‘Oh, Eve,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. Is that serious? I don’t really know much about it, to be honest.’
‘The doctor says I’m at risk of more fractures so she wants me to take this medication.’
‘Well, then you should.’
I try googling osteoporosis but, surprise, surprise, no signal.
‘Look, Eve, now we’re living here too, can we find out about getting broadband? The business would really benefit. It’s so useful. Essential, actually. And then there’s Rob. He’s going to be blogging about his journey and we’ll be able to read what he’s doing. And the girls can FaceTime him. You know, speak face to face with him on their phones.’
‘Really, Christabel, what’s the point of bringing them to live in the countryside if they’re going to spend the whole time glued to their phones?’
‘I want them to stay in touch with their father. And their London friends. And I want them to make new ones here.’
She sighs.
‘It’s how it is now, Eve,’ I say as calmly as I can. ‘Whether we like it or not.’ And whether we like it or not, the reality is that we are living in Devon while Rob crosses Africa. While we are dealing with dogs and pheasants, Rob could well be facing wild animals that would think nothing of eating him for lunch.
We sip our tea, both lost in thought for a moment.
‘I’ve got a leaflet somewhere,’ she says, breaking the impasse.
‘About broadband?’
‘What? No. About osteoporosis.’
She rummages amongst a pile of papers on the dresser top and brings over an NHS leaflet for me. I take it from her and scan it.
‘It says to avoid further fractures you need to take regular exercise.’
‘I certainly do that. Luther and I go for a walk around the field and into the village every day, come rain or shine. And I’m doing t’ai chi and my daily yoga.’
‘Good. Right. And you have to eat healthily.’
She snorts derisively. ‘I’ve always eaten healthily. I was a pioneer of wholefoods back in the sixties, for goodness’ sake.’
‘Lots of food rich in calcium and vitamin D?’
‘I eat tons of green veg, but I suppose I don’t really do cheese or much dairy...’
‘In that case it suggests a daily calcium supplement.’
‘But you know me and pills. I really don’t want to be putting something into my body I don’t need.’
‘You’re always taking supplements.’ I point at her container. ‘This is just a vitamin. The clue’s in the name.’
‘I suppose so,’ she admits, reluctantly. ‘Remind me what else it says?’
‘It says you must give up smoking and reduce alcohol consumption. You haven’t smoked in years, have you?’
She looks guilty. ‘No. Not really. I mean the occasional one.’
‘Eve, really? You just said you don’t want to be putting something into your body you don’t need. You don’t need tobacco. Or booze, for that matter.’
‘Yes, all right. I know fags and booze aren’t needed but when you live with someone like Des, it’s hard not to indulge.’
‘It’s probably not great to be living on a vineyard either.’
‘No.’
We sigh in stereo. Like mother, like daughter.
‘I don’t have to drink it, though, do I?’ she says.
‘You don’t. Though it might be trickier to abstain if the wine actually tastes good in the future.’
We share a wry smile.
‘My early menopause is to blame,’ she says.
Oh yes. The early menopause. I haven’t forgotten that.
‘Not to mention the family history,’ Eve continues, tapping her long fingers against her tea cup so I get another waft of grass.
‘Family history?’
‘My mother,’ she says, as if I should know Granny had osteoporosis when no one ever told me that. ‘So, Christabel, you need to look after yourself. And Ruby too, of course. Before you know it you’ll be hitting the menopause and she’ll be pushing out a baby.’
Great. Something to look forward to. ‘Eve, really.’
‘I’m being practical. You like me being practical.’
‘True.’ She has me there. ‘And while we’re confessing, I have something to tell you.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve booked an engineer to come on Friday.’
‘An engineer? Whatever for?’
‘Broadband.’
‘Oh, Christabel.’
TUESDAY MORNING, AND Eve is bustling round the kitchen, sliding a baking tray out of the Aga and resting it on a cooling rack. It smells like Christmas. Cinnamon and nutmeg. We haven’t even got out of October yet.
‘Flapjacks,’ she says. ‘Make some coffee, would you, darling?’
