‘I took it as a given,’ Will says, sounding offended that I can’t read his mind.
I sigh and give in. ‘If it’s what you want, then we’ll do it. I just want you to be happy and healthy.’
‘I feel as if I’ve been given a new lease of life.’
I feel as if I’ve had mine snatched away from me. But this is it. William loves it here in this big house with its leaking roof and its clanging plumbing and its lights that flicker on and off, so I might as well make the best of it. And I do love this man. I bloody well must do!
‘How’s the heart bearing up?’ I let my fingers walk lower on his chest. He might have been given a relatively clean bill of health - blood pressure and cholesterol notwithstanding - but we still don’t really know why it was that he collapsed that fateful day on the Tube so we haven’t made love since Will’s been ill.We’ve both been too worried about him exerting himself even though the doctor said - with a laugh - that it’s a myth that many middle-aged men die of heart failure while they’re having sex with their younger mistress. I’m still worried. He didn’t mention what might happen if that same middle-aged man was having sex with his equally middle-aged wife. Do I want to risk it?
‘The heart’s fine,’ he says with a grin. ‘Sound as a pound. In fact, it seems to be speeding up quite nicely at the moment.’
‘Then I suggest that it’s about time that we christened this bedroom,’ I say as I fling his damn chicken book to the floor.
‘Be gentle with me,’ Will teases as he takes me in his arms.
I intend to be. Very gentle. I kiss him lovingly.
And, for a short time, I can forget where we are and what we’ve done and chickens and sheep and the vague scratching noises that are coming from the attic, and just love my husband once more.
Chapter Eleven
‘
J
esus!’ I exclaim. ‘What the hell are
they
?’ And I haven’t used the Lord’s name in vain since the kids were born.
‘Chickens,’ Will says.
He’s just come back from Scarsby in the knackered old Land Rover, blowing exhaust fumes into the ozone layer. If we’re embracing a newer, greener lifestyle, it clearly doesn’t extend to our choice of vehicle. You could smoke mackerel just holding them near the exhaust for five minutes.
More and more of the scabbiest-looking chickens I’ve ever seen are flying out of the back of the Land Rover and onto my drive. They’re squawking as if they’ve been scalded.
We only had the chicken conversation just over a week ago, and I’d hoped that I’d be able to ease myself into the reality of actually owning any. Will normally takes six months to read a book - at least - and I was sure he wouldn’t rush out and buy any until he’d gleaned all the knowledge that Audrey had to impart about our feathered friends. But I hadn’t bargained on the fact that now he’s not working, he has nothing to do with his time. And, of course, there’s the matter of his personality transplant.
More and more chickens fill the drive. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ I ask. ‘Why are they all bald? Why are they all running round and bumping into each other?’
‘I’ve rescued them,’ William tells me.
‘From what?’
‘They’ve been kept in terrible conditions.’A bit like this family then. ‘The farmer let me have them for five quid each.’
I can’t help feeling that my naive husband has been robbed.
One runs into my legs and falls over. ‘They’re blind.’
‘Hmm.’ Will scratches his head. ‘I thought they might be.’
‘What are we going to do with them?’
‘Look after them,’ Will says, that offended tone creeping into his voice again.
When I imagined chickens I thought of more exotic-looking breeds - Sultans, Polands, Buff Rocks, Gold Sebrights or even the weird Transylvanian Naked Neck for novelty value - (yes, I have been sneaking a look at Audrey Fanshawe’s very helpful tome) - not these paltry excuses for poultry.
They’re all spreading out now across the garden, banging into things and flapping their wings. ‘Where are we going to put them?’
‘Ha!’ my husband says, and disappears to the back of the Land Rover, lifting out the last remaining chickens as he does. He pulls out a magnificent brochure and points to a building which I take to be a chicken coop. It is the Ritz-Carlton of chicken coops. Yet another person who saw Will coming. ‘Da da!’
‘We’re going to put those manky chickens in that?’
‘I thought we’d give them a nicer home than they had. It’ll be delivered later today. Fingers crossed.’
Definitely fingers crossed as I’m not having these things in the house if it doesn’t turn up.
One of the chickens runs full pelt into the trunk of an apple tree. ‘I think we should get someone to look at them. Suppose they’ve got bird flu or something?’
