The Various (2 page)

Yes, she could be pretty scathing, could Mum, when she got on to the subject of Brian. Until she wanted him to do something for her, of course.

But he was being friendly enough now, and actually quite funny in a shy sort of way, as they threw the bags into the back of his battered old estate car and drove out of Taunton.

‘Poor old Midge, you must be wondering what you’ve ever done to deserve this. Stuck on a farm with Mad Brian,’ (he rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue), ‘and nearly two weeks till the cavalry arrives.
You
must have been a terrible sinner in a previous life. Seriously though, when Christine phoned to ask if you could come and stay, I said
delighted
, of course, but what on earth will the poor girl
do
until Katie and George get down here?’ Uncle Brian glanced across at her. ‘I gather you’re a big reader,’ he said.

Yes, thought Midge, that’s just the kind of thing her mother
would
have said. ‘Don’t worry about Margaret, Brian. Just give her a stack of books and you won’t see her for a fortnight.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do like reading. Don’t worry, Uncle Brian, I’ll be fine.’

‘Well listen, I thought perhaps we could try and organize a couple of trips out at least. Perhaps go to the cinema, or maybe ten-pin bowling at that place in Taunton. What’s it called – the Hollywood Bowl?’

Poor Uncle Brian, he
was
trying. Midge imagined him in his big old yellow cords, attempting to have a jolly time at the bowling alley. ‘It’s OK, Uncle Brian,’ she said kindly, but half mischievously, ‘I’m sure you like skittles better.’

‘Well, you know, I
do
like a game of skittles. I won a pig a few summers ago at the local fête. Mind you, I was up to my
ears
in pigs at the time, so I gave it back. But Midge, if there’s anything you want to do, or anywhere you want to go to pass the time a bit, then you will speak up, I hope.’

The inside of the car was scruffy, and smelt of dogs and hay. The back seats were folded down and the vehicle was obviously a maid-of-all-work, used for everything and anything. One of the foot control
pedals
kept making a funny noise – a long protesting squeak – every time Uncle Brian pressed his foot down on it. Midge glanced down into the driver’s footwell, and noticed that her uncle was wearing quite a smart pair of polished brown brogues – but no socks. His ankles showed up pale and strange in the shadow of the footwell.

Midge was so surprised that she spoke without thinking; ‘Uncle Brian, you’ve got no socks on!’ and immediately felt embarrassed.

Uncle Brian laughed, though, and said, ‘Less a case of
not
wearing socks, and more a case of
am
wearing shoes!’ This made Midge feel even more confused. Did her uncle usually go barefoot then? But Uncle Brian went on, ‘I was padding around the house in bare feet looking for my sandals – it suddenly felt like that kind of weather – then realized that the time was getting on and I needed to be heading for Taunton to pick you up. So I bunged on the first pair of shoes I came across. Happened to be my Sunday best. Don’t worry,’ he added, ‘I may be crazy, but I
can
dress myself.’ He saw that the remark had hit home and that Midge may well have had her doubts about him, and he laughed again. ‘What
have
they been saying about me?’ He was obviously amused and not at all offended.

‘Sorry,’ said Midge. But it was true that her mum’s remarks had led her to expect that her uncle might be a bit weird.
Harmless
probably, but definitely a weirdo. And yet he wasn’t really
that
odd, as far as she could tell. He just wasn’t much like her mum, that was all.

‘Do you mind if I phone Mum?’ she said. ‘I just remembered I promised.’

‘Yes, do,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘You’ve got a mobile then?’

‘For my birthday,’ said Midge. She pulled out her new phone, and took it out of its soft case.

‘Coo!’ said Uncle Brian, sounding like a schoolboy and obviously impressed, ‘it’s tiny!’

Midge’s mother answered the phone in the slightly breathless manner she always affected – as though she were either just rushing out or just rushing in. Which very often was the case, of course. ‘Christine Waaalters!’

‘Hi Mum, it’s Midge.’

‘Margaret! Everything all right, darling? Have you arrived?’

‘We’re in the car. I’m fine.’

‘Uncle Brian found you then?’ She sounded as though there may always have been the possibility that he wouldn’t.

‘Yes, he was there waiting.’

‘Now have you
got
everything?’ Midge looked out of the window, bored now, and answered her mother’s questions automatically. No thought was required. It was a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ conversation. Finally, her mum got to the end of the list and said, ‘Well have a
lovely
time, darling. Be good and look after yourself.’

