Page 31 of Once Upon a Thyme
Here came the burning embarrassment to fry my ears and make me feel as though I was wearing a brushed-wire suit.
How could I even have thought…? Me, little Tallie Fisher, how dare I allow myself to step outside the role allotted to me by life and imagine that someone so…
so… Mika might have been serious? I turned away and began pulling faded petals off the rose clambering its way over the wall, feeling the hot-cheeked mortification dying back to the usual background bewilderment.
He had fancied me, he had practically admitted it.
He was marrying Tessa. Nothing could have come of any attraction, because he was marrying Tessa.
Focus on that, Tallie.
Slowly, to give myself chance to adjust from fury-driven or fiery with humiliation back to base level, I walked back to the cottage.
Zeb was still where I’d left him, which felt odd.
Inside I felt as though I’d aged a century, as though letting out some emotion had released several pent-up decades which had settled on me like dandruff.
‘All right?’ he said cheerily.
‘Yes,’ I replied, still slow. ‘I just had to have a word with Mika.’
‘I saw.’ Now Zeb looked down at the table, tracing a crack with his fingernail. ‘I was a bit worried for a minute. You went off looking as though you wanted to rip his immaculate head off.’
‘Were you?’
‘Actually.’ Now he looked up and met my eye. ‘I was worried you were going to offer to leave with him.’
Zeb sounded serious. Although the words had been lightly spoken, almost like a joke, there was nothing amused about his expression. He really did look as though he’d been afraid that I was going to throw myself at Mika and ask to be taken away from all this.
The last of the anger drained away completely to be replaced by a different kind of warmth. The sort of warmth that feels as though it creeps out from your heart rather than being forced in from outside. A hot drink, as opposed to an acid bath.
‘How could I leave all this?’ I waved an arm. ‘I’ve got seeds to bring on and a fennel bed that’s still got trotter prints in it. Plus the possibility of a barn full of birds and a potential donkey.’
‘Which is why’ – Zeb came in now with what seemed to be a burst of cheerfulness – ‘you have me as Pig Wrangler and Shit Shoveller. There’s still an element of financial management creeping in to my role of course.
Hence me persuading Simon to pay to build us a new barn.
One with proper fastening gates that Big Pig can’t open. ’
There was a moment of quiet into which the future settled. No rock stars. No life on the road, being an accessory to a man who flirted like he breathed. Instead, a future here, with my herb garden and my animals.
I shook my head. ‘It was too easy,’ I said, clanking china as I put the used mugs away in the cupboard. ‘He didn’t even quibble.’
‘Yes,’ Zeb said slowly. ‘I wondered about that.’
‘I thought that maybe you’d got something nasty on him or the band.’
Zeb didn’t speak for a moment and I had to look over my shoulder to check that he was still there. He was tipping his chair casually back with the sun slicing through the window frame to tattoo him with shadow. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘ I haven’t. But I think someone might.’
‘The band?’ I had a brief thought that perhaps Mika had persuaded Simon to give us whatever we wanted. Perhaps he had felt guilty about how he’d treated me, and this was his way of making himself feel better.
Zeb shook his head. ‘Not sure.’ The chair came back to earth with a clonk. ‘Anyway. Do you fancy doing something tonight? I know we’re about a million miles from the nearest cinema, but we could… go for a walk? Or something?’
He spoke quickly, as though he had to get the words out before common sense cut in and strangled him.
I let the china drop heavily onto the draining board. ‘What?’
‘You, me, somewhere that isn’t here or your mother’s kitchen? Might be nice.’
I turned with a slowness that seemed to be weighted with doubt. ‘What?’ I asked again, although the words had made perfect sense.
‘Sorry, did you have something else planned?’ Zeb stood up, unfolding himself from behind the table. ‘What do you usually do in the evenings?’
‘I pop in on my mum, I tidy up the gardens, do a bit of pruning and I… I watch TV. Mostly,’ I added, honestly, because often I did none of those things; I sat at this table and stared out at the day lowering itself behind the trees and watched the dusk creeping in around the hedges.
Also, I dreamed. I dreamed of what could be, what could have been and I looked at my loneliness with a degree of introspection which probably wasn’t healthy.
