Make Do and Mend in Applewell

by Lilac Mills

  Breathing hard, he wondered if it was time to come clean. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up, and once he’d received his final wages at the end of December he’d have to tell her. He wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret when there was no longer any money going into their account. If he hadn’t managed to secure another position by the New Year, he’d put in a claim for benefits and tell Lottie. Until then, he’d pray and hope.

  ‘How’s that old boat coming along?’ John asked, after Henry had pulled into the yard and tracked John down – the noise of a hundred or so sheep in the pens adjacent to the biggest barn had given him a clue as to the farmer’s whereabouts.

  ‘It’s finished,’ he declared proudly, ‘and it looks great. Here.’ He took his phone out of his pocket and showed John the finished result. ‘Robin was absolutely ecstatic – he couldn’t wait to go to school and tell his friend Callum all about it. A real boat trumps a pretend fire engine any day. Although it was only six in the evening, he insisted on going to bed and staying there.’

  ‘It does look grand,’ the farmer agreed.

  ‘You’ll have to come and see it next time you’re in the village. Lottie would love to show it to you.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll do that,’ John said. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’

  ‘I hate to ask, but I was wondering if you had any oars to go with that boat you so kindly gave me?’

  ‘What do you want them for? You can hardly row the damned thing.’ John took his flat cap off and scratched his head. He seemed to do that a lot when he was speaking, Henry noticed, with a smile.

  ‘To put on the wall above the bed. For decoration,’ he said.

  John gave him an odd look. ‘Right. Hmm, well, I’ve not seen any around for years. They might have gone for firewood, or the like. I’ll keep an eye out for them, though, and if I see them I’ll give you a bell.’

  ‘That would be great, thanks.’ It had been worth a try. Maybe he could have a scout around some reclamation yards, he thought, until he remembered his precarious financial situation. If he had to pay for them, the oars would have to wait until he’d landed himself a new job.

  John spoke. ‘’Ere, can you make use of this? The missus wanted a new door in the porch, so she had one.’ John didn’t wait for a response, but turned smartly on his heel and led Henry back across the yard and into one of the sheds. ‘I’ve got no use for it. Maybe your Lottie can do something with it.’

  Henry found himself gazing at a glass-panelled interior door. Most of the glass was still intact but a few panes were cracked, and one had disappeared completely.

  ‘Um…’ What on earth would Lottie be able to do with an old door? ‘That’s wonderful – thanks.’

  ‘I’ll help you load it in your car. You’ll have to put the back seats down as far as they’ll go.’

  ‘Right, yes, I’ll do that.’

  ‘You grab that end and I’ll take this.’ John lifted one end of the door and waited for Henry to get a grip on the other.

  Henry did as he was told and together they walked to Henry’s car. After some fiddling around, they slid the door in through the hatch at the back.

  ‘Well, thanks for that,’ Henry said, nodding at the door he had no idea what to do with. ‘I’d best leave you to your sheep.’

  ‘Aye, I’d better get back. Their feet won’t trim themselves.’

  Henry watched him go, then got in his car. Lottie would think he’d gone mad. He knew she was good at recycling, but he was pretty certain the only thing you could do with a door was to use it as a door. Or… he had a thought. Without the glass in it, he supposed it could be used as a trellis. But the Hargreaves’ household didn’t need either a door or any trellis.

  He’d leave it up to Lottie – if she took one look and demanded he take it to the nearest household waste depot, that’s what he’d do.

  That would teach him to try to get something for nothing.

  Chapter 13

  Lottie

  ‘Why?’ Lottie asked, after Henry informed her he had a door in his car.

  ‘John Porter,’ he replied, as if that explained everything, when it explained diddly-squat.

  ‘Nope. I’m not getting the connection,’ she said.

  ‘I dropped by his farm to see if he had any oars to go with that boat.’

  ‘And you came away with a door instead? Are you expecting me to make oars out of it?’

  ‘Can you?’ His hopeful expression was endearing.

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘So what are you going to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know – you tell me.’

  Henry shot her a despairing look. ‘Surely you can do something with it?’

  Lottie hesitated. She possibly could find a use for it that didn’t involve it being hung as a door, but honestly – why was he bringing her other people’s rubbish? At least they’d been on the same page when it came to the boat. This time they weren’t even in the same library.

  ‘You’d better stick it in the shed,’ she sighed.

  Something she’d thought of a few days ago came back to her, but she dismissed it. Still, the idea lingered, despite knowing it was ridiculous to even contemplate that Henry might be bringing her things to upcycle just to keep her occupied. She was a mother to three children, she had a house to run and a husband – she didn’t need anything else to keep her busy.

  As she watched Henry wiggle the door out of the car, huffing and puffing as he did so, she noticed an expression of chagrin on his face. It seemed to her that he was a little bit put out at bringing her a present and her dismissing it. She supposed her reaction had been somewhat akin to that of the owner of a cat being presented with a mouse, and she wondered if cats could tell that their owners were being ungrateful.

