Pastures New

by Julia Williams

  ‘I do what I want,’ said Pete defiantly. ‘I’m not tied to her apron strings.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting you were,’ said Ben, rather taken aback with the aggressiveness of the response. He and Pete had been mates for years, and he’d never seen him like this.

  ‘Well, good,’ said Pete, with a drunkenly determined growl.

  ‘I don’t mean to pry, but is everything okay?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I need another pint.’ Pete didn’t appear to have heard the question.

  ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’

  ‘If I want a pint I’ll bloody well have one!’

  ‘Woah!’ Ben held his hands up. ‘Here, let me get it for you.’ It was so busy at the bar he had visions of Pete spilling it over half the punters in the pub, and in the mood he was in, Ben could see things turning ugly.

  ‘I’ve a good mind to go round to Gerry’s right now,’ Pete announced abruptly when Ben got back.

  ‘You don’t know where he lives,’ said Ben.

  ‘I do,’ said Pete, ‘he’s staying at the motel on the other side of town.’

  ‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?’

  ‘I shall march right up there and have it out with him,’ said Pete. ‘In fact, I think I will challenge him to a duel. Fancy being my second?’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Ben. ‘You know, there is an easy way to sort this out.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Pete asked.

  ‘You could talk to Saffron.’

  ‘So she can lie to me again?’ asked Pete. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Pete!’ Ben was exasperated. ‘There may be a perfectly simple explanation for all this. From what I’ve seen, Saffron can barely give Gerry the time of day. Maybe he pounced on her and she fought him off?’

  ‘I know what I saw,’ said Pete sulkily, lifting his pint to his lips. He missed and half of his pint ended up on the table, the floor and over his shirt.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you home,’ said Ben.

  ‘I’m not going home,’ Pete replied moodily. ‘I want another drink.’

  ‘And I think you’ve had enough, mate,’ said Ben.

  ‘Don’t tell me when I’ve had enough.’ Pete lurched off his chair, and swung a drunken punch at Ben. He missed but tottered forwards, hit the bar, and slid slowly down to the floor.

  ‘You’ve had enough,’ said Ben, ‘and I am taking you home.’

  In the end, Amy and Josh had stayed the night at Saffron’s and the women sat up till very late mulling over their respective dilemmas. It was gone midnight when they went to bed, Amy going first, completely exhausted by the events of the day. Saffron had drawn the curtains, and left the bolt off the door. Despite several calls to his mobile, which was switched off, Pete hadn’t responded. Saffron nearly rang Ben to ask if the men were together, but she couldn’t face the questions about Amy. So she too went to bed, where, worn out with worry, she had eventually fallen asleep to the sound of falling rain on the roof. She woke once at 4 a.m., and Pete still wasn’t back. She rang his mobile again, and from the irate drunken response worked out that he was with Ben drinking whisky. At least she knew he wasn’t in a gutter somewhere. She turned over and tried to go to sleep, but lay awake for a long time, wide-eyed and terrified. Pete was going to leave her. She knew it. And there seemed to be nothing she could do.

  Ben woke up on his sofa with a stinking head and a dry mouth. He squinted at the table where an empty bottle of whisky was looking accusingly at him. Everything after about midnight, when he and Pete had drunkenly decided that women were the bane of their existence and they were going to pursue a policy of celibacy and denial for the rest of their natural lives, was a bit of a blur. He had tried to persuade Pete to go home, but having apparently forgotten all about the punch he’d tried to throw Ben’s way, Pete had gone into ‘you’re my best mate’ mode. Ben had vague memories of Pete saying, ‘We have to stick together, mate, through thick and thin. At the end of the day, when the chips are down –’ Ben winced a little here – even in his hung-over haze – at the number of clichés Pete had managed to produce in one short sentence ‘– it’s only your mates you can trust.’

  The trouble with only trusting your mates was it tended to lead to appalling hangovers. Ben sat up and rubbed his head. Had all that really happened with Amy yesterday? He wanted to turn the clock back and undo everything they had said to each other.

