Chapter 19
There was nothing that I could settle to other than keeping an eye on Buddy and going repeatedly over in my mind what had occurred since I’d arrived back at Fernside after the most thrilling conversation with Helen in The Greenman.
Under different circumstances, such as those where I hadn’t been confronted by my beau, Constance’s only living relative and now the potential barrier to my blissful future, I would have been celebrating in style, booking a valuation and searching for a local solicitor, but I couldn’t continue with any of that now.
‘What’s the matter with you, Buddy?’ I frowned at the circling dog, when I came out of my reverie and noticed he was looking pleadingly towards the back door. ‘Ah,’ I guessed, and quickly jumped up to let him out. ‘Go on then. And no peeing on your aunt’s lovely green lawn. Or any of the plants!’
He shot off round the side of the house, and I hoped he was heading to where James had said he would go, rather than making a bid for freedom. It wouldn’t bode well for us if I lost his dog, would it? The way James had fussed over and spoken to him suggested he thought the world of him.
‘Wait for me,’ I called to Buddy as I slipped on my shoes and followed him.
He’d found me before I spotted him and was looking much happier about life when he came tearing back, so I assumed he’d done what he needed to.
I’d just started to tell him what a good dog he was when he ran off again, but this time to the garden gate.
A loud woof alerted me to the fact that someone was there.
I knew it couldn’t be James because he hadn’t been gone anywhere near long enough.
‘Hello, you,’ came the sound of Rick’s voice. ‘What are you doing here, you daft dog? Come on, let me through.’ He appeared around the side of the house with the broken for sale board in his arms. ‘Hey, Tilly. This was on the drive; I almost ran over it. What’s going on?’
I realised then that James had doubtless been the one to pull it up and cart it back.
‘Is this a friend of yours?’ I asked, rather than answer Rick’s question as Buddy capered about around him.
‘Yeah,’ he said, as he leant the board against the house wall and gave Buddy a fuss. ‘Kind of. I mean, if it’s who I think it is, I haven’t seen him in a long time, but we were briefly acquainted once.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I see. So, you also know James, then?’
‘Same as the hound,’ he shrugged. ‘Our paths have occasionally crossed in the past. But never mind that, what has happened? Someone said they saw an ambulance turning onto the drive earlier. Is Constance, okay? And actually, what is her nephew doing here?’
‘She slipped over on the jetty,’ I told him, and his hands flew to his face. ‘She seemed fine, but James called an ambulance just in case and the paramedics wanted to take her to get checked over.’
‘So, nothing broken or bleeding, then?’
‘Not as far as we could tell,’ I said, feeling suddenly emotional and a bit wobbly.
‘And what about you?’ he asked tenderly, rather than pursue the James topic. ‘Are you okay?’
Buddy came over, sat on my feet and looked up at me with his big brown eyes. James had big brown eyes, too.
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ I said shakily, as I rubbed Buddy’s domed head and tried to smile. ‘I’m not the one who fell over, am I?’
‘Perhaps not,’ Rick frowned. ‘But you do look a bit pale, Tilly. Let me make you a tea and you can tell me what’s going on.’
I felt a lump form in my throat.
‘Don’t be nice to me,’ I told him. ‘I can’t handle that today. Not from you or anyone.’
‘Come on,’ he said, and the three of us headed inside.
I sat quietly at the table while Rick bustled about and made me a mug of very sweet tea and watched me eat a couple of plain chocolate digestives. They were Constance’s favourite, so I made a note to replace them on my next trip to the store.
‘So,’ he said, once I’d almost finished the tea, ‘now you’re full of sugar, do you feel up to explaining? What is James doing here? I’m dying to know.’
‘Before we get into that,’ I said rather crossly, the sugar having obviously made a difference to my recovery from the shock of it all, ‘I want to know why you’ve never once mentioned to me that Constance has a nephew?
’ Rick puffed out his cheeks. ‘I only very recently discovered she had an estranged relative somewhere out in the world and today I came back from a trip to the pub to find him playing her piano!’
‘Is he good?’ Rick asked. ‘I bet—’
‘Rick!’
There was a time and place for his silliness and here and now wasn’t it.
‘Sorry.’
‘So, why has James never come up in any of our conversations?’
‘Because when Constance and James had this monumental falling out a while back, she banned all talk of him,’ Rick said sadly.
