Nineteen
It was Thursday afternoon, and Clare was on her knees in Prosecco and Prose helping Trish unpack books. Stop-it was scooting the empty boxes round the room with his nose. There was a delicious smell of cinnamon seeping out of the kitchen, which was both soothing and disturbing. It reminded Clare of the night in Sam’s kitchen with the smell of spices. The two women were discussing the fundraising auction. A Barnstaple hair salon had donated a cut and blow dry, and someone else had offered a free manicure.
‘I want to help too,’ said Trish. ‘I thought I could ask a local author to do a reading. If I throw in a glass of wine, I could charge a fiver and maybe the author would donate a portion of their book sales.’
‘Fabulous idea,’ said Clare. She looked outside at the crowded terrace. ‘What’s the sentiment?’
Trish pulled a face. ‘Honestly?’
Clare nodded.
‘People are nervous,’ said Trish. ‘They’re thrilled the Council rejected the plans, but they expect him to win because he always does.’
Clare used a pair of scissors to slice open another box, then ripped it apart, the sound echoing her feeling of despair. She heard the door open and tutted, ‘I just wish—’. Trish held a finger up to her mouth, then said, ‘That cookery book you ordered is in, Sam.’
‘Thanks. I’ll stay for coffee and a slice of your fudge cake. Can I buy you two something? What about you, Stop-it?’ The dog waggled a box at Sam.
Clare blushed, then glanced down at her T-shirt and slacks, remembering how smartly she always dressed in London. But she didn’t think her current clients – Captain Hilts and his brood, plus the pigs – would bat an eyelid if she appeared stark naked, provided she fed them. She struggled upright with a pile of books in her arms, itching to ask him where he’d disappeared to on Bank Holiday Monday afternoon. Sam took them from her.
Not wanting to feel those eyes on hers, she leaned down for another batch.
‘Where did you vanish to last Monday?’ he whispered.
She looked up. He was smiling. ‘Where did I ? What happened to you ?’
‘I went to fetch some milk from my cottage fridge store and when I got back my brother was standing in the kitchen spitting feathers.’
She chewed her lip, wondering if he was telling the truth. A frown crossed his face, ‘You didn’t—. Richard didn’t see you, did he?’ His eyes widened. ‘Is that why you left?’
She nodded.
‘Ah. Awkward for both of you.’
Trish returned with a tray, saying excitedly, ‘Can we tap you for a prize? There’s going to be an auction and a charity bridge day.’
Clare shut her eyes. She wanted to scream. Alerted, the Hastings family would find a way to ruin the bridge tournament and with it, their hopes of funding an EIA.
When she wasn’t helping Anna prepare for the bridge tournament, Clare was in the orchard. Using a strimmer secured by a strap over her shoulder, she worked her way up and down the rows of apple trees. She was clearing the grass and weeds that had grown through the mulch around the tree trunks, an area her mother’s orchard books referred to as the ‘sward’. When the last circle was bare, Clare hooked up the trailer, just as Sam had taught her nearly three months ago. She spent two days moving bark chippings from her mother’s stores, scattering them liberally over each root zone. The book assured her that the fresh mulch would keep the weeds away and help to retain moisture round the roots. The branches above her were weighed down with fruit; she would be harvesting soon. All twelve acres. Flicking through her mother’s records, she’d discovered that last year Cindy had harvested over forty tonnes. How had her mother picked all those apples? There must be a machine in one of the barns.
Clare traipsed round the farmyard, peering in at dusty spaces filled with cobwebs. One barn housed her mother’s workshop, another stored the animal feed. In the old milking parlour next to the Rotovator she found a useful looking metal pole propped against the wall, beside which was a stack of rigid plastic baskets, like those used by supermarkets to deliver groceries. She concluded that her mother had harvested manually. That was going to take weeks. And Clare had no idea even what to do with the apples – her mother’s cider was revolting.
Trish had offered to stock the juice, but Clare wouldn’t sell forty tonnes of apples that way. What she needed was a neighbouring cider farm who wanted to buy her crop. But Sam Hastings was the only cider farmer she knew, and she wasn’t going into business with him.
She had a more urgent challenge; whatever she ultimately did with the harvest, she had to juice the apples, and her mother’s records also revealed that, for the last five years, she’d used Sam to press the apples! Clare had scoured the internet and found an alternative supplier, but he was near Bude, virtually an hour’s drive away.
Whichever way she turned, her plans seemed to hit a Hastings roadblock.