‘They’ve not got bird flu,’ Will says crossly. ‘They just need a bit of tender loving care, Ashurst-style. Don’t you, my darlings?’
Another chicken falls over.
‘Well, I think we should call someone. Maybe a vet.’
‘There’s a chap in the village,’ my husband tells me. ‘Lives in that modern house up on the hill.’
Wise man. I bet his windows don’t feel as if they haven’t any glass in them. ‘We should get his number. Phone him.’
‘Good idea,’ Will says. ‘I’ll just wait until the sheep arrive and then he can look at them all.’
‘Sheep? Sheep? What sheep?’ At this point, I start to hyperventilate.
Chapter Twelve
P
utting on my Joseph trousers and a cashmere wrap cardigan, I wander down to the little school we’ve enrolled the children in.
It’s September, the first day of term and my children weren’t very happy at all this morning about starting a new school. I’ve never seen two kids eat cereal so slowly.
I too am worried about our choice of educational establishment, but for different reasons. Tom and Jessica have been in an exclusive private school until now and I wonder how they’ll cope with the change.We’ve been here over a month now and yet they still haven’t met any of the children from the village.There’s hardly been anyone around. Most people, it seems, have been on holiday to warmer, more sensible places with fewer sheep and, to be honest, my social skills have been so buried beneath a mountain of gloom that I haven’t cared whether we met any of our neighbours or not. So, consequently, we haven’t. This morning we hung around in the playground looking new and uncomfortable while everyone else in their cosy cliques ignored us. We might as well have been wearing signs that said
unclean
. Then, when the school bell rang, I left my two at the door of St Mary’s with a heavy heart.
Now I can’t wait to collect them, to see how they’ve fared. The school is the size of a Wendy House and has windows just like those in the Gingerbread Cottage. I have to admit there’s something quite nice about being able to walk to meet Tom and Jessica. This is a duty that Maya’s always performed - out of necessity - as I’ve always been at work.
This school has the grand sum of twenty pupils and they’re all disgorged at once on the stroke of 3.30 p.m. Is this the sort of place though that’s likely to turn Jessica into a lawyer and Tom into a plastic surgeon? I bend down to kiss Jessica while Tom, skilfully, skirts my embrace.
‘How was school?’ I ask cheerily.
‘Small,’ Jessica says. ‘Very small.’
‘Did you make any nice friends?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘They all talk funny and I can’t tell what they’re saying. But they say
we
talk funny.’ My daughter looks outraged at that.
‘Give it a few days and you’ll love it,’ I reassure her.
‘No,’ Jessica says. ‘Don’t think so. I’d like to go back to my old school.’
‘Me too.’ Tom kicks at the playground.
‘We’ll talk to Daddy,’ I say as a diversionary tactic.
The Headteacher comes out to talk to me. She’s called Mrs Barnsley and is dumpy and is dressed in clothes that my dear mother, even when she was alive, wouldn’t have been seen dead in. Mrs Barnsley takes in my designer labels. ‘Welcome to Helmshill, Mrs Ashurst,’ she says. ‘The children have settled in really well.’
‘We haven’t,’ Tom corrects her.
Mrs Barnsley ignores him. ‘We hope you’ll all be really happy here. This is a small school and we trust that we’ll see you on some of the various committees we have. We depend on the enthusiasm of our parents.’
I quite liked it when all I had to do was throw vast quantities of cash every year in fees at the matter. Then I’d felt that I’d done my best by my kids. In all the years that I’ve had children, I’ve managed to avoid school committees on the grounds that I’ve been way too busy. I plan on continuing it that way. In my mind it’s one small step from being on a committee to making jam and baking cakes for the summer fayre. If William wants this life so much, then he can be on all the bloody committees. And make the jam. ‘Yes, lovely,’ I say - two-faced bitch that I am. ‘I’d really like that.’
Mrs Barnsley, clearly contented at my malleability, smiles and walks away, task completed and lines of authority drawn.
I hold Jessica’s hand as we walk home and, for the first time in our weeks here, start to take in our wider surroundings. Tom idly pulls leaves off the hedges that we pass. My daughter chatters inanely about nothing in particular and I half-tune out.
