Second Thyme Around (35 page)

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Authors: Katie Fforde

Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women

BOOK: Second Thyme Around
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He looked up. ‘Actually, when I first called on Kitty, it
was
self-interest. I called on her so I could either get closer to you, or discover if Kitty was a witch, making you one too.’
‘But when you got to know her, you loved her for her own sake.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Yes.’ He frowned over the bacon for a few seconds. ‘And we’ll make our marriage work this time because we’re both too stubborn to let it fail. Would you like an egg, or just a tomato?’
‘Egg, please.’ She hesitated for a second, but then decided to ask her question; if their marriage was to work,
there must be no doubts between them. ‘Lucas, why were you unfaithful to me? The first time? And how did you get to be a chef?’
Lucas pushed his hand through his hair, making it stick up. He thought for a few moments, trying to work out what to say. ‘I was frightened. I was in a marriage I couldn’t make work, a job I couldn’t do, and wasn’t suited for. Celia wanted me. She was senior to me, older than me and her attention was flattering. She came on to me when she’d summoned me into her office to give me a bollocking.’
‘Instead she gave you a rollicking?’
He frowned. ‘She took off all her clothes and then started on mine. I’m not saying I shouldn’t have resisted, but I’d stopped giving you orgasms—’
‘It’s all right, you’ve started again.’
‘Don’t interrupt. Celia wanted me so blatantly. It seemed easier to abandon you and carry on with her. God! I was such a shit! I don’t know how I lived with myself!’
‘What about Celia? Did you live with her?’
‘For a bit, until she got bored with me. Then she kicked me out.’
‘I thought you said you left her!’
‘I did, my possessions followed rapidly behind.’
Perdita chuckled. ‘Go on.’
He added butter to the pan, and put in the halved tomatoes. ‘I bummed around the City for a while, making money, sleeping with older women, collecting some extravagant presents on the way. Then I saw a girl I thought was you. It brought me up short. Some mates had hired a house in France, asked me to go with them.’ He paused to add the eggs to the pan.
‘Go on. How did you get to be a chef?’
‘We got talking to one, one night. Strangely, he was English. He came through into the bar for a coffee. We’d had a bloody good meal, and told him so. I asked him a
couple of questions, he saw I was interested, and said if I wanted to learn more, I could sign up at the hotel down the road.’ He looked at Perdita, his expression rueful and self-deprecating. ‘I don’t know if the chef was a sadist or a genius or both. But he taught me about food – after he’d taught me about cockroaches and maggots and working fifteen-hour shifts with no break, in the blistering heat.’
‘So when you got to be a chef, you modelled yourself on him?’
He shook his head. ‘You think I’m a bastard?
That
bastard nearly took the end of my finger off with a knife. If my nails hadn’t needed cutting, he would have done! I am what a pussycat is to a sabre-toothed tiger, compared to that man!’
‘So why did you stay?’
He shrugged, and got two plates out from the cupboard. ‘He knew about food, he took me on completely untrained. I was learning a lot.’
‘And?’
‘I think I needed to prove I could take it. That I wasn’t the dilettante City boy I seemed to have become.’ He looked up and grinned. ‘Perhaps I felt my backside needed kicking. It certainly got it. Literally and figuratively. Now, do you want breakfast in bed? Or will you get up?’
She slid out of bed. ‘I’ll get up.’
‘Then please put some knickers on. That jacket is long, but not quite long enough for my peace of mind.’
She giggled and rummaged in her bag. When she was dressed, below the waist at least, she joined him at the table. ‘So how did you get from scullery boy to shit-hot chef?’
‘Eat your breakfast, it’s getting cold.’
Obediently, she sawed at a piece of bacon. ‘Why don’t you want to tell me? Surely this is the good bit of the story?’
‘It is and it isn’t.’ He frowned, pulling the skin of his tomato as if it required great skill. ‘You really want to know? Well, I poisoned him.’
‘What!’
‘Not badly, only enough to give him dreadful diarrhoea. The sous was drunk – I’d arranged that too – and so I had the restaurant to myself for the night, apart from the other skivvies, of course.’
He shot her a look which reminded her of the night she had worked for him, and what had nearly happened afterwards. She sighed, regretting her restraint.
