Breakdown (30 page)

“No, someone might report it to the constable,” she said with a frown.

After lunch, Chris did chores in the barn, then Fiona took him to the greenhouse to pick tomatoes.

“Just the biggest, nicest ones you can find,” she said. “I’ve got a buyer coming later. He only wants the best.” They nestled the tomatoes into flat crates that stacked.

“Who does he buy for? The produce I saw in the grocery in Bath was on the grotty side.”

“I’m not sure. He’s cagey. He’s willing to pay extra, so I don’t ask.”

“Huh.”

“Did you grow tomatoes in Breton?”

“Outside. They don’t have a greenhouse. Not as nice as these.”

“Was it all for home use or did they sell any?”

“They trade some of everything, yes. George sells off quite a few hogs in the fall.”

“George is married, right?”

“Yes. Marie is his wife. His mum is Grace. Pauline is his sister.”

“She’s not married?”

“Fiona.” Chris straightened up and gave her a look.

“We used to be able to talk.”

“I know. What did Laura tell you?”

“Nothing I wasn’t starting to suspect myself.”

Chris tried to keep his tone light. “I’ve been here five days. What on earth have I done to make you so suspicious?”

“It’s what you haven’t done. Laugh, smile much, or take that ring off your finger.”

He glanced down, fingered it like he used to do so often. “It’s still important to me.”

“There’s a solution to every problem, Chris. Two brains might be better than one.”

“I’ll remember that. And I’ll try to smile more.”

“I mean it.”

“Okay.”

They picked in silence for a while.

“Did you assume I’d try to take up with Laura again?” Chris asked her finally.

“No. Do you want to?”

Heat rose to his face, and Chris busied himself behind a particularly leafy bush. “I don’t think it would work, for all kinds of reasons.”

“I agree. Though it would be...tidy, I suppose.”

“Life’s not tidy. Especially not anymore.”

“No. It’s not. But you don’t have to fight it.”

Chris grunted. “Fight what?”

“The untidiness. So you’ve got some clutter, so what?”

“You’ve lost me,” Chris said, putting two tomatoes into the crate.

“I think you’re looking for a solution that will make everyone else happy, without taking into consideration what you want. Talk to Jon.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“I promise.”

“Lovely. Now, take that stack to the kitchen, would you, please? I’ll find a few more and bring this one.”

Chris carried the stacked crates of tomatoes out of the greenhouse toward the kitchen. The clouds had thickened and a breeze had sprung up. Rain wasn’t far off.

A group of men came in through the back gate, some with rakes over their shoulders. Chris stuck close to the wall around the garden. When his restrictions were over, how long would it take before they stopped viewing him as a stranger? In Breton, they had welcomed him with little reserve. The suspicions seemed higher in Hurleigh. Was it because Hurleigh was closer to bigger cities and had more experience with the plague?

Soon, a honk sounded outside the gate. Chris helped Fiona carry the tomatoes out. The sight of the delivery van sent a rush of adrenaline through Chris. The vans in London had been nearly identical. The little man who got out to greet Fiona with a big smile was nothing like the Londoners, however, and put Chris more at ease.

“Oh, such beauties!” he said, lifting one crate off the stack. “Mrs. Wolcott, my dear, you never disappoint.”

Chris loaded the tomatoes into the crowded van. He caught sight of other large and perfect produce. The man handed Fiona an envelope and drove off with a wave.

The rain picked up as Chris did chores with Brian in the barn before supper. They ran across the yard and had to wait inside the kitchen door while Fiona brought them towels. She made them stand by the Aga until they dried some. Jon and Simon were even worse off when they got home from the Dealy farm, after the trek through the back field. Fiona sent them upstairs to change.

After supper they gathered in the sitting room. Ian and Preston took turns playing the piano, getting up and bowing after each piece with silly grins at the applause from the adults. Brian left the room and came back with a pitcher of cider and a stack of glasses and poured for everyone. Brian took his glass and shooed the boys from the piano bench. A smile warmed Fiona’s face as Brian settled himself on the bench and took a few thoughtful sips of the cider.

“C’mon, Dad, play!” Preston demanded.

