Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage

by Milly Johnson

  Viv would have disputed that. ‘Poor deer,’ she said, picking up some of the pellets.

  ‘Would you rather we fed them Rice Krispies?’ replied Heath with a barely concealed huff. ‘Now are you ready to begin? I’m going to switch on the tap. Beatrice will go onto her branches. She will not divebomb you.’

  ‘You’re leaving me in here, by myself?’ asked Viv. Her heart-rate was through the roof. She jumped as water coursed through the pipe and she quickly directed it onto the ground. Just as Heath said, Beatrice flew up to her branch and watched Viv washing down her gravel with a mix of interest and disdain.

  ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ said Heath, trying not to chuckle as Viv emerged from the cage shaking. He threw in some meat which the eagle owl swooped on. ‘Now I hear from Geraldine that Ursula actually gave you the time of day, which is encouraging, so let me see for myself.’ He opened the snowy owl’s cage and watched as her head swivelled around to Viv and her beak started to twitch.

  ‘Good. Now, in you go,’ said Heath.

  Viv’s wellies were stuck to the ground. Heath gave her a push and closed the door behind her.

  ‘If she attacks, I promise, I’ll be straight in.’

  ‘What do you mean attacks?’

  Ursula’s beak started moving. Chuck chuck chuck.

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Viv.

  ‘Amazing,’ said Heath. ‘She’s telling you she’s fine about you being in there. Give her the sign that you have no food for her,’ urged Heath. Viv gave Ursula the full jazz hands.

  ‘Nothing to eat here, birdie,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘Honest.’

  Viv set about clearing Ursula’s aviary, checking on the position of the bird every few seconds, which made it a very long job.

  ‘You don’t have to worry, I did say I was on full chaperone duty,’ said Heath, with a smile of impatience which wasn’t really a smile at all. ‘Although I am impressed that she is letting you get so close to her. She tried to crack open my head.’

  ‘You aren’t helping,’ said Viv, finishing off the hosing.

  ‘Okay, now you give her food. That will push you up even further in her estimations. Pick some of that up and let her have it. Call her by her name.’

  ‘She can recognise her name?’ asked Viv.

  ‘Well, they learn to recognise the sound, which may or may not be the same thing.’ replied Heath.

  Viv stepped out of the aviary to pull a handful of meat from the bucket. She heaved slightly as she threw it into the far corner. ‘There you go, Ursula. Ursula. Ursula. Ursula. Urs—’

  ‘Okay, that’s fine.’ Heath cut her off. ‘I think she’s got the gist. Out of there now, let her eat her breakfast. Now for the fun part. Frank. You’ll need to take no nonsense from him . . .’

  ‘There is no way I’m going into the pen with a vulture,’ said Viv, waving her hands in a definite gesture of ‘go stuff yourself.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Heath conceded. ‘You did good for today. You can watch this one out.’ He walked into Frank’s cage with the hosepipe. Frank followed Heath around his aviary as if he were supervising. Then he tugged the hosepipe out of Heath’s hand. Heath picked it up and Frank went for it again. They had a gentle game of tug of war and Viv was mesmerised.

  ‘They don’t show you stuff like this on cowboy films, do they?’ Heath turned to her, a smile playing on his lips. ‘They get a very bad press.’

  Viv found herself smiling in return.

  ‘You should open this place up to the public,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a sanctuary, Vivienne,’ Heath said, twisting off the tap. ‘A lot of these animals have been traumatised by what people have done to them. They don’t want to mix with any more strangers than they have to. Although I see your point. But there are other places who do that sort of educating. These guys are here to live out the rest of their lives in peace.’ He reached for the food bucket. ‘Okay, Frank, that’s you done for today. Time for food.’

  Frank leaped on the meat and Heath watched him for a while, though Viv wondered if his thoughts were on the bird or far away.

  ‘I’ll see to the hawks myself. They need to fly before I feed them today. Why don’t you go back to the cottage and do what you have to do there. Can you ring the hospital and let me know if Geraldine needs picking up? They were waiting to hear what the consultant said when I phoned this morning. Will you check the answering machine as well, please. It should flash when there’s a message but it’s broken and doesn’t,’ Heath said.

