Reversing Over Liberace (17 page)

“Run
away
? She's a frigging
goat
. What did she do, pack her hay net and thumb a lift to Doncaster?”

“Goats don't have thumbs.” Cal's surrealism was infectious.

“Precisely my point.”

“She's up on the hill, but it's a steep walk and I can't do it with my stick. I mean, let's face it, she only has to walk briskly in the other direction. So I threatened her with you.”

“What happened?”

“She peed on me. Well, not so much
on
me, more
at
me. So, would you? Tomorrow evening? I could pick you up.”

“Tomorrow I'm out with Luke.”

“Bring him. I'd like to meet him. If you're serious about buying the place, that is. Once you're married he's going to have to know, isn't he? So maybe you could kind of introduce the idea? Show him how lovely it is out there and, trust me, this is a good time of year to do it. You do
not
want to be giving him the guided tour in February, always supposing you can get down there. Lane freezes solid for months at a time and we've usually two foot of snow lying until March.”

“You silver-tongued salesman, you,” I said.

“What, the idea of being snowed in with nothing but the sound of the wind in the hills, stoking up the Aga to keep the place warm, bottles of whisky in bed waiting for the snow plough to get through, that puts you off, does it? Then you're not the woman I think you are.”

“It sounds…” I gave a little shiver, but more at the tone of his voice than the thought of snow drifts to my waist. It might have been my imagination. In fact, it almost certainly
was
my imagination, but it sounded to me as though Cal was flirting, ever so slightly. I wondered if Ash had been right, if Cal really
was
so lonely that he fell for every woman who was nice to him. “It sounds wonderful, actually.”

“Okay then. I'll be at the place about seven. I'll see you both down there.” And he was gone, giving me no chance to stammer about taking Luke being a bad idea.

Chapter Nineteen

“And it would make the most
sensational
weekend place.” I was half-full of informative animation, and half-full of vodka and Red Bull. “You could take clients up there.”
Sell it to him, Willow.

“No harm in having a look, I suppose.”

That had been easier than I'd expected. “I'll have more than enough money to buy it in my own right, so you don't need to have anything to do with it if you don't want to. I thought I could start up a business, maybe growing herbs or something. In the meantime, maybe I could let it out to OC. She's selling the rectory, and she's going to need somewhere for her and the baby.” I didn't say that, if this was the case, I'd have to get a move on. OC had woken up today swearing she was having contractions, but by lunchtime she'd decided it had probably been a dodgy prawn sandwich.

“Steady on, Willow.” Luke laughed. “If we buy anything, and we really should do it in both names, then it will have to be suitable for both of us.”

“There're some barns around the back. You could keep cars there.”

“And land, you said? How would it be for planning permission?”

“You'll see. We're nearly there. Pull in over here, in this lay-by.” I was a bit shocked by Luke's immediate desire to change everything, but then he hadn't had time to fall in love with the place as it stood yet.

“There's no access? Willow, how could you run a business with no road access?”

“It can be sorted. Come on, down here.”

As we approached the end of the narrow lane, I covered Luke's eyes with my hand. “You can look in a minute.” And led him by the wrist until we arrived at the top of the meadow. “Now look.” I uncovered Luke's eyes and waited, heart pounding, for his verdict.

“It's very pretty.”

Was that all he could
say
? The sun and clouds were playing chase me across the fields, giving rise to an interesting stipple effect of light and shade. The breeze softly wafted the smell of flowers across to us and there was no noise, apart from the cry of a sheep. It really couldn't be any more bucolic if it had the Wurzels in it.

“Those are the barns I told you about.”

“Very nice.” Luke turned to me earnestly. “Actually, Willow, I think you might be on to something here. The potential is just…” A wide-armed gesture said it all. “It really is fabulously sited. Look at the little river there.” We walked towards the house. Cal was still in the yard watching us approach. “Oh my God, these are genuine cruck-framed buildings. How old
is
this place? It's fantastic!”

I introduced Cal to Luke. There was a moment of stiff-legged confrontation as they shook hands, then Luke smiled. “I really like your place, Cal. Fantastic opportunities here, yeah? Be worth a fortune to a developer. Can I look round?”

