Tweet
<span style="font-weight: bold">mi cudden put it dung...loved it </span>
JUNE
THE NEW FOREST, HAMPSHIRE
Chance alone brought her into his orbit. Later he would think that had he not looked down from the scaffolding at that precise moment, had he taken Tess directly home and not to the wood that afternoon, she might not have come into his life. But that idea comprised the very substance of what he was suppose to think, which was a realisation he would only come to once it was far too late.
The time was midafternoon, and the day was hot. June generally prompted torrents of rain, mocking anyone’s hope for summer. But this year, the weather was setting itself up to be different. Days of sun in a cloudless sky made the promise of a July and an August during which the ground would bake, and the vast lawns within the Perambulation would brown over, sending the New Forest ponies deep within the woodlands to forage.
He was high up on the scaffolding, getting ready to climb to the peak of the roof where he’d begun to apply the straw. Far more pliable than the reeds that comprised the rest of the materials, the straw could be bent to form the ridge. Some people thought of this as the “pretty bit” on a thatched roof, the scalloped pattern crisscrossed with spars in a decorative fashion. But he thought of it as what it was: that which protected the top layer of reeds from weather and avian damage.
He’d got to the knuckle. He was feeling impatient. They’d been working on the enormous project for three months, and he’d promised to begin another in two weeks’ time. The finishing work still needed doing, and he could not hand off that part of the job to his apprentice. Cliff Coward was not ready to use the leggett on the thatch. That work was crucial to the overall look of the roof, and it required both skill and a properly honed eye. But Cliff could hardly be trusted to do this level of work when so far he hadn’t managed to stay on task with even the simplest job, like the one he was meant to be doing just now, which was hauling another two bundles of straw up to the ridge as he’d been instructed. And why had he not managed this most mundane of tasks?
Seeking an answer to that question was what altered Gordon Jossie’s life. He turned from the ridge, calling sharply, “Cliff! What the bloody hell’s happened to you?” and he saw below him that his apprentice was no longer standing by the bundles of straw where he was supposed to be, anticipating the needs of the master thatcher above him. Rather he’d gone over to Gordon’s dusty pickup some yards away. There Tess sat at attention, happily wagging her bush-like tail while a woman—a stranger and clearly a visitor to the gardens if the map she held and the clothing she wore were anything to go by—patted her golden head.
“Oy! Cliff!” Gordon Jossie shouted. Both the apprentice and the woman looked up.
Gordon couldn’t see her face clearly because of her hat, which was broad brimmed and fashioned from straw with a fuchsia scarf tied round it as a band. This same colour was in her dress as well, and the dress was summery, showing off tanned arms and long tanned legs. She wore a gold bracelet round her wrist and sandals on her feet, and she carried a straw handbag tucked under her arm, its strap looped over her shoulder.
Cliff called out, “Sorry! I was helping this lady,” as the woman called, “I’ve got myself completely lost,” with a laugh. She went on with, “I’m awfully sorry. He offered…” She gestured with a map she was holding, as if to explain what was patently obvious: She’d somehow wandered from the public gardens to the administrative building, which Gordon was reroofing. “I’ve never actually seen someone thatch a roof before,” she added, perhaps in an effort to be friendly.
Gordon, however, wasn’t feeling friendly. He was feeling sharp, all edges and most of them needing to be smoothed. He had no time for tourists.
“She’s trying to get to Monet’s pond,” Cliff called out.
“And I’m trying to get a bloody ridge put onto this roof,” was Gordon’s reply, although he made it in an undertone. He gestured northwest. “There’s a path up by the fountain. The nymphs and fauns fountain. You’re meant to turn left there. You turned right.”
“Did I?” the woman called back. “Well…that’s typical, I s’pose.” She stood there for a moment, as if anticipating further conversation. She was wearing dark glasses and it came to Gordon that the entire effect of her was as if she was a celebrity, a Marilyn Monroe type because she was shapely like Marilyn Monroe, not like the pin-thin girls one generally saw. Indeed, he actually thought she might be a celebrity. She rather dressed like one, and her expectation that a man would be willing to stop what he was doing and eagerly converse with her suggested it as well. He replied briefly to the woman with, “You should find your way easy enough now.”
“Were that only the truth,” she said. She added, rather ridiculously, he thought, “There won’t be any…well, any horses up there, will there?”
He thought, What the hell…? and she added, “It’s only…I’m actually rather afraid of horses.”
“Ponies won’t hurt you,” he replied. “They’ll keep their distance ’less you try to feed them.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t that.” She waited for a moment as if expecting him to say more, which he was not inclined to do. Finally she said, “Anyway…thank you,” and that was end of her.
She set off on the route that Gordon had indicated, and she removed her hat as she went and swung it from her fingertips. Her hair was blonde, cut like a cap round her head, and when she shook it, it fell neatly back into place with a shimmer, as if knowing what it was supposed to do. Gordon wasn’t immune to women, so he could see she had a graceful walk. But he felt no stirring in his groin or in his heart, and he was glad of this. Untouched by women was how he liked it.
Cliff joined him on the scaffolding, two bundles of straw on his back. He said, “Tess quite liked her,” as if in explanation of something or perhaps in the woman’s defence, and he added, “Could be time for another go, mate,” as Gordon watched the woman gain distance from them.
But Gordon wasn’t watching her out of fascination or attraction. He was watching to see if she made the correct turn at the fountain of nymphs and fauns. She did not. He shook his head. Hopeless, he thought. She’d be in the cow pasture before she knew it, but he fully expected she would also be able to find someone else to help her there.
Comment