Wedding Tiers. Trisha Ashley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ me this cottage.

      Since she’d taken me in at thirteen when I was orphaned, and was my only remaining blood relative, I was absolutely devastated. It brought back lots of long-forgotten memories of my parents and how I felt after I lost them…and I know all this orphan business sounds a bit Charles Dickens, but I can’t help that—that’s the way it was!

      But I couldn’t contemplate selling the cottage, which was my home as well as a link with Granny, and nor did I want to leave Harry, of whom I was very fond, to cope alone. But then, I didn’t want to be parted from Ben either!

      I expect I was a bit neurotic, needy and tiresome for a while, but Ben was always there for me, in his strong, silent way. And in the end he came up with the solution, suggesting that he go back and complete the last weeks of his course alone, and then we’d settle down together in Neatslake.

      Despite it being Ben’s idea, his parents never forgave me for dragging him back from what they were convinced would have been instant fame and fortune in London; but then, they’ve never thought me good enough for him anyway. At one point they even threatened to cut off the small allowance they were making him, though they changed their mind. I thought he should tell them to stick the allowance where the sun don’t shine as a matter of principle, but he wouldn’t, so we had one of our rare arguments. I’ve never used any of the money—it goes straight into Ben’s account to pay for art materials and CDs and all those gadgets that mean so little to me and so much to him.

      But his parents were wrong, because here we still were, living a version of our dream on a slightly smaller plane than we’d envisaged, perhaps, but none the less very happy, for all that. Perhaps one or two things hadn’t worked out how we planned…though as Ben said, as long as we had each other, nothing else really mattered.

      And luckily, it was all the compromise involved in trying to balance living a greenish life in the middle of a village, against earning enough to pay the inescapable bills, that interested the readership of Skint Old Northern Woman magazine enormously. While they didn’t pay a lot for my articles, it formed a regular part of my income, and then the icing on the cake came, quite literally, from my hand-modelled wedding cake business, catering for the alternative market—sometimes very alternative:

      JOSIE GRAY’S WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WEDDING

       CAKES

      Do you want something different? Original? Personal? Truly unique?

      Josie Gray will design the cake of your dreams!

      Or at least it had formed the icing, until Ben had won a major art prize about eighteen months previously, and his work began to get the recognition it deserved at last and fetch much greater prices.

      Looking back now, I suddenly had an uneasy feeling that the equilibrium of our lives had subtly changed at that point…but maybe I was being over-imaginative?

      Ben bought me a shiny, expensive breadmaking machine to celebrate his win, which he said would take away all the endless kneading. Though, actually, I always rather enjoyed doing it, going off into a dreamy trance and forgetting time, which made for very light bread.

      But that, and one or two other little gadgets he’d brought back for me from London, seemed against our whole ethos, though it could be that I was unsettled by them because I simply didn’t like change. It made me uneasy. I just wanted us to go quietly on as we always had, happy as pigs in clover.

      The wood-burning stove crackled quietly and nearby a door slammed, waking me from my reverie. The top of Harry’s felt hat appeared as he shuffled slowly down his garden, hidden by the dividing fence, to feed the hens.

      There was an arched gateway between our two plots so we could both come and go freely, for though Harry was nominally in charge of the hens, we shared our gardens and what grew in them. But these last few months, as Harry had grown increasingly infirm after a fall, it seemed I was doing the lion’s share of the work.

      Ben used to do most of the heavy digging, but lately he’d either been shut up in the wooden studio at the end of the garden, built against the tall stone wall separating us from the grounds of Blessings, or he was in London.

      Each time when he got home and enfolded me in a big, warm hug, swinging me off my feet and telling me he loved me, it almost made up for his absence…but not quite.

      I looked down at the laptop and sighed heavily, having totally lost the thread of what I was going to say to finish off.

      The little wicket gate between the two gardens squeaked open and Harry came through, followed by his sheepdog, Mac. Harry carried a hoe in one hand and a stout walking stick with a ram’s-horn handle in the other, and I had to give him full marks for effort even if I expected to find him lying full length among the brassicas one of these days. And there was the problem of his failing eyesight, so that half the time he was nurturing seedling weeds and tossing the veggies onto the compost heap…Still, that wasn’t too much of a problem in mid-October, and he was heading for the pea and bean beds, which needed clearing anyway.

      Behind him, stepping delicately, followed the pale, speckled shape of Aggie, the escapologist hen. The others were all fat, cosy, brown creatures, whom I couldn’t distinguish apart—and didn’t want to, since they were quite likely to end up on my plate. But Aggie, with her inquisitive nature and skill in escaping from enclosed places, was different, and Harry was forbidden from even thinking of culling her, whether she deigned to lay eggs or not.

      Opening the door I called, ‘Tea in twenty minutes, Harry?’ and he made a thumbs-up sign.

      I went back in, took another look at my notes, and then rattled off the rest of my article, before changing all the names as usual. Even though I never tell anyone’s secrets, or gossip about local people, I wouldn’t feel half as free to write what I wanted if everyone knew it was me, and where I lived!

      Then, with a click of a button, I sent it on its way to the magazine.

      It was then I suddenly remembered that in the summer, after one of my cakes had featured in the coverage of a terribly smart local wedding, Country at Heart magazine had contacted me. They were interested in the way I combined my wedding cake business with the self-sufficiency too—but, of course, they didn’t know I was the author of ‘Cakes and Ale’ in SONW magazine, and I didn’t tell them!

      They interviewed me by email and telephone, and then sent a photographer to take some pics, but I hadn’t heard anything since, so perhaps they’d thought better of it, or found someone more interesting to feature.

      Our Sadie’s been after me to up sticks and go and live in New Zealand with them again,’ Harry said, selecting a ginger biscuit from the tin after careful inspection, and then dunking it in his mug of tea. A bit crumbled and fell, but was neatly snapped up before it hit the floor by Mac, who lunged silently shark-like from under the table and then retreated again. ‘She’s sent me a photograph of the extension they’re building onto the side of the house, like a little self-contained flat.’

      ‘Granny annexe, they call them. She’s obviously very keen for you to go, Harry,’ I said brightly, trying to sound encouraging, even though I would miss him dreadfully if he did go.

      ‘She says I should want to live near my only daughter and grandchildren, but it was her chose to go and live on the other side of the world in the first place, not me! There’s no reason why I should have to end my days somewhere foreign.’

      ‘Well, СКАЧАТЬ