  A muffled snore from the other corner of the room alerted him to the fact that Pete was asleep in a chair. Ben had vague memories of trying to persuade him to phone Saffron, but Pete had been having none of it. Ben sighed. He had thought Saffron and Pete were one of those perfect marriages, they had seemed so right for each other. But then again, maybe there was no such thing as a perfect marriage.

  Ben got up gingerly – his head really was thumping – and went to the kitchen to make some coffee. By the time he returned, Pete was awake.

  ‘Do I look as grim as I feel?’ he asked.

  Scanning his beer-soaked shirt, half-open since he’d taken his tie off sometime the previous evening, and his decent trousers muddy from where he had fallen over several times in the allotments, then moving up to his pale face, complete with bloodshot eyes and wild hair, Ben laughed and said, ‘Grimmer. But I probably look the same.’

  ‘Remind me never ever to drink elderberry wine again,’ said Pete.

  ‘You’re the agent of your own misfortune,’ said Ben, ‘and I have no sympathy.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ protested Pete. ‘The Wine Producers were practically forcing it down my neck.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Ben, ‘I didn’t see you saying no.’

  There was a pause while they sipped their coffee.

  ‘So are you going to ring Saffron and tell her where you are?’ Ben asked. ‘She’ll be worried about you.’

  ‘Worried about me?’ said Pete. ‘Somehow I doubt it.’

  ‘Don’t you think you may be overreacting just a little bit?’ Ben suggested. ‘You still don’t know her side of the story.’

  ‘No, and I don’t want to,’ said Pete, a stubborn look setting in. Ben knew that look of old, although he hadn’t seen it since they were teenagers. It was a bad sign it was here now.

  ‘Well I think you should ring her,’ said Ben. ‘I would.’

  As if on cue, Pete’s mobile rang.

  ‘Hi Saffron. Yes, I am still at Ben’s. When am I coming home? When I feel like it.’

  Pete snapped the phone shut and slammed it angrily down on the table.

  ‘Don’t say another word,’ he said. ‘Don’t you say another bloody word.’

  Saffron stood open-mouthed in her kitchen.

  ‘He’s not coming back,’ she said, the words not sounding right coming from her lips.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Amy replied.

  ‘I asked him when he was coming home, and he said, when he felt like it. And when I asked him what he meant, he put the phone down on me.’

  ‘Maybe he’s bluffing?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Saffron. ‘Pete can be very determined when he puts his mind to it. And he’s the most stubborn cuss I know. If he’s decided he’s not coming back, he just won’t.’

  ‘Well, if he won’t come to you, you’ll have to go to him,’ said Amy. ‘I’ll hold the fort here with the kids. You go over to Ben’s and sort this out.’

  ‘Amy, are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ said Amy. ‘I know my love life is a disaster, but there’s no need for yours to be too.’

  Saffron pulled her coat on, and, heart in her mouth, made her way across the allotments. It was another grey and miserable day and the rain had made the paths muddy and slippery.

  She got to Ben’s house horribly quickly. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to say, but she had to let Pete know how she felt about him, and how wrong he was about everything.

  Ben answered the door, ushered her into the lounge and discreetly disappeared upst
airs to have a shower.

  ‘You look like shit.’ The words were out of Saffron’s mouth before she had thought them through. Engage brain before mouth, girl, she admonished herself.

  ‘You don’t look so hot yourself,’ said Pete. He looked grumpy and dishevelled, but still her heart lurched at the sight of him.

  ‘This is silly, Pete,’ said Saffron. ‘Come home, we need you.’

  ‘Not as much as Gerry, apparently,’ said Pete, with a stiffness that she didn’t recognise.

  ‘Pete, you’ve got it all wrong,’ Saffron told him. ‘Gerry pounced on me and I told him to bugger off. I do not want Gerry back, I just want you.’

  ‘How do I know you’re not lying to me?’ Pete demanded. ‘I was away for two days, and anything could have happened. Besides, Maddy as good as told me you were having an affair.’

  ‘So you believe her more than me?’

  ‘Can you honestly tell me you haven’t lied to me about anything?’

  A guilty look crossed Saffron’s face. ‘No, but –’

  ‘So you have lied to me.’

