The Little Orchard on the Lane: An absolutely perfect and uplifting romantic comedy

by Tilly Tennant

  ‘Of us, Mum…’

  ‘Of you. It would give you the chance to see what life is like somewhere else if you’re so keen on it.’

  ‘But when they said they’d like to see more of us I’m not sure they meant that much!’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Carmel admitted. ‘I suppose it might be a bit forward – it was just an idea.’

  ‘To be honest,’ Posy continued thoughtfully, ‘I had thought about offering to help Asa, but it was more along the lines of having a look and perhaps drawing up something that I could email to him later on. I suppose that would mean going to have a look in person. So it would be a good reason to visit, if nothing else.’

  ‘And perhaps a good excuse for me to come with you?’ Carmel said with a sly smile.

  Posy grinned. ‘Another weekend away? I’m not going to complain about that.’

  ‘Neither am I.’ Carmel raised her glass again. ‘Perhaps we can pick up some more of this fabulous cider too. I’ve never been a cider drinker either, but I think this might have changed my mind.’

  ‘Want me to find out if Karen has any availability?’ Posy asked. ‘Then I can message Asa to see about meeting up to have a look at his place.’

  ‘That sounds like a very good plan to me,’ Carmel said.

  Posy was inclined to agree. It sounded like a very good plan indeed.

  Chapter Ten

  They were driving up the track that led to Oleander House when he caught Posy’s eye – fully clothed this time but still an unmistakeable figure; once seen, hard to forget. Every inch of him seemed to be taut, tense, muscles straining and visible even beneath his denim shirt. He eyed the car as he rolled up his sleeves, his stride never faltering as he looked right inside and connected with Posy, who was sitting in the passenger seat. She turned instantly away, blushing and feeling strangely guilty about nothing in particular.

  ‘Someone got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning,’ Carmel said mildly.

  Posy turned to her. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘That man. He looks as if he thinks the world is out to get him.’

  ‘Oh…’ Posy hesitated, and then thought, what the hell. Even she didn’t understand why she was so reluctant to share their meeting with her mum. ‘I think that might be my fault. That’s the neighbour Karen was telling you about. The one whose land I trespassed on.’

  ‘Oh!’ Carmel laughed lightly. ‘You naughty girl! You’re going to have to try harder not to upset the locals if you’re going to be spending more time here.’

  ‘Don’t I know it!’ Posy didn’t think she’d ever uttered a sentence with more heartfelt sincerity. She most certainly didn’t want a repeat of anything like that day by the lake. Despite this, and despite the fact that the charged moment that had begun this confession had now passed and the neighbour was already far behind them, she was also strangely and vaguely disappointed by that. He was handsome – the type of handsome that would turn heads even in London, where the handsome-guy-per-square-metre quota was far higher than everywhere else, because every hot actor, musician and model naturally congregated there to find work. Although a higher proportion were often dickheads too. This guy was obviously a miserable pig, but perhaps he wasn’t a dickhead. Then again, she thought, perhaps he was. He’d certainly behaved like one when she’d stumbled across him swimming in the lake.

  Naked…

  For a moment she was lost in the memory until her mum spoke again.

  ‘It looks as beautiful this time as the first time we saw it.’

  Oleander House rose up ahead of them and Carmel was right. If anything, it was more beautiful than the first time they’d seen it, because now they knew what they were heading into and could appreciate the house and the welcome that lay within.

  ‘We’ll drive right up this time, eh?’ Carmel continued. ‘It’s much nicer knowing you’re definitely welcome than being quite terrified of what awaits.’

  ‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ Posy said warmly. ‘Much nicer!’

  * * *

  As before, Sandra, Giles and Asa came out to meet them.

  ‘We saw you pull in,’ Giles said. ‘Well, when I say we, I mean that Sandra sent the shout up. She’s been like a cat on a hot tin roof all morning, racing around to get everything ready.’

  ‘I wanted to make sure everything was straight – that’s all,’ Sandra said with a slight frown at her husband.

  ‘You didn’t need to make any special arrangements for us,’ Posy said as she accepted Sandra’s kiss on the cheek.

  Carmel nodded agreement. ‘Once you’ve seen the inside of my pottery studio you’ll realise we can live in any kind of chaos quite happily.’

