‘We’ll take a look at that now,’ Giles said. ‘If we haven’t bored you enough already?’
‘I’d like to see it,’ Carmel said.
Posy agreed. She’d never really thought about how any alcohol was made, only interested in where it ended up (in her tummy on a night out), but she was always open to new experiences.
They followed Giles, who led them into the barn where they made their product. It looked a lot more ramshackle than Posy had imagined it, with rough whitewashed walls and a concrete floor. It was much colder in here, with very little natural light, and monstrous machines stood silently at one end, while at the other there was a faint hum from a lot of tanks.
‘All the pulping is done as soon as the apples are picked in the autumn,’ Giles explained as he patted one of the silent machines. ‘We do that in these, then’ – he moved along to another – ‘we press the pulp here to extract the juice. We do various bits and pieces to purify it, and then it goes into the tanks down there to ferment. Last autumn’s juice is in there now, doing its thing.’
‘And then it’s cider?’ Carmel asked.
‘We do a bit more to it but basically it’s a cycle – that lot will be out of there and ready to go by the time this harvest is ready to go in. There’s not much room for manoeuvre – it all has to go like clockwork, but we’ve got it down to a fine art after all these years.’
‘I’m sure that’s enough of our boring processes,’ Asa said.
‘It’s not boring at all,’ Carmel said. ‘I’ve never really thought about it before; it’s a shame we can’t be here to see it all in action.’
‘Maybe this autumn…’ Giles said, smiling. ‘We’d be happy to have you over – we may even rope you in.’
‘I’d like that,’ Posy said with a smile of her own and a warm feeling. When she’d come to find her family, to be accepted like this was exactly what she’d hoped for.
* * *
It had all been perfectly delightful, but as they were walking back across the courtyard from the cider house, a smaller building, shaded by a beech tree, caught Posy’s attention. The bricks were worn into shades of red, orange and white, while the wooden windows were framed by pink clematis and the door was a sturdy blue.
‘That’s so pretty,’ she said, pointing to it. ‘Is that your part of the house, Asa?’
‘Oh, no,’ he said, looking suddenly apprehensive as he shot a brief, loaded glance Giles’s way. ‘That’s Mother’s old place.’
‘We built her a granny flat,’ Giles said. ‘After Dad died and she got a bit older and a bit less patient she couldn’t stand all the hustle and bustle at the house with workers going back and forth and such. We had two old buildings out of use, so we took out a loan and had them converted; one for her and one for Asa…’
‘Just to give me some privacy,’ Asa put in, ‘and for Giles and Sandra to have some privacy in the main house – not because I was annoyed with the workers or anything.’
They all stopped and gazed at the house. Then Giles broke the silence.
‘Would you like to take a look inside?’ he asked.
Posy nodded uncertainly but Asa looked sharply at his brother.
‘Perhaps you’d be more interested in the main house…’ he began, but the argument quickly tailed off. It was hard to know who he was trying to protect – maybe all of them. Perhaps he was trying to protect the seedlings of a new relationship, ever so fragile, just poking through the soil, and perhaps he felt that Posy seeing the place where her unforgiving biological grandmother – the woman who’d pretended not to know Posy even existed – had lived out her final days wouldn’t help at all.
‘No… I’d like to see…’ Posy said, straightening up. ‘I think I ought to.’
‘I can unlock it for you and let you go in… I understand you might want to see this alone and it’s absolutely no problem… Asa and I could just as easily wait outside for you.’
‘I’d like that very much,’ Posy said, though she sounded even less certain than she had moments before.
‘We’ll be right here when you’re done,’ Giles said, striding over to unlock the building for them.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Carmel asked.
Posy nodded and then opened the door.
