Homecoming

by Susie Steiner

  Some intuitive impulse made her take the test. She’d gone to the chemist in her lunch hour. The shop was deserted and Karen Marshall was looking bored, sat on a stool behind the counter, rearranging nail polishes. Primrose’s heart sank when she realised the Clear Blues were right next to Karen, so she’d have to ask. ‘Can I have a test, Karen?’ she’d said.

  Karen had made a point of hiding the test in a bag. ‘There you go, Prim,’ she’d said, over-mouthing the words in a low voice. So Primrose doesn’t know why she’s bothered trying to stop Max from telling Joe. Thanks to Karen Marshall, the whole dale would know by morning.

  *

  Max walks out of the kitchen and hangs his fleece on the finial at the bottom of the stairs. He takes the stairs two at a time, his heart pounding, to the small bathroom where the door is ajar, its glass panels etched with daisies.

  He leans over the sink and looks up at his face, eager to see if it might look different now he’s set to become a father. He is smiling still, stupidly, like the joy might burst out of him. He sees Joe’s beady black eyes crinkle with pleasure. ‘A baby! Ann, Ann! A baby! Did you hear that? Well lad, that’s grand.’ And he’d get out a bottle of fizz from the larder, one they were saving for Christmas, and he’d pop it. Because bairns, that was what the Hartles did well; that was their strength. He’d seen it in the photos and in all the stories Ann and Joe were forever telling, when they looked at each other in that particular way, full of nostalgia. ‘Remember, Ann, that party for Max? You did that smashing picnic in the barn. It was sweltering that day. And we cooled off in Little Beck. Bartholomew went right under, d’you remember?’ ‘Don’t,’ Ann had said, patting her collar-bones, ‘it still makes me go cold.’ But she was smiling at Joe. Now Max is bringing them full circle, he is the first and he will bring it all back for them. He turns off the tap. Joe was always saying that bairns turn things around for a man. Fire up the heart. He could do with some of that. Max scoops up water in his palms, sloshing it over his face and onto the floor. When he looks up again, steam from the hot tap is erasing his reflection, so that only his neck remains.

  *

  ‘I’ve got to go and see him next week,’ Ann says over the roof of Lauren’s car. They are outside the George in Morpeth-le-Dale. They slam their doors and their feet crunch on gravel in the dark night.

  ‘Who? Barry Jordan?’ says Lauren.

  ‘Yes. God I’m dreading it. He always makes me feel guilty that man, as if buying a fruit loaf from Greggs were some cardinal sin. Lord forgive me, I weakened over a peg bag in Coopers!’

  ‘Hang on,’ says Lauren, stopping Ann with a hand on her arm. ‘You’ve got a new peg bag?’

  ‘Drawstring. Fully lined.’

  ‘Be still my beating heart,’ says Lauren, and then she’s pressing forward again and pushing open the pub door. Ann wishes she could delay her, keep the conversation just the two of them a moment longer, so that Lauren could tut, like she does, and say, ‘That Barry Jordan. ’E wouldn’t know a peg bag if he were smothered with one.’

  But Lauren has gone in and pushed open the second inner door and Ann is already faced with the warmth and noise of the George and all the team over at the bar. Lauren leads the way, Ann behind her like some cade lamb. Lauren says hello to the team: Elaine Henderson, smart twin-set; Mo Dorkin, short and round, with a gold tooth; Pat Branning, tall, face as open as a hay barn. (You could never dislike a woman who smiled as much as that.) Other ladies, whose names Ann doesn’t know, are gathered behind Elaine. Ann hangs back in a cloud of Lauren’s perfume, with a hand up to any attempted embrace, saying ‘I’ve got a bit of a cold,’ to which a couple of the women say ‘Poor you’.

  ‘Right,’ says Lauren to the assembled group. ‘What are we playing? Round the clock or double-in, double-out? Has anyone spoken to the George team?’

  ‘Actually,’ one of the ladies says, but then she stops and there is a general shuffling in the group. ‘Elaine thought . . .’

  ‘I thought I’d have a bash at captain for the first round,’ says Elaine, with military briskness. You’d not want to find yourself on the wrong side of Elaine. Nor Lauren Blakely, for that matter.

  Elaine continues, ‘You won’t mind, will ye, Lauren – letting someone else have a turn?’