  ‘I can vouch for that,’ Posy said, smiling at Giles and Asa in turn before Sandra reached to give Carmel a welcome kiss too.

  ‘It’s so lovely to see you both again,’ she said.

  ‘It’s good to be back,’ Carmel replied. ‘We were just saying how Oleander House looks even more beautiful than we remembered it.’

  ‘Probably because you’re not worried about visiting this time,’ Sandra said, echoing the thoughts that both Posy and Carmel had had independently. ‘I think we were all stressed that day but it’s going to be much more fun this time.’

  ‘I’m sure if it has anything to do with you it will be,’ Asa said. He turned to Posy. ‘How are you? It’s good of you to bring a bit of London glamour back to dreary old Somerset again.’

  ‘If you’d ever walked past the pubs in Soho at throwing-out time you wouldn’t think it was glamorous at all,’ Posy said with a light laugh.

  ‘Come on through to the patio,’ Sandra said. ‘I’ll fix us drinks while Giles puts the finishing touches to lunch and you can get me up to speed about what’s been happening since we last saw you.’

  * * *

  Lunch was pork and pear salad, followed by tarte aux pommes and cream. All the fruit had been grown on their land and the pork had come from a farm just beyond the far boundaries of Astercombe. They finished with coffee which had come from a little further afield – a few more thousand miles further afield, Asa said with a grin – and then later, when they’d all got their second wind, they continued with cheese that had been matured in the caves of Wookey Hole and a crisp sparkling wine.

  ‘Wow, this is good,’ Carmel said. She reached for the bottle to take a closer look at the label. ‘Made locally too? Is it made here?’

  ‘Oh no, we wouldn’t have the first clue about grapes,’ Sandra said. ‘It’s made by one of our neighbours.’

  ‘Oh,’ Posy said, exchanging a look with her mum. There was no need to ask which neighbour – there couldn’t be many vineyards in the area.

  ‘Do you swap produce with him then?’ Carmel asked. ‘He sends you wine and you send him cider?’

  ‘Oh goodness, nothing like that,’ Sandra replied with a faint smile. ‘I got it in the village shop. It looked nice and I like to buy local where I can. Besides, if rumours are to be believed he needs all the pennies he can make.’

  ‘He doesn’t do well? I thought there was a real market for British wines these days?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Giles said. ‘But like many businesses there are lots of variables and success can be fickle. Just because one does well doesn’t necessarily follow that another will.’

  ‘Do you speak to him much?’ Posy asked. ‘Is he a friend of yours?’

  ‘He’s very private,’ Giles put in. ‘We speak to him when we have to but it’s usually strictly business.’

  ‘More’s the pity,’ Asa added. ‘Trust us to get a misanthropic neighbour. Good, interesting company is scarce enough round here, and when the only people who move in are miserable hermits it hardly helps.’

  Posy resisted the urge to raise her eyebrows at the remark. It was a little quiet in these parts, she’d imagine, but everyone (mostly) that she’d met was perfectly sociable and very interesting. She was sure they must have events and get-togethers through the year.

  �
��How long has the vineyard been there?’ Carmel asked. ‘I would have thought it’s far easier to grow something native like you do.’

  ‘Oh, years,’ Sandra said.

  ‘There was a vineyard on that site or somewhere close by mentioned in the Domesday Book,’ Giles said. ‘In fact, I think there was a vineyard there until the Middle Ages. It disappears from the records – or so Nigel told me – around then, probably due to the mini ice age making Britain too cold to grow grapes.’

  ‘Nigel?’ Posy asked. ‘Is that the man who owns it now?’

  ‘Nigel is the previous owner,’ Sandra said. ‘He replanted the vines in the nineties when viticulture became fashionable in the UK again, but Lachlan has only owned the vineyard for the past couple of years or so. It had become a bit neglected but he’s working hard to turn it around. And you can grow some very nice grape varieties here, so I believe, if you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘It was neglected by the previous owner then?’ Posy asked.