Sometimes I told my hopes and dreams to Big Pig, but I wasn’t going to tell Zeb that either. Tears pressed behind my eyes but I froze my face and swallowed hard. Self-pity mingled with unaccustomed confessions were making me emotional, that was all.
‘Or do you already have a date for tonight?’
‘Who the hell would I possibly have a date with?’ A half-laugh coughed out over the tightness in my throat.
‘Mika…’ Zeb said slowly and carefully.
‘Isn’t real. Oh, he’s real enough, but he doesn’t want me .
He’s just playing. I knew it really, but sometimes it’s just nice to dream about something that isn’t this house and this garden and doing my mother’s laundry because she can’t get downstairs and making sure she’s had something solid to eat!
’ The words burst out, surprising even me.
‘He’s got a lovely house in London and a huge garden and somebody must be cutting his lawns and planning his borders and I just thought, why shouldn’t it be me? Why shouldn’t it be me ?’
I was crying now with the rim of the sink pressing into my back harder and harder as I leaned into it, trying to use the sensation to stop the tears.
Zeb took a tiny step forward to approach me, but he stopped.
‘He’s a player,’ I said, trying to push the tears back in with the angle of my wrist. ‘Of course he’s a player.
He even told me he was, Simon told me he was.
It’s just… it feels as though this place has knocked all the dreams out of me, you know?
It’s “get up, weed, plant, tidy, sell, sweep gravel, feed the animals” all day, every day, like there’s no other life out there.
This is all I’ve ever known, I’ve been living here and doing this since I could toddle and it’s like some giant Groundhog Day. ’
Somewhere in the back of my head Sensible Tallie was telling me that, yes, this might be how I felt deep down, but equally deep down I knew that I was very lucky.
I had a job, a roof over my head, a mother who loved me.
There were people out in the world who would kill to have even one of those elements, so what right did I have to be dissatisfied?
None. I had no right. I should pull up my Big Girl Pants, realise that this was my life, and then grit my teeth and get on with things.
But Emotional Tallie, who didn’t usually get much of a say, other than crying when one of the guinea pigs died, had taken control for once and was becoming slightly hysterical.
Zeb looked somewhat taken aback, which wasn’t surprising. It can’t be every day that your employer breaks down in tears in front of you and admits to wanting something else.
‘Er,’ he said. ‘Do you think another cup of tea might be a good idea?’
His diffidence made me snort a laugh. ‘No. No it’s fine, I’m all right really. I just sometimes get a bit… and you were there. Sorry.’
He’d rolled up his sleeves again. What was it about the sight of those bony forearms that made something inside me go peculiar? The way the cuffs of his shirt flapped against his skin or the vulnerability of the veins that showed on his wrists?
‘I thought you loved it here.’ He sounded cheated , as though I’d somehow swindled him out of something.
‘I do. No, really, I do.’ I sniffed mightily and wiped my eyes on the hem of my T-shirt.
‘It’s just that sometimes it all seems so…
narrow, do you understand what I mean? As though if I never left this place I could just keep doing this until I die.
Ticking over but never actually living .
I love it here but sometimes I just feel as though there should be… more .’
Zeb came out from around the table and sat on the edge of it, nearer to me.
There was an expression in his dark eyes that gave me a similar feeling to seeing his bare wrists, as though my heart were twisting sideways in my chest. ‘Of course I understand,’ he said softly.
‘That is exactly how I feel. It’s how I felt about being a chef, to be honest, and it’s how I feel about the financial advice thing.
Yes, it’s great, it’s a wonderful job and I know I’m doing a good thing, but I want there to be more.
Something else. I’m not great with pressure, that’s my problem, I’m a born backroom bloke, but something in me wants there to be…
yes, like you said, more. Living, rather than working and sleeping.
Having something, someone, a life. I’ve always been restless, looking for something and I didn’t realise that the something I was looking for – could be this. ’
We stared at one another with the dawning realisation that we had a lot more in common than we’d ever suspected.
‘But what else is there for me?’ I asked finally. ‘I mean apart from imagining running away with a famous folk-rock band member and living a swish and fancy life in London with a gorgeous garden and a converted chapel.’