‘Did someone say coffee?’ Des is here, covered in streaks of vibrant colour. He goes to kiss me but I dodge out the way and indicate his filthy hands.
‘Just a bit of paint, Chrissie.’
‘I’d rather you kept it to yourself, Des, thanks all the same.’
He pretends to envelop me and I manage to sidestep him. ‘Someone’s got out of bed the wrong side this morning.’
‘You mean someone’s got out of the wrong bed this morning.’ I clank about making coffee.
‘Ah,’ he says, knowingly. ‘Still annoyed at your mother for giving your room to Melina?’
‘Yes. No. Whatever.’
‘Really, Christabel, you sound like Ruby and Scarlet,’ Eve chides. ‘What on earth are you sulking about? Melina’s transformed that bedroom into a work of art.’
‘Work of art?’
‘She does have an eye for colour,’ Des says. ‘None of that magnolia for her.’
‘I don’t use magnolia. I use off-white.’
He smiles at me. Then his smile mutates into a frown of concern as he recognizes the hurt in my expression. ‘Whatever is the matter, my love?’ he asks.
Before I get the chance to answer, the door bangs open and there he is, like Lord Flashheart – Flash by name, flash by nature – legs astride, ruddy-cheeked, taking up all the space and oxygen in the room.
‘I’ve brought the post,’ Nathan says. ‘Something smells good.’
THE FOUR OF us sit around the table, hot coffee and warm flapjacks, but a chill in my heart. Eve and Des are so relaxed with Nathan. He is so relaxed with them. I can’t really process what’s happening or what is to come. Or why Eve has forgiven him so readily for walking out on her child and grandchild. Was it because she knew him when he was a young lad? He was always round here, part of the family. They hit it off. Had a rapport. He’d do odd jobs around the place. And she knew how much he loved me. And he did love me. And then he didn’t. He fell in love with someone else and buggered off to the other side of the world. But I reckon Eve still believes it was my fault he left. That something was lacking in me. Or that I did something. Or didn’t do something. It’s so unfair.
I focus on Luther’s warmth at my feet where he’s resting his chin, his breath like a mini fan heater.
‘So what’s this proposal?’ Des asks, pulling me back from the precipice of despair with a jolt.
Proposal? No proposal of Nathan’s ever led to anything good.
‘It’s about a party, actually,’ Nathan says. ‘I’ve been speaking to Melina and she told me to organize a sendoff for the pickers, before they head back home, and I thought we could use your barn.’
‘Our barn?’ I am taken aback. The cheek of it. He’s got so many outbuildings he could shelter a small town in an emergency. ‘Haven’t you enough barns of your own?’
‘None as pretty as yours.’
Eve and Des both smile, proud owners of a pretty barn rather than narked owners of a failing business.
‘I never thought of our barn as pretty but I suppose it is,’ Eve says.
And yes, all right, you can’t deny its charm. An eighteenth-century granary built in cob with a thatched roof. Rough round the edges.
What Rob would call ‘rustic’, using his marketing shine to buff it up, to promise more than he can actually give.
But no.
Just no.
‘What a wonderful idea.’ Eve studiously ignores me kicking her under the table. ‘We’ll ask the locals along too.’
This is absurd. ‘Sorry to put a damper on the proceedings, but who’s going to cover the cost of this?’ I pipe up in desperation.
‘It’s the least we can do,’ Des says. ‘We haven’t had to pay their wages, Chrissie.’
‘Des, there’s no money to put on a spread. I’ve been through the books.’ I indicate the pile of papers on the table in front of me but then feel treacherous again, mentioning their – our – financial woes in front of Nathan, who really should know better than to ask us for help when he must have an inkling that Eve and Des are struggling. And now I’ll probably get another reprimand from Eve for mentioning money.
‘I’m not expecting you to foot the bill for this,’ Nathan says, looking at me. ‘I just thought your barn would be a nice setting. Actually it was Melina who suggested it. My barns are all full of stuff. “Junk”, she called it.’
‘Ignore my daughter, Nathan. She’s being ridiculous.’ Eve, as expected, is most put out. ‘Of course you can have the barn. And we can run to a crate of wine and a keg of cider.’
