Winter IV, part 1

Winter IV, part 1 They had the new bedding and the bed did look better. But the rest of the room still looked so shabby. Apart from the ceiling of course – but they never seemed to get any closer to making the room nicer. “Come on, Honey,” she told herself. “You’ll feel better when you’ve had a wash, done your hair, got outside a bit…” It was getting cooler, but the days were still clear and sunny.
But Honey knew she was just trying to put a brave face on things. They just didn’t seem to be getting anywhere and she was feeling like she had less and less energy. They were still living out of their suitcases. The door Frank wanted to replace was just boarded over. And the idea of having a child one day seemed to have retreated over the horizon in a cloud of dust. The little bedroom, that in her mind’s eye would have been a baby’s room, was full of Maddie’s cases. And Maddie had been dropping hints about making it into a dressing room – “a bit of paint, some proper clothes storage and it would be ideal…” The spare chest of drawers was full of Maddie’s clothes, not hers or Franks. Honey was having to admit to herself that she minded having Maddie there all the time. And yet – Maddie had said she didn’t have long to live. How could she be so unkind as to turn a sick woman out? “It’s hereditary, my dear,” Maddie had said. Except…Clara had said Maddie was a Portland, and they were really long-lived. The two things couldn’t both be true. She’d ask Maddie what her maiden name was when she came down for lunch. She was still having breakfast in bed, but getting up for longer and longer parts of the day now – there was no doubt that she’d been ill with that nasty fluey cold. And actually quite considerate too. “Just leave my meals outside the door,” she’d said. “I don’t want you coming in here and catching what I’ve got.” Not that Honey or Frank ever went into her bedroom anyway: they’d not been in the room for months. Maddie kept it clean and kept the door locked.
Maddie had obviously finished the breakfast Frank had taken up for her – Honey went to collect the dishes and take them downstairs to wash. And I could go and buy some paint, she thought. Stop putting it off. Go and find out how much credit we’ve got with Minnie. Go and do it, girl. Don’t be so passive. Make the change happen. Be more Clara! Frank came in through the back of the house, glowing from the run he’d just done. The contrast between the still-scruffy pantry and the cheerful kitchen beyond it was a bit too obvious.
“I’m back,” he said. “Lovely,” Honey said. “Did you have a good run? There’s a casserole in the oven, ready when you are.”
“Mmm. I can smell it. Just let me have a quick wash and change…”
“I’ll put the green veg on when you’re back down.” “Chas is getting faster. It’s all that gym time he’s putting in – but I still beat him!” Frank glanced at the file on the table. “You been doing school stuff?”
“No. I’ve been going back over our accounts right from the beginning. I think my income must have gone down. I know what I was getting at the start, and I’ve always been really careful with the shopping. Even with feeding Maddie, we should have credit…” Honey sounded distressed.
“So, I went to look at paint and asked Minnie what we could afford. We’re actually in the red, but there’s a bit more coming in from the art gallery crew that’ll get us to the end of the month okay. But we’re never going to be able to get this house done up. Frank, I don’t think we can carry on like this.”
“So what’s changed? I know how carefully you shop. This doesn’t make sense. I’ll go and talk to Minnie tomorrow.”
Magazines! Frank hadn’t really registered them before, but the one with the classic car on the front caught his eye. Honey would enjoy the gardening one too. Or the cooking one. Or the science one – she loved learning new things to add into her teaching. He noticed the bucket too – when it rained here, it rained hard.
“You got a leak, Minnie? Need a hand sorting it out?” “No, but it’s real kind of you to offer. Dan’s going to be over in a few days and he said leave it to him seeing as he put the roof on in the first place and knows what went where, so to speak. He’s just about better now – I hear Maddie was none too well either. Anyway, what I want to know is the story behind what old Tench calls “that repeatery thing.” He said as how I should ask you iffen I wanted to know how it worked, not him. But what I want to know is how you found it and knew that was what you needed! I think it’s real smart of you to be able to fix it all up too.” Frank resigned himself to satisfying Minnie’s curiosity!
