Page 45 of A Year at Appleyard Farm
Fifteen minutes later, after changing and dressing Robyn warmly, Merry waved them off down the path, Cora smiling broadly, and Rupert walking neatly at the pram’s side, keeping pace with it perfectly. She felt her husband’s arms slide around her waist.
‘Are you okay with this?’ he asked softly, knowing how hard it was for any new mum to let her baby out of sight for more than a minute.
Merry watched the little trio for a few moments more before turning in Tom’s arms. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Absolutely.’
21
It was the start of a beautiful friendship, and one that set a new rhythm to Merry’s days.
Every morning, towards eleven, Cora would appear to collect Robyn for a walk, the sight of the three of them setting off down the path never failing to bring a smile to Merry’s lips. Robyn herself seemed more settled, her legs bouncing in delight whenever she caught sight of Rupert. She was feeding better, and Merry could hear her daughter’s contentedness in her steady stream of burbling noises.
For Merry, it brought a welcome couple of hours of unstructured time, and although she felt a little guilty, Cora’s admonishment soon made her put it aside and enjoy the opportunity it gave her to do whatever she pleased. Most days, this meant being able to help Tom more usefully, but on others she caught up on a little housework or did some baking.
This morning, Merry stood in the more formal of their two living rooms and looked at the pieces of old furniture gathered there. The plans had come back on the new shop design, and with the actual building work beginning to get under way, she was keen to explore some of her ideas.
Merry couldn’t explain her feelings about the shop, but whereas everything in their hotel had been of the highest quality and the last word on elegance, it was not a look that she wanted to replicate here. She’d always had a savvy eye for recognising a bargain or the potential in things that others might overlook, but she had tended to save these items for their own living accommodation. The shop was different, though. She and Tom had trawled through brochure after brochure of shop fitments and bespoke units, and although she could see their practicality, none of them drew her eye.
If she had to pick one word to describe what was in her head,kitsch, was probably the best she could come up with, but even to her, this sounded horrifying. However, she was beginning to have a very clear idea of how she wanted the shop to look, and now was as good a time as any to see whether any of this furniture would prove to be useful, or indeed would fit the space. She took out her tape measure and began to jot down some measurements.
The desk was ideal; its surface a little pitted and stained, but once painted, this wouldn’t matter one bit, and, in Merry’s opinion, would only add to the look she was trying to create. It had one large drawer that ran the whole width of the top and once in place, with the drawer pulled open, it would add to the overall display space. The desk itself wasn’t too deep, and she checked again with the tape measure. The drawer was locked, but she gave it a tug, feeling it move slightly, and then tugged again, just to be sure. They wouldn’t need the lock after all.
One side of the drawer had moved out much further than the other, and Merry dropped to her knees for a better look. She popped out to the kitchen, where Tom’s toolbox now seemed to live more or less permanently and returned with a long-handled flat screwdriver. The lock was a little loose on one side, and Merry was sure that with a bit of help, she could persuade it to part company with the wood.
She tucked her hair back behind her ears and gritted her teeth, as she brought her weight down on the end of the screwdriver. She wiggled it from side to side, and pushed it further and further as the metal began to buckle. She didn’t want to damage the front of the desk but reasoned that a small amount of repair would be necessary anyway. Eventually, the lock pushed away from its housing completely, and Merry jiggled the drawer open.
Packed almost to overflowing, it was full of huge sheets of paper, and bundles of notebooks secured with elastic bands. The tallest of these piles was wedged against the top of the drawer, so that Merry had to use the edge of the screwdriver once more, pushing down in order to totally free it. On one side was an old Oxo cube tin, and Merry lifted it out, a smile on her face. Her mum still had one just like it, where she kept her needles and threads. This tin was full of old keys, and Merry tipped them out onto the desktop in wonder.
She lifted out one of the piles of notebooks, the band holding them falling away, long since perished. Thirty seconds later, her heart thumping in her chest, she ran through the house, shouting for Tom.
She found him in the shop where his head bobbed up from behind the little pot-bellied stove in the shop, black smudges all across his forehead.
‘You have to come and see this!’ she exclaimed, breathless, reaching out for his hand. She stopped when she caught sight of it. ‘But don’t touch anything!’
Tom followed her back into the house, trailing in her excited wake.
One of the notebooks still lay on the desktop where she had left it.
‘Look Tom, look at these,’ she directed, holding it open so that Tom wouldn’t have to touch it with his sooty hands. ‘They’re sketches, designs, some of them just tiny details, almost doodles, but others cover the entire page.’
Tom looked up at her flushed face, with dawning realisation of what he was seeing.
Merry nodded. ‘They’re all Christopher’s work, pages of the stuff. And there must be…fifteen or so books in here. I haven’t looked at them all, but that’s not the only thing.’
She gingerly lifted up the corner of one of the sheets that lay flat in the drawer, revealing its underside.
‘What are these, mock-ups or something? Proofs?’ Tom looked at the coloured sheets, a long rectangle filled with vibrant colour, not painted like the canvases, but printed onto shiny paper. He glanced ruefully at his hands, and Merry knew he was itching to get a better look.
‘I almost daren’t lift them out.’
‘Just take out the top one, carefully,’ Tom suggested.
Merry did as she was asked, holding her breath until the paper was safely down on the desktop again. She stared at it in amazement.
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘We can’t keep these. What do we do?’
Tom stared down at the artwork in front of him. ‘The sad thing is, Merry, that no one will probably want them. I agree we need to find out, though. I’m not sure if they have any historical significance, but what’re left of his family ought to know at least.’
‘I can’t believe all this stuff was left here to rot.’
