‘At the airport?’ I ask, rubbing my bleary eyes.
‘No sir, we’ve arrived in New York.’
Jesus, those sleeping tablets are even better than I thought. I can’t remember even getting on the plane let alone any of the flight and yet it only feels like I’ve been asleep a couple of hours at most.
The noise outside is exactly how I’d expect New York to be: a bustling cacophony of voices and car horns almost like that of a parade laid on just for me. Rolling down the blacked-out window, I prepare myself for that first look at my new home, the first taste of the new me.
Welcome home, Mr Cavendishscrawled in dripping redpaint onto a bedsheet is the first thing I clap eyes on. The whole thing fills up the window so that it’s impossible to see beyond it. Perhaps I’m hallucinating.
When the bedsheet retreats from my window, it is a row of tractors I see next, lining a crumbling road. Their tyre tracks have left at least a mile of churned-up grass verge behind them. A dozen or so pensioners are turned out in their Sunday best, clapping and waving little union flags as though the king has just decided to pay their nursing home a special visit.
‘What’s going on? I’m supposed to be catching a flight to New York,’ I say to the driver, my palms growing sweaty.
‘This is New York, sir,’ he replies simply.
‘Unless you’ve got some sort of newly patented flying car, how the fuck can we be in New York?’ My temper grows short as my confusion mounts.
‘I’ve been told to take you to the Big Apple.’ The driver double-checks the map open on his phone and nods to himself.
Pressing the heel of my palms into the sockets of my eyes, my confusion shifts to frustration, then to anger. ‘The Big Apple. New York. The United States. North America.’ My words are staccato through my gritted teeth.
When I peel open my lids again, the light swirls and throbs across my vision. Everything is blurred, as though a film has been laid across my irises, but after a moment of blinking, I finally pull into focus the building the congregation musters in front of. I would assume that roses mix with wisteria to climb the trellises in the summer, but right now it’s bare branches that scale theirway up the stonework and hanging baskets with forgotten Christmas decorations inside fill the gaps. The whole thing is ancient, and I’m sure it’s a sight to behold in the summer, but it’s a bleak image of the crumbling English countryside at the arse end of February. Yet it’s clear this place is a source of pride for all of these people who stand before it as though presenting their finest jewels and best goats to foreign royalty.
A sign hangs from the thick wooden beams above the door. It swings back and forth though there’s hardly a breeze. A lush tree fills most of it and a heavy Granny Smith hangs from its painted branches. Within the shine of the green skin, the words ‘The Big Apple’ reflect the sunlight in their thick black lettering.
And beside it all, I see a beautifully ornate sign, its letters carved out and filled with the greenery that surrounds us at every single angle and it reads:New York Village.
‘You’ve got to be taking the piss.’ Placing my head in my hands, I try to ignore the smug look on the driver’s face that I catch in the rear-view mirror.
‘Oh my, last time I saw you, you were only this big.’ A shrill voice cuts in so close to my face that I jump back with such force I whack my head on the headrest. The deeply lined face of an elderly lady that I have never seen before is pressed so far through the cracked open window that I can smell the lavender rinse in her hair. ‘Haven’t you grown?’
Only when I see her bony hand reaching in to touch my face do I snap out of whatever trance has been keeping me stupefied in this car. The only thing I can think to do isslide out of the door and stand before the rabble. There’s plenty of open space, too much open space even. If any more OAPs try to touch me, or this turns into someHot Fuzz–type of small-town mass murder thing, I know I can run.
‘You don’t remember me do you, duck?’ She stands beside me now, her diminutive frame hunched over as close beside me as she can possibly get.
‘I’m afraid not.’ I smile, though I’m sure it comes out more of a grimace.
‘I’m Barbara. I used to change your dad’s nappies back in the day. You’re welcome to call me Auntie Babs – everyone else does.’
‘Oh right. Lovely.’ I laugh breathily, trying my best to be polite, though my brain is utterly scrambled with the onslaught of what has happened, and I’m still not convinced my sleeping pills aren’t making me violently hallucinate.
‘Give the boy some space, Barbara.’ A younger, stockier woman, seemingly mid-fifties, comes over and thankfully places herself between me and ‘Auntie Babs’. ‘Welcome to New York, son. I’m Tracy, but that’s a name I won’t force you to remember for a little while. I’m the manager of that there pub. Let’s get you in an’ have a drink, eh?’ She has a motherly air to her, and though this is my first time meeting her, my anxiety plateaus in her presence and I can finally breathe.
The crowd still rages on, however. Every step I take, they cheer, as though they’ve never seen a man walk in Alexander McQueen brogues before. Why on earth dothese seemingly normal people care so much about me? My father isn’t even here.
Tracy the landlady leans close to me and through a gritted-teeth smile says, ‘Just give them a wave and that will pacify them for a bit.’ I do as she says, and the swarm cheer and wave their flags even harder than before. Tracy pulls me through a side door of the Big Apple, and the thick, sloping walls muffle the noise outside so finally I can think again.
Chapter 4
Beatrice
Everything has to be perfect for Arthur Cavendish. Those have been the only words muttered this week in the village. The bus stop has been power-washed, flowers have been planted completely out of season, and nobody seems bothered that one frosty morning will see all of them wilted. Parts of this pub that haven’t seen the light of day in decades have been dusted and polished as though Arthur Cavendish has come to judge us for some sort of ‘best kept village’ competition.
Honestly, I don’t get the fuss. All I have ever heard about this man is that he is everything but what his father is. He has not a touch of his humility or grace, and he does everything in his power to besmirch their name. Everyone else is acting like Arthur’s face hasn’t been splashed across the papers all this week because of his drug-fuelled escapades, and I know for certain that hissudden appearance here is no coincidence. Fortuitously for Arthur, they seem to have been able to overlook his wrongdoings. Sixteen-year-old Beatrice wasn’t quite as lucky when she was caught smoking in the old barn and treated like a jezebel for at least a month after. But I’m not holding a grudge or anything …
Still, this is the closest I’ve come to meeting a Cavendish, and the first time in years that one has visited our forgotten little village. So, I’ve had two showers and straightened my hair for the event.
‘Finally some fresh meat in the village who aren’t your cousins or pensioners and old Beatrice Norton reminds us all that she is neither a nun nor a secret OAP,’ Cerys, Tracy’s daughter, heckles from the bar whilst tugging on her nose ring as I take the feather duster to the curtain poles. ‘Jesus, girl, you actually look fit when you don’t smell like cabbages.’
