CHAPTER 52
Harriet
Dorset
They walked along the Down towards the village in silence.
The chilly sea breeze made Harriet pull her scarf more tightly around her neck.
She was nervous. She glanced at Owen, who didn’t seem anxious in the least. She felt vaguely reassured.
At least after this confrontation, she would know what was going on.
It was early afternoon, all the chores had been done and a lamb hotpot was gently simmering in the oven at home, Mother on hand to oversee.
They had a couple of hours before the winter light would dim.
It was always better, Harriet reminded herself, to know the worst.
‘Supper when we get back from the lion’s den?’ she asked Owen.
His eyes lit up. ‘I wouldn’t say no.’ Harriet felt a spear of guilt – it must be lonely on that farm on his own; it had been too long since she’d asked him over.
Harriet hadn’t told her mother where they were off to. Just, ‘If I’m not back by six o’clock, help yourself to supper and then turn the oven right down.’ And if she wasn’t back by seven – then what? Phone the police?
When Owen paused at the five-bar gate and looked back at the farmland bathed in the pale red light of the November afternoon – the Down that was his life, Harriet supposed; his livelihood, certainly – she saw an expression in his eyes that she recognised.
It was a gleam of affectionate propriety. ‘You love it, don’t you?’ she said. She leant on the gate and tried to see it through his eyes. It wasn’t hard.
He didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. ‘It took a while, though.’
This surprised Harriet. ‘Where were you before? You never said.’ She remembered Owen and Susan as newly-weds, joining the Warren Down village community.
They’d never interested her – she was still in her teenage years and the young farmhands were much more appealing.
And she had spent so much time with her father, of course, long hours in his study talking, reading, listening to his stories.
Was that why Mother had never loved her as much as she loved Joanna?
Had her mother been jealous? Could she have been lonely all that time?
The thought was surprising – and painful. Harriet frowned.
‘Over to the north-west.’ He pointed.
Over the hills and far away, Harriet thought.
Scott and his camper van slid into her mind and she pushed them firmly out again.
Her chance for a taste of freedom had been and gone, and in reality, it had never been more than a fleeting dream.
She was bound to Warren Down and Mulberry Farm Cottage.
She knew that now. And as for Scott . . .
he hadn’t given her freedom, but he had given her something else that she was grateful for.
An experience of sensuality. A letting-go. Not to mention a reality check.
‘My father had a farm in Marshwood Vale,’ Owen went on.
They turned and stood side by side, watching the sea in the distance.
The waves rose and curled gently in the breeze, soft and grey; the winter tide was receding.
Tranquillity, Harriet thought. She almost forgot about where they were going and why.
A feeling of peace stole over her like a soft silken sheet.
‘You didn’t want to take over your father’s farm then?’ she asked.
That was the way around here, as she knew only too well. The farm got handed down from generation to generation and it was hard to escape – if you wanted to do something else, that was.
Owen opened the gate. ‘It was losing too much money.’ He shoved his hands into the pockets of his forest-green fleecy jacket. ‘My old man didn’t want to bring it into the twentieth century, that was his trouble.’
Harriet followed him through. She understood.
Her father had often talked about this – farming, how it was in the old days and how it was going to be in the future.
Getting bigger, surviving when you were smaller, going organic and making it pay .
. . And although he’d wanted more than anything for Harriet to step into his shoes – he’d always considered her capable of doing anything he could do, she knew that – he’d also known it would be hard for her. Above all, he was a realist.
‘And you couldn’t persuade him to make changes? To bring it up to date?’
He closed the gate behind them and they began to stroll on down the grassy path where Owen’s sheep were grazing in the field.
It felt slightly odd to be with him like this, thought Harriet, but at the same time, companionable.
And this was something that Harriet didn’t want to do alone.
She needed moral support – someone strong by her side.
‘He wouldn’t listen. Matter of fact . . .’ Owen’s firm stride faltered for a moment and Harriet glanced across at him.
‘What?’
‘I wasn’t that interested in farming back then.’
‘You?’ Harriet laughed. ‘You’re joking.’
‘It’s true.’ He grinned back at her. ‘And look at me now.’
Harriet was intrigued. She shot a sidelong glance at the great beefy man walking beside her – a farmer through and through – and she tried to imagine him as a child.
Quiet, probably. And shy. Gentle too, she couldn’t imagine him pulling the wings off wasps or shooting catapults at dogs or anything.
‘What were you interested in?’ she asked him.
He seemed embarrassed. His shoulders hunched up a bit, his hands went deeper into his pockets. ‘Oh, you know . . .’
