Two If by Sea (48 page)

In front of a bow-fronted bakery that promised cream teas sat a bright red ragtop Packard that might have been eighty years old. It gleamed like the day it was made.

“Now, look at
that
car,” said Colin, at nine already a gearhead. He shouted aloud when the door of the antique car swung open and Patrick Walsh got out, waving his arms and then pulling off his hat to wave that, too. “Dad! It's Patrick!” Colin nearly crawled out of the window when Frank explained briefly that the car had been Tura's father's, and was now theirs.

“I'll do anything for that car,” Colin said simply. “I have five years until I'm fourteen.”

“You can't drive until you're grown up,” Ian said.

“What could I do, Dad? I can muck stalls every night. I could get all A's. I'll do the dishes. I'll be Ian's tutor.”

“I read better than you,” Ian said murderously.

Frank pulled Colin back down as both boys swarmed toward Patrick and freedom. “Wait up,” Frank said. “Let's do this sensibly.” The truck's rubber tarp was stretched taut over carefully wedged mounds of luggage, and he'd agonized all the way from the airport that at any minute a corner might open and spew their life, from winter socks to electric shavers, in a confetti of trash. What kind of man shipped a not very new or useful truck to
England
? Where its steering wheel was on the wrong side? And planned to have the steering wheel altered? Well . . . Frank. pulled the truck into what looked like a car park, although there were no signs. “Just let me lock up, and I'll walk you over.” It was like holding back a team of sled dogs in full cry. Then they were on top of Pat, nearly bowling him over while Frank dug his fingers deep into the declivity of his hip to try to coax out the pain that had taken up lair there on the flight from Chicago.

Since the end of January, Pat had been living at a small guesthouse called Mrs. West's (“She asks me when I'll be in at night and do I want hot towels left in the covered bin. I feel like I'm living some old lady's mystery story . . .”). He'd spent most of his time supervising work on Stone Pastures, sending reports of a new fence and new pipes, of the horses passing through quarantine, finding the vet who would see to them all and be ready to deliver Glory Bee at the end of her pregnancy.

Since they were living in England, and since so much had changed, Patrick had decided that he would not take Glory Bee's competition further. As he told Frank, he was sick about it, but he was young, a young man, with much to do and see, and he had determined long ago that he would own and raise a colt of Glory Bee's. To try to ease everyone's disappointment at the anticlimax, Frank gave his consent to breed Glory Bee sooner rather than later. For some reason, Frank wanted this to happen at Tenacity, where Twelfth Night had been bred, but he wanted to involve Tura's horses, too. A single vial of chilled sperm from the German owner of Rodin, the Hanoverian stallion that had been Tura and Cedric's, did the trick. It was Frank's sentiment about the provenance of the horse that made the choice for him, although Rodin's status on the 2009 Irish Equestrian Eventing Team and the eight splendid foals to his credit were on the plus side of the ledger as well.

At Stone Pastures, the manager, was similarly taking down the breeding operation. It had dwindled to a slice of its former bounty after the Bellinghams' death, after Kate sold Tura Farms. Under her direction, the two younger stud horses were sold. The manager wrote to Frank telling him that the remaining stud, Demetrius, was a friend to him and he would like him to spend his later time with the people he comprehended as his family. Perhaps Demetrius had a last foal in him, and what did Frank think was a good price for the horse? Horrified, Frank insisted that the manager have the stallion outright, prompting a blustering telephone exchange. Frank ultimately prevailed, although making Frank feel beholden, as though it was him being given a gift. The manager kept one broodmare as well, supervising the sale of the others to farms around. He insisted that he would help Frank when he and Patrick came out to put the farm to rights. The manager had not lived in the house, although Tura had offered it. He had his own snug place in the village, above the yarn shop his wife owned, and they had only a single child, a daughter of twelve.

Now there was nothing to do but to go.