That afternoon, while Clare was walking the dog, she ran into Anna trawling the village for auction prizes. Her friend confirmed what Clare suspected – most Brambleton businesses were Hastings’ tenants. The pair fell into lockstep, working their way up the hill. Watching Stop-it investigate each lamp post and drop his nose into clumps of grass, Clare felt a sense of calm run through her. Brambleton offered a gentle way of life.
‘Ivy says there’s a steady stream of people offering to host cake sales and coffee mornings, and several are dropping off boxes of chocolates and books for raffle prizes,’ said Anna.
Clare gave a soft groan. ‘We need decent prizes to auction.’
‘There’s the dentist,’ suggested Anna.
‘That would make a terrifically exciting auction – a free trip to the hygienist.’
Clare’s arm jerked sideways. Stop-it was straining to reach a discarded banana skin. ‘This dog is interested in everything except kibble,’ she grumbled, pulling the dog to heel. ‘We’re pinning a lot on the bridge evening. What do you think we can charge?’
Anna beamed at her. ‘With food and a glass of wine, at least fifteen quid.’
Clare screwed up her face. ‘Do you think we could get away with a teeny bit more? Say ￡17.50?’
‘How many tables are we targeting?’
‘I was hoping fifteen.’
Anna swallowed. ‘That’s sixty people. We could try. Let’s play at the bridge club tonight and sound out our target market. I’ll make up a flyer.’
Clare let out a deep sigh. It was kind of Anna to offer, but the notice had to be precisely worded to avoid a Hastings crying foul over the ‘free’ glass of wine. ‘Let me have a look at your draft.’
‘Come here,’ said Anna, hugging her. Clare clung on to her friend, squeezing. She was worried she’d set herself up as a sort of mythical wonder worker, a ‘prodigal daughter’ returned from London to slay the monster threatening the village.
She’d never taken on a case unless convinced she would win, but this time she wasn’t sure she could. And it was personal. Clare wasn’t just fighting Richard’s plans to save Brambleton, but also to protect her mother’s legacy, the orchard.
As they released each other from the hug, Anna said brightly, ‘Ivy may be right – he might not appeal.’
Clare shook her head, ‘Sadly, I don’t believe in Father Christmas anymore.
The next day, dressed in an old baggy sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms, Clare was on her hands and knees picking windfall apples, and feeding them into long orange mesh sacks. The dew was still thick on the grass and her legs were wet and cold where the moisture had seeped through, but the sun was warm on her back, and she was finding the task unsettlingly enjoyable. Last night had gone well, with over twenty tickets sold for the BARS’s bridge fundraiser, and several players offering to donate prizes for the raffle. Even Richard spitefully threatening to clamp any cars parked on his land that evening didn’t dampen her mood. She scrambled upright, picked up the metal pole she’d found in the old milking parlour and whacked it against a branch. A handful of apples tumbled to the ground, and she bent to retrieve them.
An hour later, she dislodged the final apple clinging to a top branch of the first tree. She gazed down the rows. At this rate she would still be harvesting at Christmas. She stalked to the next tree, took hold of a thick low branch, closed her eyes and pumped it up and down as if she was using the battle rope in the gym. Apples rained down. She shut her eyes and winced as hard fruit thwacked her head. Something thumped into her arm. She peeked down; surrounding the tree was a carpet of apples. This was the way to do it , thought Clare. She used one hand to form her sweatshirt into a pouch and, kneeling, used the other to scoop apples into it.
After a lunch break, Clare modified her technique to arrange a blue plastic tarpaulin round the base of each tree before she shook it. She was giving a branch a good shake when she heard laughter and glanced up. Sam was striding through the orchard. By the time he reached Clare he was roaring with laughter, ‘what the ... what ... on ... what are you doing?’ He chuckled, pointing at her head.
She giggled, peering through the metal colander she had taken to wearing before she shook each tree. She removed it, then the folded teacloth cushioning the makeshift helmet from her scalp. ‘Improvised protection ... Mum probably has a proper apple collecting helmet, but I must have thrown it out ...’
He wiped his eyes, then spluttered. ‘There’s no such thing. Cindy didn’t have a helmet; she had a tree shaker.’
She stared at him. Was that a specialist or a machine? She didn’t want to show her ignorance, ‘I suppose that would make it faster ... I mean to get the apples down, but I don’t know how she managed to collect them all, my knees are sore after just two days ...’
He cut her off. ‘Please tell me you aren’t harvesting manually.’
Did Cindy used to borrow machinery from Sam, was he about to offer to lend it to her; if he was, she was going to accept. ‘Yes.’ She admitted.
‘Why? Is the apple collector broken?’
‘I think she must have sold it.’
‘I doubt it.’ he pointed to the orange baskets, ‘those are part of the machine. Come on show me where you found them, and I reckon the collector will be there too.’
