What bound him to the past? His title, his lands, his manor house, his tenants, his mother?
I wonder what the opposite of hiraeth is. The sense of being trapped by a past that also, like the idealised version, never really existed.
“Henry?” Jemima stirred and stared. “Where have you been?”
“I’ve been here all the time,” he said without thinking.
Her lip trembled and he took the cup from her hand and placed it carefully on the bedside table before putting his hands over hers and squeezing.
“Henry…”
“I’m here. I’m here all the time, and I won’t go away. I might pop next door from time to time but I’m always here. You know that, don’t you?”
“Henry. Don’t go.”
“I’m here.” Richard’s voice rasped and he cleared his throat. “I’m not going anywhere, Jemima. Try and sleep. Try and sleep.”
Her eyes were already fluttering shut. “Henry, don’t go.”
“I’m here,” he whispered. “You’re safe.”
Her fingers flexed weakly and he held on, bowing his head. Her breathing was rattling in her thin chest.
“Jemima. Mum.”
She was asleep.
Chapter Eleven
“Are you happy being single?” Helena ran her hand firmly over the packing tape that was wrapped around the final box of paperwork. Vicky was ferrying back and forth from the office to where her car was parked in the yard outside, filling the boot with all the paraphernalia that had accumulated in the stables.
“Most of the time, yeah, for the moment, I guess.” Vicky paused in the doorway and waited for Helena to pass the box. “Thanks. Bloody hell, what’s in this one?”
“Everything else that didn’t fit in the others. But it’s the last one.”
Vicky hauled it outside, legs quivering, and loaded it into the car, wedging it precariously between the other boxes. She slammed the boot shut and the car’s suspension bounced. She turned to Helena who had come to the door, dangling the key. “Ready, then?”
Helena shook her head. “No. I still can’t believe he’s done this.”
“Was he drunk?”
“When he rang? Yeah, and then some. I suppose he dropped me home after the spa and just hit the bottle because it was gone ten when he called me.”
“And he just said we had to get out?”
“Pretty much. He wanted nothing more to do with any of this. Oh shit, Vicky, I am so sorry, I feel like I’ve ruined everything.”
“You haven’t! Oh don’t start. Come here. Have a hug.”
Helena let herself sniff against Vicky’s broad shoulders for a moment before pulling back. “Thanks, Vicky. I don’t even care about him and the relationship any more. It’s the project I’m upset about. All that hard work, gone.”
“No! Don’t say that.” Vicky gripped Helena’s upper arms and shook her. “Come on. Get into the car. We’re off to the pub.”
“What about all the stuff? Are we dropping it at the school on the way?”
“No. Er, surprise… I made some phone calls this morning and there’s been a change of plan.”
Helena buckled up in the passenger seat. “What are you plotting?”
“Sorry I didn’t involve you. I just stayed awake all night, thinking, and then this morning I rang Ray at The White Hart. It’s going to be our new headquarters! The project goes on, Helena, with or without Mr High and Mighty Lord of the Moors.”
Vicky floored the accelerator and managed a passable wheel spin in the courtyard, making Nerada whinny and kick the stable door as they roared past. “I hope he saw that, too,” Vicky muttered as they bumped painfully down the track and through the village to the pub. “Arsehole.”
Within moments their exuberant progress was curtailed by a tractor and trailer and they were reduced to a five-mile-an-hour crawl as it inched its way past double-parked cars. Helena seized the moment. She was growing curious about her reticent friend.
“Vicky, what’s your aim? Your dream future? You know, in ten years’ time. Kids? Husband? Government Minister for Education?”
“Haha, I don’t know. Not government, that’s for sure. Can you imagine me in the House of Commons?”
“Yeah, you’d knock a few heads together. Seriously though…”
The tractor crept along and made an un-indicated turn to the left, causing everyone to brake. “Is that Henderson?” Vicky squealed as they both lurched forwards and the seat belts snapped and jammed. “Pillock. I shall have words when I next see him.”
