by A. L. Lester
There was a man bending over him. Face to match the voice. Florid cheeks on a kind face, black uniform jacket. Ambulance man. “There you are, young chap. I knew you were in there. Now. I’m Chris. Me and my mate Nige here are going to move you onto a stretcher and take you down to the ambulance. And then we’ll take you to hospital and they can sort you out. All right?”
Laurie tried to speak in response and to sit up, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t move his left arm or leg very well at all. “Mmmm,” he heard himself say.
“Good. Right. Come on then, Nige. And you, maid, we’ll look after him, if you move out of the way.” The ambulance man pushed at Fly gently aside while his partner laid the stretcher down.
“There we are. Now. Gently now. Let’s get you on to it and we can get you down to hospital to be looked at properly.”
It was undignified but he did his best to help. He realised he’d wet his trousers. Humiliating. Passing out again seemed a good way to avoid dealing with that, so he did.
Chapter 6: Realisation
March and April, 1972
He couldn’t get the bloody window shut. Laurie cursed under his breath. He leaned even further over the kitchen sink to try and grab the handle with his good hand, but he couldn’t quite reach. Sally had latched it open to let the steam out this morning when she started boiling vegetables on the chipped blue Rayburn and she had forgotten to close it when she went home.
He made a final stretch, touched it with his fingertips, but then overbalanced and slipped on the slate floor. His weak leg went out from under him and he tumbled gracelessly to the cold tiles, swearing and knocking his stick on the way down.
“Fuck!” he shouted loudly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck and balls!”
He put his good arm across his eyes. There was no-one here with him, but he didn’t even want to admit to himself that he was crying. Fly got up from her bed by the Rayburn and came and licked at his tears, worried.
“It’s okay, girl,” he reassured her. But it wasn’t, really. It had seemed so simple. He’d been in hospital more than four months and was desperate to get out.
He’d come home. Sally would be in and out during the daytime to help with the house like she always did. He knew he could manage to wash himself and dress. It wouldn’t take much effort to get himself up and down the stairs to bed, he’d reassured everyone.
He hadn’t truly realised how much his weakened side would affect him in the day to day. The hospital had made everything easy and the nurses had been there to lift and carry for him without him really having to think about it.
He hadn’t given any thought to the simple things. Opening tins of dog food took him half an hour, with the tin wedged between his bad arm and his torso. He couldn’t balance to reach things down off the high shelves in the pantry. Getting across the yard to the barn or the side field where they had the in-lamb ewes took him an hour rather than five minutes.
Not that he needed to get across the yard or to the barn. Jimmy and Paul and Thomas were managing really well with the work. Yes, they were a man down without him, but he was making the decisions now he was back again. But in fact, the farm had been running perfectly without him here over the autumn and winter and he felt superfluous.
Even more so down here on the floor.
He’d insisted when he came home a fortnight ago that he didn’t want any fuss or any special help. He just wanted to get back to normal. People had taken him at his word, more or less, although Sally had given him a side eye so violent he’d thought her eyeballs might pop out when he’d said there was no need for her to cook for him at weekends when she normally wouldn’t come in. And there seemed to be an increased amount of traffic in and out of the kitchen, with the farm men popping in for a cup of tea as I was passing through the yard, can I get you one, Gaffer, while I’m here? that he didn’t remember happening before he was ill.
She’d taken over the housekeeping completely when her Aunt Emily had passed on a couple of years ago and she’d definitely found her forte. Cooking a main meal for the farm workers and residents for one o’clock dinner had always been part of the job, as had the baking. She’d just picked up where Aunt Emily had left off and had now taken to leaving an extra plate—bread and butter with jam and cheese and cake for his tea—out on a tea-towel-covered tray on the kitchen table.
Swearing, he struggled to his feet, using the edge of the white ceramic sink to pull himself up. He rested his hip against it, panting with the exertion and steadying himself before he bent to pick up his stick. He’d use that to hook the window toward him. He should have thought of it before.
That done, he limped over to the Rayburn to put the kettle on. Even that wasn’t simple. He raised the lid one with his right hand, gripping the warm silver rail along the front of the range with his left. That steadied him enough to manage the weight, pushing the lid upright so he could slide the kettle over onto the hot plate. They always refilled it right after using it, so it was warmed through and didn’t take so long to boil. It was heavy, too.
He took a moment and sat at the table, head resting in his hands. He was so tired. All the time. He found himself weeping at the most ridiculous things. He allowed himself a moment of emotion. Disgust for his inability to fend properly for himself. Distaste at the instructions he’d left hospital with, the long list of things with which he was supposed to ask for help. Bathing, putting his shoes on, cutting his nails. Wiping his arse even, on bad days. He was never going to ask anyone for help with any of those things ever again.
By far the worst thing was driving. He wasn’t able to drive a car anymore. On the road, definitely. Even around the farm. Practically speaking, it was impossible anyway. He couldn’t make his left leg work enough to manage the clutch or his left arm work enough to manage the gears, particularly in the tractor. He’d tried. He couldn’t even get up and in by himself without help.
