Captain William Laurence (betwixtsea_nsky) wrote in pathways_log, @ 2021-04-11 19:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | silent hill: henry townshend, temeraire: william laurence |
Who: Henry and Laurence
What: Henry buys some produce from Laurence
When: March
Where: The Farmer's Market
Warnings/Ratings: These two are pretty tame
Status: Complete
Laurence’s favourite days of the week where the days when he could come and bring his produce to the Farmer’s Market. He spent most of his time out of doors now that he’d taken up farming for a living, but it was still nice to be able to sit outside on a beautiful day. Even nicer when he could meet people and talk to them; that was something that was missing from his time out at the farm.
He’d just finished setting out his produce so that it would show to advantage, and took a moment to check his table over once more with a critical eye. Sure that it was looking its best, he sat down behind his table, and greeted his first customer.
For Henry, farmers markets were like treasure hunts. Most stalls sold produce of some variety or another, but there was always at least one that sold something different. Sauces, rubs, relishes, whatever. And even though Henry didn’t have an opinion regarding organic versus non-organic foods, he did find the stories behind the things people made and sold at farmers markets quite interesting. At one point he’d kicked around the idea of making a photo book of the different kinds of farmers markets he’d been to. That, however, had fallen by the wayside.
Henry paused by one of the booths to look at what was being offered. He glanced up at the man when he greeted him. “Good morning,” he said back pleasantly. “Good day for a market.” He grimaced at his own words. Of course it was a good day. “Uhm, what are you selling?”
“It is indeed,” Laurence said warmly, noticing the grimace but pretending he hadn’t. “You can take a look, if you’d like,” he said, gesturing to his table, which was laden with spinach and kale, parsnips and carrots, garlic and onions and asparagus and leeks. He’d even managed to gather some rhubarb before the market today, which he’d been pleased about. “I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of a selection right now; I don’t have a greenhouse, and so I’m limited to what the season will allow me to grow.”
He hoped that at some point in the future he’d be able to afford to have one built.
“Do you come to the farmers market often?”
“Sometimes,” Henry answered, “They’re fun to walk around and see what everyones got to sell.” His eyes moved over the selection. They lit up at the sight of the rhubarb. “My grandmother used to grow rhubarb,” he said with a smile. “Her rhubarb pie was amazing. I think I have the recipe for it somewhere.” He glanced up at the man. “How much is the rhubarb?”
“I’ve always been fond of rhubarb too,” Laurence said. “It reminds me of home.” Of course, neither his grandmother nor his mother had been the type to bake; but they’d had a cook who’d made delicious rhubarb pies.
“It’s $2 a pound,” Laurence said after a moment. It was a little less than he’d been planning on charging, but the man had seemed pleased over the prospect of rhubarb pie, and Laurence was more than willing to help him with that.
$2 a pound was a little more than Henry wanted to spend (or probably should spend), but it had been a long time since he’d had rhubarb. He probably had Gran’s recipe still...somewhere. Maybe he could take some to Caroline and have her taste test it for him.
“I’ll take a pound,” he said. “Some asparagus too. Uh, not for the pie.” In case the other man may have thought that was the case. “And garlic and some carrots.” If he was going to splurge on the rhubarb, may as well go all in and make a decent meal to go with it.
“I think I’ve been by your stall a couple of times,” Henry said as the other man gathered up his items. “I’m sorry I’ve never stopped before.”
Laurence laughed. “I think a rhubarb and asparagus pie would be an experience that you wouldn’t soon forget,” he said. Though a cream of asparagus pie could make for a tasty savoury pie, and he made a mental note to try making one at some point. “Would you like a paper bag?” he asked as he began to gather the vegetables, giving them an extra inspection before putting them aside to make sure they were still good.
“That’s nothing to apologize for,” Laurence said. “There are many good booths here, most of which have more interesting products than mine.” Laurence was still too new at farming to have as much variety as some of the others - especially without a greenhouse - and he certainly didn’t have time to make pastries on any sort of scale where he could sell them. “I hope you’ve had a chance to stop by Sweetie Pies. They’ve one of the best meat pies I’ve had the pleasure of trying.”
“No, I haven’t,” Henry admitted. He glanced up and down the aisle of booths, checking to see if Sweet Pies was nearby. He looked back at the man a little sheepishly. “I don’t always have a lot of cash,” he admitted. “Lately, though work has been more consistent.” And he owed Caroline for that.
“I don’t think I’ve seen rhubarb at many of the other booths,” he offered helpfully. “So that means you have something interesting.” He cocked his head a little curious. “Do you get a chance to go to the other booths often?”