The village is nestled in a bowl of rolling green hills, crisscrossed with drystone walls at vertiginous angles. Today the sky is impossibly blue and the clouds mimic the white fluffy fleeces of the ubiquitous sheep. Only the sound of bleating and the occasional burst of birdsong breaks the silence. This is a little different to the relentless noise of traffic on Ladbroke Grove outside our previous home. Could I learn to love it here? Would it be so bad to lead a small life in the middle of nowhere with time on my hands to look at the sky? Maybe I’m starting to soften towards this place, after all. Could we all live a life of blissful contentment here? It wouldn’t be too bad, would it . . .
‘I hate it here,’ Tom says, breaking into my musing. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Me too,’ Jessica agrees. ‘It smells funny.’
I sigh to myself. My daughter’s right. Wherever you go there’s the faint lingering smell of manure in the air. Perhaps my happy-ever-after ending still needs more work.
Chapter Thirteen
W
e cross the green to Helmshill Grange and the sight of its dilapidated exterior takes even more of the spring out of my step. In the drive there’s a shiny new Range Rover that I don’t recognise.
Then I hear a bleating noise rather close to home and my springless step grinds to a halt. I know exactly what that means. We’ve got sheep. Despite my hope that Will would change his mind and would be kept sufficiently busy with the blind chickens not to have time to consider any other farmstock, the sheep, it seems, are now ensconced in my garden.
‘Go and say hello to Maya,’ I tell the children, giving them a gentle shove in the direction of the house. ‘She’s been baking some cakes.’At least, I hope she has.When I finally steeled myself to risk the Aga, it’s taken days to fire up the wretched thing and now the kitchen is as hot as Hades.
I head toward the sheep. There are only three of them, but that seems like more than enough.
‘Hello, darling.’Will kisses my cheek distractedly.‘This is the vet.’
‘Hi,’ the vet says. ‘Guy Burton.’
‘Hi.’ I shake his hand. The vet’s very handsome, I have to say. We’ve met very few of our neighbours yet, but most of them have been ancient, gnarled and unfriendly. Guy Burton very definitely doesn’t fit into that category.
The vet is fairer than Will, taller too and more rugged-looking. His eyes are brown, soulful and look like they’ve seen a bit of life. His face is bronzed and weather-beaten. How old must he be? My age - thirty-eight - or maybe a bit younger? There’s a hint of designer stubble around his chin, but it’s probably not designer at all; it’s likely that he just hasn’t shaved today. He looks like a man who wouldn’t hog the bathroom mirror. Even so, I bet he makes the hearts of the single girls in Helmshill flutter - if there are any. His accent doesn’t sound local and I wonder what someone like Guy Burton is doing in a place like this. Apart from looking at our livestock, of course. Hmm. If I wasn’t a happily married woman, perhaps Guy Burton would turn my head. Wonder if he’s unattached? Perhaps I could fix him up with Serena. It’s about time my sister dated someone who wasn’t a married lawyer.
‘Welcome to Helmshill,’ he says, breaking into my match-making thoughts.
‘Thanks.’
‘I hope you’ll be happy here.’ You and me both, I think.
Then I point at one of the bedraggled chickens who is currently walking round in a circle, pecking blindly at the ground. ‘Are they going to live?’
‘I’ve called that one Christopher,’ my husband tells me with loving pride, causing my mouth to gape.
‘They’ve been badly kept in deep litter,’ Guy says with a shake of his head. ‘We’ve told that farmer a dozen times. Doesn’t listen. The ammonia from their own waste makes them blind. He’s lucky that you’ve taken them off his hands.’
Will says nothing about the large sum of Queen’s shilling that has changed hands.
‘With a lot of love and some well-aimed antibiotics,’ the vet says, ‘they’ll be fine in no time.’
‘How often do they need the antibiotics?’ This sounds expensive.
‘Daily,’ Guy answers.
‘You have to come every day?’
‘No,’ he laughs. ‘You put them in. It’s just a few drops for their eyes. Nothing to worry about.’
‘Oh.’ My husband will have to put drops in their eyes.
‘And they’ll need to be shown where their food is and be lifted up on their perches until they learn to do it themselves again.’