Page 3 of Once Upon a Thyme

Simon Welbury looked at me again, in my tatty working trousers, my T-shirt speckled with shed nepeta petals and the smell of elderly and impatient cat which arose from my bundled flowers.

‘Er,’ he said. It was clearly the sort of day that bred confusion.

Zeb came further forward. I had to admit that he looked more managerial than me, or, at least his jeans were still clean and his shirt didn’t look as though the Flower Fairies had staged a hit-and-run. ‘You said “the band”?’ he asked.

Simon turned to Zeb now and I could see his bafflement.

How could the young woman – well, young ish , and definitely young compared to Simon – be the owner of this place and not the slightly smarter-dressed man who was approaching with confidence and not trying to hide behind a stinky bouquet?

The dissonance was clearly written all over his face.

‘Yes,’ he said, trying to spread his words between us so he didn’t have to commit to speaking to either one of us definitively. ‘The band. The Goshawk Traders.’

He regarded us hopefully and with a proud expression, like a father revealing his offspring’s Prize For Good Work.

‘Wow,’ said Zeb, faintly and his gaze flicked up to take in the variegated clothing of the people wandering around outside the shop, staring at buckets and picking up packs of dried herbs. ‘The Goshawk Traders . Wow.’

I looked at both men and flourished my bundle of foliage. ‘Who are they, then?’ I asked.

Now they stared at me. In fact, the whip of the surprised ponytail nearly had my eye out. ‘You’ve never heard of The Goshawk Traders?’ Zeb asked. Simon just boggled. ‘Best-selling band? Most downloaded albums? Headlining all the festivals this year?’

‘Um,’ I said, feeling stupid. ‘I don’t get a lot of time for stuff like that.’ The only music I ever heard these days was the stuff we played in the shop, which was far more on the Peruvian Nose Flute end of the spectrum.

Simon clearly took pity on me. ‘We’re folk rock meets prog meets acid psychedelia,’ he said. ‘NME describes our music as the offspring of Mumford and Sons and Genesis delivered by The Grateful Dead.’

This did not enlighten me as much as he apparently thought it would. ‘Are accordions involved?’ I asked.

‘Sometimes.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Look, what can we help you with, Mr Welbury?’ Zeb gave me a wide-eyed ‘what the hell are you doing?’ look. ‘If you want to buy herbs…’

‘Ah. No. Well, not quite. It’s more involved than that.

’ Simon was talking to Zeb now, but that was fine.

As long as nobody tried to send me to make tea, in which case I would, most certainly, play the ‘this is my herb farm’ card.

But otherwise, I’d just stand here and listen. ‘We’d like to film here.’

The multicoloured-clothed fraternity were still mooching around outside the shop, as though they were afraid to go too far from the minibus, like cats on a caravanning holiday.

‘Film,’ I said, trying the word out. ‘Here.’

‘Yes. We’d like to make some of the video for the new album here. We were driving past and Mika – that’s Mika over there, viola and washboard – noticed your sign.’

Viola and washboard? I briefly wondered at the random words, then the phrase ‘folk rock’ echoed in the back of my head. Oh no, it was worse than I’d thought. Not just accordions, but washboards too.

Zeb was giving me increasingly desperate looks as though I were expected to say something but the only thing that occurred was the prevalent, ‘Err.’

‘You’d like to film a music video? Here?’ He asked, eventually.

‘Sizing the place up obviously, first, but, yes. If you’ll have us.’ The ponytail whipped again as Simon looked over his shoulder towards the band. ‘Over here, lads!’

‘Well, that’s…’ I began.

‘How much?’ Zeb waded in. ‘I mean, obviously, you’d want exclusive use of the garden and parking, so there would be substantial costs to the business.’ He gave me another wide-eyed look.

‘We’ll talk about that.’ Simon smiled at the space somewhere between Zeb and me, clearly still uncertain as to who really was in charge and not wanting to offend the real boss.

‘If the guys approve the place. We’ll just have a bit of a walk around, size the surroundings up, that sort of thing.

If that’s all right?’ he added to the air around my left ear.