  ‘I thought we were getting a league together,’ says Lauren, squaring up. ‘We’ve some very inexperienced players,’ she says, casting a look at Ann. ‘It’s important the captain knows who to play.’

  ‘Captaincy’s not been decided yet,’ says Elaine Henderson, with some force. ‘And as you were late . . .’

  ‘Five minutes,’ snorts Lauren.

  Ann hears in her head the whistling music from that Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. What was it now – High Noon? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? That’d be about right. The ladies shift again, like some restive herd. Pat is smiling with all her face, as if this alone might smooth things.

  ‘Double-in, double-out then, everyone?’ says Elaine. ‘I need eight ladies who can hit the board.’

  ‘Might as well sit down,’ Lauren whispers to Ann. ‘She’ll not pick us for this round.’

  Ann exhales with relief.

  They buy a round of drinks and she, Mo and Pat follow Lauren to a table. They sit in a line along the banquette, watching women gather in front of the dartboard on the opposite side of the room. The floor is a busy swirl of burgundy carpet, the dark wood pillars dripping with horse brasses.

  ‘Here, Hayley Barnsdale’s up,’ says Mo. They all look across the floor to an attractive woman in a purple mohair sweater. ‘Found love off the Internet, so Karen Marshall says. Madly in love, by all accounts.’

  Ann and Lauren shoot a glance at each other.

  Mo and Karen from the chemist: the espionage dream team, their periscopes in every bedroom across the dale. There were al-Qaida cells less vigilant than those two.

  ‘Gone on holiday an’ everything,’ Mo is saying. ‘Greece, Karen said. Happen she left her daughter behind. She stopped with the Richardsons a couple of nights, so I hear.’

  ‘You’d know all about it, would ye?’ says Lauren.

  ‘Just what I heard,’ says Mo. ‘Only seven, she is. Well, it’s not right, is it?’

  ‘That’s it, Mo,’ says Lauren. ‘You suck the lifeblood out of others’ happiness.’

  Bit harsh, thinks Ann, watching the two of them. Only human, to be interested in folks’ lives. But she can see what it is about Mo that rankles. It’s the glee. The feeling that if you were bleeding to death in the street, she’d have more to say about the price of your shoes.

  They get in another two rounds, during which time Ann asks Pat about her children. Her son has motor neurone disease. That ever-present smile seems heroic now. All these braveries, Ann thinks, that are hidden in people’s lives.

  Lauren asks Ann about Ivy Dawson’s mobility scooter.

  ‘Don’t get me started. That woman’s a liability,’ says Ann, but a gasp is rippling round the room and all eyes are on the floor. Lauren is straining up out of her seat. She begins a low incantation, through her teeth.

  ‘Don’t put Brenda up. Don’t put Brenda up. Don’t put Brenda up.’

  They all look across the room.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Ann asks Mo.

  ‘It’s getting towards the end of the round is all. Scores are low so it’s harder to hit the points home. Even the best players —’ Mo stops and throws her hands into her lap. ‘Well, that’s in then. Might as well go home.’

  Brenda Farley, who is eighty if she’s a day, has taken to the floor. Her toe is on the yellow line, a dart in her hand. She is four foot two and so stooped by a dowager’s hump that she can barely see the board. They all watch as Brenda strains her eyes upwards, her brow furrowing hard into horizontal pencil pleats, and then it’s as if the stoop gets the better of her and her gaze returns to the floor.

  ‘Oh god, I can’t watch,’ says Lauren. She has her hand up over her eyes, with two fingers parted to peer
through.

  ‘It’s just cruel is that,’ says Pat.

  ‘There’s no point watching,’ says Lauren angrily. ‘She’ll be all week just trying to lift that neck.’ She turns to Ann. ‘Let’s talk about summat else. Have you brought the ewes down for tupping?’

  ‘Not yet,’ says Ann. ‘Next week or two.’

  ‘What’s tupping?’ asks Pat.

  ‘It’s when you put the rams in to serve the ewes,’ says Ann, grateful to be the keeper of some knowledge at last. ‘A tup is what we call a ram, you see, for breeding.’

  Ann’s last words are drowned out by a loud gasp, then another, deeper than the last, and then cheers and clapping as the room erupts, free and strong. Brenda Farley is smiling, though she has allowed her gaze to return floorward. Other team members pat her on the hump.

