Changing Seasons. Spring III, part 2

Spring III, part 2 It was pure coincidence that I happened to be passing just as Clara slipped and fell! Honest. I probably forgot to tell you what we’re going to be doing for her in exchange for all this “free” help. Only going up that scaffolding of hers to check out the stonework on the church tower. And then helping her clean it, if it’s safe to do so! She strikes a hard bargain. Marcus is planning to teach Clara to drive? Does he know what he’s letting himself in for?
“But how can I apply for a licence?”
“You can’t. Not yet. You’ll need an address and an identity. But I can start teaching you – and then you can apply when you’re old enough and have an address. You’ll be sixteen soon, but the address might take a bit longer to sort out. The streets are quiet enough here for you to learn the driving basics – and once I’m happy that you can handle the truck, I’ll take you into traffic bit by bit.” And off they went. Sooner him than me! He looked a bit worried, though Clara looked super-calm. Mind you, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’d been hot-wiring cars in her cradle. Or at least since she could toddle. But Marcus and Annette like and value her, so there’s obviously a lot of good in her. Somewhere… Let me show you what we built over the winter. Cellar and office above it. Everything’s on paper and in ledgers at the moment – seriously old-school – but one day (like when this place has internet access) we’ll go into computers. And downstairs… …we have new shelving, new stairs – and yes, a lot of brick that we repurposed from those old factories. Good job we did it before they had new owners – we’re probably going to have to negotiate our bricks from now on. And there’s wine already on the shelves. Hopefully, this will be the year we get the tractor. There is actually too much work for us all, but Annette couldn’t face hiring new people and having a new baby all at the same time. I guess I can see her point too. It’s a lot of disruption all at once. And I’m in no hurry to share my bunkhouse either. I’ll just carry on only having one day off a fortnight! Talking of my nice bunkhouse, I’ll show you why it’s taking me a while to find the place I’m looking for. I don’t have a lot of clues. I found this old album, in a pile of stuff my mother was throwing out, years and years ago, and just fell in love with the place really, I guess.
I was left on my own a lot as a child – everything revolved around my older brother really. My much older brother! My mother had him when she was twenty-two – and then me when she was forty-four. I was not an expected or a planned child, needless to say, and I don’t think she was any too happy about it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I always had enough to eat and so on, but I just felt – well, extra. Superfluous, in fact.
It was always going to be my brother taking my dad’s place in the business. Not me. This is the house. Maybe you can’t see what I saw, but that small boy saw home. And I think that’s what I’ve been looking for all my life, actually. It looks like a lived-in, loved, cared-for place. But there’s no clue at all as to where it might have been on this picture. This is my grandfather. Actually, he was old enough to have been my great-grandfather really. My mother was their only child, and she was born when my grandmother was over forty. Late fertility obviously ran in the family! Anyway, you can tell that the farm was near water from this one, but there’s a lot of river round here.
I’ll show you the others later on. I’ve got a lot of work to finish off before I go round to Euan and Patience for tea tonight. “So why are Marcus and Annette blaming you for their unexpected pregnancy? I mean,” I added hastily, suddenly realising how that could sound, “I know they don’t think you actually caused the pregnancy so to speak…”
“Good,” Patience interjected.
“…but there is a general ‘it’s all your fault’ joke going on.”
“Ah,” Euan said. He actually blushed.
“Well…”
“Go on,” Patience said, with resigned amusement. “He’s a grown man. You can tell him the story. He can take it.”
“Well, we’d just decorated the b-bedroom. And it l-looked very romantic. B-but we aren’t planning on extending our family so I went to M-Minnie’s shop and b-bought the last p-packet…”
“Ah,” I said, putting him out of his misery. “And when Marcus went along a bit later on the same errand?”
“Quite,” Patience said drily. “And you know Marcus. Once he’s set his mind on doing something – especially that sort of something…”
“He wouldn’t be about to change his mind! He’d trust to luck…” “So what are you going to do about school for your children? Once they’re a bit older?” I knew Patience and Euan wouldn’t be moving.
“I’m a trained primary school teacher,” Patience said, surprising me once again. I mean, not that I think she’d be a bad teacher (in fact, I can see her being great) I just didn’t know that about her.
“We’re going to clear some classrooms in the old school, patch up the walls and so on. And then I’ll be in charge of Marianna’s four school age ones, and we’ll do a nursery-style room for my three…me, Marianna, Clara, Euan, Lachlan – we’ve got enough people power to cover all the bases. Annette’s baby too, when it’s old enough. And they can all go to high school in Newborough when they’re old enough for that.” This was the last game, and I might win it. If I could keep Patience off-balance…Distraction techniques to the fore, chaps!
“That sounds like a great idea! Do you want a hand with the general cleaning and repairs and so on? What needs doing?”
“Oh, yes please. We’re starting quite soon – why don’t you go and have a look? The key’s under the stone by the front door.”
Had I distracted her enough? No. I watched gloomily as she foured it up. She knew Euan and I were both knocking on fours.
“My game, I think,” she said smugly and sweetly. I was just about to go and check out the school, see what needed doing, when Clara came cycling past. But not from the direction of her home – odd, that.
“Hey, no doing anything here until you’ve helped me!”
“I haven’t forgotten. But you need Marcus as well – remember? So I’m just checking out what needs doing here.” “Look! An ancient dolls’ house!”
Typical girl response! I was busy assessing the window frames and wall panelling for wear and tear. “I think the windows look sound enough. And the external brickwork’s weathered well. But this internal wall’s not so good.”
“Brings a whole new meaning to the idea of open-plan classrooms! And I can’t see Barnabas staying in one room when he could get into the next one with ease.”
“Me neither,” I agreed. “Patience says she wants two rooms – one as a kindergarten room and one as a school room. These two look like the best two – side by side, nice and light and airy. What do you think?”
After all, Clara might be irritating, but she’s not stupid. She has a lot of good ideas. Might as well pick that sharp brain of hers. Turned out she knew the building (and its history of course) quite well. “Those two rooms and the corridor. Barnabas will be through every hole in these walls, including the ones at your head height. We can lock the other classroom doors, but we need this to be safe and to look clean and nice as well. There’s more to do than you’d think just for two classrooms, but when all this is done, there’ll be less to do for the other classrooms. This school originally educated up to secondary level, so it would be possible to do that again with low numbers…Depends on whether the children will want to stay here or go to Newborough when they’re older.”
“True. Good thinking – I’ll take all that into account. So where were you coming from when we met? Is there more I don’t know about this place?”
“Oh definitely.” Clara paused and then said, “Come on. I’ll show you.” I rescued my bike from the bike racks and followed her down the road. Had she found my farm before I did? But no, I hadn’t needed to worry. She took me down to somewhere I hadn’t been before, but it was a housing estate. “This one’s for sale. I want to find out how to buy it. I need an address if I want a driving licence. And I can’t go on living in a church forever either.”
Well, whaddaya know? Clara’s looking for a home as well. But it’s not as special as the one I’m looking for. A home and a happy couple living in it. I’ve finished Amber’s book, so I’ve got an excuse to talk to her again. Maybe I’ll show her these photographs - they might suggest a story to her.

The Christmas card garland is by Sandy at ATS3.
The holes in the wall at the school are by Cyclone Sue at TSR