Next of Kin (37 page)

‘Give him a message, will you?' Velma said. ‘Will you? Tell him I'll be down as usual. Like before.'

‘Oh—'

‘You tell him,' Velma said. Her voice was comfortable with complacency.

‘Sorry,' Judy said.

‘What d'you mean, sorry?'

‘I mean the job's not open any more,' Judy said. ‘I mean that there's no “like before” to come back to.' She took a breath and shut her eyes, picturing Zoe on the coach to London, staring out of the window. ‘You walked out,' Judy said to Velma with decision, ‘and now you can stay out.'

‘Dad?'

Robin turned. In the dim light of the barn, he couldn't see her very clearly, especially silhouetted against the light as she was.

‘Hello.'

‘Dad, I've just done something. I've sacked Velma.'

‘Velma!'

‘She saw Gareth driving Zoe off. So she rang to say she'd be back and I said she wouldn't.'

He smiled.

‘Good for you.'

‘You don't mind?'

He shook his head.

‘I'll do what she was doing.'

He smiled again.

‘What nobody was doing—'

‘Dad,' Judy said again, ‘you OK?'

He bent and picked up the mallet lying in the straw at his feet.

‘I will be.'

‘I don't know if this is the moment to ask you, but—' She stopped.

‘Well?'

‘Can I ask it, can I ask you something?'

‘Of course,' he said. He put out the hand that wasn't holding the mallet and took her arm. ‘Come outside. Come out into the light.'

‘I haven't any business to ask, in a way, I haven't any right—'

‘What is it?'

He guided her out into the yard, to the sheltered space by the feed store where Gareth left his bike.

‘Can I stay?' Judy said.

He stared at her.

‘Stay?'

‘Yes. Live here. Live with you.'

He dropped his hand from her arm, turning his face up towards the sky for a moment before he said, ‘Judy, dear, I've got to sell the farm.'

‘Sell it—'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Sell it. I'm hoping to sell it and then lease it back. And the milk quota. I don't know if I can do it, but I've got to try.' He gave Judy a quick glance and then he said, ‘I can't afford to replace Gareth, you see. And the debts are – well, better not to think about them. The new slurry pit's just a detail. I've seen it all coming and, at the same time, I haven't. Haven't wanted to. I've got to go back to where I started, milking myself, full-time. It's the only way.' He squinted up at the sky again. ‘At least it'll give Grandpa a chance to say I told you so.'

Judy leaned against the warm grey wall of the feed store and spread her hands flat on it, at either side.

‘I'd no idea—'

‘No. Why should you?'

‘I just assumed you were managing, that you always would, that there was a kind of permanence here.'

‘There isn't permanence anywhere,' Robin said.

‘When you sell up,' Judy said, ‘could you go somewhere else?'

‘I don't want to go somewhere else.'

‘Because of the continuity? Because of the change?'

‘It isn't much here,' Robin said, ‘but I made it, what there is. And—' He paused, and then he said, ‘And I know it.'

‘Even though it's so hard. Even though it's always been so hard—'

‘Yes.' He bent down and wrenched a clump of weeds out of a crack in the concrete floor of the yard. ‘I don't think it's going to be any harder, in a way. Physically it will be, because I'm older, but maybe in other ways, I'll – well, I'll get fewer things wrong.' He hurled the weeds away into a corner. ‘I wouldn't want to live any other way now. I suppose I may have to, one day, but I'll only give in at the last ditch.' He turned his head slowly and looked at Judy. ‘There'll always be room for you here, Judy. Or wherever. You know that. But there's no money. Farmers never pay themselves anything anyway and I couldn't pay you.'

‘Suppose I don't want that—'

He smiled at her, a tired, faraway smile.

‘You think about it. Don't rush into anything. Changes of heart—' He stopped.

‘Well?'

‘Changes of heart are heady things.'

‘I mean it.'

‘Yes.' He leaned forward and kissed her, very lightly, on the cheek. His own cheek was rough. ‘Got to get on now, Judy,' he said. ‘Things to do. You know how it is.'

