The Wedding Cake Tree (33 page)

‘I know he must have seen some harrowing things, but so have thousands of soldiers.
I’m sure they don’t all bugger up their private lives because of guilt. Why should Alasdair be different?’

Jake’s tone changed
; he became more determined. ‘Listen Grace, you need to move on. As I said before, you don’t know him really, and your mother should never have led you into a relationship with a man who leads that kind of life. Alasdair may have come across to you as a certain kind of a man, a man you can depend on – lean on – but I would much rather your mother had sent you off on the journey alone.’

‘I should leave then
…’

I glanced across th
e room to see Alasdair’s shepherd’s crook leaning against the dresser.

‘Do you think we ever really know a person, I mean
really
know them? I thought I knew Mum, but I didn’t know anything about her as a woman, and then I thought I’d got to know Alasdair … and look where that got me.’

Jake took a deep breath and thought about his answer.

‘I think we all create a persona as we progress through life. We create our own characters and they are influenced by loads of external factors: the job that we do, our position in the family perhaps and, to a certain extent, we stereotype ourselves … play out a role. We’re all flawed, Grace. We all harbour dark thoughts from time to time. I’ve always thought that it’s during the hard times that you really discover the truth behind someone’s character. But a character can’t be constant. Life won’t allow it. Perhaps the people we know best are our own children, but even then I’m not so sure.’

‘Do you regret not having a child of
your own, Jake?’

He smiled tenderly.

‘As far as I’m concerned, I did.’

I hugged him close, and glanced over his shoulder at the crook again. I knew in that instant where I wanted to go.

‘So, are you headed back to London?’ Jake asked the following day after carrying my bags down the stairs into the kitchen.

‘
No.’

‘
Where then?’

‘Long
-term I just don’t know. But in the short-term, believe it or not, I’ve decided to go somewhere completely different, for a little while at least.’

‘Where?’

‘I’m going to go back to the Dales – to Mum’s farm – to Annie. She said I could visit whenever I like and I think she meant it.’

Jake smiled.

‘Sounds like a plan.’

Chapter Thirty-
Eight

By the end of June my life had altered in a way that I would never have thought possible. My furniture was in storage, the flat in Twickenham sublet, contacts in the media were informed of my departure and I had said a fond farewell to my London pals with promises I would keep in touch. There was just one – extra special – friend I needed to see; I owed him a meal at the new Thai place after all. He was on good form.

‘So,’
Paul scooped noodles onto chopsticks as he spoke, ‘you buggered off on holiday for a couple of weeks and came back determined to change your life, what a cliché. I’m not upset that you’re leaving by the way, I’ll give you two weeks before you hot-foot it back to London’—he pointed a chopstick at me to prove his point—‘there’s a limit to how much cow shit a civilised person can take, Grace.’ Trust Paul to bring a dash of realism to a plan. ‘And Soldier Boy?’ he added. ‘Has he been in touch?’

‘Alasdair, his name is Alasdair
, and he’s a marine,’ I interjected crossly. ‘And no, he hasn’t been in touch.’

‘
You found his flaw in the end then, he is an arsehole after all. And you must admit, it sounds like he was a bit of a smooth bastard.’

I glanced up and smiled
, remembering.

‘He wasn’t
smooth, and he isn’t an arsehole. He’s trying to protect me.’

‘By leaving you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How does leaving you protect you?’

I pushed my tepid meal around the plate with my fork while I thought of a response. There was no way I could tell Paul, a keen-nosed journalist, the truth about Alasdair’s job, or St Christopher’s come to that. 

‘It’s complicated.’

Paul put down his chopsticks.

‘I know there are things you ar
en’t telling me about him and, believe it or not, I’m not going to push, which must be a first for me. Anyway,’ he added brightly, ‘let’s forget about him for a second and move on to something more important. Are you absolutely positive about this move up north? I know you said your mum had opened your eyes to what you really wanted out of life, but I’m worried you’re just going to bounce around from place to place in the hope of finding something that doesn’t exist.’

I glanced out of the window and watched a police car whizz past.

‘Alasdair may have been an enigma,’ I said finally, ‘but he opened my eyes to living a different kind of life. Mum said in one of her letters that I was watching life rather than living it. I don’t want to do that any more.’

‘And you think you’ll find what you’re looking for in the Yorkshire Dales?
Come on, it’s hardly a metropolis.’

‘That’s exactly the point though,’ I said, leaning forward in my seat, more animated now. ‘I never really wanted to live a cosmopolitan life Paul, it’s not who I am.’