The first few notes were careful, hesitant. Chris did not recognize the piece. It stayed slow, hollow and haunting, and trailed off abruptly. Brian started something else, this one lighter and faster, then launched into an old familiar tune from many years ago, a song crowds used to cheer for. Jon smiled broadly, but Brian stopped suddenly with an exaggerated groan.

“God, not that one!” he exclaimed with an eye-roll, and started something else. He played for the better part of an hour, some things that Chris recognized, some that he did not. Chris spent most of the time focused on a worn spot on the arm of the couch, afraid to meet anyone’s eyes, his heart pounding, trying to keep his expression casual, taking occasional sips from the glass that Brian had handed him with a faint “cheers.”

When he finished, Brian took the boys up to bed, and soon after Chris excused himself and went up to his room.

He lay on his back on his bed, still hearing the piano in his head. That Brian could coax such beauty and emotion from the keys still amazed him. What had he said to Jon, about music?
What use is it now?
Well, there it was. Brian had spoken to him, to all of them, through the music he’d just made. He’d always been able to do that. Chris couldn’t come close.

Chris smiled. And now Brian was passing that on to his children. Preston could mimic the notes, but he was young. Ian showed promise already. If he kept at it, he could play like his father someday.

His gut clenched.
Oh, Rosie. What would I have given you? Everything, if I could have.

Someone knocked softly on his door.

Chris sat up, sniffed, wiped his eyes. “Come in.”

Fiona opened the door a crack and put her head in. “I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

“No, not at all.”

“Are you okay? You left suddenly.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard him do that.”

“He did it for you.”

Chris took a deep breath.

“He told me you’d talked. You’ll be okay, the two of you, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. It always hurt him, you know, after he thought you must be dead. He never said, but I could tell.”

“God, why do we keep blundering through life hurting the people we love the most?” Chris said.

Fiona came into the room and sat down next to him on the bed. “Hopefully we can learn from our mistakes and fix them.”

“I’ve fixed the one thing I thought I needed to fix, but now I’ve made an even bigger mess.”

“You can fix that, too.”

“What happened with Jon’s girl?” Chris asked.

Fiona looked as if she had expected something else, but she nodded.

“It was last year. He’d told us he was going to ask her to marry him; he’d got a ring in Frome. He was so happy. We all were. She was younger, but we all liked her very much. She said yes, but when they told her mother, well, she wouldn’t have it. They had a huge row, the three of them. She’d always wanted Susan to marry another chap, a friend of the family. He and Susan had grown up together. Susan said she thought of him more like a brother.” Fiona stopped and shook her head. “It was so hard for Jon. In the end, Susan couldn’t go against her mother. She married the other chap, just a fortnight later. I don’t think Jon’s over it yet.”

“No,” Chris agreed.

“He wouldn’t talk to you about it?”

Chris shook his head. “Are there other possibilities? Once he gets over her?”

Fiona wrinkled her nose. “I don’t really think so. It’s been a bit of a problem. We’ve plenty of men around here, not so many women.”

Chris made a noise in his throat. “It’s just the opposite in Breton.”

“Have you told him that?”

“If he’s not over her yet, the prospect of single women on the hunt would not be a positive.”

“You’re probably right.” Fiona was quiet for a time, then laid her hand on top of Chris’s. “You could bring her here, you know.”

Chris groaned. “She wouldn’t come. She wouldn’t leave her family. They need her. She works so hard. It made it easy to stay, doing the outside work so she could do Grace’s work and Grace could have a rest.”

“It sounds like you’ve already found a family, Chris.”

“I promised Jon I wouldn’t walk out on him.”

“Talk to him. Tell him. Explain it.”

“Yes, all right. I’ll try.”

Fiona put her arm around him and gave a little squeeze. “Good night, then.”

“Good night. Thank you.”

After a while, Chris got up off the bed and peeked out his door. The house was quiet, the loo empty. He brushed his teeth, washed his face. As he turned off the tap, his gaze fell on his wedding ring. He stood still at the sink, his hand on the knob, and stared at the gold band on his wet hand. He grasped it with the fingers of his right hand, tugged at it, but it didn’t come off. He turned the water back on, put some soap on his finger, and tried again, working at it, easing it past his knuckle, until it slid off his finger and lay in the palm of his right hand.

