Breathing new life

Bede glanced up from the laptop screen as the phone interrupted his train of thought. He smiled. Elin always claimed she didn’t have a telephone voice but he loved to hear it. She relaxed into her normal tones and he gathered it was Marjorie. He turned from his spreadsheet, took his glasses off and polished them, listening and suppressing guilt: they hadn’t been to see their old friend for a few weeks – not since Philip had moved next door to his mother, into an apartment newly converted from a couple of outbuildings. It sounded like Elin was putting their absence right. She called over to him and he agreed to go and look at her temperamental old solid-fuel central heating boiler – again.

‘Honestly, that man.’ Elin put the phone down and came to sit across from him.

‘Philip? What’s he done now?’

‘Marjorie’s had to huddle up in front of the living room fire for days waiting for him to get someone he knows to see to the central heating. She suggested he call us but apparently you’re incompetent, as evidenced by the fact that it’s broken down again, and undesirable – which of course doesn’t need evidence. But Philip’s out this morning.’

Bede had been recommending for years that she get a new system, but as long as he could patch it up she was happy for him to do so, saying that scrapping it would be a waste and therefore a greater evil than the fuel it used. Bede wasn’t convinced, but he respected Marjorie’s ‘waste not, want not’ philosophy – an attitude she and Joe had shared. Whatever the boiler’s ability to take another weld, maybe he should sign its death certificate this time, help her out by offering to install a biomass boiler like theirs. They could supply her with the willow chippings for next to nothing, shaving more off the carbon footprint by keeping it local.

It would certainly piss Philip off – they suspected he was dying to get his hands on his mother’s rambling old farmhouse and rip the heart out of it, for himself or as a money-making exercise, so he’d doubtless consider a new central heating system an expensive irrelevance. Bede smiled grimly. Marjorie had no intention of moving or dying any time soon so he would feel not the slightest guilt in at least discussing it with her.

Before going to Bridge Farm, they called at the Foxover Storehouse and Elin saw Kate browsing the shelves. She’d almost managed to reach the door when her neighbour called out.

‘Elin! Can I have a word, please?’

Aware of Bede waiting in the car outside, she tried to think of an excuse, but Kate launched in without giving her the chance. ‘I’d be grateful if you could ask your husband to show a little more responsibility around the teenagers. He may think it’s amusing, or cool, but I really don’t appreciate him encouraging underage girls to drink. What was he thinking of? Even you’ve got to admit, Elin—’

‘Kate, please! I was there on Friday night. Didn’t Tamsin tell you? Bede made himself unpopular by refusing to serve her. I have no idea what makes you think he’d encourage her, but—’

‘So how come—’

‘Someone could have bought drinks for her?’

‘Well, he should have kept an eye on the situation.’

‘I don’t think she even had that much; it just went to her head. And I’ll tell you something else: we stopped on the way home – Bede did, actually; he was driving – and we gave her a lift to make sure she got back safely.’

‘Oh.’ Kate’s expression softened, but only for a moment. ‘If only he’d been as thoughtful when it came to the drinks. But… Well… Honestly, Elin, it is a worry. I admit I sometimes get distracted, running the bed and breakfast on my own. You can’t imagine—’

‘Don’t get me wrong; I do sympathise.’ Elin forced a smile, eager to avoid any veiled references to her own lack of parenting experience. ‘We’ll try and keep an eye on her whenever either of us is in the Horseshoes. OK?’ She glanced through the window at their car, saw Bede tapping the wheel impatiently. ‘I’m sorry, Kate, but we’ve got to be getting on.’

The last thing any of them needed was for him to join them for a more acrimonious re-run.

As they pulled into the Bridge Farm yard, Elin’s heart sank as she saw Philip’s SUV outside the converted outbuildings now called The Grange, not so much parked as sprawled at an angle of casual arrogance. ‘Marjorie said he’d be out.’

‘Don’t worry, he probably is. You don’t expect the poor bugger to slum it with just one car, do you?’ Bede pulled up neatly parallel to Marjorie’s hatchback.

