CHAPTER 60
Harriet
Dorset
It was Christmas Eve and Harriet was in Big Barn, unearthing the trestle table in readiness for a Christmas lunch that would include Owen, who had nowhere else to go, of course, and Harriet’s new half-brother.
From the doorway, she could see her mother and Henry wandering through the orchard.
Mother was well wrapped up in a big old fur coat and scarf, her hand tucked into the arm of her prodigal son.
In the past weeks, Harriet had watched them get closer and closer.
They were walking slowly, heads bent together, still catching up on the major parts of their lives they’d spent apart, she guessed.
Harriet was beginning to realise that, like it or not, Henry was now a permanent fixture in their lives.
They were like two peas, Harriet thought.
She shifted a stack of chairs that were in the way and started to drag out the trestle.
They had enough chairs and tables to accommodate an army; they needed them for the café which would be opening again in a few months.
She paused – it was too heavy for her to do it alone.
And she watched the way the two of them walked.
They shared the same physicality. Henry wasn’t frail – he was still only in his fifties after all – and, she chuckled, she knew from chasing him down the lane that he wasn’t unfit.
But they had the same slender frame and similar gestures too.
‘You’re needed,’ she told the trestle table as she stood, hands on hips, assessing it.
Christmas. She’d made the pudding two weeks ago – according to tradition, she’d steamed three bowls in her mother’s ancient steamer: one for Christmas, one for Easter and the other for any old high day or holiday.
She’d made the cake a few days ago – it was called ‘last-minute Christmas cake’, which was particularly apt this year, and given it the usual seed and nut glaze rather than the more traditional marzipan and royal icing.
She’d collected the turkey this morning, a woodland free-range bird reared by one of Owen’s contacts in North Dorset, wrapped the presents and, together with Joanna, had collected the greenery and decorated the tree.
‘It seems like a real Christmas again this year,’ her sister had said. And although she was rather enjoying having a moan about all the extra work, Harriet had to agree.
She glanced again at Mother and Henry in the orchard as they walked towards her.
How much did she mind the togetherness? She wasn’t sure.
Mother had changed. But arguably for the better.
She seemed much happier. And she’d started baking again, helping in the house, showing an interest in the domestic side of things.
Perhaps she would even help Harriet in the café in the spring.
Perhaps Harriet wouldn’t struggle to do it all alone – as she usually did.
It was hard to mind. The trestle table could do with a good clean and polish.
Harriet scraped at a particularly stubborn stain with her fingernail.
Her mother seemed restored almost by Henry.
She dusted away a cobweb. As if part of Mother’s life had been returned to her.
Harriet tried to imagine what it would feel like – for a child you thought you had lost forever to suddenly appear once again when you’d lost all hope.
It must be amazing. It was as if through Henry, Mother had at last found peace.
To Harriet’s surprise, she blinked away a tear.
What was happening to her? There were always, she supposed, so many mixed emotions at Christmas.
Harriet took a scouring cloth and dunked it in the bucket of water she had brought with her for the purpose.
She began to scrub the table. Christmas was also a time when funds were at a traditional low, and this year was no exception.
Joanna’s contributions had helped no end, but there were now two extra mouths to feed and apart from the odd bottle of wine, Henry hadn’t made any offers she couldn’t refuse.
It seemed harder than ever to keep warm in the cottage with all the draughts and lack of insulation.
They needed new windows as well as a new roof, and the back door had warped alarmingly in the last few weeks.
Yesterday, Owen had brought round some big terracotta pots and urns to put outside Big Barn and the cottage, ready for the summer’s fun and games, as he put it.
‘They’re lovely.’ Harriet had trailed her fingers along the rough terracotta. ‘How much do I owe you?’
‘Don’t be daft.’ He hefted them into place as if they weighed nothing. ‘They were part of a job lot.’
‘Thanks, Owen.’
He straightened. ‘I was thinking maybe geraniums.’
