To Mend a Broken Wing, page 7
“Why are those cows all fucking staring at us?”
We’d begun the tour by broadly surveying the grounds from the elevated position of the house. I’d pointed out riveting landmarks such as the chapel, the lake, and the distant cricket club, then taken him towards the village. Instead of winding our way down the drive, I chose the more scenic shortcut across the fields. Not recommended in the dead of night after several drinks at the Rossingley Arms—I still had the scars to prove it.
“Which cows?”
“Those huge fucking brown ones, over there!”
We were skirting the edge of Rob’s dairy farm, crossing a wooden stile that cut through one of his pastures. There was zero chance of bumping into him at this time of day, which mostly felt like a good thing, and yes, we had attracted the attention of several of his charges, who had inquisitively edged towards us.
“Because that’s what cows do. They’re Ayrshires, by the way. That farmer has around two hundred and fifty of them. The other dairy farm beyond has sixty Friesians. The milk yield is—”
“When?” he interrupted.
I frowned. “When what?”
“When did I ask?”
Sometimes, bad behaviour was better ignored. Childcare college had taught me that. Thus, cursing my employer under my breath, I ploughed on.
“I suppose if the only thing you did was eat grass all day, you’d find us desperately fascinating too. That’s why they stare.”
One cow took a couple of definitive paces towards us, and cows being cows, five or six others all stopped grazing and copied.
“Is that electric fence switched on?” Noah quickened his step. Oh my God, spot the townie.
“Maybe? If the farmer remembered?” I shrugged casually. “Why don’t you touch it and find out?”
He gave me a look. “I’m not that fucking stupid.”
“Anyhow,” I carried on, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. “I wouldn’t worry about cows, not unless they’ve just calved, which this lot haven’t. I’d be more concerned about the fucking huge bull behind us. Especially with you dressed in that bright red sweater.”
To give him credit, Noah avoided the majority of the cowpats as he legged it to the next stile. I very much doubted I’d gained myself a new mate though. In the distance, Rob’s placid longhorn lounged under his favourite oak, not giving a shit that two blokes wandered through his pasture.
“Have you really lived here all your life?” Noah asked, not hiding his incredulous tone. I’d filled ten minutes of our time together outlining a potted history of the village and my own unremarkable footnote within it.
“Yes, my parent’s house is about half a mile in that direction.” I pointed to my left. “I went away to college in Bristol for three years, but then I came back.”
“Why the fuck?”
We’d left the fields of grazing livestock behind us, much to Noah’s relief, and hit the lane taking us into the village. I was on the cusp of pointing out another tranche of enthralling local landmarks, such as an ancient gravestone marked with a skull and crossbones (disappointingly, not a pirate burial but a plague victim) and the row of terraced cottages purportedly the longest stretch of uninterrupted thatched roofing south of the M25. If we had time, I had plans to show him the tiny cottage belonging to Mrs Hannon, aged 109, the ninety-eighth oldest person alive in the UK, although that ranking tended to be rather fluid, especially after a cold snap. So, all things considered, his question came across as a tad rude, but seeing as it was the first time he’d spoken since I’d pulled the bull trick, I let it pass.
“Uh, because I like it here?”
Reaching a fork in the road, I nudged him in the direction of the village green. His eyes strayed down to my deformed left arm and just as quickly back up again. So, yes, that might have something to do with it too. With so many oddities inhabiting this village, a man with a withered arm barely registered. Especially when he’d been here all his life. Whereas in town, at college, or on the bus, every stranger and his dog considered it their divine right to stare or ask about it. Like this guy. I might as well get it over with.
“No, it doesn’t hurt, and no, it’s not an injury or cancer. I was born this way. The medical term is phocomelia. No, I know you haven’t heard of it; no one has. Yes, the rest of me is normal. And no, I can’t paint watercolours with my feet. Nor do I ever find ‘can I give you a hand’ jokes amusing, no matter how well I know that person.”
I recited the drill in a dull monotone, hating every second but knowing from bitter experience it was the best way of shutting someone up. No doubt it endeared me to Noah even less.
