‘Me too,’ he sighed sadly, before stopping the tractor again and climbing out.
We ate a simple picnic lunch of sandwiches, fruit and lemonade and then walked around the field margins which were awash with wildflowers and separated from the land on either side by dense, high hedgerows.
‘Can you hear that?’ said Joe, cocking his head. ‘It’s too hot now for the birds to be singing, but the insects are out in full force.’
I listened to the thrum of intense buzzing, the lazy drone of a plump bumblebee and watched the progress of a pair of butterflies as they fluttered elegantly by.
‘Amazing,’ I said again, hoping there weren’t too many of the stinging varieties close by. ‘It sounds like a very busy spot.’
‘There are places like this all over the farm,’ Joe said proudly. ‘Dad was very keen on keeping the hedges when everyone else was ripping them out. He always had a respect for the land, and I’ll be the first to admit that that did sometimes mean compromising yields and profits, but he knew it was going to be worth it for the sake of diversity. We’ve even got a large pond taking up the middle of one of the fields further inland. Charlie was all for draining it and filling it in, but Dad dug his heels in about that too.’
I wondered if Charlie would forge ahead regardless now. Probably not if Joe had anything to do with it. He was clearly passionate about all that his father had achieved and even though I was no expert in farm management I could appreciate that it couldn’t have been an easy decision to sacrifice money in the bank for the benefit of flora and fauna.
‘Your dad sounds like a great man.’
‘He really was,’ said Joe, sounding a little choked, ‘and Mum was a wonderful woman.’
He had obviously been close to his parents and loved them very much. That, combined with his love of the landscape and former admittance that he still ‘felt the pull of the place’, made me wonder why he had never pushed to be more involved with it all.
He had told me that it fell to Charlie as eldest to take over and that he had wanted to get away after the crash, but surely if he’d stuck around, he would have eventually come to terms with driving by the crash site?
But then, that was easy for me to say, wasn’t it? Because I hadn’t been subjected to the horrors that he had seen that night or lost the love of my life to the person who had been the cause of it.
‘Joe . . .’
‘Sorry, Tess,’ he said, cutting me off, ‘but I think we should get back. I don’t much like the look of that horizon.’
I followed his line of sight, but everything looked fine to me.
*
Clearly, Joe had a far more experienced weather eye than I did, because within an hour the weather had changed completely. Where there had been blue sky, there were now rolling dark clouds which threatened rain, thunder and hail, and they had been quickly blown in by a roaring wind.
‘Do you think we should at least try to get the dog out from under here?’ Joe asked Charlie as he set the table in the kitchen for what I considered a very early dinner. When I mentioned it, the brothers had responded that it wasn’t all that early when you’d been on the go since dawn.
The farmhouse was absolutely beautiful, although a little run down, and the kitchen was an interesting mix of magazine-style country touches combined with practical functionality. The large scrubbed pine table looked as though it had been in situ for as long as the house had stood and it was that which Bruce was cowering under with his tail between his legs and his muzzle between his front paws.
‘No,’ said Charlie as a flash lit up the room and what sounded like a handful of gravel was dashed against the window. ‘He’s fine where he is.’
Joe didn’t look impressed, so I slipped off the sofa on to the floor where I was level with the dog. He might have been a pain in the backside, but I hated seeing him so cowed. Spotting me, he slid out on his belly and thrust his nose in my lap. The poor thing was shaking like a leaf.
‘I’ll keep him over here if you like,’ I said, trying to dissipate the tension I could feel building and which wouldn’t help Bruce’s nerves at all.
Neither brother answered and I wondered if the pair bickered a lot. I know Joe wasn’t happy that Charlie wouldn’t take on board any of his suggestions for the farm and I wondered if the elder brother resented what he might consider interference from the sibling who was rarely around.
By the time dinner was served Bruce was practically sitting on my lap and when I took my seat at the table and accepted the glass of red Joe offered, he somehow squeezed himself under my seat and rested his heavy head on my feet.
‘I did wonder,’ said Joe as he lifted a gargantuan pie out of the Aga, ‘if it was going to be too hot for this today.’
‘So did I, to be honest,’ said Charlie, as he deposited three large tureens of vegetables down the middle of the table.
He sounded far happier now he was faced with a plate the size of a platter.
‘Did you make this?’ I asked Joe, eyeing the crisply baked pie which was decorated with golden pastry leaves.
‘I did,’ he said proudly, then added with a frown, ‘oh god, you aren’t vegan or vegetarian, are you?’
‘No,’ I laughed, ‘I’m not. I thought you’d remember that from the afternoon tea we shared and the fish and chips we ate at the seaside.’
‘Oh yeah, of course,’ he said, sounding relieved. ‘This isn’t really as fancy as it looks.’ He added, with a self-deprecating nod to the table.
‘It looks pretty fancy to me,’ I told him.
‘You haven’t tasted it yet,’ said Charlie with a wry smile as he dug in.
Joe ignored him.
‘It’s one of Mum’s recipes,’ he said to me instead. ‘The filling is cooked in the slow cooker all day and then it’s a quick assembly job with a packet of shop-bought puff pastry, before finishing off in the oven.’
My stomach grumbled loudly in response and we all laughed, except for Bruce, who was still shaking under the table.
The meal tasted every bit as delicious as it looked and accompanied with the fruity, warm wine I was left feeling replete, relaxed and a little sleepy, in spite of the storm outside raging louder than ever.
‘You stay where you are,’ Joe insisted, as I made a move to gather the empty plates. ‘Charlie and I are used to clearing up.’
‘We’ll get washed up and then I’ll go back out to check the yard,’ said Charlie.
I didn’t much like the thought of him going out into the storm and I wasn’t much looking forward to the journey back to Wynmouth either. That said, if I couldn’t prise Bruce off me, I wouldn’t be going anywhere anyway.
‘I’m not sure . . .’ Joe started to say but stopped as a crack of thunder seemed to suck in the walls of the room before releasing them and taking the electricity away with it. ‘Bugger.’
Clearly, the boys were prepared for such eventualities and within minutes the room was bathed in candlelight and Joe was cranking the handle on a wind-up radio while Charlie ran the water to wash up.
‘I was going to say, Tess,’ said Joe, setting the radio down on the table and picking up a tea towel, ‘that if this carries on, I might not be able to get you home tonight.’