They would put aside regrets, “and past glories,” Patrick said, at least for the moment. They would make their life quietly and slowly, saving their champions for the future when the crackling current of menace that propelled them was a memory like gunfire from a border town. Transporting a spooky, pregnant young mare also was the very definition of gambling, but something about the hormones surging through her seemed to have solaced Glory Bee, and she crossed the sea in relative serenity, as did Sultana and the aging Bobbie Champion, this time in a proper conveyance.

After the horses were in order, Patrick had hired a very capable, and very pretty, groom, and an assistant, a local boy who came in four times a week, and turned over the daily routines of care and exercise. He set about overseeing droves of sturdy workers who cobbled up sturdy fences that would keep the horses safe without dislodging those old walls of stones wedged and balanced like irregular plates centuries ago, for dry stone walls were held together by nothing but skill and gravity. Tradesmen renovated the water and heating systems. A family crew raised a high barn, as well as a good, solid stable that fed into a riding ring designed deftly to sit half indoors and half out. The cottage that would be Pat's own home grew steadily up from the ruins of a gamekeeper's small lodgings just over a rise from the main house: he would have two small bedrooms and a bath up a low staircase and a common room with a dab of a kitchen below. It would be a tidy place soon. The family's home was another matter.

“However bad you think it is when you get there, guv, it's not as bad as it was,” Patrick said. “Mrs. Bellingham, she never lied. It was clean as a pin and tucked up tight. Even the windows, what they had, were washed. But the water smelled like it came from a bog and it took all the juice in the house to turn on a light the size of a mushroom.”

“And now?” Frank said, not quite sure he wanted to know.

“Now there's a fine well, the big fireplace that burns logs is working, and there's another one with gas up in the big bedroom.” Water filled the new troughs and ten acres were in seed. And yet, Patrick admitted, strong work lay ahead on what he called “the living bits” of the house. “The guy you had draw the downstairs plan, with the half-moon windows and such, he took off, leaving those not finished. A girl in town who's still at university finished the plans and showed me how to save some energy and space. With a little luck, you can be in style by the time you light the bonfires. And there's phone and wireless operating in case you have to call for help.”

Patrick referred to the ancient and not-altogether-innocent June rites of midsummer, called, mostly as an excuse for well-aled revels, the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Claudia's first planned visit would be for a month at the end of May, with Hope, who was coming to stay. Hope had lived with her friend Arabella, to help out with Eden and Marty's baby—a boy born in February named for both their grandfathers' middle names—Daniel James Mercy Fisher. If all went well, Frank would go back to the States in September to hear Claudia's last Hillerand Lecture, this one in Chicago. Before she left Madison for her father's house in North Carolina, where she would stay for the duration, she kept up a breezy front, cuffing and cuddling the boys and saying, “Now you're part of me. And we Campo women are tough. We'll all be fine.” When she and Frank spoke, she described herself as diligent and joyous, staying up late and reading like a single girl, enjoying dinners and day trips with her sisters and relishing her last bit of freedom before coming to what she still called the farm at the end of the world. Later, he would learn that Claudia's last carefree single days were as much fun for her as a short stint in the Rock County Jail, that the days collapsing to bring her nearer him and the boys were the only thing that smartened her resolve. Without them, Claudia's emotions skittered around like a colt on ice: she felt foolish for yielding so readily, doubtful for letting her emotions overwhelm her good sense. He would admire her for embroidering the time they spent apart as an idyll and concealing an ambivalence he should have known she would experience even more than he did—for she had so much more to lose. She saw him off teasing and untrammeled, to do what Frank did best—stir his worry into work, until it bled like cream into tea and was scarcely noticeable.

When he arrived in Stead, finally, Frank mentally rubbed his hands together. Patrick had warned him the farm was in rum shape, half hope, half ruin. Frank hoped it was worse. Then there would be more to do, more sweat, more tired muscles—more dreamless nights. Frank wanted to leave for the farm the minute Pat greeted him and the boys.

