‘Fine, have it your way.’
She grabbed the walking frame. ‘We’ll go slow, don’t worry.’ Positioning it in front of him, she tried to read whether he wanted any assistance or not and when he held out an arm she helped him up before he gingerly put his hands on the walking frame.
They walked slowly to the open back door and followed the path along past the windows at the front of the house until they stepped through the gap between the trees and into the sunny courtyard.
‘People love the ball every summer,’ Melissa told him as they made their way steadily across to the barn. ‘I was so excited when I was finally old enough to go as a guest. I got to put on a proper dress like all the other ladies I’d seen over the years.’ She looked at the barn, the buddleia bush to the right that would bloom every August with its rich purple flowers on cone-shaped heads, bringing with it the scent of honey. For now, as they approached the barn doors, the buddleia bush only had leaves of deep green as it lay in wait for the months to roll on so it would have its turn to show off.
‘My favourite part was watching the guests arrive,’ she went on, wondering whether, if she conjured up enough memories for him, brought to mind the looks on people’s faces and reminded Barney how much delight he gave to everyone in the village, perhaps it could persuade him not to abandon the event altogether, to consider that maybe there was an alternative solution. ‘I’d analyse their faces – some looked nervous, others excited, a few couldn’t stop laughing because they’d managed to squeeze into dresses that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades. And don’t even get me started on Patricia from Oak Cottage and the expander she told us about.’
Barney couldn’t contain a laugh as he steadied himself against the walking frame. The sound bubbled out of him like the softest music, a reminder that the man she knew was in there somewhere.
Encouraged, Melissa continued. ‘She went into great detail telling everyone how she’d gained twenty-eight pounds since she was married, had no intention of losing it, so had employed the services of an expert seamstress to let out her dress considerably.’ It wasn’t funny that she’d put on weight, it was the way Patricia had told the story – complete with actions to mime trying to get into the dress determinedly because she wanted to go to the ball, much like one of the sisters in Cinderella trying to ram a shoe onto her foot. Melissa wondered what Patricia’s reaction to seeing her would be when she bumped into her. Patricia worked shifts in the tea rooms, or at least that’s what she’d been doing when Melissa left. And better than having had the amusing memory herself, she’d put a smile on Barney’s face.
Melissa and Barney were still talking about the ball when Harvey pulled his truck into the courtyard from the lane that led around the fields beyond and sneaked in the back way to Barney’s place.
‘You seem to have cheered him up,’ he told Melissa when he stepped down from the truck as Barney inspected the lavender bush nearby, pulling off a couple of spent blooms that held no colour. ‘You got him outside, it’s a positive step.’
‘Here’s hoping.’ She kept her voice low and crossed her fingers on both hands, grinning at Harvey.
He seemed to suddenly remember they weren’t as close as they had once been and the relaxed conversation was replaced with a stilted, ‘Only came to bring some hinges to fix up the door.’
‘You work all day,’ said Barney, who had come over to join them, his hands resting firmly on the walking frame as all three stood outside the double doors to the barn. ‘No need to have to do it here as well.’
‘No arguments, Barney, I’m happy to do it.’
The second Harvey pulled open the door on one side, gently, explaining this was the door he needed to fix with the hinge, the smell got her first. The sweet, earthy scent of freshly cut hay scattered across the pale grey concrete floor. She could see where it had come from – the few bales piled in the corner, another couple halfway down the interior, one beside the doors. The barn had been a huge part of her childhood, a play space, somewhere she could do gymnastics freely, a place where there was laughter, a plentiful supply of apple juice, a friendship that had lasted…until it hadn’t.
Another memory rose and washed over her as she pictured her mum and dad dancing in the middle of the crowds like they’d done every year. Her mum, who detested the summer heat, had her hair pinned up, a delicate pink flower barely a contrast to the red hair that had faded as she grew older; her dad wore the same suit he’d got married in, the cummerbund a good fit. And they’d both been fine dancers. They’d never had formal lessons but that hadn’t stopped her dad teaching Melissa before her first ball – they’d danced in the kitchen, along by the cooker and around the table, as her mum cooked the dinner.
The barn had also been a welcome escape from the sunshine on the days when it beat down upon them relentlessly. They’d had ice-creams from Barney’s freezer – he’d gone about his business and let them have the freedom neither of them really got at home. Melissa’s family home was too small to run around in, with a modest square garden that her mum had always kept immaculate. The time she and her brother had had competitions on the swing seeing who could go highest and then jump from it into the vegetable patch hadn’t gone down well. They’d ruined half of whatever it was she’d planted and that had been the end of the game, and the swing’s demise. But here, in this barn, there was more space than they could hope for, and for Harvey it had been a space away from his dad that gave him his sanity. Sometimes Harvey had come here not wanting to talk about his home life; other times he’d kicked hay bales, thrown apples outside, anything to release his frustration. Melissa remembered Harvey turning up one day and Barney handing him a basket of spoiled apples. He’d taken Harvey outside, around the back of the barn where there were the remains of an old six-foot wall, and he’d told him to sling each apple against it. Barney had joined in, Melissa too, and by the end Harvey knew he wasn’t alone in all of this. His father could do his worst and he’d still be standing.
