Up With the Larks (24 page)

'Hang on,' Annie interrupts him. 'The
women
? What
women
?'

Pete looks bewildered. 'Why – the wives.'

'What wives?'

'Uh, some of the farmers' wives volunteered, the wives of
our best customers. But mostly
our
wives.'

'Did
your
wife do this?' She gives him a steely look.

'Uh, yes. Years ago. And, uh, she's not my wife any more.
We divorced.'

I cluck sympathetically but Annie does not. Instead, she says
in a no-nonsense voice, 'It's a wonder any of your wives stick
around, if that's what they have to do, sitting up all night
making hundreds of sandwiches for their husbands' work. Why
didn't
you
do it?'

Poor Pete has no answer to this. I feel sorry for him and
am about to drag Annie away but before I can, he says, 'D'you
know, I'm not sure. I mean, we're always busy till late, the night
before shows, setting up stalls, bringing in equipment, getting
everything ready, but that's no excuse, I know. Maybe I should
have.'

He looks so crestfallen that even Annie takes pity on him.
'Well, you could be forgiven, I suppose. In those dragon days
no one expected husbands to do anything mundane like baking
scones.'

I say, 'Dragon days? Goodness, Annie, Pete is our generation,
not your grandfather's.'

'So he is.' She gives him a stunning smile. I can see it
enveloping him, like a silvery mist. All of a sudden I'm feeling
dowdy and slightly grubby. We've been sweating in the hot sun
and I feel sticky, my loose hair getting stringy and limp in the
heat. Annie, on the other hand, who has been trudging along
with me all day, still looks immaculate, her frothy dress bright
and fresh amongst the jeans and cords of the farmers milling
about. She's wearing some thin strappy sandals that look like
slivers of silver and gold and emphasize her lightly tanned feet,
no doubt acquired at great expense at a top London salon.

I'm wearing an ancient pair of Capri pants, an old faded
blue shirt and flip-flops. I try not to be envious. I tell myself
that Annie has to go back to London to her empty – if stylish
– flat while I stay here in my beloved Cornwall.

As Pete and I stare at Annie, he, I notice, with the beginnings
of lust and me with my struggle to turn envy into admiration
for my dear, whacky, wonderful friend, something odd starts to
happen. Tears begin to trickle down Annie's face, under her
black sunglasses.

'Annie, what's wrong?' I go to her as Pete's mouth opens in
alarm.

She takes off her glasses to rub her eyes furiously. They are
getting redder and more swollen by the minute, and watering
like crazy.

Pete says, 'What's the matter? What's happened?'

'Must be an allergy,' I say. 'Don't know what it can be now.
She thought she was better this time.'

Behind us, we hear a squeal of excitement. Turning to look
at what Will and Amy have found, we see that we are almost
face to face with a big, furry, brown llama that has just wandered
up from the small compound behind Pete's tent.

The llama looks at us with great beautiful eyes while Annie
squeezes eye drops between the swollen slits that were once
her lovely eyelids. I say to Pete, 'I guess she's allergic to llamas
too.'

He gets her another glass of wine to swallow another antihistamine,
not a good idea I would have thought but Annie
thinks it is. Pete says, 'Why don't you stay here in the back of
the tent, in the shade, out of the way of the animals? Give
yourself a chance to recover.'

I say, 'It would probably be better if we just left. Anyway,
your customers are wondering what's up.'

Sure enough, there are a cluster of farmers around us, peering
at Annie who looks as if she's bawling her eyes out, giving a
few hostile looks at Pete for ignoring their needs to administer
to an obvious city gal.

To my surprise, Annie actually flutters her eyelids at him,
which isn't easy given their swollen state, and says, 'Oh thank
you, Pete, that's so kind of you,' and lets him lead her away
into the cool dark recesses of his agricultural tent.

I start to trot after them but Will and Amy are pulling me
to get something to eat. I call to Annie, 'We're going off to
battle the food queues. Shall I bring you anything?'

She says she's not hungry. When we get back, nearly an hour
later, fed up with the long wait for our burgers and chips,
Annie, still talking to Pete in the back of the tent, says, 'Oh,
that was quick.'

'Quick?' Will shouts the word. 'We were ages!'

