Second Prize: 'Suffolk' Short Story Competition 2006
Suffolk Sunshine, by Dominique Lansdowne
I knew it was after Christmas, but if I’m honest dates don’t mean much to me, one day slips into the next here, and until my boss spoke I’d say there was little to make this particular day stand out at all.
I was taking a break, leaning on the gate next to the water trough and I didn’t even hear him approach, the first I knew was when he slapped me on the back “Tom”, he said, “I’m trusting you to be kind to your cousin.”
“My cousin?”
“She’ll be here any minute,” he explained before wandering towards the entrance to the yard.
I stayed where I was, and after a few minutes I heard the rumble of our Land Rover. The boss’s wife swung it across the yard and parked at about thirty feet away from me. Close enough for me to steal a first glance at my cousin. She stepped out of that vehicle and at once I could see she was all long legs and vanity. Me, I’m solid and plastered in mud up to my knees most days and I couldn’t see how we could possibly be related.
I leant a little harder on the fence and tried my best to look disinterested.
I focused beyond her, to the rest of the farm. The closest field was ploughed, the soil dark, wet and waiting to be sown. Beyond that the trees were black and skeletal against the grey sky, grey which was too low for cloud and too thin for fog. This was what I always thought of as the nothing time of year. I don’t mean that in any dismissive way, after all, all living things need to rest, it’s just not exciting to watch.
I glanced back at her and wondered whether she was the sort who would appreciate the jobs of our hibernating little farm. I also wondered what her story was, but most of all I wanted to know how long she’d stay.
OK, I’m not saying I avoided her as such, but I found out plenty before we’d even been introduced. She liked to be called Sunny and she’d come for the year, “to help out” the boss said. And after that “they’d see”. Whatever that meant.
She was from the other end of the county; a Newmarket girl and looked too polished for us. I wondered if she’s even seen a farm before. She’d been here less than an hour when I spotted her gazing out across the front paddock.
I followed her gaze, trying to see it for the first time too but I grew up here in my father’s shadow and learnt the intricacies of the hedgerows and fences and crops and harvests from men who, like him, had been here their entire working lives.
I’ve never been to Newmarket but I’ve heard stories of champagne and ladies’ day and the wild antics of the stable lads. I know it would all be as alien to me as our rural life clearly was to her.
I spent the afternoon helping to move bales of straw from behind the barn. Most years our first guests arrive at Easter, but occasionally they rent the barn for half term, then by high season the accommodation is earning more than the rest of our farm’s activities put together and I’m tied up doing dray rides to the pub and back. I suppose we’re only pretending to be a traditional farm otherwise our barn would still be a barn and the holiday makers would be camping five miles up the road in Hemsby. But even pretending is bloody hard work and after the fifth load of bales I couldn’t help but wonder how Sunny was really going to fit in.
And I also couldn’t help hoping she did.
I made up my mind to talk to her and on the way back found myself rehearsing my best line, “Hi, I’m Tom”.
I tried it in several tones of voice before realising that I sounded like a lonely hearts ad. It took two more days of rehearsing these three little words before I conceded that I really was a lonely heart; self-conscious and tongue tied but with just enough optimism to consider trying it for real.
I’d caught her glancing at me a couple of times, but only because I was busy gazing at her for ever longer chunks of time. She’d been at the farm for four days and for no particular reason I suddenly found the strength to introduce myself. My heart raced at just the thought of it though and I tried to remind myself that an introduction probably wouldn’t lead to anything more but it was no good, I was already galloping off on my wild goose chase.
The wild goose in question is standing at the other end of the yard with her back to me. That’s not a complaint by the way, she’s one of those head turners that looks utterly feminine however she stands.
So I wandered over, desperate not to be desperate.
“Tom” I said.
“Sunny” she replied and turned her head away from the view, letting her gaze settle on me.
Her eyes were big and brown, the sort you can dive into and hope to drown. I caught her perfume, she smelt like heaven, or maybe not quite that chaste. My legs jellied a bit and I shifted my weight around a bit too obviously as I fished around for the killer follow up to reciting my name.
She looked amused and flicked her head back, shaking her hair away from her eyes. It didn’t help my concentration.
“The farm” I began, but found that I couldn’t add anything else.
“Yes,” she said “tell me what it’s like working here.”
I thought it over. What was best? The dramatic weather. The annual splash of tourists. The peace of winter. Or maybe the continuity of being one in many generations to work the same acres. “It’s home,” I said, “I’d never look for better because this is it.”
“Wow” she replied and looked away again.
“I hope you stay” I murmured.
“Why have you avoided me then?”
“I didn’t know what to make of you. And I didn’t – don’t understand why the boss called us cousins?”
She shook her hear and seemed amused by that. “Because we are.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible, we’re so different.”
“Really?” Now she was looking me in the eye again.
“Yes” I hesitated, but only for a moment, I’d made up my mind I’d head down this path and I wasn’t about to about-turn now. “You’re refined. Beautiful.”
“And where has it got me?” she snorted. “Everything until now has amounted to nothing, but coming here feels like coming home and you’ve just told me you feel the same way too so how are we so different eh?”
“You’re a townie.”
“I’m Suffolk born and bred and proud of it too. I’ve had it with the racing set.” The tension left her and her voice became soft. She nudged me playfully, “I’m more interested in a muscular farm worker you know.”
“Don’t tease” I huffed. “You know carrot dangling is cruel.”
It was all bluff, a little mantra was running through my brain, it said please mean it, please mean it. I scratched my ear, stalling for time as it dawned on me that she meant a whole lot more to me than a little horse play would ever satisfy.
“Not if you get to eat the carrot” she sighed. Her eyes were doing that sparkling thing again.
I dared to hope and stepped closer.
“Can we be kissing cousins?” she whispered in my ear.
“Absolutely.”
She nuzzled my shoulder, “My full name’s Suffolk Sunshine you know and we’re two of Suffolk’s best.”
I smiled and it was my turn to shake my head, “Who’d have thought it, the racehorse and the Suffolk Punch.”
© Dominique Lansdowne 2006
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