Page 16 of My Lemon Grove Summer
‘Good idea. The sooner we can make it habitable, the sooner we can be out of here.’ He nods to the door. ‘Barry was telling us about his time working as a postman.’ There’s a smile on his lips. Not unkind, because Lennie isn’t like that; he’s just a tease. ‘And we can start thinking about work. We should get our first payments from Giuseppe, which will tide us over, but I thought I’d ask around. See if anyone needs any help. I don’t mind what I do. I’d quite like to be outside.’
I think about the town and its empty shops. The lack of business opportunities.
‘It’s going to be okay, isn’t it, Lennie?’ I ask suddenly, looking up at Mount Etna. ‘We have made the right decision?’
‘We certainly have,’ he says, pulling me to him and kissing my hair. I lean against him and rest my head on his chest. I hope he’s right, I really do.
‘Here they are, the lovebirds!’ smiles Sherise. ‘You don’t fool me with your separate-rooms story!’ she laughs, waving a spatula at us. She’s wearing a frilly apron and cooking what looks to be a full English. ‘I always like to make Billy a fry-up,’ she tells us.
Lennie slips his arm around my shoulder and smiles. Sherise serves up the bacon and eggs.
‘I get my sister to send us bacon,’ she says through the smoke, ‘wherever we are. Picked up these eggs on our way from the mainland. Wrapped them in a woolly hat.’
‘A woolly hat?’ says Barry, and Ralph stops checking his phone and looks up.
‘Oh, we’ve been travelling for months now. Working here and there, moving on, haven’t we, Billy?’
Billy nods and looks at the plate of food, but doesn’t pick up his knife and fork.
‘What kind of work?’ Ralph finally speaks.
‘Mainly caretaking, housekeeping and gardening, general maintenance. We’ve been staying in France, looking after a big house there.Gardiennage, they call it.’
‘Sounds amazing,’ I say.
‘Oh, it was,’ she looks at her husband. ‘He’s a bit fed up. We thought this project . . . well, that we might be able to put down some roots finally. But after seeing the houses yesterday, I don’t think it’s going to work out for us.’
‘Maybe once they get them repaired, with a bit of paint . . .’ I try and enthuse.
‘It’s not that. Billy was hoping for a bit of land. Keep some animals, settle down to what he knows.’
‘What’s that then?’ asks Tabitha, eyeing up the bowl of oranges.
‘We were dairy farmers in the UK. Billy’s born and bred into it. His father and his grandfather’s farm before that. But,’ Sherise shrugs, and I can see the pain etched on their faces all of a sudden, ‘when the prices dropped, there was nothing more we could do. Supermarkets were bringing in milk from all over. It was costing us more to keep the cows than we were making from selling the milk.’
She turns and clears away the pan she’s been using.
I remember staying on a farm once when I was in the children’s home. I was terrified. The cows were huge. But it was incredible how even some of the more disruptive kids got stuck in and seemed to find their place with the responsibility that being around the animals brought. It wasn’t the animals that did it for me. Something about being outside just made me feel, well, a lot happier. My brain seemed to work better when I was active. Going back to the classroom after that was a big adjustment, and not one I managed very well, I’m embarrassed to admit as I think back.
‘What happened to the cows? You sold them?’ Tabitha asks, intrigued, and I think I may have misjudged her. She’s clearly interested in Sherise and Billy’s lives.
Sherise shakes her head, then turns back and places a hand on Billy’s shoulder.
‘No buyers.’
‘Slaughtered?’ asks Ralph, quickly and to the point.
Sherise nods her head slowly. ‘There didn’t seem much point staying on. So we gave up the tenancy and started travelling.’ She brightens, clearly trying to jolly her husband along. ‘We’ve loved it. Been all over.’ She starts drying the pan vigorously.
Billy’s shoulders drop, and he pushes the plate of food away from him.
‘Er, if you’re not going to eat that, I could help you out,’ says Barry. Billy nods, and Barry pulls the plate towards himself and tucks in.
‘This could be great for you then?’ I say brightly.
‘Not really,’ Sherise says. ‘As I mentioned, we’d hoped to get some land, keep some animals, but from what Giuseppe was saying yesterday, that doesn’t sound possible.’
I feel for them. Looks like their hopes and dreams have been smashed before we’ve even started. There must be a way to help them.
