The Summer of Wishful Thinking

Can we talk about getting broadband through a landline? Mobile signal is really bad in gatehouse. Gemma

The new tenant. He’d forgotten she’d be in by now, having left a note for her yesterday when he’d delivered one of Dad’s pots as a welcome present and some spare geraniums for the window ledge. He really should go down and check she had everything she needed. He felt bad about the window. The new pane was sitting in his shed and he’d meant to fit it himself but time had run away from him. And the ivy – damn, he’d forgotten to trim that back too. He couldn’t be blamed for the mobile blackspot though.

Sam hung his head, feeling exhausted by the list of things he had to get done. Well, she’d just have to wait in line. He couldn’t get to it right now. He had to finish here, cook supper for Dad, see that his father had a proper wash today and got to bed so Sam could have a few peaceful hours to himself to catch up with his administration. Tomorrow they had a visit to a local care home scheduled so that was out too. Monday, that was the earliest he could do anything.

I’ll come by on Monday.

A reply came through immediately. I meant today. Please. It’s very important to my son.

Sam decided not replying was a reply. He’d offered his first available slot.

She didn’t get the message inferred by his silence. I’m working Monday.

I’ll come by before you leave. 8 am? He put the phone away and wiped his forehead on the towel he’d draped on the handle of the barrow.

You chose this, he told himself. You picked this over investigating crime. Rotted manure versus rotten humanity: you’d make the same choice every time.

Something made him look up – a flicker of movement over by the keep. Dad? No, there was a boy clambering on the half-collapsed curtain wall that made up a rockery in the castle garden. Having ignored the many ‘Do not climb’ signs, the kid was trying to get up to the battlements.

‘Hey, you! Get down!’ Sam shouted, running towards the invader.

Startled, the boy gave a squawk and lost his footing. He disappeared, fortunately falling down onto the shelved slope of the rockery rather than taking the plunge into the moat. Sam cursed. He shouldn’t’ve yelled. He knew better but, dammit, he’d been scared for the lad.

He collared the boy limping away from a patch of squashed edelweiss. It was the tenant’s son. Why was he not surprised?

‘Are you crazy? You could’ve been killed!’ He was tempted to shake some sense into him but years of police training saved him from getting physical. A firm but non-bruising grip on an arm was all that was required to exert his authority.

‘Let go!’ growled the boy.

‘No chance, mate, you’re trespassing.’

‘I’m not your mate.’

‘No you’re not – so you don’t get mates’ roaming rights. Leo, isn’t it? Didn’t your mother tell you that you were not allowed into the castle gardens?’

‘She might’ve.’ The boy’s eyes skittered away, sure sign that he knew he was in the wrong.

‘Does she know you’re here?’

The boy shook his head.

‘It’s time then that we had a little chat about castle rules. Come with me.’ He released his hold. Funny how he could tell what the kid was thinking. The boy obviously wondered about running but worked out it wasn’t worth it. That showed he did have some brains. In a bristling silence, they walked down the drive to the cottage. Sam knocked on the door. His tenant appeared, checked shirt tucked into distracting cut-off shorts. How was he supposed to have a sensible conversation with a woman showing that much length of tanned leg?

‘Oh, hey.’ She smiled but then it faded when she saw who he stood beside. ‘I thought you said Monday?’

‘Ms Whitehall, I caught your son climbing on the castle keep.’ He knew he sounded a prick but he was still suffering from shock of the near miss.

‘Oh. Oh, Leo!’ She glared at her son. ‘I told you not to go into Mr Ranworth’s garden. What were you thinking?’

Leo shuffled his feet. ‘There’s a rare Pokémon, Mum. A Magikarp. It’s in the castle. I haven’t got it in my collection.’

This nonsense seemed to make sense to his tenant because she was nodding sympathetically. ‘I understand, Leo, but you have to ask Mr Ranworth permission before you try to catch Pokémon on his land.’ She looked up at him expectantly. ‘Would that be OK? It would really make Leo’s day.’

The only explanation Sam could come up with was that she was crazy too. ‘You do understand that your son almost broke his neck climbing on the ruined part of the keep?’

‘He did? Wow, Leo, I didn’t realise you were getting to be so … um … bold doing this Pokémon thing.’ She looked almost pleased for a second before covering it with concern. ‘But you have to understand that the real world has real dangers. You don’t get a second life if you take a fall.’

‘Of course, I understand that. I’m not an idiot, Mum.’

Sam begged to differ. ‘And he damaged some plants.’

‘Naturally, I’ll pay for any damage. Leo, apologise to Mr Ranworth.’

The boy muttered an ungracious ‘sorry’.

His pretty tenant nodded, relieved. Did she think that was enough? ‘Well done, Leo. Now perhaps Mr Ranworth would let you catch the Pokémon safely?’

‘You’re kidding?’ marvelled Sam.

She frowned. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘The problem is I don’t have time to escort the boy to catch this … this carp thing. I’m not a babysitting service. Tell your son to stay out of my garden. I’ve got work to do.’ He turned on his heel and began to walk away. ‘What the heck is that?’

