Page 6 of Once Upon a Thyme
‘Useful, how?’
He didn’t speak for a moment. The silence rattled with seed heads in a passing breeze and an owl hooted atmospherically. The air was warm and heavy with scent but it was so familiar as to hardly register. ‘Look,’ Zeb said finally, and there was an urgency to his voice that took my attention away from the gently swaying ivy back to him. ‘My business is new. I need some testimonials to put on my website and your mother has promised some extravagant praise if I can just turn this business around. I need the work, and you…’ he tailed off to stare pointedly at the chamomile bed. ‘You need some proper marketing,’ he finished. ‘We could help each other. Plus, it’s already paid for.’
He was only half-lit in the amber light that came past me through the window from the kitchen lamp. He was hunched, the silhouette of his hair almost trembling with eagerness against the sky and there was something about his keen slender shape, bent forwards with the desire to stay employed, that reminded me of Ollie.
The owl hooted again and then flew, a ragged, torn-paper outline across the air of the garden.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, come inside,’ I snapped. ‘It’s ridiculous trying to talk to you when you’re grovelling in the dark.’
I opened the door and went into the kitchen, not looking to see if he followed, but I could hear his feet on the brick floor as he came in. I put the kettle on.
‘It really is lovely here,’ he said. His tone was humble.
‘Stop it.’ I fetched the mugs. I had to dig for a spare; Ollie would know if someone had used his mug and he wouldn’t like it, so I found an ancient bone china cup at the back of the cupboard. ‘I’ve been working here since I could toddle, there’s nothing you can tell me about the business.’
There was a furtive squeak from somewhere in the rafters. I hoped he hadn’t heard it.
‘All right. Maybe you don’t need help with the day-to-day stuff. But what about The Goshawk Traders? If Simon decides that they do want to film here, you could do with someone to help manage that. You’ll want to publicise the fact that the gardens were used in their video, maximise visitor numbers for as long as possible afterwards. And what are you going to charge? You’ll have to close the gardens while they’re here, so you need to allow for…’
‘Yes, I know!’ In truth I felt a bit stupid, which was making me snappy. Stupid that I’d fallen for his ‘looking for a part-time job’ spiel. If I’d hustled him out there and then with the truth that there wasno job, none of this current exchange would be happening, and I wouldn’t be wanting to murder my mother. No, scrap that, I’d still be wanting to murder her, but it would be for some other reason. ‘Sorry. I do know. I just – well. I haven’t thought that far in advance yet; after all, they may decide not to film here at all.’
There was another silence into which the kettle boiled. It was clear that neither of us knew what to say from here on. I knew what I wanted to say – something about him being here under false pretences and my mother having no right to force her way into my life – but we’d covered that and I would only be digging over old ground.
‘I used to be a chef,’ Zeb said suddenly and surprisingly from behind me. I kept my eye on the kettle, unsure as to whether this was an unasked-for confidence or whether he was following some mental train of thought obvious only to him. When you worked with Ollie for a while you learned that only about twenty per cent of words actually got said by some people, and sometimes entire conversations with you went on without you even being aware that you’d spoken.
‘A chef,’ I echoed and poured water onto teabags because it gave me something to do with my hands and a reason for not turning around to face him, only to embarrass myself further.
‘Yes.’
Good grief, this was painful. ‘I still don’t know what you’re doing here at this time of night.’ I turned around and caught him stroking his thumbnail along one of the cracks in the old table, his head bent and his hair flopping so that he now looked like David Tennant’s sad younger brother. ‘You presumably have a home to go to.’
‘A flat.’ He took the mug I held out. ‘In Pickering. Over a takeaway.’
‘Well, that’s…’
‘I had a house. A lovely house and a wife.’ He spoke very quickly now, as though he wanted to get the words out. ‘But being a chef can be dreadful hours and split shifts. We wanted to start a family but I was never home and she didn’t know when I’d be coming back half the time.’ He wasn’t looking at me, he was keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the riven surface of the table. ‘So we split up and I retrained and I’m having to start again.’
I had no idea why he was telling me this, and no idea how I was meant to react. ‘I’m sure that was all very painful.’ I sat back down in the slouchy chair. It had kept Granny’s imprint so well, after the sixty or so years of her having sat in it, that I had to form myself into the shape of an eighty-five-year-old woman just to get comfortable.
‘So I need this job.’ Zeb slumped further forward until he was sitting almost by accident on one of the stools. ‘I’ve lost everything and I have to start again, and your mother is willing to give me a shot. I’m hoping that telling you this will appeal to your better nature and stop you slinging me out of the door.’
‘Ah. You want me to pity you.’ His confessions made more sense now.
‘No!’ Now he sat upright and looked more like the assertive Zeb who had talked to Simon about payment this afternoon. ‘I’m trying to explain why I’m here. Why I want you to give this a go, just for the month. What have you got to lose, after all?’
I sat back in the chair, cupping my hands around my steaming mug and looking at him, his elbows on the table and an urgent expression on his thin, dark face. What did I have to lose? My autonomy. My independence from my mother, hard won after years of fighting and a continuation of border skirmishes. I mean, I understood her need to keep me close, of course I did. Her life hadn’t been easy, filled with losses and fear, and I was all she had. But even so…
Then I thought of the band, traipsing around our carefully laid out acres, those casual hands scooping at flowers and fingers snatching at leaves, releasing scents to the air and a confetti of petals strewn in their wake. The dark eyes of Mika, watching me, and I realised how desperately I wanted them to come and film here.
‘Do you know how to get in touch with The Goshawk Traders?’ I asked.
Zeb sat straighter again and put his mug down on the table. ‘Simon gave me his details.’
‘Then I think you should do that. Tell them we’d be delighted to have them film their video here. Lay it on a bit thick about how much we’d do for them – make the whole place available for as long as they wanted, close to the public, all that.’
‘Payment?’
‘Think of something. Not so much as to put them off, but enough to compensate for being closed while they’re here.’
