Page 39 of Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm
‘Ah, I’m not finished yet. I came for your help. I’ve hooked the caravan onto my truck to get it across the fence and into position, but I could do with someone to guide me in.’
‘I didn’t expect you to do that,’ I say in surprise. ‘I could’ve done it.’
‘Because you’ve got a towbar on your pretty little car that’s never seen a mud splash in its life?’
Okay, fair point. I take another gulp of water to avoid answering.
I like how kind and helpful he is, even though it’s pretty clear he still disapproves of me. I didn’t expect him to do any of the things he’s done to help me today, and I know he’s got plenty of his own work he needs to be doing, but he hasn’t made a big deal out of it at all.
He’s much different than I thought he was.
***
There are a variety of crunching and grinding noises as Noel reverses the truck diagonally across my little back garden at the pace of geriatric snail, trying to slide the caravan onto the wide grass path at the side of his pumpkin patch. I’ve swept up the broken glass and kicked down the remains of the rotting fence, and now I’m trying to guide him incrementally left or right in an attempt to stop the caravan veering off, feeling a bit like a Chuckle Brother with all the ‘to me, to you-ing’. He seems to be doing a better job without my help.
Once the caravan is on his land, he straightens up easily and guides it neatly into perfectly parallel place. As he gets out of the truck and detaches it from his towbar, I climb inside, and discover it’s not as bad as I first thought. It needs a deep clean, and the upper cabinets that are dangling off need to be removed completely, but the units installed around the kitchen area are still sturdy. If I replace the broken window with a wooden shutter it can act as the rustic serving hatch I’d imagined and keep the squirrel out if colliding with my face didn’t give it enough of a fright to prevent it ever returning.
‘What’s it like?’ Noel pokes his head round the door and leans in.
‘It could be worse.’ I kick my foot through some of the debris on the floor, and then walk to the seating area at the other end. The cushions and soft furnishings have been chewed to bits by the previous bushy-tailed resident, but I get my hands under one and rip it off, and the wooden benches underneath are still undamaged.
The caravan dips under Noel’s weight as he climbs in too and treads through the rubble to poke around the kitchen area and prod at the window frame.
‘What do you think?’ I bite my lip as I wait for his verdict. I’m assessing it like I know the first thing about caravans when the nearest I’ve ever got to one before is being stuck behind them on the motorway.
‘It could be worse.’ He deliberately repeats my words. ‘Pull an extension lead out from the house and you’ll have a power supply, a folding shutter on this window, and a really good clean inside and out. I think it’s a cracking idea. I looked into getting a hot chocolate machine a couple of years ago, so I know that’s going to set you back about three hundred quid. It’s kind of an investment, but it’s going to be better quality and easier than trying to do it with a kettle, and if you can imagine a cold, snowy day after walking around a Christmas tree farm in December … there’s nothing people will want more than a hot chocolate.’
It does seem like a good idea. All right, it’s another expenditure I hadn’t planned on – and something tells me there are a lot more of those to come – but I can’t think of anything nicer than walking around the farm and then coming back to the entrance for a cup of hot chocolate to stave off Jack Frost nipping at your nose. There will be waiting time while trees are netted and paid for and fitted into cars, and there’s nowhere else nearby for people to get refreshments. It’s the festive equivalent of the ice cream van in the beach car park.
I duck around a hanging cabinet as I go back towards the kitchen area, trying to assess how much work the caravan will need and how much time I’ll have to do it in. I bump into Noel as we move around each other in the small space and he leans over to test the under-unit storage cupboard doors. It’s so nice of him to get as involved as he has, and I wish I could do something in return.
‘If I sort out the caravan and get a hot chocolate machine, you could borrow it next year, if you want. Just as a thank you for letting me use your land this time around. I mean, why shouldn’t we help each other out, if we can?’ I say, fully aware that there’s pretty much nothing I could help him with because he’s an expert who seems to have everything under control and running like the well-oiled machine it should be. Clearly, I need his help a lot more than he needs mine.
‘I don’t expect anything in return, but that’d be great.’ He turns around to speak and jumps as we bump into each other again. ‘We usually make drinks from the kitchen when the patch is open, but it gets busier every year and running back and forth and passing drinks out through the kitchen window is getting increasingly unprofessional. You can be the guinea pig and see how it goes this year. It might fail miserably for all you know.’
‘Yeah.’ I roll my eyes. ‘Thanks for that vote of confidence.’
‘Just being realistic. You’ve got all these grand plans, but …’ He trails off, deliberately not finishing the sentence.
He doesn’t need to because I can finish it for him.But you’re a city girl and this world isn’t for you.He might be helping me, but he’s clearly still in no doubt that I’ll leave whenever things get tough. I decide not to push it. I can’t tell him he’s wrong about me – I can only prove it. ‘How is it possible that you’re this grumpy on a lovely sunny evening, but at six o’clock in the morning, you’re as chirpy as a cheerful canary who’s had frosted cereal for breakfast?’
He raises an eyebrow that gradually goes higher and it takes a ridiculously long time for him to start laughing. ‘I’m a morning person, all right? By this time of day, the caffeine hit has worn off and I turn back into a yeti. Like a hairier Cinderella in reverse.’
The mental image washes away all the lingering annoyance. ‘You’d never suit a ballgown.’ I don’t mention that his shoulders are so wide and his arm muscles are so defined that they’d never find a ballgown large enough for himtosuit.
He laughs. ‘But at least I’ve got plenty of pumpkin carriages and a terrible sense of timekeeping, and the prince wouldn’t have any trouble remembering my giant feet in glass slippers.’ He rubs his fingers over his chin. ‘The stubble might give it away too.’
I’m giggling so hard that I have to lean against the caravan wall for support, and the more I laugh, the more it makes him laugh too, until the lines around his eyes are crinkled up and tears of joy are forming in the corners.
He suddenly seems to realise that we’re just standing here laughing at each other, because he jolts upright. ‘Pumpkin spice!’
‘What?’ I say in confusion, wondering how you go from Cinderella to pumpkin spice.
He looks really pleased with himself. ‘It goes brilliantly in hot chocolate, and you look like you could use a drink. Stay there, I’ll prove it.’
He squeezes past me in the narrowest part of the caravan and our bodies drag against each other as we both breathe in and I try to flatten myself against the wall to let him pass.
I get the feeling it’s an excuse to get out of this cramped space and away from whatever that was that sparked between us, but a hot chocolate sounds absolutely perfect right now, and I find myself watching from the doorway as he walks through the rows of pumpkins towards his house.
