Homecoming (4 page)

‘What’s tupping?’ asks Pat.

‘It’s when you put the rams in to serve the ewes,’ says Ann, grateful to be the keeper of some knowledge at last. ‘A tup is what we call a ram, you see, for breeding.’

Ann’s last words are drowned out by a loud gasp, then another, deeper than the last, and then cheers and clapping as the room erupts, free and strong. Brenda Farley is smiling, though she has allowed her gaze to return floorward. Other team members pat her on the hump.

‘Well I never,’ says Lauren.

‘I don’t believe it,’ says Pat.

‘Just shows you,’ says Mo.

‘What? What happened?’ asks Ann.

‘Two doubles and a bully, that’s what happened,’ says Lauren. ‘I’d best congratulate Elaine.’

‘Don’t choke on it,’ says Ann.

‘A gimmer,’ says Ruby. She takes a fulsome slug of pale ale. ‘Hang on, I know this: a gimmer is a female lamb, sold for breeding.’

Bartholomew raises his pint to her. ‘Very good. And what’s a mule gimmer?’

‘Oooh, give me a minute. A mule gimmer is . . . a cross-bred lamb. Not a pedigree.’

‘And with Swaledales we cross with?’

‘The Blue-Faced Leicester!’

‘My work here is done,’ he says, clinking his pint glass against hers.

‘So that email was from your mum,’ she says. ‘Why didn’t you just say?’

He shrugs. Takes another gulp of his pint.

‘She’s worried then,’ says Ruby.

He nods. ‘Not the best time to be a farmer.’ He is looking out across the room: stripped-oak floors; tongue-and-groove bar painted ‘heritage’ green; industrial lights. The Three Kings on Cathedral Way is a pub with an eye firmly on itself. Not like the boozers back home.

‘So, you’re still working on that main bed,’ she says.

‘Yep.’

‘Run this by me again. You’re putting more plants in the ground.’

He hasn’t told her how much this central bed – his new project – means to him. When his mind is idling, he thinks about it: sketching out the ribbons of oriental poppies, aquilegias and verbascum; the great drifts of alliums and tulipa ‘spring green’.

‘Just in case someone tries to do something crazy, like buy them?’ Ruby is saying.

‘I know it doesn’t make sense.’

‘Is capitalism ready for a visionary such as yourself?’

‘I often ask myself the same question.’

‘I suppose,’ she says, ‘you’ll be showing off plants to their best effect – showing what they look like in a border.’

‘It’s not just that. It’s what I’m into. Leonard thinks it’s pointless, too.’

‘Leonard thinks everything’s pointless.’

‘There’s something about plants in those mean little nine-centimetre pots. I want to see them expand.’

‘Can you afford it?’ she says.

‘Arh, businesses don’t expect to make much in the first couple of years. If I really want kerching, it won’t be from plants, anyway.’

‘What d’ye mean?’

‘It’s the other guff that makes money – your gazebos, those nasty solar lights, plastic toadstools.’

‘How depressing,’ she says, with feeling. Ruby says everything with feeling. ‘I mean, what you’re doing with that bed is so much more special.’

He says nothing.

Ruby says, ‘I think you should ditch the horrible knick-knacks and go for it on the main bed. Do what you love – find a way.’

He drains his glass.

‘What about if you made it a destination – a place people visit and hang out in? So what you would become is a beautiful garden with a nursery attached.’

‘Beautiful gardens don’t make money.’

‘Why not? You could make something really brilliant, Bartholomew. That old lean-to – the glass one – that’d make a great café. Vines in the ceiling, sand on the floor, newspapers on wooden tables. And if you got rid of all the plastic crap, that corner of your warehouse could be a farm shop. Bung in a kids’ playground in the lower field.’

‘All that takes money. I’ve got no money, Rube. I’ve got bank loans up to my eyeballs and piss-all income. That’s why the fishing gnomes have to stay.’

She slumps back, jutting out her lower lip. ‘Lottery maybe.’

He stands up.

‘No wonder you don’t have a name,’ she says. ‘You don’t really know what it is yet.’

‘I’m going to put some music on. See if I can inject some atmosphere into this place.’

The pints roll on, Ruby downing them as they come. She’s a terrible drinker – can’t take it at all, because she drinks so seldom, so she soon starts to sway with it, putting her head on his shoulder, laughing too loudly. She was right about a name for the place. In the two years since opening, he’d been functioning under the trade name ‘Garden Centre’, always with a view to rebranding it eventually – a strategy that drew uniform derision from anyone with experience in business. His mother kept suggesting ‘Have a Hartle’, which kept him awake at night.