‘So, what happened?’
‘Well, the owner came in. That I hadn’t arranged, and wouldn’t have done. But he liked my work and offered me a better job in his restaurant in Paris.’
‘So, did you become head chef there?’
‘Oh no, but I was slightly higher up the food chain. The chef I was working for was livid when he found out. I had to abandon my last week’s wages and go to Paris.’
‘And the rest is history?’
‘More or less. Now, eat up, you know how offended chefs get if people let their meals get cold.’
‘I’ve just had a dreadful thought,’ said Perdita, when they’d reached the toast and marmalade stage. ‘What are my parents going to say when I tell them we’re going to get married again?’
He balanced a large piece of peel on his crust of toast. ‘I don’t think that’ll be a problem.’
‘Lucas, you didn’t ask my father’s permission for my hand, did you? If you did, I’ll never speak to you again, let alone marry you!’
‘No! Of course I didn’t. But before they left, they asked me to keep an eye on you. And your mother – intimated – that she’d be glad if we got married again. I think she wants you off her hands. Now Kitty’s gone, she thinks she might have to be a mother to you herself.’
‘That’s very unfair. She did the best she could. I’ve turned out all right, haven’t I?’
He sighed. ‘More than all right. Now, have you had enough breakfast? Have we talked enough? Or can we do what we were put on earth to do?’ He came round the table and pulled her to her feet. His kiss tasted pleasantly of eggs and bacon with a hint of marmalade.
‘You haven’t told me about me being an heiress, yet.’
‘Later.’
 
‘ … so Kitty said, would I mind looking at her will, even if I didn’t want to be an executor.’
Perdita could imagine her saying it.
‘Cast your eye down that, darling, and check I haven’t lost my marbles and left it all to a cats’ home.’
‘I did tell her it was none of my business if she had, but she insisted.’ He sighed. ‘Her husband left her very well provided for, she’s had some extremely good financial advice and she’s lived frugally most of her life. You’ll inherit an unencumbered house, if you overlook some major repairs, an excellent portfolio of shares, and some valuable jewellery and pictures, which have lived in the bank for years.’
‘But when was this? Unless it was very recent, there was still time for her to change it.’
‘It was before she had the first TIA’
‘Then it might all have changed. It might be Roger who’s the heiress, not me.’ She smiled to hide her anxiety.
He shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t taken in by Roger any more than I was. I dare say she’s left him something, out of guilt, but she’d never disinherit you.’
‘I do hope not – not because of the money, but—’
‘The land. You told me. And Kitty wanted you to be well provided for. I asked her why she didn’t keep the house up better and she said if you wanted to sell it, it was silly
to spend money you might not get back.’ He smiled. ‘If the worst comes to the worst, and she has left it all to Roger, you’ll just have to be a kept woman, and live off your husband.’
She frowned. ‘Joking apart, I wouldn’t want to do that.’
‘Seriously, though,’ he went on, ‘we could raise the money to buy the land off Roger, and if he was dealing with me he wouldn’t dare to ask over the odds.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just know. I can be quite frightening, although I know you’ll find that hard to believe.’
She was forced to laugh. ‘So you think my fortune is safe?’
‘Yup. So do you want to sell the house?’
Perdita sat perched on a low three-legged stool. She wasn’t conscious of thinking, but after a moment, she said, ‘No.’ Until that moment, she hadn’t allowed herself to think about what she might want to do with Kitty’s house. Now she felt she wanted to live in it, fill it with children, stop the roof from leaking and revamp the kitchen. And now suddenly, it wasn’t only her decision. ‘But where do you want to live?’
He didn’t hesitate. ‘Where you want to live. With you. By your side.’ He gazed at her, for once letting his feelings for her shine through his eyes. ‘I don’t care where I live. I can do what I do anywhere. If you want to live in your house, I’ll happily live in it with you.’
‘But supposing you get fed up with Grantly Manor? Supposing you want to open your own place somewhere?’
‘Then we’ll sort out how later, when it happens. At the moment let’s just concentrate on getting married and being happy. Oh—’ he paused guiltily.
‘What?’
‘I’ve just remembered. They want us to make a television series together.’
