The Things I Know(61)
Thomasina finished up the vacuuming and stripped the bed in the guest room. She flopped down then on to the wide mattress, sinking into the springs and staring up at the ceiling, remembering how she had lain with Grayson on his narrow bed, and how it had felt safe, warm and secure to fall asleep with her head on his chest and his arms wrapped around her in a wonderful bubble of their own making. The conversation with her parents and the realisation that things were moving at pace left her feeling the very opposite: insecure and unsettled. It was the first time in her life she could not picture her immediate future. Where would she live, exactly, and what work would she find? She was still battling with her parents to be allowed to spread her wings, but now she exhorted herself to think – think of how to make things work, how to make things better.
‘What on earth is wrong with you, Thomasina?’ her mum shouted from the doorway. ‘I’m going to have to put a rocket up your backside if you’re not careful! Christ alive, with you wandering around all dreamy-eyed, everything’s going to take twice as long!’
‘I can’t help it, Mum. I can’t stop thinking.’
‘What you thinking about?’
‘The future, Grayson, lots of things.’
‘I reckon you’ve got it bad, my little ’un.’ Her mum looked at her with a knowing expression and a small smile of understanding lifted the corners of her mouth.
‘I have. I sort of feel that, if I’m with him, I can do anything. He makes me see myself differently.’ Thomasina jumped up off the mattress and gathered the dirty sheets from where she’d dumped them on the floor.
‘And you’re sure he feels the same? I don’t want you to get hurt, darlin’.’
Thomasina nodded. ‘He does.’
‘Well, it might not be the bungalow for you then. It might be that you live all that way away in London with your tall man, his funny haircut and his proper handful of a mother!’
Her words were a step in the right direction, confirmation that Thomasina would one day go, and she was grateful. ‘I don’t think so. I can’t imagine me living there, not at all, especially not with her. But then I can’t see me in the bungalow with you and Dad either.’
‘So where do you see yourself, my girl?’
‘I don’t know exactly, Mum. But I know that Austley Morton isn’t big enough to contain all the thoughts and dreams I have. I think I want to travel, try new things.’ She took a deep breath, a little embarrassed by her statement of intent and pre-empting her mum’s next question. ‘And I don’t know what “new things”, but something completely different! And that thought doesn’t scare me – in fact, the opposite. I feel excited – alive! And yet a little afraid at the same time. I guess I always thought I could wander as far as I wanted but still have the farm to come home to: a base, a beacon to guide me back again . . .’
‘I understand that,’ her mum said with a sigh. ‘It’s not easy for any of us. My little girl is finding her feet.’
The two stared at each other, Thomasina a little overcome by her mother’s acknowledgement.
Seconds later her mother coughed and shifted on the spot. ‘Well, that all sounds very interesting, but right now you need to stop daydreaming. There are a dozen calves glad you’re not doing something completely different right now, as they’re waiting to have their shit picked up, so you’d best crack on!’ She winked at her.
Thomasina fed the calves and mucked them out, scooping their waste into the wheelbarrow and carting it away before setting to on the cement floor with a hot-water pressure hose, detergent and a stiff brush, and finally topping it off with fresh bedding and straw. She didn’t mind the labour, thinking ahead now to a time when this might be someone else’s chore and how she would miss the interaction with these beautiful beasts. She remembered her gran saying to her once, “Be careful what you wish for!” It had always struck her as the oddest of phrases, but now, at the prospect of Waycott Farm passing into Buttermore hands, she understood it in a way. Countless were the times she’d wished to be anywhere but on the farm, bemoaning the work and the long, long hours and yet now, in the light of it all coming to an end, she could only look upon each task with sweet nostalgia and a worrying sense that she might be losing more than she would gain.
‘There we are, my darlings, a lovely clean house for you all!’ She felt a fine film of sweat across her brow and ran her hand over the smooth, hard back of Maisie-Moo. ‘Can’t imagine you in an Ikea bungalow, not at all.’ She liked the feel of the animal beneath her palm. ‘At least not until you learn to control that flow of shite and can aim it at a toilet!’
As she and Buddy walked out towards the chicken coop, she checked her phone, hoping for a message from Grayson. There wasn’t one. A charge of disappointment exploded in her gut. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Thomasina. He works all day, and not how you work – he’s in an office on a computer. He can’t just whip out his phone and call you up for a chat any old time.’ She pictured the moment she’d left him, as he jumped on the bus with his long fringe flopped over his eyes and his satchel over his shoulder – a long, odd fringe, because Auntie Joan had never finished her hairdressing course, stopping to have a baby and get chucked out by her dad . . .