Homecoming

by Susie Steiner

  ‘Only this stack to go,’ says Lauren, bringing a pile of plates over from the kitchen table and putting them next to Ann on the counter.

  Ann had managed, late this morning, to peel Joe away from the to-ings and fro-ings and take him to Lipton to see the flat. He’d harrumphed all the way up the stairs, complained about the smell, the size, the state of the place but she could see some sparkle in his face, a covered-up interest in it when he said, ‘I’ll have to pull this lino up.’ She could see him thinking, ‘There’s a job for me here,’ which was a pleasure to him (much as he wouldn’t admit it) after saying goodbye to so much.

  ‘Look Joe,’ she’d said, standing at the window. ‘You could go to the club in your slippers.’

  ‘I’m not that old yet that I can’t put me shoes on,’ he’d grumbled. But he’d stood next to her looking around the room and she could feel it coming off him – something similar to what she felt, a new start, a new type of life that would be interesting and different to the one they’d had.

  Upstairs, they’d stood in the second bedroom with the sun streaming in through muddy glass and she’d said, ‘Max could go in here, you see.’

  ‘Is he going to be back with us till he’s fifty?’ Joe said.

  ‘No,’ she’d scoffed. ‘Don’t be daft. Just till he’s back on his feet, settled at Talbot’s, and off the drink. He’s hurt, Joe. We have to look after him.’

  ‘You’ve changed your tune.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ she’d said, venturing back down the stairs.

  She wasn’t stupid. She knew they’d struggle with it: leaving Marpleton and the house her children had grown up in and the work of the farm and that connection with the land and the fell. But she also had the sense that the worst was behind them, and that the changes were most painful when you resisted them or in the run-up. It was gone now, and a rest would do them no harm. They could be snug in this place, without auction or feed prices to worry about. She’d even snuck into Al’s Electrical to see about the price of halogen down-lighters while Joe went for a loaf to Greggs.

  She hands Lauren a plate and the drips tickle down Ann’s bare forearm.

  ‘That’s doing nothing,’ she says, nodding at the sodden rag Lauren is holding. ‘There’s a clean one in the drawer.’

  Lauren turns and while she’s bent over the drawer she says, ‘There’s some news actually.’

  Ann looks at her friend but she’s only half present, her mind feeling its way endlessly over the new landscape she’s moving through. She says, ‘Don’t tell me, you’re pregnant.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Lauren says, shaking out a tea towel with sheep breeds on it. ‘I’m just pretending to be in me sixties. Hanging out with you geriatric old farts makes me feel good about meself.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Sylvie’s pregnant.’

  Ann stops, both wet hands in the air. ‘Oh Lauren!’

  She puts her arms around her, keeping her hands out and feeling tears prick in the corners of her eyes.

  ‘A baby, Ann,’ says Lauren. ‘A baby that’s just a little bit mine.’

  ‘More ’an a bit. A quarter.’

  ‘After Jack . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I thought,’ Lauren is breaking up, ‘I thought I’d never hold a baby again and be that in love wi’ it.’

  ‘And now you will.’

  Lauren is sobbing now, heaving with it. It’s come sudden, out of nowhere –perhaps she’s been turning it over in her mind with all the drying-up she’s been doing.

  ‘When it happened,’ she is saying, between little gasps, ‘when it happened, Ann, I thought life would never go on, and now . . .’ She sniffs, laughing at herself. ‘I’m already scared. What if he gets sick? What if I love ’im too much and he gets sick?’

  Ann shakes her head at Lauren as if to say, ‘Don’t be daft woman.’

  ‘I don’t even think Sylvie wants this baby,’ Lauren blurts, in the relief of tears that are better out than in. ‘I think she’s doing it for me and I don’t care, I want it that much.’ She wipes her eyes with the tea towel.

  ‘Well, it’s the least she can do after you bought her that car.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Lauren. ‘Absolutely.’

  They return to their positions, Ann at the sink, Lauren waiting with her tea towel for the next plate.

  ‘Where’s Ruby got to?’ asks Lauren.

  ‘Gone upstairs to read her book.’

  They are silent for a time, then Ann says, ‘Happen I could get that baby gym back off Primrose.’

  ‘Don’t you dare. I can afford another baby gym. God, you’re tight. Any road, sounds like Primrose might need it herself before long.’

  Ann turns to her in surprise, and Lauren holds up her tea towel in defence. ‘Only a rumour,’ she says.

  ‘Poor Max,’ says Ann sadly.

  ‘He’ll be alright Ann. He will. He’ll be better off at Talbot’s. He’ll meet someone, someone more suited. I’ve always thought Max needed a right bossy woman – someone to knock him into shape. Take charge.’

  ‘Someone like his mother you mean,’ Ann says.