“Is your job not steady then?” Laurence asked. He could understand that. He’d grown used to having a steady and predictable paycheque when he’d been in the Navy. He was happy he’d had a decent savings put aside.
“It’s still early in the season,” Laurence said. “I was just lucky.” At Henry’s question though, he nodded. “I usually try to make a tour toward the end of the day before everyone leaves.” It helped to foster community, though it was also when Laurence most liked to do his grocery shopping for home.
“I’m a freelance photographer,” Henry explained. “I’m still in the process of ...establishing myself, I guess?...here in Vegas. One of my regular clients has had a few events right in a row recently and she’s tapped me to be her photographer.”
Laurence frowned thoughtfully, looking anew at the man in front of him. “You’re the photographer I met online some time ago, aren’t you?” Laurence said. “You’ll have to forgive me, I seem to have forgotten your name,” had they even exchanged names? Laurence wasn’t sure, “but we spoke of magicians and Vegas shows.”
Assuming it was the same person, though Laurence was nearly certain it was.
Henry’s head cocked slightly and looked at the man in the booth a little more closely. He wouldn’t have thought he’d run into some random person he’d chatted with briefly online. Vegas was a big city with thousands -- millions? -- of people. What were the odds? “I think so,” he said. “We were talking about magicians named David, or something like that?” He laughed a little. “I don’t think we got as far as names. I’m Henry.” He offered his hand across the table.
“Yes, that was me,” Laurence said, grinning. It wasn’t likely, though Laurence wasn’t one to question such things. If there was a purpose, it wasn’t for him to know.
“I’m Will,” Laurence said, grasping his hand firmly. “Will Laurence. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Henry.”
“Same to you,” Henry said as the two men shook hands. “I didn’t realize you were a farmer.” Henry also didn’t think he’d and Will would ever actually meet. It was rare to meet random people you chatted with on-line, wasn’t it?
“I’m still very new at it,” Laurence conceded. It was true that, after nearly two decades in the Navy, he often felt like a fish out of water, so to speak, when he was with the other farmers of Nevada. “Have you been a photographer long?”
“I’ve been taking pictures since I was a kid,” Henry said. “But for being a professional photographer? A couple of years.” He regarded Will for a moment. “What were you doing before you became a farmer?”
“You must be quite skilled at it,” Laurence said. “Before this, I served in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. I resigned last year as a captain.”
“I’m not bad,” Henry said with a slight smile. “The British Navy? What made you decide to come to America after you resigned?”
“I thought I would appreciate the quiet,” Laurence said, and then laughed a little. “Though, I suppose if that was the case, Las Vegas could be considered a strange choice to make.”
It had made a strange sort of sense for him at the time; Las Vegas seemed like a city in which anonymity would be easy after the media horse and pony show he’d left behind in Britain. Americans rarely paid much attention to British news media, and even if it wasn’t, there was so much else happening, so many minor and major celebrities, that no one was likely to give him a second glance.
“Being close to all the live entertainment didn’t hurt either. If I had to live the rest of my life being unable to attend a show, I’d surely go mad. Somehow, Las Vegas just seemed like a good fit.”
Looking for peace and quiet in Las Vegas actually did make sense to Henry. He nodded his head in understanding. “This is a good place to get lost in,” he said. He glanced upwards beyond Laurence’s stall towards the city proper. “There are so many people and so much going on all the time it’s easy to get lost in the rush and just be left alone. Even if you wanted the attention, you’d have to put in a lot of work to get it.”
His eyes moved back to Laurence. “Though, I gotta admit, it is the last place I would have expected to find a farm.”
“It surprised me as well,” Laurence said. “I was looking for some cheap farmland and I found a bit of land just outside of the city, but I had to double check to be sure that farming would be a viable choice out here. It’s been a steep learning curve, but I’m lucky in that my neighbours and the other farmers who come to these markets have been willing to give me tips.”
“That’s nice of them,” Henry said. “I wouldn’t have thought the desert would have been a great place to farm, but I bet the land out here is cheap, right? The stuff you got here now looks good,” he said. “Especially that rhubarb.” He cocked his head a little. “Is it hard?” He asked next. “Farming in the desert, I mean.”
“It was quite cheap,” Laurence agreed. “Though I bought it sight unseen, and it all needed more work than I had been expecting.” Laurence had put nearly more work into making his home acceptable than he had on the land, and he still wasn’t sure if it would past muster were he to have guests over. “I suppose that’s what I should have expected from such a incautious decision though.
“The land had all been irrigated already though, so it hasn’t been too difficult. The previous owners had overworked much of the land so I’ve needed to leave it to fallow.” He was aware, a little, that he was likely to be coming across as very dull; Henry’s questions had likely signaled nothing more than a polite curiosity, and he was unlikely to have actually been interested in the specifics, and so Laurence finished with, “I may have had a better time of it if I’d chosen to go into livestock instead.”