  ‘Well I never,’ says Lauren.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ says Pat.

  ‘Just shows you,’ says Mo.

  ‘What? What happened?’ asks Ann.

  ‘Two doubles and a bully, that’s what happened,’ says Lauren. ‘I’d best congratulate Elaine.’

  ‘Don’t choke on it,’ says Ann.

  *

  ‘A gimmer,’ says Ruby. She takes a fulsome slug of pale ale. ‘Hang on, I know this: a gimmer is a female lamb, sold for breeding.’

  Bartholomew raises his pint to her. ‘Very good. And what’s a mule gimmer?’

  ‘Oooh, give me a minute. A mule gimmer is . . . a cross-bred lamb. Not a pedigree.’

  ‘And with Swaledales we cross with?’

  ‘The Blue-Faced Leicester!’

  ‘My work here is done,’ he says, clinking his pint glass against hers.

  ‘So that email was from your mum,’ she says. ‘Why didn’t you just say?’

  He shrugs. Takes another gulp of his pint.

  ‘She’s worried then,’ says Ruby.

  He nods. ‘Not the best time to be a farmer.’ He is looking out across the room: stripped-oak floors; tongue-and-groove bar painted ‘heritage’ green; industrial lights. The Three Kings on Cathedral Way is a pub with an eye firmly on itself. Not like the boozers back home.

  ‘So, you’re still working on that main bed,’ she says.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Run this by me again. You’re putting more plants in the ground.’

  He hasn’t told her how much this central bed – his new project – means to him. When his mind is idling, he thinks about it: sketching out the ribbons of oriental poppies, aquilegias and verbascum; the great drifts of alliums and tulipa ‘spring green’.

  ‘Just in case someone tries to do something crazy, like buy them?’ Ruby is saying.

  ‘I know it doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Is capitalism ready for a visionary such as yourself?’

  ‘I often ask myself the same question.’

  ‘I suppose,’ she says, ‘you’ll be showing off plants to their best effect – showing what they look like in a border.’

  ‘It’s not just that. It’s what I’m into. Leonard thinks it’s pointless, too.’

  ‘Leonard thinks everything’s pointless.’

  ‘There’s something about plants in those mean little nine-centimetre pots. I want to see them expand.’

  ‘Can you afford it?’ she says.

  ‘Arh, businesses don’t expect to make much in the first couple of years. If I really want kerching, it won’t be from plants, anyway.’

  ‘What d’ye mean?’

  ‘It’s the other guff that makes money – your gazebos, those nasty solar lights, plastic toadstools.’

  ‘How depressing,’ she says, with feeling. Ruby says everything with feeling. ‘I mean, what you’re doing with that bed is so much more special.’

  He says nothing.

  Ruby says, ‘I think you should ditch the horrible knick-knacks and go for it on the main bed. Do what you love – find a way.’

  He drains his glass.

  ‘What about if you made it a destination – a place people visit and hang out in? So what you would become is a beautiful garden with a nursery attached.’

  ‘Beautiful gardens don’t make money.’

  ‘Why not? You could make something really brilliant, Bartholomew. That old lean-to – the glass one – that’d make a great café. Vines in the ceiling, sand on the floor, newspapers on wooden tables. And if you got rid of all the plastic crap, that corner of your warehouse could be a farm shop. Bung in a kids’ playground in the lower field.’

  ‘All that takes money. I’ve got no money, Rube. I’ve got bank loans up to my eyeballs and piss-all income. That’s why the fishing gnomes have to stay.’

  She slumps back, jutting out her lower lip. ‘Lottery maybe.’

  He stands up.

  ‘No wonder you don’t have a name,’ she says. ‘You don’t really know what it is yet.’

  ‘I’m going to put some music on. See if I can inject some atmosphere into this place.’

  The pints roll on, Ruby downing them as they come. She’s a terrible drinker – can’t take it at all, because she drinks so seldom, so she soon starts to sway with it, putting her head on his shoulder, laughing too loudly. She was right about a name for the place. In the two years since opening, he’d been functioning under the trade name ‘Garden Centre’, always with a view to rebranding it eventually – a strategy that drew uniform derision from anyone with experience in business. His mother kept suggesting ‘Have a Hartle’, which kept him awake at night.