‘So, you could just give up cheffing, and become a
television personality?’ She kept her head down and observed him from the top of her eyes.
‘No I could not!’
‘Well, you’ll have to live with a stigma of some sort. Either you married me for my money, or you’re not a proper chef, just a personality.’
‘No one,’ he said sternly, ‘who sees us together, could ever think I married you for your money. And besides, no one need know about the money. We can just carry on the way we were. Talking of carrying on …’
‘Quite right. We should finish our breakfast and do the washing-up. Do we still do it outside, on the table on the veranda?’
‘I wasn’t thinking about washing-up.’
‘I know what you were thinking of, but I need to wash myself, even if we ignore the dishes.’
‘I know, let’s have a bath.’
‘A bath! You mean, there’s an en suite out the back, and you never told me?’
‘Sort of. You clear up the breakfast while I fetch it.’
He came back a little later with an old tin bath. ‘It’ll take a while to fill, and we must put lots of newspaper down, so we don’t get the floor too wet, but you’ll like it, I promise you!’
 
 
The days that followed were like their honeymoon had been, only better. Then, anxious to please him, Perdita had followed all Lucas’s suggestions about what they should do and how they should do it. Now, she had her own ideas. He wouldn’t relinquish the cooking entirely, but she did make him eat tinned tomato soup with white bread in it sometimes.
‘This is the food that nourished me for years,’ she said.
‘Nourished! Ha! No wonder you always looked so pale.’
The weather was golden. The short October days were filled with sunshine, and the mornings with mist. Lucas swam naked in the loch, insistent that at the end of the summer, the top few feet were warm enough to do so. Perdita was happy to watch him, especially when he came out, dripping like Poseidon, and swept her wetly into his arms, but she kept her own ablutions to the minimum, depending heavily on the public lavatories in the local town, and any pub they visited. Every two days he filled the ageing tin bath and watched her splash happily in it, agreeing that as the floor shared the washing experience, carting the water in from the burn was worth it.
If the evening was fine, Lucas put the bars of an old oven shelf over the remnants of the fire they’d used for their billycan tea and had a barbeque. Whatever the weather, the billycan tea was a ritual they never missed.
On the last afternoon, before they were due to go back,
he took her to a spot where, if you were lucky, you could see golden eagles and harriers, mountain hares and distant flocks of deer.
They spent a lot of time gazing across the valley to the mountains beyond, watching the sky darken to the colour of duck eggs, tinged with pink. Perdita hadn’t spoken for a long time and eventually Lucas asked her if she was all right.
‘I was just remembering something Kitty once said to me about bereavement.’
‘What?’
‘It was years ago, when I was still at school, and I asked her about Lionel, her husband. She said when you lose someone you love, the days go by so slowly, and the loss leaves a vast, immeasurable hole in your life. But gradually, after years, sometimes, very, very slowly, the hole begins to close. It’s like darning, she said. Slowly, slowly, you place threads across the hole and weave them together, until eventually, after decades, maybe, you find the hole has gone.’ She turned to him and smiled ruefully. ‘There’s still a bloody great darn there, of course. The sock is never whole again, but at least your toes don’t stick out any more. Your life does function.’ She found herself laughing and crying at the same time. ‘Kitty told me this and then said, “I don’t know how you’ll manage, darling. I’ve never managed to teach you to darn.” ’
He buried her in his arms and held her very tightly. Eventually he said, ‘I’ll help you. I’m good at darning.’
 
Perdita was half excited, half terrified as they swept round the drive to the front of Kitty’s house. She had been partly expecting to be confronted with a couple of pantechnicons and Roger filling them with antiques. Or, and she had to admit this was very unlikely, to find the
house covered with demolition notices and builders’ vans, indicating the site was soon to be ‘executive homes with integral garages’.
‘I’m glad to see the house is still standing,’ she said when he’d stopped the car.
‘Why on earth shouldn’t it be?’
‘I don’t know, really. I just didn’t expect things to look the same, when other things have changed so much. Like us.’
He caressed her chin with a gentle finger. ‘We could try and make love in the front seat of the car, but it might be more sensible to go into the house and see if there’s a letter from the solicitor.’
