Page 29 of Once Upon a Thyme
It wasn’t her fault.
I sighed and closed my eyes, feeling the worn leather of the chair against the back of my neck, almost like the fingers of a lover kneading my muscles. I had a brief flash of memory of the touch of Mika’s hand, taking mine to lead me up among the tall flowering foxgloves and the summer-scented mints in the shaded garden. And then memory stretched to include his laughing with Tessa, his arm reassuring around her after the pig incident, his general easy affection with her.
Mika was not for me. Simon had warned me that Mika was – how had he put it? ‘He can be a bit…’ Simon had never actually finished that sentence. I remembered the whole of that time with Simon, his surprising questions about my situation and his dark almost-warning about Mika. How would he have finished? ‘Mika can be a bit…’ What? Over-excited? Over-affectionate? Over-dressed? Reckless, careless, casual with his affections?
I didn’t really care. It had been so long since a man, any man had noticed me. I protected myself against casual incursions by cultivating an aura of obsessive busyness, always dashing around the place cutting or weeding or planting, so any man who came as a customer would have got the impression that I was far too absorbed in the garden to date. I could have slowed down, flirted lightly with some of the delivery men who brought the animal feed or the hay and straw. Service engineers who periodically came to poke at the Aga or the hot water system in the cottage or the irrigation unit had been chatty; surely I could have dropped my single status and an assumed availability for nights on the town to them?
But I had been raised on dreadful tales of how falling in love ended. Granny had, on some late winter nights when my mother had been confined to her bed and we’d sat around this table illuminated only by a single swinging bulb, been condemnatory about her daughter’s choice of husband. No details had passed her lips, nothing I could winnow out for information about my father. Just vague, dark hints about meeting and marrying quickly – from her tone, I deduced that I had been ‘on the way’ and marriage had been hastily scrambled in order for my mother to remain respectable, which was ridiculously old fashioned even thirty years ago. This valley, on the edge of the moors, was still populated by families who had been here longer than most of the trees and before the rivers had settled in their current courses; old-fashioned courtesy and manners caused ridges and rifts out here like fingerprints of behaviour. Granny would have wanted to save face and not be seen to have a daughter who had succumbed to modern morality. Maybe she felt a twinge of guilt afterwards at forcing Mum to marry? Maybe things might have been less intense if I could have been born to an unashamed single mother with a perhaps less-than-present father? Forcing Mum and Dad into a relationship which might not otherwise have gone the distance with the concomitant awful ending, was really down to Granny.
Now, here I was, with a mother I couldn’t imagine introducing to any potential partner because of her overt mistrust of any utterances of love or devotion – ‘men will say anything, Natalie. Anything. And then they will leave you heartbroken’ – and a herb garden which took so much of my time and energy that I didn’t really have the opportunity to meet anyone anyway.
A mouse scraped along the beam and I allowed myself the briefest fantasy of introducing Mika to my mother. Surely he, with his sparkling self-confidence, wouldn’t be daunted by her recurrent illness and her dark hints about relationships ending. He’d be wild and energetic, sweep her out of her long sadness and into glamour. He’d entice better doctors, specialists, into a proper diagnosis of her energy-sapping headaches, sickness and inability to function. She’d get the proper medication and re-emerge into the life she’d lost, back into fashion and modern hairstyles and, perhaps, a new man. She was still young, after all.
I tried to imagine my mother dating and my concentration switched back to the mouse on the beam. A tiny, hunched outline scurrying between the walls of the kitchen, it disappeared down inside a crack where the ceiling met the top of the wall and any visions of Mum being whisked off her feet by a dashing older man were swept away by new visions of an enormous nest of mice threatening to bulge my ancient walls and bursting onto the gardens in a mass of seed chewing and plant wreckage.
I pulled the table up against the wall and climbed up to try to peer down inside the wall, which was where Zeb found me, some minutes later.
‘If you’re trying to get rid of the evidence, may I suggest a bonfire?’ He stood and looked at me for a minute, the parcel in his hands giving off a trail of steam and a fantastically enticing smell.