‘Given her advancing age and the fact that she’s on her own here, I did try and talk to her about it, but she said that if I persisted, or if I talked to anyone else about it, she’d find another gardener and it would be the end of our relationship, too. ’
‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘She was adamant that James was banished then.’
‘You could say that. You know how stubborn she can be and I thought if I lost the gardening gig here, then I’d never have eyes on her. You might have realised, we don’t share the same hairdresser.’
‘But she wouldn’t have known if you’d told me about him on the quiet,’ I tutted. ‘You could have filled me in on any number of occasions when she was out of earshot.’
‘I could never break a promise to Constance,’ Rick insisted.
He sounded so genuinely appalled by my suggestion that I supposed I had to take him at his word.
‘And anyway, as they no longer had anything to do with one another, I didn’t think there was any need to talk about him.
More than that in fact … because it happened a while ago, James hasn’t crossed my mind since you arrived, so it was never an issue. ’
I wasn’t sure I believed that Rick hadn’t thought about him at all. He was as prone to admiring a handsome man as the rest of us, but I couldn’t question his love for Constance. It felt more likely that his forgetfulness about James resulted from that.
‘Well, as he’s back now, I’m sure we’re allowed to mention him,’ I said. ‘Do you know what it was that they fell out over?’
‘Not in any detail. Constance has never gone into it. She’s quite a private person where family is concerned…’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘But I always assumed it was something to do with a conversation about selling the woods. The timing seems to fit, though it wasn’t all that long ago that Constance asked me if I knew anyone who could put a board up for her, so she took a while after James became taboo to act on her decision.’
‘I see…’ I said, considering all of this information.
‘I never knew James well,’ Rick continued. ‘He went to some posh private school and was only around in the holidays. I was really shocked when this ruckus first happened though, and he just walked away and disappeared from Constance’s life.’
Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who had assumed James had abandoned his aunt.
‘I don’t think the situation was quite as cut and dried as that, Rick.’
‘Oh?’
‘I don’t know the details,’ I said, as the conversation I’d had with Constance about monkeys and organ grinders popped into my head, ‘but I don’t think he’d completely disappeared.’
‘Well, that’s something, I suppose,’ Rick accepted. ‘And now he’s back,’ he added, with a nod to Buddy who was hovering in the hope of biscuit crumbs, ‘perhaps things will turn out all right, after all.’
‘Not for me.’ I swallowed.
‘How come?’
‘James has told me that the woods are no longer up for sale.’
Rick’s mouth fell open. ‘You’re kidding? No, of course you’re not.’
‘No,’ I said shudderingly. ‘Of course I’m not.’
‘And has Constance confirmed this?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She hasn’t. She was outside while we were… getting acquainted, so I don’t know what she knows he’s said at this point. And now the pair of them are at the hospital.’
‘Given that James went with her, perhaps he’s trying to patch things up between them. Though that’s probably not much consolation for you right now…’
As much as I loved the thought of James and Constance restoring their relationship, I knew that wouldn’t bode well for me.
But in spite of that, I wasn’t going to wish for their continued estrangement, just to get my own way over buying the woods, assuming Constance disagreed with James’s desire not to sell.
And of course, if Constance and I did now forge ahead without James’s blessing, that would doubtless sever familial ties again and end my relationship with James, romantic or otherwise. That is, if we still had one…
‘Tilly?’
‘Um…’
‘Are you okay?’
‘Not really,’ I said dully, while trying not to cry. ‘I was just thinking about my lost future.’
Rick didn’t know it, but I wasn’t only considering the woods. James was someone I could see myself being truly happy with for a very long time, maybe for ever, or he had been until a couple of hours ago.
‘Oh, you poor love,’ Rick said sympathetically and gave my hand a squeeze. ‘I’ll make another brew.’
I sat nursing my mug and further mulling things over.
While Rick had made the tea, he’d told me how James used to help his mum in the nursery when he was back from school.
It saddened me to think he’d just finished his A-levels and would have been able to spend more time with her than when he’d been away at school when he lost her.
‘That is sad,’ said Rick, when I aired my thoughts. ‘But it doesn’t justify him interfering over the woods. Though perhaps that’s why he wants to hang on to them, because of the connection to his mum…’
That thought made me feel even worse about wanting to take them out of the Clarke family. Given that James had said the greatest gift his mum had given him was her passion for the outdoors then it was perfectly logical that he wanted to keep close the place where he had felt most connected to her.