So that meant his freedom was gone. He couldn’t pop down into town to do his own shopping. He couldn’t make the trip up to Bristol to the Radnor or the Moulie for a night out or a shag. Not that anyone would look at him now.
Here he was. A useless cripple, crying in his own kitchen.
Fly nudged him with her cold wet nose and he scrubbed his hands over his face angrily. “Okay girl, I’m okay. Just having a moment.” He fondled her silky ears and she huffed at him anxiously. “Do you want to go out?” Her ears lifted as she cocked her head to one side listening to the magic words and Nell came and stood beside her in the same pose. “Come on then.” He pushed himself laboriously to his feet to open the door for them to go out on their important canine business. “Moping over. Let’s get on.”
* * * *
The thing with the farm, they kept telling him, was that he didn’t actually need to be hands-on with the work. The three farm workers were reliable, experienced, and worked well together. They had just spread themselves a bit thinner to fill the hole he’d left. If he was happy to lord it inside and issue instructions, they’d get on with it. And they didn’t really need that if he was honest. They were good men.
But it was in his nature to need to be hands-on. His Uncle Matthew had been the same, right to the end. Even when Laurie had more or less taken over from him once he’d been at the farm for a few years in the early sixties, Uncle Matty and Rob had made their rounds every morning and night, checking the fields and the stock. It had been a ritual perambulation that had only ended when the old man had been too weak to get out of bed.
Laurie was already too weak to walk all round the farm twice a day. He wasn’t much use at all.
He felt like the farm had been left to him as a sacred trust. Uncle Matthew had taken him in when things got difficult at home in his teenage years. He’d given him the unconditional acceptance that he’d needed as he was working out who he was. No-one had ever said anything to him before he came to live here, but it was obvious to anyone who knew them well that Matty and Rob were a couple and had been for decades. Laurie was
sad that they had both passed on before the law changed in 1967 and they could acknowledge each other publicly if they chose to.
They’d neither of them said much to him, just told him to be careful, that Bristol had a few places it was safe to drink and it was probably best to avoid Taunton because of the danger of local gossip. And then they’d given him the space to work it out for himself. He owed both of them a huge debt and there was no way he was going to fail them by letting the farm decline.
If he couldn’t manage to keep it together as a business and live here in the house by himself, he’d have to sell it. And he wasn’t going to sell it. The family had been here for a couple of hundred years one way or another and he wasn’t going to be the one who let it go. He wasn’t ever going to get married and have kids to pass it on to, he knew that much about himself. But he’d find a way. He’d find a way to keep it on.
Chapter 7: Girl
He was in the kitchen trying to make his own breakfast—it was Sunday and he’d told Sally to please not come in, he could manage perfectly well by himself. He was cracking eggs awkwardly into the hot frying pan, hoping it was heavy enough not to move as he couldn’t really manage to steady it with his gimpy hand.
The dogs were curled up by the Rayburn after going out to explore in the hard frost that had come down in the night. The temperature had dropped again suddenly over the last day or two after looking like spring might be on its way in. The March days were getting longer and the beech trees up the valley were taking on the glow of rising sap as he looked at them out of his bedroom window in the morning. The sun came up over the hill behind the house and touched the woodland with delicate spring fingers, but the nights still made him glad of the heavy quilt. The lino in the bathroom stung his bare feet and he was still glad to make the effort to put his slippers on, despite it being a chore to manage.
With no warning, the dogs started barking, giving tongue loudly and circling round and round in the way they did when something outside was urgent enough in their canine brains for them to need to go and patrol.
He used the rail on the front of the Rayburn to swing himself around and take the few steps necessary to let them out of the door into the scullery and on to the porch and out the back door. He was improving, he told himself. He couldn’t have twisted like that a few weeks ago, not without the stick. It was reassuring.
They rushed out on their urgent dog business making for the older barn…fox, probably, he thought. There were turkeys in there that had access to the field behind. The dogs would see it off.
Instead of the barking decreasing into the distance though, fading in pursuit of the escaping fox as it usually did, it increased to manic levels and didn’t stop. The barks were short, sharp impatient shouts, the sort that requested human intervention out in the fields to deal with a problem ewe.
He sighed and took the pan of eggs off the hotplate. He noted that he could keep his balance much more easily now, too—he didn’t have to think about bracing himself to lower the heavy lid, he was back to doing it automatically.
He grabbed his stick and made his way out of the back door and across the yard. The ground was dry and still quite hard with the frost.
The dogs were in the end of the barn. Decades ago, in the last century, when there had been more farm workers, some of the younger, unmarried men had lived here. There was still the sink, an antique potbelly stove and a table, some ancient upright chairs, a decaying pair of leather armchairs, and a sofa. The wooden stair in the corner led up to a dusty loft with half a dozen beds where they had slept. He had a vague memory of Matthew once telling him that Rob had lived here for a while until he’d moved into the house.
The dogs had cornered someone behind the sofa. It looked like he had been considering making a dash for the wooden staircase, but had reconsidered when he saw Laurie come in through the barn doors at the other end of the building.