‘We really can’t spare any more than that, Eve.’ I’m being a cow, I know I am – those workers put everything into gathering our harvest and we should be thankful, but really, this is exasperating. Why is this man so welcome at our kitchen table?
‘And I can provide a pig for a hog roast.’ Nathan is leaning back in his chair now, legs akimbo, as if this is his own kitchen table.
I get a flashback to our relationship. How much space he used to take up. In the kitchen. In bed. In the car. And then, after he left, in my head. I might be a cow but he’s a big fat bull.
‘A hog roast would be splendid as long as it’s away from the barn,’ Des says. ‘We don’t want any stray sparks on the roof.’
‘Of course,’ Nathan says.
‘Hang on,’ I interrupt. ‘How do you reckon Ruby and Scarlet will feel about a dead pig being rotisseried in front of them?’ I think of the girls, imagining their horror – and then wondering when they’re going to show their faces this morning, hoping it won’t be just yet.
But these thoughts are shoved sideways when Nathan sticks the boot in. ‘You shouldn’t mollycoddle them, Chrissie,’ he says.
I can almost hear the sharp intakes of breath from my parents. They know this won’t go down well.
No, it won’t.
‘Mollycoddle them? Did I hear you correctly?’ I ask this very quietly, through gritted teeth.
‘Sometimes you just have to tough it out.’
‘Tough it out? Like you did with our marriage? With our daughter?’ I’m having to ball up my hands now, to stop them from shaking. To stop them from throttling his big fat neck. ‘How dare you comment on my parenting.’
‘I’m just giving you my opinion,’ he says, arms up in the air like I might be about to whip out a shotgun and aim between his eyes. Oh, how I wish.
‘Your opinion? What do you know about parenting?’
His body language changes. He has suddenly shrunk in stature. His legs are crossed. His arms by his side gripping the chair. He at least has the decency to blush.
‘I don’t know a lot about parenting, Chrissie. If you remember, I didn’t have very good role models at home. It was only here, in this house, that I found acceptance and guidance.’ His eyes narrow. He strokes the stubble on his chin. ‘I let you down. I let Eve and Des down. I let myself down. But most of all I let Ruby down.’
There’s a gaping hole of silence now, no one sure how to fill it. I almost feel sorry for Nathan. Almost. But I won’t let myself. ‘You left us,’ I tell him, keeping my voice as steady as I possibly can.
‘You were the one who told me to leave,’ he says.
A shift in the room. A slip sideways.
I feel my face flare up with heat and nausea pool in my stomach. ‘I told you to leave home when I found out about you and Charlotte. I never told you to leave Ruby. She hasn’t seen you for ten years. Ten years! She doesn’t even know who you are. You’re just a name. Not even a memory. How dare you twist this!’
Nathan shakes his head as if I’m being ridiculous. The girl he used to know so different to the one now, and yet exactly the same. ‘Let’s not do this here,’ he says.
‘I’m not doing it anywhere,’ I retort, shoving back my chair with such force it tips over.
Then I leave them to their pathetic party-planning and grab Luther’s lead from the chair. He wags his tail, a steady gaze of adoration in his dark-brown eyes, and I can’t remember the last time a human looked at me that way. We head out into the cold day and the poor old dog has to work those long legs to keep up. As we reach the gate, I stop to open it and Luther licks my hand.
‘What is wrong with people?’ I ask him, half hoping for an answer because I don’t know anything. Tears sting my eyes and my heart feels crushed. Why of all places did Nathan have to move in next door?
‘Woof,’ Luther barks, enigmatic as ever.
NATHAN HAS GONE by the time we’ve returned from our walk, some of the cobwebs blown away. The kitchen is deserted apart from Melina, who is scrubbing the flagstones.
‘Hello, Chrissie,’ she says. ‘The floor is wet.’
‘You don’t have to do this, Melina.’
‘Who else will do it?’
‘Me?’
‘You have other fish to cook.’
‘I do?’
‘Ruby is unhappy.’
‘She’s awake, then?’
‘Yes, I woke her and Scarlet.’