  ‘Yes of course. Shall I put on some lunch? Spanish omelette? It won’t take long to make. I can use these.’ Viv lifted up the egg basket.

  ‘Thank you. That would be good. Forty-five minutes?’

  Viv took the basket of eggs back to the cottage and at the door she turned and looked behind her. The sun was high in the sky, shining down on them all, whilst fingers of mist stole across the thousands of small bright blue flowers springing up from the earth as if preparing to pick them. It was such a beautiful valley. And the man she had moved here to get to know – and had hoped would want to know her too – was the one intent on destroying it.

  Chapter 34

  Stel had been busy that morning, which took her mind off Ian, but when the rush died down, her mini-depression returned and she sneaked off early for her lunch. Ian always came in at twelve for a cuppa to drink with his sandwiches. She put the kettle on ready for him, her whole body buzzing with anxiety.

  She rolled her sandwich around in her mouth but she wasn’t hungry. The hands on the clock reached quarter past twelve and he hadn’t arrived. He was avoiding her, that was the only conclusion. She took her phone out of her bag and checked for texts and there were none. She turned the phone off and back on again in case there was a problem, but it all looked perfectly normal. Then her head shot up and with it her spirits as the door out to the garden opened and in walked Graham. But no Ian followed.

  ‘Hi, Graham,’ said Stel, trying to sound as if she wasn’t about to cry. ‘Is . . . is Ian coming in?’

  ‘No, he’s gone to the nursery. Not sure if he’ll be back today.’

  ‘Oh.’ The word was full of Stel’s sunken hope. She switched on a jolly smile; she probably went a bit overboard being chatty with Graham to cover up her disappointment. One date and she was totally out of synch: she felt some sensible part within shake its head at her in frustration. Fifty-two years old and she was behaving like a child.

  Chapter 35

  Linda’s cleaner Hilda always arrived half an hour before she was due to start work so she could have a cup of tea and a natter with Iris. It was something they both looked forward to so they could put the world to rights in that time. Most of it, at any rate; but the matter of the Pawsons’ hold over young Freddie was one problem too far.

  Hilda stole a quick look at the clock on the wall as she sat at the dining table. She had OCD about time and had to start work on the Hewitt kitchen worktops at half-past one. If the house had suddenly burst into flames at twenty-five past, Hilda wouldn’t have been dragged out by ten burly firemen until she’d cleaned the granite surface clear of fingerprints.

  ‘When’s Andy home then?’ asked Hilda, waving away the offer of some Walkers Shortbread.

  ‘Not until next month,’ sighed Iris. ‘Obviously we haven’t told him Rebecca’s being a madam because we don’t want to worry him. He has to keep his mind on his job, doesn’t he?’

  ‘I’m glad my lad is a builder and not a soldier,’ said Hilda, shaking her head slowly from side to side. ‘I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.’ She turned her attention back to the matter at hand. ‘But there isn’t a force in heaven or hell that would keep me away from my grandkids.’

  Iris slammed her hand flat down on the table, making Hilda jump. ‘I’m going to have to step in, aren’t I?’

  Hilda blanched. She didn’t want the responsibility of inciting Iris into action. Iris, she imagined, would be a loose cannon in a situation l
ike this. There would be a definite shortage of any tact or diplomacy. ‘Now hold your fire a minute, Iris. What I’d do and what you should do are totally different. Leave it to your Linda and Dino.’

  ‘Dino won’t do anything. He says that if he goes up there and starts on them, it’ll be wrong with him being a man and them being women, and Linda is scared stiff to rock the boat so she won’t take the risk.’

  ‘Then you should remember that you could make things a lot worse,’ warned Hilda, a note of panic rising in her usually calm voice.

  ‘Aye, but I could make them better as well. I could talk calmly woman to woman to that old cow of a mother of hers.’ Iris’s eyes were glittering as her brain whirred behind them spitting out sparks. ‘She’s more my age than Linda’s.’

  The way Iris’s face screwed up as she referred to Enid Pawson didn’t exactly inspire Hilda with confidence that any meeting between them would go down well.

