be healed, it will be here.’ She moved abruptly then, as though regretting having said so much, revealing something she wanted to remain hidden.

  ‘Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll bring a van,’ he promised, touching her shoulder in a way that promised friendship, before leaving.

  Once again she felt a loss as he disappeared through the trees.

  ‘Telling you to go, was he? Miserable man.’

  She turned to see the boy watching from the corner. ‘No, Bertie, he was offering to help me. Now, why aren’t you in school?’

  ‘Headache all over, miss, right down to me big toe,’ he replied before running off.

  *

  On market day Sophie went with two heavy baskets and sold most of her produce, and the following day she went looking for furniture. Having seen that there was already a couch and a kitchen table at Badgers Brook, she listed the larger items she would need: bed, cupboards, chests of drawers, a few chairs. Besides these, her greatest need was for bed linen and soft furnishings, and all these she managed to buy second hand with a promise of delivery the following weekend.

  On the day she had arranged to move into Badgers Brook she
woke early and began to put her possessions and the last of her stock of preserves outside ready to go on to the promised van. A car stopped in the lane and she glanced at her watch. If it was Ryan he was much earlier than planned. But it wasn’t the friendly Ryan, it was the older man, Owen. And he was not friendly.

  ‘I thought I told you to leave! Get off this land, you’re trespassing. And take all this junk with you.’

  ‘But I am moving. Today. You can see that. I’m waiting for the van to arrive.’ She almost said, ‘Waiting for Ryan, your cousin,’ but did not. She simply wasn’t any good at confrontations. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘Be out of here in an hour or I’ll bring the tractor and run over this mess, and that’s a promise.’

  A stone hit him on the shoulder, and although it obviously had not come from her direction he turned and glared at her. ‘Who threw that?’ he demanded. A second stone caught him on the ear and he put his hand up and held it, twisting round in pain. Sophie had her suspicions but said nothing.

  She heard a van pull up and was relieved to see Ryan appear.

  ‘Owen?’ he said at once. ‘What are you doing here? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Just telling this trespasser to leave. She was told to be gone days ago.’

  ‘You won’t have to wait any longer,’ Ryan said grimly. ‘In fact, now you’re here you can help me load up the van, and be careful not to damage anything.’

  Sophie went back inside leaving the two men arguing. She walked around the room that had been her home, touching the walls, opening and closing the oven door beside the now cold fire. It was exciting to be leaving but there was a foolish part of her that felt she was letting the house down by abandoning it to its fate.

  She unnecessarily checked to make sure the fire was completely out, piled into a cardboard box the small amount of firewood she and Ryan had gathered ready to be transported to her new home, and when she went outside again the van was packed and Ryan was waiting for her.