Font Size
Line Height

Page 21 of Once Upon a Thyme

Unfortunately for my desire to sit around brooding and remembering Mika’s touch and his suggestion of a meal together, the shop was busy that afternoon.

Whether it was people wanting to come and catch a glimpse of The Goshawk Traders or whether they genuinely decided that herbs would be the perfect addition to their décor, I found myself advising on and selling copious bunches and posies and statement stems. None of the customers seemed disappointed at not being able to pick their own fresh herbs and there was a degree of loitering in the car park that led me to believe that herbs might not have been their main reason for travelling the dusty incline.

I reminded myself to be grateful that they had arrived and were willing to spend money, and the band were largely invisible anyway, the lighting in the cottage meaning that they had decided to redo this morning’s ‘tea’ shots when the sun shone full through the windows.

It was nice to be busy, to be able to forget Mika and his dark twinkling eyes, Zeb and Big Pig, my mother’s sudden interest in my turnover and the mice in the cottage beams. Here, with a willing crowd actively wanting to spend money, I could be Tallie.

I could educate, inform and, more importantly, ring cards through the till to the extent that I could envisage the bills being paid at the end of the month rather than wrapped around the year with little bits of money being thrown here and there.

A good turnover day would mean a little extra money for Mum too which might be enough for her to lose interest in trying to improve my income.

Her obsessions never usually lasted for long anyway. The only one which had, was me.

I watched the last couple leave the car park as the sun bent the shadows over the roof of the shop and laid them gently across the gravel, and enjoyed the sudden silence.

There was nobody anywhere in evidence, all I could hear were the swifts peeping from their upturned bucket nests in the eaves outside and I could enjoy my acres without…

‘Oh, there you are!’

‘God, Zeb, you made me jump!’ Zeb, who had been emptying the wheelbarrow, evidently having mucked out Big Pig, emerged from the shadows, barrow first. I’d been so far gone in my reverie of trailing hands through the herbs and the way Mika’s curls bounced around his face, that I hadn’t heard him coming.

‘I’ve been in the shop. Working. Selling stuff. You know, doing what I’m supposed to.’

He nodded, gravely. There was straw all down his front. ‘Good. How were the takings?’

‘Excellent. And nobody got to see the band, so I suspect many of them will suddenly discover that they need more yarrow heads for their downstairs bathroom décor, and be back.’

‘Lovely.’ The barrow went down on its rest. The whole thing needed a good clean, I noticed, there were clumps of muck sticking to the base. I ought to take to it with the hosepipe.

Then I wondered why I was noticing the state of the wheelbarrow when I’d got a world-famous band in my kitchen and Zeb standing right in front of me. Was this my life now? Excitement breaking out all over and I was the one standing out here worrying about pig muck?

‘You look very pensive.’ Zeb’s voice floated through my musing. ‘Wondering how to spend today’s takings? Because the handle on this is loose, look.’ He wiggled the barrow handle, which was, indeed, loose. ‘So I think that’s a priority spend.’

‘Ollie can fix it,’ I said, still lost in my realisation that I was all about the quotidian and normality.

ABBA and the Beatles could have been hosting an, all right extremely unlikely and probably quite spooky, get-together in the kitchen and I’d still be out here worrying about sluicing pig poo off a wheelbarrow.

Why couldn’t I get excited about what was happening instead of worrying about incipient rust? ‘When this is over and he’s back.’

‘Ah yes, Ollie.’ Zeb leaned comfortably against the fence. ‘I know he’s a good worker, but wouldn’t you be better off with someone who can actually, you know, talk to customers? Serve in the shop when you’re not here?’

That jerked me out of my self-study. ‘What? No! Ollie’s great. He knows every kind of herb, he knows where they grow best and he’s a master of the compost. Just because he’s a bit socially awkward, that doesn’t make him a waste of space you know.’

I must have sounded fierce because Zeb looked startled.

His eyebrows shot up to compete with his raggy hairline, which was bobbing about with an alarmed life of its own.

‘Well, yes, I know that. It’s just that you’re paying him to work here but he can only do half a job.

If you had someone who knew about herbs and could work in the shop then you wouldn’t have to close whenever you needed to be somewhere else.

Maximise profits, you see,’ he finished, apologetically.

‘Unless you and Ollie have – history?’ he added, in a tone of such disbelief that I almost laughed.

