Page 21 of Once Upon a Thyme
‘Yes. Thank you, but it wasn’t necessary, honestly. I’ve got this, Mum. We’re doing all right. I’m keeping him on for this month because you’ve already paid, but I won’t need him after that. You can give him a glowing reference though, he’s been…’ I stopped, unsure. What exactly had Zeb been? ‘He’s liaised with this band and they’re here now filming a music video, which is going to be great for business,’ I finished.
‘Aband?’ Lady Bracknell’s ‘ahandbag?’ could have been uttered in just such an appalled tone.
‘Yes, you won’t have heard of them, they’re a bit modern for you.’ My mother was stuck in the music of her childhood. There was still an A-ha poster upstairs in my cottage with little kiss marks all over Morten Harket’s face. In my mind, my father had looked a bit like Morten Harket; in real life I wouldn’t know. There were no pictures of him anywhere.
‘Do they have guitars?’
‘Well, yes, most bands have guitars, Mum. This lot are a bit posy and I’m not convinced on the washboard front but…’ No. I wasn’t going to mention Mika, not to my mother, who would instantly demand that he be taken round for her inspection.
‘Someone plays the guitar?’ Her voice had gone a bit faint and I could hear Zeb asking if she was all right.
‘Yes. What’s wrong with that?’ There had been a note in her voice that had made my spine prickle, but there was absolutely no point of connection between my mother, sickly duvet-wrapped and hating the outdoors, and a bunch of late-twenties musical nomads. She clearly hadn’t even heard of the band, so it was the musical genre that was making her sound so weird.
I heard her dismiss Zeb and then come back to me. ‘Nothing, darling, of course. Guitar players tend to be sofickle, that’s all. But I suppose you’re just keeping an eye on the garden, as Zebedee says.’
Why did she have to use the full form of everyone’s name all the time? Everyone, absolutelyeveryonecalled me Tallie, even the postman. My mother was the only person in the world to use Natalie and sometimes it made me feel as though I were someone else when I was with her, someone different to the person the rest of the world saw. She was at it with Zeb now too.
‘Yes. I’m just making sure that nobody tramples anything too badly.’
‘You don’t have to… tointeractwith them?’
Too late I remembered that my father had played the guitar. It was one of the very few things I had ever been told about him – he’d been tall, and he’d played the guitar in a band. Nothing else; just as there were no pictures of him, there were no memories either, as though that car crash had wiped him from the face of the earth. But my mother had been traumatised by being left, ill and alone with a baby, while the man who had promised to love her forever had died so tragically; I could understand why none of it was talked about. Angela Fisher was fragile, easily damaged and needed protecting – we were poles apart in every way. Clearly she was now triggered by the mere mention of guitar players.
‘No, Mum. Not really.’ The thought of Mika rose again, like bubbles in a boiling liquid.
‘Well, good. You stay away from people in bands, Natalie. They’re no good.’
I was almost certain that noteveryonein a band was going to profess lifelong love and then get themselves killed, it just wasn’t statistically possible, but she was looking out for me and my future. My mother didn’t want me hurt in the same way as she had been, that was all.
‘I’ll keep an eye from a distance, Mum. It’s fine. They’re only here for a week, filming this video, and then they’re gone.’
‘Why don’t you take a holiday?’ This was a surprising turn. My mother had never suggested that I might need a break from the herbs since I’d taken over the business. ‘Maybe while Zebedee is here and the garden is closed? It might be a lovely time to go away somewhere – Italy is beautiful.’ A momentary breath, during which I actuallydidconsider a short-notice holiday to bask on a beach or wander the mountains. ‘I could come with you.’
The vision of lying sun-drenched in a bikini or walking through picturesque markets with a raffia bag and enormous tomatoes, shrivelled and died.‘No thanks, Mum. I’ve got work to do. Big Pig made a real mess of the fennel beds and I want to get that put right and Ollie has the week off, you know how he is.’
I heard Zeb again, an amused tone in the background. My mother actually giggled, a sound I didn’t think I’d ever heard her make before. ‘Well, of course, you know best, Natalie.’ She even managed to say my name without its usual sarcastic edge, which was a miracle. ‘Oh, and Zebedee says he’s heading back now, to’ – another little giggle – ‘to stop you from fraternising with any guitarists.’
We said our goodbyes and I slumped, exhausted, over the shop counter. Why did my mother have the effect on me of making me feel as though I’d spent a day in the company of forty thousand hyperactive toddlers? In fact, even a playgroup visiting to cuddle the rabbits, stroke the guinea pigs and feed turnip heads to Big Pig, with the concomitant risk assessments and enforced hand washing, was a breeze compared to a short conversation with my mother.
‘Tallie?’ It was Simon, appearing in the shop doorway. ‘Has something happened? Are you all right?’
I straightened up. ‘Yes, yes, all fine, I was just – polishing the counter.’ To add veracity I dusted a corner with my sleeve. ‘How are things going?’
‘Mm, fine, fine.’ Simon didn’t sound totally convinced. ‘The band want to do a few interior shots and I wondered if you’d mind if we used your kitchen.’
Interior shots? Was this a music video or a drama documentary? I hastily tried to remember whether I’d washed up last night’s pots and pans and swabbed the toast crumbs off the work surface. ‘Well, I…’
‘It’s Mika, you see.’ Simon sighed heavily. ‘He’s got a “vision” apparently, for how the video ought to look. To make the band look approachable and ordinary. He thinks them making mugs of tea and chatting round a table might be just the thing.’
‘I thought this was a video of them singing and playing?’ I was confused. The garden was one thing, but when things started bleeding into my home life I wasn’t sure.But Mika…whispered a treacherous little voice in my ear.
‘We intercut. So the video runs the length of a few songs, and some of the time they’re playing and singing and the rest of the time they’re wandering about.’ He sighed again. ‘It’s not like it was back in the old days when you sat behind a drum kit with a camera on the lead guitarist, and just tried not to sweat too much.’
‘Maybe tomorrow?’ It would give me a chance to make the kitchen look cutely cottagey and fit in with the band’s aesthetic, whatever that was. I could look it up before morning. ‘There’s a few things I need to do in there today.’
Simon slumped into a relieved stance. ‘Oh good. I hoped you weren’t going to be difficult about it. Mika can be very… single-minded when he’s got a vision.’ Now he raised his eyebrows at me as though I were supposed to understand a subtext that I hadn’t even known I ought to be looking out for.
I thought about Mika taking my hand and leading me over to introduce me to the band. He hadn’t given me a chance to say, ‘No, sorry, I’ve got things to do.’ Was that a sign of his single-mindedness? A determination to make life go the way you wanted wasn’t always a bad thing though. Hadn’t I had to grit my teeth and make things happen, particularly in the early days of running the herb farm? I felt the memory of the pressure of his fingers around mine, the way the light had caught in his curls, his laughing eyes.