Walking to the old milking parlour, Clare was conscious of his proximity. He was so close she could hear him breathing. She imagined what it would be like feeling his arm around her waist or his hand grasping hers. She peeked down at Sam’s hands; they were rough and weathered from years of working in his own orchard.
When they reached their destination, she pulled open the door.
‘There it is’ he said triumphantly pointing at the Rotovator, ‘and that,’ he said, indicating the anchor-shaped chunk of metal she had dismissed as a piece of old farm machinery, ‘is the apple shaker.’
Clare spent the next week juggling preparations for the bridge competition with the competing demands of harvesting apples, keeping warm in the evenings, and feeding herself and Stop-it on her tiny weekly budget. Harvesting had become much quicker now she was using machinery. Hooked up to the tractor, the shaker neatly felled the fruit, allowing her to steer the collecting machine over the fallen apples and hoover them up. Listening to the fruit tumble into the two orange baskets secured to the back of the machine brought a smile to her face.
During the daytime, she was too active to notice the temperature, but the nights were chilly. In London, she never felt cold. Her flat was well-insulated, and the central heating run by cost-effective gas. The period farmhouse was draughty, North Devon wasn’t on the gas grid, and she couldn’t afford to fill up the oil tank. There was a pile of logs, mostly too big for the fire grates, but the thought of chopping wood sounded dangerous, and anyway, she didn’t know how to lay a fire. Clare dragged an armchair next to the Aga, and in the evenings read a book with Stop-it curled up on her lap, thankful that its fuel tank registered 75 per cent full.
The freezer was empty and, bored with fried eggs, she rummaged through her mother’s books, unearthing a copy of Delia Smith’s How to Cook series. With Stop-it acting as chief sampler, one evening she made salmon fishcakes, and on the next she braised sausages in cider apples.
With a week to go before the fundraiser, Clare called a BARS meeting. Ready to tackle the temperature, she built a mountain of newspaper in the sitting room fireplace. She balanced a firelighter on top, a few small logs above that and then lit the paper. The flames burned brightly, devouring the newspaper; the firelighter caught, and the fire curled round the wood. For a few minutes Clare admired her handiwork. She sat on the sofa, snuggled into a corner in front of the roaring fire as she used to do so often as a child.
It was dusk, and the lamplight illuminated the shabby furnishings. Cotton throws covered the ancient sofa and both chairs, but there were muddy paw marks on them, and most of the cushions were at least six-sided, the extra angles added by Clare folding over corners and stitching them up after Stop-it’s games. She pictured her pristine flat, but for the first time since she had arrived in Devon, she didn’t miss it. Yes, it was warmer, but it didn’t have as much character. Besides, she wasn’t sure there would have been sufficient space to host tonight’s meeting in her flat.
Her fellow activists arrived together. Anna and Clare sat on either end of the sofa, while Ivy and Fred took the armchairs.
‘Were you burning some of your mother’s old papers?’ asked Ivy, gesticulating at the fire grate. There was a pile of black ashes, a scorched log, but no flames.
Clare threw her hands up in despair. ‘I had that going. Why has it gone out?’
Anna rose, picked up a poker and stabbed at the wreckage. ‘You need more kindling,’
‘And more wood,’ said Fred.
‘I haven’t got either.’
Anna and Ivy exchanged a glance. ‘Let’s sort this,’ said Anna. ‘Ivy, do you know where Cindy kept her wood store?’
While Clare stood by helplessly, Fred, Ivy and Anna bustled about, collecting kindling, logs and firelighters. She could hear wood being chopped outside. Anna laid a fire with the firelighter beneath a lattice framework of kindling, then a towering stack of logs, explaining, ‘Fires burn upwards, so give the flames something to chase.’
‘I’ll come back in the morning and chop some more wood for you,’ announced Fred as he dumped a full basket by the roaring fire.
‘That’s super kind, Fred, but please, just show me how to do it. If I’m going to be here for winter, I must learn.’
‘How close are we to our target for ticket sales?’ asked Ivy
‘Still a dozen light,’ said Anna.
Fred claimed he might be able to sell them.
‘All twelve?’ asked Ivy. ‘My, my; God does move in mysterious ways.’
‘Yup. Someone asked me this afternoon,’ said Fred triumphantly.
‘For twelve tickets?’ said Anna.
Fred nodded.
Clare had a sudden unpleasant thought. ‘It’s not Hastings in disguise, is it? He’ll find a way to scupper it. We can’t let him play.’
‘Oh, ye of little faith,’ said Fred in a mocking tone. ‘It’s not Richard.’
If it wasn’t Richard, Clare didn’t care who played. They needed all the money they could get.