Chapter 7

Caroline’s ex-husband owned a hardware store, selling pretty well everything for do-it-yourself enthusiasts and household goods, including cookery hardware, gardening tools, camping equipment and outdoor wear. It had long been a successful business, after a shaky start nearly forty years earlier, but her ex-husband Robert Bradshaw had recently sold half the store’s shares to a private company he had formed abroad, based in a tax haven, about which Caroline was unable to get any information. Then he had split the other half with Caroline’s two boys, making it appear that he had retired on a modest pension, with few actual assets to his name. This affected Caroline’s divorce settlement, which was significantly reduced from her earlier expectations.

The boys’ connivance with their father hadn’t helped relationships with their mother. She had been too demoralised, powerless, timid even, to put much fight into clawing anything back. But that wasn’t the concern here. Today she wanted to build bridges to see if there was any chance of either improving her relationship with her boys in her life here, or possibly taking them with her to a new life in Sweetwater Valley.

Determinedly, she marched into the store. As soon as she entered and looked around at the staff in their distinctive uniform tops, she realised with a start that the staff would hardly recognise her. She had rarely stepped into her ex-husband’s place of business in recent years, even while they were still married. Before, she had always been intimidated by the macho atmosphere of power tools, nuts and bolts, ladders, consumables and spare parts. Now there soft furnishings, curtains, summer room furniture, and carpets.

She had to laugh at herself. Here she was in what she used to regard as an intimidating male domain, while she was considering a permanent move to a ranch, dominated by cowboys who roped monstrous steers and branded them, close by Injuns who had attacked her stagecoach, a town that had just had a double hanging, and had occasional gunfights, with a Town Marshal who was trying to track down and hang a gang of cattle rustlers!

She was actually chuckling to herself when she bumped into her youngest son, Robert Junior. He was looking more and more like his father every time she saw him: overweight, losing his hair to the point where he now shaved it all off. He had a sour, harassed look, in a store packed to overflowing with shoppers.

“What are you doing here, Mum?”

“A mother can’t speak to one of her children when she needs to, Robbie?”

“Not when it’s the busiest shopping weekend of the year, Mum. Why don’t you come in Tuesday?”

“I’ve got the plumbers coming on Tuesday.”

“You got a leak? Adam’s boys could’ve fixed that.”

Caroline remembered that Adam had followed his father into the plumbing trade, but that was long after Robert Senior had opened the store all those years ago. It had certainly branched out and grown since then.

“Not had a leak or anything, just having some additional work done. I wanted to talk to you and Adam today, if possible, as I may not be around at Christmas.”

“What?!” he spluttered, “but you always do our Christmas dinner, with all the trimmings!”

“That was last year, dear, remember? That was when I had a proper kitchen to cook festive meals in. You’ve seen the galley I’ve got in my little house. The nearest thing to a turkey dinner I can cook in there is a Spanish Omelette!”

“But I’ve got a fantastic fitted kitchen in my place, that the boys from our kitchen fitters here put in last spring.”

“I didn’t know you could cook, Robbie?”

“I can’t, but you could come over and—”

“Oh, no, I’m not cooking Christmas turkey this year, at least I don’t think so. No, I will most probably be having roast beef rib.”

“Beef’s my favourite, Mum, better than dried up old turkey, any day.”

“Are you saying that my turkey was—”

“No, Mum, look, let’s continue this conversation in the office, shall we? Hey, Kyle, can you take over this till for me? ... Thanks. OK, Mum, let’s go.”

The offices were in a portacabin in the yard out the back of the store, surrounded by stacks of fencing panels and stacked pallets of bags of garden compost. They walked quickly across the yard to the offices in the far corner of the back yard, as it had started raining hard again.

In the open plan half of the offices, a couple of female clerks were beavering away at whatever they were working on, while Caroline’s oldest son Adam was sitting at his otherwise empty desk, drinking coffee and reading an opened tabloid newspaper.

“What are you doing here, Mum?” Adam asked, looking up, “You never come to the store.”

“Exactly what I said,” Robert Junior said, “and Mum says she’s not cooking Christmas dinner this year.”

“What? But you always cook Christmas dinner! What are we going to do? My new girlfriend Tanya could burn a boiled egg! At home we either eat out or it all comes in hot and steaming, delivered in a box.”

“Mum says she hasn’t got a decent kitchen in that pokey little house.”

“But Mum, Robbie’s got a fabulous kitchen —”

“I’ve tried that, but she’s thinking of going away for Christmas.”

“But you never go away other than visit Pops, and now he’s gone...”

“Look, I’m not here to have an argument with you boys, I just want to talk to you about your recent attitude towards me.”

The door leading into the final third of the cabin opened up and her ex-husband Robert joined in the conversation.”

“I thought I could hear your voice, Carrie. What the hell are you doing here?”

“If only I had a pound for every time I was asked that!” Caroline laughed, “I just wanted a word with my sons to find out where we went wrong in our relationships and whether we could rebuild bridges. It is that time of year, you know, Christmas.”

“OK, Denise, Jackie,” Robert Senior said to the two office staff, “can you leave us for a few minutes while we have a family discussion—”

“Ex-family!” Caroline said, somewhat surprised that she said it with a smile on her face.

“Yes, but we still have the boys, Carrie, where we can meet halfway.”

“We never met halfway, it was always YOUR way, Robert. You cheated and lied through our marriage and robbed me of the fruits of it ... and I guess I just let it happen.”

“Yes, you did. A few home truths, Carrie, you never helped me with this business, you were too busy spending my money to bother to help me make it, so I was damned if I was going to share any of this with you.”

Robert stormed off purple with rage, the boys taking his side.

“He’s right, Mum,” Adam said, “you never took part in what we were doing.”

“No, I only kept house for you and saw that you all had clean clothes on your backs and good food inside you. I took you to school and collected you, I took you to all the extra activities, like football, scouts, swimming and days out entertaining you, while your father never lifted a finger to help. Even as adults and you had your own places, in between wives and girlfriends, you were always coming home for food —”

Her mobile phone chirped with an oncoming call. She answered it, observing with a little satisfaction that both boys looked somewhat chastened by her words.

“Hello ... Yes, hello Mr Jones? ... You want to come round and measure ... Yes, I can be home in twenty minutes ... see you then.”

She turned back to the boys. “That was a message from my plumbers, so I must be off. I’ll sort out something on Wednesday and leave you a message about when and where we should meet.”

She turned on her heels and bustled out of the offices and headed home, but not before she heard Adam ask his brother, “Her plumbers?”

It was early afternoon when she got home. Mr Jones from the plumbers agreed that what she wanted was a simple job, and that they could take the hot water feed from the bathroom, but advised putting the radiator on the inner rather than the outer wall to reduce the pipe work. He recommended fitting a carbon monoxide detector and thought that her wish to fit adequate insulation to the garage door, would be effective in evening out the temperature variations in the garage during summer and winter. He priced it up then and there, and Caroline agreed to the having the work done, even though it would blow most of her savings. They could work their way around the old car, Mr Jones said, and they would be back on Tuesday 8 am, with a plumber to do the radiator and another chap to insulate the door.