The First Time I Saw Your Face (22 page)

‘Am I allowed to say “Whoop de whoop”, and “Get in there, Jen”?’

‘No, look, he’s just coming as a friend, Cress.’

There was a loud raspberry noise from Santa Fe. ‘Coming is coming, Jen. Things are moving forward, even if you don’t want to admit it. And very soon you’re going to have to think about “hope”. But we’ll leave that for another time, eh? Let’s take it easy … but, remember I’m here at the end of the phone, sweetie.’

By the time Jennifer wished Cress goodnight, she felt calmer until she started thinking of Matt naked. Naked and glistening with water. She lay down on the bed and moved the fantasy back a few frames, to helping him undress for that shower. She was pulling his black T-shirt up and over his head and bending to press her lips against his chest and run her tongue down his belly. She could almost feel the smoothness of his skin against her mouth.
She remembered the buckle on his belt, saw herself undoing it and then relieving him of those terrible jeans.

Soon she was lying naked with him and in her fantasy she was the old Jen and he was as she imagined him, lithe, sensitive, a little naughty. She ran her hands over that incredible backside of his and pushed herself against him and his brown eyes looked at her with lust; not pity or revulsion, but dirty, unmistakable lust. She rode the fantasy, stringing out her pleasure, stopping when it got too much, starting again and building up the heat; revelling once again, after so long, in how sexy she felt.

Mack squelched into the kitchen. The waterproof outer shell did its job on his top half, but his jeans were soaking, and during most of the walk his torch had kept flickering and he had been waiting for the moment when it would go out entirely and whatever was out there would savage him. A four-legged version of O’Dowd probably.

It had been a nice, sad-lover exit from the pub though, and hopefully that would be the image they would be left with, not the memory of that balls-up with Sonia Hadrian. Sonia ruddy Hadrian! What the Hell had possessed him? He knew the name of his fictitious girlfriend off by heart: the lovely Sara Jeffries, with the slightly scary, suitably mysterious job. But when Doug had put him on the spot like that, his mind had emptied completely. It was only sheer luck he hadn’t said Grace bloody Darling.

He struggled out of his wet things and wrapped himself inadequately in the kitchen towel. O’Dowd had been right
about the effect girlfriend trouble would have: Jennifer’s face had been a picture of sympathetic concern. Doug’s too and, if Mack had got the guy sussed, a few minutes after he had left the pub he was certain Doug would have mentioned to Jennifer about visiting the farm.

He shivered and took himself upstairs and under the duvet. So, if he’d successfully manipulated Doug, Jennifer would tell him shyly tomorrow that he was welcome to come to the farm. An invitation to the enemy’s camp. He thought back to that long, wet walk home and how the sheep had ‘baa-baa-d’ at him as he’d passed. In the rain it had sounded like ‘baa-stard, baa-stard’. It was a judgement he could only agree with.

CHAPTER 20

Jennifer watched Matt struggling into the dark green boilersuit, her father helping him, and wanted to reverse the film and take it off him. His jumper was in her arms, handed to her along with his fleece, and she was very tempted to hold both to her face and breathe him in.

‘All set?’ her father asked, patting him on the back and when Matt nodded and looked across at her as if to ask if she was coming too, she said, ‘I just need to help Mum with a few things,’ and went back into the house. She was buying herself time in which to calm down and not turn into a gibbering, self-deluded wreck.

He was here for the farm, nothing more. Clinging on to that thought, she headed for the kitchen and the straight-backed, full on lemon-drop example of womanhood that was currently her mother. If Ray was pulling out all the stops to be welcoming, Brenda was pushing them back in again, and the way she was relieving the potatoes of their skins suggested just how pleased she was to have this guest.

‘Need any help?’ Jennifer asked, draping Matt’s jumper over the back of a chair and seeing her mother turn and look at it.

‘No. It’s all under control.’ Brenda nodded at the jumper. ‘He’s all kitted up, is he?’

‘Yes. Dad’s been really helpful and friendly with him.’ Jennifer saw her mother turn abruptly back to the potatoes. She went to stand behind her and looped her arms around her shoulders. The steel backbone relented a little.

‘Come on, Mum. I know you think you’re protecting me, but it makes me feel like a child. Being like this; visiting Matt … well I’m guessing you weren’t offering him Meals on Wheels?’