Lyndsay had spread a map of Dean Place Farm on the kitchen table in the cottage. The fields, irregular in shape and linked haphazardly to one another, were marked out in acres and hectares, with their gateways and stiles. The stiles were part of the local footpath system, but Joe hadn't liked walkers, hadn't liked footpath associations, and had managed, without actually closing them, to make both paths and stiles subtly unwelcoming. There'd been a battle or two over this; letters in the local press and a stand-up shouting match with two formidable women armed with statutory rights and wire-cutters. But Joe, with the doggedness of one who was both on the spot and had closed his mind to any change of heart, had won. Looking at the double-dotted lines of the footpaths on the farm map, Lyndsay thought she might re-open them and even, perhaps, make a farm trail for visitors. Maybe Robin would join in, and let his cows be part of it. You couldn't imagine visitors getting much satisfaction out of nothing but acres of barley and rape seed.

The kitchen was quiet. Rose was asleep upstairs and Hughie had gone, for the first time in weeks, to his playgroup. He had, moreover, gone without his baseball cap, and without Seal. Seal lay on Hughie's bed carefully swaddled in Hughie's pyjamas and wearing, Lyndsay could have sworn, an expression of palpable relief on his plush face. She had considered putting him in the washing machine – he badly needed it – but had refrained. Hughie was creeping forward, inch by inch, and she must not, because of a senseless whim for hygiene, knock him back.

A car drew up outside. She raised her head from the map and looked out of the window. It was Robin. She hadn't seen him for weeks and certainly not since she'd come back to Dean Place. She straightened up and waited for him, by the table, watching his shadowy form come into the house through the patterned glazed doors of the outside porch, and then the kitchen. He opened the door, without knocking.

‘Hello,' he said.

She nodded.

‘I'm glad to see you,' Robin said. ‘I'm glad you're back.'

He was wearing an old checked shirt with a frayed collar, and corduroy trousers.

‘Judy's back, too,' Robin said.

‘I know.'

‘Has she been to see you?'

‘No—'

‘She will,' Robin said. He looked round. ‘No children?'

‘Asleep,' Lyndsay said. ‘Or at playgroup.'

‘And you are counting your acres?'

‘Trying to.'

He came round the table to stand beside her and look at the map. He said, ‘What'll you do with the land you can't get subsidy on?'

There was a tiny beat.

‘I don't know.'

‘Trees?'

She said nothing.

‘Not advisable,' Robin said. ‘Stock?'

She said nothing.

‘Too expensive. You need manpower. Grazing?'

She said nothing.

‘The best idea, really. I could tell you who to approach.'

‘I'm going to get a manager,' Lyndsay said tightly, ‘to begin with.'

‘He'll want a share—'

‘I know. I know that. I mayn't know much but I'm not a complete fool.'

‘Nor am I,' Robin said.

She moved away from him a little.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I'm not such a fool,' Robin said, ‘as not to know why you'll hardly speak to me.'

She put her hands flat on the map, and leaned on them, looking sternly downwards.

‘Zoe,' Robin said. ‘Right?'

There was a pause and then Lyndsay said, ‘It made me feel so lonely—'

‘You were lonely anyway,' Robin said. ‘So was I. We both are. We have to be, for a while.'

She gave a tiny nod.

‘I thought – well, I suppose I thought you could be there for me, you could—'

‘No,' Robin said gently. ‘Who'd I be helping?'

She straightened up and pushed her hair back over her shoulders.

‘Hughie's a bit better. He went to playgroup today without Seal.'

‘Good.'

‘My parents are hardly speaking to me—'

‘They will,' Robin said. ‘It's hard to offer help and have it turned down—'

Lyndsay looked at him, for the first time since he had come in.

‘But was it real help? Was it what was best for them or best for me?'

He shrugged. There was something about the shrug, something humorous and appealing that made Lyndsay say suddenly, ‘Oh Robin, I'm sorry, I'm so—'

He put a hand out. He was laughing.

‘Don't you start.'

‘What?'

‘Saying sorry. First Judy, now you. She wants to say sorry all the time and I can't take the both of you—'

‘Suppose we mean it?' Lyndsay said indignantly. ‘Suppose we really do?'

