Narrow Minds (2 page)

Helen raised her eyebrows at me and I sighed, it looked as though the whole embarrassing story was going to have to be told.

‘We'd just moved into Lillian's and I came up with one of my fantastic ideas that instead of another steel boat we buy a wooden one.' I laughed, remembering the fantasy I had indulged in. ‘The ad said that it was an ex-fishing boat and that it was ready to sail away, and it was such a good price it would have left us with a huge amount of money to make any necessary repairs.

‘So anyway, we made an appointment to see it and wandered over to Hartlepool for the day.' I shook my head remembering the first impressions. ‘Helen, it was dreadful, it didn't help that the weather was appalling, but quite frankly bright sunshine and a Caribbean backdrop couldn't have made that boat look any better.'

Helen frowned. ‘I remember how bad ‘Happy' was when you bought her.' She shuddered. ‘I can't imagine anything worse than that.'

I laughed. ‘Happy was a palace compared to this thing.'

Helen grimaced, obviously having trouble imagining anything so awful.

‘She was about sixty foot long and was fairly cute from the outside. Well, apart from the gaping holes and obvious rot in a lot of her planks, but Geoff felt that these could all be replaced for a fairly reasonable price.' I laughed, ‘What we didn't expect to find was an obvious telegraph pole for a mast, an engine that took up nearly a third of the boat and ceilings so low that we all had to walk about with our heads on one side.'

‘Wasn't it fixable at all?' Helen winced at my description.

I sighed. ‘If it had been just the two of us I suppose it might have been. Charlie, however, took one look at the beds, stinking, under two inches of water (the roof/deck was leaking due to all the holes in it), took one lungful of the stinking mould-laden air and just burst into tears. She stated that there was no way she was going to live on that and she'd actually rather go back to her father's than ever again set foot on the equivalent of the
Marie Celeste
.'

Helen winced. ‘And since then I supposed she's not wanted to look at any others.'

I shrugged. ‘My fault, I should have been far more careful, Charlie never saw Happy when we first got her so she doesn't remember the gruesome mess that we lived in.' I sighed. ‘They seem happy here, they've got all their little gadgets, all the things they didn't have on the boat. School starts on Monday, so they're going to get friends, Geoff's got his job and feels that he shouldn't leave before he's done at least a year.' I took another sip of coffee. ‘Everything we do just tightens the net and makes it harder and harder for us to escape.'

Helen's grin had faded. ‘I didn't realise it was only you that wanted to get back home, I thought you were all working toward that.'

I pushed the half-finished coffee away. ‘So did I, Geoff says he wants to but he hasn't bothered looking at boats, he's really intent on his new job.' I shook my head. ‘God, I sound so self-pitying, it's really good that he's got this job and he's qualified.' I paused. ‘I just wish we could've done it closer to home.'

Helen sighed. ‘I don't have any answers for this one, if it's just you...' she tailed off and shrugged. ‘You can't just push off on your own and leave them all behind.'

I smiled sourly. ‘It might be the best thing, they'd soon come running when the food and the clean washing ran out.'

Nodding, Helen checked her watch then leapt up and grabbed my arm. ‘Talking of things running out, come on we're runningout of time, you have to see this.' She pulled me toward the door. ‘Honestly you're going to love it.'

Out of the coffee shop we wandered back past the little shop and into the impressive entrance hall. Helen bounded away toward the stairs and spoke over her shoulder at me, ‘
Come on,
it's nearly two o'clock.'

‘Come on, come on.' She shouted over the top of the banister before disappearing behind another big wooden door. I puffed along behind her thinking that cow print wellies probably weren't right for this place and hoped I wasn't dropping mud on the carpet. Distracted, I stopped to study some of the portraits on the walls, their huge antique gold frames perfectly in keeping with the decor. The eyes of the long dead followed me as I slowly followed the sound of Helen's voice.

Lost in thought, I was surprised when a slim hand shot out through the door and grabbed my cuff. ‘Oh, good grief, come on!' Helen snapped. ‘I know you want to spend your life just drifting along the river, swatting mozzies and watching Geoff fall into the water but there really are times when you need to get a bloody move on.' She pointed to a glass case in the middle of the room, surrounded by silent onlookers. ‘Look at this.'

