Can’t Buy Me Love, page 14
‘She’s up on the hill, but it’s a steep walk and I can’t do it with my stick. I mean, let’s face it, she only has to walk briskly in the other direction. So I threatened her with you.’
‘What happened?’
‘She peed on me. Well, not so much on me, more at me. From a distance. It was surprisingly effective, actually, like the Castle Howard fountain. So, would you? Tomorrow evening? I could pick you up.’
‘Tomorrow I’m out with Luke.’
‘Bring him. I’d like to meet him. If you’re serious about buying the place, that is. Once you’re married he’s going to have to know, isn’t he? So maybe you could kind of introduce the idea? Show him how lovely it is out there and, trust me, this is a good time of year to do it. You do not want to be giving him the guided tour in February, always supposing you can get down there. Lane freezes solid for months at a time and we’ve usually two foot of snow lying until March.’
‘You silver-tongued salesman, you,’ I said.
‘What, the idea of being snowed in with nothing but the sound of the wind in the hills, stoking up the Aga to keep the place warm, bottles of whisky in bed waiting for the snow plough to get through, that puts you off, does it? Then you’re not the woman I think you are.’
‘It sounds …’ I gave a little shiver, but more at the tone of his voice than the thought of snowdrifts to my waist. It might have been my imagination. In fact, it almost certainly was my imagination, but it sounded to me as though Cal was flirting, ever so slightly. I wondered if Ash had been right, if Cal really was so lonely that he fell for every woman who was nice to him. ‘It sounds wonderful, actually.’
‘Okay then. I’ll be at the place about seven. I’ll see you both down there.’ And he was gone, giving me no chance to stammer about taking Luke being a bad idea.
Chapter Nineteen
‘And it would make the most sensational weekend place.’ I was half-full of informative animation, and half-full of vodka and Red Bull. ‘You could take clients up there. Have corporate events, dinner parties, that sort of thing.’ Sell it to him, Willow.
‘No harm in having a look, I suppose.’
That had been easier than I’d expected. ‘I’ll have more than enough money to buy it in my own right, so you don’t need to have anything to do with it if you don’t want to. I thought I could start up a business, maybe growing herbs or something. In the meantime, maybe I could let it out to Bree. She’s selling the rectory, and she’s going to need somewhere for her and the baby.’ I didn’t say that, if this was the case, I’d have to get a move on. Bree had woken up today swearing she was having contractions, but by lunchtime she’d decided it had probably been a dodgy prawn sandwich.
‘Steady on, Willow.’ Luke laughed. ‘If we buy anything, and we really should do it jointly, both names on the deeds, you know, for the insurance? So it will have to be suitable for both of us.’
‘There’re some barns around the back. You could keep cars there.’
‘And land, you said? How would it be for planning permission?’
‘You’ll see. We’re nearly there. Pull in over here, in this lay-by.’ I was a bit shocked by Luke’s immediate desire to change everything, but then he hadn’t had time to fall in love with the place as it stood yet.
‘There’s no access? Willow, how could you run a business with no road access?’
‘It can be sorted. Come on, down here.’
As we approached the end of the narrow lane, I covered Luke’s eyes with my hand. ‘You can look in a minute.’ And led him by the wrist until we arrived at the top of the meadow. ‘Now look.’ I uncovered Luke’s eyes and waited, heart pounding, for his verdict.
‘It’s very pretty.’
Was that all he could say? The sun and clouds were playing chase me across the fields, giving rise to an interesting stipple effect of light and shade. The breeze softly wafted the smell of flowers across to us and there was no noise, apart from the cry of a sheep. It really couldn’t be any more bucolic if it had the Wurzels in it.
‘Those are the barns I told you about.’
‘Very nice.’ Luke turned to me earnestly. ‘Actually, Willow, I think you might be on to something here. The potential is just …’ A wide-armed gesture said it all. ‘It really is fabulously sited. Look at the little river there.’ We walked towards the house. Cal was in the yard watching us approach. ‘Oh my God, these are genuine cruck-framed buildings. How old is this place? It’s fantastic!’
I introduced Cal to Luke. There was a moment of stiff-legged confrontation as they shook hands, then Luke smiled. ‘I really like your place, Cal. Fantastic opportunities here, yeah? Be worth a fortune to a developer. Can I look round?’
