Chapter 10
Beatrice
Like every day before this one, I finish what needs doing by myself.
I’m neither annoyed at Arthur nor disappointed.
He did exactly what I expected him to do so I can’t be surprised that it actually happened.
That would be like putting your goldfish in the car and getting angry that it can’t do a wheel spin.
When I hear the clicking of a stick across the yard however, that’s when my stomach cramps.
‘Where’s that grandson of mine? Got himself into more trouble?’ Ms Riches limps over and helps me to unload a few tools from the tractor. ‘Or did he piss you off so much that you’ve left him to spend the night in a dyke?’
‘Something like that.’ I chuckle.
‘Well, I hope it’s one with plenty of nettles in to keep him warm.’ She turns back to me, a serious look on her face. ‘So, where is he?’
‘Oh, he’s just finishing up some bits on the back field,’ I lie through my teeth. ‘He couldn’t leave half a job so I said I’d drop these bits off and take him to the pub after as a thank you.’
Ms Riches looks at me with a quizzical brow but doesn’t ask any more questions. It’s easier to lie. How else do I explain that I lost Arthur nearly five hours ago and have no idea where he could possibly have gotten himself to in this time?
‘You coming in for a cuppa?’ the old farmer asks, but I shake my head.
‘Sorry, can’t today. I’m already running late for my shift at Tracy’s.’ I sigh, looking down at my dirty hands and wondering how I’m going to manage to find Arthur, scrub myself clean, and get back across the village to start my shift in twenty minutes. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow!’
Unable to wait around long enough for her to reply, I grab my bike from inside the shed and speed off back down the driveway, hoping I’ll spot a wild Cavendish rambling over the fields on my ride home.
Or find him with his thumb out on the seven-mile straight trying to hitchhike his way back to London.
Either way, he won’t have had much luck, so I’m hoping he can’t have gotten far.
Those twenty minutes melt away as I cycle aimlessly around the countryside. With no sign of Arthur in any of the neighbouring fields, or on the tarmac as roadkill, thankfully, I am in a full-blown panic by the time I reach the Big Apple.
‘Fuck, fuck, FUCK,’ I call through the door of the pub and the patrons all look up from their pints in shock.
‘I’ve had him for one day, one bastarding day, and I’ve lost him.
’ Still in my farm gear, too flustered to have gone home to shower and change, I practically throw myself at the bar and Tracy slides me off in disgust with her bar cloth.
‘What’re you on about?’ she says, making sure to anti-bac the patch I had just smeared myself on.
‘I’ve lost Arthur Cavendish,’ I wail, throwing my head into my hands.
‘I was a total cow and called him out for being a complete arse, and he stormed off, and now he’s probably dead in a ditch somewhere and it’s all my fault.
The British public will all be wanting my head.
’ Behind my hands, I hear the landlady laugh and slowly I pry my fingers away to get a good look at her.
Sure enough, her chest bounces in laughter; she’s mocking my demise.
Deciding that Tracy is no help in my crisis, I turn to the rest of the pub for aid.
‘Has anyone seen Arthur Cavendish? Has he passed your windows? Or trampled your flower beds? He’s yay high, stupidly strong, sharp bone structure, dark hair that is far too long for any sort of manual work, and a face that you both want to simultaneously snog the chops off and punch. ’
‘I ain’t seen no Arthur but have a look, our Eddie is back home,’ Jimmy pipes up from the corner, pointing a thumb at Arthur who sits blushing beside him. Arthur raises his hand in a wave and offers me a nervous smile.
‘Oh, lovely,’ I murmur. What should one do in this moment?
If this was some sort of Regency drama, I’d faint, pretending to be overcome by the tightness of my corset or the climate of the room, though it’s actually just a ploy to make everyone forget what the hell I just said.
Or I could run away, shave my head, change my name and never return.
But with my stamina I’d probably only reach Coningsby and that’s not worth the bother.
I always try and live my life like it’s a film; it makes hardships feel like they’re essential for my character development, or turns embarrassing moments into the charming bumbling of a romcom heroine.
I suppose that started after Mum and Dad left.