‘Oh.’ I want to tell Melina that waking the girls is not her job but then I realize the time. It’s nearly midday.
‘Do you know what’s the matter with her? Has anything specific happened?’
‘She has face like thunder.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘She doesn’t tell me.’
Poor Ruby. My poor unhappy Ruby, abandoned first by one father, then by another. I did not tell Nathan to do that. I did not. I told him to leave me. Not her. And yes, OK, maybe I made things difficult for him, but I had to be strong. I had to focus on Ruby. My career. Then he went off travelling with Charlotte and that’s pretty much the last I heard from him, and when Rob and Scarlet appeared, it was just so much easier to put all my eggs in one basket.
Does Ruby have an inkling who Nathan is? And why am I avoiding the inevitable conversation? But I can’t do this today. She needs to settle in, get used to her space, the new school. And anyway, she’s shown no interest in meeting her birth father. No desire even to talk about him. ‘Rob’s my dad,’ she always says when anyone asks. End of. And it hurts me all over again that he’s gone away.
‘Where is she, Melina?’
‘She has went with Des to see harp man about musical lessons.’
‘Oh. Right. Yes of course.’
‘You OK, Chrissie?’
‘No. I’m actually not, Melina.’
‘Sit down and I make coffee.’ She tuts at the Aga. ‘I do not understand why Eve has so much love for this old stove. Why not get nice clean electric cooker?’
She clanks away and makes coffee, strong and sweet, and I can’t help it. All my bitterness and resentment froths up and spills out of my mouth.
‘I’m so angry with Rob for leaving us. He’s so bloody selfish.’
‘He is going to Africa. Not to the moon.’
‘I know that, Melina. But really? Right when the girls are about to embark on their GCSEs?’
She’s sitting opposite me at the table with her own mug of coffee, staring into its depths like it’s a crystal ball. I wish she’d find the answers in there. ‘Tell me about Nathan,’ she says. ‘Why do you hate him?’
‘I’m talking about Rob,’ I correct her.
‘But this is about Nathan.’
And so it is.
I tell her about Nathan. The gist of what happened in the past.
‘Nathan is Ruby’s father?’ Melina actually looks surprised. She never looks surprised. She always takes everything in her stride.
‘Her birth father, yes.’
‘And now he lives next door.’
‘Yes. He lives next door. And I hate the way Eve and Des, Eve especially, have welcomed him back like the prodigal son.’
‘And did you tell him to leave? Many years ago?’
‘I did tell him to leave. But that doesn’t mean he should’ve shirked all his responsibilities. It certainly doesn’t give him the right to tell me how I should bring up my daughters.’
And now, to my shame, I am crying. Quiet shudders rather than snot-filled blubs, but crying nonetheless. ‘I’m sorry, Melina,’ I manage to say. ‘I feel so stupid.’
‘You feel stupid? Why?’
‘Because I’m going to pieces over this. And it’s pathetic. I mean it’s not like I’ve had to leave my country and everything. To clean other people’s floors.’
‘True.’ She shrugs. ‘I do not argue with that.’ She gives a wry smile.
And I feel my lips reciprocate. My problems a little lighter for a shared moment.
‘You must appreciate what you have,’ Melina says. ‘Two good daughters. Lazy, but good.’
I nod. She’s right. I do.
‘You must not worry about what you do not have. Rob has not forgotten you. You will hear from him soon.’
I nod again, though this time with a little less certainty. ‘I hope you’re right, Melina. I’ll go up the hill again and check for a signal. See if he’s emailed. Or messaged. Or blogged. Or texted.’
I’m about to get my coat when she stops me.
‘There are letters here.’
For a silly moment, I think she means from Rob but of course they’re not from Rob; they wouldn’t have got here yet even if he had written a letter, which I don’t think he’s done since he was a child.
‘Bills, maybe.’ Melina opens the property section of the Western Morning News and there, hidden amongst its pages, lurk three telltale envelopes.
I PUT OFF searching for a signal and hunt down Eve instead. I find her and Scarlet in the study. They are behind the desk, in cahoots, Scarlet showing Eve a sketch in her notebook.
The West Country Winery Page 9