Coming Home To Holly Close Farm

by Julie Houston

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ I held up my hand like a traffic cop, preventing his crossing the threshold. ‘I haven’t accepted yet.’

  ‘Probably best offer you’ll get round here this evening,’ Josh said archly as he rubbed his hands together against the cold, ‘and there’s spag bol for supper.’

  ‘With mushrooms?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘Do you want there to be mushrooms?’

  ‘No, I hate the slimy little beggars.’

  ‘Definitely no mushrooms.’

  ‘OK. Give me twenty minutes.’ I opened the front door to let Josh pass, and his arm in its navy suit sleeve brushed my naked one sending a small frisson through me. ‘Help yourself to wine,’ I said over my shoulder as he made his way into the warmth of the sitting room and I scarpered back to the bathroom and my now-cooling bath water.

  Why on earth was I shaving my legs, and giving my whole body the works? Because your poor old body needs it, I told myself. You’ve totally abandoned and mistreated it since Dominic buggered off. It was weeks since I’d bothered with anything more than a quick slash of lipstick and a bit of blusher, and it felt good to carefully smudge smoky eyeliner around my eyes and add a couple of coats of mascara. I finished off with a fabulous coral lipstick and, instead of replaiting my wet hair, dried it upside down so that it fanned out and framed my face in a mass of blond waves.

  Oh God, was Josh Lee going to think this was his lucky night? I played down my appearance by pulling on a clean pair of faded jeans and my favourite navy polo-neck cashmere sweater. I was just about to add my work boots when, instead, I thought sod it, and scrabbled in a bag of still to be unpacked clothes and found my lovely suede ankle boots, which made my legs look so much longer.

  ‘You’re looking good, Maddison.’ Josh smiled as he turned from where he’d been standing by the table. I remembered he’d always called me by my last name for some reason. ‘I always said you were the most gorgeous girl in sixth form.’

  ‘Not to me you didn’t,’ I said. ‘And I’m only coming with you because I need to talk about Holly Close Farm with you. And I can’t face another cheese sandwich.’

  ‘Are these the plans?’ Josh, I saw, had been having a good look at what I’d been working on. ‘Bring them with you. Your ideas for the two cottages are stunning. Really.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I felt ridiculously pleased. ‘Come on, you promised me food.’

  *

  Not being much of a cook, I’m constantly surprised by how good other people are.

  ‘Where’d you learn to cook like this?’ I mopped up the remains of the Bolognese sauce – sans mushrooms, as promised – and took a good look round Josh’s kitchen. It was, as you’d expect from a professional builder and suave entrepreneur, ultra-modern. All stainless steel with huge fuck-off fridges and freezers: very masculine, very Josh Lee.

  ‘I suppose I’ve just got into cooking over the years. Mum was a bit too busy with her own life to ensure there was always a proper meal on the table. We didn’t starve, my brother and me, but it was usually a ready meal or a pizza or a takeaway. When Dad left us to be with Sally – his partner – we had to fend for ourselves a bit. Anyway, I enjoy putting together ingredients.’ He grinned. ‘It’s a bit like building, starting with good materials and ending up with something whole.’

  ‘I didn’t realise,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know your parents had split up.’

  ‘Not unusual, really. Probably more unusual if your parents are still together. I suppose it has put me off long-term commitment…’ Josh broke off. ‘Or perhaps I was just waiting for you, Maddison, to reappear.’ He grinned boyishly, reminding me so much of the sixth-former he once was. He’d had all the girls in the lower sixth – and probably the upper, too – drooling over him. He’d certainly done the rounds of us all, hopping from one to the next, playing us along.

  ‘I doubt it very much,’ I said archly, taking our plates over to the dishwasher. ‘Gosh, this is some monster.’ I opened up the machine, which was all shiny dials and flashing lights, and gazed in wonder: for a girl who was used to a yellow dishcloth, a pan-scrubber and a bottle of Fairy Liquid, this was pretty futuristic. Josh came up behind me as I looked for a seemingly non-existent place to stack the dirty knives and forks.