‘Have a Hartle! Christ, that’s bad!’ shouts Ruby, slamming her pint down on the table so that a wave of it sloshes over the side of the glass.

‘I know,’ he says.

‘We can do better ’an that.’

‘I was thinking something youthful and urban – just one word,’ he says. ‘You know, like Planted. Excepted that’s taken.’

‘Or Soiled.’ She laughs. ‘Come off it, Bartholomew. One word is pretentious.’

They look out across the bar in silence.

‘Worth a Trowel?’ says Ruby. ‘Pot Luck? All You Need Is Lush?’

‘If you’re not going to be serious . . .’

‘I’m just thinking out loud. Let’s think about your stock.’

‘Well, um, there’s some hard landscaping, you know, paving stones and stuff, bricks, gravel, compost. In the warehouse there’s fertilisers and plant food – like fish, blood and bone.’

‘I don’t think fish, blood and bone is going to draw in the crowds. Tools?’ She burps with her mouth shut. ‘’Scuse me.’

‘Spades, forks, aerators, hedge trimmers. This isn’t getting us anywhere. And anyway, this is about the tenth time we’ve gone through it.’

‘Maybe we should be thinking elegant rather than cool. It’s on Ray Street, Ray of Hope! Hoe Ray Me?’

‘Oh god, this is rubbish,’ he says.

‘No, hang on. Alive and Digging!’

‘Alive and Digging?’

‘As in the U2 song.’

‘Simple Minds actually. No one’s going to get that.’

‘P’raps not. Dig . . . dig . . . Can You Dig It? Dig When You’re Winning! The Dug Out. Diggery Pokery.’

‘Please stop.’

‘Thanks very mulch.’ Ruby is now slurring. And hiccuping.

‘Let’s get you home,’ he says, standing and putting on his padded jacket.

Ann sits heavily down in the passenger seat and enjoys the support against the base of her back. Lauren’s car is always immaculate. Still smells of car showrooms even though it’s not new by a long chalk. Nissan-something. Not like the fifteen-year-old draughty thing Joe drives. You could be sure of a cold bum and poor visibility in a Hartle vehicle.

‘Amazing performance from Brenda,’ she says.

‘You’re telling me,’ says Lauren, peering at the road. ‘That
woman
’s barely hit the board in a year, and suddenly . . .’ She pulls out slowly, both hands on the top of the steering wheel, her body hunched over it. ‘Come to think of it, that woman’s barely
seen
the board in a year, never mind hit it.’

Ann listens to the rhythmic thrub of Lauren’s windscreen-wipers and looks over at her friend, whose face is outlined with a greenish glow from the dashboard. Loose flesh on her cheeks, sagging below the jawline. Crow’s feet about the eyes. God we look old, she thinks.

‘How’s your kitchen coming along?’

‘Oh Lord it’s slow,’ says Lauren, craning forward again, flicking the indicator for a right turn. ‘Trouble is, when they’re there – the builders I mean – you can’t wait to see the back of them for all the dust. And then they’re gone again and you’re cursing because it’s all half done and I’m dying to put all me things away. Sorry, I can really get boring on this one.’

‘You let rip love.’

‘Well, since you insist. Eric’s no help.’

‘You do surprise me.’

Lauren laughs. ‘Honestly, that man could drive you to drink. He never talks seriously to the builders, always leaves that to me. He’s their best friend, cracking jokes, charming their socks off. Then, soon as they’re gone, he goes around the kitchen picking at this and that. “They haven’t put these hinges on properly. That tiling should be done by now.” As if I’m his foreman and I should be following him around with a pad and pen.’

They’ve had this conversation, or versions of it, for twenty-odd years. They have this saying, she and Lauren, which they say in unison. ‘Don’t put your husband on a pedestal. He’ll only want dusting.’

‘It’ll be done soon,’ says Ann, ‘and then you’ll love it. You’ll forget this bit.’

‘I know, but I tell you, never again. Anyway don’t let me go on. How are the boys?’

‘Their campaign of secrecy continues,’ says Ann. ‘If they told me owt, they’d have to kill me. Bartholomew is too far away, and Max . . .’

‘Not far enough?’

Ann laughs.

‘It’s always the way,’ says Lauren.

‘Joe says we have to support Max, pay him enough so he can start a family. But we haven’t got a brass farthing. We don’t draw salaries ourselves.’

‘Well good for Joe,’ says Lauren. ‘You were always a mean beggar.’

‘I am tight, it’s true. But why can’t Max go and find other work – shearing or labouring or summat? Supplement his income? Joe glories in it – you know, that Max is working the farm with him when most sons would wash their hands of it – but where’s the glory in a son as can’t think for himself?’