Though, he hadn’t wanted to have to bring his livestock to slaughter; he’d chosen farming so that he could help nurture life, not so that he could continue to end it.
Henry knew very little about farming. Farms weren’t common where he’d grown up. The ground was much too rocky for any type of substantial farming -- anything more than a couple of acres of land for sheep and maybe some apple orchards. But he basically understood what Laurence was talking about. It wasn’t as dull as the other man may have feared. The parts of what he’d said that Henry latched on to was just how hard it was. “That was kinda risky buying it without seeing it first,” Henry said. “Were you that desperate to get out here?”
“It wasn’t that, it’s just…” Laurence started, and then grimaced, running a hand through his curly hair. He’d never thought of it as being desperate to get out of there before, but how else could he explain it? The idea had come into his mind - he should buy a quiet farm somewhere in America and just leave - and then he’d done it as soon as he’d found a farm he could afford in a location that he thought he could find something resembling contentment. He’d done so despite knowing, in the depths of his heart, that he’d be sacrificing the approval his father had only so recently given him, and that he’d be unlikely to ever return to live in the country that he’d so loved.
“Yes, I suppose I was, at that,” he amended. “I think it would have been difficult to view any land that I was interested in, as I lived in the United Kingdom at the time, but had I not been so eager to start anew, then I’m sure I would have come up with a more practical way of doing so.”
“I didn’t think about that,” Henry admitted. “If you were in England at the time, it would’ve been pretty impossible to come all the way out here just to look at a farm.” He fingered his wallet thoughtfully. “It’s kinda too bad I didn’t know you a few years ago,” he said. “When I sold my grandparents’ house. It was a good place to escape to. Though, thinking about it, it probably wasn’t what you were looking for. It was just a house, not a farm. And the town...people there liked to talk. Uh, how much do I owe you?”
“I think I could handle a house, though I haven’t the first idea what I would do living in a town or a city.” He’d lived largely in London, when he wasn’t living at his family’s estate in Allendale, but then he’d been Navy. Outside of his work as a Navy officer, Laurence was sadly without any marketable skills. “And I’m not sure I’d care much for the gossip. My home town had scarcely 2000 people in it, so I think I understand what it would be like though.”
He glanced at the produce Henry had gathered, and then named a price, a little lower than what he would have charged normally, though the price of conversation seemed enough to knock the price down to what he’d given Henry.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “There weren’t many farms where I grew up. Not large ones, at least. The ground wasn’t so great for growing stuff other than potatoes.” He chuckled a little as he handed the money to Laurence. “You could probably have sheep though.”
“Sheep aren’t so bad to bring up, so long as you have grazing land for them,” Laurence said. Except Temeraire didn’t like sheep as much as he enjoyed cattle; he would complain of the wool getting stuck between his teeth.
Laurence frowned sharply at that particular intrusive thought, trying not to think too hard of how one might have wool stuck in their teeth after eating mutton.
“I’ve not considered much in the way of livestock just yet though. Perhaps chickens, sometime in the future, for their eggs. Sheep for their wool may be appealing though.” He wondered what the price for wool was these days.
The sudden sharp frown on Laurence’s face startled Henry. He wondered if he’d gone too far somehow talking about farming in New England. He did have a way of saying things that didn’t always go over well with others. “Chickens are good,” he agreed. “People’d buy the eggs, for sure.”
Maybe he’d taken up enough of Laurence’s time. He had a booth to run, after all. He wasn’t going to be making money standing there and chatting with Henry all morning. “I should probably go,” he said, motioning with his hand. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Thank you very much for the rhubarb and the asparagus. I’ll let you know how the pie turns out?”
“You’re welcome to take up as much of my time as you’d like,” Laurence said, though he was aware that Henry was likely eager to continue on; Laurence would not continue to monopolize his attention. “I would like it very much if you’d care to,” Laurence said. He’d as of yet had no one report back to him how they’d enjoyed his produce, aside from his neighbours, and they only once Laurence had sent his regards for the haunch of beef they’d exchanged for his produce. “I hope you have a most pleasant afternoon, M-” Laurence started, and realized belatedly that he didn’t actually know Henry’s last name, “Sir,” he managed to amend, smoothly.
Henry nodded. “Yeah, sure, I’ll let you know,” he promised. “I’ll send you a message on the forum.” Maybe even a picture of the food once it was cooked. He gave Laurence a smile as he started on his way again. “Thanks again, Will. Good luck with the farm.”