Homecoming (13 page)

‘This is from me,’ says Joe. He is handing her a small parcel. ‘More fizz anyone?’ he says to the room.

‘Thanks, love,’ she murmurs and begins absently unwrapping it on her knees but her eyes are still on the general hubbub and the rustling pile of paper which is growing mountainous in the centre of the room. Joe is trying on the cardigan she has bought him and saying, ‘It’s very nice, love, but I’m not sure it’s better than the one I’ve got.’

‘You mean the one with holes in it?’ she says.

Bartholomew has turned away from Max and is saying to Primrose, ‘What did Santa bring you, Prim?’

‘Pans,’ says Primrose, pouring peanuts into her mouth. ‘But they’re not from Santa. They’re from Max.’

‘Romance not dead then,’ says Bartholomew.

‘How d’you mean?’ says Primrose.

‘Never mind,’ says Bartholomew. Ann watches him lean back in his armchair and take out his phone from his pocket. Fiddle with it. Then she looks down at the present on her knee.

‘My god Joe, we can’t afford this,’ she gasps, holding up a necklace. Beautiful it is, little lilac stones and diamante. Old-fashioned. Glittering.

‘Yes we can,’ says Joe, stepping over the paper mountain and raising her up from her chair and taking her, still bewildered, in his arms. ‘Nothing’s too good for the woman I love.’

And she doesn’t know whether to give in to the feeling she has of being ever so touched or whether to give more to the sense of anger rising, at his being irresponsible with money. And when he was always telling her to tighten her belt. There is a third feeling, that she bats away, about the necklace being not . . . well, totally to her taste (though it’s lovely, she can see that). Just not quite the sort of thing she wears. And if they were going to splash out, she’d rather have halogen down-lighters in the kitchen, like Lauren’s. But marriage has taught her to receive gifts for the meaning. The little things, you had to let go of. She turns while he fastens the necklace around her neck. She pats it and she feels it sit there, the cost.

The kitchen is all movement as everyone idles in. Ann is removing the bird from the oven and its juices are spitting noisily in the pan. The room seems briefly packed with unusually large adults, though Primrose hangs back, patting the dog in the doorway. Tess’s tail thuds against Primrose’s leg.

Bartholomew notices the care Ann has taken over the table. There are crackers on each of the plates, red paper napkins and a holly wreath at the centre of the table. Joe is filling the glasses with more wine. He and Ann are growing garrulous with it.

‘Sit down everyone,’ Ann shouts, bringing a bowl of roast potatoes to the table. ‘Joe, I need you to carve now.’

‘Right you are.’

‘Shame Ruby’s not here,’ says Max, and Bartholomew feels himself bristle. ‘Not ashamed of us are you?’ Max is looking at Ann and Joe as he speaks, though they are too busy with the food to notice. ‘Not joining the ranks of old married couples any time soon?’

‘Well, I . . .’ Bartholomew begins.

‘Here girl,’ says Max to the dog, bending under the table to stroke her as she slinks past, ‘where are you going? Dad, I’ve heard of a tractor that’s coming up for sale over Malton way: a good one, apparently. Five years old. I could go up there next week, take a look.’

‘Sounds good,’ says Joe.

‘If you two think you’re going tractor-shopping any time soon, you’ve got another think coming,’ says Ann, bringing over the carrots and the sprouts. Steam rises up to her face from the bowl. Her complexion is red with the heat and the wine. Knobs of butter slide over the vegetables. ‘There’s no money and you know it.’

Bartholomew sees Max smile at Joe and Joe return with a wink.

Bartholomew feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. He takes it out and opens the message from Ruby. It is a photograph of another festive table, groaning with turkey, potatoes, parsnips, sprouts and various other bowls too blurry to identify. Her text says:

When he looks up, Primrose is pointing a Christmas cracker in his face. ‘Will you pull mine?’ she says, without smile or frown.

Lunch is eaten too hastily, he thinks. The Hartles eat with a Neanderthal urgency, as if they might never eat again. Joe and Ann’s faces are flushed and bloated. They all wear paper hats from their crackers and as he looks around the table, Bartholomew thinks it makes them resemble in-patients in a mental institution or a retirement home.

His phone vibrates again.

‘Ruby at home with her folks?’ says his mother.

‘Yes. In Leeds.’