Marjorie had said they should go straight in, and there was a note in the porch confirming it. Elin glanced at Bede but he was opening the sturdy front door before she’d finished reading it. Despite the countless times they’d been there over the years, she still felt like a visitor while he seemed completely at home – an even more unlikely friend to Marjorie than Joe had been. As they stepped into the dusty hallway, Bede called out, his voice fading to the familiar sound of the grandfather clock ticking away the minutes like the heartbeat of the house it presided over. Marjorie’s welcoming response drifted through from the back.

Enveloped by the distinctive old-house mustiness, they made for the conservatory. Elin noticed the living-room fire had not yet been raked out and laid. On the coffee table beside the fireplace, the photo of Joe in hiking gear stood where it always had, its frame now draped with his old familiar scarf. She smiled to herself at the fondness it revealed, looking so at home among the jumble of artefacts that crowded the room, documenting Marjorie’s travels to destinations that must have been all the more exotic to the sheltered daughter of a Foxover landowner. She wondered if Philip ever thought about his mother’s choice to display Joe’s photo like that – the framed family portraits on the wall, though larger and grander, seemed more dutiful than affectionate.

Marjorie was where they most often found her, in her beloved winter garden. She spent a lot of time looking out over the cheerful colour of the flower beds towards the river, enjoying the room’s apparent knack of drawing in sunshine even on a dull day. Joe had spent many an afternoon patching up leaks in the conservatory roof until eventually he and Bede had insisted on reglazing it for her – the kind of favour they had always done without question.

As she stood to welcome them, a hint of distance and guilt in Marjorie’s expression suggested she’d been dozing. She was immediately enveloped in a bear hug from Bede. He dwarfed her at the best of times, but to Elin this seemed the first time she’d actually looked her eighty years. She hugged her in turn and kissed her marshmallow cheek. Marjorie announced that the kettle was on and must have boiled by now.

‘Tea all round?’ Bede disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

‘The biscuits are in the tin,’ Marjorie called after him.

Elin sat in the chair Marjorie indicated, breathing in the wisps of fresh spring breeze that carried a little of the outdoors through an open window into the sun-warmed conservatory.

‘You’re looking well, my dear,’ Marjorie said. She lowered her voice. ‘And what about that young man of yours?’

‘Bede’s fine, thanks.’

‘Really? You know you don’t have to hide anything from me.’

‘Really.’ Elin smiled. ‘There’s nothing to hide.’

‘It’s good to hear it. Joe’s passing hit him so hard. I’m glad he’s coming out of it – I was only pleased he felt he could talk to me when he needed to.’ She frowned slightly. ‘Not that I didn’t realise, you understand, and try and get him to talk to you.’

‘I’m sure. It’s fine.’ She’d never confessed to anyone, not even Fran, her bouts of insane jealousy during those months that he’d opened up to Marjorie, or even Joe’s bloody dog, rather than express his feelings to her.

‘I know he sometimes felt guilty about taking you for granted.’ Marjorie took her hand and squeezed it. ‘So has he finally accepted it was an accident?’

‘Come to terms with the fact he’s never going to prove otherwise. We’re fine now, honestly. Did you know Brian’s got him working at the Horseshoes?’

‘Now that I do find hard to imagine.’

Relieved at the change of subject, they both smiled, and reminisced about when Marjorie used to go to the pub regularly with Joe. Her favourite seat by the inglenook fireplace had always cleared as if by magic; even visitors somehow seemed to know it was hers.

Bede returned with the tea-tray – two cups and saucers and a mug – and found a place for it among the clutter on the side-table. Elin poured as he handed the plate of biscuits round before taking the mug and perching on a footstool.

‘Now then.’ Marjorie turned to Bede, a slight tremor in her hand rattling the cup in the saucer as she picked it up. ‘Is it true what I heard about you having a go at Philip’s new venture? The pheasant pens in Holtwood?’

Her voice was stern, but her veiled smile suggested she certainly didn’t back her son in all he did, and might even approve of the end if not the means. Bede held his hands up.

‘First I knew about it was when I was wrongly accused.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, come off it!’ His tone made Elin flinch, but as so often she was amazed by what Marjorie would tolerate from him. ‘Do you really think I’d stoop so low as to harm innocent birds?’

His eyes sparked with challenge and amusement.

