Chapter 19
19
S tiff as hell from hunching over a sink that had been built a hundred and fifty years earlier, for people several inches shorter, Caro walked on the spot. ‘Ouch! God, it hurts.’ She jigged her weight from foot to foot, hands burning with cold as she lifted them from the freezing water. ‘How many more?’ she gasped.
At the Aga, Tomasz turned. Pushing his glasses back on his head, he raised his hand to count the huddle of cabbages on the kitchen table, one, two, three … the knife in his hands a sheath of silver.
‘Nine,’ she said, a tinge of impatience in her voice.
‘Nine.’ He agreed. He nodded at the sink. ‘Use the sieve. You don’t have to put your hands in then.’
‘If I use the sieve,’ Caro groaned, ‘we’ll be here till Christmas. At least this way I can get a good load done at once.’ And turning back to the sink she plunged her hands in again, gathering the flow of shredded cabbage together, lifting, squeezing and finally dropping it onto a tea-towel. She folded the tea-towel in half and then half again, pressed and rolled and shook it open, spreading the pieces onto a baking tray that had been lined with paper. She put the tray in the freezer and leaned against the sink, looking out of the window. High above, the torch of a July sun had risen steadily, Helios driving his chariot halfway across the world, while she had been chained to the sink, blanching cabbage. ‘Can we take a break?’ she said.
Tomasz looked up from the skull-sized cabbage he was busy quartering, and Caro looked down at her hands. Her knuckles were as creamy white as the cabbage heads, her nails already splitting, the varnish, so recently applied, flaking and chipped. ‘There’s an awful lot in the freezer already.’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, how much cabbage does anyone need?’
Smiling, he put the knife down. ‘I could always make Sauerkraut,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to do all this then.’ And he waved a hand at the tea-towels laid the length of the kitchen bench, the paper-lined trays stacked next to the sink. ‘Sauerkraut is more of a one-person job.’
‘If we do that, we’ll have time for coffee in the garden before I go. I can make it,’ she added. Because if we do that , meant if he does that. If Tomasz carried on fulfilling the obligations of this trial run they were in the middle of, while she escaped again. Escape wasn’t the right word of course, she just couldn’t think of another one right now. It was Thomas who had insisted she go in the first place. When she’d told him about Helen’s idea for a joint retirement/hen evening he had waved aside any reasons she had made not to and booked her ticket, presenting it with her over breakfast. And of course she was looking forward to the evening, it’s just that the one excuse she hadn’t voiced, was the one he wouldn’t have waved aside: that while Spencer Cooper was still in town, it was better that she wasn’t. She hadn’t examined this idea, she had in fact done the opposite, shut it away, and covered it up with other thoughts, such as arranging delivery of her bouquet, double-checking that the car company had all her instructions. But it was stubborn, and every time her guard fell, it was there, this persistent notion that if he was in town, it was better that she wasn’t. She watched as Tomasz took a huge pan of boiling water and poured it down the sink.
‘I don’t even like cabbage,’ he said.
Smiling she put her hand on his cheek. It was OK. Helen’s place wasn’t even in town. Close, but not London. Not really. ‘Neither do I,’ she said and kissed him.
‘Let’s not tell the Sullivans then.’
‘I won’t if you won’t.’ Caro smiled. Laura and Neil Sullivan were the couple who owned Hollybrook Farm – the people they were leasing from. The husband-and-wife team who had handed them a file containing A to Z instructions of everything they would need to know about running a smallholding. A: assess your soil quality regularly. D: Ditch management. It was the size of a brick and equally dull, and frankly she’d seen merger proposals between companies worth billions use fewer trees. She hadn’t made it beyond F: (fertilise the soil regularly), although Tomasz read it regularly. Sitting by the stone fireplace, night after night leafing through the pages with the devotion of a true believer.
‘I was thinking we should invite them to dinner next week.’
‘Why?’ Turning away, Caro pulled the plug from the sink. She hadn’t meant to sound so abrupt, but she didn’t want to invite Laura and Neil for dinner. So far, they had managed to contain any necessary socialising to coffee. Dinner was a different matter. Dinner could spill over for hours, way past F: (fertilise the soil regularly) …
‘Well.’ Tomasz wiped his hands on a tea-towel. ‘We have the solicitor next week. I thought it would be good to go through some stuff before ––’
‘Before what?’ This time the abruptness was intended. The trial run wasn’t over. They hadn’t decided anything, they had discussed many things, but there was a difference between discussing and deciding, and going by the language he was using, Caro wasn’t sure Tomasz appreciated that. The solicitor’s appointment was merely to go through the legal implications of some of the changes they were thinking of making if they went ahead. If.
‘Before we make a decision,’ he said, and looked at her. ‘That’s what I was going to say.’ He folded the tea-towel back on the drainer and went to the door. ‘I’m going to check on the chickens.’
‘OK.’ She watched him walk out the door and along the garden path. This last week he’d spent so much time with the chickens, she’d started teasing him. Your babies, she’d said, but he was always there. Fixing a runway that didn’t need fixing or mending a fence where she couldn’t see a break. Almost as if he needed space. As if he too was having doubts. Thinking this she made a steeple of her hands and covered her face. The feeling that had started small as a stitch only a week into this trial, was growing. Laura and Neil, the photo Matt had sent her of the after-work celebration, that view of London, tomato, after courgette, after tomato …. She could hear the quiet whispers, growing louder every day. I’m not sure, I don’t know. I’m having second thoughts.
She turned to the table, and in a movement born of frustration, scooped up a handful of cabbages and dropped them in the compost bin. Nobody needed too much sauerkraut either, and this she could personally vouch for! Around the time she was trying to get pregnant, she had eaten it with every meal only to suffer constant wind. Those months when she was doing everything she could to make her body as healthy as possible, and then her body had betrayed her anyway. Looking back out to the garden, Caro breathed deeply, holding onto the air as if she were deep underwater. Our babies, Tomasz had answered, when she’d teased him about the chickens. But she didn’t think of the chickens as her babies, and the unborn soul who really had been her baby was a memory that no longer hurt. Motherhood had been such a fleeting experience, a few precious weeks for which she would always be grateful, but what she had said to Helen only a few months ago was true. She had accepted the fact that she would never be anyone’s mother and set about concentrating on the fact that she would be someone’s wife. It was eleven am on a sunny July morning so there was no reflection from the window to reveal the frown on her face, and the movement had been so subtle, she hadn’t felt it.