‘Good idea.’ It would give the café more of a continental feel and geraniums would last until October if they were lucky. Kept in the old greenhouse, they’d survive year after year. Harriet sighed. But would she?
‘I’ll bring some potting compost round later.’ He was watching her appraisingly as if he might say more.
‘All right. Thanks, Owen.’ She waited, but he just grinned and walked away.
What, she wondered, had he been thinking?
It had been kind of him to give that painting to Joanna, but she hoped he wasn’t holding out any hope that her wayward sister might be harbouring any romantic ideas about him – it seemed most unlikely.
After all, Joanna lived in another world most of the time.
It had proved to be an interesting world – all that stuff about their ancestor and the girl next door had been quite the revelation – but it wasn’t rooted in the reality of life as Harriet knew it.
Mother and Henry were in the farmyard now, chatting and laughing.
They shared the same sense of humour too; they seemed to have quickly become inseparable.
He was still staying in the holiday let.
But how long would it be until he wanted to move in here?
Harriet shook her head. He was nice enough, this new brother of theirs.
But he’d move in over her dead body. Since Father died, this had been an all-female household, and she planned to keep it that way. Father . . .
Harriet was still trying to come to terms with what she had learnt about her parents’ marriage, and more to the point, what she had learnt about her beloved father.
In a way, she had always known and so it was something of a relief to let it emerge fully into her consciousness.
Her father had been far from perfect – worse, he had been violent towards her mother, the woman he was supposed to care for and love.
Even though it had been only the once, even though he had been shocked and disappointed at what he must have seen as her deception, it was still hard to forgive.
And yet Harriet knew she had to forgive him.
He meant too much to her and the man she’d known and loved had been a gentle one.
Could that man and the man she’d seen with his hands around her mother’s throat be one and the same?
Something had stopped her seeing it; her love for him had made it impossible for her to consciously acknowledge.
But now, she must accept it; she must see him as he truly was, flaws and all.
As for her mother . . . she’d made mistakes too, and been punished for them.
Father had consciously excluded Harriet’s mother from so much of his life; Harriet supposed he’d never properly forgiven her.
But he had still asked Harriet to look after her.
He had still cared enough to do that. Harriet pulled the trestle table further out into the barn.
What her father had done was very wrong.
Nevertheless . . . Harriet sighed. How could she stop loving him?
‘Anything I can do to help?’
Harriet realised that her mother had now gone into the cottage and that Henry was standing in the doorway of Big Barn watching her, a look of compassion on his face. How much had Mother told him? Everything, she supposed.
‘Oh, thanks.’ There was so much, Harriet thought, to get used to. ‘Care to give me a hand with this trestle?’ she asked. It was a two-man job and no one else was around.
They struggled outside with it and to her surprise, Henry grasped the hand brush from the bucket of cleaning things and started brushing down the legs and the underside of dust, cobwebs and grit that had accumulated in the winter months, since it had been put away.
She’d never taken him for a practical man, but then again, what did she know about him, really?
She’d hardly spoken to him without Mother being around – until now.
‘I never apologised properly,’ he said, as they stood regarding one another on either side of the table. ‘For allowing you to think you were being followed by some stalker. I really am so sorry, Harriet.’
‘That’s OK.’ Though he had already apologised – several times.
But those prowler days seemed far away now.
As did the days of dating online. Harriet didn’t regret her time on Someone Somewhere and, most especially, she didn’t regret meeting Scott.
He had definitely changed her life. She had seen what was possible and she had seen what she had, what she was.
She supposed she was feeling, if not exactly contented, then at least more accepting of her lot.
And besides, for some reason, she didn’t feel so lonely anymore.
‘And about the typing . . .’
‘Yes?’ Harriet had been wondering about this. ‘Why did you employ me to do that?’ After all, she sent the pages back to a PO box; it hadn’t involved any personal contact that could have enabled him to get closer to their family.
‘When I came here and looked around’ – he gestured to the farmyard, the old blue tractor, the hen coop, the barns – ‘it all seemed a bit . . .’ He hesitated.