CHAPTER 19
Joanna
Dorset
Joanna had been working in her bedroom at Mulberry Farm Cottage all morning but now she got up, stretched and went to look out of the window at the dusty farmyard and the green hills beyond.
She hadn’t thought she would stay here so long, but she’d been busy writing up the Venice walk and getting the copy off to Toby prior to publication, finishing some other writing projects, starting her research for Lisbon .
. . She hadn’t even had time to start investigating her family tree.
And somehow, one week had run into the next and then the next until she realised it was a month since she’d come back from Venice.
The publisher had required a quick turnaround.
By now, she supposed, people might even be reading the brochure, following in her footsteps.
She should, she was aware, be making plans of a more personal nature.
Since her announcement to Harriet and her mother, very little had been said on the subject of her marriage.
Harriet wasn’t the type to invite confidences or emotions and her mother, though sad, had also been accepting.
As for Martin . . . apart from the occasional text message, he seemed to have accepted her decision.
Joanna moved away from the window and began collecting up her books from the bed. She’d bought a small desk and office chair from a vintage shop in Bridport, but the desk wasn’t big enough for all her stuff; when she was writing and researching she liked to spread.
She thought about that conversation she’d had with Martin when she’d been in Venice, when she had told him that their marriage was over.
She’d been surprised by the passion in his voice when he told her he still loved her .
. . But even if that were true, it was too little, too late. There was no going back, not now.
She pulled Emmy’s letters from the desk drawer where she kept them. She could hear Harriet typing in the study. Joanna went to the door, knocked lightly and went in.
‘Hmm?’ Harriet was peering at a sheaf of untidy handwritten pages on the desk next to her computer. She’d got that job she’d told Joanna she was going to apply for and it seemed to be taking up rather a lot of her time. ‘What’s up? Is Mother all right?’
‘Last time I saw her she was in the kitchen reading one of her magazines.’ Joanna and Harriet had come to an uneasy truce when it came to ‘keeping an eye on Mother’.
Harriet’s call barring was still in force and this made Joanna feel decidedly uncomfortable, but she hadn’t forced the issue.
Their mother was sometimes vague, sometimes surprisingly sharp and on the ball, but always, there was a sense of affectionate sadness that reminded Joanna just how much Mother had lost when Father died.
‘Just need to get to the end of this section, then I’ll do lunch,’ Harriet said, peering at the manuscript again. ‘Half an hour tops.’
‘It looks a complete mess.’ Joanna still felt that shepherds’ huts made more sense and there were plenty of other ways of making money. Perhaps she should phone Martin and push him to put the house on the market?
‘It is. But he’s offering a good rate, so . . .’ Harriet let this hang.
Joanna leant in to take a closer look. Very scientific and totally incomprehensible. ‘Didn’t Owen say he might be interested in renting the big barn?’ she said.
Harriet paused briefly to glare at her. ‘Yes.’
‘Then . . . ?’
‘Then he’d be forever hanging around.’ Harriet pulled one of the strangled faces that Joanna remembered from childhood.
She laughed. She would have thought Harriet would welcome the company.
And it wasn’t as if she used Big Barn for anything much – she could store the fruit in the cellar and the hay in Little Barn or the old sty.
She could still do the teas in summer – from the kitchen, with people sitting outside and under the little marquee if it rained.
But Harriet preferred problems to solutions.
And she valued her privacy – Joanna could understand that.
‘I found some letters in the attic, Het.’ She dangled Emmy’s letters briefly in front of her sister. It wasn’t fair not to share, she’d decided. This was Harriet’s home – even more than it was Joanna’s – and besides, she might know more about the mysterious Emmy than Mother seemed to.
‘Oh yes? Anything interesting?’ Harriet didn’t even stop typing.
‘Love letters,’ Joanna said. ‘Written from Venice, Lisbon and Prague.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Harriet, not taking her fingers from the keyboard.
‘Oh, they are.’ Joanna held them closer to her breast. If she shared Emmy’s letters with Harriet, then her sister might return the compliment and do some sharing of her own. And Joanna wanted that. ‘Written by someone, maybe one of our ancestors, called Emmy, to a man called Rufus.’
‘Right.’ Harriet barely glanced up.
‘So, do you want to read them?’ She tried for a teasing tone but Harriet just looked cross.
‘If I had the time,’ she said. ‘If I was remotely interested . . .’
Joanna sighed. ‘So, you don’t know who Emmy is?’
‘No idea. Should I?’
‘And you haven’t found any of those photos of our ancestors you were talking about?’
‘Sorry.’ Harriet waved her away. ‘And now, I really need to get this finished, Jo. All right?’
‘All right.’
Joanna returned to her room and put the letters back in the drawer. The trouble with Harriet was that she simply had no imagination.
