Coming Home To Holly Close Farm

by Julie Houston

  ‘I don’t think anyone could get permission to flatten it,’ I said. ‘The house must be listed?’

  Madge laughed. ‘Well it certainly wasn’t when I lived there.’

  ‘So, what’s made you change your mind about selling it after all these years?’ Mum came to sit with us at the table. ‘Shall we have a sherry, girls?’

  Daisy pulled a face. ‘I’d rather have gin, Mum.’

  ‘Me too,’ Madge pulled a similar expression to Daisy. ‘Sherry’s for old ladies who smell of pee. Believe me, there are plenty of ’em in Almost Heaven.’

  Daisy giggled. ‘That place we went to yesterday? It’s not called Almost Heaven?’

  Mum laughed too as she poured the drinks. ‘She’s having you on, Daisy. It’s called Almast Haven, presumably because it’s on the outskirts of Almast village. Well, I’m having sherry and I bet Vivienne will have one too once she gets back from her rehearsal.’

  Madge pulled another face. ‘I forgot you had the diva staying with you.’

  ‘Ssh,’ Mum warned. ‘She’ll be back anytime. So, come on, Granny, why’ve you suddenly decided to let us in on this house secret?’

  Madge sipped her gin. ‘I suppose it’s with Harriet and… what was the girl’s name? Lottie…?’

  ‘Liberty,’ we all chorused.

  ‘… Liberty coming to see me yesterday. The last thing I was expecting was a visit from Lydia’s granddaughter and her daughter. Over the years – and there have been literally hundreds who’ve managed to work out that I own the place – I’ve simply turned down out of hand those who’ve come around wanting to buy Holly Close Farm.’

  ‘You didn’t say that’s what the house was called, Granny,’ I interrupted her. ‘That is such a wonderful name for it; it totally encapsulates the whole feeling of the place.’

  ‘Oh God, she’s off,’ Daisy sighed.

  ‘So, was it a working farm, then?’ Mum frowned as she finished her sherry and poured herself another large one. I grinned across at Daisy. At this rate, we’d be pouring Yorkshire pudding batter on our apple pie and Mum would be wondering why the crème-anglaise- tasting Yorkshire puds hadn’t risen. ‘I knew you were brought up on a farm but I didn’t realise you’d lived on one when my mum was a little girl. Granddad Arthur wasn’t a farmer, was he?’

  ‘Don’t get any idea that I was brought up on a big farm, Kate. My dad worked for the Co-op as a tenant farmer and milkman, and the Co-op moved him – and us – from farm to farm in the area whenever a new manager was needed. We kids all went into the mill as soon as we left school at fourteen: Goodners and Sons’ Mills on the outskirts of Midhope. Holly Close Farm was a smallholding – your grandfather Arthur had always wanted to raise poultry; he certainly didn’t want to go back into the mill when the war was over – and with some help from his mother who’d saved up every bit of money he’d sent back to her from his army pay, we managed to buy it straight after the war.’

  ‘But you left? Wasn’t it successful?’ I was sure Madge had said no one had lived at Holly Close Farm for over sixty years.

  ‘My husband – your great-grandfather – wasn’t the most talented of men when it came to business…’ Madge hesitated. ‘Nancy and I left in 1953.’

  ‘Not with Granddad Arthur then?’ Daisy glanced across at me. Had Madge left him? This must have been a bit of a scandal just after the war. As far as I knew from my scant knowledge of social history, divorce, particularly away from London in some northern backwater, wasn’t ever the done thing.

  ‘Arthur died in 1953. Much as I adored the house, it…’ Madge hesitated again, ‘… it just wasn’t… appropriate for Nancy and me to carry on living there. What did I know about turkeys?’ Madge, who was generally exceptionally self-assured, appeared to flounder as she spoke and she reached for her gin, her arthritic fingers grasping tightly around the glass.

  ‘Appropriate?’ Mum frowned. ‘What do you mean appropriate? I assume, seeing the house still belongs to you, that you didn’t have to sell up when Granddad Arthur died?’

  ‘No, I didn’t need to sell it. I didn’t want to sell it. Arthur had left us reasonably well provided for and I think, at the time, I probably thought I might go back there one day.’

  ‘He must have been very young to die,’ I said gently. ‘What was it? Some sort of accident?’