Annie has the grace to look embarrassed. Amy says, 'Aren't
you hungry? I thought you said you were starving.'

'Actually, Pete very kindly found me a pasty somewhere.
Lovely homemade Cornish pasty, bliss.' She looks at him
through her still swollen eyelids as if he were Apollo bestowing
upon her the food of the gods.

Oh dear
, I think.
Oh my, oh my, oh my.
He smiles at her as if
she were Aphrodite.

My first impulse is to congratulate them both and open a
bottle of champagne but I pull myself together and try to act
rationally. This is just some crazy flirtation brought on by the
heat, an allergy and a wayward llama.

So I say, 'Uh, Pete, business must be slow today.'

He looks sheepish. 'Well, actually we've been pretty busy. I
was flat out all morning.'

Annie says, 'Pete's been having a bit of a break. The other
sales people have taken over while he has some well-deserved
lunch.' She glances at him and their eyes meet and hold for
longer than necessary.

He finally, reluctantly, pulls away. 'Guess my time's up now,
though. Better get back to the customers.'

On the way home Annie is oddly reticent about the
encounter. 'Pete's terrific. I really liked him. But we'll probably
never see each other again so what's the point of talking
about it.'

This is so unlike Annie, not wanting to dissect every moment,
analyze every gesture, that I know she's been smitten.

The day after the show I'm back at work, Ben is busy at the
café – he's taken on extra hours during the summer months
– and Will and Amy are back at school for another week, so
Annie borrows Minger and decides to do some exploration on
her own. 'Just let me borrow a map and a flask as well, and
I'll be off. No need to worry about me, I'll be fine. There's so
much of Cornwall I haven't seen yet. I'd like to get to know
the place better.'

Alarm bells go off in my head. 'This wouldn't be anything
to do with meeting Pete, would it? If so, Annie, you've got to
be careful. You're worlds apart . . .'

She interrupts me, 'No lecture, please. Don't I know it? This
has nothing to do with him. I hardly know him.'

I notice a note of wistfulness in her voice.
We shall see
, I
think, glad that Pete is one of my customers and I can sow
some seeds there if necessary, forgetting completely my
misgivings about their complete incompatibility.

The house feels empty when I get back from work, with
everyone gone. I potter around, prepare some veg to stir fry
for the evening meal, have a long leisurely bath and put on a
skirt, for once. Must be Annie's influence, all those great clothes,
her wonderful style. She's reminded me that I had that too,
once. 'What do you mean,
had?'
I'd said to her.

'Oh darling, don't get prickly, you still have style, oodles of
it. It's just different from your old city style. More . . . more
Cornish funky, I'd call it. I like it, I truly do.'

By the time Annie gets back, Ben is home and we've already
opened a bottle of wine. We're sitting in the kitchen and though
the days have been warm, the evenings are cool and we still
have to leave the window in the other room open for the swallows.
The three eggs have hatched and are being fed by their
parents, much to our delight.We've closed off the sitting room
so that the swallows don't get frightened and leave, especially
with Jake leaping about the place.

Annie thinks we're mad, of course, as it's the best room in
the house and was newly decorated before the birds nested
there. Now swallow guano is covering the walls and they'll have
to be repainted once the birds go. But she was as thrilled as
we were when she had her first peek of the babies, all huge,
open beaks and tiny, fluffy bodies.

Annie rushes into the kitchen now in a state of high excitement.
Ben says, 'You've been gone ages, we were getting
worried. Are you all right?'

I hand her a glass of wine but she's too fraught to take it.
'Oh, you won't believe what I've found. I can hardly believe
it myself. It's in the car, come look – no, don't look, not yet.
I'm not sure it's not dangerous, maybe I shouldn't have brought
it home.'

'Annie, what are you talking about?'

She slumps down on a kitchen chair. 'I think I'd better
have that wine now.' She takes a huge gulp. 'Oh what have I
done? Maybe it's contaminated? Maybe I'm full of radiation
poison.'

'What, the wine? Annie, what're you talking about?' I give
Ben a look that says maybe we shouldn't have let Annie loose
in the Cornish countryside. I let the dinner wait while we open
another bottle of wine and try to get some sense out of our
London friend.