Perdita didn’t move. The house hadn’t burnt down or anything, but she didn’t know what sort of a mess she’d left it in. She felt as if she’d been away for months, not just a couple of weeks. Cobwebs and rats, possibly even weasels and stoats, creatures from the wild wood, could have taken the place over in her absence. Not to mention burglars.
They had spent the night in a motel, halfway home, so that they wouldn’t arrive in the dark, and now everything looked in surprisingly good order. The fact that they had driven round without being battered by rose fronds, or wisps of lavatera was a good sign. The front was clearer of weeds than it had ever been, even in Kitty’s day, Kitty being fond of so many weeds other gardeners would have happily removed.
‘Come on, my little ostrich,’ said Lucas, ‘you’ll feel better when you know the worst.’
‘Someone’s been doing the garden,’ Perdita said, pleased, but anxious lest something precious had been tidied on to the compost heap. ‘I wonder what the house is like.’
‘I expect Miriam has been in.’
Perdita found the key and unlocked the front door.
Instantly the smell of polish greeted them. A huge vase of chrysanthemums and scarlet Bishop of Llandaff dahlias stood on the hall table, adding their piquant scent to the air. Everything looked shiny and cared for.
‘I wonder where all the boxes of papers are.’ She was pleased to see the hall without them, but again, she was anxious lest anything had happened to them.
Lucas opened the door to the library. ‘They’re in here. In fact, I think Miriam must have raided the local public records office for extra supplies.’
Perdita peered in over his shoulder and saw row upon row of boxes, obviously gleaned from the local wine merchant. ‘No, that’s about how many there were, only Kitty’s boxes were scruffier. Let’s go into the kitchen. That’s where Miriam will have put the post.’
The kitchen also gleamed. The table, cleared of extraneous items, made a lovely centrepiece. There was a note from Miriam leaning up against a little silver jug full of garden cyclamen.
Nothing has been thrown away, it’s all still there for you to sort out. Janey and William helped me upgrade the boxes and move them into the library. I’ll be in tomorrow. I’ve made a note of my extra hours. The post is on the sideboard.
‘I gave her permission to do extra hours,’ said Lucas, as Perdita picked up the pile of letters and took them to the table.
‘Spending my money for me before I’ve even got it, are you?’ She flicked through half a dozen seed catalogues and a prize draw before identifying the letter from the solicitor. ‘Well, I’d better find out if I’ve got any.’
She held the thick, manila envelope and tried to get her finger in under the flap.
‘Here,’ Lucas handed her his Swiss Army knife. ‘Use this.’
Perdita withdrew a sheaf of papers and scanned the letter which was on top.
‘“Dear Miss Dylan,” ’ she read aloud. ‘“I am happy to enclose the papers …” Oh, why don’t they cut to the chase?’
‘Let me look.’ Lucas took the bundle and riffled through it. ‘Here’s a copy of the will. Do you want to read it yourself?’
‘I’d better, I suppose.’
He handed her the will. Perdita took a deep breath and glanced down the page. Then she closed her eyes and handed it to Lucas. ‘It’s all right. It is all mine.’
‘Not quite,’ said Lucas after a moment. ‘There’s a legacy for Roger here.’
‘Oh? What?’
‘“To my great-nephew Roger Owen,” ’ he read, ‘“I bequeath the entire contents of the cupboard on the landing outside the attic.” What on earth’s in there, I wonder?’
Perdita started to laugh. ‘I know. It’s all the cups and saucers Kitty got from jumble sales. We used them for the funeral. Remember?’
‘Kitty owned those? I thought you must have borrowed them from the village hall. They had that look about them.’
‘I expect a village hall which was upgrading gave its crockery to the jumble sale where Kitty bought it. She wanted lots for when the garden was open.’
‘Well, I’m sure it’s a very handsome legacy,’ said Lucas, obviously a little confused.
‘No it’s not! It’s probably worth about a fiver! God, she was a wily old bird! Even when she was in her death throes she was on to Roger and his interest in her Meissen collection! That has cheered me up. I hated the thought of
Kitty being bullied when I wasn’t there to protect her. I should have known that no one bullies Kitty, even when she’s ill.’ She dumped all the papers onto the table. ‘Come on, let’s explore the rest of the house.’
‘I didn’t think that table would stay clear for long,’ said Lucas.