  Madge didn’t say anything but twisted the plain band of gold on her right hand. Her ring finger on her left hand was, I noticed, ringless. ‘If I’m going to give Holly Close Farm up, Charlie – and it really is silly, I should have done so years ago, I suppose – then the whole story will come out.’

  ‘Whole story?’ Mum, Daisy and I all leaned forward to catch what Madge was saying.

  ‘Not now, not now,’ Madge whispered as the kitchen door banged open and Dad and Vivienne came in.

  ‘Ah, sherry, marvellous,’ Vivienne said, rubbing her hands theatrically. ‘Madge, dear, how are you? You look wonderful. How’s the leg?’ She poured herself a generous sherry, took a large sip and stood back, giving Madge a long appraising glance. ‘Now, Madge, I have a darling little crepe-de-Chine scarf, in a shade somewhere between amethyst and lavender, that would go marvellously with that jumper of yours. I shall search it out for you after luncheon.’ Vivienne paused for breath only to imbibe more sherry and then launched once more. ‘My God, I need something to drink after that rehearsal. The director is a total amateur.’

  ‘Yes, Vivienne,’ Mum tutted, ‘John Wright’s the butcher in the village.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Vivienne sniffed. ‘Let’s hope he handles his steak and kidney rather more professionally than he handles his cast of players. And as for the woman who is trying to be the young Honourable Gwendolen Fairfax – well, she must be fifty if she’s a day, and with a huge bust Mae West would have envied. And that accent.’ Vivienne shuddered. ‘Oh! Ah ’ope Am not that, luv.’ Vivienne affected a broad Yorkshire accent. ‘It’d leave no room for t’ developments, and Ah intend to develop in many directions… And then she thrusts that great bosom of hers in the direction of the family butcher. I think she’s after more than his half-pound of shin beef. Must be something going on between them or he’d have brought in her understudy weeks ago: can’t act her way out of a paper bag.’ Vivienne laughed and downed her sherry. ‘Just got a couple of emails to write, Kate. Shout me when luncheon is ready. Smells marvellous, darling.’

  *

  ‘Where’s everybody gone now?’ Mum, red-faced both from the sherry and unsuccessfully juggling the oven space for roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and the beef she’d forgotten to actually put in until an hour previously, was stressed. Cooking wasn’t her strong point and I knew she’d be itching to get back up into the attic, which she’d converted into her studio. Mum was a brilliant potter and, with one of the attics done out years ago – the floor reinforced to take her wheel and clay – she spent as much time as she possibly could away from domestic duties, creating the most wonderful plates and pots for which she was beginning to make a name for herself.

  ‘Sprouts, Mum! I’ll get them.’ I dashed over to the hob where a sulphurous smell of overcooked veg was beginning to emanate from one of the pans. ‘These are done now. Well, overdone, really.’ I eyed the watery green liquid in which myriad sprout leaves were floating and boiling. ‘What do you want me to do with them?’ My ability in the kitchen was worse than Mum’s and I gave the contents an exploratory poke with a knife. At least Mum had had thirty years of marriage to hone her culinary skills whereas, living alone, I’d been happy with a baked potato and a tub of cottage cheese. Once I’d moved in with Dominic I’d made an effort, watching MasterChef and devouring the Saturday Guardian’s cooking supplement, but Dominic had laughed, thrown my inedible pastry to the poor birds – I suspect there were a lot of grounded starlings in Bloomsbury – and taken me out for dinner.

  ‘Oh, God knows,’ Mum sighed. ‘How anyone can enjoy sprouts is beyond me, but I suppose they’re good for you.’

  ‘I th
ink you’ve boiled any nutritional value out of them.’ I held up the pan.

  ‘Look, stick the little green bastards in that tureen on the side. We can microwave them back to life a bit when we’re ready to eat.’ Mum put down her oven gloves. ‘How are you feeling now, Charlie? Pretty fed up?’

  ‘Hmm. Not wonderful. I just keep thinking of Dominic and his wife and three kids all sitting down to Sunday lunch. You know, one big happy family.’

  ‘I doubt very much either Dominic or his wife will be feeling on top of the world, you know. I’m sure he’ll be missing you, and his wife most certainly won’t be giving him an easy time of it.’

  ‘Suppose. So, what happened to Granny Madge’s husband, Arthur? He must have died pretty young for Madge to have brought up Granny Nancy all by herself.’