‘You too, Mum. Bye.’

‘Say hello to Brian for me.’

‘OK. Bye.’ Midge snapped the little popper shut and squeezed the phone back into her pocket. ‘Mum says “hi”,’ she said.

‘
Good
old Chris!’ said Uncle Brian, with an enthusiasm that took Midge rather by surprise. ‘What a gal! Very clever woman, your mum,’ he added. ‘Always knew she’d go far. Always had that
drive
– you know? That
drive
!’

‘Yes,’ said Midge. She did know.

And so the journey passed comfortably enough. They crossed Sedge Moor, the Somerset Levels, flat and still partially flooded from the recent summer storms, then rose up higher through narrow leafy lanes, past some dense and ancient-looking acres of woodland – thickly overgrown and untended – and finally wound in through a rickety wooden gateway, once painted white but now peeling and green with tree-sap. The sign on the gate said ‘Mill Farm’ in whitish letters on a faded blue background. The car swung into a weed-strewn cobbled yard, past a couple of tumbledown farm buildings and came to a halt in front of the main house.

Midge’s passenger door window was open, the weather being warm and dry for a change, and she was instantly struck by the peaceful silence as the car engine died. There was no noise other than the sound of the birds, the warm rustle of the leaves in the trees, and the buzz of a passing insect. No traffic, no roaring jets, no people, no city. Just peace. She looked up at the house. Remote, overgrown and neglected, the old Somerset longhouse nevertheless seemed friendly and unthreatening in the bright sunshine. The honey-coloured stone from which the house was built,
although
weathered and stained, could never look sinister or forbidding.

Midge got out of the car and looked about her. Rust-red barn doors hung uncertainly on their hinges, bits of disused machinery lay everywhere, overgrown with nettles. An ancient milk churn, once used as a plant-holder but now perforated to the point of disintegration, stood by the open farmhouse door. (Uncle Brian had obviously not worried about locking the place up before he left.) A couple of tatty hens scratched around on the doormat, just inside the threshold, and she caught a glimpse of a tiny kitten – far too young to be out by itself – playing in a tipped-up Wellington boot that lay on the front path (where it may well have been lying for weeks, judging by the state of it). The whole place looked derelict, disused – and entirely delightful. Midge just loved it instantly. She had never been here in her life before, to her knowledge, and yet she felt somehow as if she had come home. Home to Mill Farm.

‘And of course, my time’s pretty well my own,’ said Uncle Brian. He had not spoken for half an hour, but was obviously still continuing their earlier conversation. ‘So if you
should
want to pop over to Taunton, to the library or whatever, then you just say so. Always best to go in the morning though. Don’t do much in the afternoons usually.’

‘Don’t you have to work then?’ said Midge, curious to find herself in the company of an adult who was not forever frantically busy.

‘No,’ said Uncle Brian, standing in the cobbled yard, hands in his yellow corduroy trouser pockets, and staring up at the rooks in the cedar trees. ‘Not any more I don’t. Coming into a bit of money, old girl. Or at least I hope to be by the end of the holidays. I’ve got the land up for sale – some of it anyway. Come and have some soup.’

The soup was homemade leek and potato, and very good it was too.

‘Used to be a chef,’ said Uncle Brian, ‘for a while.’

There were not many things, Midge was beginning to learn, which Uncle Brian had
not
been ‘for a while’. He talked, as they ate their soup, of the numerous ideas he’d had for Mill Farm, cheerfully acknowledging his failures and seemingly not embarrassed to confess to his twelve-year-old niece that he was pretty hopeless as a businessman. He was interested in her too, and what life was like for her in London, not asking too many questions about school, and occasionally remembering bits of her past that she had forgotten or hadn’t known about – telling her
at
one point that he had some snaps of her with his own children, Kate and George, taken when they were tiny and on an outing to Bournemouth.

‘Or maybe it was Sidmouth. Or Exmouth. I’ve still got them somewhere. I’ll hunt them out later. You loved the sea, I remember. Kate could take it or leave it, George – poor George – was absolutely terrified, wouldn’t go anywhere near it. But you were in there like a shot.’