“Help yourself. I'll borrow Will to give me a hand with the goat.” Limping, in what I considered to be an excessive fashion, Cal led the way out of the yard and down the lane which led up onto the hill. “He seems all right.”

“He is. He's
so
good for me, Cal. I never thought I'd meet anyone who'd actually want to
marry
me, you know? I'm not the easiest person to be around. Not just with the, well, you know, but, with my family and everything. I kind of got used to being me-ish, I suppose.”

We reached Winnie's hideout on the hillside. Cal found the going increasingly difficult because the ground was uneven, pock-marked with hoof-holes and rabbit dugouts, like a micro-scale battlefield. “There's nothing wrong with you.” Cal sounded angry. “I don't know why you think there is.”

“I puke on blokes.”

“Your system doesn't cope well with emotional overload, that's all. It's not something so abnormal, so
perverted
that you have to marry the first man who asks.”

“I'm thirty-two, Cal,” I said slowly, wanting the words to sink in. “I know that's not old in men-years, but in terms of woman-time it's pretty nearly over the edge into Botox and suck-it-all-in underwear.”

“You don't have to get married, though, do you?”

“Luke wants to.”

“And you? What do
you
want, Willow Cayton? Hmmm?”

Banks burst. “I want to live
here
and have babies that grow up being able to ride before they can walk, and milk cows and weave, and know what plants they can eat and what they can't. I want to grow things and make perfume and medicines out of them, and cheese with plants in and candles with dried flowers and…stuff.”

“Let me guess,
The Good Life
?”

“Maybe. Maybe I'm just a hippy who missed the boat.” By now Winnie had got fed up with eyeballing us from a quarter of a mile away and was sidling up, curiously.

“You've got a very pastoral image of life, haven't you?”

“I know the realities.” I felt somehow that I was being got-at.

“And Luke? Does he know? Does he have any idea what it's like to have to get up at four to milk the cow, fight to get the Aga lit, chip the ice off the water trough before work, bring animals in, fetch animals out, all up to your thighs in mud? Nothing ever clean, nothing ever dry, everything full of bits of hay and mouse shit in the larder? Because
that
is winter up here.
I
know and I love it. Will you? Will
he
?”

“I thought you only spent your summer holidays here?”

Cal sat down like a folding deckchair, dropped his head forward and let his hair hide his face. Winnie was fascinated. “Yeah. I lied about that,” he said, as though challenging me to say anything. “I grew up here. My great-aunt adopted me when I was five, when…” Shaky territory, obviously, because he suddenly pushed his hair back and grinned up at me. “If you reach out now, you can grab her collar.”

Without looking, I stretched my hand sideways and closed it around the leather belt. Winnie curled her lip in contempt and took off at a trot. Fortunately our joint inertia forced us gradually to the bottom of the hillside until we reached the lane. Winnie was puffing at the exertion of dragging me, size ten of pure muscle and thirty years of chocolate, and I was glad that I'd kept my footing. I was sure she'd deliberately headed through every cowpat and gorse bush she could see. Farther up the slope I could see Cal edging his way down, using his stick as a brake, anchor and occasional flail on the thistle-strewn pasture. It seemed somehow demeaning to watch so, taking advantage of Winnie's momentary breathlessness, I hauled on her collar until she moved into the gateway to the paddock, then wrestled the gate open and shoved her through. My previous experience with ponies had taught me once out—always out, until the escape hatch was firmly closed with wire, preferably in Winnie's case, electric and running off the mains.

“What did she do, jump?” I asked, completing my circuit of the small field to find Cal leaning on the gate, trying to look as though he wasn't gasping for breath. “I can't find a hole anywhere big enough for her to have got through. Although I wouldn't put it past her to have tunnelled.”

“She got out through the gate.”

I looked disbelievingly at the solid, five-bar gate he was resting against. It was a good five-foot tall, conventionally built with no gaps big enough for a solidly constructed Toggenburg to have squeezed through. “What, with a crowbar?”

“No.” Cal pulled open the gate, standing aside. Winnie, on the other side of the field, raised her head and I barely managed to drag the gate shut before she hit it at a dead run.