  ‘You listen and listen good, Iris Caswell. Stay out of it or you’ll regret it. You promise me you will.’

  Iris sniffed. ‘All right, all right, I’ll stay out of it,’ she said. ‘If you think that’s best, Hilda. I don’t want to cause any trouble.’

  Hilda nodded with relief. Thank God for that, she thought.

  But Iris’s gunpowder was lit and fizzing. One was never too old for crossing fingers behind one’s back when telling a lie.

  Chapter 36

  Through the window, as she was washing up the frying pan, Viv watched Heath walking towards the cottage. His shoulders looked huge in the checked shirt he was wearing. But then he needed huge shoulders to carry the burden he presently had to bear. She wondered what he would do when the sanctuary closed. Go back to being a full-time vet in a regular practice, she supposed, which wasn’t a bad life. He’d be loaded, for one thing, based on the evidence of what they charged every time Basil needed any treatment. He suited this setting, she could tell that, even after their short acquaintance. But she did wonder if he resented having the responsibility of the sanctuary thrust on him. Maybe having his hand forced might release him from those duties so he could enjoy a life that surely would be a lot less hard work.

  Pilot had trotted out to meet him and was now escorting him in, periodically looking up at him like a sheepdog waiting for a command. He too was blissfully unaware that his forever home was a misnomer.

  Heath paused by the door to kick off his massive wellingtons. He filled the door when he stood in it, inhaling Viv’s cooking. ‘That smells good,’ he said.

  ‘It’s only a glorified omelette,’ said Viv. ‘I doubt it’s anything of the standard Geraldine supplies.’

  But Viv had to admit to herself that she hadn’t done a bad job. The ingredients were all from their land: spring onions, the peppers growing in a stone trough at the side of the door, chives standing proud in their pots on the windowsill, the potatoes dug up from the back garden and stored in sacks in the cool cellar, the tomatoes from the greenhouse, and the eggs of course from the rescued chickens. The cheese was from the local farm, a strong nutty cheddar with a hint of sweetness which became stretchy when melted. Heath tucked in hungrily and almost caught Viv staring at him as he ate. He didn’t look like a vet, thought Viv. He looked more like a bear-trapper, with his muscular arms and strong frame. She couldn’t imagine him giving ear-drops to hamsters.

  ‘So how old are you again?’ he asked, reaching for a second quadrant of the tortilla circle.

  ‘Twenty-three.’

  ‘You seem older.’

  ‘Thanks,’ and she tutted with dry amusement. She was going to reply that she’d had to grow up faster than a lot of kids, then realised that might lead her into an explanation of her mother’s illness, which he wouldn’t want to hear about. So she left it at that.

  ‘It wasn’t an insult.’

  It was hardly a compliment either, to be fair, she thought.

  ‘I’m exactly ten months older than Antonia Leighton,’ she said.

  He ceased chewing momentarily, then his jaw began to work again.

  ‘What relevance is that?’

  Actually, Viv had no idea. She’d just said it without thinking. She thought Antonia Leighton looked older than her age, too. Yes, she was beautiful, but in a couple of years that default setting of a frown and downturned mouth would give her ‘lines of misery’ as her mother called them. But if she said that to Heath, it would sound like the bitchy comment it was. Viv thought it best to leave it.

  ‘I rang the hospital but the consultant hadn’t done his rounds. He was due any minute, the nurse said.’ Viv refilled their mugs with more tea.

  ‘Thank you. A hospital minute is at least an hour,’ replied Heath, stabbing a square of omelette as if he’d experienced many a ‘hospital minute’.

  Which led Viv nicely to a gripe that had been niggling her. ‘I wish you’d rung yesterday to let me know how Geraldine was. I was worried. I didn’t know how badly she’d been hurt.’

  Heath’s eyes flicked up to her face as if grossly affronted that he’d been rebuked. But some part of him must have taken on board that Viv did have a point.

  ‘I should have, you’re right,’ he said. ‘I apologise for that. My phone battery was flat, and Geraldine doesn’t have a mobile but that’s no excuse. I could have found a pay phone.’

