“I’m glad I called on you.” She smiled. “I guess I’m keeping you from borrowing that rod. It must be special.”
“Special. You should see the reel. Ned paid over a thousand dollars for it.” His forefinger flew to his lips. “Don’t tell Susan. I mean how much it cost.”
“She’ll find out when she pays the bills.”
“No, she won’t. He paid cash. He’s been squirreling away money. And you know she wants to paint the inside of the house. No point in rocking the boat. She’s taking his run for the state senate in good stride.”
“Been a tepid campaign.”
“It will be until September, then the Democratic primary will heat up. Ned’s campaigning hard on expanding the reservoir, environmental responsibility, and building the bypass, which would seem to be a contradiction but I’ve seen the plans he’s got about the bypass. It’s one of the alternative ones. I can’t remember the number.”
“This place has been fighting that bypass since I was in grade school.”
“Well, sugarpie, it’s got to happen. The question is: where?”
“Kind of like the new post office.”
“Yes.” He folded his hands together.
“I don’t think I’m going to like that, any of it. The bypass or the post office.”
“Tell you the truth, I don’t think I’m going to like it, either. I hated it when they built I-64. Sliced in half some of the most beautiful farms in Albemarle County, and in all the counties from Tidewater to St. Louis, Missouri. More traffic. More pollution. More accidents, especially up on Afton Mountain. They can build the road straight as an arrow but they can’t do squat about the fog. People ought to learn to live with nature instead of thinking they can control it. Damned fools.” He stared down at his shining shoe tips for a moment, then looked up. “Now it’s my turn to apologize for my language.”
“I say worse.”
“But you’re not a pastor.”
“The Very Reverend.” She laughed back at him.
“Don’t you forget it.” He laughed back.
“Poppy, we’d like some treats,” Elocution mewed.
“Either she’s agreeing with you or it’s a call for tuna.” Harry ran her fingers along the young cat’s cheek. “With my Pewter it’s always tuna.”
“Elo, just wait a minute. Now that you’re here, Harry, I’d like to ask you something in confidence.”
“Sure.”
“Do you think the relationship between Blair Bainbridge and Little Mim Sanburne is becoming serious?”
“Yes.”
Blair was Harry’s nearest neighbor. Little Mim was the daughter of Jim and Mim Sanburne. She was also the vice-mayor of Crozet. Her father was a Democrat. Little Mim was a Republican. Table talk at Sunday dinners was never dull at the Sanburne house.
“Big Mim is coming around to it. Mim can’t stand anything that isn’t her idea. Jim’s been working on her, wooing her, pitching to her ego. Why watch television when you can watch your friends?”
“That’s why people watch television. They don’t have friends.”
“Harry, that’s a big statement.”
“Well, I mean it. If you’re sitting around watching a simulation of life, you aren’t living. If you’ve got work, friends, things you love to do, and people you love to do them with, you don’t have time to watch TV. I watch the news and the Weather Channel, and half the time I don’t even do that.”
“You might have a point there.”
“I got you off the track. I’m sorry.”
“Well, here’s what I’m turning over in my mind. If a marriage should result from this courtship, I can’t imagine that Little Mim will move out to Blair’s farm, can you?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“It’s a lovely farm but not grand, and Little Mim, like her mother, has been raised in the grand tradition. He’ll move over to Dalmally”—he named the Sanburne estate—“or Mim will buy them something close by, or, and here’s what I think really will happen, they’ll take over and restore Tally’s estate.”
“Tally will cane them to death.” Harry mentioned the cane Tally used for walking, an elegant ebony cane with a sleek silver hound’s head for the handle. She used it to good effect to get her way as well as to find her way.
He shook his head and held up his forefinger. “You watch: Mim will send her future son-in-law to inveigle Tally, and Tally may be in her nineties but she cannot refuse a handsome man. As it is, she adores Blair, and they’ll work out some deal where the newlyweds live in one of the cottages or even in the big house with Tally.”
“The house is in good shape.”
“And so’s the farm, but she’s let the outbuildings go and the back pastures. I foresee that Rose Hill will be restored to former glory and Little Mim will inherit her great-aunt’s estate.”
“But what about Dalmally? When Big Mim should be bumped Upstairs—not that I wish this to occur anytime soon—what happens?”
“First off, the Urquharts live a long time. Mim’s mother died young for an Urquhart, at eighty. Mim will break one hundred, and she’s not going to be moved from Dalmally any more than Tally would be moved from Rose Hill. And when that day does occur, Stafford will come home.” Stafford was Mim’s son, currently living in New York City. Mother and son did not get along very well.
“Never.”
“Oh, yes, he will.”
“His wife is the highest-paid black model in America.”
“She’ll be in her sixties then and she’ll come home with him, I’m telling you. And never forget, Virginia was the first state to elect an African-American governor, Doug Wilder. Stafford’s wife will fit right with the black folks who are making a positive difference. You mark my words.”
Harry didn’t want to argue with Herb, but she couldn’t imagine those two leaving the high life in New York. Then again, this was decades in the future. God willing.
“Having Little Mim and Blair at Rose Hill makes sense.” Harry agreed with that part of Herb’s scenario.
“My old family place will be put back on the market.”
Blair’s farm had originally been the old Jones homestead, a designation of some importance in these parts. No one ever wanted the homeplace to wind up in the hands of others, but more often than not such places did because the originating family couldn’t afford the upkeep.
“Yes.” Harry’s voice dropped. A new neighbor was not necessarily an appetizing prospect, most particularly since she liked the old one.
“Well, I have a thought. I believe Blair would give you good terms.”
“Oh, Herb, I’d love to have the land, but I can’t afford all of it.”
“I’d like to have the homeplace back, and my retirement isn’t too far in the future. If, and I mean if, the time comes that you and I should approach Blair, I think we could work something out. I can’t farm all that land, but you can. If you can buy the lion’s share of the land, I’ll keep, say, maybe twenty or fifty acres, whatever, with the cemetery. You take the rest.”
She had one hand on each cat, and her hands rested on them. “That would be wonderful,” she whispered. “Wonderful.”
“Blair likes you very much.”
“And I like him.”
“And I think both Big Mim and Tally would help us all structure a deal that we could live with and perhaps even thrive on.” He smiled broadly. “Those women have two of the best business heads in the state of Virginia. If Tally had been a man she’d have run R. J. Reynolds or Liggett & Myers, I mean it. She was born in the wrong era. As it was she built her farm into something special and spread her risk. Tally played the stock market, too, and she taught Big Mim. As you know, Mim’s mother was the society type. She didn’t care about making money, only spending it.”
“You know, I’m so excited by the idea that I can’t breathe.” Harry took a deep breath. “And I’d have a holy neighbor.”