I approached the glass case curiously, the other people standing around moved aside for me and we all stood staring at this most beautiful ‘thing'.

Within the case a life-sized silver swan rested on a glistening streambed of twisted glass rods. Silver fish hovered above the ‘stream' and all was framed within a bed of large silver leaves, as old as it obviously was, the ‘thing' was breathtakingly beautiful.

I was right about it being an antique, a description from 1773 lists it as:

A swan, large as life, formed of silver, filled with mechanism, beating time with its beak to musical chimes terminating at the top with a rising sun upward of three feet diameter, the whole eighteen feet high
.

I looked again at the swan. The aforementioned sun was no longer present and the case was now about six foot. It was obviously no more than a beautiful statue, which was a shame but it would be ridiculous to hope, after 236 years, that it still worked.

I was still marvelling at the workmanship when a hush fell on the small crowd and a smiling man approached the case, there was a definite sense of anticipation.

Helen appeared beside me and grinned. ‘Isn't it gorgeous?'

I nodded then jumped as the glass rods began to rotate. Pressing closer to the glass, I jumped again as the swan's gleaming silver head bent left toward me then away to the right, it then twisted around and appeared to preen its own back. Rotating back again, it sighted a fish in the water and bent down, a fish appeared in its mouth which it seemed to swallow. When the fish had disappeared the swan's head returned to its upright position and the whole thing became a statue again, as the music stopped all was silent and still. I firmly stifled a childish impulse to grab the man and shout ‘again, AGAIN!' It had only lasted about forty seconds but it was forty seconds I would remember for a fair while: incredible.

As we wandered around the other exhibits Helen poked me. ‘Well?'

‘Well what?'

She grinned. ‘Oh come on let's hear it.'

‘What?' I pretended to have no idea what she was talking about.

‘Swans don't eat fish.'

I laughed. ‘Swans don't eat fish, they may be beautiful but they are also aggressive, scary, and plain stupid most of the time. They wait in the dark for you to come out on the front of the boat then they hiss loudly, and laugh as you leap two or three foot into the air. But for something that old and beautiful I'm willing to be tolerant of its reality failings.'

‘Good.' She looked at me sideways.

‘What?'

‘Well, if you extend that tolerance to your neighbours and give them a chance, they may surprise you as well.' She gave me a beaming, self-satisfied, smile.

‘If my neighbours were old and beautiful I would. And, if I stayed up here for two hundred and thirty-six years, those neighbours might, just might, stop thinking of me as a southerner and actually talk to me.' I paused for a moment. ‘Helen?'

‘Yes?'

I gave her a ‘look'. ‘I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but you can be intolerably smug when you're right.'

‘See you next week.' She gave me a huge grin.

I turned round and stuck my tongue out at her. ‘Oh shut up.' After a quick hug I was back in my car and away. Maybe she was right, maybe I shouldn't keep hankering after the past. I've always told the kids, especially Amelia, who has a tendency to revisit situations in the hope they'll turn out differently the second time, ‘Never go back, always go forward.' There was a distinct possibility I should take my own advice.

A heavy knocking on the back door returned me to my fairly mindless perusal of Kevin's ice-skating cows and sighing heavily I dragged my face away from the window. I noticed that my face and hands were blue from the cold but my thighs were a fiery red from where they'd been in contact with the radiator: they were beginning to tingle alarmingly.

I limped through the kitchen toward the back door. This was the only other room I really liked. Tiny and poorly equipped, it boasted just a couple of cupboards, a sink unit, a small cooker and a washing machine. It reminded me of home, even the lino on the floor was the same pattern as the one we'd had on the boat. As I opened the door to the grinning postman. I noticed that the snow was getting heavier, each flake was now the size of a fifty pence piece and I was sure I could hear a slight thud as they hit the ground, each one adding to the rapidly thickening blanket.

‘Afternoon!!' John stuck his head through the door and smiled alarmingly. ‘More bills, what a swine eh? Never mind we all have to live with it, better to smile and take it on the chin, than moan about it.'