‘I’m going out for a quick walk before lunch,’ she called, letting herself out of the cottage before anyone could object. Sometimes, it was so claustrophobic here. So, she really must get her act together and find somewhere else to live.
She headed up the pitted grassy track towards the Beacon.
The sky above was a pale grey, and in the distance, the sea glimmered between the lush green hills.
But the countryside knew that summer was over and so did Joanna.
She couldn’t stay here indefinitely. She blew out her cheeks as she climbed, taking deep breaths and pacing herself. So where should she settle?
She’d talked briefly over the past few days to her closest London friends Steph and Lucy, filled them in on what was going on and where she was staying.
‘Are you coming back?’ Steph had asked.
‘Not yet.’
Joanna eased into a deeper breathing pattern, pulling her scarf closer around her neck as she trudged up the hill.
Why was Harriet always in such a bad mood anyway?
She could at least have shown some interest in Emmy’s letters.
Was she dating someone she’d met online?
If so, it didn’t seem to be making her very happy.
She paused to look out over the hills. She hadn’t appreciated this landscape as a girl, but now .
. . Halfway up the hill, she turned to look back at the rambling stone farmhouse she’d grown up in, with its slate roof and sash windows; at the tall pines outlined against the clear sky, at the mulberry tree beside the pond, the old blue tractor standing forgotten by the barn.
She remembered her father driving that tractor, Harriet perched next to him looking smug.
Why didn’t Harriet sell it on? What use was it just rusting away?
The cottage looked older than ever in the autumnal light, the pale gold stone crumbling and flaking in places.
Reminding Joanna that nothing lasted forever.
The turf under her feet was peppered with rabbit burrows and sheep droppings.
On the hill to the south, Owen’s carthorse loped lazily towards the water trough, followed by its gangly foal.
She saw that Owen had lit a bonfire in the next field – the smoke was billowing in great grey gusts, mingling with the fusty autumnal air and settling behind the horses like a sea mist.
Joanna pulled out her phone and called Martin. He’d probably be at work, but . . . She breathed in the scent of the smoky bonfire. It was some distance away but she fancied she could see the flames leaping into life, feel the heat, hear the crackle as the dried undergrowth took.
‘Jo!’ She tried not to hear the hope in his voice.
‘Martin, I was just wondering—’
‘Yes? Hang on a sec.’ She could imagine him going somewhere more private to take the call. And that was another problem with Mulberry Farm Cottage – there was so little privacy. If someone phoned, then everybody knew about it. She smiled. Unless you came up here, that was.
Joanna walked on. A small black-faced sheep bleated at her approach and ducked away. It was one of Owen’s flock. ‘I’ve been thinking about the house,’ she said, when he was back on the line.
‘The house?’
‘Well, I have to live somewhere. So . . .’
‘You want me to put it on the market. You haven’t changed your mind.’
There was no easy way of saying this. ‘We have to, Martin. I need the money. I need to find somewhere to live.’ Then maybe she could also make more of a contribution to the Mulberry Cottage Repair Fund, and perhaps Harriet could give up her typing job at least.
Joanna was at the top of the hill now; she was in better condition than when she’d first arrived home – she was hardly out of breath. It was a rewarding climb. The sea spun out in front of her – a sheet of smooth metallic blue, undulating in small currents where the breeze caught it.
‘Not going so well back in Dorset, is it?’ Martin said.
‘I never said I was staying here forever.’ Joanna walked past the gorse bushes and the wooden beacon and leant on the rail looking out to sea.
To the west was the golden roof of the Cap, even higher than the Beacon; beyond, Doghouse Hill and Seatown; to the east, the ribbon of Chesil Beach threaded out of sight towards Portland Bill.
‘OK, I get the picture.’ There was a pause.
At least he seemed to have accepted how things were, she thought. Joanna took the track which spiralled round and down the cliff, teasing, towards the bay. ‘So, will you do it?’ she asked him.
‘Yeah, I’ll do it.’
‘Thank you.’ Joanna exhaled with relief as she came to the end of the path.
She walked on down the road, next to the stream, bordered by brambles, bulrushes and lichen.
She walked down the steps to the pebbled beach where the fishing boats were stacked up to one side of the stream.
Sat for a moment, on the pebbles, hugging her knees.
Her phone pinged in an email and she instinctively checked it. She must get back, she reminded herself. She’d probably missed lunch, but she should get on with planning the bridge walk in Lisbon; she was leaving in just over a week.
The subject of the email was: Bridge walk – Venice. The sender was someone called Nicholas Tresillion. Joanna was intrigued. Someone had done the walk. Someone had written to her about it.
Dear Joanna Shepherd, she read.
I enjoyed your bridge walk in Venice – an ideal place for it, I suppose. And something in particular interested me. You said we might be surprised at what we saw. And let me tell you, I was . . .