“…So, I looked on line and found this article about Eddie: his obituary really. But on a specialist website. How he’d been a telephone engineer, the son and grandson of telephone engineers. And his hobby, which had been finding, repairing and restoring old telephone equipment.”
“Oh, I get you. Like Dan’s great-uncle with old farm machinery. Nearly drove his great-aunt demented what with it littering up the yard…” Frank leapt in again hurriedly before he heard all about Dan’s great-uncle.
“So, his widow was moving to be near their daughter and grandchildren. But she didn’t want his pride and joy just to go for scrap. Well, if it was as good as it sounded, it was just what we needed, so Old Tench and I fixed up to go and see her, borrowed Marcus’s old truck. And she was so happy to think that it was going to be used.
“Eddie, he’d have been right in there helping you do this,” she said, when we’d told her the story. A museum had offered to take it if she paid for the transport, but Old Tench paid her instead.
So, we all built the hut at the crossroads to house it – there’s quite a lot of labour available now! Old Tench said it reminded him of a barn-raising he’d been to as a child – and then Rafe and Leo, Marcus and Caleb and Chas and I all went up the next weekend in the three trucks and brought it back and installed it.” “And that’s a solar panel outside the hut?”
“Yes. It needs power – and that was the easiest way. That’s new, not recycled! And Eddie’s widow also gave us some of his collection of vintage phones too. Which is useful, because I’m not sure how long those candlestick ones will last.” And then, before Frank could start talking to Minnie about his real reason for coming to the shop, Sal and Marianna came into the shop and starting thanking him for his telephone magic. And he didn’t want to have the money conversation in front of Marianna. Didn’t want her feeling guilty that she and Lachlan weren’t giving enough, seeing as it was her four who were a large part of the school. He’d have to try again later. Frank found Minnie alone just before she closed, watering the winter-flowering pansies.
“Minnie,” he said hesitantly. “I don’t know who to talk to about this, but we’re having problems managing now that Honey’s income has gone down. I know how tight money is for Patience and Euan, Lachlan and Marianna, and I totally get why they’ve probably had to reduce their contribution, but we’re really struggling to do more than just survive. We’ve gone through our accounts but we can’t work out how to spend any less. We were managing fine at first, but…” Minnie listened sympathetically until Frank ran down. She’d been through this with all her daughters, and felt bad that she hadn’t done more to help Honey.
“Real saving that Honey of yours was at first. I was impressed by her.” She bit her lip. “I guess I should have said something. She’s only young and it’s hard to keep track of how the little things add up. ‘Course, the curtains weren’t cheap, but like I said, buying quality, if you can afford it, does pay off later because they last well. It’s the magazines that add up, and the chocolate – you don’t think you’re spending much but it makes a difference. Lucy, it was magazines with her, little cat themed things with Susie and books with Julie. They all had to learn this the hard way…I wish I’d said something to her though. I feel real bad about that.”
Curtains? They didn’t have a curtain in the house. Magazines? Had Honey been buying them and not telling him? Did this mean he couldn’t trust her? He ought to ask her at least though. “So how’s it going?” Artie asked. “After all, you had the super decorator here to help you.”
“Going good,” Chas said. “You’ll have your house back to yourself really soon – we’ll be finished painting by tomorrow.”
“Hey, I’ll miss you,” Artie protested. “This has been real companionable.”
“Well, I’m still going to be riding Old Pete for you. So it’s not like you’re getting rid of me completely.” “Gosh, I was hungry!”
“Hungry? You hoovered that food up! I doubt it touched the sides,” Chas said, teasing Clara.
“And it’s so delicious too,” Sal added. “What a shame you didn’t even taste it.”
"Did so too,” Clara retorted. “Dill. Artie, you put dill with the salmon this time, didn’t you?”
“No fooling her,” Artie said. "She notices what’s going on around her.”