‘No.’ I had to shut down that line of reasoning.

‘I took Ollie on because… because…’ I stared across at the sleepily nodding herbs for inspiration.

The weight of the sunlight was pressing down on everything now with its early evening heat, as though the day was nearly fully cooked. Time to close the shop.

Zeb followed me as I went to the A frame and began dragging it into the yard. ‘Because?’ he prompted. ‘My imagination is working overtime here.’

‘I’m certainly not paying extra for that ,’ I said, and he laughed.

‘So. Ollie.’ He took the bottom half of the big stand, which proclaimed Drycott Herbs pick your own farm and shop to be open and helped me carry it inside.

I sighed. ‘Look, you mustn’t breathe a word of this to Ol, all right? Not that it matters so much now that he’s turned out to be so good, but I don’t want him to think…’

‘You have a secret desire for his body?’ Zeb hauled the frame over the step and we both stopped, back inside the deep shade of the shop again, where it felt as though night had fallen suddenly.

‘Don’t laugh,’ I said. ‘Ollie is lovely. He just doesn’t interview well, that’s all. It’s not his fault.’

Zeb tipped his head. The shadowing in the shop made him look sharper.

It accentuated the planes and angles of his face and the line of stubble which drew his cheekbones in with a graphite smudge.

The stalks of straw stuck to his shirt now made him look more natural, more as though he belonged here.

‘Of course it’s not his fault,’ he said, and even his voice sounded different. More thoughtful.

‘Ollie came just as I was taking over Drycott from Mum,’ I said. Without thinking I pulled a piece of straw from Zeb’s front and began pleating it in my fingers. ‘His mum knew we were looking for workers and she brought him over one day in February.’

I remembered the sheer terror on Ollie’s face that day. He’d been almost green with fear, and his mother had had to spend several minutes persuading him out of the car, his hands clenched with tension on the edge of the seat.

‘I took them both into the cottage and made them tea, and Ollie loosened up a bit when he saw all the herbs. Once he started talking to me it all seemed to get better for him, and we chatted about growing things for a while – he had his own garden at home and he’d been experimenting with – never mind. ’

‘Poor Ollie.’ Zeb shifted and more straw fell off him. ‘That must have been hard for him.’

‘Then my mum came down. She’d been having one of her poorly days so she’d not been about much but she heard us talking and she came into the kitchen.

Well, Ollie was off like a rabbit then, and I told his mum I’d be in touch, and once they’d gone, my mum started laughing.

She wasn’t… she wasn’t very polite about him, put it that way.

So I told her I was hiring him, starting next week, and it was one of the only times I’ve ever seen her speechless. ’

I stopped. That was all he needed to know.

Ollie had turned out to be a terrific asset to the business, and the fact I’d hired him in the first place to annoy my mother in one of the few, subtle ways that I could go against her shouldn’t come into it now.

I always reassured myself that at least I hadn’t hired him because I felt sorry for him, because it was obvious he would struggle to get work anywhere else.

It hadn’t been pity, it had been the desire to show that this was my business now and Mother no longer had the last word.

‘He’s great with the animals too,’ I said, twisting a barley head around the straw figure that my hands had made without thinking about it. ‘Like you. Men seem to have an affinity with Big Pig.’

‘Hm. That’s damning with faint praise if ever I heard it.’ He leaned back comfortably against the counter. ‘Why is she called Big Pig?’

I rolled my eyes at him, although I didn’t know why. He wouldn’t be able to see in the gloom. ‘Because the guinea pigs are small pigs, obviously.’

‘But why not something worthy of her? Like Tallulah or… or… Gladys? Big Pig isn’t a name, it’s a description.’

‘When she came she was only meant to be temporary,’ I said, staring out of the window now towards the animal barn.

‘She was a few weeks old and someone dumped her in the gateway. They’d probably bought a piglet as a pet and then realised how big they get.

They’re cute when they’re small, but they only stay small for a fortnight, and whoever dropped her off must have known that I had a barn.

I was going to pass her on to a farm, but I got fond of her.

’ I thought of the bulk of Big Pig and her seemingly perpetual desire to stand on me.

‘ Fairly fond, anyway,’ I added. ‘So I made the best of it and we got the rabbits and the other pets and they see us through the winter with playgroup visits and suchlike.’