Well, Dad left first, years before. He found another family, at the other end of the country, and decided he liked them better.
It was just me and Mum for a while, until she too decided that New York was too small for her.
‘The Chosen One’ was always an orphan, or had some sort of strained relationship with their parents, so when they decided they wanted to head off and follow their dreams of making money without me holding them back, I convinced myself this was my hero’s origin story.
But really, they just left me behind. And now I’m not liking the direction that my narrative is taking, and I’m in my right mind to march up to the writer’s office and give her a stern talking-to.
‘Now you know you haven’t killed our guest, are you going to chill out?’ Tracy pokes me as I hide my head in my hands. ‘Come on, kid. Why don’t you take the evening off? You look like you need a rest.’
I could sleep for an age. Each one of my limbs feels as though it’s hanging on by a thread and they’re just dead weights dragging me through.
I’m exhausted. But the thought of sitting at home, in the quiet of it all, with only the sound of a car passing every hour to break up the thickness of the silence, with too much time to replay this moment and every other moment over and over until I go insane, I’d rather fall asleep on my feet without a second to think.
‘I’m okay,’ I say with a smile that feels like far too much effort and I’m sure is utterly unconvincing. ‘You mind if I just nip for a shower though?’
‘That was going to be my next suggestion.’ She smiles and gestures towards the door to her flat.
Not a day goes by where I’m not grateful that Tracy isn’t your typical boss.
She practically adopted me when I came home from London and found Mum had picked up sticks and vanished to ‘chase her own dreams’, and even before I left she was always there, looking out for me, even if it was just a packet of crisps and a J2O on my way home from school.
They always say it takes a village to raise a child, and this village certainly raised me. They still do now, at my big old age.
Returning to the bar no longer splattered with mud and smelling like a cow’s manky hoof, I feel a little more at ease.
‘All sorted?’ the landlady asks and I answer with a nod.
‘You all right holding the fort? It’s clubbercise night in the village hall and I already bought my glowsticks.
’ She waves the fluorescent wands excitedly.
‘Of course,’ I reply, my smile honest this time.
‘I’ll keep an eye on Cerys too.’ I gesture to the teen who sits beneath the dartboard and is under the impression no one can see her phone wedged in her physics textbook.
Her brightly lit face is the first giveaway but the fact she’s still on the same page that she was on when I first walked in just proves she needs a few more lessons on how to be a sneaky teenager.
‘God, yes please. I’m worried she’s going to end up scrapping Cavendish.’ Cerys looks up from her phone intermittently to death-stare Arthur and I chortle at the image of it.
‘You can dance easy knowing there won’t be any bar fights without you,’ I reassure her and she waves me off with a salute.
The opening hours of my reign as landlady regent pass quietly as I eye him cautiously from behind the bar, just to make sure he doesn’t wander off again.
But when I return from the cellar after a barrel change, Arthur is stood between two stools, twiddling a beer mat between his thumb and forefinger.
‘You want to, and I quote, “snog my chops off”?’ He grins, leaning over the bar so he is uncomfortably close.
‘No,’ I say through the thickness in my throat. ‘If you had actually listened, I didn’t say that I wanted to. Just that you have one of those faces. I like how you conveniently left out the part where I said I could punch you too.’
‘Hang on—’ he grins wider ‘—so you meant that you could punch me. Meaning you would also snog me.’
‘God you’re insufferable,’ is the only reply I can think of before I loudly jab at the ice tray.
‘You’re the one who said it.’ He shrugs. ‘And, I accept your apology.’
My scowl jumps out at him across the bar and he holds his hands up in surrender. ‘I didn’t—’
He cuts me off. ‘And I owe you one too,’ he says, relaxing his childish smirk into an expression of seriousness. ‘I’ve been a dick.’
‘You don’t do this often, do you?’ I remark, noticing how he can’t look me in the eye.
‘No.’ He sighs. ‘But don’t think you’re special.’ He winks and I shake my head, trying not to let my smile slip through.
‘No chance of that.’ I grab a glass from the shelves and start to fill it with lemonade to make some attempt at moistening my throat again.