‘Remember who you’re talking to, young man.’ Marjorie shook her head in mock disapproval. ‘Just take care. Though maybe my son’s activities in and around the woods have gone far enough. I’ve made it clear what I think.’

Elin knew Holtwood still had a special place in Marjorie’s heart despite the years that had passed since she’d sold it. Any pleasure she might have at Philip buying it back was clearly fragile. The allusion she’d just made was as close as she’d ever come to speaking directly about the fracking proposals, however, and even Bede had agreed it was wise not to push her.

‘Don’t tell me he should be looking closer to home for the culprit?’ he said. Elin held her breath.

‘Enough.’ Marjorie’s voice was playful but her expression warned him not to take it too far.

‘Well, if you girls will excuse me.’

Bede stood, topped up his tea and left to see to the boiler.

‘Philip’s still convinced it’s him.’ Marjorie gave Elin a long, searching look. She didn’t reply; even if she had her own doubts, she certainly wouldn’t betray them to anyone else. ‘Though I believe the pair of you,’ Marjorie continued. ‘Bede rarely does anything without good reason. Not like Joe.’ She gazed out of the window. ‘He was a good man, but…’ Elin savoured that rare ‘but’ to what she sometimes couldn’t help thinking of as the cult of Joe. ‘I always thought he seemed a bit lost. Only came here to get away. He needed that; I was glad I could let the place to him. But I think he’d have happily allowed Alderleat to crumble round his ears as he pottered in the garden. Who’d have thought it would be your Bede… Used to roar up on that great beast of a motorcycle – you remember that?’

Elin smiled, recalling the heady mix of terror and exhilaration she’d got from riding pillion on their early dates. After he’d become more involved at Calsthorpe and then Alderleat, he’d suddenly sold his beloved Triumph. Just like that: from one day to the next it became part of his past. He simply claimed that shedding the bike was as important a part of his personal development as anything he’d ever learned about its mechanics.

‘I found him a little intimidating at first, if you don’t mind me saying,’ Marjorie continued. Elin smiled in sympathy. ‘No manners, the lines of his hands always black with oil as if to declare there was no point cleaning them properly because time spent away from making or repairing something was time wasted. Who’d have thought he’d ever come to live here?’ She turned from the window to look at Elin. ‘We’ve got you to thank for that. Meeting you certainly changed him for the better.’

Elin laughed. ‘Once Joe had persuaded him to actually speak to me.’

Her frustration had almost bordered on contempt as Bede had failed to respond to her, until the day he’d hesitantly asked her to go with him into the Calsthorpe trees, hunting mushrooms. Whether or not the invitation had been down to Joe’s matchmaking, his knowledge of edible fungi and the vast underground mycelium networks, and his enthusiasm for sharing it with her, seemed to open a floodgate, and soon they were talking naturally as if they’d always known each other.

‘Oh, he used to play the sullen young man with me, too,’ Marjorie said. ‘But the way he confided in Joe, I could see there was heart beneath the surface. It was a slow process but I warmed to him. And I know Joe was thrilled when the two of you agreed to come and live here.’

‘It was the perfect opportunity for us to put our ideas into practice,’ Elin said. She would never, especially not after Joe’s untimely death, voice the occasional longing she’d felt for her and Bede to have a place of their own.

‘More than that. Joe liked having family around him,’ Marjorie said as though she’d read her mind.

‘Likewise, you must be pleased that Philip’s come to live next door.’

‘I thought it was only temporary, while he settled down after the divorce and got on with renovating the Grange. I assumed he intended to sell it or let it out when it was finished, but it looks like he’s staying.’ She sighed almost imperceptibly. ‘He seems to think I need looking after, though I think I’m putting him right on that score.’ She smiled at Elin. ‘At least we’ve each got our own front door.’

As he came through from the boiler room in the lobby connecting Marjorie’s kitchen and Philip’s front door, Bede tried to deny the nerves he always felt here. That time he’d turned up at Bridge Farm looking for Joe, the Grange had still been a ramshackle outbuilding and Marjorie’s kitchen its timeless self. Hearing raised, angry voices – his uncle’s and one he didn’t recognise – he’d paused outside the half-open back door.