  ‘Have a Hartle! Christ, that’s bad!’ shouts Ruby, slamming her pint down on the table so that a wave of it sloshes over the side of the glass.

  ‘I know,’ he says.

  ‘We can do better ’an that.’

  ‘I was thinking something youthful and urban – just one word,’ he says. ‘You know, like Planted. Excepted that’s taken.’

  ‘Or Soiled.’ She laughs. ‘Come off it, Bartholomew. One word is pretentious.’

  They look out across the bar in silence.

  ‘Worth a Trowel?’ says Ruby. ‘Pot Luck? All You Need Is Lush?’

  ‘If you’re not going to be serious . . .’

  ‘I’m just thinking out loud. Let’s think about your stock.’

  ‘Well, um, there’s some hard landscaping, you know, paving stones and stuff, bricks, gravel, compost. In the warehouse there’s fertilisers and plant food – like fish, blood and bone.’

  ‘I don’t think fish, blood and bone is going to draw in the crowds. Tools?’ She burps with her mouth shut. ‘’Scuse me.’

  ‘Spades, forks, aerators, hedge trimmers. This isn’t getting us anywhere. And anyway, this is about the tenth time we’ve gone through it.’

  ‘Maybe we should be thinking elegant rather than cool. It’s on Ray Street, Ray of Hope! Hoe Ray Me?’

  ‘Oh god, this is rubbish,’ he says.

  ‘No, hang on. Alive and Digging!’

  ‘Alive and Digging?’

  ‘As in the U2 song.’

  ‘Simple Minds actually. No one’s going to get that.’

  ‘P’raps not. Dig . . . dig . . . Can You Dig It? Dig When You’re Winning! The Dug Out. Diggery Pokery.’

  ‘Please stop.’

  ‘Thanks very mulch.’ Ruby is now slurring. And hiccuping.

  ‘Let’s get you home,’ he says, standing and putting on his padded jacket.

  *

  Ann sits heavily down in the passenger seat and enjoys the support against the base of her back. Lauren’s car is always immaculate. Still smells of car showrooms even though it’s not new by a long chalk. Nissan-something. Not like the fifteen-year-old draughty thing Joe drives. You could be sure of a cold bum and poor visibility in a Hartle vehicle.

  ‘Amazing performance from Brenda,’ she says.

  ‘You’re telling me,’ says Lauren, peering at the road. ‘That woman’s barely hit the board in a year, and suddenly . . .’ She pulls out slowly, both hands on the top of the steering wheel, her body hunched over i
t. ‘Come to think of it, that woman’s barely seen the board in a year, never mind hit it.’

  Ann listens to the rhythmic thrub of Lauren’s windscreen-wipers and looks over at her friend, whose face is outlined with a greenish glow from the dashboard. Loose flesh on her cheeks, sagging below the jawline. Crow’s feet about the eyes. God we look old, she thinks.

  ‘How’s your kitchen coming along?’

  ‘Oh Lord it’s slow,’ says Lauren, craning forward again, flicking the indicator for a right turn. ‘Trouble is, when they’re there – the builders I mean – you can’t wait to see the back of them for all the dust. And then they’re gone again and you’re cursing because it’s all half done and I’m dying to put all me things away. Sorry, I can really get boring on this one.’

  ‘You let rip love.’

  ‘Well, since you insist. Eric’s no help.’

  ‘You do surprise me.’

  Lauren laughs. ‘Honestly, that man could drive you to drink. He never talks seriously to the builders, always leaves that to me. He’s their best friend, cracking jokes, charming their socks off. Then, soon as they’re gone, he goes around the kitchen picking at this and that. “They haven’t put these hinges on properly. That tiling should be done by now.” As if I’m his foreman and I should be following him around with a pad and pen.’

  They’ve had this conversation, or versions of it, for twenty-odd years. They have this saying, she and Lauren, which they say in unison. ‘Don’t put your husband on a pedestal. He’ll only want dusting.’

  ‘It’ll be done soon,’ says Ann, ‘and then you’ll love it. You’ll forget this bit.’

  ‘I know, but I tell you, never again. Anyway don’t let me go on. How are the boys?’

  ‘Their campaign of secrecy continues,’ says Ann. ‘If they told me owt, they’d have to kill me. Bartholomew is too far away, and Max . . .’