Her mother did laugh at that.

‘Is it because you dislike him, or because he’s not Alex?’

Her mother seemed to consider that before replying. ‘I can’t help liking Alex, or thinking that life would be simpler if you and he—’

‘Simpler for you.’ Jennifer let her arms drop, suddenly cross that she’d had to introduce Alex into this shining, exciting day.

Her mother put the potato she was still holding on the draining board, gave her hands a shake over the bowl and turned around.

‘You’re right, love, I guess I do mean that. But, I’m not stupid. I do appreciate that you and Alex, well, you probably can’t reheat what you had.’ Her mother put a wet hand on her arm. ‘I just want you to be wary, that’s all. This Matt’s bright and cheerful enough but there’s something
under all that.’ Her mother gave her a querying look. ‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’

‘I’m going out now,’ Jennifer said, ‘need to make sure Danny hasn’t played some awful practical joke on him.’

Mack was glad to be out of the lambing sheds and all that steaming, bleating, ripe-smelling new life. He didn’t know how Danny and Ray stood it. At times they’d been working flat out, delivering lambs, moving ewes, trying to get one lamb from a set of triplets accepted by another mother. Mack had helped deliver a couple of lambs himself, trying not to gag at how squelchy the whole experience was, although he had felt a bit wet-eyed as he watched the ewes slowly licking their new arrivals.

His nerves had been on high alert all day, but Danny and Ray couldn’t have been friendlier, even if Danny had managed to convince him they gave all the sheep names. He supposed that pulling his leg was a good sign. Better than pummelling him to death for deceit.

Now he was hanging on to the edge of a high-sided trailer, being towed by Ray on the quad bike. As they bounced downhill to go and feed the sheep out in the fields, he had to soften his knees to stay upright, and he felt a bit like Boadicea in her chariot. He watched the sheepdog running out and back, out and back to the trailer.

Somewhere Jennifer was walking down to join them, and no doubt she’d laugh when she saw him splattered with mud that had been thrown up at him from the wheels of the bike. He hoped it was mud.

As they neared the bottom of the valley, they had gathered a long line of sheep behind them, and Ray whistled and the dog instantly fell back, not crowding the sheep and sometimes lying on its stomach, its eyes darting left, right, ahead. Ray stopped and uncoupled the trailer, and Mack helped him split open the bags of brown, yeasty sheep nuts that were balanced across the handlebars of the bike. When Ray started up the bike again, he rode in a straight line, letting the nuts spill out on to the ground and soon there was a struggling, shifting line of sheep, heads down, eating. As Jennifer joined them, slightly out of breath, Mack saw Ray’s lips moving.

‘Are you counting them?’ he asked, amazed.

‘Aye,’ Ray said, ‘but I never get to the end. Always asleep by then.’ He had laughed, but Mack could see he was concentrating on the rising land off to their right where the gorse bushes were particularly dense. His face relaxed when a large ewe, with some arrogance, emerged and started to trot towards the food.

The dog made a move and Mack asked what it was called.

‘Mack,’ Jennifer said and for a second he wondered if he was having his leg pulled before he remembered
that
was not his name up here.

Just before the ewe reached the rest of the flock, the dog behind it came too close, and the ewe turned right round and, after a stand-off, headbutted it hard.

‘My goodness, do sheep often do that?’ Mack was
reassessing everything he had ever believed about sheep being stupid and placid.

‘When they’ve got lambs in them they do.’ Ray whistled for the dog to come back. ‘Mack’s still young; bit overeager.’

On the journey back to the farm, clinging on and trying to keep his weight forward this time as they climbed out of the valley, Mack knew that he and the sheepdog had a lot in common. Here he was, answering to O’Dowd’s whistle, speeding up or falling to his belly as required. And that sheep, he was very afraid that sheep might be Brenda.

Over supper later, he was certain it was, although he had to admit she knew how to cook. He’d had double helpings of her shepherd’s pie (which under the circumstances he thought was an apt menu choice) and piled buttery carrots and leeks, peas and tiny broad beans beside it on his plate. He was ravenous, and he supposed it was the hard work and fresh air.

All had gone well until Jennifer had disappeared to the loo and Ray had ambled back out to the yard.

‘Thank you for inviting me,’ he said to Brenda with his best smile. ‘And providing supper too.’