‘Is it just like you remembered?’ Harvey broke into her thoughts now.
‘Yes.’ But, looking up, she realised there’d been a lot of maintenance along the way. ‘The wooden timbers look new.’
‘Replaced last summer,’ he confirmed as they watched Barney sit down on the hay bale nearest the door. ‘This barn takes quite a bit of upkeep, especially with the ball running every year.’
‘Except that now it isn’t.’
‘He still hasn’t come around?’
‘He seems pretty adamant.’
Harvey exhaled, ran a hand through his hair. Melissa had always loved the way the tufts on top fell in different directions when he did that. He never styled his hair, it just had its own habits. Once upon a time he’d had a long fringe and she’d teased him about it, so much so that he handed her the scissors and told her to cut it. His mum had gone spare. The fringe, jagged and far from a professional job, had prompted his mum to come and have words with Melissa. But all Melissa had thought was that at least it wasn’t his dad who had seen it first. He was away with work and it gave Harvey’s mum enough time to employ the services of a decent hairdresser and sort it out.
Melissa spotted the old apple press. ‘I thought he might have got rid of that or upgraded it.’
‘No need, works perfectly well,’ Harvey replied, mimicking Barney’s tone, before he ducked outside to grab his tools for the repair to the door hinge.
Melissa strolled around the barn, rubbing her hands against her upper arms as tiny goose pimples appeared. It was warm enough outside for the delicate blue T-shirt dress she’d chosen for today, but so much cooler in here.
She squinted. The same slight gap she remembered in the top of one of the doors let in a shaft of sunlight that, if you stood in the wrong spot, hurt your eyes. The stage was still there at the end of the barn nearest to the double doors. Harvey had built it for Barney the year before Melissa left, around the time they’d been busy making plans to move to London, perhaps travel t
hrough some of Europe together if they had enough money. Her need to leave the Cove had increased by the day and they spent hours under this roof discussing what they were going to do, what they could see, how free they would be.
In an odd way, Melissa knew she’d been more trapped by leaving – she’d shut off a part of her life that was very real because that was the only way she knew how to cope. Being here now made her question whether she’d been right to do it that way. But, then again, she’d landed the job that she’d dreamed of, that took her on all kinds of adventures, she’d met Jay and was engaged.
She brought her focus back to the here and now, crouching down in front of Barney as Harvey reappeared and began taking off the hinge on the door ready to replace it. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ He’d shut his eyes, his legs still in the shaft of sunlight coming in through the open doors.
‘Tired, that’s all.’
‘Thank you for coming out here with me. It’s still a beautiful space.’
‘You always did like it in here.’
‘We got you outside,’ she beamed. ‘Perhaps we should do little and often when it comes to exercise, we’ll get there in the end.’
He took a deep breath. ‘I’m not sure it’s going to be that easy.’
‘Since when have you ever given up?’ She toyed with a piece of hay she’d pulled from the bale.
‘It might be time I accepted this place is too much for me.’
‘The barn?’
‘The barn, the house, the garden.’
‘You can’t mean it…remember you have plenty of people who care and who will help.’
‘People look after themselves.’
‘Rubbish.’ She definitely had, and she didn’t miss the irony of her suggesting people did otherwise.
‘I’ve been thinking…perhaps it’s time I moved into one of those places.’
‘One of what places?’
‘For the over-seventies, you know, where there are people of my own age.’
Harvey swore when he caught his shirt on something.
‘Everything OK?’ Melissa asked.
‘Didn’t see a protruding nail, caught my shirt, that’s all.’
Most likely distracted by Barney’s comment, Melissa suspected, as Harvey got his hammer and banged the nail to blame back in again before checking the rest of the surface for anything else threatening.
Her attention back to Barney, she said, ‘You and this barn, this house, this land…well, you go together, that’s all.’
‘I’m getting old, Melissa. In one of those places I’ll be looked after.’
Harvey jumped in on the conversation, leaving Melissa in no doubt that’s what had distracted him. ‘This is crazy talk, you know that. And we’ll look after you, Barney. You’ve no worries on that score.’
‘Melissa doesn’t even live here anymore, and you have a job and a life.’
‘I won’t let you down,’ he insisted.
‘And I won’t be a stranger, I promise,’ Melissa added.
‘Time moves on, for all of us,’ Barney replied simply. ‘Maybe I need to start realising it and not live in the past.’
‘Is this why you don’t want to run the Wedding Dress Ball?’ Melissa ventured to say. ‘You think it’s living in the past?’
A look of confusion crossed Barney’s brow before he told her, ‘I was younger when I first started organising it. Maybe someone else needs to take over, or it should be stopped all together.’ He didn’t let her get another word in. ‘I’d like to go inside now.’
‘I can’t see it,’ said Harvey, who had gone back to working, moving the new hinge into place while he addressed Barney. ‘I can’t see you leaving Heritage Cove, let alone living with a load of people way older than you.’
While the sounds of a drill filled the air Melissa helped Barney stand up and take hold of the walking frame.