Midge took a tangerine from the bowl of fruit on the table and dug her thumbnail into the soft spongy peel. ‘How old were we?’ she said. She suddenly felt comfortable. This was family. Uncle Brian’s children were her cousins. He was her mum’s older brother, and best of all, she realized – she liked him. He was cheerful and easy to talk to. Her mother could be difficult to talk to. She often seemed preoccupied, even in the middle of a conversation, on edge – and snappy. Uncle Brian was more relaxed. He didn’t appear to be continually wishing he were somewhere else.

‘Happy in his own skin’ – it was a phrase she had once heard Mr Powers, the oboist, use. He was talking to her mum about such and such a conductor. The words had struck her as being curious at the time and she had wondered what he meant. But now she thought she knew. Uncle Brian was someone who was happy in his own skin. Was she happy in hers? She looked at her freckled arms and thought about it.

The kitchen where they sat to eat was a large room, and typical of the house generally in that it hadn’t
been
altered or redecorated in years. The doors and all the woodwork, including the great table at the centre and the tall Welsh dresser that held the crockery, were painted cream – or at least they may have originally been white, but cream they now certainly were. The floor was red-brick and worn into dips where the traffic of heavy boots had passed most often – at the threshold of the main door, in front of the Rayburn stove (also cream) and by the massive and badly chipped porcelain sink. The walls, whitewashed scores of times – though not very recently – were largely unadorned. There were no tasteful prints, no artful displays of kitchen utensils or gadgetry, no pinboards and no curtains. The single window, iron-framed and thickly coated with (cream) paint, looked out on to the farmyard where the car was parked. On the windowsill stood a fruit-bottling jar with a dish-mop in it, and next to that a container of Fairy Liquid. And that was about it. Above all, it was quiet. She could hear the fast tick of a small travel alarm clock, an old wind-up one, that stood high up on the great Welsh dresser next to a couple of pewter mugs.

A solitary black-and-white photograph, ancient and now yellowing in its heavy black frame, hung on the wall to one side of the Rayburn. It was of a child, a girl in a complicated looking dress and high lace-up boots, sitting very upright on a wickerwork box. Her feet dangled a few inches above the ground, and she held something in her lap – Midge couldn’t make out what it was, some sort of strap with bells on it – as she stared out of the picture. The girl had a round and beautiful
face
, with a curling mass of fair hair and dark faraway eyes. In the background, pale and blurred, a clock face was just visible. Twenty-five past ten. The girl was smiling, but she looked uncomfortable. And who wouldn’t be, thought Midge, dressed like that.

‘Uncle Brian,’ she said, ‘Why are you selling the house? Don’t you like it here? I do.’

‘Do you?’ Uncle Brian seemed pleased. ‘You haven’t really seen it yet. Anyway, I’m not selling the house, just some of the land.’ They had come straight into the kitchen from the car, and apart from a glimpse of the dim flagstone hallway where a black spaniel lay (barely acknowledging their arrival with the briefest twitch of her stumpy tail), the rest of the house remained unexplored.

‘I love it here,’ said Midge. ‘It’s really cool.’

‘Cool enough in the winter,’ said Uncle Brian a little grimly. But he hadn’t misunderstood her, and went on – ‘Yes, I love it too.’

Midge looked around the kitchen and said, ‘It’s so . . .’ she searched for a word, ‘ . . . friendly. And unspoilt.’

Uncle Brian chewed on a piece of crust thoughtfully and regarded her. She looked like a typical city kid, this twelve-year old niece, dumped on him (and his own children) for the summer by her high-flying mother. Her jeans, T-shirt and trainers, as he was sure Katie and George would recognize instantly, had not come from the local supermarket, nor had her blonde hair been cut at the shop on the corner. The total cost of her outward appearance would probably be more
than
he’d spend on himself in two years. She was neat, sharp, and, if not exactly pretty with her overabundance of freckles and rather square jaw, she was certainly enough of a city-slicker to turn the heads of any of the lads in
this
backwater. Yet the words she had chosen in order to describe Mill Farm could be equally applied to her – friendly and unspoilt. He had been worried that she might not get on with Katie and George but . . . well, it could work out. The three children hadn’t seen each other since they were what, five, six years old? Before he and Pat had separated in any case. And now he was to have charge of the lot of them, right in the middle of everything else that was going on. But there. It looked like he’d be able to muddle along without too much disruption to his routine. Speaking of which . . .