  ‘Here.’ He reached an arm in front of me, pressing something so that an empty cutlery tray suddenly shot towards me. I could feel the crisp cotton of his pink-striped shirt and the metal from his leather belt against my back and, remembering the dream from a few nights back, suddenly felt horribly randy. Embarrassed at his closeness, and convinced he’d be able to see my traitorous nipples, which had jumped to attention all on their own, I tried to back out, but Josh continued to load the dishwasher with me trapped between him and his shiny machine – ‘You’re telling me you were getting off on a bloody dishwasher?’ I could hear Daisy say scornfully. ‘You need to get out more.’ I began to laugh at the very thought and stepped to one side out of both Josh and his dishwasher’s way.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Josh smiled, reaching for the bottle of wine and refilling both our glasses.

  ‘Oh, it all just seems ridiculous that ten years after I was snogging you in the Jolly Sailor, I’m back in Westenbury, trapped between you and your pan-scrubber.’

  ‘I’ve never heard it call a pan-scrubber before,’ Josh grinned, glancing down at his nether regions. ‘And, for your information, I wouldn’t dream of putting my precious pans in the dishwasher. They’re soaking in the utility. OK, come on, into the sitting room where you can show me your plans properly.’

  For a good half an hour Josh and I sat on his cream sitting-room carpet with the plans laid out in front of us as I explained my ideas for both the farm and the cottage. He was a good listener, genuinely interested in what I’d come up with, and said very little as I talked him through what I’d been working on all the previous week. It was strangely intimate and when he accidently touched my knee as he shifted to get a more detailed look, I moved it away.

  It reminded me of a game of chess. We were studying the plans and I’d point something out and there’d be silence. Then he’d make a comment for or against my idea and I’d either accept his comment or shake my head and make a further move of my own by tracing a finger over something I was particularly pleased with. Then there’d be more silence; more studying of layouts, windows, new walls and then more comments. When he touched my knee once more with the stem of his wine glass, this time I didn’t move away.

  ‘Jesus, Maddison, I’m going to have to make love to you or call you a taxi.’ Josh looked up from the chess game of plans and reached a hand for my face, stroking it with warm hands. ‘Your call.’

  My call? I was feeling so rampantly over the top from the wine, the heat of the room, the excitement of explaining my plans and Josh Lee himself there was no way I was going to call a cab.

  14

  ‘Wow, Granny, this James bloke sounds to have been an absolute blast.’

  ‘Bloke? A blast?’ Madge raised her eyebrows in Daisy’s direction. ‘Goodness, you girls do have the most extraordinary ways of describing men. In my day, it was smashing… a lovely person, a sweetheart … a dreamboat even… Or was that in the fifties?’ Madge closed her eyes slightly in an attempt to recall pertinent adjectives of the time. ‘Anyway, yes, I was totally taken with James Montgomery-West from the very minute I met him.’

  ‘Taken with him?’ Daisy laughed. ‘I can see why, looking at this photo.’ I leaned across Daisy to take another look and studied the features of the exceptionally attractive man in the faded black-and-white image held in her hand. ‘And you were still supposed to be seeing Arthur?’ Daisy went on. ‘That must have been a bit difficult?’

  Madge frowned and, for a moment, looked almost distraught. Once the winter vomiting bug had passed and Almast Haven was open to visitors once more, I’d driven over, picked Madge up and brought her back to the bungalow for a change of scene as well as further instructions on sorting out the garden
. Before we got stuck into our various tasks that Monday morning, we’d settled Madge in front of the fire with coffee and the date and walnut cake Mum had bought from some recent charity do.

  ‘Difficult? Well, yes, I suppose it was rather difficult all round.’

  Daisy cut herself a huge piece of cake and sat back on the sofa. It was sleeting outside and while it was the start of a new week and she and I should really be getting stuck in to our various jobs, it was very tempting to just stay put in the warmth and talk to Madge.

  ‘So, you’d met him at The Ritz?’ Daisy asked once she’d swallowed half her cake and recovered some crumbs from her sweater. ‘What then? Did you start seeing him?’