  Chastened, she tried to make amends. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said to him. ‘I’m sure I can do something with it.’ She was sure the internet would offer up all kinds of weird and wonderful suggestions.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t have anything to do, though: with Eleri asking her to revamp furniture to create a children’s play area in the cafe and the sledges she wanted to make, Lottie had more than enough on her plate. Another thought occurred to her – had Henry been listening at all when she’d told him about what Eleri had asked her to do? She suspected not, otherwise he wouldn’t have brought her a door.

  I ask you, she thought to herself. Other husbands would give their wives flowers, or chocolates. Not hers – he brought her a door. She realised he was being thoughtful, because the chocolates would only go to her thighs and the flowers would soon wilt and die. And he was trying to support her in her quest to upcycle rather than discard and buy new. The problem was, she didn’t particularly want a door, they didn’t need a door, and she hadn’t got a clue what to do with it.

  Oh, well, it could sit in the shed until she found a use for it, but the thought gave her pause as she recalled the village hoarder, George Nightingale. Although she applauded his waste not, want not ethic, what she didn’t want to do was to turn into a female version of him.

  Her principle of mending or fixing what she had rather than discarding it straight off the bat was different, as the boat being turned into a bed testified. Robin’s old bed wouldn’t go to waste, either. She’d find a use for it sooner or later. Preferably sooner.

  With the door safely stashed, Lottie and Henry went back into the house. Now might be a good time to tell her husband that she’d arranged a date night for them. He might not be a flowers and chocolates man, but he had clearly been thinking about her, and it warmed her heart.

  ‘Guess what?’ she said, biting her lip in what she hoped was a provocative manner.

  ‘Hmm?’ Henry appeared to be a little distracted.

  ‘I said, guess what?’

  Henry’s gaze when he looked at her was blank for a moment, then he focused with an effort. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Disappointed that he wasn’t going to play along, Lottie
stopped trying to be provocative because it obviously wasn’t working, and told it to him straight instead. ‘We’re going out tomorrow evening.’

  ‘We are? Where?’

  ‘Nowhere exciting. Just the Busy Bumble for supper, but I thought we could do with an evening away from the kids.’

  A vertical line creased his brow and his gaze sharpened.

  ‘Before you say anything,’ she hurriedly continued, ‘your mum is coming to babysit, in case you were worried about the children.’

  ‘Dinner? Out?’

  ‘Yes, that’s OK, isn’t it?’

  For some reason, Henry didn’t look as if it was OK. He looked alarmed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought we were trying to save money,’ he replied.

  ‘We are, but not to the extent that we can’t have a bite to eat in the pub now and again. It’s not as though we make a habit of it.’ She couldn’t remember the last time they’d gone out for a meal.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, walking away. It seemed that Henry considered the matter closed.

  Lottie, however, didn’t. There was something more to this than simply not wanting to spend the money. Meals at the Busy Bumble were hardly expensive, and it wasn’t as though they would sink a bottle of the pub’s finest wine. She’d have half a lager like she always did, and Henry would invariably have a pint of ale. They weren’t exactly big spenders.

  In that case, what was his problem?

  She dashed into the hall and was about to ask him – confront him might be a more accurate description – when his phone rang.

  Henry was halfway up the stairs as he fished it out of his jeans pocket, and he slowed to a halt as he looked at the screen. ‘Hello?’

  There was a short pause, then he said, ‘Er, hang on a sec, I’ll, um…’ Henry walked back down the stairs and along the hall to the front door. He didn’t look at her once. His expression was blank, but she knew her husband too well. The best way she could describe him was ‘unnerved’.

  ‘Shifty’ was another word that sprang to mind.

  She watched him hurry outside, pulling the front door shut behind him, and trot down the drive, where he eventually stopped and began talking. Lottie strained to hear what he was saying, even going as far as pressing her ear to the glass, but all she heard was the sound of her own whooshing pulse.

  Giving up on trying to listen, Lottie darted into the living room and peered out of the window. Henry had his back to the house, shoulders hunched, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his phone. He kept scuffing his feet, reminding her so much of Robin that if she hadn’t been so concerned she would have smiled.

  She waited for him to end the call and, as soon as he turned towards the house, she leapt back and scuttled into the kitchen, where she pretended she’d been preparing the evening meal all along.

  ‘Important?’ she asked casually.

  ‘Nah, just work.’

  The words themselves might have been offhand, as was the manner in which they were delivered, but Lottie sensed suppressed excitement coming off him like heat from a radiator. His mood had lightened too, and he didn’t look as miserable as he had when he’d arrived home.

  Lottie persevered. ‘Anything to worry about?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not at all. Everything’s tickety-boo.’

  She flinched. He’d used that phrase again, the one that didn’t sound as though it should be coming out of his mouth. Tickety-boo, indeed. She couldn’t help wondering where he’d got it from, because it wasn’t like him to be twee.

  ‘In fact,’ he continued, ‘maybe we should go to the pub on Friday after all.’

  ‘Great. I’ll confirm with your mum.’ But it isn’t great, is it? Lottie thought. There was something going on with Henry. She didn’t know what it was, but she was determined to get to the bottom of it.