‘Arh, he loves those boys, Ann,’ says Lauren, glancing at her then back to the road. ‘Your Joe, he loves those boys more than any father I’ve seen. Bartholomew’s doing well, in’t he? And you liked that girlfriend of his, Ruby, when he brought her back.’

‘I s’pose. He’s my great white hope, is Bartholomew. But he doesn’t tell us anything.’

‘That’s boys,’ says Lauren.

‘Ruby’s smashing – Joe and I both think so – but he’s not marrying her. They’ve been together a year now and to start with it were all love’s young dream but they seem to have gone off the boil.’

‘These things do. He’s still young.’

‘Thirty-two? I had two boys by that age. This generation, they don’t commit to anything.’

They have pulled into Lauren’s drive and she is pulling on the handbrake. Neither makes a move to get out of the car.

‘Well, it’s different now. Harder for ’em,’ says Lauren.

‘And as for Max, I don’t know how that marriage works. She’s such a pudding.’

‘Raw sexual chemistry I expect,’ says Lauren and Ann laughs.

‘On that note, I think I’ll get off. Thanks for the lift.’

‘Thursday night for flower-arranging?’ says Lauren.

Ann has heaved herself out of the passenger seat. She is stooping to look at her friend who is still seated, gathering her handbag and keys.

‘It’s a date,’ says Ann, then closes the passenger door.

Ruby stumbles on the cobbles of Cathedral Way, under the orange street lamps. Stumbles over and into him, and then drags on his arm. He marches her purposefully up the High Street and past the Theatre Royal. There are still plenty of people about – it’s not yet 10 p.m. They’ve not eaten, apart from a steady flow of crisps and peanuts. No wonder Ruby is rolling.

‘I couldn’t do it,’ she says, hanging on his arm.

‘Do what?’ he asks. He puts his hand in his pocket so his arm becomes a loop for her to hold onto.

‘Set up on my own. Don’t think I’m brave enough.’

‘Well, it’s not for everyone,’ he says.

‘What are you saying? You think it’s beyond me? Good for nothing ’cept serving sandwiches?’ Black spidery flicks of mascara have smudged onto her cheekbones, among the brown freckles.

‘Course not. What would you do – if you left the café?’ he says.

‘Dunno. Cooking.’

‘You’re good at that.’

They walk on, Bartholomew setting the pace. She’s a dead weight on his arm, uncomfortable and tiring. They reach Theobald Road.

‘Give us your key,’ he says and she feels about in her bag for what seems like minutes. She has her feet apart to steady her, but her body sways. She gives him the key and they walk further up Theobald Road.

‘So that’s what the café idea was all about,’ he says.

‘Eh?’

‘A café at my place – for you to run?’

‘I didn’t think of that,’ she says. ‘You want to go into business w’ me cos I’m so clever!’ She puts her arms around his neck while he tries to open her front door with her key.

‘I don’t think so,’ he says, low and stern. ‘I’m not going into business with anyone. I’m on me own. That’s how I like it.’

‘Jeeeeez, alright,’ says Ruby and they fall in, tumbling into her dark hallway.

In the echo of the hall as they clatter up the communal stairs to her flat, he says, ‘Watch yourself, Rube.’

She stops on the stairs, looking at her shoes, with one arm on the banister. He is behind her.

‘Why are you so paranoid?’ she says, suddenly sober and angry. ‘You always think I want something from ye, like I’ll be sticking a pin in the condoms next. You’re not that much of a catch Bartholomew.’

She takes her key off him roughly and opens the front door to her flat, leaving it open for him to follow.

Her place is dark, except for the fairy lights which she never turns off. In the gloom, the purples, pinks and oranges from the cushions and rugs glow, as if they’ve stumbled into some over-stuffed grotto. She throws her bag down on the sofa and takes her coat off. She is shambling towards the bedroom, prising off her shoes as she goes. He steadies her and leads her to the bed. She sits, then lies her head on the pillow and he lifts her stockinged legs. Her eyes are shut. He hears a snore ring out.

Bartholomew wants to go home but doesn’t feel he can leave her just yet. He’s been experiencing this more and more lately – a gap between what he should do and what he wants to do – and he wonders if this is how love ought to feel. He goes to sit in the wicker chair in the corner of the room, beside the window where net curtains are filtering the orange of a street lamp, its massive bulb just beyond the glass. He watches Ruby sleep, one hand to his chin, the other on his knee. He sees her turn over with all her body, hip up, face down, and as she does so, she farts.