  ‘Not about Gerry,’ said Saffron. ‘Honestly, nothing happened. Nothing at all.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Pete replied.

  ‘Then there’s no point in carrying on this conversation any more, is there?’ said Saffron. ‘If we can’t trust one another, our marriage is meaningless.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Again, she saw the stiffness in Pete and his fixed, rigid stare, looking past her.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Saffron in exasperation. ‘You did, by not believing me. But I’m not going to demean myself by begging. You know where I am if you want me.’

  She turned and walked out of the door, slamming it really hard. Bloody men! Why did they have to be so dense? It was only when she was halfway home that she stopped and took a deep breath. What if Pete took her literally? What if he never came home again?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘I’ve got a proposition for you,’ said Ben as he walked in from work one evening a few weeks after Harry’s funeral. He tried not to wince as he saw the state of his bachelor pad. Since Pete had been crashing out in his small spare room, the house not only felt incredibly crowded, but had also taken on that distinctive squalor of two lads living together. Ben couldn’t help but be seduced by it. Having another bloke about the place somehow immediately transported them back into a kind of Men Behaving Badly state, the like of which he hadn’t experienced since his student days. In fact, it was probably watching repeats of Men Behaving Badly till the early hours which was partly responsible.

  There were empty cans of lager sitting on the coffee table from the previous night, along with takeaway wrappings. Ben liked cooking normally, but somehow with Pete in the house he hadn’t been getting into the kitchen much. Instead they had been repairing to the pub after work, moaning about the state of their love lives, and then coming back around 9 p.m. Realising that, once again, it was too late to cook, they would ring up Mrs Lee Wong for a Chinese, or the Nevermorewell Bar ’n’ Grill for a curry. A night at the gym was long overdue.

  ‘What’s that then?’ Pete was in the kitchen, already raiding the fridge. ‘We’re nearly out of lager,’ he said.

  ‘Now there’s a surprise,’ Ben replied. ‘No thanks.’ He waved Pete’s offer away. ‘I want to go to the gym tonight and get an early night. I’m knackered.’

  ‘So what’s the deal?’ Pete asked, sipping his can of lager. He hadn’t shaved for about a week and was beginning to resemble a younger Captain Ahab.

  ‘The deal is that I’m leaving.’

  ‘You’re wha-at?’

  ‘Well, not for good. The practice needs to save some money, and I was on a short-term contract. I’ve got a bit of dosh in the bank. First off, I’m going to see my parents. And then I’m going travelling for a bit. I’ve got nothing to keep me here. I thought I’d rent the house out while I’m away.’

  ‘But what about me?’ Pete looked comically woebegone.

  ‘If you will insist on this stupid standoff with Saffron –’ Pete was refusing to see Saffron till she apologised for accusing him of not trusting her; Saffron was refusing to apologise for ‘nothing’, as she put it, so the situation was at an impasse ‘– then you are of course welcome to stay here as long as you like. However, as your best mate, my advice to you is to stop being a prat and go home where you belong.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Pete. ‘Well, as Saffron is probably likely to take the shillelagh to me if I go home, I think I’ll pass on that one.’

  Ben laughed. A vision of Saffron as an axe-wielding Boudicca type was all too probable.

  ‘I still think you’re being a prat,’ he said, ‘but it’s your funeral.’

  ‘Does Amy know you’re going?’ Pete asked.

  ‘No,’ said Ben shortly. ‘I only decided for certain today. And it’s not going to make any difference, is it? She’s made her feelings quite plain.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit pig-headed?’

  Amy paused from digging Mrs Amos’s frosted flowerbeds. Her steamy breath showed sharp and clear against the cold wintry sun. Even though it was hot work, she still felt chilled to the bone. She had done ever since the news had filtered through that Ben was leaving. She hadn’t seen him since Harry’s funeral, over a month ago now, and he was going away. And he hadn’t told her.

  ‘Er, pot calling kettle black,’ said Saffron, pulling up some unsavoury-looking roots. ‘God, we should have done this earlier. How the hell did we get so behind?’

  ‘Ooh, I don’t know,’ said Amy, ‘was it because I’ve been busy looking after the elderly, breaking my heart and generally ruining my life, while you’ve deliberately sought out single-mum status?’

