A Spring Affair

by Milly Johnson

  This was the umpteenth ‘hamper’ she’d sent for. Lou had received a T-shirt by way of a thanks once that would have fitted around a small infant school. The words ‘thank you’ weren’t actually said. Victorianna would have spontaneously combusted, had she had to say them. Her mum got a framed photo of Victorianna posing formally with live-in lover Edward J.R. Winkelstein the Third and his expensive hairweave, which wasn’t dissimilar in texture nor colour from Shredded Wheat. Victorianna looked like a younger, more glamorous version of Renee. He looked the way Lou would expect an Edward J.R. Winkelstein the Third to look.

  ‘Well, let me know when you’re going and I’ll come with you. She’s got a dinner-party soon and wants some of the stuff for then. I’ve got the mint chocolate disc things.’

  ‘OK, Mum. How about Tuesday?’

  ‘Yes, but no later otherwise she won’t get the stuff in time.’

  How tragic, thought Lou.

  ‘We could have been and gone in the amount of time you’ve been talking to that Michelle. You must have been on half an hour. And you want to check that email thing of yours. Your sister said she wrote two days ago.’

  ‘Well, I do have other things to do besides jump when Victorianna asks, Mum. And a please and thank you and a cheque for you wouldn’t go amiss. Doesn’t she realize how much you spend on these flaming hampers?’ said Lou. ‘You could have taken the stuff over yourself for how much it’s cost you in postage and packing.’ If your beloved daughter ever had the decency to invite you over there, she stopped herself from adding.

  ‘I am her mother. I don’t expect anything in return,’ said Renee pointedly.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not as if she’s poor. She’s always bragging about how loaded she and Baron Frankenstein are. Surely there’s room for you in one of the twelve bedrooms?’

  ‘Jealousy won’t get you anywhere, Elouise,’ said Renee, totally missing the point.

  Lou surrendered. ‘Tuesday then Mum, definitely,’ she said with a sigh.

  ‘Don’t go to any trouble if you’re busy. I can get a bus down.’

  If you can get someone to unnail you from your cross first, thought Lou. ‘It’s no trouble, I’ll pick you up Tuesday at nine,’ she said wearily.

  She put the phone down and vowed she wouldn’t answer it again. Everyone she seemed to speak to on it made her feel unreasonable and selfish. She badly needed this clutter-clearing session to make her feel as good as she had done cleaning out her drawer at work.

  ‘Right, to business,’ she said to herself with a big smile and a clap of the hands, and shook open a large black binliner in preparation.

  The spatulas were the first to go, then some tongs that had gone rusty in the dishwasher, then some grimy-looking toothpicks that had wriggled out of their packets. She aimed the old ice-cube tray that she never used into the bag. Used lolly sticks–what the hell had she kept those for? A broken melon-baller, a stencil brush, a once-used rice ball and a blunt vegetable peeler joined them.

  Be ruthless, the article had said. Ask yourself, ‘Have I used it in the last six months (seasonal goods–allow one year? Am I likely to ever use it in the future?’ If the answer is no, can it go in a recycling bin, or to charity, or to a car-boot sale or be sold on eBay? No? Then throw it away without a second glance.

  Some things she questioned, such as the ancient can-opener that looked more like a medieval instrument of torture. It hadn’t worked for years, but had a handy bottle-opener at the top. But as she couldn’t remember the last time she had opened a bottle with it, she launched it at the binliner with the accuracy of a seven-foot-tall basketball player.

  When the drawer was completely emptied, she scrubbed it down, washed the utensils she was keeping and slotted the whole thing back. It was crazy how something as simple as throwing out some old rubbish gave her such a sense of accomplishment.

  Next she tipped out the odds and sods drawer, suspecting she might be putting very little of it back. A broken mirror, five combs (none of which had a complete set of teeth), some grubby Sellotape, cheap pencils that had needed sharpening for about four years, a yellowing pattern for a cricket jumper she would never knit, an incomplete set of playing cards, sixteen CDs and DVDs given away as freebies with various newspapers, cracker novelty prizes from last Christmas…Into the bin went everything but the scissors and a pair of tweezers that she thought she’d lost months ago. She collected all the loose paperclips into an empty matchbox that she also found in the drawer and took them to the desk in the small study next door.