“Same time again tomorrow then?” Clara asked. “I’ll leave my painty clothes here. I better head home and rescue Annette.”
“You’re a good chap, Clara. Thanks awfully,” Chas said, in his most English accent, making her laugh. “Yes, Sal’s doing real well on Old Pete." Tom Tench had been admiring the trophies. "Give her another season like this, and I might be able to get some stud fees out of him. Come and see what Chas and her helped me do. Wanted to do it before they moved out, and I call that real kind of them.” “We got this room decorated too! House is real smart now, thanks to your help and theirs. And I got all my stuff out of storage – photographs and racecards and so on. Memmy-robilia, you could say. Been sorting through it all.” “You see, that Chas, him and Sal loved hearing my stories. And he said I should write them down. Well, I said I wasn’t one for doing that and he asked that Amber. But when she heard me tell her one of them, she said I could write it down no problem. Said I was a natural story-teller. I said I didn’t know where to start. Told all this to Bess, and she said, I’ll start you off. Turns out she’d kept all my letters to her. So she’s lent them back to me to give me a sort of timeline to my story.” “Fancy Bess, keeping your letters all that time.” Old Tench decided to help his friend a bit. “Allus did wonder iffen there might have been somethin’ between you two, iffen she hadn’t met Joe first.” “Your wits must have clean flown out of the window! Bess and I? Never was anything between us. She knew that and so did Joe. No one could ever have thought that. She kept my letters because they was interesting – she and Joe both liked reading them. Sides, if there had been anything between us, I’d have gone back to help her when Joe died.” Artie laughed at his friend’s nonplussed look.
“You been reading romances from the library?” “No,” Old Tench said slowly. “No. Somethin’ someone said to me…but you’re right. I was bein’ kinder dumb. Acourse you’d have been straight back to her iffen you loved her. Nothin’ would’ve kept me from Mary’s side iffen I thought she needed me…”
“Which reminds me,” Artie said. “Bess wants to know how come you haven’t been round to see them all. Says as how she’s a bit tied at the moment, but never too busy to chat. And you can always give her a hand while you talk! Wouldn’t wear your fancy shirt if I were you.” “You and Clara can head off to Minnie’s no problem. As long as you’re back to help with the cooker. And then lug all our stuff over. Not that there’s much to lug!”
“Great,” Sal said. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours?”
“That’s fine. Artie and I want to see if there’s anything here that’s worth salvaging for our new place.”
“New place, new horse as well! Come on Clara, before he changes his mind.” “So anyway…” Sal was saying to Minnie, about a Christmas present for Chas, when Clara yelled “Aargh!” as a sudden gush of water came through the ceiling and landed on the counter. On the mail that was sitting there waiting to be collected by its various recipients. “Quick girls! Rescue them. Take the letters out of their envelopes before they’re ruined. I’ll find the kitchen roll,” Minnie said, sweeping the mail onto the floor and out of the pool of water.
“Ought we to open someone else’s post?” Sal asked.
“No-one’s going to mind when I explain what happened to their mail.” And so the two girls set too, opening the soggy envelopes and fishing out the damp-but-still-legible letters as fast as they could. Then Clara made the oddest noise and dropped both letter and envelope on the floor. Most of the blood had left her face. She looked as though she was going to faint. And then, even as Sal was saying, “Are you all right?” Clara turned and ran from the shop as fast as she could.

Frank, Honey, Maddie and house were made for me by Hidehi as a lovely gift.
I’ve tweaked them slightly to fit the scenery of Two Lakes, so if you’re going to play them, they won’t look quite like this. I’ve tweaked Maddie’s personality too…
Link here for the house:
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9351879
And for the family:
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9351878

The horse supply shop is by LMC as a gift to me for the 2020 Summerfest gift exchange
Link here:
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9395123

I'd like to thank a work colleague of my husband's for his help with the technical details of the telephone system. Any technical errors are entirely mine!