‘Then I'll know,' Robin said, ‘won't I? I'll know. If, that is, I think either of you have any cause. If I don't think that we all of us, one way and another, had our reasons.' He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Judy wants to stay.'

‘At home? At Tideswell? You and her?'

‘Yes.'

‘Lord,' Lyndsay said.

‘And she wants this at the very moment I've got to try and sell it.'

‘Have you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Oh Robin—'

‘Maybe to your landlords here. I don't know. And then lease it back, get put on the tenancy with you.'

She said, uncertainly, ‘I'd like that.'

‘Would you?'

‘It's frightening, taking all this on—' She paused and then she said, ‘Joe's debts, those loans. He never said a word—'

‘No,' Robin said, ‘he wouldn't have.'

‘The bank didn't know either. They've taken the loans on for now, but not, of course, for ever.'

Robin grunted.

‘I'm going to do an evening accountancy course,' Lyndsay said. ‘Accounts and book keeping.'

‘Good girl.'

‘Please,' Lyndsay said, ‘don't talk to me like that.'

‘Sorry. Habit.'

‘We haven't got any habits now,' Lyndsay said. She moved away from the table and went across to the window, looking over Robin's Land Rover bonnet to where Joe had planted the barley all those months ago on that great sloping field opposite which she had gazed and gazed at, the field he had insisted on top-dressing their very first Christmas Day together while she waited and watched, frustrated and impotent and, now it seemed to her, almost ridiculous, in a new red velvet dress with the candles lit and the table laid with ivy trails. ‘There aren't any habits left. We've got to make new ones.' She turned from the window and looked straight at him. ‘We've got to make our own.'

Chapter Twenty

You couldn't, Dilys thought, fault the condition in which Debbie had left their house. When Robin and Lyndsay had first suggested that she and Harry move into Gareth's house, she had been horrified, and more than horrified; offended. For her and Harry to move out of Dean Place Farm into a herdsman's house seemed an affront she couldn't even contemplate because it was, in essence, so improper. And then it was made worse by Harry leaping at the chance. She'd sat opposite him, at the kitchen table round which all farm and family business had been conducted for over forty years, and seen his face light up at the suggestion. There was no mistaking it. He looked, no more no less, like Rose did, when you offered her a biscuit. Rapturous.

She had said, at first, that there was no question, that the idea was not to be contemplated, not mentioned again. And then something even more disconcerting had happened, which was that Lyndsay – Lyndsay of all people – said that there was no money in any case to buy a bungalow in Stretton, and then Harry had looked as if he wanted to jump from his chair and hug her.

‘The business side of this farm,' Lyndsay said, not looking at either of them, ‘is in an absolute mess. There isn't any money to buy a bungalow.'

Dilys stared at her.

‘Nonsense.'

‘No,' Lyndsay said. Her voice was flat, as if she was reciting something dull. ‘True. Fact. Joe was in debt, deeply in debt. Money you didn't know about, money that didn't go through the books, private loans.'

Dilys clenched her hands together.

‘How much?'

Lyndsay looked at her, directly, for the first time.

‘You don't need to know how much. You just need to know there isn't the money to buy a rabbit hutch, let alone a bungalow.'

Dilys went upstairs then. She left them and went upstairs, and sat in the dusk at her bedroom window and waited for one of them – Lyndsay or Robin or Harry or Judy – to come up and find her, and apologize. But no-one came. She sat there, upright, her hands folded deliberately in her lap, and thought of those hours she had spent over the farm books, hours and hours with her meticulous columns, her attention to detail, her obedience to Joe's progressive wishes. It seemed to her impossible, outrageous, that she might have got things wrong all those years, that Joe might not, after all, have known what he was doing. Out of the question, like moving to a herdsman's house. She must have sat there for over an hour. The intimately familiar landscape outside the window sank into darkness and she could no longer see the swoopings of the house martins which nested each year, so faithfully, beneath the eaves of the house. Finally, she had gone downstairs again and found them all there, still talking, still resolved. Judy had smiled at her, a smile, Dilys supposed, intended to convey sympathy in the face of the inevitable. But Dilys wasn't ready for such sympathy. She had put the kettle on, noisily and pointedly, and banged cups down on the table, and clattered spoons.