‘Help yourself. I’ll borrow Will to give me a hand with the goat.’ Limping, in what I considered to be an excessive fashion, Cal led the way out of the yard and down the lane which led up onto the hill. ‘He seems all right.’
I looked at Cal’s expression, because his tone had had the tiniest sting in it. It was bland and completely unreadable. ‘He is. He’s so good for me, Cal. I never thought I’d meet anyone who’d actually want to marry me, you know? I’m not the easiest person to be around. Not just with the, well, you know, but, with my family and everything. I kind of got used to being me-ish, I suppose.’
We reached Winnie’s hideout on the hillside. Cal found the going increasingly difficult because the ground was uneven, pockmarked with hoof-holes and rabbit dugouts, like a micro-scale battlefield. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’ Cal sounded angry. ‘I don’t know why you think there is.’
‘I puke on blokes.’
‘Your system doesn’t cope well with emotional overload, that’s all. It’s not something so abnormal, so perverted that you have to marry the first man who asks.’
‘I’m thirty-two, Cal,’ I said slowly, wanting the words to sink in. ‘I know that’s not old in men-years, but in terms of woman-time it’s pretty nearly over the edge into Botox and suck-it-all-in underwear.’
‘You don’t have to get married, though, do you?’
‘Luke wants to. He says it’s more sensible to be married than just living together. Gives him “gravitas” as a businessman, and there’s more security for both of us.’
‘And you? What do you want, Willow Cayton? Hmmm?’
Banks burst. ‘I want to live here and have babies that grow up being able to ride before they can walk, and milk cows and weave, and know what plants they can eat and what they can’t. I want to grow things and make perfume and medicines out of them, and cheese with plants in and candles with dried flowers and … stuff.’
‘Let me guess, The Good Life?’
‘Maybe. Maybe I’m just a hippy who missed the boat.’ By now Winnie had got fed up with eyeballing us from a quarter of a mile away and was sidling up, curiously.
‘You’ve got a very pastoral image of life, haven’t you?’
‘I know the realities.’ I felt somehow that I was being got-at.
‘And Luke? Does he know? Does he have any idea what it’s like to have to get up at four to milk the cow, fight to get the Aga lit, chip the ice off the water trough before work, bring animals in, fetch animals out, all up to your thighs in mud? Nothing ever clean, nothing ever dry, everything full of bits of hay and mouse shit in the larder? Because that is winter up here. I know and I love it. Will you? Will he?’
‘I thought you only spent your summer holidays here?’
Cal sat down like a folding deckchair, dropped his head forward and let his hair hide his face. Winnie was fascinated. ‘Yeah. I lied about that,’ he said as though challenging me to say anything. ‘I grew up here. My great-aunt adopted me when I was five, when …’ Shaky territory, obviously, because he suddenly pushed his hair back and grinned up at me. ‘If you reach out now, you can grab her collar.’
Without looking, I stretched my hand sideways and closed it around the leather belt. Winnie curled her lip in contempt and took off at a trot. Fortunately our joint inertia forced us gradually to the bottom of the hillside until we reached the lane. Winnie was puffing at the exertion of dragging me, size ten of pure muscle and thirty years of chocolate, and I was glad that I’d kept my footing. I was sure she’d deliberately headed through every cowpat and gorse bush she could see. Farther up the slope I could see Cal edging his way down, using his stick as a brake, anchor and occasional flail on the thistle-strewn pasture. It seemed somehow demeaning to watch so, taking advantage of Winnie’s momentary breathlessness, I hauled on her collar until she moved into the gateway to the paddock, then wrestled the gate open and shoved her through. My previous experience with ponies had taught me that once they’d found an escape route, they’d be out every chance they got, until the escape hatch was firmly closed with wire, preferably in Winnie’s case, electric and running off the mains.
‘What did she do, jump?’ I asked, completing my circuit of the small field to find Cal leaning on the gate, trying to look as though he wasn’t gasping for breath. ‘I can’t find a hole anywhere big enough for her to have got through. Although I wouldn’t put it past her to have tunnelled.’
