The Cheesemaker's House Read online

  “That was nice and considerate of you.” He reaches his hand across the table to shake mine. “I’m Owen Maltby, by the way.”

  “Alice Hart. I’ve just moved into New Cottage.”

  For a fraction of a second it feels as though he is going to drop my outstretched hand but I must have imagined it because he continues smoothly: “Nice property.”

  “It needs a bit of work doing to it though.”

  “Is that why you’re looking at the builders’ ads?”

  “Got it in one.”

  “Look, I don’t want to stick my oar in, but most of the builders who are any good don’t need to advertise in the paper. There’s a guy I went to school with who’s OK…I could give you his number?”

  “Would you? That would be very kind.”

  “No, not kind – ulterior motive. I want you to settle in here if you’re going to come to church – there’s precious few of us under forty and we could do with bringing the average age down a bit.” Before I can answer the café door opens again.

  “Be back in a tick,” says Owen, and flies behind the counter.

  Chapter Three

  My mental image of a Yorkshire builder was a rotund man in a cloth cap who would exhibit a great deal of sucking of teeth when confronted with my barn. I certainly didn’t expect Richard Wainwright to be tall, dark and handsome with a couple of days of designer stubble and a gold hoop in his left ear. But then I didn’t expect a naked swimmer to be reading the lesson in church either. It’s clear I’m going to have to abandon my southern prejudices sooner rather than later if I’m going to fit in here. But I still can’t help feeling we should all be running around downing mugs of tea you can stand a spoon up in, not drinking skinny lattes.

  In this aspect of his behaviour Richard doesn’t disappoint. I am already making the second pot when he reappears from his prodding and poking in the barn, drapes his long body against my kitchen doorframe and says:

  “I can do it, but it’s going to cost you.”

  “I expect it to cost me,” I grin at him. “It’s a wreck I want to turn into a luxury holiday pad – I know that won’t come cheap.”

  He wanders into the kitchen and sits down at the table. “I’ll need to do a proper quote, but I reckon in the region of twenty grand. It’s a lot of money – take you a while to get it back.”

  “I’ll get it back when I sell though.”

  “Oh, so that’s your game is it; buy – do up – sell – quick buck.” He looks disapproving.

  “No. It’s not my game. It’s my insurance policy in case I don’t like it here.”

  He stretches back in his chair and picks up his tea. “So why did you come? I’m curious.”

  “Well, you mustn’t tell anybody, but I’m on the run from an international drug smuggling cartel and I thought they’d never find me in Great Fencote.”

  “Hmm…I wouldn’t be so sure. You don’t know what evil walks the streets of Northallerton. Only last week someone was prosecuted for putting the wrong sort of yogurt pot in their recycling bin – it was all over the papers.” We both burst out laughing.

  “Seriously, love,” he carries on, “if you don’t want to say then that’s your business. No-one round here’s going to mind.”

  “I was just trying to make it sound more exciting than it is. My husband ran off with his secretary, that’s all.”

  “It happens. My wife left me for a pen pusher at the council. Said she’d had enough of muddy boots all through the house. Each to their own, I suppose.” He shrugs.

  “The funny thing is,” I continue hesitantly, “that when it happens to you, you feel like it’s never happened to anyone else. When someone else says it, you realise just how common it is.”

  “Human nature, love. We’re not cut out to be monogamous. We get bored and we move on, that’s all there is to it. Still, if you get lonely and fancy a shag...”

  “Let’s see what sort of builder you are first,” I snap. Maybe a little too tartly, so I put on a smiley face and continue, “I want to know if the muddy boots are worth it.”

  Richard roars with laughter.

  But I don’t want a shag, although I spend some time thinking about it later, sitting on the bench by the pond, gin & tonic in hand and William dozing at my feet. What I want is time; time on my own to heal, like it says you need on the advice pages of the magazines I’ve started buying. Time to work out where I went wrong, if I’m honest, because although I have an inkling, I’m not completely sure.

  You see I wasn’t very good at telling Neil I loved him – or maybe I just wasn’t good at loving him full stop. I thought that being his best friend would be enough; I thought that after the passion had gone it was all you had left and you just had to get on with it. We had settled much too young into a middle aged rut and it had only taken a whiff of excitement to break our world apart. If only we’d been able to talk about what we both wanted then we might have been OK. But I’ve never been much good at that sort of thing.

  I’m just not very good at loving people full stop. After my father died I was the bitch from hell to my mother, but I suppose in my defence I thought I had good reason. I loved my father to distraction so I couldn’t understand how eager she was to replace him; I didn’t find out about her money worries until much later. Looking back it’s little wonder she couldn’t confide in a thirteen year old ball of anger and it’s probably the reason we’ve never been close since.

  I didn’t cope very well with her constant stream of boyfriends and suspect I managed to put a fair few of them off. I sulked, I stropped, I wore a uniform of black leggings and shapeless sweatshirts. I had lots of girlfriends but didn’t go near a boy myself – anything male had become the enemy. I left school as soon as I could and got myself stuck in a dead end job in a pet shop.

