‘Pretty hard not to when you’re practically shouting about it to your mates inmybastard local!’ I can’t help but raise my voice as I finally unravel and meet him on my feet so we stand face to face, like bulls ready to butt heads.
‘Perhaps if you didn’t go out of your way to make a spectacle of yourself, people wouldn’t talk.’ He flinches at the end of his sentence as though it’s someone else spitting those vile words.
‘Why are you even here, Arthur?’ I hiss, my blood boiling. ‘Is New York going to be the dumping ground for A-listers to burden us with their junkie kids from now on? Because if that’s the case, I want out.’
‘It’s nice to see that you still have pigeons out here delivering the news to you. The fact that you’d so blindly believe such things explains a hell of a lot.’ He turns hisface from me and scoffs, ‘I don’t need to be here, doing this withyou,’ before turning away and striding back down the field.
‘You don’t even know where you’re going,’ I call to him, suddenly aware that if I lose Ms Riches’ grandson on his first day, she will not be happy, and, most importantly, I won’t get paid.
‘It’s hardly bustling. I’m sure I’ll figure it out,’ he calls back, not bothering to turn around to face me.
In my frustration, my pent-up rage, I launch the crusts of my sandwich towards him and they burst into a thousand crumbs in his hair. He simply waves me off with his middle finger and marches down the barren wheat field without once looking back.
Chapter 9
Arthur
‘Not happening.’ Tracy points at me as soon as I step through the door of the Big Apple. I soon figured out after walking through field after field, that the only place for a lost traveller to turn in New York is the pub.
‘I’ve come to apologise.’ Putting my hands up in surrender, I’m desperate for somewhere warm to sit and a pint to nurse.
‘It’s not me you need to apologise to.’ She turns away from me to pull a pint and I stand slumped in the doorway.
‘Come on in, ducky, you don’t need to apologise to your old Auntie Babs.’ I notice Barbara for the first time as her shrill voice cuts through the bar and I cringe at the sound of it, and the way she taps the bar stool beside her, motioning for me to sit.
‘Oh hush, Barbara. The boy isn’t interested.’ Tracy comes to my rescue once again and I begin to hope that her hatred for me doesn’t run too deep stirs in me. So, with adeep breath and all the expectation of being barred, I take a few cautious steps towards her.
‘I do. I need to apologise to Beatrice, I know that. But you deserve an apology too.’ My body feels heavy at the mention of her name, and I wonder if she is still in that field cursing my name. ‘I’ve made a real arse of myself. Please can we start again?’ I outstretch my arm across the bar to shake her hand. She looks at it for a moment, deliberating.
‘You’re lucky that business is slow and I can’t afford to turn patrons away,’ she mumbles, not bothering to shake my hand. ‘But you need to know, wellies and overalls are banned in my pub. They stay at the door.’
I look down at myself. ‘I, er, well, I don’t have anything underneath.’ My cheeks warm as I try to keep my voice low, but I notice Barbara at the bar scan me from head to toe.
‘Not my problem.’ Tracy shrugs.
With no other choice than to try and find my way back to my grandmother’s house, I stand in the middle of the Big Apple, taking off my wellies one at a time. Tracy watches me from her peripheral with intrigue. This village has made me lose my mind. I’m sure of it, because for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, I find myself stripping off in front of strangers.
Once the zip of my overalls reaches my stomach, I’m grateful when Tracy’s voice interrupts me. ‘All right, Magic Mike, I get your point. As much as someone with your figure is a welcome sight in this neck of the woods, we really don’t need a striptease. You’ll give poor Barbara a heart attack.’
‘I don’t mind,’ the older lady interrupts, sliding on herglasses and resting her chin in her hands on the bar like a swooning schoolgirl.
‘Cerys,’ Tracy calls to her daughter who lounges on her phone in a booth opposite. ‘Can you take Mr Cavendish upstairs and fish out some of your dad’s old clothes please?’
‘Oh God, not that dick,’ is the teen’s only response.
‘Arthur or your father?’ Tracy replies, bemused.
‘Both.’
All I can do is stand, barefoot, with a polite smile on my face as the mother and daughter discuss my fate. I’m grateful when Cerys reluctantly does as she’s told and leads me up a back staircase to the flat above the pub.
The wallpaper is peeling down the walls of the tired space. Damp patches colour the ceiling corners in a murky brown and it’s clear that all of Tracy’s time and money go into making the pub perfect for her customers, and she pays the price at home.
‘Mind the junk,’ Cerys murmurs, as we step over a pile of laundry and sidestep around a few tools that have been abandoned halfway through a DIY project. ‘Wait there,’ she says, as she slips behind an old door and returns moments later with a cardboard box of clothes. She digs out an old T-shirt and pair of jeans. ‘My dad had a beer gut so these probably won’t fit you.’
‘It’s okay, I’ll grow into them,’ I reply, thanking her as I take them.
‘You can change in there.’ She points to a bathroom at the end of the hallway. ‘I’ll wait here.’
