Page 2 of Once Upon a Thyme

The catmint was in full flower, trailing gracefully over the gravelled path in buoyant swathes as though in a passionate but thwarted relationship with the pineapple mint in the opposite bed.

I cut an armful, ignoring the pungent smell.

The little purple and white flowers and the dusty-green leaves made a good backdrop for bouquets, and there was always a market for the bunches I made up, a woven mass of flower and decorative foliage that we sold from the polished galvanised buckets neatly lined up by the fence.

I straightened up, resting the dots of nodding heads against my forearm and looked out across the garden.

To my left was the tiny cottage where I lived and worked, and on the right the old stables which I’d converted into the shop area.

Their rooflines were dipped and buckled with the contours of aged beams echoing the line of the moors which embraced our little enterprise in its valley like a burly chef’s arm encircling a mixing bowl.

Apart from the wonky roofline and the encircling moorland hills everything else was geometric.

Herb beds were divided by well-ordered pathways and trimmed box edging, as though the Tudors had gone downmarket and now lived in a two-up-two-down but had kept the gardeners on.

The pet barn was straight and true in all its corrugated-roofed glory, the fencing and walling so horizontal that you could have danced the samba along the coping stones.

Everything was neat, everything was tidy.

Apart from the herbs, and I cut those a lot of slack because flouncing and flopping over the gravel like drunken bridesmaids was what they did at this time of year.

Over at the far side of the acres, our reluctant recruit, Zeb, had been put to work by Ollie, and the pair of them were clearing weeds from the saxifrage, Ollie’s blond head bent next to Zeb’s dark, untidy one.

Ollie was explaining something. I could see his mouth moving in his almost constant stream of monologue, to which Zeb appeared to have adjusted, judging by his head-down occasional nod.

I watched them work for a few moments – it really didn’t take two people to weed and I wondered again at my mother’s presumption in advertising a job that didn’t exist. But then, that was my mother all over.

I tucked the nepeta further into my arms, letting its smell of musty mint float by me.

No, it didn’t take two to weed, but I knew I really could do with someone to help with the sales side; a dichotomy I was trying to get my head around.

Zeb seemed to have been accepted by Ollie, he seemed keen to work – maybe I could find a slot for him.

He might not be the kind of person to have ideas.

He seemed, like Ollie, content to work without expressing opinions on how things were done, so perhaps I could use him as just another pair of hands around the place for now.

I’d have to tell Mother he was only here for a couple of weeks; maybe I could tell her I was giving him some work experience?

I couldn’t let her think she was right about me needing help or she’d think she’d won.

Well, no, she’d know she’d won. Not knowing best simply didn’t cross her mind; after all, she had had her whole life to understand the business, she’d been born into it.

I’d had herbs thrust upon me and it was purely the luck of the draw that I enjoyed the work, was good at it, and had the kind of temperament that meant pleasing my mother was more important that heading overseas to pick grapes, or going off to university to study marine biology.

I’d not so much taken over the family firm as had the family firm squeezed into me until the impression was so deep that I couldn’t get it out.

Resentment heated the back of my neck in the same way as the sun warmed my shoulder blades.

I bent to add a few stems of lavender to my makeshift bouquet and wondered again why I’d gone along with it.

Why hadn’t I just turned on my heel, like those heroines in the books I read, all snappy and professional?

Why hadn’t I told Zeb that there wasn’t a job and held the door ajar for him to push past me, offended and annoyed in a macho way?

Why hadn’t I rung Mother and snapped out a stream of unanswerable questions – I’d bought her out of the business, why did she think that there was any need for her to interfere any more?

Why did she not consider me a grown woman who could run my own affairs? Why couldn’t I tell her anything ?

The mental picture broke down about there. Whilst I could imagine dismissing Zeb – after all, I didn’t know the man – the mental image of offending my mother went all wobbly and pixelated, like the TV in the cottage when the weather was bad, accompanied by a sense of dread.

I looked back over at the slightly untidy and lanky dark figure, now hunched over some stubborn couch grass.

I didn’t want him here, but I needed him and my mother knew it and that made me itchy somewhere inside.