“All right, keep yer hair on. You brought it up, not me.”
One of the young farmers chugged past in a shiny new John Deere, the flash bastard, and he threw me a cheery wave. Noah narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
“Who’s that?”
“Oh, that’s Rich, a guy who farms Fernlea, over on the east of the estate. Wheat, barley, and oil seed rape mostly.”
Crawling along in a clapped-out Mini behind the tractor was Mrs Laycock, the school secretary. We waved to each other as well.
“Do you know everyone?”
“Yeah, of course I do. I’ve been here my whole life.”
“Are there any shops?”
“There’s a bread van.” I felt a desperate urge to defend my home, to justify to this urbanite my own decision to stay in such a backwater. “Sharon delivers every day, pretty much any sort of bread. As long as it is bread and not a cake. You won’t catch her out with banana bread, for instance. Because in her book, that’s a cake. She scratches you off her Christmas card list if you ask her about cakes.”
I frowned, trying to make Rossingley sound vaguely appealing to this miserable out of towner but fully aware it made me come across as a local yokel. Fuck it, I was a local yokel. A proud one.
“Eddie, the milkman, also brings cheese and cream if you order it a week in advance. And if you slip him an extra fiver, he’ll drop off some fags too. Honestly, we’ve got everything. Mick, the mechanic who owns the garage, mends hedge trimmers. Hairdryers and vacuum cleaners, too, as long as they aren’t Dysons. He doesn’t do Dysons.”
He harrumphed so I gamely carried on.
“The tractor rally at Easter isn’t to be missed. The highlight of the Rossingley calendar. And there’s the pub, of course.”
“I should fucking think so. Living in this bleeding backwater, you’d need somewhere to drown yourself in alcohol.”
As if on cue, the mobile library trundled past and came to a halt in the defibrillator layby.
“See? There’s a whole vanful of entertainment, right there,” I pointed out. “As long as Barbara Cartland and James Patterson are your jam. And if racy historical romance or thrillers prove too much and your heart packs up, then in that converted red phone box—you see where there are green stickers? We’ve successfully campaigned for a…”
“This whole village is dull as fuck,” Noah declared and thrust his hands in his pockets. Conversation over.
*
“I’M NOT ENTIRELY sure he’s going to stay,” I confided in Lucien on Friday. “He’s…um…not best pleased to be here.” That was putting it mildly.
“We must remember, darling, Rome wasn’t built in a day.” He shot me a knowing look. “Partly because they didn’t have us mixing the cement, did they? You’re doing a marvellous job with him. He totally hides from Jay and myself. At least he talks to you. And don’t pretend to me he’s not a pretty addition to the scenery.”
A blush heated my cheeks—being a ginger frequently annoyed me on many levels. Yeah, so maybe I had noticed that Noah’s eyes, a diabolical shade of brown, were fringed by equally diabolical thick eyelashes. And that he had inherited his dad’s almost arrogant way of taunting you with them, practically spoiling for a fight or a fuck. The latter, I could so get on board with.
“Lucien Duchamps-Avery,” admonished Freddie from his sprawl on the kitchen sofa. (A catwalk model loitering around the house was an occasional perk of the job.) “You’re a married man and father. You have tubs of lip gloss older than Toby and Noah.”
“I may have you thrown in the tower for that comment, darling.” Lucien pouted at him. “Just making an innocent observation; that’s all. And somebody around here has to keep their eyes peeled for a suitable young man for Toby.”
Another flush surged up my neck, so my face now annoyingly matched the colour of my hair. I already had a man, sort of, although his suitability was questionable.
“I don’t think Noah’s gay,” I mumbled. “And I certainly haven’t got the guts to ask him.”
“I’m not sure he is either,” Lucien concurred. “But we can live in hope.” He frowned slightly. “Under that stubborn, angry exterior, I think there is a very big heart straining to get out. Just like his father. He’s craving love and affection; everyone can see that. I have a feeling he hasn’t ever experienced much of either.”
“I agree,” Freddie interjected. “He wouldn’t have gone to France otherwise, to track down Guillaume, whatever he’s told himself his reasons were.”
