The Things I Know(81)
‘She does. And I was thinking that maybe . . . maybe I should go home, Grayson. I didn’t want you to be on your own or travel alone and I had no idea what awaited you, but . . .’ She chose her words carefully. ‘I feel like a bit of a spare part, and there’s so much work to do at home, and I think the last thing your mum needs is me staring at her! I seem to make her agitated, and that can’t be good for her heart.’ She waited, hoping he might reassure her.
Grayson stood still and took a deep breath. ‘I’m so glad you came with me. And I’ll keep you posted on how she’s doing.’
It wasn’t the plea for her to stay by his side that she had, at some level, hoped for. In fact, it was at best accepting and at worst spoken with no small measure of relief. He pulled her towards him and held her against his chest. Running her hand over the front of his shirt, she inhaled the scent of him and imprinted the feel of his arms across her back. Arms she knew could only carry so much and, right now, it felt for all the world as if she might be the weight he cast aside.
‘I love you, Grayson.’ Her mouth twitched with all she wanted to say, but she knew this was not the time or place.
‘I love you too.’
With her sleeves rolled up and her breath sending plumes of smoke up into the cold autumn sky, Thomasina toiled hard all week, humping hay, driving the tractor and guiding the cows from one field to another along unwieldy tracks where briars bothered them and small pebbles made them hesitant. She liked the extra responsibility, but the ache in her limbs at the end of the day and the throb in her foot more than wiped out any joy.
Peeling off her fleece top and beanie, she took a seat at the table in the kitchen opposite her dad while her mum brewed tea.
‘How’s Grayson’s ma faring?’ her dad enquired, as he smoothed the pages of the Gazette.
‘She’s coming home, actually.’
‘They didn’t keep her in long!’ her mum added, as she placed a welcome steaming mug in front of her.
‘Four days.’ She sipped the hot tea, which slipped down her throat like nectar. ‘Thanks for my tea.’
‘And how’s Grayson doing?’ Her mum asked this with a downward slope to her mouth, as if to add, the poor boy . . .
Thomasina recalled their conversation earlier in the day. It had left her feeling low.
‘How’s things?’ She hated the banality of her words when what she wanted to do was talk earnestly, fearing they had gone a little off track, unable to feel the same vibe from him as she had when they were nestled side by side on the old sofa in the snug. Thinking of that moment on the path when she had felt sure that a proposal had been imminent, knowing that she would have shouted without hesitation, ‘Yes!’ Now, though, she wasn’t so certain. She didn’t want to come second to Ida Potts and was not about to give up on her own ideas and her desire to travel just to play second fiddle to his demanding mother, watching from the sidelines in their shitty flat.
‘Okay, I guess. Auntie Joan and Auntie Eva came in while I was at the hospital and ran the vacuum cleaner over, dusted and changed my mum’s bed linen. They’ve put milk in the fridge and we have plenty of tea bags. So we’re all set. We even have a vase of yellow carnations on the table.’
‘That’s good.’ She didn’t know what to say next.
She could hear the hum of expectation in the pauses, felt the pulse of longing in the silent spaces between the spoken words and sensed his reluctance to open up more. They kept the tone general and uninteresting, frustratingly swapping titbits about their day, and when he said goodbye it left her with an aching, unsatisfied void in her gut. The rest of their communication that day had taken place via text message. Grayson explained he was often travelling underground without a signal, or was in the hospital, where phone use was barred, but she feared the truth was something more straightforward: he was trying to back away a little.
Thomasina felt physically sick and so overcome with doubt that it left her feeling a little light-headed. It felt easier not to think about it, to encase her emotions in a thin veneer of forced indifference and go about her day ignoring the gnawing feeling in her gut that felt a lot like hunger but was nothing to do with food.
‘Piece of cake, darlin’?’ Her mum held out one of her Grandma Mimi’s tins, and her tears finally came at the sight of the once gilded cake tin with its faded imprint of blue and pink roses – a tin she still had no hope of filling with sweet confections baked for the man she loved. She dropped her head on her arms at the table as her mum palmed circles on her back.
‘It’s okay, my little ’un. Everything is going to be okay . . .’
Grayson’s texts slowed and Thomasina galvanised herself against the increasing disappointment, until, only a week later, his communiqués had declined to one a day. She felt a combination of anger and distress, in direct proportion to the decrease in contact.
Her mood was further hampered by the fact that she was yet to receive an enquiry from her ‘Chicken Expert’ postcard, which had been on the board at the farm wholesale store for a couple of weeks now. She remembered the excited anticipation with which she had pinned the card up, afterwards keeping her phone within reach and waiting for the calls to come flooding in from chicken novices across the county, all seeking out her know-how, but this was not quite how it had panned out, and, in truth, she felt stupid for thinking it might have been otherwise. Frustration kicked at her shins and made her restless, which only added to her general malaise. If this little business didn’t take off, she wasn’t going to be able to afford a ticket for the Bristol bus, let alone to anywhere further afield. She had decided to redouble her efforts and maybe place a proper ad in a proper magazine, like Practical Poultry, but that would cost money, which she didn’t have, and couldn’t earn unless her venture took off . . . and with these thoughts she was back to square one.