She had no right to make decisions for me.

She was still, despite four years of my sole ownership, trying to hang on to control over Drycott.

Then, to stop myself from thinking about my mother, I tried to imagine telling Zebedee he could only stay for a few days, a fortnight at most. He’d be fine about it, I was sure.

I’d have grounds, too, he’d been alarmed by the pig, rendered semi-speechless by her presence in the kitchen, and odd though it might seem, the pig was as much a part of Drycott Herbs as – well, as the herbs.

Or me. I bet my mother hadn’t mentioned that in whatever she’d put in the job advert.

Ollie saw me looking and stood up to wave. ‘Hey, Tallie! Nearly finished this bed, would you like us to start doing some cutting? We’ve nearly sold out of herb posies; we could top up the buckets?’

Before I could reply, there was a commotion in the small car park outside the stables.

Customers drove directly in off the road, and as the farm was situated on a vast sweeping bend in the narrow moorland lane, sometimes people not steering with enough concentration could be gathered by accident.

We were used to vehicles arriving in a confused state then trying to reverse amid the herb buckets to make their way straight back out again, but this kerfuffle seemed worse than usual and I turned around to see a minibus nudging its way into a spot opposite the doors.

Ollie and I stared. High summer meant that we generally expected a glut of customers coming and going but a minibus was a new one on us. Herb lovers aren’t usually the coach trip type.

The bus door opened and there was a gradual procession of people getting out, all of which was too much for Ollie.

He bolted, heading off to the compost corner to busy himself with tidying and turning the compost heaps, while Zeb watched his sudden retreat from the saxifrage with a startled expression.

The bus continued to disgorge passengers, until they were crowded in the car park, a collection of long hair, embroidered jackets, tight jeans and flapping skirts, as though the 1960s had come on an outing.

Overhead, swifts screamed in dark streaks across the sky above our heads, darting their way into their nests under the eaves of the old stables, intent on feeding their newly hatched young.

Several of the new arrivals ducked, which told me they were unused to the countryside, although their clothing had already given me the heads’ up that they weren’t exactly expecting the pig snuffling over her gate in their direction, or the bunches of herbs grouped in buckets outside the shop.

They all looked baffled and a bit shell-shocked. Maybe it had been a white-knuckle minibus ride. The road down into our steep-sided valley was precipitous in places and you hung on to your seat and hoped that smell of burning was from local bonfires, not from your brakes.

Zeb glanced over at me, then back in the direction that Ollie had taken.

Ollie himself was now invisible; most likely he was crouching down behind the bins.

Zeb’s expression was still registering the same shock as it had when he’d encountered the pig, probably wondering what the hell he’d let himself in for, working for someone who hadn’t even wanted a worker, and with a workmate who either monologued for Britain or ran away.

You didn’t get this sort of thing from influencing.

‘Hi there!’ An older man, long greying hair gathered into an unwise ponytail, who seemed to be in charge of the rag-tag group of visitors, saw me and approached.

‘Who’s in charge around here?’ I saw him look towards Zeb, then back at me again, clearly not wanting to assume, but assuming pretty bloody hard that it must be a man.

I stepped forward. ‘Me. I am. Tallie Fisher, I run Drycott Herbs, Mr…?’

The man looked me up and down slowly. It was an assessing look with widening eyes and a slight smile. Not sexual, not leering, which was just as well as he had to be in his fifties and, well preserved he may be, but I was not about to be letched at. ‘I’m Simon Welbury.’

He said it as though I should know who he was. I didn’t, so I just stared. My catmint drooped.

‘I manage the band,’ he went on, with a nod towards the collection of people in the car park, who were now beginning to filter through the gate in ones and twos, peering in at the stable building and staring at the herb beds.

‘Oh?’ I tried to sound politely interested but had no idea why I should be, and was, in fact, fighting an urge to join Ollie down the back of the compost storage.

‘How can we help you, Mr Welbury?’ Zeb came forward, wiping his hands down his legs and his presumption jerked me from my taken aback status and back to full management potential.

‘Yes.’ I threw Zeb a stern look for overstepping. ‘What can we do for you?’