by Susan Lewis
‘You are nothing like him,’ Gina screamed over her. ‘And let me tell you this, you don’t want to be …’
‘So you do know who he is?’
‘Of course I know who he is …’
‘Then tell me.’
‘This conversation is ending right now. You can stay here tonight, and tomorrow I’ll put you on the next train back to university where you’d do well to concentrate on your studies and give up this …nonsense you’ve created for yourself.’
‘I came here to try and save your marriage, which is more than you seem to be doing.’
‘My marriage is my business …’
‘And my father is mine. I have a right to know who he is.’
‘Just stop it, Vivienne. Stop right now.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Oh for God’s sake …’
‘Does he know about me?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘All the difference in the world to me.’
‘But it means nothing to me.’
‘How can you be so cruel? I don’t understand …’
‘It’s you who’s being cruel, always bringing this up, forcing me to relive a time I’ve tried so hard to forget, and doing it now, when Gil has just gone … Don’t you think I’m feeling bad enough? Why did you have to come here and make me feel even worse?’
They swung round as the door opened and NanaBella came in, pale and fiery-eyed. ‘I can’t let you carry on like this,’ she said forcefully. ‘You’re tearing each other to pieces and nothing good is ever going to come of it.’
‘Then make her tell me the truth,’ Vivienne implored.
Gina’s eyes flashed in her mother’s direction. Turning to Vivienne she said, ‘You’ve heard the phrase, be careful what you wish for, well it applies here, young lady. I am trying to save you from yourself. Remember that the next time you want to bring this up.’
‘What do you think she meant by that?’ Vivienne asked, as she and Gil got up to meander back to the house.
‘I probably think the same as you,’ he replied.
Wanting it put into words, she said, ‘You mean that he wasn’t a particularly good person so she’s trying to save me from him?’
‘It seems the most logical conclusion.’
Of course it was, but there were still other options. ‘What if,’ she said, ‘she was afraid he’d try to take me away from her? That could be a reason why she never told him about me.’
He gazed up at the gulls swooping and screeching about the cliffs as he pondered this. ‘That might account for how she was about him when you were young,’ he said, ‘but not for why she still won’t discuss it now.’
Having already come up with the same answer for that, she said, ‘But if we don’t get her to talk about it, how on earth are we ever going to find him when we have absolutely nothing to go on?’
Coming to a stop, he turned her to face him and put his hands on her shoulders as he gazed tenderly into her eyes. ‘There can’t be a “we” in that scenario, Vivi,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll be there when you try to talk to her, if that’s what you want, but if she still won’t tell you anything I’m afraid I can’t help you to find him.’
Though she’d half expected the answer, Vivi still felt crushed. ‘You feel it would be disloyal,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘As much as I love you, I love her too and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt her. I think – I’m certain – that if she knew I was helping you to find your father it would hurt her very much.’
CHAPTER TEN
SHELLEY
Winter 1995
By the time The Darling Buds of May was turned into a hit TV series, Jack had been gone for almost two years. None of the family watched it; they were probably the only people in the country who didn’t. They simply couldn’t. It was too painful a reminder of the evenings he’d read the books aloud to them, and the way they’d teased one another about being just like the characters. Jack had looked nothing like David Jason who played Pop Larkin, though Shelley knew he’d have thoroughly approved of the casting, since Jason had been a favourite of his.
The series was over now, it had run for two years but there were still a thousand and one reminders of Jack all over the place and no one had stopped missing him, even for a minute.
Shelley knew she never would. Even now there were times when the loss was so deep, the grief so wrenching that she had to take herself into the woods to scream and rant as though the noise and the effort would somehow blot out the pain – and the disbelief, and the sickening, senseless tragedy of it all. Such a vital and beautiful man who did so much good in the world, who cared for everyone and brought so much joy into people’s lives. It was so wrong, so futile and cruel. What kind of god or fate would do this to someone who was in his prime and who’d still had so much to give?
Shelley was a thinner, even duller version of the woman she’d been six years ago, a woman who spent too much time being afraid for her children, and who was far more cynical now that she’d ever been. However, her heart remained in the farm and her family, the engine that seemed to operate in spite of her, keeping everything going the way Jack would have wanted her to. His heart was still here too; hardly a day went by that she couldn’t feel it beating alongside hers; often it was what got her through the day. Other times it was the children, their children, who reminded her that life, they still mattered. They’d meant everything to their father, and they continued in their different ways to try to make him proud.
‘Dad would have really liked that,’ Hanna might say for any number of reasons.
‘I wish I could tell Dad about my violin lessons,’ Zoe would lament. ‘I think he’d be pleased.’
‘I made the squirrel better all by myself,’ Josh told her yesterday, dashing in through the kitchen door, pride and amazement all over his face. ‘I can probably put it back in the woods next week.’ He’d learned his healing skills from Jack, of course, and it just about broke Shelley’s heart to see how brave her young boy was, and how determined to follow in his father’s footsteps. He’d grown so tall already, and was so like Jack it caught at her heart in the most painful way, especially when he smiled. There wasn’t another smile like it. She loved him so much, probably too much, but they all did. He had the same reckless air about him that Jack had always had, along with an interest in everything, a mischievous humour, and an energy that had a magnetic quality all of its own. Just about everyone seemed to respond to this – his friends, neighbours, teachers, and the many people who came to the farm. Most impressive of all was the way he seemed so effortlessly to connect with the natural world. Animals never appeared to be as afraid of him as their protective instincts should have made them; Shelley could swear that some even spoke to him, for the way he understood them allowed no other explanation.
