Chapter 11 Tilda #2
I nod. “Well, I would be. But I’ve been flat out here. By the time I get home I haven’t got the energy.”
He shrugs off his shirt and throws it onto the stone post on the grass, pushing his hair back from his forehead, and stretching unselfconsciously. His grey T-shirt rises to reveal a muscled stomach with a line of dark hair leading down to the buckle of his jeans. Do not look, Tilda.
I look down and then sneak another glance up through my lashes.
“It’s the same with the house,” he says a moment later.
I look up. He’s leaning back against the wall now, careful to avoid the fresh paintwork. “At some point I need to get it under control, but I’ve no idea where to start.”
“That’s the story of my life,” I say as Malcolm appears in the distance.
“Maybe once I get this tourist nightmare off my back, I can think about it.”
“You mean you don’t like living with all that clutter?” I put a hand to my mouth, realising what I’ve said. “Sorry, I mean—it’s—well, your office couldn’t look any more different to the kitchen.”
He grins, surprising me. “Yeah, I’m not exactly into the maximalist look. Left to me, I’d bin the lot, but I inherited the distillery and the house. Priorities.”
The smile transforms his whole face. He looks younger and less severe and dangerously handsome. I shake myself inwardly and say brightly, “Maybe you should take a leaf out of my book and start decluttering in the evenings.”
“I thought you said you hadn’t started?” Finn laughs. “I spend my evenings dealing with paperwork.”
Malcolm draws closer, an odd smile on his face. He stops in front of us and dips his head in a nod. “Hard at work, I see.”
“I’m trying,” says Finn, shooting me a look, “but I keep getting distracted.”
“Well,” Malcolm laughs, “I hate to interrupt, but I need to borrow you for a quick sec.”
The two of them head off across the garden, deep in conversation.
I head off to finish another edge, and I’m pretty much done with the weeding by the time I get back to find him wiping the edge of the paint pot with a rag.
There’s one thing left, so I try and move the heavy terracotta pot by the step, but it won’t budge.
I dig my nails under the lip and rock back on my heels, trying to get one side to lift so I can roll it, but it weighs a ton, and if I don’t dig out the bramble root it’ll grow back again in about a week.
He stands up and without saying a word picks the pot up as if it’s made of polystyrene, plonks it down on the weed-free path, and stands back out of the way.
I look at him, then the pot.
“Well, get on with it then,” he says gruffly.
I glare at him and push the spade into the soil. I dig down, grabbing the root with my gloved hands and tugging hard until it comes loose. I wiggle back and forth but it won’t move. I wiggle my hands a little further down and squat down, trying to get a decent grip, and pull, hard.
“Ooof.”
The root comes loose, and I fall backwards onto my bottom. Finn looks down his nose at me as if I’m incapable of functioning as an adult.
“Are you done?”
I scramble to standing, which involves an undignified shuffle from hands and knees.
“Yes, thank you.”
“I’ll move this back then, shall I?”
“Look at this,” trills Georgia from behind us. She’s got her fancy camera hanging around her neck and a T-shirt that says, QUEEN OF EVERYTHING.
“Okay, this is amazing. Finn, if you stand there with the paintbrush in your hand and Tilda, you lean on the spade—”
I try and brush some of the dirt off my dungarees.
“Oh no, don’t wipe it off, you look perfect.”
I arrange myself in a suitably gardener-ish pose and Georgia snaps away happily.
The next morning dawns bright and sunny, and our mission is walls – his, made of stone, mine covered in yet more bramble.
Finn prises flaking paint from the window frame of the tasting room, and I work outside along the low stone boundary wall with a billhook and secateurs, pulling out last year’s thorny dead growth and digging out the stubborn new green.
He doesn’t comment on the heaps I leave lying on the path at lunchtime and I don’t comment on the fact that once again he’s taped the place as if he’s in some sort of painting Olympics competition.
He puts a can of fuel down by the side of the ride-on mower which has run out and shoulders the rusted gate open so I can cut the grass in the long field by the barrel warehouse.
There are two wooden picnic tables hidden in the undergrowth, and I strim the long grass around them before Finn gets to work giving them a coat of dark brown wood treatment.
The spaniels lie like two punctuation marks on either side of Flora where the sun hits the cobbles, only moving by inches as the light moves.
We eat standing up in the courtyard, Finn with a travel mug of coffee and me with a lump of cheese from the village shop and a hunk of sourdough freshly baked that morning.
“Is that lunch?”
“It’s rustic,” I say, swallowing. “Authentic island fare.”
“Authentic as in… no heat source involved?”
“I’ll have you know I’m a perfectly good cook,” I lie.
“Toast doesn’t count.” His mouth twitches.
“How did you know I was talking about toast?”
Finn’s laugh is low. “Call it a lucky guess.”
I tear the bread in half and offer him a piece. “I don’t offer my artisan sourdough to just anyone, you know.”
His fingers brush mine as he accepts. “I’m honoured.”
Our eyes meet over the bread. Neither of us looks away immediately.
“Well,” I say, my voice slightly breathless, “don’t get used to it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
But he’s smiling as he says it, and we eat in silence. I try to ignore the fact that my fingers are still tingling from where our hands brushed.
By Friday a shape is emerging from the chaos.
The front border has been neatly edged, and I’ve dug out all the moss that covered the brick path between the stillroom and Finn’s office.
He’s painted the still room window frames, and all the doors are now shiny with black gloss. It’s not perfect, but it’s respectable.
“Looking good,” says Malcolm, wheeling a trolley across the yard.
“Those flowers make a difference, don’t you think?”
Malcolm tips his head towards my just-finished planting.
I shake the soil from my palms and steal a glance in Finn’s direction. He gives a brief nod – not quite approval, but close – and then stalks off. I tell myself I’m not disappointed that he didn’t say anything more.
“Your dad would be impressed,” Malcolm says, his voice casual, and picks up the trolley handle. “It’s good to have you here, Tilda.”
I curl my fingers into my hands, a wave of apprehension washing over me. “You knew my dad?”
He gives me a curious look. “You don’t remember meeting me back when you were a lass?”
I shake my head.
“Aye,” Malcolm laughs. “I had more hair in those days, right enough. But yes, I knew your dad well.”
There’s a pause, long enough for me to wonder what he’s not saying. I cringe inwardly, imagining my dad in the corner of the island pub, drinking himself into a stupor.
“Had a good eye for a garden himself,” Malcolm adds, almost to himself, before he sets off again with the trolley. He doesn’t look as if he’s got bad memories of my dad.
I’m left standing there, nonplussed.
“Have a good weekend, Tilda,” he calls out a moment later.