It was quite different looking at the house, knowing it was to be their home, and the home of their children. Kitty was still there, in every book and picture, piece of silver or china, but the house no longer seemed to be in decline. Perdita and Lucas had plans for its future.
‘Shall we keep the shower room downstairs? It is useful having somewhere to wash when you come in from the garden,’ said Perdita.
‘But we could close up the doorway from the sitting room.’
‘And put back the china cupboard? Possibly, but I don’t know if I’d want so much china as Kitty had. Especially if we’d have to stop the children breaking it. I might have a sort through and see if there’s any other stuff I can fob off on Roger.’ She paused. ‘I would like to keep the blue sofa. Kitty felt so sentimental about it.’
‘Only if it’s comfortable. She wouldn’t want us to be burdened by her sentiments when she knows we’ll have enough of our own.’
‘Shall we test it now?’ Perdita asked with mock innocence.
‘No,’ said Lucas firmly. ‘Let’s go back to the kitchen.’
Back there, Perdita surveyed the room with a critical eye she had never used before. For years and years, this had been Kitty’s kitchen, the way she liked it, not open to criticism or change. Now it was hers and Lucas’s.
‘I think an Aga, don’t you? A four door one. Middle-class-lefty-trendy
red,’ said Perdita.
‘Not while I live and breathe! If you think that I’m going to cook on something which takes half an hour to boil an egg, you can think again! No, we need a professional range, something which gets up to a decent temperature.’
‘I just like the thought of coming down to a warm kitchen on winter mornings, like today.’
‘We can have central heating.’
‘I wanted to make the kitchen a bit more like they made my kitchen in the programme, with a few bits of copper and stuff hanging from the ceiling.’
‘You can hang what you like from where, but you’re not condemning me to cooking on an Aga.’
She’d lost the battle, but she hadn’t given up winning the war. ‘OK, I’ll settle for an armoire.’
‘An armoire? What the hell is that? And where on earth did you hear about them?’
‘They’re all the rage. With wire netting over the front, to stop the hens getting in – or out. Eileen – one of the carers, you know, the young one? – had a magazine with them in. She was addicted to housey mags. I wonder if she’s left any behind.’ She glanced at Lucas, to see if he was reacting.
‘Darling, do you really want a kitchen like they turned yours into on the programme?’ He seemed to have given up fighting and wanted to please her. But on the other hand, he didn’t want to share what he considered to be a work space with a lot of clutter.
‘It’s all right. I’m teasing. We’ll keep the cooking end of the kitchen strictly business, as long as it’s pretty, and make the dining end all fancy. The table stays, don’t you think?’
‘Definitely.’
‘And the sideboard. What about the bookcase?’
‘Useful in a kitchen, and it’s full of wonderful antique
cookery books. Kitty never thought about what her first edition hardcover Elizabeth David’s were worth.’
‘As we don’t want to sell them, it’s not relevant. Shall we go upstairs now?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think we’d better. We’re bound to feel obliged to test the beds and there are probably rather a lot of them.’
She chuckled. ‘Let’s go and see my poly-tunnels then. I hope everything’s not dead.’
‘Well, let’s just give William a ring first. Janey might be there and they haven’t been together long. We don’t want to embarrass them.’
Perdita bit her lip in horror. ‘Imagine being caught
in flagrante
by both your bosses!’
‘Exactly. And we’ll take the car. Go round the front, like proper visitors.’
William and Janey weren’t in bed, they were waiting by the gate, rather anxiously, holding hands.
 
Perdita jumped out of the car and ran to them, embracing them both. ‘Hi! How are you? How are my poly-tunnels? How is everything? We’ve brought you some honey and some genuine Scotch whisky. Thank you so much for holding the fort while I just ran away.’
The anxiety faded and was replaced with tentative expectation. Janey let go of Perdita and said, ‘Well? Are you two … well, you know?’
‘Well? Yes, extremely well. How kind of you to ask,’ said Perdita, laughing.
‘We’re going to get married, if that’s what you want to know,’ said Lucas. ‘And I’m not planning to use her great fortune to open a new restaurant. Things’ll carry on as before, until Perdita gets pregnant.’ He glanced at her. ‘If she isn’t already.’

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