‘She got out through the gate.’
I looked disbelievingly at the solid, five-bar gate he was resting against. It was a good five-foot tall, conventionally built with no gaps big enough for a solidly constructed Toggenburg to have squeezed through. ‘What, with a crowbar?’
‘No.’ Cal pulled open the gate, standing aside. Winnie, on the other side of the field, raised her head and I barely managed to drag the gate shut before she hit it at a dead run.
‘You let her out? Why?’
‘Firstly because she’s a total cow and I hoped the local foxes would form some sort of association to bring her down, and secondly, would you have come, otherwise?’
‘What? Yes, of course I would!’
‘If you say so. Shall we go back? Your other half will be wondering what we’re up to.’
We wandered slowly through the yard and into the house, to find that Luke was up in the loft, tapping at timbers with a Swiss army knife and muttering about woodworm. He barely noticed me appear in the hatchway and disappear just as quickly.
‘He’s happy,’ I reported. ‘Can I borrow your mobile? I want to ring home to check that my sister hasn’t popped her infant out without due regard for the seventy-eight-hour labour she’s been warning us she’s got in store. Mind you, if she had, I think Ash’s hysterical shrieking would have been audible from here.’
‘I didn’t bring my mobile. There’s no signal in the valley.’ Cal put the kettle on the Aga plate to boil and leaned his back against the stove. ‘Where’s yours?’
‘Flint broke it.’
‘Oh. Can’t you use …’ A gesture towards the ceiling.
‘I never use his phone. Anyway, you said there’s no signal.’
‘If you walk up to the road, you can get two bars, apparently. I’ve got satellite broadband out in the barn, if it helps.’
We were both trying to avoid looking at Luke’s jacket (pure wool, impeccably tailored) hanging on the back of one of the spindle-legged chairs.
‘I could email, but it might take ages for anyone to pick up.’ Another sliding glance. Cal grinned.
‘Sod it, no one’s going to die if you borrow it for one quick call, are they?’
The tiny sliver of phone was tucked into an inside pocket, with Luke’s credit card. It felt warm, the jacket smelled of him. I stroked the sleeves back into place as I removed the mobile, feeling comforted by the softness under my fingers.
‘Come on. I’ll come with you up the hill. He’s going to be ages yet. What was he doing, exactly?’
‘Prodding the beams.’
‘He’s not one of these mild-mannered sales assistant by day, super surveyor by night types, is he? What’s wrong with the beams?’
‘Just woodworm, I think. They look sound enough.’
Cal muttered something and hauled away up across the meadow, outdistancing me. ‘What?’ I asked, catching up.
‘I said, I’ve never been up there. Can’t. Ladders, d’you see.’
‘Oh. Oh, you mean your …’
‘War wound, yes. Can’t do ladders. Great excuse never to have to paint window ledges. Or fit bird boxes.’
‘Or groom giraffes.’ I slowed down to walk beside him. ‘But, it’s not that bad, is it? I mean, you get about all right. It’s not like you’re …’
‘What? Not like I’m disabled? But I am, Willow. That’s precisely what I am. Disabled, special needs, a cripple, call it what you like. That’s me.’ His voice was so bitter that I was surprised the words didn’t drop, blackened, to the ground. ‘A spastic.’
‘Cal.’
‘Go up to the cars. There’ll be a signal there.’ Cal stopped walking and turned around, looking out over the house.
‘Cal …’
‘Just go.’
I left him, clenching his jaw and staring ferociously into the distance, and walked up the lane to the road, where the two cars were parked. I leaned against Cal’s (didn’t dare lean against Luke’s, might have smeared the paintwork), working hard not to notice the used condom lying on the backseat. So Cal wasn’t quite as unlucky in love as Ash made it sound? I tried to conjure the image of him making love to a girl in the back of the Micra, and failed. Not because I couldn’t imagine him naked, oh no, that bit was worryingly easy, but because I couldn’t imagine any woman getting down and dirty amid the cast-off sweet wrappers, crisp packets and changes of clothing. I wondered who she’d been. Lucky bitch.
Luke’s phone had a passcode. I stared at the numbers for a moment, a bit dumbfounded. I never locked my phone, none of my family did either, and we all had a tendency to use whichever sibling’s phone was nearest around the house.