  ‘Whenever I asked my mum what her father had died of – I know she was only about nine when he died – she said I was too young to understand and that she’d tell me when I was older. I’ve always thought he must have taken his own life, you know, Charlie, and in the early fifties, of course, it was a crime. If you survived a suicide attempt you were prosecuted and probably ended up with a prison sentence, and if you did succeed in ending it all, you couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground. There’s no grave anywhere, as far as I know. Granny Madge has been just as unforthcoming over the years.’

  ‘Mum, what’s this supposed to be?’ I dipped my finger into a jug of yellow lumpy gunge and licked.

  ‘What do you think it is? It’s custard.’

  ‘It’s full of cornflour lumps and it’s salty. You’ve added salt instead of sugar.’

  ‘Bugger. Stick some of your dad’s toffees in and we can call it salted caramel sauce. No, better still, chuck it and open a tin of Ambrosia. Where is everyone? We’re going to eat soon.’

  ‘Dad was called out to a cow in labour, Daisy’s doing something with your geraniums, Vivienne is answering her fan mail and Granny Madge has gone for a lie-down in the sitting room.’

  ‘Well, can you round them all up and tell them food is just about ready? I want to finish off a ceramic I’m working on before the light goes.’

  *

  ‘It really is so much colder up here than in the south,’ Vivienne was saying as she helped herself to cremated roast parsnips. ‘It’s such a shame Graham decided that farm animals were his forte…’ Vivienne raised her manicured fingers to air quote the word ‘… after he’d graduated from vet school and thus ended up in the north.’

  ‘Just be thankful he didn’t make penguins his forte…’ Mum, fed up after a morning spent in the heat of the kitchen, used her knife and fork in order to raise her own – extended – quotation marks, sending, in the process, a shower of still semi-frozen peas from her plate ‘… or you’d be having luncheon with the Inuits. Anyway, he followed me north after university rather than a herd of Friesians, Vivienne.’ Mum was beginning to lose her rag.

  ‘Ah, here’s the intrepid vet now.’ Vivienne made it sound as if Dad had been exploring the Amazon instead of some poor cow’s nether regions. ‘Come on, darling, your food’s in the oven. Were you successful? Have you brought forth new life once more?’

  Dad grinned as he took his plate from the oven. ‘God, that’s hot. Well, it wasn’t exactly me doing the pushing.’

  ‘No, darling, but I’m sure you were doing the pulling.’ Vivienne patted his hand before attempting– and failing – to pour the now congealed gravy over his somewhat fossilised- looking lunch.

  Mum threw her a dessert spoon. ‘Try spooning it out, Vivienne.’

  ‘Dad, you stink.’ Daisy pulled her chair away from Dad’s.

  ‘I was just saying, Graham, how cold it is up here in Yorkshire,’ Vivienne trilled.

  Granny Madge, who’d said very little so far over lunch, arched an eyebrow in my direction and I grinned back at her.

  ‘I really do think, once Earnest has been put to bed, I might explore warmer climes.’

  ‘Costa Rica,’ Mum said dreamily. ‘I’ve always fancied Costa Rica.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Kate,’ Vivienne smiled somewhat patronisingly. ‘Spain in winter won’t be overly warm and the Costas will be full of retired couples in shell suits, drinking their duty free and indulging in swinging parties.’

  ‘Sounds like my kind of fun,’ Granny Madge said drily, and Daisy and I giggled.

  ‘No,’ Vivienne went on, ‘I think Spain is out of the equation. Now, if Santa comes prematurely…’

  She looked hopefully at Dad as Daisy muttered, ‘Raphael’s problem, too, when he’d had a drink.’

  ‘… then maybe he’ll bring me a little surprise voucher for a Thomson’s holiday and I could pop down to the travel agents in town and book something for late January after the performance. Be out of your hair…?’

  ‘Get your cheque book out, Graham,’ Mum muttered grimly. ‘Right now.’

  ‘So, Vivienne,’ Daisy said, after chewing with some difficulty, and swallowing the tough beef, ‘I’ve a spare ticket for speed dating at the Jolly Sailor tomorrow evening. Apparently, it’s a charity do – raising money for Help the Aged, I think. Charlie won’t come with me. Are you up for it?’

  Vivienne laughed theatrically. ‘Me, darling? I do hope you’re not implying I’m Aged myself?’ Vivienne laughed again at the very idea that anyone might think she was old.