  Madge put down her own cake untouched and leaned forward. ‘Well,’ she smiled, her eyes bright, ‘it was like this, girls…’

  *

  As Madge and James stepped out of the hotel and on to Piccadilly, James suddenly stopped and, much to both Madge and the doorman’s surprise, stroked the carved stonework of the building. ‘All a sham,’ he smiled as Madge stood, wondering, at his side. ‘This façade is just that. A façade. Take a pickaxe to this beautiful stonework and you’ll soon expose the steel skeleton beneath it.’

  ‘How on earth do you know that?’ Madge laughed. ‘And does it matter anyway?’

  ‘I love buildings, love how the stones fit together. I was just really disappointed when I found out The Ritz isn’t solid stone through and through.’

  ‘So how do you know that?’

  ‘Architecture,’ James said, taking her arm and guiding her down the road and into Green Park. ‘I managed two years at Cambridge before this all blew up in our faces. And also, the hotel management itself is constantly reminding the public how safe the hotel is because of its metal frame.’ He laughed. ‘They omit to mention that the steel was imported from Germany. Anyway, one day, when this is all over, I will go back to my studies… if I survive.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that.’ Madge shivered at the thought. She’d only just met this man but already she knew she couldn’t bear to let him go.

  ‘I’m probably living on borrowed time,’ James smiled. ‘Been incredibly bloody lucky so far. Anyway, I apologise, it’s not my intention to be depressed tonight. Come on, let’s breathe in this magical summer air.’

  Madge had walked in Hyde Park a couple of times with Fran, but with the anti-aircraft guns mounted on their steel structures now the main feature of the area, rather than the grass, fields and flowers she was so missing from home, she’d not been inclined to venture in there by herself. Now, as they strolled through Green Park in the dusk and bosky light shed by the London trees, it felt wonderful to be seeing verdant green rather than the grey stone and concrete of the city.

  ‘I just needed to get away from the madding crowd,’ James smiled down at her as they walked beneath the giant plane and lime trees. Breathing in the scented night air, he appeared to be sobering up amazingly quickly.

  ‘Thomas Hardy?’ Madge was impressed. Not many men, particularly from back home, shared her love of reading.

  ‘You like his novels?’ James stopped walking. ‘I’ve only just discovered them. There’s a lot of hanging around back at base, waiting for the weather to break so we can be off. I’ve done an awful lot of reading lately.’

  Madge stared up at him. ‘Are you frightened? You know, when you set off?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said bleakly, starting to walk once more. ‘Yes, every time. We’re all a bit superstitious: the men all carry some good-luck charm or other, whether it be around their necks or in their top pockets.’

  ‘What do you have? For good luck, I mean?’ Madge suddenly really wanted to know what was going to keep this man she’d just met safe from oblivion.

  James smiled. ‘I don’t have anything.’

  ‘Then you must take this.’ Madge sat down on one of the park benches and scrabbled around in the collar of her shirt, pulling out a chain with a tiny gold cross, which she unfastened. ‘I’d really like you to have this,’ she said shyly. ‘My mum gave it to me the morning I left Yorkshire. She’s very religious, is Mum: she and my brother, Isaac, are always at church. The rest of us aren’t. I mean, we do go to church when it’s Harvest Festival and Christmas… you know, we walk down into the village…’ Madge knew she was talking too fast, and suddenly realised she must appear very forward to James, giving him this little piece of jewellery, the only piece her mum had ever given her. ‘It’s not particularly valuable.’

  James took the chain and looked down at it as it lay in his hand, still warm from Madge’s neck. Then he slid the tiny cross from its chain and placed it in his breast pocket. An old man was laying a huge bunch of yellow roses underneath one of the black poplar trees. Who was he remembering, Madge wondered as she breathed in James’s smell of citrus, cigarettes and whisky as he reached forward. Her skin felt raw, inflamed, when he very gently unfastened the top button of her shirt and replaced the chain where it belonged. He fastened the button once again, straightened her tie and stroked her face with the ball of his thumb.

  ‘Thank you, Madge. That will keep me safe, knowing you gave it to me.’

  James stood and they continued to walk in silence through the park. He stopped at last at a park gate. ‘Do you have to be back by a set time?’

  ‘Yes, eleven o’clock. It’s a bit strange, living on Oxford Street,’ Madge smiled. ‘Not really like being in the war at all.’

  James glanced at his watch. ‘Do you want to go back to The Ritz? I mean, I have dragged you away from Francesca?’