I could feel another ‘err’ coming on, so was glad when Zeb said, ‘I’m sure that’s fine. It’s fine, isn’t it… Tallie?’ Then he nudged me with his elbow.

The six band members wandered over in a leisurely fashion, four men and two women, or rather – I checked my presumption – four people in loose cotton trousers and two people in skirts.

Lots of hair, some beards, piercings, a swirly tattoo and an overall air of patchouli; they were practically a caricature of a folk-rock band.

‘This is Genevra, Will, Loke, Tessa, Vinnie and Mika.’ Simon nodded towards each person; some of them waved rather sheepishly. ‘The Goshawk Traders . ’

I could see a couple of customers over in the yard, pointing and gabbling between themselves; one had pulled out a phone and was filming, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t the delightful layout of the herb beds that was proving appealing.

‘It’s a gorgeous place you’ve got here.’ This was Mika, a man with lavish dark hair swept back over the shoulders of a tailored jacket, an image of urbane male ruined by the baggy harem pants he was wearing.

‘Oh yes.’ Now he looked at me directly and I felt suddenly scruffier, smaller, hotter and as though I’d gained about four stone whilst standing here. ‘You’re the owner, right?’

He had very bright eyes, I noticed. Very bright and very dark, with long eyelashes that looked as though they were coated in mascara, which of course they very well might be. He smiled and I got hotter.

‘Yes,’ I said, vocabulary battling in my throat to force back the ‘umm’ that was struggling to get out, and making my voice higher-pitched than usual. ‘Yes, that’s me.’

He plays the washboard , the sensible part of my mind said. The washboard . But the non-sensible part of my mind, the part that was busy reacting to the knowing eyes and the high cheekbones, was shouting louder. This man was beautiful and he was talking to me .

‘Amazing,’ said the amazing man, and then the whole troupe, followed by Simon, set off for a wander around the perimeter walls, exclaiming and touching and sniffing, hems scraping gravel as they went and depositing little backwashes of grit in their wake.

‘What is wrong with you?’ Zeb said.

I tore my eyes away from the passage of the group and turned to him.

‘Me? What’s wrong with me? You’ve been here five minutes, I haven’t even filled the forms in yet, and you’re coming over all Earl of Grantham?

You are here to do some part-time weeding and you think you can tell me…

’ I tailed off. Zeb was shaking his head.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, hustling me by the elbow until we stood in the shelter of the Malva sylvestris. ‘I told you a bit of a fib earlier. I’m not here for a part-time job.’

Some of the generalised irritation I’d been working up towards my mother evaporated.

For once, this didn’t look as though I could quietly lay blame at her door.

‘Which is just as well because, as I told you, I didn’t advertise one.

’ Zeb continued to stare at me as though it was supposed to be obvious why he’d come and I just wasn’t getting it.

‘Okay. So, why are you here, and if it’s anything to do with HMRC I can tell you now that my tax returns are regular and squeaky clean. ’

Zeb, with his floppy, half-spiked hair, who did not look like anyone the tax office would send on an investigation, gave me a pursed-lips look.

‘That remains to be seen,’ he said darkly.

‘No. I actually run a business consultancy agency. Still quite small but I’m picking up business, and some of the business I picked up… is yours.’

My mind was freewheeling. Over in the car park I could see more cars pouring in and I felt a momentary lift of the spirits until I noted that all the occupants were training their attention on the band members, now standing at the junction of the radiating paths where a small bog garden was green and lush.

It was also full of froglets, but they didn’t seem to have noticed these, because there was a certain amount of posing going on.

I took a deep breath. ‘My mother,’ I said flatly.

‘I don’t know about that. But I’ve been hired for a month by a Mrs Amanda Fisher to raise the profile and turnover of the business.’

I stared over to where The Goshawk Traders were being stalked around the garden by a mob of phone-wielding people, and wondered whether my mother had influence in surprising spheres.

‘And this sort of thing is exactly what you should be going for!’ Zeb continued. ‘Opening up to a wider marketing opportunity.’

Above us the mallow shook its leaves in a shiver of breeze.

There was a sudden puff of scent, carried on the same breeze, from the lavender and thyme which were flowering nearby.