Lucien gave me one of his quick naughty grins. “I promise you, Toby, do that little shimmying walk of yours in front of him, and he’ll be rolling over, asking you to tickle his underbelly in no time.”
I conceded Lucien might have a point regarding the love and affection part, but I didn’t think he’d be craving it from me anytime soon. Or from any of us, to be honest. When Noah erected his sky-high barrier topped with barbed wire around himself, it had been with the express intention of keeping all of us out.
Sensing my discomfort, Freddie pitched in. “Toby, have you asked Noah about the cricket? Perhaps he’ll feel more at ease if he gets involved in something physical, instead of skulking in his room or wandering the estate on his own. You never know, joining everyone in a team sport might thaw him a little.”
I applauded Freddie’s optimism. “Yes, I have. And he wanted to know why everyone keeps asking him about the cricket.”
“More importantly, does he play?” Lucien demanded. “Because Jay has tickets to watch a rugby match at Twickenham with you-know-who in a couple of weeks. If we don’t have an answer by then, I’m going to find myself having to be vaguely pleasant to his Second-Best Man every Monday evening. I’ll have to offer him a heterosexual pint of real ale, with a stupid made-up name like Badger’s Arse, then feign an interest in televised snooker while he spreads his testosterone all over my cream sofas and monopolises my husband.”
“It’s good for you, Luce,” laughed Freddie. “Anyhow, if you want him to clear off, you could always come downstairs in that lacy baby doll number. It kept him away for six months last time. Poor guy was petrified.
“Probably best not to parade it in front of our newest house guest, though,” he added thoughtfully. “Sounds like you need to break him in gently. Where is he anyhow?”
The two days Noah had been with us, as Freddie had observed, he’d spent hiding out in his room or trudging around the estate, hands thrust deep in his pockets and his eyes glued to the ground. Kind of avoiding everyone, including the herd of cows. The cool, tortured look suited him, but God, it must be wearying keeping it up all day every day. Even baby Orlando’s charms had failed to coax a smile out of him.
With work commitments and busy lives to return to, the time came for Marcel and Guillaume to say au revoir and regretfully fly back to France. Putting a brave face on it, Guillaume suggested that without him hanging around, his son might feel more at ease and come out of his shell. No one was holding their breath.
Noah didn’t exactly give them a jolly send off. As they loaded their bags into the boot of Reuben’s car, he could barely bring himself to look at his father. To make it worse, he ignored Guillaume’s outstretched handshake, shoving his own hands into the pockets of his jeans instead and kicking at the gravel drive. Simple good manners cost nothing; if he’d been my mother’s son, she’d have pulled him up on it, not caring who was listening. But everyone, including Lucien, let it go. Despite wanting to grab him by the shoulders and give him a jolly good shake, I kept my mouth shut too.
Attempting to make it up to his oldest friend, Reuben hung off Guillaume’s neck and reminded him he was wonderful, which was cute, and hopefully gave sulky Noah something to chew on. Marcel, taking the initiative into his own hands, issued Noah with a firm hug and a promise to call the house every day to see how he was faring, which Noah accepted with the charm and grace of a lamppost.
*
EVEN THOUGH HE wasn’t exactly a great conversationalist at breakfast—and by that, I mean he drank his tea and munched toast in stony silence—Noah’s presence or absence was noticeable, nonetheless. And at breakfast next morning, the Noah-sized hole was difficult to miss. After packing the kids off to school and putting Orlando down for a midmorning nap, ten o’clock came and went with still with no sign of him, so I went upstairs to investigate. No surprises, the fucker had repaid everyone’s kindness by doing a runner.
“Okay, let’s not panic.” Lucien wrung his hands together, doing an excellent impression of a man on the verge of panicking. Most likely, he was imagining breaking Noah’s disappearance to Marcel and Guillaume. “He can’t have gone far.”
His optimism was misplaced. If the guy had set off late last night when we’d all been tucked up in bed, he could be halfway across the world by now.