‘You kids hang out here as long as you like.’ Barney brushed away her hand again when she tried to accompany him. ‘I’m fine to go back to the house on my own.’
‘We can’t let him do this,’ she told Harvey the second Barney was out of earshot, across the courtyard and in through the door. How could Barney even think of leaving his home with its special memories, the times he treasured as much as they did?
‘Stubborn as anything, that man.’ Harvey shook his head and fixed the last screw in place. He tested the hinge by closing the door on that side.
‘He was never that pig-headed before, was he?’
‘You must’ve been away so long you’ve forgotten.’ He held up both hands, the old hinge clasped in one before he dropped it into his toolbox. ‘Not having a go at you, just saying. He’s always been determined.’ His brow creased. ‘But never quite this adamant on doing something so out of character.’
Looking around the barn as she wondered what to do to convince Barney he wasn’t too old for any of this, she spotted a collection of black-and-white photographs lining the wall behind the stage. She went past the hay bales on one side and started working her way along the pictures. Each had a date on the top. There was the summer Wedding Dress Ball of 1997, the first in the collection that she could remember. She would’ve been ten years old then, too young to attend but not too young to admire those who did. She moved along, recollecting a few of the other occasions, some faces old, some new, and stopped in her tracks at one year’s photograph, of a crowd of people dancing. Her parents were in the middle, smiles on their faces, sharing a look only between themselves. She put her fingers to their faces, she knew they’d hate to know she’d left Heritage Cove behind so brutally without turning back.
She moved along, taking in all the scenes, and stopped when she got to the picture of the ball the summer before she left. She was wearing a white dress with a halterneck that she’d found in a charity shop. Harvey’s mum had sewn delicate little flowers all over it for her and it felt as special as something she’d had designed for herself. She and Harvey were dancing in this photograph, their faces full of excitement at their adventures ahead. They’d not only talked about moving away and European sights they could finally see, but also about settling in this part of the country, perhaps even back in Heritage Cove, when they returned.
Melissa took another step so she was facing the photograph of the following year. She knew she wouldn’t be in that one or any of the subsequent pictures either. ‘When did Barney put all these up?’ she asked Harvey, who was packing up the last of his tools as she got to the end of the collection.
‘I did it for him last year for his birthday.’ He came to stand by her and look at the photographs himself. ‘This barn has been many things over the years, but its biggest claim has to be the ball.’
‘Barney has to see it through again this year and every year.’
‘I don’t know, maybe he’s right, maybe he’s getting too old.’ When she shot him a look he smiled, ‘No, you’re right. The Wedding Dress Ball is a part of him as much as he’s a part of it.’
‘What can we do?’
‘To make him change his mind? I’d say, not a lot.’
‘Then we’ll have to help. With the ball. Between us we’ll have to put the event on.’
Harvey laughed until he realised she wasn’t joking. ‘I’ve never organised an event in my life – unless you count my mum’s sixtieth, which was tea and cakes for a group of eight.’
‘Come on, how hard can it be?’
‘I’m not being funny, but you’re only here for a few weeks, aren’t you? So who’s going to take charge when you run off again?’
She ignored the low blow. ‘I’ll hang around for longer.’
‘Don’t you have a job? A boyfriend? A life?’
‘All of that can wait, this is more important.’
He stood staring at her as though he couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth and she only hoped it showed how much she still cared, how much she loved Barney and this village despite turning her back. A person could have both, could
n’t they? They could have roots and wings. You didn’t have to sacrifice one for the other.
‘Come on, Harvey. We have to do this. What do you say?’
‘I say I wouldn’t even know where to start. If you want to organise it then go ahead, but count me out.’
She ignored the resistance. ‘We could talk to Barney, find out all we can. I think if he sees the event going ahead he won’t be able to help himself. He’ll want to be involved, he’ll realise it can’t be the end. And, I think it might stop all this talk of moving into an old people’s home.’
‘You always did get carried away with plans,’ Harvey grinned. ‘All right, you talk to him. But I’m not committing to anything.’
‘Fine.’
As they walked outside to the courtyard and over to Harvey’s truck, where he put his toolbox into the tray at the back, she asked, ‘What made you come here so quick today? When I saw you in The Street earlier I got the impression you wouldn’t be over for a while. Were you checking up on me, to see if I’d been able to get Barney to at least look at the list of exercises he should be doing?’
‘Of course not. I remembered the door hinge, and after he had the fall in here, I don’t want anything causing another accident. My mind has been running overtime thinking of things that could possibly go wrong.’
She’d never thought he’d give himself quite such a hard time with this. ‘Harvey, anyone could’ve fallen off a ladder.’
‘Doesn’t stop me wishing I’d been here for him, though. Both you and I know it could’ve happened to anyone but Barney seems to think it’s his age – it’s as though this one incident has drummed into him that he’s in the later years of his life. And the more he talks like that, the more I worry.’
‘He’s got plenty of time left yet. And it’s good you keep an eye on him.’ But Harvey had always looked out for everyone else. Her, Barney, his mum. He was a good man, she hadn’t meant to hurt him, but then again he’d let her down too.
Coming Home to Heritage Cove Page 9