‘That would be Sarah Breedt – she stopped my heart when I first saw her.’
‘So you’re a ladies man, Mr Barlow.’ Hannah looked out her window and couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed in this charming man.
He smiled across at her. ‘My name is Neil, please. And I’m one lady’s man. Sarah married me forty years ago, and I’m still flummoxed that she chose me in the first place.’
‘Oh,’ said Hannah, ‘your wife.’
‘I saw a sign in a shop – you know those knick-knacky shops?’ Hannah nodded, smiling as he continued. ‘The sign said, “Every love story is beautiful but ours is my favourite.” That’s true for me.’
Hannah felt drawn to indulge him, and was beginning to get an inkling as to why Sarah might have chosen him. ‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘Well,’ he said, settling in to his tale, ‘we met on a train from Pietermaritzburg. Sarah had been at university there and was on her way home to Leliehoek, and I was finishing my studies at Cedara College of Agriculture and going home to Johannesburg.’
‘So you had a farm in the Transvaal?’ said Hannah.
‘No.’ Neil glanced at her, his eyes twinkling. ‘There was no farm in the family at all. My parents wanted me to be a businessman and I just wanted to be a farmer. The thought of their intelligent, good-looking son’ – Neil winked at Hannah – ‘being a farm manager was definitely not in their plans for me. Anyway, by the time Sarah and I reached Ladysmith, instead of changing trains for Joburg, I changed my ticket to spend more time with her. We arrived at Bethlehem station together, and Sarah’s parents just assumed I was a long-standing boyfriend from university, not some stranger she had picked up a few hours previously.’
‘And what happened?’
‘At the end of the Christmas holiday, Sarah returned to finish her last year of studies and left me working for her father on Goshen. She graduated that year and married me. We moved into a cottage that Sarah’s granny had lived in, and you know what?’ Hannah shook her head. ‘It felt like I was home for the first time in my life. Thirty years later, we moved back into that cottage to allow my son to have the farmhouse.’
Hannah coveted the sweet simplicity of his story. Her story was messy. Too many bruised relationships she was limping away from.
She indicated the turn-off to the track up ahead and stared at him in surprise as he drove straight past it. ‘My car is up there,’ she said, pointing up the track again. ‘Aren’t we going to tow it?’
‘Yes, we are, but this bakkie doesn’t have a winch on the front. I’m going to pick up my son’s Hilux. Is that okay?’
Hannah hoped her non-committal murmur passed for a response while she slid a few inches down in her seat. She could feel her cheeks flush as they headed up the driveway and took a road Hannah hadn’t noticed earlier, one that led behind the main house.
They pulled into a farmyard where tractors and equipment were parked in a large shed. A kitchen garden, planted with herbs and vegetables sprawled from the back of the house, and a paved path divided the garden, leading to what looked like a kitchen door. Neil crossed to another farm vehicle, a white Toyota Hilux with railings around the bed at the back. He checked for keys. ‘I’ll be right back – my son is much more responsible with keys than I am. Give me a minute.’
He hadn’t taken a step when the kitchen door opened, and there stood the tall man from earlier. He frowned at Hannah and looked at his father, before saying, ‘What’s going on, Dad?’
‘This is Hannah Harrison. I found her marching down the farm road.’ Neil gestured across to her, smiling at the younger man. ‘She’s taken over Tim’s shop in town. Her bakkie got stuck up in the donkey pasture, and she needs a tow.’
Neil’s son stared at Hannah. ‘What the hell were you doing up that track? I told you there was nothing here for you.’
Those million things Hannah had thought to say to him fled and her mouth gaped in shock while she wondered how she could possibly be surprised at the rudeness of this man.
‘I see you have already met my son, Alistair,’ Neil said dryly. ‘I’m afraid he’s lost the manners I raised him with, and seems not to have inherited any of my charm.’ He touched Hannah’s arm briefly and smiled. ‘I’ll be your knight in shining armour today, be it an old, creaky one.’ He turned to his son, who was standing, arms folded, defensiveness rolling off him in waves. ‘Come on, boy,’ Neil said cheerfully, ‘get those keys – we have a quest.’
When Alistair disappeared inside, his three dogs responded to Neil’s whistle, leaping and scrambling onto the back of the vehicle. Jim Beam jumped neatly into the cab and settled in his usual place on the seat back while Neil leant across the seat to open the passenger door for Hannah. She climbed in while he attempted to clear miscellaneous items from the dusty footwell. Boxes of sparkplugs were shoved into the cubby hole, a pair of binoculars dumped on the seat between them.
‘Sorry about the mess, Hannah,’ said Neil. ‘My son needs a woman to improve his habits.’ He waggled his eyebrows at her, and she shook her head, but couldn’t help a grin for him.
Alistair returned, throwing the keys to his dad, who caught them one-handed out the window. He then walked around to Hannah’s side, opened the door, and waited for her to move up on the seat to make space for him. His mouth was pulled into a sneer, daring her to refuse. She glanced across at Neil, who grinned at her. She shifted up on the bench seat so that she was sitting in the middle and wondered, awkwardly, if she should put her right leg over the transmission into the driver’s side, but then decided that, as much as she did not want to be squeezed against Alistair, having someone she’d just met change gears between her legs was a little more intimate than she was comfortable with. Alistair wound the window right down, hooked his left arm out the window frame, and shifted as much of his body as was possible away from Hannah.
‘I would still like to know what you were doing up in the donkey pasture after I told you to get off the farm,’ said Alistair.
Hannah snapped. ‘What’s your problem? I came to ask permission from you to visit the memorial site and you jumped down my throat before I could even get my name out.’
Alistair was glaring at her. ‘What the hell are you talking about? First you ask if there’s camping on the farm and now you’re talking about a memorial. There’s nothing on this farm that would interest you. But more than that,’ his voice rose, ‘I told you to get off the farm and you deliberately drove off the road into the donkey pasture.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ Hannah spat back at him, ‘I didn’t know it was a donkey pasture. There was not a donkey in sight—’ She broke off to mutter, ‘“That’s one thing about our Harry. Harry hates everybody.”’
Neil laughed out loud, ‘You can quote Dirty Harry? You’re not old enough to know those movies.’
Hannah tried to shift away from Alistair. ‘My father’s a fan,’ she said as she gripped the edge of the seat as hard as she could, bracing her body against the motion of the truck as it rolled and bounced.
Her miserable Mazda came into view and, as soon as they drew to a stop, Alistair jumped out, getting away from her as quickly as possible.
Hannah watched as he walked around the small blue Mazda, seemingly assessing whether to tow it forwards or back. He returned to Hannah’s side of the car and swept his arm in a wide, sarcastic bow which, combined with his hard angry look, had Hannah scrambling out. He yanked the seat forwards and scrabbled around behind it, pulling out two strips of old carpet. He threw one to Neil and the two men hunkered down at the Mazda’s back wheels to slip the ends of the carpet strips under the tyres.