Mr Doubler Begins Again: The best uplifting, funny and feel-good book for 2019. Seni Glaister

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘But that was more than two decades ago! You’re not telling me you’ve not eaten at a friend’s house for all that time?’

      Doubler immediately pushed his chair back to stand up, continuing with the tea-making process that Midge had abandoned in her shock.

      ‘I suppose I haven’t. Amazing how time flies, really. But it’s not surprising. I’ve had my head down with my work, and your mum was always there to keep me company Monday to Friday. I never felt lonely.’

      ‘But, Doubler, that is not good enough! What about trips to the town? To the shops? How many times a week do you actually leave this place?’

      Again Doubler fell silent. He had deliberately kept his isolation a secret from his children, but he didn’t think Midge would be so easy to fob off with a convenient version intended to pacify her. And besides, Mrs Millwood knew the extent of his solitary confinement, so there was little to gain by hiding it from her daughter. Still he hesitated, acknowledging his failure at life as if for the very first time.

      She was insistent. ‘Doubler, how many visits to town do you make a week?’

      Doubler poured tea for them both, took a sip and concentrated furiously on the lip of his cup.

      ‘A month?’ Midge tried.

      Doubler finally raised his eyes to meet hers. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t leave here.’

      ‘What, never?’

      ‘No. Not since Marie went. I have an arrangement that covers me for groceries and it’s quite satisfactory. Anything else I need is delivered to me here. I only have to pick up the phone. It lets me get on with the work I need to do. My potatoes are actually very demanding and even in the winter there is so much to do. I have very little help, you know – just a few extra pairs of hands for harvest. Most of it I do myself and I just wouldn’t manage if I was always popping into town.’

      ‘I’m not talking about always popping into town. I’m talking about once or twice a week, say, getting out and about, having a conversation with somebody, anybody. You’re living as a recluse and that can’t be healthy.’

      ‘I’m OK,’ Doubler said quite firmly. ‘I don’t need anybody much. I mean, of course I relied very much on my lunchtime natter with your mum. That I miss dreadfully.’ His eyes filled up and Midge thought he might break down altogether, but he shook himself and drew himself up straight. ‘But I’m coping without those even. Conversation is overrated, you know.’

      Midge shook her head sadly. ‘No, Doubler, it’s not. And if I wasn’t here trying to keep an eye on you in Mum’s absence, I hate to think what would happen to you. I’m going to dial the number for Grove Farm myself, but you’re going to do the talking – after all, you’re a bright, interesting individual and you are more than capable of engaging with these people. You’re going to volunteer immediately – and I mean immediately, tomorrow ideally. And just so you don’t get cold feet, I am going to drive you there myself the first time. I can imagine the shock to your system could be immense and I don’t want to feel responsible for you when your system goes into collapse because I’ve made you have a conversation with somebody other than my mother. Come on, I haven’t got all day.’

      She led him to the telephone, looked up the number on her own phone, dialled it and handed Doubler the receiver with a look of impatience that Doubler feared much more than the sound of a stranger’s voice.

Chapter 11

      The phone rang just as Doubler was sitting down to lunch. He had still not got used to the silence round the table, which was so much louder than any conversations he’d ever had in there. Midge’s insistence that his lifestyle was unhealthy had unsettled him, and the vicious hilltop wind that rattled at the windows and occasionally shrieked as it tried to find a way inside only served to exaggerate the stillness in the kitchen.

      Doubler had propped himself up on his left elbow, his hand supporting his chin while poking at his potatoes with his fork, pushing them round the plate with a disinterest that was quickly turning into dissatisfaction. He wondered, as he chased a potato from one side of the plate to the another, whether he would ever enjoy eating again. Mrs Millwood might have been consuming an inferior lunch all these years, but she had been consuming an inferior lunch with him and that small distinction was now having a disproportionately large impact on the flavour of his own food. He added this new slight to the growing reasons to be disgruntled by Mrs Millwood’s absence and he was so deep in this thought, crafting a list of complaints in his head, that he was shocked by the shrill ringing from the telephone.

      He had just begun a quavering ‘Hello’ when that perfectly familiar voice cut through his mumbled greeting. ‘So, Mr Doubler, you know how you always sneer at my apple choice?’

      ‘I do?’ he asked, trying to force some indignation into his voice to compete with the warmth that was spreading from deep within him.

      ‘My apples. You sneer. Don’t tell me you don’t.’ Mrs Millwood paused, hearing a smile. ‘My Granny Smiths?’

      ‘Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be my first choice of apple, it’s true. Nor my second. Nor my third, for that matter. I doubt it would make it into my top ten. I doubt I could name a hundred apples, but if I could, I don’t suppose the Granny Smith would make it there either.’ Doubler luxuriated in the conversation, his mind casting itself out across the orchards of England. ‘Cox’s, the russets – all the russets – and, oh, I am partial to an in-season Bramley—’

      Mrs Millwood cut him short, breathless with irritation. ‘I didn’t ask you for your favourite apples, did I? I didn’t ask for a lecture. I just want to hear you openly admit that you find my choice of apple inferior.’

      ‘I suppose you have a motive for this call, do you? There must be some very sick patients on that ward of yours and I don’t suppose they want to hear you being confrontational for no good reason.’ Doubler wondered, even as he spoke, whether he’d ever felt such intense joy.

      ‘The thing is, Mr Doubler, I learnt something today. Quite by chance. It turns out, entirely unbeknown to me and without this knowledge ever having influenced my apple choice, Granny Smith herself was a bit of a trailblazer. She reminds me very much of your John Clarke.’ Mrs Millwood must have sensed an imminent interruption because she pressed on urgently. ‘Now, I know you think he’s special, but let’s be honest, his father was a potato breeder before him, so it already ran in his genes, so to speak. But Granny Smith set sail for Australia back in the 1830s! She was a true pioneer. And to think how tough that voyage must have been in those days – I can only imagine what the boat would have been full of. Sickness and convicts, I suppose. But Maria Ann Smith – that was her name – Maria Ann Smith made the journey regardless and started an orchard way down there in New South Wales. Can you imagine such courage? She discovered her apple quite by accident. A chance cultivar from a seedling, would you believe it? I was shocked to my core when I learnt this. To my core!’

      Doubler considered this information carefully. While the old lady might well fit the description of a true pioneer, he wasn’t sure that he liked the fact that her entrepreneurship was being presented to him as somewhat superior to Mr Clarke’s genetic predisposition to breed potatoes. He digested this brand-new information before forming his response.

      ‘Ah, Mrs Millwood, I can see what you’re getting at. You are proposing that your Granny Smith is an equal to my Mr Clarke. Is that it? Because I don’t think СКАЧАТЬ