  Oh heavens. Is that what he wanted? To go back there? Madge felt she would die if they just retraced their steps, went back and that was it. If he didn’t ask to see her again. ‘If that’s what you want.’ Madge could hear herself speaking almost sulkily. And she wasn’t generally someone who sulked.

  ‘Madge, I can’t think of anything worse. I don’t want any more to drink. I just want to walk with you. I want to know everything about you.’

  Madge felt relief flood through her like a warm shower. ‘Let’s keep on walking then.’

  They walked side by side up Pall Mall and through the surprisingly quiet streets, their hands touching occasionally but James making no attempt to take hers in his. As they passed the Phoenix Theatre where Love for Love, starring John Gielgud, was being played, Madge felt slightly embarrassed. Love? What was she feeling? It couldn’t be love, she knew that. No one loved someone within an hour of meeting them. Maybe this was merely lust? She’d certainly never felt like this about Arthur, never wanted to melt into him as she’d wanted to dissolve into James in the park. ‘Where are we going?’ Madge turned to James, trying to take in everything about him: his tall stature, his blond hair, his brown eyes and the wonderful way he spoke. Cultured, educated, southern.

  ‘I’m hoping… yes, it is… come on, it’s still open, let’s find ourselves a table at Elena’s.’

  ‘Elena’s?’

  ‘Elena Giacopazzi’s café. We can drink coffee there, proper strong Italian stuff.’ James suddenly looked worried. ‘Unless you’d rather have gin, of course.’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t really like gin that much – my mother always told me to stay away from it.’

  ‘Wise woman.’

  Elena’s was only half full, mainly of after-theatre-goers as well as, Madge realised, American army personnel. James easily found a table and ordered coffee for them both. ‘This will keep me awake,’ he grinned. ‘I don’t want to sleep and wake up to find I’ve dreamt you. That you weren’t real after all.’

  The coffee when it arrived was strong and unfamiliar to Madge, used as she was to mainly drinking tea or some revolting coffee substitute, but from then on strong coffee, its smell and taste, would forever remind her of James and this first evening with him.

  ‘So, you studied at Cambridge?’ Madge asked. James sat across from her, his fingers slowly stroking the back of her hand. It felt wonderful, rather like being bathed in warm sunshine, and s
he never wanted it to stop. James took her hand and brought it up to his mouth, kissing it before replacing it with her other.

  ‘Yes, and funnily enough I’m back there now.’

  ‘In Cambridge?’ Madge’s heart did a little somersault. Arthur was based in Cambridge. ‘Whereabouts? Or is it a secret? There seems to be so much that mustn’t be discussed.’ She glanced round the café at the laughing, coffee-drinking crowd and tried to work out which, if any, could be a German spy intent on following James out, once they left, and finishing him off.

  James laughed at her seriousness. ‘I’m with Bomber Command at Bourn at the moment. See, look, no one’s interested.’ He turned to survey the other tables.

  Madge felt herself pale. Arthur was at Bourn. She was his girlfriend. He’d given her that ring, for heaven’s sake.

  James didn’t appear to notice her unease. ‘Yes, we’ve been lucky devils. Chalked up fifty-two sorties so far and most of those with Eddie as wireless operator. He’s bloody good at his job. You get used to flying with the same crew.’

  ‘And are there a lot of you based there?’ Did he know Arthur? was what she was really asking.

  ‘A couple of thousand at least: RAF and WAAF, and the Americans now, of course. Thank goodness they’ve come in with us; we certainly wouldn’t be anything without them.’ James nodded towards one of the USAAF men, who nodded back but then carried on talking to the group he was with. ‘Poor devils. Not their war, of course, and such a bloody long way from home.’

  Still shaken that James was apparently at the same airbase as Arthur, Madge wasn’t quite sure what to say. Should she say her boyfriend was there with him? Should she ask if he knew him? But, why would he? James was a flight lieutenant, flying the planes; poor Arthur, still in the lowest rank possible, simply serviced them. In the end, she said nothing.

  ‘Madge, tell me everything. Tell me all about your family, your brothers and sisters, what you did before you joined up, what you want to do afterwards.’