  ‘Not at all.’ Daisy said smoothly. ‘You’re the very vision of youth and loveliness, Vivienne. And, yes, I’m sure there’ll be someone your age.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt that anyone would be interested in a fading ex-TV star.’ Vivienne pouted with the hidden implication that the whole of Westenbury, if not Midhope itself, would, in reality, be ready to sweep her off on a date.

  ‘Too right,’ Mum sniffed. ‘Charlie’ll go with you, Daisy.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’ Perish the thought.

  ‘Yes, you will. That’s all settled. My house, my rules.’ Mum’s tone softened as she said, ‘You have to get out there, Charlie. Show the world you don’t care you’ve been dumped.’

  I felt my throat constrict and had to concentrate on the food on my plate before I could speak. ‘But I’ll be off back to London by the end of the week.’

  ‘Charlotte, that’s what I want to talk to you about.’ Granny Madge, suddenly alert, put down her knife and fork neatly on her plate and took hold of my hand across the untouched sprout dish. ‘I’m hoping you won’t go back to London. Before I get in touch with Harriet and her daughter and negotiate a price, I’d like to be able to tell them that I will sell, but on the proviso that you will be the project manager. I believe that’s the term used these days? And that you will draw up plans and work with them on Holly Close Farm.’ Madge never once took her eyes off my face as she spoke.

  ‘Granny, I don’t think you can do that,’ I said gently. ‘You, as a seller, can’t stipulate who a prospective purchaser must use to develop the property.’

  ‘Oh, I think I can,’ Madge said stoutly. ‘If they want the house badly enough – and to be honest I’m not sure they’ll have the money, I mean Liberty is just a slip of a girl – then I will suggest that having you to oversee it all would be part of the deal.’

  ‘I think you’re living in a bit of a fairy tale here, Granny,’ I smiled.

  ‘No, I’m not. I actually would really like Lydia’s great-granddaughter to have my house. That’s why I changed my mind about selling: it’s keeping it all in the family. I’d hate the idea of Holly Close Farm going to strangers. So, Charlie, what do you think?’

  7

  ‘Let’s do it, Charlie. Let’s do it together.’ Daisy was beside herself with excitement. ‘You and me together. We’d make a great team.’

  ‘I can’t ever remember you and me being a great team.’ I pulled a face. ‘We could never agree on anything: whose turn it was to sit in the front seat of the car with Mum, who was going to hoover and who was going to dust, which one of us was washing up or drying.’

  ‘You’re
going back over twenty years, for heaven’s sake,’ Daisy laughed, lifting the kettle and pouring boiling water onto instant coffee.

  ‘Well, that’s where we disagree to begin with,’ I said, pointing a spoon at her mug. ‘How can you drink that instant crap when there’s such fabulous proper coffee to be drunk?’

  ‘Oh, that’s Dominic talking. You loved a mug of Nescafé until you met that pretentious wanker.’

  ‘And who refused to unload the dishwasher after lunch yesterday? Said it wasn’t their turn, they’d done it after breakfast?’

  ‘Well it wasn’t my turn. You’d done nothing but fanny around taking Granny Madge to visit her old house while I’d spent all morning working my backside off in the garden. Those two have absolutely no idea about how to put a garden to bed for the winter.’

  ‘But you’ve not even seen the house yet, Daisy. I know Granny’s got this mad idea that she’ll only let Libby and her partner have the house if they’ll agree to me project managing the renovations and you sorting the garden, but the plot is huge – there must be eight or ten acres at least – and as far as I saw yesterday a good part of it used to be given over to being a smallholding. There’s broken-down sheds that will need clearing. It’s a huge job.’

  ‘Why is it that you think yourself capable of planning the renovations of the house and yet you don’t think I’d be up to sorting the garden?’ Daisy was getting cross. ‘Just because your architectural degree took you seven years and you’re a “professional” doesn’t mean you can belittle my work as a landscape gardener.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Daisy, I know you’re really good at what you do. But what experience have you had? You’ve spent the last few years either travelling, doing a ski season, pulling pints or walking up and down the aisle of a cabin flogging duty free and handing out sick bags?’

  ‘You really can be sodding supercilious when you want to be, can’t you, Charlie?’ Daisy attempted to scrape burned bits from her toast into the kitchen bin, scattering flecks of black onto the surfaces and floor.