‘Where did—’ Before I can finish my question, the door to the pub opens with a creak and an old lady dressed head to toe in mismatched tweed swaggers inside with a walking cane shaped like a peacock at the end.
‘’Mon, then kidda,’ she says as though she has known me for a lifetime already. ‘Grab your stuff.’
‘Me?’ I ask, wondering if she is talking to me, or simply looking at me dead in the eye whilst addressing someone else.
‘No, I’m talking to Cedric.’ She gestures to the bodiless deer mounted on the wall with an exaggerated eyeroll. ‘Come on, I haven’t got all day.’
‘All of my things are still in the car,’ I say, still a little stunned.
‘Well, I hope you’re not expecting me to fetch them for you.’ She taps my ankles with her cane. ‘Quick march.’
I look to Tracy for some sort of explanation, or help, but she simply turns away and fiddles with the optics on the bar. With no choice but to follow the nameless woman, I keep at a distance and hope she hasn’t got some James Bond–style weapon concealed in that cane of hers.
All of her movements are executed with such speed, I can hardly keep up. She throws open the door to the pub – I have to catch it again before it slams into my face – and she walks with such pace that her stick doesn’t even touch the floor. Thankfully the crowd has dispersed when I venture outside again and only a few bodies linger. Their hushed voices and quick rustling for their phones are the only noises that greet me. When I reach the car, I finally draw the courage to question my captor.
‘Sorry,’ I begin, ‘not to be rude or anything …’ she quirks her eyebrow expectantly ‘… but who exactly are you?’
She bursts out in almost mechanical laughter. ‘You taking the mick?’ When she notices the seriousness on my face, hers falls and the wrinkles around her smile deepen like cracks in ancient stone. ‘I’m your grandmother,’she says, a softness creeping into her tone that seems uncharacteristic of the person I’ve known in these last few minutes.
There’s a strange emptiness that slips into me at the sight of her. How can I not recognise my own grandmother? I’ve never even asked about her. Never even wondered about her. I always just thought our family consisted of nannies, PAs, and producers. Though my mother and father’s humble beginnings have overshadowed and created much of their successes, I realise now, even I only know the short pitch. I know they had little and made a lot; I know they had no help; I know they have achieved great things in spite of it all. But I have no idea what ‘it all’ is or was.
‘What’s the matter, lad? Cat got your tongue?’ She pronounces the latter word so that it rhymes with ‘thong’ and it takes me a second to understand what it is she’s even talking about.
‘No, no,’ I say, absently, so many things swirling around in my head for me to try and understand. ‘I just don’t remember you.’
‘Ay, well you wouldn’t. That boy of mine was always too ashamed to come home once he got a bit of money under him.’ She shakes her head. ‘All the folk round here reckon the sun shines out his arse, but I know he’s nothing but selfish. No wonder his spawn is spoilt too.’ My grandmother prods me with her cane as though she is speaking to a crowd.
She must be wrong. Why would he just abandon his hometown to the point where his only son never even knew of its existence? Even more so, why would he sendme here to ‘realise how much it means to be a Cavendish’ when it seems as if he abandoned his roots long before I did? Not a single part of any of this makes sense and all I want to do is lie down in a dark room and not have to think about any of it.
‘Why would he send me to stay with you then? It hardly sounds as if you’re on good terms.’
‘He didn’t,’ she replies matter-of-factly. ‘He sent you to Tracy, to stay at the pub, but somehow, you’ve managed to piss her off in less than an hour so she called me. She didn’t say exactly what you did but she called you a “prick” and many other interesting names that I’m sure you’ll hear a lot during your tenure in New York, since you’ve managed to upset the nicest person in the village.’ My stomach gurgles with guilt and my face grows hotter the longer she speaks.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, bile thick in my throat.
‘Not me you need to be saying that to, pal.’ She chuckles dryly. ‘You will be coming back here first thing to apologise to Tracy though. Everyone knows you don’t piss off the only pub in the village.’
I agree, and with no other choice, I hoist my cases out of the boot and stand before her expectantly. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘No need, we’ll walk. It will give us a chance to catch up.’ I look down again at my two extra-large suitcases, and my fatigue of the events of the last week finally catches up to me. I debate whether to even bother carting them with me now.
As we set off down the path, the concrete quickly comes to an end and instead diverges into two mud tracks madeby tractors through a field. My grandmother takes the left, clearly the one most travelled by the way the mud is churned up and thick with sunken footprints. Each stride sees another inch of filth climb my trouser legs and the colour and shape of my brogues are now completely intelligible. I don’t see another building for miles ahead, not even a shed, let alone a house, but still, I follow.
‘So, this is where my dad was raised?’ I say, dragging my cases through the topsoil with great strain. The horizon is so wide, so vast, that every corner of the peachy sky is visible as it blushes deeper and deeper with the evening sun. A breeze flows across the land like nothing I’ve felt before. With no obstacles, no structures of men to inhibit it, it stretches wide across the earth and breathes through my clothes, my hair, and I can suck in its freshness so deeply it’s as if each inhalation cleanses me from the inside. I close my eyes for just a second to take it all in.
It takes just a moment’s lapse in concentration for the farmer’s mud to swallow one of my shoes and the foot that once inhabited it and send me head first into the loam, taking out my grandmother’s cane and sending her flying with me.
‘You bloody great buffoon!’ she shouts as she frees herself from the grip of the field, her tweed taking on a new shade of brown, the same one smeared across her face. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’
I stumble over to where she sits in the earth, leaving my shoes to the mercy of the field. ‘I’m so sorry. Oh God. I’m so sorry.’ Stammering through my apology, I try and aid my grandmother back up to her feet. ‘Are you okay?’I fuss, my hands on her arms only smearing more mud over her.
Shoving me off, she wobbles to her feet herself, not forgetting the exaggerated eyeroll to go along with it. ‘Well done, son. Very well done.’ I’m not quite sure if it’s the sneer in her tone or the way she strides from me that gives me the impression, but I’m pretty sure she’s being sarcastic. I’ve been here an hour at most and I’ve managed to make even my grandmother hate me. If this was Dad’s plan all along – make me meet all of the ghosts of his Christmas past, present, and future to force me to realise just how shitty of a person I am – I have to say it’s already working.
Once she has paced away for a few metres she turns back to me, a mobile phone the size of a butter dish in her hand. ‘I think we’ve caught up enough. I’ve called for a lift.’
After a few minutes of silence, a white flatbed truck trundles across the field in the distance. The night has drawn in and the darkness falls thick and fast. With every bump over the ploughed earth, the headlights of the truck flash and wink in the distance, their brightness growing ever closer.
My grandmother, unburdened by suitcases, strides off ahead, and she reaches our saviour before I do. A lean, tall yet still distinctly feminine figure jumps down from the cab. Tearing off her soiled blazer, my grandmother tosses it into the back of the truck before our rescuer gives her a hand up into the passenger seat and climbs back into the driver’s side herself. Dread mounts in me as she begins to drive again and I start to question if I’ll survive a nightalone in this wilderness if they leave me behind. The vehicle draws closer and closer to me, but its pace shows no intention of stopping.