  Clear and redeploy as you go, the article dictated. And the newest disciple to the religion of clutter-clearing obeyed.

  Next she tackled the cloth drawer, throwing out all the old vest bits and tatty floorcloths because she had just found three new packets of J-cloths that had been hidden under everything. She had just got on her knees for the under-sink cupboard, when the doorbell rang.

  She hoped it wasn’t Michelle, then felt immediately mean and treacherous. She had really started to enjoy herself and just for once didn’t want to talk over and over about what a man really means when he tells you to piss off because you’re a bunny-boiling bitch. Then again, it could have been the postman. She stole over to the window and sneaked a look. It was a lot worse than Michelle and her mother combined. It was Mr Halloween himself–her brother-in-law, Des.

  ‘Oh knickers,’ Lou said, and quickly stepped back against the wall, confident that she hadn’t been seen.

  Luckily for Lou, there was no detectable sign that she was in–no TV or radio on, and her car was safely hidden away in the garage so, to all intents and purposes, she didn’t look at home. She waited in the silence until she was pretty sure he must have gone–then, to her anger and amazement, she heard the key in the lock, the door opening and footsteps in the hall. She really would kill Phil when he got home. He’d obviously done what she told him never to do again, and lent Des his key There was nothing for it now, no place to hide. And even worse, she’d got the old white T-shirt on that made her boobs look massive.

  Lou braced herself, burst into the hallway and, hands going to her chest, feigned a big shock to try and get the point across that this really wasn’t on, without actually daring to spell it out directly. Lou was just too soft for confrontations these days.

  ‘Oh Des, it’s you. What are you doing? You scared the life out of me.’

  ‘I knocked,’ said her brother-in-law in his nasal monotone drawl, thumbing back to the door, ‘but I didn’t think you were in. I called in to see Phil at the garage. He lent me a key in case you had gone out shopping.’

  ‘Oh, right then,’ said Lou, who really wanted to say other things that weren’t so polite. ‘So, what is it that you wanted?’ she urged after waiting in vain for Des to explain. He had no gene that allowed him to feel awkward in long silences but a big one that gave him the ability to make Lou’s flesh creep.

  ‘I just came to borrow Phil’s golf clubs.’

  ‘Ok,’ said Lou. ‘Did he say where they were?’

  ‘No,’ said Des helpfully. Not.

  Lou took the quick option and rang Phil’s mobile, only to get the message that his mobile had not responded and could she please try later.

  Oh, how Lou wished she were one of those people who didn’t feel obliged to be so polite and could just usher him out to come back when Phil was in. She was forced to go from room to room with Des following behind her in that way of his that had no respect for personal space. Phil said he was just stupidly insensitive, but Lou sometimes wondered if he got kicks from being such an unsettling presence.

  Des Winter-Brown arriving at your door could make you think it was Trick or Treat night. Tall, skinny and corpse-pale, his shoulders were rounded from stooping and his hair was lank and black from over-zealous dyeing. He had regular enough features, but there was just something about his strange quietness and the way he would turn up close beside Lou without a clue of his approach that made her dread the mere hint of his visit. She
hated the way his eyes dipped to her chest. She disliked his long skinny hands with their long skinny fingers most of all. God knows what his toes must look like.

  When Phil had lent him a key to get something from the house on a previous occasion, Lou had been in the shower when she heard activity downstairs. She broke the world record for drying and dressing herself when she heard Des’s, ‘It’s only me!’ drifting up the stairs.

  ‘It was just Des, Lou. He only popped in for a hammer, not a screw,’ was Phil’s laughing response when she countered him about it later.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell him to come back later when you’d be in?’

  ‘You’re getting this totally out of perspective,’ Phil said, failing to see any problem.

  ‘You shouldn’t be giving him a key to our house!’ said Lou crossly.

  ‘Well, excuse me, but I think you’ll find it says my name on the deeds,’ said Phil then, with a dangerous degree of impatience. ‘You’re forgetting this house was mine long before you came on the scene.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that since we’re married, it’s ours,’ said Lou, her voice firming as much as Lou’s voice could.

  ‘I think you’ll find if you want to push it, we can carry on with our original plans to split up and find out exactly what the law says about it!’