Finally she starts to talk coherently. 'I was on the coastal
path then decided to go inland, across a field.'

'A field?' Ben asks. 'With all your allergies?'

'Yeah, well, it was dumb I know, looking back, but I thought
I'd get to the car quicker if I went that way rather than going
back on the path. I was starting to get itching eyes again so I
thought it was time to head for home. Anyway, it was getting
late. Up to then, I'd been fine.'

'You seem OK now.'

She nods, 'I must be getting immune to the countryside.'

I don't remind her that she said the same thing before her
last bad attack.

'Maybe I'm getting immune to everything. Minger and the
rabbits and the chickens. And Jake.' She gives the dog, lying at
her feet, a pat. 'Poor Jake, I suppose I could have taken you,
but you're just so hairy, and stuck in a car with you on a long
trip . . .'

'Annie, stop rambling. What happened in the field?'

'Well, I was very nearly back to where I'd parked when I
saw something in the ground, giving off a weird glow. I looked
closer and it was some kind of strange stone, sort of glittering
and gleaming in the light, in a spooky kind of way.'

Another look goes between Ben and me. Ben says, 'Annie,
have you been overdosing on those antihistamines?'

She ignores him. 'The more I stood there looking at it, the
more I was sure it wasn't like anything I'd seen, or seen in
photos, or even read about. I know what stones and rocks look
like, and this wasn't anything like one on earth.'

I look warily at her. 'Annie, are you saying that it was
supernatural?'

She gets defensive. 'Look, if you'd seen it, giving off that
strange glow, a kind of eerie sparkle, you'd have said it was
supernatural too. But I'm not saying it's magic or anything. I
think it's something from space – a bit of a star, a meteor,
whatever. Things are always falling from the sky, apparently,
and I'm sure that's what my rock is.'

She's speaking calmly now and I'm starting to believe her.
So too is Ben. Annie is an intelligent woman after all and not
given to weird fantasies.

Ben's voice is eager as he says, 'And it's in Minger? You
actually brought it home? Let's go have a look.'

'No!' Annie's shout stops us from our rush to the door. 'That's
what I've been worried about. What if it's contaminated or
radioactive? It's possible, probable even. I've read that those
things are, those rocks that drop to earth from space. I could
kick myself for picking it up; I should have left it there. I just
didn't think and the car was close by, so I prised it up, heaved
it back to the car . . .' she stops.

Ben looks grave. I take a step back from Annie, wondering
if the glow on her face is radiation or simply too much of
the wonderful Chablis she brought us from London. 'You
shouldn't have done that, Annie. You shouldn't pick up
anything from the fields or moors. It's one of the basic rules
of the countryside.'

She looks miserable. 'I was just so excited, I didn't think.'

We are by now hazy with wine, dinner long forgotten. We
don't know what to do next, quite. I look out at Minger and
imagine I see blue radial lights shining out its windows.

Luckily, at this point the doorbell rings and in comes Susie,
carrying a wet paper parcel. 'Some fresh-caught mackerel,
thought you'd like some, m'bird. Just given me by a fisherman
mate, can't eat it all meself.'

I grab not just the fish but Susie, pull her into the room,
push a glass of wine into her hand. She knows Annie; she's
been to dinner at our place when Annie was here last time.
'Susie, sit down, so glad you're here. We're in a dilemma, maybe
you can help us out? You know everything Cornish, you were
born and bred here, you're in the Coast Guard as well – do
you think you could identify a strange rock that Annie's found?'

Susie puts down her wine. 'No problem, bird. Where it be
then?'

We troop out of the house, warning Susie that it might be
radioactive, that we haven't dared to even open the boot of
the car yet. Susie says, sensibly, 'If we don't be touchin' it, it
be fine. A look won't be harming us.'

Glad to be the recipients of such pragmatic – and sober
– advice, we gather around Minger, half expecting the dear
old car to be pulsating and glowing with its out-of-this-world
cargo. Ben opens the boot gingerly and we all peer inside.

'
There
,' Annie whispers triumphantly. 'There it is.'

Ben and I don't need Susie to tell us what the so-called rock
is. Anyone living in the country can recognize it.