Page 32 of Once Upon a Thyme
We wandered lanes where the hedges were heavy with late honeysuckle, threaded with meadowsweet and splattered with beginning-to-ripen sloes, their bitter green fading to bruise-black beneath the leaves.
Zeb talked about life. About things beyond herb gardens – working in a busy kitchen where the head chef threw plates out into the yard if he didn’t think the meal looked right. About the break-up of his marriage and returning to study with hours looking at business plans.
What could I offer to the conversation? I could talk about the best way to get parsley to germinate or drainage methods. I could point to things growing in hedge bottoms and tell him their uses, culinary and medicinal. I could pass occasional comment on the weather.
I felt small, boring and unworldly. Mika’s telling me that I should ‘learn to party’ had obviously gone in deeper than I’d realised.
‘You’re making me feel like Mika did,’ I said at last, as we strolled down towards the bridge into the village. My mother had not answered the phone when I’d returned her call and guilt and worry had steered my feet towards her door.
Zeb flickered his eyebrows. ‘Flattered and swept away by passion?’
‘Boring. As though I haven’t really lived any life at all.’ I slapped a hand on the parapet of the bridge, which made yellow and green lichen flake off under my palm into the water running swiftly and purposefully beneath. Even the river made me feel aimless.
‘Living and working in the same place doesn’t mean you haven’t lived.’ Zeb’s immediate rebuttal made me feel better. At least he didn’t find me boringly parochial.
‘I know. I think it’s because I stepped into Granny’s shoes.
Oh, not literally, she had tiny little feet, could never get boots to fit.
’ I waggled my well-shod clodhopper. ‘But with the business. The only change I’ve made is to redo the barn so there was room for the animals.
Everything else, even the cottage, is pretty much as she left it. ’
‘The A-ha posters being a case in point. Why not redecorate?’
I sighed. ‘Time. And if I’ve got spare energy then I’m better off putting it into the garden – clearing new beds, weeding, sorting out the irrigation unit, that sort of thing.
’ It made me sound as though I were living in a loop of days, that allowed only for variations in the sandwich I ate for lunch and the occasional deviation from my usual bedtime.
‘That’s one of the reasons it was so nice to have the band around, throwing everything in the air a bit.
It’s made me see the place…’ I tailed off.
I had been going to say that it had made me see the place differently, but it hadn’t really, had it?
‘I want to do something that’s mine.’ The words came out fiercely. ‘Build up something that I can point to and say “I did that”, but doesn’t involve toddlers patting Big Pig and an enormous muck heap.’
‘We’ve talked about that. I’m here to take responsibility for the animals and turn them into an attraction. Perhaps donkey rides? Or if that’s too hard on the insurance, we could get ducks? They eat slugs,’ he added hopefully.
‘You see? They’re your ideas. Your initiative. Yes, it will all be great, an extra attraction but – it wasn’t my idea.’
We coasted over the hump of the bridge and down to the stepping stones. Mother’s gate hung askew, the grass of the lawn growing up and obscuring the base, and a languorous rose stem had leaped the gap, with thorns at head height.
‘Do you want to pop in?’ Zeb sounded as though our conversation had been the most fascinating thing he’d ever heard, and breaking it off to visit my mother might spell the end of – whatever it was that we were doing.
I looked up at the small window of Mum’s bedroom and felt that tug of love and duty, irritation and pity. It all must have shown on my face because Zeb stepped through the gateway, ducking under the vicious thorny stem of the rose.
‘Maybe I ought to pop in. Just for a minute,’ I said, following him.
Mum was sitting in the kitchen, drinking black Earl Grey tea. This meant that she was recovering from her latest bout, but wasn’t quite up to shopping or cooking yet. ‘Hello,’ she said, sounding put-upon. ‘I tried ringing you earlier but you didn’t answer.’
‘Hello, Mrs Fisher,’ Zeb said brightly. ‘We were out for a walk and decided to call in; anything you need?’
‘A word with my daughter,’ Mum said, slightly frostily. I didn’t know why; she’d seemed to get on perfectly well with Zeb before.
‘Is that why you rang?’ I asked. ‘I did try to call you back – why don’t you just text me, Mum? It’s much easier if I’m busy.’
The tea filled the air with the cloying scent of bergamot and I wondered again how she could stomach something so strongly flavoured when she’d recently been so poorly. Surely something more neutral would be better?
‘And were you busy?’ She fixed me with a glare from above the steaming cup.