  ‘Not neglected exactly,’ Sandra said. ‘It was more that he just didn’t manage to get it right. He tinkered about with various crops but he couldn’t seem to hit on the right one and he never really broke even. Lachlan arrived a couple of years ago to try his hand. I think he got it for a good price as Nigel was desperate to offload, but he hasn’t been much more successful in making it turn a decent profit.’

  ‘He’s doing a bit better than Nigel was,’ Giles said.

  ‘A run of bad luck didn’t help poor Nigel,’ Sandra said. ‘Bad summers and pest problems – it just wasn’t going to happen for him. I think he got very disillusioned with it all. The years before Lachlan came and took over he hardly produced anything at all.’

  ‘So Lachlan is the man who owns it now?’ Posy asked.

  ‘Aye, lassie…’ Asa growled in his best, gruffest Scots accent, which was so surprising to hear from a man who was so softly spoken that it set Posy giggling. ‘What do ye mean, there’s nay such thing as the Loch Ness Monster!’

  ‘Asa!’ Sandra chided, even though she was trying not to laugh too. He grinned.

  ‘I’m not saying it’s not an attractive accent,’ he said in his own voice again. ‘It’s just a bit in your face. Especially when it’s coming from his miserable face. It sounds very incongruous amongst all our Worzel Gummidge accents.’

  ‘I would imagine it makes him stand out,’ Carmel agreed.

  ‘Oh, he’d do that anyway,’ Asa replied with a sudden wicked look. ‘He might be as miserable as sin with a heart as black to match, but there’s no denying he’s a damn fine-looking man. And an airline pilot, I’m led to believe – at least he was in a previous life – which makes him even more attractive as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘It also explains why he doesn’t have the first clue how to run a vineyard,’ Giles said.

  ‘I think he runs it OK,’ Asa replied carelessly. ‘It’s just the making-money bit he seems to have an issue with.’

  ‘Perhaps he’d do better if he didn’t upset the few staff that are willing to work for him,’ Giles said.

  Posy got the impression that Giles didn’t think much of Lachlan’s business prowess, but she supposed she didn’t know much about it.

  ‘How does he upset them?’ she asked.

  ‘I think he’s just his usual sunny self.’

  ‘So he’s not very nice to anyone – not even the people who work on his land?’

  ‘These days it’s just him,’ Sandra said, ‘so he doesn’t have to worry too much about that.’

  ‘How does that work?’ Carmel asked. ‘Surely it’s too much for him alone?’

  ‘I should imagine it keeps him busy,’ Giles agreed. ‘Acreage-wise the vineyard isn’t huge – more of a second career type of business. Nigel and his wife and two daughters managed it so it’s probably doable for Lachlan with the odd bit of seasonal help – although I must say I wouldn’t want to take that workload on.’

  ‘You’d almost certainly need help around harvest time,’ Sandra reminded him.

  ‘Oh, undoubtedly.’

  ‘So what does he do then?’ Posy asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea what he plans to do this year,’ Giles said. ‘He had half a dozen or so helpers last harvest, but by all accounts he struggled to pay them and it left him very short. I suppose he could do the day-to-day work at a push, but I don’t imagine it leaves much time for anything like a social life.’

  ‘I don’t think he knows what one of those is anyway,’ Asa said. ‘I don’t think he’s ever had one. I don’t think he even has a past.’

  Sandra chuckled. ‘Of course he has a past. Everyone has a past – he didn’t just fall from the sky fully formed.’

  ‘Well,’ Asa replied, ‘there’s not the faintest whiff of gossip to be had about him except that he’s single.’

  ‘We hear things about the vineyard,’ Sandra said.

  ‘That’s not gossip; that’s business reporting,’ Asa replied. ‘Who cares about that? If he had any kind of past it must have been terribly bland.’

  ‘As you might have guessed,’ Sandra said with a wry smile at Posy and Carmel, ‘Asa is hopelessly in love with him.’

  Asa looked at his sister-in-law archly. ‘You’re telling me you’re not?’

  ‘I am not! I’m very happily married to your brother!’

  ‘Yes, I can see why Giles would give William Wallace a run for his money,’ Asa said blithely.

  ‘Thank you for that.’ Giles reached for the wine to top up his glass. ‘Don’t forget we share the same genes.’

  ‘Yes, but have you seen the man?’ Asa continued. ‘He’s like a Greek god! I’m not even sure how he can be real!’