‘But if you go into landscape photography
, like you said, then you’ll still be watching life. Not that there’s anything wrong with watching life. I watch life then write about it all the time, it works for me.’

‘I agree with you,’ I answered, softer now, ‘but it’s
what
you watch that matters, surely.’ I thought of something suddenly. ‘Do you know who the main influence was behind my decision to move away from my present work?’

‘No idea,’ he said, losing interest a little.

‘Guess.’

He shrugged and scratched
his head. ‘Your mum? Arsehole?’

I shook my head.
‘It was you.’

‘Me
!
Why me? Don’t lay this at my door, Grace!’

I laughed. ‘When I phoned you from Scotland, you said my photos were good, but not
groundbreaking. And I thought to myself, why the hell shouldn’t I, Grace Buchanan
,
do something groundbreaking for once?’

He sighed and smiled. ‘Fair enough
, I’ll back off. Anyway, back to lover boy. I’ve got one final question …’

‘Go on.’

‘How the hell did Mr Perfect get your knickers off in under two weeks, when I’ve spent years trying to achieve the same result and nothing, not even close.’

Despite Paul
’s humour, I felt unexpected tears prick my eyes at the thought of why I’d fallen for Alasdair – I knew the answer of course: ‘Because it was magical, every single minute of it. And he didn’t
try
to get me to fall for him Paul, it just happened. Everything fell into place. I’ve never lived life that way before, it was wonderful.’

Paul took my hand across the table as a tear spilled down my cheek.

‘But was it
real
? It sounded unsustainable to me.’

I rested my head on the back of the chair and sighed.

‘I honestly thought it was real. I’d take him back you know.’

‘Even though he dumped you?’

‘Thanks for that, Paul. But yes, even though he dumped me. No one will ever compare.’

He
released my hand.

‘So answer me this
. If
I
had taken you up a mountain,’ he glanced at me naughtily, ‘and that’s not a euphemism by the way, and then I’d strapped you onto me for the ride of your life,’ he raised his eyebrows again, ‘ditto’—I laughed out loud—‘then would you have fallen for me in the same way?’ He sat back and waited for my answer.

‘Possibly,’ I said stoically.
‘Who knows? Like Mum said, it’s all about time and place.’

‘And a washboard stomach,’ he
murmured cheekily.

‘
What?
’ I tried not to laugh while drying my tears on the restaurant napkin.

‘Come on, you said yourself he was an Adonis.
You can bang on all you want about external factors influencing your decision to get off with him, blah blah blah, but if he’d looked like his face had just gone through a mangle, or if he hadn’t had airbrushed pecks, you wouldn’t have jumped into bed with him. When it comes down to it, you’re just a bloody tart.’

He grinne
d at me warm-heartedly. I wiped away the last of my tears and smiled a wicked smile. ‘You’re so right, Paul.’

The sun had just begun to set behind the Dale as my car tyres scrunched over the gravel at Bridge Farm. Annie, Ted and the dogs welcomed me warmly as I stepped out of the car. Annie’s tender embrace belied the basic fact that we had met only once before.

‘
Hope you brought your wellies,’ was all she said as she ushered me into the kitchen. Meg returned to the comfort of her sofa – Alasdair’s sofa – and I tried my best to concentrate on the conversation rather than drift into a world that included Alasdair. A full roast chicken and all the trimmings were waiting in the bottom oven of the AGA to be presented at a suitable juncture.

The consumption of food, or rather Annie’s obsession with
my daily calorie intake, became a constant battle between us and, after several weeks of pushing food around my plate in an attempt to fool Annie into believing I was eating more than the resident mouse, I was forced to concede.

The summer
ticked by slowly. Jake posted Mum’s aprons up to me, and I realised that growing up at St Christopher’s stood me in good stead for my summer on the farm. The upkeep of the vegetable patch, the henhouse and the general welfare of the dogs became my responsibilities, but I steered clear of any four-legged object that sported horns.

It was a Sunday morning in late August when Annie sat me down at the bench under Mum’s apple tree and said we needed to talk.

‘
I’m not going to make a big fuss about this,’ she said, fidgeting uncomfortably on the bench, ‘but Ted has asked me to move in with him. I’ll only be down the lane.’ She seemed uncharacteristically embarrassed; only Annie could have declared her intentions in such a blunt manner. I smiled but remained silent.

‘
His wife died ten years ago, so it seems to have been an appropriate amount of time to wait.’ I thought she was joking – she wasn’t.