  By the time Derek started going out with my mother I was becoming heartily sick of the way I was. Derek was a straightforward and thoroughly nice man who told me he wanted to be part of our lives but not to replace my father. No-one had ever said that before. He also helped me in a practical way by lending me the money to go to a private secretarial college. I say lend, but bless him, he never asked for it back. Instead he teased me and said it was nice to have a young lady about the house instead of a feral cat.

  Out went the spiky haircut and back came my natural curls. Out went endless mooning around to Smiths’ records and in came going to parties with my friends. I got a proper job at a motor dealer and shortly afterwards a proper boyfriend, Neil.

  Was ours a marriage of convenience? I still don’t know. It certainly seemed convenient that he proposed when Mum and Derek were planning to retire to Spain. Like I say, I’m not too good at loving people; I suppose after losing Dad it seems too much of a risk. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss Neil; at first, anyway.

  Just being in Yorkshire makes it easier to move on and after my second G&T I am brave enough to ask myself whether I actually want Neil back. If his car pulled into the drive, and he started to cross the lawn, I know William would race towards him. But would I? Would I want to go back to playing second fiddle to the man and his dog, to be the perfectly manicured corporate wife, and rush home from my own stressful job to cook the tea and iron his shirts? And have him grunt and heave on top of me after a few glasses of wine on a Friday night?

  I reach down to scratch William’s ears.

  “Come on, supper time,” I murmur. He looks at me gratefully and stretches. Just at this very moment, being a single woman means another gin and a fishfinger sandwich for tea. Bliss.

  Chapter Four

  The door of the church creaks as I push it open and I wince; I was hoping to make a quiet entrance and slip unnoticed to a seat at the back. As I pick up a prayer book from the pile on the font I notice Owen waving to me. Despite myself, I smile. He slides along his pew and gestures to the space next to him. I bow my head briefly towards the altar then join him, noticing that the wood is still warm from where he has been sitting.
I catch a wholesome whiff of mint shampoo.

  “Hi there,” I whisper.

  “Hello to you, Alice.” His voice is smooth like honey with very little trace of an accent, but if he went to school with Richard then he must be local.

  An elderly man two rows in front of us starts to turn around but his wife slaps him on the arm and his head swivels forwards again. I am desperate to laugh, but I dare not. I glance surreptitiously at Owen to find him looking for the first hymn in his book.

  Owen is dressed in chinos and a sports jacket with the palest of green shirts underneath. His lime tie is a blaze of rebellion in the otherwise muted outfit and the whole thing doesn’t quite come off. He just has to be single; no right thinking woman would let him out of the house like that.

  “Nice tie,” I tell him.

  “You don’t scrub up so bad yourself.”

  The organ begins to pump out music and we stand as the vicar emerges from the vestry.

  During the hymn I have time to examine both the vicar and my surroundings. The church is compact, with a low, beamed ceiling. Light streams through the window over the altar, illuminating a royal blue carpet which has seen better days and a highly polished communion rail. There are about twenty people spread out across the pews and Owen was right; apart from us and the vicar there seems to be no-one under retirement age.

  I hazard a guess that the vicar is about forty, but it’s very hard to tell because although his face is unlined and his sandy hair cropped short he has a large bald patch in the middle of it. He’s so academic he almost loses me during the sermon but I warm to him when he takes the oldest of his parishioners’ communion to their seats.

  I’m not really used to the order of service and I struggle to follow without it being too obvious that I don’t know when to sit or kneel. It is quite some years since I’ve been to church but I thought it would be a good way to get to know people. I don’t quite have the courage to walk into the pub on my own and I wonder idly if the age profile there would be any younger.

  Half way through the second hymn I feel a sharp poke in my side. I look down to see Owen offering a packet of Polos.

  “In case you get the urge to cough during the sermon,” he whispers. For a moment I think he’s having a joke at my expense, but he looks very serious. “Go on,” he urges. I take one, and he pops a sweet into his own mouth before stuffing the packet back into his trousers.

  At the end of the service I stand to leave. “Thank you for looking after me,” I tell him.

  “I haven’t finished yet. There’s coffee in the vicarage now and it won’t do you any harm to come and meet everybody.”

  Of course he is right. None of the people who seemed so daunting in church are the least bit unwelcoming; away from the pulpit Christopher exudes warmth and we soon fall into conversation about his work. He explains that he looks after three local churches, not just St Andrew’s, and he and his wife Jane have been in the parish for almost five years.

  “Three churches? I expect that keeps you busy.”

  “Not as busy as it should. It’s so hard to get people to take an interest these days, especially the young families. They turn up at Christmas if we’re lucky, but that’s about all. And I’d far rather be doing christenings than funerals.”

  I nod. “I bet you have a fair few of those.”

  “Luckily not in Great Fencote. The last one was Owen’s gran – and that was over a year ago.”

  Right on cue Owen materialises beside us and tells me he has to leave.

  “Sunday lunch at Adam’s mother’s. If I go then they can’t argue – not too much, anyway.”

  I raise my eyebrows “Tin hat time, then?”

  He grins. “It’s not her fault – it’s a generation thing. She’s never really come to terms with him being gay so she thinks I’m a good influence because I’m not.” He presses his hand onto my arm. “See you soon,” he says, and then he is gone.