  ‘Not that bossy, no,’ says Lauren, giving Ann a squeeze about the shoulders. ‘Here, shall we go back and see the flat again tomorrow? Do some measuring?’

  *

  ‘You can’t take Baby Lamb to that flat,’ says Bartholomew.

  ‘So your mother keeps telling me,’ says Joe.

  They are leaning on a fence looking out across the in-bye, each with a boot on the bottom rung and Baby Lamb nipping the grass at their feet. The field is set with empty metal pens, the stock having been loaded into various trailers and transported to new farms. A burger van stands like a stranded white box with its hatch padlocked, waiting to be towed away.

  ‘When’s Alan coming for that?’ asks Bartholomew.

  ‘Dunno,’ says Joe. ‘Said there was no hurry.’

  ‘What’ll you do wi’ it then? Baby Lamb, I mean.’

  ‘What’ll I do with him you mean?’ says Joe. ‘Max says he’ll tek him. Says Talbot’ll find a spot in his farmyard with the petting animals. Very progressive is Talbot – tamed animals for kids to stroke. A visitor centre he calls it but I’ve seen it – just a yard it is.’

  ‘You get good subsidies for that, teaching schoolkids about hedgerows and lambing, all that,’ says Bartholomew. He notices his Yorkshire has become thicker since being home, or perhaps just in conversation with his father.

  ‘Aye and grows fuel crops,’ Joe says. ‘Tries out all sorts does Talbot. There’s no flies on him.’

  There is something in Joe’s voice – is it impatience with his son, or contempt for Talbot? Bartholomew can’t quite make it out – some cynicism as least, about other people’s efforts. Understandable, he thinks, Joe’s defensiveness towards Talbot, the farmer who is still farming and soon to be the focus of Max’s needy gaze. Yes, he should be understanding, but instead he says: ‘Still doing your bidding then, Max.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, taking Baby Lamb off your hands. Staying on up here, farming with Talbot, moving into the flat with you and mum.’

  ‘You’d have him leave us too, would ye?’

  ‘No, I . . .’

  ‘We can’t all be as perfect as you, Bartholomew. Some of us know our limitations. Important that – to know your limits. We all have them, you know. Even you.’

  ‘What you mean is, you know our limits – mine, Talbot’s, Max’s. No one’s allowed to exceed you.’ And as he says it, Bartholomew feels he’s trespassing where he shouldn’t – on the rightful order of things – but he can’t stop himself. He looks nervously across the in-bye, avoiding Joe’s gaze.

  ‘Exceed me? Big word that,’ Joe says.

  ‘Do well then, do better. Would that be so terrible?’

  ‘Yes, it’s terrible. Wonderful and terrible.’

  Joe hangs his head low between his shoulder blades and kicks the base of the fence.

/>   ‘Happen I’ll have more time to travel now the farm’s gone. I could come and visit maybe, see what you’ve got down there – your place.’

  Bartholomew looks back at him and he thinks he’s never felt so small and so sorry and so much full of love and also a kind of sorrow that might be the new order of things.

  ‘You’ll have to let me get it ready. Tidy the place up a bit. For the royal visit.’

  ‘Oh aye, I expect the red-carpet treatment.’

  And he shakes Bartholomew at the neck, like an apple tree, and Bartholomew submits to it.

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks go to Alexandra Shelley for being a most attentive reader, and for cheerleading when all seemed lost. Thank you to my agent Sarah Ballard for taking me on and being unflappable. And to my editor, Sarah Savitt, for enthusiasm and faith and careful reading.

  For help in my research, thanks go to Steve Dunkley at Eblex and Paul Harper of The Farmer Network. Mistakes or licence taken with the details of fell farming are mine, not theirs.

  For various kindnesses, thanks to John and Deborah Steiner, Eve Happold, Jane Milton, Laura Godfrey, Daniel Burbidge, Sian and Joel Rickett. Thank you Maggie O’Farrell, Andrew Cowan and the Arvon Foundation for early encouragement. My thoughts go to Sarah Didinal, who came with me on the first research trip for this book and whom I still miss.

  Thank you George and Ben for being the sweetest distraction at the end of the writing day. Above all, there was one person who believed in this book before anyone else did, and who was its greatest champion: love and gratitude go to my husband, Tom Happold.

  About the Author

  Susie Steiner is a former Guardian journalist. She was a commissioning editor on the paper for eleven years and prior to that worked for The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard. She lives in London with her husband and two young sons. Find out more at www.susiesteiner.co.uk.

  First published in 2013

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2013

  All rights reserved

  © Susie Steiner, 2013

  The right of Susie Steiner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Extract from Home Electrics by Julian Bridgewater,

  copyright Julian Bridgewater, 2004, New Holland Publishers Ltd

  Extract from Unless by Carol Shields first published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2002. Copyright © 2002 Carol Shields

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–29665–1