Helena was about to point out that Vicky was still avoiding the issue, but something told her to stay quiet. It was one thing to be interested in another, and quite something else to pry and poke. She didn’t speak again until they pulled into the pub car park.
“So, what now?”
“Let’s go find out. Leave the boxes where they are.” Vicky bounced into the pub and Helena followed, almost unwillingly. After the blow of having the office closed, she just wanted to wash her hands of the whole thing, and move on. She had planned her Sunday already: offload the boxes at the school, go home, and immerse herself in a novel. Something like a romantic fantasy where the world would be far different to what she already knew. Now, it seemed that Helena had other ideas.
“Vicky! Helena! What are you drinking?” Ray greeted them with a cheery wave and burst out from behind the bar, enfolding them both in a massive hug.
“Not for me, thanks,” Helena muttered politely into his armpit.
“Nonsense. Too early for booze? A softie then. Or a brew. Now follow me, and let me show you what we’ve done!”
He almost ran through an archway and into the secondary bar area. Kids were allowed in the main bar before six, and there was a classy dining area off to the other side, but this smaller saloon bar was for hardened drinkers and secret assignations.
And now, it was the new nerve centre of the community regeneration project.
“Oh my God.” Vicky burst out laughing and clamped her hand over her mouth but she couldn’t stop the high pitched giggles. “Oh my GOD!”
Ray and Spenser had created a desk area by pulling the circular pub tables together. One had a laptop on it, and another had a three-tier metal filing tray. Yet another had a crazy mix of stationery that had clearly been gathered from every corner of the pub: a handle-less cup containing assorted pens, an ashtray of multi-coloured paper clips, three rolls of sticky tape of varying thickness, an unpleasantly grubby ball of tack, and a line of bulldog clips, all neatly joined together like an office ouroborus. They’d found a flip-chart from somewhere and set it up behind the tables. And on a piece of card, stuck to the front edge of the foremost table, was the proclamation: Arkthwaite Community Team - Regeneration Headquarters.
Ray looked fit to burst with pride. “I did it all myself, to be honest. Spenser is run off his feet in the kitchen because Tilly phoned in sick and we’ve got a party coming in for Sunday lunch.”
“Wow.” Now it made sense. The classy redecoration of the pub must have been down to Spenser. The dining area in particular was an ode to superiority with its carefully co-ordinated floral decorations, soothing ornaments and pictures, tactile furnishings and elegant calligraphy.
Ray’s efforts looked like a primary school project.
“It’s absolutely wonderful,” Helena said, beaming at him. His joy was utterly infectious. “Shall we bring our boxes in?”
“I’ll give you a hand.”
Spenser popped out to say hello as they were stacking the boxes around the saloon bar and deciding what needed to be unpacked and what could stay as it was. He was taller and thinner than Ray, and had an easy manner. His eyes met Helena’s and they smiled at each other as she said, “this is perfect. Totally perfect.”
He nodded and Ray was positively bouncing with excitement.
“I think they could do with a hand behind the bar,” Spenser told him. Ray wrenched himself away from the brand-new headquarters with a
backward look, and finally Vicky and Helena were left in peace to organise their stuff.
“Wow,” Helena said with a different meaning in her voice.
Vicky smiled. “Yes, quite. But how lovely of them to do this for us.”
“Yes.” Helena got up from where she had been kneeling next to a box of technical leaflets about broadband, and massaged her knees with a groan. “Ouch. Old age. So, where do we go from here?”
“The LETS thing, that’s definitely a goer.” Vicky sat on a chair behind the rank of pub tables and folded her arms. “We’ve had quite a few of the flyers returned with details filled in, so we can start compiling a database of skills, and matching people up. There’s an online organisation that brings all these smaller schemes together so we ought to look at affiliating or something with them, and getting it online, too.”