  Posy suddenly felt very hot, and it wasn’t because of the wine or the afternoon sun that was now finding ways to burn through the greenery woven into the trellis they sat beneath. She’d seen his Greek god physique herself, up close and extremely personal – certainly more personal than it was polite for two complete strangers to be – and Asa’s words brought the occasion very forcefully back to her now. She could definitely vouch for its effects, but perhaps now, in polite company, wasn’t the time for her to be reminded of that.

  Then, as if to compound her mortification, Asa turned to her.

  ‘What do you think? You met him, didn’t you? So Karen says.’

  ‘I did bump into him…’ Posy began uncertainly. How much could she say here? Would they disapprove of her trespassing on Lachlan’s land? Was there some kind of unwritten, unspoken law around here that to trespass, even unintentionally, on anyone’s land just wasn’t cricket? Did they find it supremely annoying if anyone ever wandered into their orchards, even if it was a lost tourist stumbling around?

  ‘Trespassed on his land, so I heard,’ Asa said, relieving her of the dilemma. So they knew about that bit at least and didn’t seem too disapproving. In fact, Asa was grinning again. ‘Did he threaten to release the hounds?’

  ‘I wandered on there by accident,’ Posy said. ‘I must admit he didn’t seem very happy about it, but I didn’t do any harm; I was only walking.’

  ‘He’s rarely happy about anything,’ Asa said. ‘I wouldn’t take it personally.’

  ‘I’ve certainly never seen him smile,’ Sandra agreed.

  ‘All that work to turn the vineyard around and still struggling to make ends meet – I’m not surprised he doesn’t smile,’ Giles said. ‘I doubt he has time for such luxuries as smiling.’

  ‘It looks like a lot of work,’ Posy said. ‘And he lives there completely alone?’

  ‘No wife living there, that I do know,’ Asa said, and sounded quite pleased about it. Posy had to agree – something about that news pleased her too, though God knew why. Lachlan might be undeniably good-looking but he was just about the rudest, coldest, most miserable man she’d ever met. How could the news that he was single possibly give her any kind of satisfaction?

  ‘More wine?’ Giles held the bottle up to Posy.

  ‘No thanks
– not just now. I probably ought to take a look at Asa’s project first.’

  Giles nodded. ‘Asa, why don’t you go and show Posy what you want?’ He turned to Carmel. ‘You could tag along while Sandra and I clear up.’

  ‘I’ll help you if it’s all the same,’ Carmel replied. ‘I’d like to make myself useful and I’m sure Posy and Asa will get more done if I leave them to it.’

  Sandra smiled. ‘In that case, your help would be most welcome.’

  Asa looked expectantly at Posy. ‘Come on then, unexpected but very useful niece of mine, let’s get on with it!’

  * * *

  Asa’s house was a long, open space, the interior characterised by exposed brick walls and heavy beams criss-crossing vaulted ceilings. Large windows ran along the south-facing aspect, fronted by a long patio to make the most of the sun, and three doors off the main space contained a master bedroom, Asa’s study/spare room and a bathroom. The floors were grey slate, worn from years of footfall during the building’s former life as a barn. As far as Posy could see, it looked open and contemporary and quite pleasant enough already – far more modern than the main house where Giles and Sandra lived and the second barn that had been converted for Philomena.

  Despite this, and all its mod cons and modern sensibilities, it wasn’t nearly trendy enough for Asa, who apologised almost constantly that it must be such an eyesore to Posy’s trained eye, even though she told him many times that it was anything but.

  ‘I just can’t seem to get the look quite right,’ he complained. ‘I see the thing in my head but it doesn’t translate to the room. And I feel certain the space as a whole could be utilised better.’

  Posy smiled but thought that he’d probably watched too many episodes of Grand Designs. Her working life would be a lot easier if people didn’t watch these television programmes and think that they could achieve the same in a day or so, and on any spare bit of change they had left over from the shopping that week. As for Asa’s house, there was a good deal of space here working perfectly well as it was. There was really no need to worry about effective utilisation. But, she supposed, there was always room for improvement, even if it was only a little improvement. He’d asked for her help and she was happy to give it.