The first thing that hit her was the smell. Like violets and talc and dust. It had the beginnings of dampness from being shuttered up for many months, though it hadn’t quite taken hold yet. Carmel closed the door softly and Posy wanted to tell her to open it again. She didn’t like it being closed. It felt as if they shouldn’t be there and that closing the door was blocking off their escape. The house felt sort of haunted; not by ghosts, but by lives and loves that never were, as if Posy’s mother Angelica had been ghosted out of existence in this space and Posy herself being here was the rudest paradox.
There was a beat of silence during which Posy could just make out Carmel’s shadow in the now darkened hallway and hear only her gentle breaths.
‘Mum…?’ she said.
‘Don’t worry; I’m here,’ Carmel said quietly. ‘Are you alright? You want to carry on? We can leave—’
‘I never knew her,’ Posy said. ‘I knew nothing of her – of the person she was, of her likes and dislikes. I don’t know what her favourite colour was, what she liked to eat, how she sounded when she laughed… I don’t even know if this smell on the air is what she smelled like.’ She let out a sigh. ‘But I might find some clues to all of that here.’
‘Would it change anything to know all that?’ Carmel asked.
‘Not between us,’ Posy said firmly. ‘You’ll always be my mum, but it’s about knowing where you came from; your DNA, who made you. I never felt that was important until I had the opportunity to find out, and now it does seem to matter, as if that piece of the puzzle had been missing but I just hadn’t allowed myself to notice.’
‘Well, there’s no harm in finding that out if it doesn’t hurt you.’
‘It’s always going to hurt me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. And sometimes the pain is a good pain. Like saltwater on a wound. It stings for a while but ultimately it helps the healing.’
Despite this, Posy felt uncomfortably like she was trespassing and half wished they could go back out into the sunshine. But she pushed on down the tiny hallway and into the drawing room beyond.
‘I wonder if Giles and Asa will worry we’re looking for hidden jewels or something,’ she joked. Not because she thought it was funny, but because she desperately wanted this to feel like less of an ordeal than it did.
‘I suppose this is all as nerve-wracking for them as it is for you,’ Carmel reminded her. ‘They’ve been so lovely since we first met them; I feel they’re trying very hard to make something up to you.’
‘They really needn’t. They had no idea about me and it was hardly their fault anyway.’
‘I can understand why they’d feel guilty. They had everything you didn’t.’
‘I’ve had a happy life regardless – there’s nothing for them to feel guilty about. They’re really nice, aren’t they?’
‘Yes. I think that’s a good sign.’
‘Of what?’
‘That your mother was a good person.’
‘It doesn’t sound like it from what we’ve been told. If nothing else, she sounds a bit wild. I’m not sure she wasn’t just the bad apple – and I know I just made a pun!’ Posy smiled briefly. ‘But meeting Giles and Asa, I can’t imagine she was much like them at all. They’re both so stable and responsible and my mother sounds nothing like that.’
Carmel smiled. ‘Well, we can’t really say how Angelica was. I suppose the events of her life might have made her act in the ways she did…’
Posy nodded. ‘I find it hard to believe Philomena was good or lovely even if she wasn’t wild. I’ve had a good life with you and Dad but she wasn’t to know that. I could have been shoved from home to home, desperate or destitute; I could have needed help she was equipped
to give but she never bothered to find out…’
‘Does it upset you?’ Carmel asked.
‘No, but it tells me a lot about what kind of person she was.’
‘Maybe a little bit. But don’t forget life isn’t always that black and white. There may have been reasons that we don’t understand yet.’
Posy was thoughtful for a moment as she contemplated the room. The biscuit-coloured sofa was well worn but clean, with those little squares of fabric that kept the headrest new in a darker beige and brown floral. There was a footstool in the same pattern as the sofa and cream curtains depicting a faux Regency pastoral scene. This was the kind of room that would have given Posy’s design lecturer nightmares. Other than the odd bits of furniture and decor, there was very little to give any kind of clue about the kind of woman who’d lived there – no photos on the walls, no prints, not a single ornament.
‘I wonder if Giles and Asa cleared away her stuff,’ Posy said.