Before they actually saw that farm, Patrick said he needed to get them some tea. Or did Frank want to go to a pub? Frank could have stood a strong coffee infused with whiskey, but Patrick still didn't drink, a summit that Patrick seemed to tread tentatively. They settled for a big bag of raisin buns and apples from the store with cups of strong, sweet black tea for him and Frank, the boys' cups half filled with milk. They carried all of it to a wooden table with a shot umbrella that canted crazily out like a beckoning arm. The local grocer, Harry, seemed to be Patrick's new best friend. But the boys were restless, and soon after restless came perverse. After consuming the buns in a few sticky chomps, they began to kick the bag around like a soccer ball and, when it was shredded, made a game of jumping on and off the seats of the picnic table, finally knocking over Patrick's tea. “Settle down!” Frank shouted at them. He had aspirin in his small carry-on bag, but the gnawing in his hip and thigh admonished him even against the thought of going to get it. He kneaded his temples for a moment—surreptitiously, he hoped. But Patrick saw, and stood.

“Are you ready to head out to the new God's country?” Patrick said. “Follow on. It's barely two kee from here.” Ian jumped back into the truck, and Patrick, with a flourish, opened the door of the Packard to admit Colin. They drove for just minutes. Then, as if glimpsing something from a recurring dream, Frank recognized Stone Pastures from the road. It was much more imposing than the photos conveyed. The house was primitive in shape, walls straight up and squared off, the ells that ran away from it low and rambling. But it was massive, set back from the road by a circle drive with sentinel yews, with a stone fence a little higher than most flanking an arch for several hundred feet in either direction. They got out and the boys burst through the unlocked front door, using their combined weight to shove it open.

Frank walked slowly through the first floor, satisfied that the rooms were commodious and every corner met neatly the corner beside it.

“When do you want to get started?” Patrick said. “Next week? You'll want to get the boys enrolled at school.”

“They're not going the rest of the year,” Frank told him as Colin and Ian silently did a dance of joy. “I'm homeschooling. That is to say, nobody's homeschooling. Ian's reading all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and Colin's got
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
”

“What about their math? And their citizenship or what have you?” Patrick said.

“They'll help us measure pieces of wood. That's math, and they're good citizens already. They'll learn history. The truth is, I don't need one more thing to worry about. I don't need conferences and bus routes.”

“You could have just left them there with your mum,” Patrick said. “They could have stayed with their friends . . .”

“Tenacity's being taken apart. And this place is being put together as a home. It seemed best for them to be on the front end instead of saying goodbye. I could be wrong. That wouldn't be any surprise.”

That night, Frank lay on a mattress, for not all of the bedrooms—how many were there?—had bedsteads yet. He imagined the house, and the farm around and above it, circling like a domestic animal, its heartbeat slowing as it lay down. The stillness against the hills seemed to fall then, benign and absolute. He rested.

The next day, they were no longer tourists, and they unpacked their clothes and toothbrushes.

Because Frank kept forgetting to do a thorough marketing—there must have been a time in his adult life when he'd moved into a place that had no sugar or salt or coffee or butter, but he could not remember it—the boys ate cheese-and-pickle sandwiches from Harry's shop three times a day. “I'm an addict,” Colin said. “I only ever want cheese-and-pickle sandwiches.” They washed cream buns down with fizzy orange. Neither of them was ever seen without an open bag of crisps. Patrick hitched Bobbie Champion to their mother's old pony cart and though Colin had never driven, after a few times around the driveway (and substantial encouragement from the horse), they were trotting up and down the road, then up and down the hill tracks. Frank felt as though he could actually
see
round-bellied Bobbie Champion losing weight. Because the boys read at night before they fell asleep, at least for ten minutes, and helped the pretty groom see to all the stable chores, Frank decided not to notice that they had gone native.

Proud of himself, about a week later, he remembered to make them take baths before the family journeyed to Manchester. From a list provided by Hope and Claudia, they went to good stores, and picked out tables and bed frames and the right kind of appliances. Then the boys caught sight of a pair of bright red down-filled sofas with green accent chairs, each the approximate girth of a humpback whale.

“That's a bit much,” Patrick said. “Claudia fancies the toff beige stuff.”