  Chapter 14

  Henry

  Finally, he was getting somewhere with finding another job, Henry thought, as he got ready to go on their date night. It was the only reason he’d agreed to go out at all, because he didn’t feel quite as guilty now about spending the money. He had an appointment to meet Sally Chisolm in person next Tuesday. She’d sounded nice on the phone – although it was difficult to tell what someone was like until you met them, and sometimes you didn’t truly find out what they were like until after you started working for them. But he was hopeful. And he’d been sadly lacking in hope lately.

  It had been rather awkward that she’d called while he was at home, and even more awkward that Lottie had been only a few feet away. He was pretty sure his wife didn’t suspect anything, though. After all, he’d been home slightly earlier than normal and officially he should still be working, so it wasn’t unexpected that he might receive the odd phone call. It was quite common for him to get a call from one of his clients asking him to pop in, or wanting to speak to him to place an order. Lottie should be used to it.

  When he came to think of it, Henry concluded that employing travelling salesmen was quite an old-fashioned way of doing things. No wonder Baldwins was shedding staff. These days it was so much easier to pick up a phone direct, or to order online. Some of the more traditional and older farmers preferred to have a bloke they knew and trusted popping around every few months and telling them what was new on the market, or leaving them with a complimentary bag of feed for them to try. Whichever way he looked at it, though, the writing was on the wall for him regarding sales jobs. He just hoped he could find another one which would last him a few more years, until he could figure out what he really wanted to do.

  Being an agricultural feed salesman hadn’t been one of his top five choices of profession when he was in school. It probably hadn’t featured in his top one hundred. He’d wanted to be a deep-sea diver, based solely on a few holidays abroad where he’d enjoyed snorkelling in the warm waters of the Med. He’d looked into it once, and had even considered taking PADI courses in his local swimming baths, but that had been as far as it went.

  Looking back, he still wasn’t completely sure how he’d got into sales in the first place, and into agricultural feed sales at all. It had just kind of happened – a friend of a friend’s dad knew someone, who knew someone, who was looking for… Yep, that’s how things often had a way of working. And here he was, seventeen years later, still selling cow nuts. Hardly exciting, was it?

  Oh, well, it put a roof over their head and paid the bills. They were hardly going to get rich from it, but at the moment he’d just be grateful to get any kind of job at all. He’d give himself a few months to settle in, and then he’d have a serious think about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Because he couldn’t, in all honesty, see himself doing a sales job until he retired.

  It wasn’t all bad, though: he loved being out and about. He loved the travelling as long as it wasn’t too far and didn’t involve any overnight stays, and he loved visiting different places and meeting new people. What he didn’t love was trying to flog them something. Which was a bit of a drawback, he had to admit, if you were a salesman.

  He’d been doing it for so long it was second nature. Even though it was hard work and a thankless task sometimes, it wasn’t too much of a chore. It was just that he didn’t want to do it any more.

  He put all these thoughts behind him as he stared into the wardrobe. Lottie didn’t deserve to have a distracted husband, not when she was going to such an effort. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d been out as a couple, and certainly not when they’d been out for a meal. Lottie was a pretty good cook, and she often said she resented spending money on pub grub when she could cook just as well at home. But he guessed that sometimes she needed a break from it, and they both needed a break from the house and from the children.

  What he’d really like, and would be a total break, would be a night away. How fantastic, just him and Lottie and wild rampant sex, without the worry of trying to keep quiet in order not to wake the kids.


  Henry pulled a shirt out of the wardrobe and slipped it off its hanger. He usually lived in T-shirts and sweatshirts, and thick jumpers in the winter – farmyards were cold and often draughty places – but this evening he thought he’d make a bit of an effort, and his blue Oxford button-down was perfect with a pair of dark navy chinos. He even had a decent pair of shoes somewhere – tan leather brogues that he’d had for at least ten years but had hardly worn, so they still looked practically brand new.

  Lottie, he was delighted to see, was also making an effort. Not that she needed to, he thought hastily, just in case she could read his mind. She was beautiful anyway; she always had been and she always would be. To his eyes, she still looked about eighteen, the tiny lines around her eyes were barely noticeable, and neither were the odd grey hairs in her honey-coloured locks. He guessed she’d be one of those women who grew old gracefully, and would still look just as wonderful at sixty as she did at thirty-five.

  He watched her brush out her hair, which was long and straight, falling to just below her shoulders. She normally wore it in a ponytail or a messy bun, but in honour of the rare occasion of them going out, she was wearing it loose. He also noticed that she had make-up on. She didn’t need it, but she always looked that little bit more coquettish with mascara-covered eyelashes and pink lips.

  ‘Is that new?’ he asked, looking at her dress.

  ‘What? No! This old thing? I’ve had it ages.’

  He cocked his head at her and gave her a knowing look.

  ‘Really,’ she protested. ‘I have had it ages. I’m surprised it still fits. I bought this when Sabrina was about two but I’ve hardly worn it, so in some ways it does feel like it’s new. Do you like it?’ She did a twirl and he wolf-whistled at her.

  ‘Come on, hurry up. Mum will be here in a minute. I’m bloody desperate for a pint.’ Gallantly he opened the bedroom door for her and ushered her through it.