‘A gnome.’

He glanced behind and saw his tenant was watching him with narrowed eyes, arms folded. ‘Ornaments aren’t allowed. They lower the tone.’

‘I rather thought the cracked window did that. Besides, it’s my rented cottage, my gnome. You may call the shots up at the castle, but here I am king.’

Sam stamped away, feeling that this wouldn’t be an argument he could win. One thing he could do, though, was make sure he left her hedge untouched on Monday and hide the whole damn mess she was making of his cottage.

It’s just a little gnome, Sam, his less-grumpy self nudged him. Where’s your sense of humour?

Give them a gnome and they’ll take a g-mile, he shot back. Next it will be illuminated toadstools and fake woodland creatures. Boy, he was now really ready to dig manure.

‘Leo, you should be more careful.’ Gemma had put her son on washing up duty as punishment for his incursion into the castle grounds. ‘It’s not just that he might have a good point about it being dangerous, but that it is his land and he requested you don’t wander there. It’s trespassing.’

‘But you don’t get it – a Magikarp – that’s like epic! None of my friends have got it – not even Aki in Kyoto.’ Leo splashed the water over the sink on to the floor as he dumped their lunchtime plates into the tub.

Gemma silently cursed the logarithm writers, or whatever controlled the game, for deciding anywhere with ‘castle’ in the title needed some special characters. ‘Strangely enough I do get it. I collected My Little Ponies when I was a child and I never did get the flutter one.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Mum.’

‘It was hard to get hold of in the UK and cost more than several months pocket money. People kept buying me the unicorn as they didn’t get that each pony was different and I wanted the whole stable.’ She’d chucked them out when she was thirteen which was a shame as they’d probably be worth something now.

Leo stacked a sud-streaked plate on the rack. Gemma resisted the urge to rinse it off. ‘It’s not the same.’

She thought it was exactly the same but knew better than to try to make her son see that her generation wasn’t that much different from his. ‘You’re not to go up there again without an invitation.’

‘But it’s just waiting there to be caught! Mr Ranworth might decide to ban Pokémon hunts on his land.’

‘Unlikely as he doesn’t even know what a Pokémon is …’ lucky man, ‘… so he’s hardly going to go to those lengths over something he doesn’t understand. I’ll ask him on Monday when we talk about getting the cottage online.’

‘Mum!’

‘It’s the best I can do, Leo. This whole situation is the best I can do. I’m sorry if it isn’t good enough for you.’

‘I just think he’s selfish – wants to keep it all to himself.’

Gemma remembered the Oscar Wilde story of the Selfish Giant. Maybe Sam Ranworth was worried about health and safety but she rather suspected he just didn’t want to be bothered by people. ‘Whether he is or not is his business, not ours. He can be any way he likes as it’s his castle. Just stay away, OK, until I fix this?’

‘All right, OK, stop going on about it.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Right, so while we are finally actually talking about stuff, about the laptop and the internet.’ He said nothing but she could tell he was listening from the methodical way he was washing the plate. ‘You need to understand about my budget.’ She picked up a drying cloth, remembering that the book on raising boys suggested not sitting head to head but having a side by side activity. ‘The money your grandfather and mother are putting aside for you doesn’t come to me; it’s going into a savings account for your university education.’

He wedged the plate in the rack. ‘Really? I’ve got, like, a trust fund?’

‘Yes. It’s very generous of them. But don’t get carried away: it’s to help you get started when you reach eighteen. It’s not for squandering – and I certainly can’t touch it to help out with any difficulties we might have now. Like the fact that I have to replace our computer.’

He went back to washing up.

‘Getting a connection to fast broadband is also going to be costly. There’ll be a monthly payment and that’s before we even find out about how much they’ll charge to run a cable to here. They might not be able to do it so we’ll have to look into mobile and that’s expensive and might not as good with the poor signal. Contrary to what your dad said, I don’t earn much – barely enough in fact. I have to watch every penny.’

Leo clearly didn’t like what he was hearing. ‘I told you we shouldn’t have moved.’

‘The rent is cheaper here but you might have to choose between a laptop and broadband: I can’t afford both.’

‘Broadband,’ he said quickly.

That’s what she thought. ‘Then I suggest you find a job over the summer and earn the money to buy us a secondhand laptop. After all, you owe me one.’

‘A job?’ Leo sounded distressingly like his father.

‘Yes.’

‘But who would pay me for anything round here? There’s not even a shop in the village.’

‘Dog walking, gardening, odd jobs: there are loads of possibilities. You’ll just have to knock on a few doors, won’t you, see if anyone needs any help?’

‘I can’t do that. I don’t know anyone. It’ll be embarrassing.’

‘Leo, all of us have things we don’t like doing. Learning to do them anyway is part of growing up.’ She might as well get all her stock of issues off her chest. ‘Oh and by the way, I bought you a razor and shaving gel when I did the shop. Have a look at your top lip. I think you might need to start using it.’

‘Seriously?’ Leo felt his face gingerly. ‘Cool.’

Gemma took another plate to dry and turned away, smiling. Thank you, book. That hadn’t been so bad.