‘Maybe,’ Carmel agreed.
But then Posy noted that the cream walls were perfectly blemish-free. If anything had hung on the walls for any length of time then surely removing them would have left a mark of some kind? They could have decorated afterwards, of course, but as nobody was using the building now she didn’t see what the point would have been, and there certainly wouldn’t have been any rush for it. Maybe there never had been photos and prints. Maybe Philomena just hadn’t been the sentimental type. It would certainly fit the picture she was beginning to build of her biological grandmother.
Without words, Carmel and Posy simultaneously agreed that there wasn’t much to see here and they moved into an equally dull kitchen, complete with a tiny dining table and two chairs. There was a conservatory/lean-to sort of arrangement at the side of the house, a small bathroom and a box room full of – unsurprisingly – boxes. It looked like years’ worth of bits and bobs had been thrown in here when there had been nowhere else to put them.
There was a full-sized master bedroom. Well, perhaps not full-sized compared to what they might have in the main house, but clearly the biggest room in this building. The bed had been stripped so that the mattress was bare, but other than that it looked fairly untouched. They had never actually asked whether Philomena had died in this bed, but the thought of it made Posy shudder slightly. Other than the stripped-back bed, the room looked as if it had remained largely untouched since then and certainly more personalised than the rest of what they’d seen so far.
There were photos here – just a handful on a dresser. On brief inspection Posy was disappointed, though unsurprised, to see that they were photos of Asa and Giles as children, plus a wedding photo of what must have been Philomena and her late husband, but nothing to acknowledge a life before then.
Posy picked one up to take a closer look. It was a group photo, but there was no sign of anyone who might be Angelica. Not that she’d know who to look for, even if she had ever seen a photo of her.
‘Posy…’
She looked up at her mum, face screwed into a question as she put the frame down again.
‘Why don’t you ask Asa and Giles if they have photos of her?’ Carmel said. ‘They did offer to tell you more and I’m sure they’d have some.’
‘I suppose I could,’ Posy said doubtfully.
She went to the wardrobe. A handful of very practical clothes hung there – neutral blouses, slacks, a couple of sensibly cut dresses…
Posy closed it again.
‘All my life I’ve wondered about my biological family. Not because I thought I might prefer them,’ she added quickly, ‘just curious. Now that I’m here looking at this lonely house I feel a bit underwhelmed. From what I can see here my grandmother was… well, I hate to say it, but a bit dull.’
Carmel gave a fleeting smile. ‘What did you expect to find?’
Posy sighed. ‘I don’t know… something more… just more.’
‘Maybe we just arrived a few decades too late to see anything more exciting,’ Carmel said. ‘Maybe your gran had been more once but then she just got old and settled down. Maybe we’ll find out more from Giles and Asa about that too – I’m sure they wouldn’t mind you asking.’
‘Yes, I could. I probably ought to. If nothing else I might find out if there are any funny habits coming my way when I get old.’
Carmel smiled at her daughter. ‘There you go – that’s the Posy I know. You’re stronger and braver than you give yourself credit for.’
Posy closed the wardrobe doors.
‘Come on,’ she said, a new briskness to her tone, ‘I think we’ve seen all we need to see here. I don’t know about you, but I feel I’d rather see more of the grounds in this lovely weather than spend any more time in a house filled with a dead woman’s belongings.’
* * *
Giles and Asa were waiting in the courtyard when Posy and Carmel came back out, conversing in hushed tones with Sandra, who’d joined them. Their expressions were all tight, a little anxious, but they relaxed as they turned to see Carmel and Posy looking relatively calm. Posy had to wonder if they’d been discussing the likelihood of her having some sort of breakdown in there, faced with the physical evidence of her birth mother’s existence. All this must have been as weird for them as it was for her and on first impression they seemed like nice people, the sort of people who’d care.
‘Everything OK?’ Sandra asked with obviously forced brightness.