The dogs weren’t attacking, just holding him there as if he were a recalcitrant sheep. His chin was up and his back was pressed to the wall, eyeing both Laurie and the dogs nervously. He wasn’t moving. Didn’t look dangerous.
Laurie leaned on the stick. He could manage the trip across the yard and over to the barn much more easily now. In fact, he’d made his way slowly earlier to let the turkeys out and check they had water. Some of the stupid creatures were staring at him from an adjacent stable. He’d rushed across this time though and he was wobbly.
“Nell! Fly! Leave it now!” They looked over their shoulders at him as if to say are you sure? and then obeyed when he repeated himself, slinking back to sit behind him on his heels, one each side.
He and the young man stared at each other.
It wasn’t a young man, he realised after a while. It was a girl. She was pressed right back against the wall of the barn at the bottom of the stairs to the upper story, frightened to move by the look of it. She might have been coming down the stairs when the dogs found her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Laurie said.
She sniffed and her chin came down a bit. “I didn’t think you were,” she said, dismissively. I was a just a bit worried about the dogs.” She eyed them nervously.
“They’re fine,” he said. And then thought he’d better qualify it. “If I tell them to be.”
She nodded once, sharply. Message received and understood.
She was about eighteen, he thought. Dark hair cropped close around her face, brown eyes, unremarkable height. Dressed in jeans and a slightly too small man’s sweater. Unremarkable in all ways, except she was in his barn. And she was thin and a bit grubby.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
She eyed him as nervously as she’d just been looking at the dogs.
“I needed somewhere to sleep,” she said. “It was cold last night.” She paused. “And the night before.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And the night before that?”
She bit her lip and looked at the floor. Yes, then, he thought to himself. A while, probably. Why had the dogs only noticed now?
Fly was watching her, head tilted to one side, tail wagging cautiously. A good judge of character, was Fly.
“Do you want some breakfast?” he asked, surprising himself. “I was cooking eggs.”
Her eyes flickered between the stick and his gammy hand, assessing whether he was a threat. She wasn’t sure.
She shook her head.
“I’m on my own today,” he said. He didn’t know whether that would reassure her or not. “Just me and the dogs. Paul and Tom came to milk early and have gone home. They won’t be back until this evening.”
She was still unsure.
“I’m going in, anyway,” he said, after a moment. “My leg’s still weak. I’m getting tired.”
That caught her interest.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“Stroke.” It was surprising how hard it was to get the words out, even now. “Back in the autumn. I’ve been out of hospital about a month.”
He risked a small smile.
“I expect you could push me over and run away if you needed to.”
She blinked at him, considering.
“There’s tea, as well,” he offered. “You must be cold. It’s not that warm out here, really.”
“It was all right,” she said. “Better than under a hedge.”
He nodded. “Yes, I expect so. Have you got a coat?”
She shook her head. “I found some blankets upstairs. In an old chest. I was warm enough.”
He nodded and started to turn, maneuvering the stick. His leg was stiff and he lurched.
She was suddenly by his side, propping his shoulder up with her own as he regained his balance. She was very thin.
“I’ll help you,” she said.
“I don’t need your help,” he replied, slightly testily. “Why does everyone keep telling me I need help?”
She stepped away and glared at him. “Because you fall over all the time?” she aske
d. “I saw you this morning. When you came to let the turkeys out. You tripped over the door sill. You’ve still got mud on your knees.”
He glanced down. She was right.
“I was fine,” he said, blankly.
“Yes, you were. But a hand doesn’t hurt sometimes.”
He looked at her, steadily.
“Eggs and tea, then?”
She screwed up her mouth, caught in her own net. “There’s really only you?”
“Yes. Just me and the dogs.”
She trailed her fingers down and brushed Nell’s head. “All right, then.”
* * * *
She ate like she hadn’t had a square meal for months, which might have been true given how thin she was. He threw away the first lot of congealed scrambled eggs and started a fresh pan. Just as well the new pullets had all suddenly come in to lay. After, he made toast in the griddle on top of the Rayburn and pushed the thick, white slices toward her with the butter dish and the jam.
She put away three slices and three mugs of sweet tea and began to look less drawn. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Laurie,” he said. “Laurie Henshaw. What’s yours?”
Her caution was back. “Cat,” she replied. “Call me Cat.”
“Do you want a wash, Cat?” he asked. “The bathroom’s through there.” He gestured out through the scullery, the way they’d come in. “There’s hot water.”
She flinched. “No. No thank you…I…. No.”
“I need to have a rest for a bit now,” he said, reassuringly. “I’m going to go and sit in the other room and probably have a sleep. The bathroom door locks.”
“I should go,” she said, already halfway to her feet.”
He looked at her. “Please,” he said. He didn’t know why he said it. Perhaps he recognised another lost person. “Please don’t go just yet. There’s no need. And maybe I can help you.”
She didn’t sit back down, but she didn’t run for the door. “Help me how?” she said, suspiciously.
He froze up. He hadn’t thought what he was going to say next. “Er. We could do with some help in the house?” he said, cautiously.