Page 24 of Once Upon a Thyme
Big Pig, seeing me and hoping for more food, snorted up from her trough. ‘Nothing.’ I glanced back over my shoulder. Genevra and Will were heading to the cottage arm in arm while Vinnie trailed behind, snatching at stems and plucking leaves. The entire band was going to be all over my scrubbed pine and oiled oak. I hoped they weren’t going to be laughing at the memory of me in my PJs or criticising my taste in mugs. Or, even worse, pulling leaves off the basil that I was bringing on in pots on the window ledge. ‘Just feeling at a bit of a loose end.’
‘Nothing to cut? No customers?’ Zeb wrangled the bale down and cut the twine. The guinea pigs set up a squeaking that went from front to back in a tuneless chorus, seeing the hay about to descend, and he stepped over their fencing to shake it into their house, while they ran around his feet like animated toupees.
‘Not really. No customers, anyway. I could cut some angelica heads, but the bucket is still quite full in the shop. I’m going to muck out the pig in a minute.’ I leaned against the stone wall. The barn was the old-fashioned, open fronted kind, built as stalling for the horses when Drycott had been the coal yard. Big farm gates kept Big Pig in her half, more gating and low fencing separated the rabbits from the central food preparation area and a final gate kept everything closed off. It all looked a bit makeshift and cobbled together, but it worked, mostly. I leaned over and rattled the nearest gate, which seemed secure.
‘What are the band up to?’ Panting, Zeb distributed the hay and started coiling the twine to hang on the handy nail Ollie had driven into the barn wall, when our previous string arrangement had failed.
‘Filming. Being beautiful. Laughing. That sort of thing.’
‘Oooh.’ Zeb straightened up, one hand in the small of his back. ‘You sound jealous.’
‘Do I? I’m not, not really. They just all seem sotogether,like they’ve got life sorted out.’
‘They’re famous. I think a lot of things are easy when you’re famous. Doesn’t mean they’re any better than you or me though.’
‘Very philosophical.’ I remembered what he’d told me about his ex workmate who now had a TV slot, and his bitterness made sense. I took a slice of hay from the bale and half-heartedly shook it loose to put in the rabbits’ rack.
‘You’ve nothing to feel inferior about, Tallie.’ Zeb sounded serious, but had hay in his hair. It was hard to be philosophised at by someone who looked like Wurzel Gummidge. ‘You’ve got your own successful business, your own house, all this.’ He threw his hands wide and more hay trailed from his grasp.
‘“All this” being squeaky rodents and an enormous pig,’ I said sullenly.
‘Don’t be obtuse. You’ve done okay, admit it. Growing up can’t have been easy from what you’ve told me, but you came through.’
I stopped and thought, staring at the excited bundle of guinea pig circling around Zeb’s feet like hyperactive mop heads. ‘There wasn’t much choice,’ I said. ‘School was tough – Mum sent me to the private school over in town rather than the local comp, so the locals called me “posh” and behaved as though I’d personally chosen not to go to school here, as if I thought I was too good for them, and the girls at school treated me like an oddity. I was a disappointment to my teachers because I wasn’t interested in much apart from horticulture. I grew up knowing that I’d probably take over Drycott so I didn’t exactly cover myself in glory on the academic front.’
My mother had been sharp about that too. On the one hand telling me that she was ‘looking after’ Drycott for me, once Granny died, and, on the other, telling me that I should study harder, take more exams, get better reports. My repeated questions as to why, when herbs weren’t that bothered about A levels, as long as you got the soil depth right, were never answered.
‘I hated school,’ Zeb said surprisingly. He stepped over the rabbit’s fence. ‘Everybody was just so…shouty.’
‘I’d have thought cheffing was pretty shouty too.’
‘Different kind of shouty. I knew what to do there. School was everyone shouting at cross purposes, but when you’re in a kitchen you’ve got one job to do and you ignore any shouting that isn’t directed at you.’ He replaced the remains of the bale on the hay stack and wiped his hands down his thighs. ‘At least this job is quiet.’
‘You’re only here for a month,’ I reminded him, possibly too pointedly. I could hear sounds that indicated that the band had left my kitchen and were milling around in the garden and I didn’t want to turn around in case Mika caught my eye again.
‘I meantmyjob,’ Zeb said evenly. ‘Targeted marketing. Going in to companies and businesses and finding out how best to increase their market reach within their chosen sphere.’
‘Oh.’ I thought for a second. ‘What’s a “market reach” anyway? Sounds like what the greengrocer does down in the village when he’s trying to get the apples from the back of the stall.’
‘I hoped that nobody would notice that.’ He perched on the gate that led out into the garden, sitting hunched on the top bar like a multicoloured crow. ‘The concept is sound though, go into businesses and help them make a profit.’ He sighed. ‘I just wish it wasn’t so…hard.’
I leaned on the gate beside him, forced to look out across the herbs which were slowly nodding their fragrant heads as the weight of the day pressed them into somnolence. Part of my mind was appreciating the loveliness of the plants while another part dwelt on the back-breaking work that was necessary to keep them looking so gorgeous. The beauty on the surface was only there because of the hours and hours of physical labour that nobody saw.
‘Ants in the parsley bed,’ I said.
‘What? Sorry, are there? Does that matter?’ Zeb bent lower over his knees, closer to me, his hair bouncing in a worried fashion.
‘Maybe. Possibly. But I was being philosophical.’ I could smell the metallic tang of the galvanised gate and was keeping my mind focused on that, rather than the sight of Mika, with one arm around Tessa, as they danced for the camera in a flourish of waltz that kept squashing the loose edging of the border. ‘Ants in the parsley. Everything looks fabulous on the surface, but underneath it’s dark and nasty and sharp.’
‘Your mother wants me to report back to her, you know,’ Zeb said suddenly. ‘She wants to know how successful Drycott is, how the turnover is looking.’
I jerked a look of surprised alarm at his face. He was carefully not looking at me, but staring out at where the band were pretending to sing for the cameras as far as I could tell from the abrupt snatches of chorus that competed with the blackbirds singing from high in the birch trees. ‘Shewhat?’
‘Oh, I’m not going to.’
‘Good.’
‘Probably.’ Now Zeb swung himself down from the gate so that he was on the other side, facing me. He blocked my view of the band now walking together into the centre of the garden and I had to move slightly sideways so I could keep on disapproving of what was happening amid my herbs. ‘She was very logical, but I thought about what you said about you owning the place and her only having a small financial interest, so I thought I’d run it by you first before I told her anything. I’ve been trying to work out how to tell you – that’s why I didn’t come back yesterday afternoon.’