I felt my cheeks get warm. I hadn’t been, after all. I’d been chatting to Zeb, enjoying the pretence of a social life for a few minutes. ‘Well, I’m here now,’ I said placatingly. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
‘Him.’ My mother jerked her head in the direction of Zeb, who was blamelessly staring out of the window. ‘I’m firing him.’
Zeb whipped round and, at the same time I said, ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Of course I can. I employed him, I can fire him.’ Now the steely glare moved to Zeb, wreathed in the sweet-smelling steam. ‘You were taken on to increase the business takings, not to play happy families with my daughter.’
‘And I’ve come up with a few strategies to increase the revenue,’ Zeb said, sounding remarkably calm. Talking to semi-hysterical chefs when the rosti had scorched must have trained him into this level, sensible approach. ‘We are talking about a new animal barn, and a proper pets’ corner.’
I made shut up, shut up faces at him behind Mum’s back and he finally looked up at me and stopped talking.
‘Drycott is doing really well, Mum,’ I said, still sounding inexplicably apologetic. ‘It was kind of you to bring in a business consultant, but…’
‘I think we should sell.’ She put her cup down onto the table. I heard it rattle off the edge of the saucer, but she managed it second time around. ‘Maximise the profits and sell as a going concern.’
‘What? No!’ Now the anger staged a resurgence, leaping up as though it had learned a new trick and my releasing it on Mika had given it permission to go through the routine again.
I saw Zeb’s head come up and he looked at me with his eyebrows lowered, half frowning and half quizzical.
‘You could go and live by the sea,’ my mother said, vaguely. ‘You’ve always liked the sea.’
‘No I haven’t!’ I was forcing the anger back down, packing it back into that unopened trunk where it had always lived. She didn’t have the power to force a sale, she could only suggest it, and even the suggestion was laughable. We’d always owned Drycott.
‘Really, Natalie darling, you’re becoming dreadfully forgetful.’ My mother picked up her cup again. ‘You always say you love the sea.’
‘I love the sea, that doesn’t mean I want to sell up and buy a house beside it!’ I could hear my voice escalating in volume. ‘I love nice cars, it doesn’t mean I want to buy a house beside the A1! I love a good steak but I’m not about to move next door to an abattoir, am I?’
Now I got the pursed lips. I dreaded the pursed lips, they were my mother’s ultimate weapon.
She pressed her mouth closed so that her top lip concertinaed into a fan of fine lines and little tension brackets opened on each cheek.
She was losing her temper but wouldn’t show it.
She’d just be icy towards me until I folded, and if I didn’t she’d be ill and invisible for weeks.
‘ I think ,’ she said heavily, ‘that selling Drycott would be best for both of us. I’m feeling poorly again now, you know I can’t cope with this sort of thing. You ought to leave now, Natalie.’
I felt Zeb touch my shoulder and turn me, moving me out of that kitchen with his body. We passed out of the front door into the overgrown little square of garden, where he stepped back to let me slow to a stop just before the gate.
‘Well, that was unexpected,’ he said. ‘But she can’t fire me, I work for you now.’
I found that I was breathing very, very deeply; my hands were curled into fists at my sides and my entire body felt as though an icicle had fallen from above, piercing me from my skull to my ankles.
‘What…’ My voice sounded squeaky, so I tried again. ‘What the hell just happened?’
I couldn’t see Zeb, he was standing behind me, but I could feel him. He was the stream of warmth in the cold that I had become. ‘I think the metaphorical brown stuff just hit the air movement device,’ he said slowly. ‘Things are surfacing.’
Now I turned around. The intrusive rose that snagged the hedge instead of arching decoratively above the gate caught in my shirt. ‘Did you know? Did she tell you that’s why she hired you, why she wanted profits maximised – to sell the business as a going concern?’
My turning had clearly surprised him. ‘No! No, of course I didn’t know. All I was told was that she wanted to make sure that everything was running as efficiently as possible.’
The rose had torn a stammering patch across the top of my arm and I could see bright beads of blood welling through the fabric. I concentrated on those, it was easier than thinking about what my mother had said.
‘But she can’t sell the place. It’s yours.
’ Zeb pushed the reluctant gate open against the pressure of the grass.
The sudden release of the scent of lawn made me desperately want to be back at Drycott.
It was stupid but I had the feeling that if I were there, I was safe.
This place, which had been a second home to me, no longer felt as though it offered any security.
‘It is mine,’ I said, as we limbo’d under the flailing rose. Then again, with ferocity. ‘It is mine .’