Page 18 of Once Upon a Thyme
There was something uncomfortable in the transition. It was jarring and Zeb seemed to feel it too, because he didn’t immediately rush out into the light and noise, but stood in the liminal zone of the doorway, half in shade. ‘Or maybe they’re getting on just fine without us.’
I could hear voices, laughing, and I was almost sure that one of them was Mika. Tinny weak notes of music flared momentarily through the air. ‘They’ll have to play louder than that,’ I said, meaninglessly, filling the space with words.
Zeb gave me a pitying look. ‘They put the music on afterwards, in edits. They only have to look as though they are playing for the video.’
I didn’t often feel stupid other than when I was with my mother. Out here, with the plants and the practical work, I was in my element, so the feeling that I’d said something daft made my cheeks heat up and my neck prickle. ‘Oh. Yes, of course.’
‘It’s all fake, Tallie,’ Zeb said, looking out across the yard now. I was glad he’d stopped looking at me because it meant I could cool down and regain my non-sweaty composure. I fanned my shirt, pulling it away from my body to get some cool air to help. ‘Everything out there, it’s fake.’
‘The herbs are real,’ I said, injecting a robust tone to pretend that I’d only been joking about the music. ‘And the pond.’
‘Oh yes. All your things are real. It’s them that are fake.’ He nodded towards the little knot of people swirling down the path towards a lighting set-up that could have rivalled a Hollywood production. ‘Don’t you think?’
Mika’s not fake, I just stopped myself from blurting. ‘They’re doing their job, Zeb. Just like we are,’ I added, although neither Zeb nor I were doing anything more than standing around chatting. ‘I don’t think they’re any more fake than any other band.’
‘I didn’t really mean that.’ Zeb still stood in the doorway, sliced by the shadow of the shop and the blaze of the sun. ‘More that – here they are, pretending that it’s all about the outdoors and that they’re close to nature and yet they’ve got a catering bus on the way and they’re surrounded by make-up and lights and stuff to make them look better. They could just be… normal.’
‘Film themselves playing a song on their phones, and eat sandwiches, you mean?’ I said, past the noise of one of the lorries revving its engine. ‘I think The Goshawk Tradersmight be a bit past that level now.’
‘But no one should have tobe“past that level”.’ Zeb sounded angry, and I wasn’t used to anger from him. ‘Why can’t everyone be on a level playing field? Why does money have to equal “better”? They get all the promotion and the advertising and all that, when there are other people out there working just as hard, harder probably, and scratching around for little scraps of public attention and money?’
He’d spun round in the doorway to give me the full benefit of his ire, shoulders hunched and his hair punctuating each sentence with a little forward nod from the impetus of his annoyance. It was, curiously, reassuring for me to see him lose his cool. It made me feel less inferior – and the realisation that I had felt inferior at all, just because he seemed to be together and a little disapproving of my life choices, made me purse my lips at him.
‘You might be taking this all a bit personally,’ I said. ‘The band is successful. Of course they’re going to have resources poured into them. A lot of people will have money riding on them carrying on being successful, don’t you think?’
There was a moment of quiet. Coincidentally, the noise outside stopped too; the lorry had done whatever it needed to and the background voices receded to a murmur and the occasional musical twang. Zeb suddenly slithered down the door frame to sit on the step with his legs jutting out into the yard and his head in his hands.
‘Sorry,’ he said, his voice muffled and his punctuating hair scraped back beneath his fingers. ‘Sorry. It’s just that it sometimes seems so unfair, don’t you think?’
It felt wrong to be standing behind him at my full height while he was obviously undergoing some conflict, so I went over to sit next to him on the pleasantly warm stone of the shop step. This squeezed us together in the doorway, our shoulders touching, but it was infinitely preferable to towering over him.
‘Like I said, sounds personal. Anything you want to tell me?’
There was a pause. He seemed to be thinking. ‘Guy I worked with,’ Zeb said, eventually, still indistinct through hands and hair. ‘We trained together. He was very… I don’t know how you’d describe it. Personable? Good looking? And pushy, very pushy. He had money behind him, wealthy dad and money seems to equal confidence. Got himself a job working for a TV chef and now he’s got his own programme on Sunday morning TV, cooking for the masses.’ The hands lowered and Zeb looked at me sideways. ‘Wanker.’
‘Ah, professional jealousy. That’s always a good one.’ I smiled. Zeb’s sudden flash of anger made me sympathetic. I’d felt the same way myself when more successful and high-profile herb farms featured in the glossy magazines. ‘Was that when you decided to stop cheffing?’
Zeb breathed a deep sigh that rocked his entire body. ‘Partly. Seeing him popping up every week and my wife asking me why I didn’t do that – make a fortune being a celebrity while I explained that he had a team of people behind him making him look good, that it was all fake and not really what being a chef ought to be like – I started to realise that she really didn’t have the faintest idea.’ Another sigh. ‘That she didn’t really know me at all.’
A burst of sudden laughter rose from the garden and I looked between the parked vehicles and through the fence to see the band laughing among themselves, Mika in the centre looking pleased with himself. They all held their instruments casually as though they were extensions of their bodies. One of the girls was sitting on the edge of the pond, Simon I could see behind the lights, waving a hand. Getting The Goshawk Tradersinto a position to start filming looked like trying to bottle clouds.
In my pocket my phone beeped a text. It would be my mother, stuck in the era of texting. I’d only just got her to stop phoning me every time a thought crossed her mind. I pulled the phone out and looked at my screen.
Natalie, darling, would you pop over? I’m feeling quite dreadful and not up to cooking, could you perhaps make me a sandwich?
There was a horrible contraction somewhere near my heart. She needed me. But here I was, watching Mika – who had ‘noticed’ me – and supervising the filming to prevent anything dreadful happening.
‘Your mother again?’ Zeb looked down at my phone screen too. Normally I would have felt annoyed, spied on, but for some reason this time I didn’t.
‘Yes.’ I held out the phone so he could read the message.
‘And you don’t want to go?’ He pushed gently at my hand, turning the phone back away and onto my lap. I saw him look towards the band.
‘I don’t want to, no. But she’s not well.’
‘Well enough to feel hungry, evidently.’ Zeb raised an eyebrow.
‘She doesn’t eat much.’ I could hear the apologetic tone in my own voice, the justification dripping like lemon juice from every syllable, sour and tongue-shrivelling.