I stretched my face into what I hoped resembled a smile and quashed my temptation to quip about ‘morning' postal rounds. I just couldn't be bothered to listen to a long list of excuses about the weather and low staff levels.

He pointed to the grey and yellow sky. ‘Bet you don't see a lot of this down south.' He carefully pronounced this as ‘darn sarth', presumably in an effort to make sure I could understand what he was saying. Sorry sweetheart, I originally come from Surrey and I've recently come from Cambridge. Lose any form of chin, stick a couple of plums in each cheek then stretch each vowel to snapping point and I might just stand a chance of understanding you.

‘Oh, this one needs signing for.' He held out a thick envelope. ‘It's for the farm, I couldn't get an answer at the door but it looks important, could you sign for it?'

‘They're just up there.' I pointed up at the barn at the top of the farmyard.

‘Oh right.' He grinned at me and pushed the letter into my hand.

It was definitely the day for heavy sighs and taking the post from him I nodded, then bared my teeth at him again. He gave me a cheery wink and swivelled on his heel.

‘No rest for the wicked eh?' He waved and headed down the passageway between the cottage and the horse barn, stamping his feet as he went, leaving clods of snow to melt and fill the passage with water. ‘See you tomorrow,' he called over his shoulder, ‘no doubt there'll be more bills … there always is.'

Shutting the door with a thud just to show him what I thought of him and his bills, I studied the post then sighed again. There really was no point in waiting, the weather was just going to get worse and it was rapidly getting dark. I might as well sling my wellies on now and go and give them the stupid letter.

Glancing out of the window I could see the diminutive Kevin and his two huge sons pushing through the milling cattle. The boys' names were Jack and Simon but I had come to think of them as Huge one and Huge two, both of them had a neck that was wider than his head, both were red-faced and blushed horribly whenever they were spoken to. If you asked either of them a question, he would give you a quietly spoken answer then rush off to do whatever people did with cows.

Kevin was appropriately proud of his huge sons and had recently regaled me with the tale that, while on a night out in their mother's small car, the boys had suffered a flat tyre. Evidently, unable to find the jack, Simon had merely lifted the little Ford Ka while his brother had changed the wheel. Looking at them, I didn't doubt the story for an instant.

Just for a moment, I considered getting dressed but decided that my dressing gown, while not really winter wear, would be good enough for a twenty-second trip up the farmyard especially if I threw my plastic mac on as well. The coat had been a slightly humorous present from Helen. It was an old-fashioned, strong, plastic mac, white with huge black cow print all over it: seriously retro. I think she had found it in a 1960s store and had laughed for ages when she first saw me in it, especially as it matched my wellies. As a special thank you I had worn it every time I had seen her since and her smile was beginning to look slightly strained. It probably wasn't acceptable to the farmers either but it kept out the rain and snow better than any other coat I owned so frankly, I didn't give a damn how I looked.

Once out of the back door I realised, with a shudder, that it was much windier than I had expected. I struggled up the steep farmyard, my eyes half-closed against the stinging snow, trying desperately to avoid the many piles of new cow plop that were rapidly freezing over. Unable to see, I kept stepping into half frozen puddles of dubious liquid that were lurking under the pristine layer of new snow. I slipped and slid on each frozen puddle, my arms pin-wheeling with each staggering step.

‘KEVIN!!' I screamed into the wind, hoping that he would see me and meet me halfway, but the wind was too loud and he was concentrating on the cows that bumped and warbled at each other, still eager to get away from the seductively warm barn.

If I'd had any sense, I would have given up, turned around and carefully retraced my steps. I should have waited for the lads to go in for tea and then dropped the letter round by way of the nice clear path. For some reason this didn't even occur to me. So, slipping, sliding, swearing and staggering, I pressed on up the farmyard.

Right at the top Simon finally noticed me, and pushing his way through the cows, came over to meet me. ‘You all right Mrs Browne?' He looked me up and down obviously taking in my wellies and the mad mac, then raised his eyebrows slightly at the sight of my pale blue dressing gown peeking from beneath. His expression spoke volumes about the sanity of the woman in front of him.