‘What’s up?’ Cal seemed to have forgiven me for my faux pas, and had come up the lane behind me.
I held the phone up. ‘It’s locked.’
Cal took it from me and looked down at the screen, his mouth twisting up into a thoughtful expression. ‘Okay. Do you know the code?’
‘Why would I be standing looking at it if I knew the code?’
‘You might be admiring it. I’ve seen your phone, remember, it’s only one stage up from two treacle cans and a bit of string. I thought you might be puzzled about the absence of push buttons.’ He gave me a smile that contained a hint of ruefulness. ‘Sorry, by the way.’
‘It’s okay, I’ve been meaning to get a new phone, now I can afford it I might even get one like this.’ I held up Luke’s to indicate.
Cal grinned. ‘I meant about me being a dick and taking offence. I know you didn’t mean anything. I can sometimes be an oversensitive plonker, I’m afraid, when it comes to …’ He tapped his leg with his stick. ‘Give me the phone a sec.’
I handed it over, slowly. ‘You’re not going to do some kind of incantation, are you?’
He bent over the phone for a second, then looked at me, his grin a little broader now. ‘No, I’m going to do psychology. What’s Luke’s date of birth?’
I stared at him. ‘Surely not. I mean – no. He wouldn’t, would he?’
Cal widened his eyes at me and looked as though he was trying not to laugh. ‘Willow. He’s a self … I mean, he’s fairly wrapped up in himself.’ There was a weight to the words, as if Cal was trying to lay tact on top of honesty. I told him. Couldn’t believe it would work, half hoped that Luke would have used my birth date, or the date we first met, but the screen unlocked as soon as Cal thumbed the numbers. He held the phone up for me to take. ‘Sorry. Oldest trick in the book.’
‘Well, he’s got nothing to hide, so of course he’d use something like that.’ I sounded defensive, even to myself.
‘If he’s got nothing to hide, he’d tell you the passcode,’ Cal said, and the words were a bit clipped. I looked at him sideways over the phone screen and there was a look in his eyes that I couldn’t pin down, a kind of tightness,
‘I never need to use his phone, do I? I’ve got my own. Even if it is only one stage up from shouting loudly, as far as you are concerned.’ I kept it light. The last thing I wanted was for Cal to fall out with Luke over something as stupid as a phone. Luke might use it as an excuse to pull out of buying the farm. Although Cal really didn’t seem the type to pick a fight for fight’s sake, I’d already seen how Luke could take things the wrong way sometimes and I wanted everything to be amicable between these two. And I definitely didn’t want Cal asking any more questions about Luke, so I called up the phone keypad and dialled Bree’s number before Cal could reply.
‘Hello. Are you all right? Nothing happening?’ I asked of my dear sister, when she finally deigned to answer.
‘That depends what you mean by nothing, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Jazz is here and he and Ash are comparing gig scars.’
‘Who’s winning?’
‘Jazz, at the moment, with a nasty gash under the ribs from a, what was it? Oh yes, a Compounded gig in Manchester. I’m only hoping Ash doesn’t bring out the big guns and start showing everyone the scar he got when that roadie bit him in the bollocks.’
‘That was at an after-gig party. That doesn’t count. Anyway, just called to make sure you were okay. Better go. I’m on someone else’s phone.’ And I rang off, before I got any more details.
Cal was just standing, watching me. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You know you owe it to yourself.’ His fingers were tapping on the car roof as though he was typing himself a message.
‘What are you on about?’
‘Look at his texts.’
‘Don’t be bloody daft! That’s spying! Why should I want to do that? I trust Luke, absolutely.’
‘If you trust him, then there won’t be anything strange, will there?’ Cal nodded at the phone. It had gone to screen, which was a picture of a sports car.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s wrong.’
‘Okay, you trust him, that’s good.’ Cal half-turned away. ‘Just checking. I mean, he seems a bit … I dunno. Edgy? And I’m not talking about that bloody haircut either.’
The screen had gone black now. I found I was staring at its blankness, and my reflection made me look uncertain. ‘I …’ I began, and then there was a buzz, and the screen lit up with the first lines of an incoming message.