“You let her out? Why?”

“Firstly because she's a total cow and I hoped the local foxes would form some sort of association to bring her down, and secondly, would you have come, otherwise?”

“
What
? Yes, of course I would!”

“If you say so. Shall we go back? Your other half will be wondering what we're up to.”

We wandered slowly through the yard and into the house, to find that Luke was up in the loft, tapping at timbers with a Swiss army knife and muttering about woodworm. He barely noticed me appear in the hatchway and disappear just as quickly.

“He's happy,” I reported. “Can I borrow your mobile? I want to ring home to check that my sister hasn't popped her infant out without due regard for the seventy-eight-hour labour she's been warning us she's got in store. Mind you, if she had, I think Ash's hysterical shrieking would have been audible from here.”

“I didn't bring my mobile. There's no signal in the valley.” Cal put the kettle on the Aga plate to boil and leaned his back against the stove. “Where's yours?”

“Clay broke it.”

“Oh. Can't you use…” A gesture towards the ceiling.

“I never use his phone. Anyway, you said there's no signal.”

“If you walk up to the road, you can get two bars, apparently. I've got satellite broadband out in the barn, if it helps.”

We were both trying to avoid looking at Luke's jacket (pure wool, impeccably tailored) hanging on the back of one of the spindle-legged chairs.

“I could email, but it might take ages for anyone to pick up.” Another sliding glance. Cal grinned.

“Sod it, no one's going to die if you borrow it for one quick call, are they?”

The tiny sliver of phone was tucked into an inside pocket, with Luke's credit card. It felt warm, the jacket smelled of him. I stroked the sleeves back into place as I removed the mobile, feeling comforted by the softness under my fingers.

“Come on. I'll come with you up the hill. He's going to be ages yet. What was he doing, exactly?”

“Prodding the beams.”

“He's not one of these mild-mannered sales assistant by day,
Super Surveyor
by night types, is he? What's wrong with the beams?”

“Just woodworm, I think. They look sound enough.”

Cal muttered something and hauled away up across the meadow, outdistancing me. “What?” I asked, catching up.

“I said, I've never been up there. Can't. Ladders, d'you see.”

“Oh. Oh, you mean your…”

“War wound, yes. Can't do ladders. Great excuse never to have to paint window ledges. Or fit bird boxes.”

“Or groom giraffes.” I slowed down to walk beside him. “But, it's not that bad, is it? I mean, you get about all right. It's not like you're…”

“What? Not like I'm disabled? But I am, Willow. That's precisely what I am. Disabled, special needs, a cripple, call it what you like. That's me.” His voice was so bitter that I was surprised the words didn't drop, blackened, to the ground. “A
spastic
.”

“Cal.”

“Go up to the cars. There'll be a signal there.” Cal stopped walking and turned around, looking out over the house.

“Cal…”

“Just
go
.”

I left him, clenching his jaw and staring ferociously into the distance, and walked up the lane to the road, where the two cars were parked. I leaned against Cal's (didn't dare lean against Luke's, might have smeared the paintwork), working hard not to notice the used condom lying on the backseat. So Cal wasn't quite as unlucky in love as Ash made it sound? I tried to conjure the image of him making love to a girl in the back of the Metro, and failed. Not because I couldn't imagine him naked, oh no, that bit was worryingly easy, but because I couldn't imagine any woman getting down and dirty amid the cast-off sweet wrappers, crisp packets and changes of clothing. I wondered who she'd been. Lucky bitch.

Luke's phone was fairly straightforward. The power button was under the flip-top. After a few stabs at random icons, I found it and, miracle of miracles, it showed two and a half bars of signal. I'd just tapped in the area code for home, when the phone started vibrating in my hand and I dropped it into the long grass with a girly little shriek. “Stupid bloody thing.” I had to grovel about in the damp tussocks to retrieve it, still buzzing away its receipt of calls or messages. Finally my fingers closed around the now-slippery casing and I hauled it up to eyelevel, seeing the screen flashing an envelope signal on-off-on-off. I ignored it and dialled home.