‘What?’ I banged my head against the ceiling, startled at his entrance.
‘You know. Disposing of financial documents relating to dodgy dealings?’
‘By hiding them in the walls? Where mice would be almost certain to turn them into confetti within seconds?’ I jumped down and the table rocked, clattering against the floor like wooden applause.
‘Great disposal mechanism. Or you could feed them to Big Pig, she’d eat anything.’ Zeb raised the paper-wrapped parcel. ‘Talking of which, here’s our food.’
Zeb irritated me, that’s what it was, I thought as I fetched cutlery and dug some plates out of the back of the cupboard. Whatever he said, however it was phrased, it grated against my nerve endings and made me want to contradict him, to wipe away that air he had ofknowing best. This wasmybusiness, I knew how to run it and how to maximise our profits. Zeb was only here because of my mother. His lanky presence in my kitchen was unwanted, even if he did come bearing delicious takeaways that scented the air with spices and hot oil.
He clearly saw my frown of annoyance as he laid the plates on the table, because he tilted his head at me until his fringe fell into one eye. ‘Are you all right, Tallie?’
‘Of course I am.’ The aggravation made my tone sharp and the words sound as though they had been handpicked to hurt.
‘Okay. Have you got the figures and everything there for me to look through?’ He brushed off my rudeness as though he expected nothing less, which upset me slightly.
‘Yes, the computer is ready for you when you finish eating.’ Then, because he really had been kind to bring food, ‘And thank you for the takeaway. I don’t get to eat them very often, can’t be bothered to trail into town. Mum usually gives me a sandwich or something at hers when I fly by in the evenings.’
Zeb didn’t even pause in his careful laying out of the food. ‘You go round there most days?’
‘I like to check on her. She doesn’t go out much and sometimes she’s too ill to eat, so I make sure she’s at least had a hot drink.’
‘So she doesn’t give you a sandwich, you make yourself one in her kitchen? She’s got a lovely kitchen, by the way. As an ex-chef I appreciate a nicely laid out cooking area.’ He looked at mine, rather pointedly: the Aga which was mostly used to heat the water; random units and surfaces which, thanks to my night spent sanding and oiling, looked amazing but were unsullied by food production. ‘I take it that you don’t cook much.’
The smells from the food parcels now in the middle of the table were making my stomach gurgle audibly. He’d even broughtchips! ‘I don’t have a lot of time for cooking.’ Now I sounded apologetic, what was wrong with me?
‘So your life is running this place and taking care of your mum. What do you do for fun, Tallie?’
Zeb swirled himself into one of the chairs at the table and tore himself a portion of naan bread to dip in some sauce. I stayed where I was, standing by the wall. ‘Is that a trick question? Are you trying to get me to admit to spending all the day’s takings on wild nights out in town?’
‘I’m trying to establish what opportunities there are for expansion or diversification. If you’re already up to maximum capacity – i.e., no time for anything else outside this place, then it would mean hiring more help.’ He eyeballed me through the fragrant steam. ‘It’s not personal.’
Now I was annoyed with himagainfor making me feel awkward. And also, I admitted to myself somewhere deep inside, a tiny bit disappointed, although I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because I enjoyed bickering lightly with Zeb? It was nice, in a vaguely masochistic way, having someone challenge me and say something other than Ollie’s usual ‘righty-ho!’ when asked to do anything. Zeb forced me to have ideas, to think about Drycott rather than carrying out the same motions and actions as I had been for the last twenty years or so, when I’d taken over most of the physical work from Granny.
Zeb made me think. And, exasperating as he might be, I was finding that I rather enjoyed that level of challenge.
‘By the time I’ve closed Drycott for the evening and sorted everything out for the morning, it’s usually too late to go and do anything else. Plus, there’s Mum to visit, and she sometimes needs me to do a few bits and pieces for her. My social life is limited to the customers and any sales people who might pop in. Which,’ I added in a momentary blurt of honesty, ‘isn’t actually very many.’
Zeb paused, a bread-scoop of curry sauce half way to his mouth. ‘My wife had an affair,’ he said.