‘No.’
‘Well . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Reading.’ He gave an apologetic bark of a laugh. ‘And history.’
‘Really?’ Harriet gawped at him. A bit like her father then.
But she’d always thought of Owen as a man of the soil, not of books.
In fact, until he’d come out with all that stuff about the mulberry tree, and she’d realised he’d actually heard of Shakespeare .
. . She’d always admired his practicality.
But his intelligence? The facts he might have at his fingertips?
She’d never thought of him in that way at all.
Until recently, she’d never imagined she could talk to him – about anything.
She’d always been so ready to palm him off with Mother before heading online to Someone Somewhere.
She blushed to think of it. How rude she had been, how unfair.
‘My father thought I was a bit of a wuss.’ Owen shrugged his big shoulders.
‘He wouldn’t have listened to anything I said about farming, no matter how much I’d read up on it.
Too stuck in his ways, he was.’ He sighed.
‘So, I had to sit back and watch them both crumble in front of me – the farm and my old man.’
Harriet wanted to squeeze his arm to comfort him, but she held back; she didn’t really do arm-squeezing, she never had. ‘What happened?’
He shot her a look she couldn’t interpret. His grey-green eyes were calm, though, like the sea. ‘Dad had a stroke. It killed him. And Mum sold the farm and moved into the village.’ He took a deep breath. ‘A year later she died too – lung cancer, and d’you know what?’
‘What?’ Harriet whispered. She hadn’t expected this when they set off on this mission together.
‘She never smoked a cigarette in her whole life.’ He shook his head in bewilderment, a bewilderment that Harriet guessed had been there ever since he lost the both of them. What could she say?
They were silent as they passed the holiday chalets and reached the edge of the village. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last.
‘It was a long time ago.’ He helped her over the stile.
But Harriet was confused. ‘So, why . . . if your father had died, I mean, why did you . . . ?’
‘Why did I take up farming when I didn’t have to?’ Owen straightened.
Harriet didn’t think she’d ever heard him talk so much – especially not in one go.
‘I resisted the idea at first,’ he admitted. ‘I planned on going to university . . .’
University? Crikey, how could she have got him so wrong?
‘Then I met Susan.’
‘Ah.’ Harriet didn’t remember that much about Susan Matthews, only that she was nice enough, if a bit of a gossip.
She remembered her mother saying things, though – that Susan was forever putting Owen down, talking over him, telling him what to do.
Harriet had always interpreted this as meaning Owen had nothing much to say for himself, that he was dull, boring, spineless even.
But perhaps he was just shy – until he got to know people.
Perhaps he had met Susan when he was vulnerable and still grieving the death of his parents.
‘She was the daughter of a farmer too, you see.’
They had reached the lane. To the right was Warren Cove. And to the left . . . As one, they paused.
‘A bit of an irony,’ Harriet agreed. She did see. She looked up at the soft grey winter sky.
‘I thought of how much the old man had wanted me to go into farming,’ Owen said. ‘And there was Susan and her dad, him wanting to lend us the money to get started.’
‘So you bought Warren Farm.’ Timing and circumstances so often dictated people’s pathways and decisions. It was a matter of chance. Fate, if you like. Harriet turned towards the village. She had to do this. There was no going back. She straightened her shoulders and jutted her chin.
‘It took me a while to make something of it,’ he said.
Harriet knew that. She had been a first-hand witness.
But he had done it. He had made the farm successful.
And whenever times were hard for them at Mulberry Farm Cottage, Owen was there, helping her out, giving advice about the pigs, buying off the land to enable them to survive.
‘But you did make something of it,’ she said. ‘You’ve done really well.’
He began to speak so low that Harriet had to lean forwards to hear the words. ‘Only Susan didn’t stick around long enough to see it,’ he said.
Did he still feel bitter? Did he still love her?
‘More fool her,’ she said.
They began to walk up the lane. Suddenly Harriet lost her nerve. She stopped. ‘Will you come to the door with me?’ she asked him.
He laughed. ‘’Course I will.’
She was consumed with relief. ‘Thanks, Owen,’ she said. ‘You’re a real . . .’ She hesitated. What was he exactly?
He put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed, like she should have done to him fifteen minutes ago. ‘What are friends for?’ he asked.
Friends. She grinned back at him as they reached her prowler’s front gate.
The moment of truth was fast approaching.
But, yes, of course. Friends. Owen was right.
That was what they were. What they always could have been if she’d ever given him the chance.
And it was funny, thought Harriet, that she’d simply never realised this before.