  And no doubt a part of him had still been cross with her, Viv guessed. Okay, so whilst she was in brave mode, she thought she’d ask the big question again. He was hardly going to throw her out for it, because he needed her.

  ‘Can’t Antonia Leighton help you?’

  Heath’s fork clattered onto his plate. ‘What?’ he replied.

  Whoops, thought Viv. Just when it had been going quite well. Maybe she’d strayed too far beyond the boundary asking this one. ‘Well, you and she obviously have a . . .’ She struggled to find the appropriate word that wouldn’t have him picking his fork back up and sticking it in her neck, ‘ . . . a . . . a . . . friendship.’

  The timing couldn’t have been better. The house phone rang and Heath snatched it up from the dresser behind him. ‘Yes,’ he barked into it. The poor recipient was copping for his displaced anger, it seemed. ‘Yes, yes,’ his voice softer now. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour. Thank you. Bye.’ He put down the phone, picked up his empty plate and carried it over to the sink.

  ‘Geraldine’s ready to be collected,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and get her.’

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’ asked Viv. She didn’t want him looking at her with those hostile eyes. She’d rather be facing Ursula than him at the moment.

  Heath ignored the question, walked to the door, stopped there, and turned back.

  ‘I’m grateful for your staying on, but a word of advice: you ask too many questions for someone who is “just here to help”. You won’t make yourself any friends in Ironmist if you pry into the lives of the people here. We don’t owe strangers any answers.’

  Then he picked up his boots at the side of the doormat and walked out, closing the door so Pilot couldn’t follow him, leaving Viv wondering what the hell he meant by all that.

  Chapter 37

  Stel deleted Ian’s number and with it the tinkly ring tone she’d assigned to it so she knew instantly that it was him if he phoned or texted. She wouldn’t be messed around, she decided, as she switched off her monitor at home time. Why did Ian fill her up with so much hope that he was looking forward to seeing her at work on Monday, only for him to blatantly ignore her? Once she’d said her ‘goodnight, see you tomorrows’ and was sitting in her car, the scaffolding holding up her composure fell apart. The tears which had been building behind her eyes all day began to spill over. Hadn’t she learned by now that she wasn’t destined for a happy ending? Then, as she slotted her key into the ignition, her phone rang in her handbag.

  She fumbled to find it, dropped it, picked it up again and looked at the screen to see a number she didn’t recognise. But didn’t Ian’s end in 3-0? She pressed connect just before it we
nt to voicemail.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ she said, not even trying to sound cool, calm and collected.

  ‘Stel?’

  It was him. Her tears dried up instantly as if the car was a giant microwave oven.

  ‘Ian?’ She felt as if a light had switched on in her heart.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. How are you? I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to see you today. I drew the short straw and had to go and pick plants out in Huddersfield. Normally that’s not a short straw, but I’d rather have stayed behind today. No prizes for guessing why.’

  ‘Oh, no worries,’ Stel wished she didn’t sound as if she’d been crying. ‘I presumed you were busy.’

  ‘Have you got a cold?’

  ‘No, no, I’ve just had a sneezing fit. I think I’m allergic to my new car air freshener.’ Too much detail, she thought, admonishing herself. Why didn’t she just shut up after the sneezing fit bit?

  ‘I missed my coffee break with you,’ Ian said.

  ‘I missed seeing you for coffee, too,’ said Stel, aware that she was gushing and not caring.

  ‘Well . . .’ Pause. ‘I was going to suggest . . .’ Even longer pause.

  Oh please, please suggest another date, Stel begged the heavens above. I can be ready in half an hour.

  ‘ . . . How about having lunch with me in the garden tomorrow. I’ll supply the sandwiches.’

  ‘Oh . . . lovely.’ That gap between the two words was shouting of disappointment.

  ‘I’m going to spend time with my mum tonight. It’s her birthday. Otherwise we could . . . oh well, not to be. Can’t let her down.’

  ‘Of course, I understand,’ enthused Stel. ‘Tomorrow is great.’

  ‘I’ll see you in the garden at twelve then. Hope you like home-made cake.’

  ‘I love it,’ said Stel. If Ian had said hope you like raw pig’s testicles, she would have given him the same answer.