‘
The thing is my love, by rights, half of this farm belonged to your mother, which means half of it belongs to you now.’

‘
Well, not really,’ I contested, ‘Mum seemed happy to hand it over to you, so don’t worry about me. It’s time for me to move on anyway.’ I was lying of course; the thought of moving away from that safe haven broke my heart.

‘
I’m not asking you to move on, Grace. What I’m saying is that you can stay here, indefinitely. One day it will all be yours anyway.’

I stood up suddenly and took a few steps away from Annie, then whirled around to face her.

‘
What?
You’ve got to be kidding? Why don’t you sell it?’ She looked at Mum’s apple tree, glanced around the Dale and then gestured for me to sit down again. When I slumped back on the bench beside her she reached over and took my hand.             

‘
I don’t need any money. It’s what I want to do, it’s the
right
thing to do.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Why do you think Frances sent you up here, Grace? What was her purpose?’

I shrugged. ‘To meet you?
To see where she grew up perhaps?’

Annie smiled. ‘
Perhaps. But most importantly, she sent you here as a way of passing a message on to me.’

I shrugged again.

‘Listen love, Frances handed the farm over to me forty years ago, and now she wants me to hand it over to you.
I’ve
had my life here and now it’s her turn … through you. That’s her real message in all of this, and she was right to send you …’ Annie jostled and rolled her eyes. ‘It would have been better if she’d done all this twenty years ago of course, but we won’t hold that against her.’ I smiled – typical Annie! ‘To be honest love, you’d be doing me a favour; the farm’s just too much for me now.’ She let go of my hand and crossed her arms defiantly. ‘I’ve never been one for big chats or arguments and I’m not going to start now. I’m not going to hand it over straight away …’ she winked. ‘I might not get on with that old bugger up the lane and then I’ll be back. Look, accept it, make a go of it, live your life here. But above all, be
happy
love.’

I thought of the sheep farming book Mum had bequeathed to Alasdair
…
it may come in handy
. Had this been her plan all along?

‘
But I don’t know the first thing about sheep farming,’ I said in a panic. ‘And I’m frightened of rams.’

She laughed out loud.

‘Looks like you’re going to have to learn then lass, and quick.’ I became aware that my mouth was gaping open. I closed it. She laughed again.

‘
Don’t worry. Ted’s son will stay on and help with the few sheep we have and you can continue to rent out most of the land. It’ll all work out, just wait and see.’ She stood up as if to go. ‘He’s a nice lad; about your age … single too.’

She winked at me
again and was just about to retreat to the kitchen when I leapt forward and threw my arms around her; luckily we both had aprons on that time to dry our eyes.

By September I had enrolled on an advanced landscape photography course at Darlington College; it was quite a drive but worth it. Then Annie volunteered my services to help with music lessons at the local primary school, and by October I was teaching music theory and piano in three separate schools. I was asked to provide singing lessons for the local amateur operatic society. I said I would. My return to music came about due to the presence of a dusty piano that sat – unloved and out of tune – in Annie’s front room; it was neither unloved nor out of tune for long.

Jake phoned me in September to say he had seen Alas
dair. Their paths had crossed in Scotland, at the Commando War Memorial in Lochaber, at a memorial held by the family of the man under Alasdair’s command who had died. My heart ached for all of them; the dead man, his family and for Alasdair of course. Listening to Jake on the phone, I remembered Alasdair’s words – that he fought for the man to his left and the man to his right – and I could only guess how Alasdair must have suffered standing with the family at the memorial.

Then
Jake went on to tell me something that shook me to the core; that Alasdair had been offered a promotion and had not only refused it but had also resigned his commission. An ex-colleague who was setting up a security company in the Middle East needed a partner. Alasdair had agreed to go with him once he had worked his notice with the marines. His superiors had been shocked at his decision and realised he needed help, but he refused counselling and – unusually – rather than take some time out at St Christopher’s, he retreated into himself. Jake described him as a ‘closed book’. Part of me wanted to rush to the Middle East and scour every city until I found him, but that would, of course, prove fruitless.

I
thought of Alasdair’s words on the night our friendship had turned intimate in Zagreb, ‘If our remaining days together were all I could give,’ he had said, ‘would you take them?’ Not believing at the time that he could really mean it – or, so desperate to spend the night with him I had not cared about the full implication of what he had said – my smile had confirmed that I would. Months later, I asked myself the same question. Would I have given myself to him so fully if I had known the outcome would be heartbreak? It was an easy question to answer; yes, I would, in a heartbeat.