‘I’m telling you to drop it, clear off and stay away.’

‘It may disappoint you, but there are some things in this world you can’t control.’ Joe’s voice had an edge Bede had rarely heard. ‘Not your mother and certainly not me.’

At the harsh sound of chairs scraping the flagged floor, Bede had raised his hand and knocked as if he’d just that moment arrived. A middle-aged man, whom he now knew to be Philip, snatched open the door, glared at him, then turned back to Joe.

‘If you insist on going ahead, I swear you’ll regret it.’

They’d gone ahead with buying out the Alderleat lease and hadn’t regretted a thing over the years, but how long could the man’s grudge last? Of course Bede had reported the conversation after Joe’s death, but even he could see that an unsubstantiated memory was hardly evidence. And surely the fracking proposals weren’t personal.

Shaking his head, he turned back to the task in hand. Satisfied everything was working, he moved to the fireplace, ready to put the back boiler and the whole creaky system to the test. A match to the crumpled newspapers brought the flames to life and he relished watching the DailyMail burn. He fed the fire, feeling dirty as he did so, but it needed coal to run properly. As the initial roar settled to a steady crackle, he allowed his gaze to be drawn by the glow, and thought again that he really must have a word with her about renewing it.

Don’t you start. She’s got enough on with Philip telling her what to do.

He started, looked around. I’m only trying to help. 

She’ll ask when she’s ready. No need to cause trouble between her and that son of hers.

Bede glanced accusingly at the fire, then quickly swept up. He went back through to the boiler room and checked the tank – at least he’d made sure that it was well lagged – and the pump, observing it all with the satisfaction of a job well done, tinkering with a few adjustments. He heard a key in the lock of the adjacent porch, followed by Philip’s voice. ‘Hello? Someone there?’

As Bede removed his glasses and wiped his hands on his overalls, he reminded himself he had nothing to feel guilty about.

‘Well, well. This is a surprise.’ Philip declined to shake his grimy hand. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Your mother phoned us. Asked me to look at the boiler. She’s in the conservatory with Elin.’

So go and have it out with her. Leave me to finish off in peace.

‘I’ve got someone booked in to see to this, the day after tomorrow.’

‘No need now.’

Philip glared at him as though Bede’s actions were not so much to help his mother as to criticise him. He brought out a leather wallet from his pocket. ‘How much do we owe you?’

Bede frowned, genuinely taken aback. ‘Owe me?’

‘For the repairs.’

‘Nothing.’

Philip radiated irritation. The man could even take declining payment as an insult. He strode off towards the conservatory. As Bede heard Marjorie greet her son calmly, he was once again struck by how different they were, and wondered what on earth her late husband must have been like.

11th June 1999

Today was a good day. I’ve taken a few days’ holiday and I’m here in my trusty tent in the mountains for a bit of fishing, bit of time alone in the wild to recharge. First proper time I’ve spent outdoors since I lost the allotment – all the paperwork for that went home and Suzanne just cancelled the lease out from under me. Well, no point in dwelling on the bad, though I do miss the soil on my hands. Look on the bright side – I met a couple of interesting people earlier.

After an early start, there I was, drinking a coffee from the snack van, when suddenly there’s this blare of horns and a movement in my mirror, a hatchback veering off onto the verge. I’m out like a shot, to a last doppler of a horn fading off down the outside lane. Blow-out by the look of it. She did well to get off the road – from the skid marks it looked like she was in the outside lane – but she’s sitting there looking shaken, watching me jog up. Shaken but in control. Not bad for a woman in her fifties, sixties maybe. The remnant of tyre was a hazard to traffic so I dived out between cars to retrieve it, and I’m almost as shaken as she is by the time I offer to help change the wheel – though she looks like she’d have been more than capable on her own.

By the time we’d done and I’d bought us a nice calming cuppa and the comfort food of bacon butties, I’d heard all about Marjorie Northcote’s beautiful-sounding place in a little village by the River Severn – or maybe it’s just her accent makes me think it’s something special. Not too cut-glass but quite posh all the same. She’s got plans to settle down and sort out her crumbling old house after a few years spent travelling. Said she wanted to do something useful after her husband died and she’s been driving across the continent and beyond for charities, delivering aid parcels and the like. Got to admire her.