It was easier than he had thought it would be.

Chris rinsed and dried his hands, keeping a careful hold on the ring, and then went back into his room. He stood with his back against the door, then picked up the picture of the three of them—himself, Sophie, and Rosie—from the bedside table, and took it to the bureau. He opened the top drawer and put the picture in. He put the ring on top of it and closed the drawer with a deep breath.

It was easier than he had thought it would be.

He sat down again on the bed, stretched his hand out toward the bedside table, grasped the picture he had left there, facedown, under the edge of a book from a shelf in the sitting room. Pauline had seemed a little embarrassed about it when she had brought it into his room as he was packing. He stared at it. The first stirrings of euphoria tickled his stomach. He got a piece of paper out of the drawer, and a pen, and wrote a letter to Pauline.

* * *

Dear Pauline,
This letter is just for you. I’ve been thinking, the past two days, how you will get that first letter I sent, the one with all the this-is-what-happened stuff for everyone, and you’ll read it out loud, and pretend to be happy for me, but really you’ll be gutted because it means I won’t be coming back. I couldn’t let you go on feeling that way.
The distance thing isn’t working, is it? But I’ve gone and promised Jon I wouldn’t walk out on him. When I realized that I had to come back to you, I figured I could just bring Jon with me. But he’s firmly entrenched here. He got all grumbly (as you’d say) when I mentioned the vague possibility. I’ll work on it. Find out what’s got him tied here. I think it must be a woman.
God, I miss you. I’m straddling a fence of razor wire, you on one side, Jon on the other. Whichever way I go it will cut me to ribbons. Will you take me, cut and bleeding, if I fall your way? But I can’t walk out on him. I can’t.
Please write to me. God, I wish we had a phone and could ring each other. I want to hear your voice.
But I’d rather feel your breath against my skin. I want to kiss every part of you. I want you to kiss every part of me. I want to hold you and not let go.
I have to stop now, or there won’t be enough numbers to count backwards through.
I miss you. I love you.
Chris

CHAPTER 26

“H
ow big is the school here?” Chris asked Jon as they loaded boxes of jam and produce into the wagon in the damp dawn before breakfast.

“I’m not sure. There are about twelve in Ian’s class. They lump classes together. They’ve got four teachers, I think.”

“We started a weekly football game in Breton, mainly for the kids, but some of the adults joined in. Have you got something like that here, for the kids to do?”

Jon stopped with a box in his arms. “I don’t know.” He gave Chris a neutral expression. “Who was ‘we’?”

“Freddie, one of the teachers at the school. It was her idea, I just helped her with getting the field in shape. I went to the practices and games, too, until I left.”

Jon put the box onto the wagon and lifted the back gate into place. “I’ll harness the horse after breakfast,” he said, and turned toward the house.

Breakfast conversation was dominated by market talk. Simon volunteered to go along to get the booth set up.

“You could help with milking if you like, Chris,” Simon said. “I had a talk with Winston, and he said it would be fine. He won’t report you.”

“Sure, happy to,” Chris said.

Everyone rushed their breakfast and the washing up. The boys grabbed their book bags and headed off to school. Fiona, Laura, and Vivian gathered their bags and lunches and went out to the wagon, where Simon was harnessing the horse.

Jon motioned to Chris. “We’re running late.” They set off through the field.

Chris was glad of the time with Jon. He hoped to start the conversation he had promised Fiona. But it was clear Jon was stewing over something. Chris mulled possible openers. Jon made that unnecessary.

“You did more than just work on a farm in Breton,” Jon said without looking at Chris.

“I made some friends. I pitched in where I could. They’re good people.”

“Good people here, too.”

“I know,” Chris said. “Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

“Fiona told me about Susan.”

Jon stopped in his tracks and turned to face Chris. “You could have asked me.”

“I did ask you. You wouldn’t tell me.”

Jon put on his stubborn face. “And?”

“It’s a shit situation, I know. I’m sorry.”

“What else?”