‘I didn’t invite you. It was Jennifer.’

He remembered the headbutting sheep and felt the need to fight back. Even Matt Harper would react to that rudeness, wouldn’t he?

‘I sense you don’t like me much, Mrs Roseby,’ he said.

‘You’re very direct.’

Oh no. Really I’m not.

‘I try to be,’ he said, endeavouring to meet that drilling blue gaze.

‘Well, maybe you do … but I have to think of Jen. You’re here for a while and then gone.’

He thought how clever that was: implying it was the fact he was passing through that she objected to, rather than something about his character.

‘I don’t see why that should stop me being friends with Jennifer.’

She gave him a long, assessing look. ‘So it’s just friendship you want then, is it?’

‘Of course,’ he said and terminated the conversation by feigning interest in the lamb-cam. It showed Danny and Ray and a load of sheep. As an idea for a reality show, it was rubbish.

When Jennifer returned, the rest of the meal passed without any more headbutting, but he knew Brenda was watching his every move. He purposely kept up a stream of chat with Jennifer, not that it was hard, and tried to enjoy the plum crumble. As coffee was put in front of him, he thought of the weird, chaotic meals his mother had used to assemble with bits and pieces that never quite went together: corned beef and peas; tinned tuna and baked beans.

The only time Brenda really smiled was when the door opened and what Mack took to be a passing Valkyrie came in, a large baby in a pink snowsuit on her hip. Brenda’s face looked as though it belonged to a sunnier person,
and she suddenly had the baby in her arms and Mack was not sure how it had got there.

The Valkyrie almost broke his hand when she shook it and he discovered she was Danny’s wife. He wondered how much strengthening their bed needed with those two in it.

‘I should really think about getting home,’ he said. ‘Let me help you with the washing-up before I go.’

Brenda, as he had calculated, would not hear of any delay-making washing-up, and she showed an almost rude haste to say her goodbyes. He got a warmer send-off from the others, Ray telling him to come back any time he wanted – next time they might not be so busy – ‘Normally we just stand around leaning on a gate and chewing grass,’ he said.

Jennifer walked him up the track to the road, shining a torch ahead of them, and he knew now, in the dark, with the memory of the warm kitchen still in their minds, was the perfect time to move things along.

‘Thanks for taking my mind off my Sonia,’ he began.

‘There’s no need for thanks. Happy to help. Are you still … I mean, talking?’

‘Yes, bit wobbly, but where there’s life … Do you think I should send her some flowers? I was a bit sharp with her on the phone about not coming up.’

Jennifer’s voice came back through the dark. ‘Yes. But ring her afterwards to say sorry too. Best not to assume one bunch of flowers will do it.’

‘Sensible advice.’ He left a little gap to give the impression
he was thinking and was acutely aware of the sound of Jennifer breathing, the cool of the dark around them. ‘Tricky, isn’t it, having to rely on the phone?’ he tried. ‘I find it hard to say what I want to say, not just to Sonia, but to friends as well … if I was at home I could just go to the pub, chat to them. The miles between us all make it difficult.’ It was a little hook in the water and if he was in luck, Cressida and how far away she was would come up.

‘You can always talk to me,’ Jennifer said. ‘If you want to.’

Great; wrong fish on the end of the line.

They walked for a while, listening to the sheep bleat in the fields around them, the torch picking out stones and bits of sheep poo.

OK, time for the ‘give and take’ approach – I’ll confide in you about something and maybe you’ll offer me some titbits in return.

He stopped walking. ‘You know, I would like to talk to you, Jennifer, if that was a serious offer. I …’ Another pause as if he was dredging up the courage to go on. ‘Thing is, my girlfriend isn’t staying away because she’s busy: she’s punishing me. She wants me to give up writing, the walking books, the novel, and get a proper job with a proper wage. I’m not sure she really understands how much I love what I do.’

Oh Hell, my girlfriend doesn’t understand me. You can do better than that.

Jennifer made a kind of agreeing noise. ‘It’s hard when people don’t get what makes you tick,’ she said slowly,
and he noticed how she was keeping the beam of the light from her torch down as if it was easier for her to talk in the dark. ‘That’s why … that’s why I think Cress only goes out with other actors or people in the business.’ She started walking again, and he was careful to slow the pace.