‘Might you go and see her?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he says, leaning back in his chair. ‘We see enough of each other at home.’ He is surprised to hear himself call Winstanton home.

‘I could never live down south,’ says Max. ‘Too crowded.’

Joe has his head down, pushing food urgently onto his fork.

Ann snorts. ‘You could barely leave Marpleton. We thought you were going to stop at home till you were fifty. Terrified we were. Thank god for Primrose is all I can say,’ and she pats Primrose’s knee.

‘I think if Max and Primrose are to have a child, then she ought to know about the trike incident,’ says Bartholomew.

‘Ooh yes,’ says Ann, rolling with it, taking another slug, ‘we must tell you that one. Chuh, the shame of it. D’ye remember, Joe?’

Max colours up. ‘Don’t, mum,’ he says.

‘Yes, go on,’ says Bartholomew. ‘Tell her.’

‘Well, Max was at nursery,’ says Ann, ‘must’ve been three or four at the time, and all the kiddies were fighting over the tricycles. There were only five of them and Max had bagsed one and he were riding around, crowing like. And all the other kiddies were waiting for a turn. Anyway, he needed a poo – this is what the teacher told me. And rather than give up his trike, he just stood up astride it and pooed right there in his pants.’

Joe is cackling. Primrose giggles into her napkin. Bartholomew smiles. Max’s face is like thunder.

Ann is laughing, saying, ‘And I said to him, “You daft apeth, you bought yourself, what, three minutes, tops?” He was that desperate not to give up his place.’

Max stands up and throws his napkin down onto his chair and walks out of the room. They all look at each other, hearing Max climb the stairs and then bolt the bathroom door.

‘Are there seconds?’ asks Primrose.

‘Of course, love,’ says Ann. ‘What would you like?’

‘Everything,’ says Primrose. She watches Ann fill her plate. ‘And another potato,’ she says quietly.

‘How are Eric and Lauren?’ asks Bartholomew. ‘Are they coming over later?’

‘Eric’ll be too busy polishing his Nissan Micra,’ says Joe.

‘They’re well,’ says Ann. ‘Having their kitchen done. That’s dragging on, driving Lauren nuts. Goodness, it’ll be beautiful though. They’ve got these little spotlights in the ceiling and they give off this sparkly pinkish light, like in a hotel.’

‘Not good for your electricity bill, halogens,’ says Primrose, with a full mouth.

‘We don’t need spotlights,’ says Joe.

‘No,’ says Ann, ‘we probably don’t. But I wouldn’t mind painting this room. It’s looking very tired. Hey ho. Things are just too tight.’

Joe has got up from the table and is clearing some plates.

Bartholomew feels his phone vibrate again. Two messages. The first is a picture of a white bowl containing brown sponge submerged in a lake of cream.

The second says,

He decides to turn his phone off.

‘Right,’ says Ann. ‘Who’s for Christmas pud with brandy butter and rum sauce? Just a slither, Bartholomew?’

He is used to hearing his mother tell him he needs feeding and pushing food at him but now he notices her adjust the lie of her knife.

‘OK, thanks mum. Can anyone smell burning?’

Bartholomew gets up and pushes his chair out with the backs of his legs. He wanders about the room sniffing – towards the oven, then through the kitchen door to the hallway, the dogs following him to where the air is cool. But the smell recedes in this direction, so he returns to the kitchen. The others have now stood, raised by a vague curiosity.

‘Your mother will have left something on the stove again,’ says Joe, investigating.

‘I have not,’ says Ann. ‘P’raps it’s next door’s dinner.’

Bartholomew walks around the table to the back door and opens it tentatively and the noise hits his ears, even before the smell. Smoke is pouring from the black mouth of the hay barn, on the opposite side of the yard. He takes several broad steps towards it until a wall of heat stops him. The snap and pop of flames on the bales can be heard over the engulfing roar.

‘Dad!’ Bartholomew tries to shout but no sound emerges. Joe is already at his elbow, straining forward. Everything seems to Bartholomew to be in slow motion. Joe is stumbling towards the barn.

Bartholomew runs forward after him, hoping to grab Joe. Needles are pricking the edges of his eyeballs; he squints into the drifts of grey and black smoke. Joe is shouting but he can’t hear what he’s saying, so Bartholomew goes further in. When his hand finally reaches Joe’s back in the darkness, he finds his father beating something, his whole body flailing onto the bales. Bartholomew pulls at him, first his cardigan, then his whole body, dragging him backwards.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ he shouts. ‘Come out, dad!’ He forces Joe towards the doorway. ‘Max! Get some help!’

