Another Life: Escape to Cornwall with this gripping, emotional, page-turning read. Sara MacDonald

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      ‘Shouldn’t Gabby be home by now?’ he asked Nell.

      ‘Any moment, I should think.’ Nell was getting a casserole out of the Aga and peering at it. ‘The last helicopter is about seven or seven-thirty. Is Matt doing the milking?’

      ‘No; Darren. Matt’s been out at Mendely with me all day today, he’s whacked, I’ve sent him home to Dora.’

      ‘Oh dear,’ Nell said, ‘I’m sure to bump into Dora in the village.’

      ‘He’s not as young as he used to be …’ Nell and Charlie intoned together. ‘I hope your Charlie isn’t taking advantage.’ They grinned at each other.

      ‘I’m dreading him retiring,’ Charlie said, reaching for a towel. ‘The younger lads just don’t have the interest or staying power.’

      Nell finished stirring the casserole and put it back in the oven. ‘You can’t blame them, Charlie; low wages, long days in all weathers.’

      ‘I don’t,’ Charlie said. ‘I just can’t afford to pay more. You’d think the incentive of a tied cottage would be attractive, but not in the middle of nowhere, it seems. I look after those cottages, too. You should see the state of the accommodation John Tresider offers his workers. His houses have to be seen to be believed. It gives all farmers a bad name.’

      ‘Then it’s a disgrace,’ Nell said crossly. ‘There’s no excuse, they got a huge grant last year. His father was as bad. He couldn’t keep his workers either. I’m surprised the environmental health people haven’t been round to condemn them.’

      ‘It’s only a matter of time.’

      This was a conversation Nell and Charlie often had in different guises, and both fell into comfortably.

      The wind hit the window in a sudden squall.

      ‘I wonder where Gabby’s got to. It’s getting late and there’s a gale coming in. I’m just going out to check on Darren.’

      ‘Charlie?’ Nell knew Charlie liked everyone safely in before dusk and as Gabby did not like driving in the dark. She was not often late. ‘I do think it’s about time Gabby had a new car. She’s starting to go further afield now and that old Peugeot is not reliable. She really needs something with a large boot to hold paintings.’

      Charlie was irritated because he knew Nell was right.

      ‘Nell, I can’t afford to buy a new car at the moment.’

      ‘Look, Charlie, Gabby puts everything she earns into the farm. If she didn’t, she could afford a new car for herself. Doesn’t that strike you as rather unfair?’

      ‘No, Nell. It’s how we survive. We have to pull together like you and Dad did. Gabby only has to ask, you know that, she doesn’t go without.’

      Nell stared at him. Sometimes it was hard to swallow her frustration or stifle a sharp retort. It did no good. It had alienated Ted and it alienated Charlie. Once entrenched, neither would budge an inch, and she was never sure whether it was obstinacy or misplaced pride.

      In her marriage to Ted she had perfected a duplicity which she guiltily maintained over the years of her marriage. Like Gabby, she had pooled her income back into the farm willingly, but she had withheld a small amount each month for her own needs. She had bitterly resented having to ask Ted for things from money she herself had earnt.

      When she had first married she had been nineteen and in those days she was unable to open a bank account until she was twenty-one. For her twentieth birthday she had desperately wanted a portable radio. Her parents had sent her a large cheque so that she could choose her own. Ted had cashed the cheque, but when she found the radio she wanted he refused to let her have the money. He told her it was a sheer waste to spend that much on a radio. He bought her a cheap plastic one and the rest went towards a new bailer.

      Nell never forgot or forgave him. The meanness froze her heart. Her mother coming to stay and seeing the cheap radio had been quietly livid. Her generous and liberal parents never made the same mistake again. They had, all their lives, schooled Nell for a career and independence. Even as a child Nell had always had a small allowance and it taught her to budget. From the age of sixteen she had never had to ask anyone for anything. The marriage her parents had thoroughly disapproved of had been a shock.

      Nell, on the rebound, had married young, full of hope, captured by a good-looking face; seduced by a long hot Cornish summer and Ted’s single-minded intent which she had mistaken for devotion.

      When she became twenty-one she had persuaded Ted it would be a good idea to have a joint account so that she could write cheques on behalf of the farm. Eventually, as she was doing the farm accounts, he had reluctantly agreed, but had made their joint account a business account, while keeping the personal account in his own name, thus keeping control of all domestic transactions. Even then he had perused each statement for evidence of female waste or frippery, but when he saw none he had relaxed.

      What he did not know was that Nell often asked to be paid in cash for her restoring, and this money she placed in her own secret account.

      ‘Good girl,’ her friend Olive had said. ‘Every woman should have a running-away account.’

      From then onwards it was Nell’s R.A. account. When Ted died and she saw the amount in his personal bank accounts, she stopped feeling guilty. She just felt sad at a lifetime of endemic meanness. They had had to work so hard all their marriage, then when they could both have slowed down and relaxed, enjoyed what they had, he had let her go on believing they owed the bank money.

      He had not even been able to enjoy the money himself, just given himself an early heart attack. She realized she had never really ‘done the accounts’ for Ted, just faithfully added up the milk quota and feed bills Ted put in front of her.

      Later, when sadness turned to anger, she had been glad of Ted’s thrift. It had enabled her to help Charlie and Gabby and put a lump away for her beloved Josh.

      She said now to Charlie, knowing it would annoy him further but needing to say it, ‘How on earth would you know if Gabby goes without? She would never say. You would never even notice.’

      ‘What’s got into you, Nell? Gabby often tells me what she’s bought. Things for Josh, usually. We have a joint account, for goodness’ sake.’

      ‘I know you do, but has Gabby ever bought anything biggish, or personal – clothes, for instance – without asking you first?’

      ‘Of course not. We have to budget, we both need to know what we can afford and what we are spending each month.’

      ‘So you talk it over with Gabby before you buy anything major, like a new tractor, do you?’

      Charlie clicked up the latch of the back door. He knew it was pointless trying to talk to Nell when she was having what his father used to call ‘a feminist moment’. Or, and this had on one occasion caused Nell to throw one of his grandmother’s vases at Ted’s head, ‘the wrong time of the month’.

      ‘You know perfectly well that Gabby and I have a joint domestic account and I run a farm account with Alan that has absolutely nothing to do with Gabby. It’s business.’

      ‘Yes. But СКАЧАТЬ