‘You’d have hated London though, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes, of course I would, but that’s not the point.’ I sighed. ‘It would be something else. I’d be – I don’t know, achieving something. I don’t want fame and fortune, I just want…’
In my pocket my phone began to trill its message that my mother was calling again. I stood, paralysed.
‘To be seen, perhaps,’ Zeb said, gently. ‘To make something of this place in your own right. Your mother does seem to regard you as something of an extension to herself, doesn’t she?’
I pulled my phone out and looked at the screen.
That old familiar guilt was tugging away at my insides, the feeling that I needed to make sure that Mother was all right.
But pulling the other way was this conversation that I was having with Zeb.
I hadn’t realised how little opportunity I ever had to be truly honest with myself, with someone else, and he seemed to understand.
But Mum needed me.
‘I should…’ I held the phone up, as though Zeb might have thought I was talking about something else.
‘Should you? Yes, perhaps you ought. Although…’ He trailed off, staring at the phone.
‘Although, what?’
The ringing stopped and the silence was as heavy as the dust-laden sunlight.
‘I’m not sure. But I think there’s a story here that’s beginning to piece itself together. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle and you are standing so close to the picture that you can only see the bits that are right in front of you.’
‘Oh very enigmatic.’ I was holding the phone, my mind a huge whirl of uncertainty. Should I call her back? What would happen if I didn’t? ‘You’re like Yoda, only without the cuteness.’
‘Thanks.’ Zeb looked genuinely hurt.
‘Sorry. You are quite cute really,’ I said, then clamped my lips together.
Zeb seemed mollified. ‘All right then. I’m just beginning to wonder about some things.’
‘I’m wondering about lots of things.’
‘So, shall we go out then?’ Now he pushed his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders slightly as though he expected me to push him away. ‘Or would you rather go to your mum’s?’
I stared at the phone again. Why didn’t she text? Why did she have to ring and then hang up, so I didn’t know whether she wanted to ask me something or whether she’d fallen down the stairs and needed my help?
Zeb was looking at me and I felt my insides give that twist again.
Oh God. It felt horribly as though I fancied Zeb!
No. No, no, no. This just wasn’t possible.
I fancied Mika, I couldn’t fancy Zeb as well, I just didn’t have enough oestrogen in me.
Besides – it was Zeb. A dead ringer for David Tennant’s younger, scruffier and lankier brother with a huge side order of no career path and an extra helping of what the hell…
Mum hadn’t rung back.
‘I think going out would be a lovely idea,’ I said, all in one breath. Mum could look after herself for a while, I’d check in on her afterwards. And Zeb really did have lovely eyes.
He brightened. ‘Fabulous.’
Although. ‘But…’ I could feel it now, that pull of guilt and duty. Perhaps she was crumpled at the bottom of the stairs and that call had used the last of her energy?
‘Look, how about we go for a walk, and during that walk we pass by your mother’s house? You could phone her back and if she needs you then we can call in.’
I felt myself relax. I hadn’t known that I was in such a state of high tension until it left me. ‘I think that sounds…’
‘Just bear in mind that I think your mother might possibly be playing on her illness just a touch to keep you close at hand.’
The tension coiled itself up again. ‘I know. I think so too. But she’s genuinely not well.
I’ve seen her some days, she’s so pale she looks as though all her blood has drained away; she can barely stand up or hold a cup and her whole body shakes.
She couldn’t fake that, not just to make sure I come when she calls. ’
‘I’m not saying she’s faking.’ Zeb held out a hand to me. ‘Come on. You can ring her back on the way. It’s a lovely evening going begging out there while we sit in here. We could be out in the fresh air comparing terrible work experiences.’
I didn’t seem to be entirely myself this evening, almost as though losing my temper and confronting Mika had thrown me into another universe, one where I was much more emotional, and more open to suggestion.
On any normal day, I would have answered the phone.
I would have kept quiet about my feelings that I was trapped at Drycott.
And I most definitely would not have taken Zeb’s hand and headed off out of the cottage into the warm late afternoon.