He and Joe are bent double, coughing. He notices Joe’s hand, where the skin is puckering and bubbling, strange lines appearing as if threads were being pulled taut.

Max has been standing, rooted, but now he runs inside.

‘I can’t look,’ says Joe and he leans his forehead against Bartholomew’s shoulder. Bartholomew holds him, looking at the smoke billowing out of the mouth of the barn and at the white plastic sacks of ewe rolls, leaning against the nearest barn pole, which are now melting onto the floor.

Ann stands at the open back door, her arms folded across her chest against the arctic air. The yard is still milling with firemen, though two engines have pulled out of Marpleton and driven away. Four firemen still have their hoses pointed at the barn. The stripes on their enormous rubber coats flash as they move. Two firemen are reeling in their equipment, another is inside the engine, speaking on a radio handset. The eighth, who seems to be in charge, stands beside the engine writing on a clipboard.

She looks at the barn. She can hardly believe it. There it is, in all its inglorious wetness. The black struts and arching roof are presiding over its charred interior like some impervious
mother
. Smoke is still drifting out from its mouth and she can see the bales – sodden and black – like a smoking dung heap, but worth less money.

The fireman with the clipboard walks towards her.

‘What a mess,’ she says.

‘You’ve been lucky,’ he says. He is a kind-looking man with a doughy, open face and ginger eyebrows.

‘How’s that?’

‘Well, for a start there’s no wind today. If there’d been a wind the surrounding buildings might have gone up – your farmhouse, for example. And second, your livestock are penned away from the barn, so no loss of life. That’s the main thing.’

‘I s’pose. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Commonest thing there is – hay-barn fires.’

‘Oh yes, of course I know that,’ she says. ‘It’s just never happened to us, that’s all. And in December. I mean, you expect it in June or September, after baling, but in the snows? I didn’t think it were possible.’

‘Aye but November were that dry, d’you remember?’ He seems enthusiastic now, the puzzle-solver. ‘And then, two weeks ago, the snows came. I’d put money on there being a leak in that roof. Wetness got in, seeped through to the centre of the bales and set off the decomposition process. That’s what made them heat up. Once they get to 160 degrees – whoosh. Up it goes.’

‘How can it get so hot though, when it’s so flaming cold out?’

‘Well, bales might’ve been too tightly stacked. Don’t forget, once you’re in the centre of a stack, it’s well insulated. Toasty it is, in there. I could be wrong. But that’d be my guess.’ He steps away from her and looks around the corner of the farmhouse, towards the gate to the village. ‘The stack is a bit too hidden from the road to be arson. And it’s not the time of year for it. Kids do that in summer.’

They stand for a minute, watching the firemen.

‘Why are they still hosing? Doesn’t look like the barn could get any wetter.’

‘We have to make sure there’s no heat left. We don’t want to leave and find there’s a patch still smouldering somewhere, which could then catch on to your other buildings.’

‘Would your lads like some tea?’

‘Now you’re talking.’

‘And some Christmas cake? Oh I do feel bad, getting you all out on Christmas Day.’

‘That’s what we’re here for, love. Mind if I come in?’

He steps into the kitchen and removes his yellow hat. He seems impossibly big, stood there next to her sink in his creaking yellow trousers and boots as big as U-boats.

‘Your insurance will cover it,’ he is saying. ‘There’s just some paperwork to fill out.’

She keeps her back to him, gathering plates and knives and taking the foil cover off the cake.

He fills the silence. ‘Still, looks like you’ll have to buy in your winter feed. What was that lot worth? About ten thousand pounds?’

‘About that, yes,’ she says quietly.

The boys have come home from the hospital with Joe, who sits at the kitchen table holding his bandaged hand as if it belongs to another person. His nostrils are black with soot.

The chief fire officer – Ken, as Ann has come to call him – is still in the kitchen, standing with his bottom leaning against the counter. He is drinking his third cup of tea. He sets it down, saying ‘Do you mind if I use your bathroom?’ and she says ‘Of course, up the stairs and it’s straight ahead of you,’ and they can all hear him creaking as he climbs them, two at a time.