‘They do,’ he would assure her whenever she teased him about it, and he’d look so serious, and surprised she’d even doubt it, that she’d play along and ask what they said. He’d usually tell her that it was a secret between him and the sheep, or pony, or weasel, or whatever was receiving his attention that day. Then he’d break into a grin, not yet able to hold the tease the way his father had, and she’d have to hug him even though he didn’t much like being hugged now he was ten.
This morning Shelley was in the kitchen, oblivious to the icy rain spattering the windows outside and to the delicious aroma of a stew rising from the Aga. It was a rare quiet moment that had turned into a reflective one as she’d found herself staring at the bronze figurine in its niche – the female dancer whose flapper elegance and fluid movement had been so exquisitely captured by her creator that she almost seemed to breathe. As always, her right hand was reaching for her partner’s, ready to be whirled into the next steps, but her partner, the man with the rakish hat and baggy suit, was no longer there.
Shelley still wasn’t sure precisely when she’d noticed the male dancer had gone.
She only knew that it had been sometime after Jack’s funeral; not the same day, but a few days, maybe a week later. It had baffled and even scared her when she’d first registered the empty space. It was as though the tragedy of Jack’s death was being reflected in the separation of the inanimate objects. The man had gone; the woman was alone, unable to continue even the illusion of a dance. How, when exactly, had it disappeared? No one would have moved it, there was no reason to, and yet it wasn’t there. She’d questioned everyone, her tone close to accusing, as if someone had deliberately hidden it from her, but no one had. She’d got them to search the house from top to bottom, turning every room and cupboard inside out, even emptying the bins, and ransacking the barns, pens, stables … It had felt as though she was looking for Jack, that if she could find the missing male bronze she’d somehow find him.
When it hadn’t turned up she’d contacted the police to let them know that something was missing after all, but as she couldn’t tell them for certain if it had disappeared the night Jack died, there really hadn’t been anything they could do. There was no evidence of an intruder, added to which was the fact that the post-mortem had shown that his death had been caused by a fatal blow to the head resulting from a fall down the stairs. No foul play involved, and how could she argue with that when she’d been right there?
For a while, during the craziest period of her grief, she’d actually wondered if Jack had taken it with him and was waiting to hand it to her when she finally went to join him. She didn’t think that now, of course, at least some sanity had prevailed in the past six years, but whenever she paused for a moment to look at the female, alone in the niche, she found the symbolism of it hard to bear.
‘Oh, God, not again,’ Hanna groaned as she came into the kitchen to find her mother gazing wistfully at the figurine. ‘Isn’t it about time you put something else there? We’re never going to find the other one. I hope you realize that by now.’
Hurt, but not showing it, Shelley turned to look at her elder daughter, thin, scruffy, brittle and not yet sixteen. She had Shelley’s light brown hair and pointy chin, Jack’s cornflower-blue eyes and her own view of the world. Like most girls – and boys – of her age this view was constantly changing, but one that seemed to have stuck for Hanna lately was the one that had apparently turned her mother into an imbecile.
The saddest part of that, for Shelley, was how Hanna had started to scorn the farm in the same way. Ever since they’d come to Deerwood she had loved the animals, the land, the freedom, the very essence of life here. She’d learned so much from her father, even more than she or Shelley had realized until after he’d gone when, as a family, they’d pulled together to make things work. It was either that, or return to London.
Hanna had never been in any doubt about the way forward.
‘The last thing Dad would want,’ she’d insisted hotly back then, sounding far older than her meagre nine years, ‘is for us to give up on everything we’ve built here. I get that it’s going to be a struggle, and that it won’t be anywhere near as much fun without him, but I think we should at least try to make him proud.’
‘I agree with that,’ four-year-old Josh had piped up, putting his arms round Dodgy as if speaking for the dog too.
‘And me,’ Zoe told her mother, red-eyed from crying over the loss of her father.
Shelley would never forget that deputation of three small children who’d believed in themselves and the spirit of their father so intensely that they’d never seemed to entertain the idea that they couldn’t keep things going. She’d felt so proud of them that day, and so moved by their determination, that even now the memory of it melted her heart.
‘Where have you been all day?’ she asked, as Hanna yanked open a cupboard and grabbed a packet of KitKats. ‘Zoe and Grandpa waited for you this morning. You said you were going to help at the Farmers’ Market.’
‘So I had better things to do,’ Hanna retorted rudely.
‘Such as?’
Hanna scowled. ‘What’s it to you?’
Shelley tried not to sigh, knowing it would only fan the flames. ‘I’d like to know where you keep disappearing off to,’ she replied, not for the first time over these past few months. Recently Hanna had become almost unrecognizable from the heroic, hard-working land girl she’d been before teenage hormones had turned her into a budding monster.