A soft scent, one which carried memory: of helping my grandmother to cut herbs, the smell of the sheets on my bed rinsed in lavender water to help me sleep…

‘I bought her out,’ I said. ‘She still draws a small amount of money from the business, but overall it’s mine. She doesn’t get a say in the marketing or anything else for that matter.’

‘None of that is anything to do with me.’ Zeb raised his head to watch the tight knot of people moving slowly along the paths. One or two had taken their attention away from the band to look at the herbs. ‘But what is my concern is maximising your returns from this right now.’

‘They don’t want herbs! Everyone has just rolled in to see the – whatever they call themselves. It’s hardly a huge sales opportunity, is it, unless you can conjure up about a hundred copies of whatever their last album is called for the shop.’

‘Oh, good idea.’ Zeb pulled his phone out and made a note.

‘But of course this is a sales opportunity! You’ve got people through the door, that’s the hard part.

Now your job is to make them want to buy herbs.

’ He looked at my face. ‘Isn’t it? You haven’t got a secret team of red-hot salespeople over there already? ’

‘It’s just me and Ollie,’ I muttered. He was right, of course he was.

‘Oh dear.’ Zeb made another note. ‘It’s worse than I thought. No sales assistance at all.’

We stood and looked at the band and Simon, who were gazing around at the layout and at the bunch of people following them at a small distance, phones outstretched, in silence for a moment.

‘So you lied to me,’ I said, watching with irritation as one of the women stripped flower heads from the foxgloves thoughtlessly with her fingers.

‘I wanted a chance to see your set-up.’

‘By lying. You could have just said .’

‘I like to get a feel for businesses first. No point wading in with tips for improvement if you’re already doing everything you can.

I need to meet the workforce, see what’s feasible for you, so it made sense to come in and work for a bit.

’ He sounded as though he were quoting from a manual.

‘This’ – he motioned towards the crowd in the middle of my garden – ‘has just precipitated matters somewhat. And, to be fair, you didn’t really ask, you pretty much accepted my story which was a touch on the thin side, to be honest.’

My mother. My bloody mother. Interfering again with a business that was nothing to do with her, other than her receiving a percentage of the profits, which was what we’d agreed when I’d bought her out.

‘Just to keep my bank balance propped up, Natalie, darling,’ she’d drawled.

‘I need a little bit extra, you know that. You know how my health is, these days, I have so little…’

‘I don’t want marketing advice,’ I said, sounding surprisingly firm. ‘The business is ticking over nicely. I don’t care what my mother said, or how she got you to agree to this, but I don’t need you. Please go away.’

Overhead, the swifts shrieked as they played non-contact tag through the air.

I could see Mika, taller than the rest of his bandmates, trailing a hand through the lemon balm bed and bending to sniff the resultant citrussy puff.

He really was incredibly good looking, with his dark flop of hair and those intense eyes. It was a shame about the washboard.

Mika looked towards where Zeb and I were standing amid the falling mallow blossoms, almost as though we were trying to blend into the background.

Even from two acres away I could feel his eyes on me.

I didn’t know whether it was best to turn away and pretend not to see him or keep looking in his direction but pretend not to be able to see him.

It was too late to do either. He grinned broadly and made an open-handed gesture, a kind of ‘it’s not up to me’ movement that somehow managed to hint that if it had been up to him, the group would even now be setting up equipment and paying me large amounts of money.

‘I suppose,’ I added grudgingly, ‘it would be a good earning opportunity if they filmed here.’

Zeb flicked me a look I saw out of the corner of my eye.

I hoped he couldn’t tell that I was watching Mika walk along the final path, only half my mind on the empty patch where Ollie had recently dug out some parsley that had bolted.

The seed heads were hanging in my kitchen now with paper bags collecting the falling seed, and we’d meant to fill the gap with more mint, but hadn’t got around to it yet.

‘You’re fired,’ I said, almost dreamily to Zeb, and then wandered off across to the shop to serve any potential customers that might result from this incursion.

It was just incidental that it would give me a better view of the band – Mika especially , my treacherous brain whispered – getting back on their bus.