Lucien immediately began thumbing into his phone. “I’ll ask Will to put a message out onto the farming WhatsApp group. It’s not yet lunchtime. If he left early this morning, then someone is sure to have spotted him.”
I endured half an hour of Lucien alternately drumming on the table and pacing the kitchen before he received a reply. He used the time to inform Guillaume that his newly minted son had gone AWOL, and from the tense expression on his face, the news didn’t go down too well.
“I know, Gui, I know,” he repeated. “I’ll do everything I can. I promise. We’re on it already.”
More nodding. “I’ll track him down,” he promised again with feeling. A pause. “Gosh, don’t be ridiculous. He wouldn’t have stolen from us. Any rate, I don’t care if he has pinched something. In some ways, I sincerely hope he has. It means he won’t starve or freeze to death.”
He put the phone back on the table. “This is merely a stumble in the road, Toby. Let’s remember that.” He sighed. “That poor boy. Gosh, I hope we find him. For Guillaume’s sake too. He’s beside himself.”
Personally, I thought that poor boy needed a kick up his backside. Ungrateful toerag.
Turning up out of the blue and having all these kind men bending over backwards to help him out? He had a charming way of thanking them for their efforts.
Lucien’s phone chirped. Uncle Will reported that one of the farmhands had spotted a guy fitting Noah’s description trudging along the Allenmouth road at around seven this morning. He’d swerved to avoid hitting him in the fog. Lucien thanked him, hung up, and sprang into action. Or rather, sprang me into action.
“Right, Toby. Why don’t I stay here and look after the children? I need you to drive to Allenmouth and start searching for Noah.”
“Me?” I couldn’t recall a clause in my manny contract mentioning I had to go running after miserable grumpy northerners, no matter how good their arses looked in stonewashed denim.
“Yes, you, darling. I’m…um… It’s incredibly hard to believe, I know, but I’m possibly not quite his cup of tea. He’s much less likely to run if he sees you.”
I wasn’t so sure. “I can’t say we exactly hit it off either.”
Lucien handed me the car keys. “Toby, you are the only person in this household who managed to cajole Arthur to try broccoli.” His voice had taken on a familiar fluttery persuasive tone, his command-wrapped-up-as-a-suggestion voice. “If anyone can coax Noah back, it’s you.”
“Tricking a five-year-old into eating his veggies is hardly in the same skill set as luring a sullen young man back to a house full of people he clearly detests!”
Not to be deterred, he wrapped his arms about himself. “Goodness me, it’s so cold out today. Don’t you think it’s cold, Toby? Did Noah have a decent coat?”
I shrugged as if I’d scarcely glanced at the moody vision of hotness that had glowered at all of us for the past week, as if I couldn’t possibly recollect any of his attire. Truth was, I’d studied him so hard I could probably recite his entire meagre wardrobe. “Um…I think he maybe had one of those thin quilted jacket things?”
“Gosh, so not waterproof either. Poor, poor man. It’s hat, scarf, and gloves weather today.”
I glanced out across the frosty lawns. Yes, a little chilly.
“I’m praying he’s stayed in Allenmouth,” Lucien continued, “and not taken it upon himself to hitch to Bristol. I’ll send Lee and Joe on the hunt too. They haven’t met Noah, but they know what Guillaume looks like. There can’t be that many young men as gorgeous and unhappy as Noah wandering aimlessly around Allenmouth.”
He lingered on the gorgeous and unhappy bit, the bugger.
“The poor man is in desperate need of a friend, Toby, don’t you think?”
Quite possibly, but Noah wouldn’t choose the plain-and-ginger variety.
With his mind made up, Lucien went for the kill, dangling his car keys between us like a bag of gold sovereigns. “Naturally, you had better take my car. That way, you’ll leave me with the Land Rover so I can pick up the twins later.”
With a pained sigh, I agreed. Sixth rule of Rossingley: save time, see things Lucien’s way. Taking the proffered keys, I reminded myself my agreement had everything to do with tracking down that grumpy, ungrateful git and absolutely nothing to do with the opportunity to drive Lucien’s fabulous Aston Martin. Nothing at all.