“What’s the point of having anything online?” Helena asked morosely. “He’s done for that. Scuppered the broadband, I mean. We have half the trenches dug and now he’s told us to stay off his land. We’re well and truly stuck in the dark ages here.”
“Stuff that.”
Helena and Vicky looked up at the sound of Cathy’s voice. The nervous hairdresser had been one of the first to get her completed LETS form back to Vicky. She’d delivered it in person, apologising for the handwriting and explaining with some shame that her son had helped her to fill it in. The slim woman sidled into the saloon, and cast one eye back over her shoulder. “Share those crisps!” she shouted. Turning back to Vicky and Helena, she apologised. “Sorry, left all the kids in there. Anyway. So why is the broadband done for? He gave his permission, didn’t he, the mad Lord Richard.”
“We’ve got nothing in writing.” Helena felt stupid. “It was a verbal agreement but we never thought to get him to sign anything.”
“Huh. Send one of Henderson’s boys up with a shotgun, he’ll sign,” Cathy said, unexpectedly belligerent. Helena saw the strength of the single mum who’d fought on to raise her kids while enmeshed in poverty and benefits and social disapproval.
“Nice idea. But we probably shouldn’t.”
“The surveyor’s finished, hasn’t he?” Vicky said.
“Yeah.”
“We’ve got the know-how and we’ve got the equipment ordered.”
“We don’t have the land, and what about the connections? The skilled stuff? He said he was going to ask around the old boys’ network.”
“We’ve got the chap I know that will moonlight for us, remember?” Vicky said. “We don’t need Richard.”
“It’s his land.”
“Huh.” Tom appeared next to Cathy, his sour face almost triumphant. “His land? No. Nobody owns the land of the English people.”
Helena braced herself for a patriotic onslaught with hints of jingoism and a side order of racism. Tom pushed past Cathy and stood central in the saloon bar, his fists clenched. “We own the land. We are the land! What of our history? The Diggers and the Levellers? This land is ours.”
Helena associated the Levellers with folk rock but she’d heard, vaguely, of the Diggers. “Morally, perhaps, Tom, but in law it belongs to Richard.”
“Natural Law!” he exclaimed, getting worked up. “No one can own the land!”
Helena looked across at Vicky, who was open-mouthed in delight. “Tom! You’re one of us!”
He shot Vicky a disgusted glance. “If you mean I’m a happy-clappy tree-hugging fairy-worshipping oh-Wicca-is-so-old bullshit wannabe, then no, I am not.”
“Er…”
“But I am a man of the Land, and this Land is ours!”
By now, Helena could actually hear the capital letters in his voice. “So what do you say we do?”
Tom advanced on her, spittle at the corners of his mouth. He balled up one fist and slammed it into his other palm. “Take it back!” he roared and she pressed herself back, away from him.
Ray came darting in at the sound of shouting. “Take what back? What did she say?”
“No, no,” Cathy put her hand on Ray’s arm to calm him down before he swung a punch at Tom. “The land, not anything she said.”
“What land?”
“What’s going on?”
More curious pub-goers and villagers pushed into the saloon bar, eager to witness some drama and Vicky got to her feet and shouted, “Stop!”
The sound of a head mistress’s voice had been hardwired into every single person there, and they froze, instantly transported back to their own childhoods when Teacher reigned as God. Vicky let the silence hang for two seconds.
“Right. Thank you. Tom, sit down. No, don’t go. Sit with us. Let’s talk. Cathy, you too. Bring the kids in, I’ve got ways of keeping them quiet. Anyone else interested in the continuation of the community project - specifically, how we move forward with bringing broadband to the village - pull up a chair and stay, too. Everyone else… out!”
There was a muttering, and a shuffling, and a general reorganisation. Ray disappeared for a moment, and re-emerged from the kitchens with a tray of tea, biscuits, and some bowls of cheesy chips.
“Food for the troops.”
“Thanks!”
“Anytime. Give us a shout if you need anything. Right, I’ll leave you generals to planning the campaign.”