  ‘I have not deliberately become a single mum,’ said Saffron grumpily. ‘It isn’t my fault that Pete won’t come home. I want him back. The kids want him back.’

  ‘Well, tell him!’ said Amy in exasperation.

  ‘What, like you’re going to tell Ben that you’ve made a terrible mistake, and you will marry him after all?’

  Amy didn’t respond.

  ‘Didn’t think so. The trouble is, it’s not as simple as all that. Pete doesn’t trust me. I’ve told him till I’m blue in the face that there’s nothing between me and Gerry and he doesn’t believe me. What hope has our marriage got if he doesn’t trust me?’

  ‘Then we’ll just have to find a way of making him believe you, won’t we?’ said Amy. ‘Come on, I’m sure there must be a way.’

  ‘Hmm, was that a pig flying past?’ asked Saffron. ‘Thought not. Go on, give me that spade. I need to vent my fury on Mrs Amos’s brambles.’

  Amy thought about what Saffron had said as she put Josh to bed that night. Josh was in a foul mood and had thrown his dinner on the floor at teatime, something he hadn’t done since he was a toddler, when Amy had been in the first throes of her grief over Jamie. Not only that, he had kicked her when she had tried to bath him. She had somehow managed to restrain herself from smacking him by dint of going into another room, counting to ten and screaming very loudly, but it had been a close run thing.

  Amy wasn’t against smacking per se, but ever since she had been alone with Josh she had been frightened that if she lost her rag with him too roundly, she would have no one but herself to apply the brakes, so a ‘no smacking’ rule had seemed sensible. Josh rarely pushed her that far normally, so it was a shock to even find herself in this position. And the trouble was, she knew exactly why he was behaving like this.

  ‘When is Ben coming to see us again?’ Josh asked as she tucked him into bed.

  ‘Oh darling, I told you,’ said Amy, ‘Ben isn’t going to come around any more.’

  ‘But I thought he liked me,’ said Josh.

  A wave of guilt rushed over Amy. What was she doing to all of them? She had been so caught up with misery about Harry it had seemed like the right thing to do. She had been so certain. It was only now that she wasn
’t so sure.

  ‘Of course he does,’ said Amy. ‘It’s just Mummy and Ben have had a silly grown-up row, so Ben’s a bit cross with Mummy.’

  ‘So it’s not my fault?’ said Josh.

  ‘No, darling, it’s not your fault.’ She kissed Josh softly on the head. ‘It’s mine, all mine.’

  ‘You should tell Ben you’re sorry,’ said Josh sleepily.

  ‘I should, shouldn’t I?’ Amy agreed. But as Saffron had said to her, if only life were that simple.

  And that’s when it came to her in a flash. She might not be able to get Ben back, but there was a very, very easy way to get Saffron and Pete together. She just needed Gerry to play ball.

  Ben had dragged Pete to the gym. The deterioration into which they had so swiftly fallen had alarmed him so much that he’d decided they both needed taking in hand. It was either that or slit their wrists over yet another Chinese takeaway. As he completed a hard-burn workout on the treadmill, Ben concluded it had been the right thing to do. Pete was looking knackered and red in the face, it was true, but even he admitted to feeling better for it as they worked their way through the weights.

  ‘Don’t I know you?’ A gorgeous tall blonde came slinking up towards them.

  Pete’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

  ‘Put your tongue away, it’s rude,’ whispered Ben.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Pete, ‘but I’m sure that can be amended.’

  ‘Oooh, get you. Oh, I know you, babe.’ The blonde clicked her fingers. ‘You’re Saffron’s husband, you dropped her off at mine once.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘I’m Linda Lowry. Saffron does my garden,’ said the blonde. She gave Pete a sly look. ‘Has she given you your birthday present yet?’

  Pete looked baffled. ‘What birthday present?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Linda doubtfully, ‘perhaps she’s saving it for Christmas.’

  ‘What is she saving for Christmas?’

  Linda looked at Pete, as if weighing him up.

  ‘The routine she was working so hard on for you.’