When she turned to me and said ‘Tell me, what does a knight in shining armour do when there are no damsels in distress to rescue?’ I confess I felt a bit inadequate. I mean, a hardware shop. I’m proud of how I’ve built the business up, and I’ve got some decent skills, but it sounds a bit…unknightly, doesn’t it? And there I am spending my weekends on the allotment (well I used to, at least), or going off into the mountains on my own, when she’s out there devoting her life to helping people.

Once we were both sure she was OK, she continued on her way to visit her friend, leaving me with an outpouring of eternal gratitude and an invitation to visit. The river Severn. Shropshire. I know nothing about it bar the Welsh borderlands, and aren’t there supposed to be blue remembered hills or something?

After waving her off, I was just leaving the layby when I saw a group of hitchers, bloke and two women (lucky sod). A bit scruffy but you don’t expect hitchers to be wearing black tie, do you? My half-hour with Marjorie had given me a taste for chatting, I like my own company but after recent weeks you really can have too much of a good thing, so I decided I could squeeze them in, rucksacks & all.

I told them where I was heading and the taller girl with long, wavy red hair just kind of nods and they head for the car. The fella, looked a bit stoned, introduced himself as Tim and shoved his rucksack in the boot before hunkering down on the back seat, too gone-out, knackered or maybe just plain shy to say more. The gypsy-haired girl grins at me all full of fun, like, and simply says ‘Fran’ as she clambers into the back with the rest of their stuff between them, leaving her mate, really drop-dead gorgeous she is, scowling at me. I think you’d call her a willowy blonde, at least that’s what I ended up calling her in my head, Willow (had to stop myself saying it out loud) because there was no move to speak to the likes of me. She finally got in the front, as gracefully as she could while looking down her nose at me. She slammed the door shut as if expecting it not to latch properly and immediately wound the window down.

‘Smells of dead pig in here.’ Dead quiet she said it, craning round to her mates in the back, as though I’m not meant to hear.

‘You mean my bacon butty?’ I’m smiling to myself as the embarrassment flits across her face. ‘Listen, love, I can find you a piece of cardboard. Just write VEGAN on it and you’ll get a lift to suit you in no time, I’m sure.’

I noticed the lass called Fran stifling a laugh.

‘Anyway, sooner you belt up, sooner we’ll be there and you can get the offensive molecules out your nostrils.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

I tapped her seat belt clasp. She rolled her eyes but obeyed, clicking it like it was a gun aimed at an abattoir guy. I saw the ghost of a smile. She was something when she wasn’t hiding it behind a veil of self-righteousness. Told myself I’d no chance – they look like students which would make her not much over half my age. Made me feel old all of a sudden, that did, though I really related to them. She didn’t look the sort to fancy a bit of rough, but you never know your luck.

It seems they’re on their way to some peace camp in a forest in Northumberland. Fran starts telling me, arms waving, how the three of them are second years at Nottingham Uni and regularly go off for a few days to join this guy Graham Scott – Grey – who’s got this land, Calsthorpe Wood, that was in his family, and he’s got a crowd in there to occupy it because the ancient, once-they’re-gone-they’re-gone-forever trees are threatened by a road scheme. Yeah, that’s right, another one. What’s the point, I said, it’ll soon become another standing traffic jam, we should be looking to proper public transport. Fran catches my eye in the rearview mirror like she’s found a soulmate.

Anyway, they’ve got a right little community going on there, building shacks out of ‘found materials’ from mother nature’s bounty and living off the land. They’re fighting this road through the courts and planning procedures, but if push comes to shove they’re dug in ready to protest. Quite sad when you think of what they’re doing and it could all be crushed. But much as I sympathise 100% with what they’re doing – I actually found myself admiring those tree-dwelling fellas, Swampy and co, on the news a few years ago – it was all getting a bit heavy and I could feel my week on my ownsome in the mountains beckoning.

Except that, when I drop them off, Willow – who turns out to be called Sophie – actually invites me to come & see Calsthorpe Wood for myself on my way home.

Seeing as it’s you, love, I might well cut my fishing trip short.