‘Yes,’ Posy replied, the lie as obvious in her tone as in Sandra’s. It was clear both women were overcompensating for nerves around a subject too thorny for anyone to dare address first.
‘That’s my humble abode,’ Asa said as they began to walk back across the courtyard towards the main house. He waved a hand carelessly at the frontage of another converted barn or stable, set even further back than the annexe that had belonged to Philomena. ‘I’m sure it’s very dull and you don’t want to be bothered with that right now.’
Which Posy took to mean that he didn’t want them poking around in his house and there was no reason not to respect that.
Chapter Six
‘But you’re coming to the nineties bash – right?’ Marella frowned as she dragged a hand through the lengths of her dark hair.
Maybe this Skype call hadn’t been the best idea after all. It had been a long day, a long drive home, and Posy was tired. It had been a strange one too, full of new and uncertain situations. Giles and Asa had been only too happy to give Posy some photos of her mother – though they had nothing later than her aged twenty, which was when she’d left home – and Posy had spent a full hour staring at the likeness, marvelling at how much of that woman she now recognised in the mirror, and mulling over the details of what they’d told her.
Her mother was slimmer at twenty than Posy now at twenty-seven, though it looked like the kind of delicateness that came from constant agitation. She had the face of someone who was never settled, and Posy felt she looked far more content. But they shared the same soft, pert features, the same long eyelashes, hair somewhere between blonde and brown – though Angelica’s fell much longer and thicker around her shoulders.
And for some strange reason that wasn’t the only thing still playing on Posy’s mind. As much as anything else, she kept going back to the excruciating run-in with the angry naked man at the lake. Whatever the reason, whenever she thought of it her face burned with indignation and embarrassment, and – much as she tried not to – she seemed to think of it often. He’d been so rude and offensive about what had really been an easy mistake to make that it was hard not to. She supposed she could understand him being a little embarrassed – after all, she’d caught him stark bollock-naked – but what did he expect if he insisted on swimming in lakes in the nip? It might well have been private property but it was hardly hidden from view. Hadn’t he heard of swimming trunks? Decency laws? Public right of way? Private property indeed! If it had been somewhere she wasn’t allowed to walk then surely someone would have warned her.
&nb
sp; ‘Posy!’
Marella clicked her fingers to bring her back. ‘Where did you go?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Posy said quickly, hoping the heat in her cheeks wouldn’t show too much on the screen at Marella’s end.
‘So are you coming or not?’
‘I don’t know—’
‘But you said you would and I’ve organised for Vince to meet us there now!’
Vincenzo… Posy tried not to curl a lip. Marella was somehow convinced he was a good match for Posy, no matter how many times Posy tried to tell her he wasn’t. On paper he was perfect – there was no doubt of that. Italian parents, hot, toned, good job in the City. Great teeth… very expensive teeth. He’d make a great boyfriend for someone if only he had the capacity to love a woman half as much as he seemed to love his own reflection.
Marella said he had hidden depths and that he was really far more humble when you got to know him, and maybe that was true. But if he did have these hidden depths then, as far as Posy could see, they were so well hidden that it would take an archaeological dig to find them. Certainly a better and more patient woman than her.
‘I’m sure he’s not going to be heartbroken if I don’t go,’ Posy said. ‘It’s not like there won’t be any other women there for him to have a crack at.’
‘I know but he really likes you.’
‘He really likes his biceps. I’ve seen him admiring them in his window reflection when he thinks nobody is looking.’
‘That’s harsh.’
‘But just a little bit true. Even you’ve got to admit he’s hardly the most modest man you’ve ever met.’
‘He can’t help it.’
‘How so?’
‘It’s in his blood.’
‘I’m sure it’s not.’
‘You say that but have you ever met a modest Italian?’
Posy laughed. ‘How many Italians do you know? Isn’t it just Vince?’
The Little Orchard on the Lane: An absolutely perfect and uplifting romantic comedy Page 6