“You make it sound like war.”
Ray hesitated on his way out of the room, and looked back with a smile and a raised eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”
* * *
Richard had watched from an upstairs window as Vicky and Helena loaded up the car with boxes from the office. He vaguely remembered his drunken phone call the previous week to Helena; he knew he’d told her that he was closing the office. He had fuzzy memories of telling them to clear it out and a painful recollection of slurring some nonsense about how it was all doomed to failure from the start - though whether he’d meant the project, or the relationship, he couldn’t remember. He might have meant both.
All week he’d hid from her, hoping that his memory was faulty, hoping that he’d just dreamed making that phone call, but totally lacking the courage to phone her to ask her. He had to apologise but he couldn’t.
When the rusty car had pulled up, he’d known for sure that he had made that phone call, and shame overwhelmed him.
Now is my chance to go down and stop them. Tell them they can stay. Make it all right again.
But what the hell did I say as well? I can’t remember. I probably said unforgivable things.
It’s best if I stay out of it. I’ve made my bed and now I need to lie in it. If I go down there, all gibbering and pleading, I’ll look like even more of an arse, and worse still - like someone who can’t stick to anything.
I need to suck it up and face the consequences.
He stayed half-hidden behind the heavy brocaded curtains, some ancient relic from his ancestors. Helena moved with a litheness that stirred him. She was at home outside, in movement, in the open air. He wanted to run with her over the moors. He never had taken her riding. He could see Nerada poking her long nose over a stable door and watching the commotion, just as he was. Regret threatened him again.
Oh, just let them get on with it, he told himself sternly. It was all a silly pipe dream anyway.
Once again he wasn’t sure if he meant the relationship or the community project.
* * *
So he started drinking early that day, and was already half-cut when his phone rang, and his old school mate Billy hailed him with a cheerful whoop. “You avoiding me or what?”
“I’m avoiding you,” Richard slurred.
“You’re pissed. It’s Sunday night, not quite seven o’clock, and you’re pissed. Oh man, you’re in a bad way. What’s happened to you, Richard? Why won’t you come down to Manchester? What terrible dark secret are you hiding? Can I come up to visit?”
“No, fuck off.”
“Charming. What’s the deal?”
“Nothing. I live here and I’m going to die here.”
“Quite soon, t
he way you sound. Women trouble? You bought yourself a Russian bride off the internet yet? Do you even get the internet out there in the middle of nowhere? Or do serfs print out your emails in a dungeon and come running up to you with them presented on a silver tray?”
“Billy, you’re an arsehole. Always was, always will be.”
“So why are you still talking to me? Why did you even answer the phone, you cock?”
Richard sank back on the sofa and put his still-booted feet on the arm. He stared up at the ceiling and noticed the spiders’ webs and dust in the corners. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Cos you’re going mad with loneliness, that’s why.”
“I am not lonely. I simply prefer solitude. Why is it that whenever someone chooses a way of life that slightly differs from the normal expectations, we’re labelled mad?”
Billy spluttered. “You didn’t choose this. You dug yourself a fucking great hole and then fell in it.”
“I like my hole.”
“Richard. Listen to me. I’m going to come and see you. I would have turned up as a surprise but I have the fear that you’d shoot me or something like a trespassing peasant. Next weekend. I’m free, and you’ve got five days to sober up, all right?”
Richard sighed. Part of him wanted to see his old friend. Not just Billy. Anyone would do. But he thought he was too far gone to rescue any relationship, any friendship, anything. He said, wearily, “It’s just not worth it, Billy. Don’t waste your journey. I’m sorry.”
“And now you’re sinking into self-pity. God, that’s so unattractive. No wonder you’re single.”
Richard opened his mouth to swear again, but all that came out was another sigh and a squeak. He fought the fog of alcohol that surrounded him like a whiskey-stained miasma, and managed to say, “I’m single because I’m a complete arsehole, Billy.”
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