‘I’m getting what’s called a life,’ Hanna snorted, ‘and that definitely isn’t to be found around here in this godforsaken place.’
Shelley took a breath and let it go slowly. She was aware that on some level Hanna’s new and unpleasant attitude was some kind of delayed reaction to her father’s death. She hadn’t seemed to grieve much at the time, had simply thrown herself into hard work and study; however, to suggest such a thing to her would only result in more rudeness, or outbursts of scorn. So for the time being Shelley was doing her best to back away from confrontations, and told herself that Hanna was going to the gym, or a dance class, maybe even the library where she used to do a Saturday morning story-reading session for under-fives until she’d found other things to occupy her time. However, the next point had to be made, so bracing herself, she said, ‘You should be revising. Your exams start next week …’
‘Tell me something I don’t already know,’ Hanna cut in tartly. ‘God, you’re such a nag. Why don’t you do us both a favour and just leave me alone?’ and spinning on the heel of a tatty trainer she stomped up the stairs to her room, taking the KitKats with her.
Shelley looked around the kitchen and tried to focus on what she should be doing, instead of what she’d like to do, which was sit down and weep. The water troughs were frozen; more hay needed moving into the lambing shed, a dozen or more tree guards needed repair … A batch of new fruit trees had arrived yesterday, but the ground was too hard for planting, and it was too late in the day to start any more hedge-trimming or ditch-clearing now.
Hearing the boot-room door open, followed by the sound of someone kicking off their wellies, she guessed it was her mother, and felt a stir of relief as Patty trudged into the kitchen, red-cheeked and wind-tousled, and carrying a large basket full of empty jars.
‘Did I see Hanna just now?’ Patty asked, hefting her heavy burden onto the table.
‘You did. Are those for preserves, pickles or pesto?’
‘Not the season for any of them,’ Patty reminded her, dabbing a square of kitchen towel to her wet cheeks. She might be in her mid-sixties now with a slightly arthritic hip and high blood pressure, but she still looked ten years younger, and had the energy of a forty-year-old. Shelley had always loved her dearly, and couldn’t remember a time when they’d ever gone through what she was enduring now with Hanna, or certainly not with so much bitterness attached. ‘I’ve brought them over to be washed,’ Patty explained. ‘Our dishwasher’s on the blink, and the plumber can’t get here till Monday.’
Since Jack had gone the family had pulled together in a way that had made all the difference to them being able to stay at Deerwood. No matter how strong her children’s resolve to keep things going, they’d been too young to take on everything themselves, and besides they were at school. However, unprompted, Nate had given up his job as a firefighter to come and work full-time on the farm, while Kat had opened a crèche in the nearby village to help bring in some extra funds. Meantime, Shelley’s parents had sold their London home to come and live at Deerwood, staying in the farmhouse while one of the derelict barns was converted into three parts, a quaint, two-bedroomed cottage for them, a small animal sanctuary for Josh with a loft store above, and the rest of the space for rustic-holiday rentals.
‘Plenty of people want to bring their children to farms for a holiday,’ her father, George, had insisted when they’d been deciding what to do with the barn, and he’d been proved right, for even before the place was ready to let they’d advertised for the coming summer and received plenty of bookings. Now it provided another small but fairly steady income to add to David’
s thriving organic fruit and vegetable business, and her mother’s popular hampers of everything from home-made jams, to goat and sheep cheeses, elderflower wine and succulent sponge cakes. She even made soaps and rose-scented room sprays these days.
Under George’s steady guidance the family had learned how to capitalize on their assets, and though they’d never be rich, they were certainly making ends meet. Jack would have been thrilled to see how innovative they had become. He’d even, knowing him, have been fully supportive of the many other plans Shelley had in mind for Deerwood. However, they were for the future, and if his death had taught her anything, it was to appreciate what they had now before it suddenly wasn’t there any more.
‘I’m expecting a shipment of Spanish lemons from the wholesaler,’ Patty chattered on, as Shelley helped her to load the dishwasher. ‘No sign of them, I suppose.’
‘Not yet,’ Shelley confirmed. ‘What are they for?’
‘Cheesecakes, possets and tarts. David wants some for his stall next Saturday – they went down very well last week – and I’ve promised a selection for the WI event on Sunday. Have you seen your father since this morning?’
‘He’s helping Nate and Josh move the pregnant ewes inside ready for their vaccines. The last thing we need is some God-awful disease getting hold of them. Actually, that reminds me,’ and turning to the wall calendar that Zoe and Josh had created as a Christmas gift for her last year, Shelley searched for her blue-coloured entries. It was the first calendar they’d made since Jack had gone – in fact, it had taken over a year for anyone to bring themselves to take down the one that still had all his chocolate-brown entries on it. Shifts at the vet’s; renewals of memberships; dental visits, Shelley’s birthday surprise … In the end, in a fit of rage with the world and more pain than she could bear, Shelley had torn it to pieces and burned it.
Hanna hadn’t deigned to get involved with the new one; she hadn’t even selected a colour for her crayon, or entered a single commitment to the daily squares.