  By the time I leave the vicarage it is almost one o’clock. I have promised to help out at the village fete in two week’s time and almost agreed to join Jane’s book club. Catching up on a bit of serious fiction would make a nice change; I’ve become far too hooked on glossy magazines.

  It is another particularly warm day and I am drawn to the river. William and I retrace our steps to sit on the grassy knoll. William pants and I shield my eyes from the sun. The water glistens and shimmers. Close to the bridge, the heron is motionless, waiting for a fish. I realise I have come here to think about Owen.

  It is hard to relate the extremely polite and well-scrubbed man to the strangely elemental river creature, and it fascinates me it is the same person. I gaze into the Swale and enjoy the memory of the muscles in his shoulders and back working through the water, and the whiteness of the soles of his feet as they the surfaced every now and then.

  Eventually I drag myself to my senses and pull William briskly back along the path. But I can’t shake the sensuousness of the memory, although it is unwelcome. I can do without this sort of longing; I tell myself sharply that I need to get a life.

  If getting a life means going to the pub, then it is Richard who provides the opportunity when he phones a few days later to say he has my quote ready and it might be better if we discuss it over a drink at the Black Horse in Kirkby Fleetham. And perhaps have some supper too, because it would save each of us having to cook for ourselves. A very practical man is Richard.

  Practical; and good looking. But of course he knows it and that’s never held a great deal of appeal for me. He’s good fun though and we enjoy a bit of harmless banter in his van when he picks me up.

  As soon as we reach the bar a youngish man wearing a checked shirt turns away from his conversation and looks me up and down. “Very nice indeed, Dick,” he nods. “Brunette for a change, I see.”

  “Alice is a client, Matt,” replies Richard. “I’ve brought her here to discuss work.”

  “You didn’t take my old ma out to the pub when you did her chimney.”

  “That was just a small job. I’m going to have to ply Alice here with drink just so she doesn’t faint when she sees how big my quote is.”

  “Your quote…that’s a new name for it.”

  “It’s not one I’ve heard before, either,” I chip in.

  There is a momentary silence and I realise that perhaps in The Black Horse women are seen but not heard, but the landlady quickly comes to my rescue.

  “Makes a change from them boasting about their tools,” she says, raising her eyebrows. “Lovely lads though, not an ounce of lead in their collective pencils, but they wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

  “Hey, Liz, that’s not fair,” Matt protests.

  “Of course it isn’t,” she replies, then turns to me. “Now Alice, what can I get you? Have what you like – if Richard’s going to fleece you for a job, you’d better start getting your money back now.”

  In the end we don’t even talk about the quote. We sit at the bar and have a couple of drinks, chatting with the others. Then Richard’s mobile rings and he wanders outside to answer it, leaving me all on my own in the middle of a slightly uneasy silence.

  “So, how did you meet Richard?” Liz asks.

  “Owen Maltby recommended him.”

  “Really?” She sounds a bit surprised but before I have time to ask her why, Matt chips in.

  “I’d steer clear of that weirdo if I were you.” He says it as though he means it.

  “Oh come on, Matt,” Liz carries on, “be a bit charitable – it wasn’t exactly normal him being brought up by his gran and that.”

  “Ugh.” Matt shudders. “But he’s so creepy – all that so-called charming.”

  So called charming? What’s wrong with being charming? Just because Owen is gentlemanly and polite…I am about to wade in on his behalf when Richard breezes back into the bar.

  “Come on, Princess, I’m starving – let’s order something to eat.”

  Nine o’clock comes and goes and it becomes apparen
t Richard is in no fit state to drive me home. Even if he offered, I wouldn’t particularly want him to – I don’t want to end up in the nearest ditch. High summer or not the sky is already darkening and I decide that if I’m going to walk then I’d better make a move.

  I slide down from my barstool. “Right – that’s me done – I’m off home.”

  Richard looks up from his conversation about football. “Shall I take you?” he offers without a great deal of conviction.

  “No, I’m fine on my own. I’m not exactly going to get lost, am I?”

  “What about the ghosties and ghoulies?” Matt asks.

  “I’m not worried about those,” I scoff.

  “Well what about Dick getting his leg over?”

  “Now that does sound scary. See you guys around.” I give Richard the briefest of pecks on the cheek and make my way out into the night air.

  First, it’s colder than I expected and second, I’m drunker than I thought I was. I tug my pashmina from the bottom of my handbag and wrap it around me before setting off down the road.

  I am fine within the street-lit security of Kirkby Fleetham but once I walk past the national speed limit sign I find myself in almost total darkness. Across the fields I can see lights coming from the farm buildings at the other end of the village green to my house and I focus on them. It’s only a mile or so and it won’t take me very long.

  The road dips away towards the beck and all of a sudden I lose sight of the lights. It is very dark and I start to think of Matt’s ghosties and ghoulies – and then of deranged axe-men hiding in the hedge and every tiny movement in the undergrowth makes me jump. It certainly isn’t the same as walking home between the pools of yellow streetlight in Reading; it’s not only the darkness, it’s the silence too – or rather every sinister rustle and squawk that breaks it.