  Lou hadn’t argued any more then.

  Lou flicked on the cellar light. ‘You don’t have to come down here, Des. It’s a bit dusty,’ she said.

  ‘No, I don’t mind. I’ll help you look,’ Des said. He was one step behind her all the way down. She felt like Flanagan with Allen.

  God, it’s a mess down here, she said to herself. If she hadn’t read that damn article her eyes would have just flicked over the stuff they kept down there ‘just in case’. Now her new rubbish-alert radar had already spotted twelve things that they would never use again and which should be thrown out.

  ‘Nope. They’re not here,’ said Lou, returning as quickly as she could back upstairs, hoping his eyes weren’t glued to her bum. That bloody husband of hers! She knew he’d given Des the key so Des would have come and gone by the time Phil came home for lunch. Her husband relished his brother-in-law’s company almost as little as Lou did.

  There were only the garages left to check, and the loft–but Lou wasn’t going up there.

  She pressed the electronic opener for the garage door, which slowly slid up and over, and checked there, quickening her step to put a reasonable distance between herself and Freddy Kruger.

  Thank God, she thought. Relief washed over her as she saw the clubs poking out from under some dust-sheets, next to the old cracked plastic garden chair and grimy table-set that would never see sunshine again, and the skeleton of a broken umbrella that looked like a long-dead giant spider.

  Des left her to heave it out by herself because his mobile was ringing. It played ‘Sex Bomb’, which was a joke in itself. The ‘Funeral March’ would have been more appropriate.

  ‘Hello, baby,’ he said to the caller.

  Yeuch, thought Lou.

  ‘I’m at Phil’s…Yes, he is but I’m with Lou,’(he winked over and Lou shuddered). ‘Golf clubs…I’m going to have a cup of tea here then I’ll be off…Oh, you are? See you in about quarter of an hour then.’

  Lou really hoped she hadn’t filled in the missing gaps correctly. That would be too horrible to contemplate. She also pretended she hadn’t heard the bit about the tea.

  ‘Well, that’s great you’ve got the clubs! Right well, I’ll leave you to it, Des. Got to dash–loads to do.’

  ‘Celia thought she’d pop in,’ said Des, as he heaved the clubs into his car. ‘She’s just coming from Meadowhall with the children, so I might as well have a cup of tea and wait here for her.’

  ‘No, get lost, I want to clean my cupboards out. I don’t want your wife looking down her nose at me and showing off her new Prada handbag, I don’t want your kids prying into my cupboards and I don’t want you breathing down my neck every time I flipping turn around!’ But whilst Lou screamed this in her head, aloud she said in that damned nice polite way of hers: ‘Oh right. Well, I’ll put the kettle on then.’

  She ripped off her rubber gloves with anger that should have been directed at Phil for putting her in this position, at Des for creeping so close behind her, at Celia for thinking that she could just expect Lou to drop everything and listen to her latest impressive buys and name-dropping ‘Jasper Conran’ into every other sentence. But most of that anger was directed at herself for letting everyone walk over her with their unthinking, unfeeling hobnail boots.

  She wished she’d gone supermarket shopping with her mother now. Even searching for posh pickles in Sainsbury’s was infinitely better than a house full of the Winter-Brown family. She stood over the kettle whilst it boiled, only to find that Des had appeared silently and without warning at her back, staring out of the window with some lame comment about the lawn looking good. He would have made a fantastic ghost for some creepy mansion.

  Ludicrously, in a kitchen as big as hers, she found herself in the position of having to squeeze past him to get the milk and the cups. She half-wished he would grope her, just the once, then she could have the excuse to belt him across the chops and ban him from the house. Then she thought of those long fingers actually making contact with her skin and she shivered. Maybe not.

  There was a knock on the back door.

  ‘Come in!’ shouted Des.

  Cheeky swine, thought Lou.

  In spilled the twins. Well, Hero spilled in, pretending to be a plane, and Scheherazade waddled in behind with a puppy-fatted belly poking out of a Bratz crop-top. Celia huffed behind them, laden with posh carriers that she could have left in her boot and complaining that Meadowhall was mad. She dumped the bags on the kitchen table and, barely acknowledging Lou, started gabbling on to Des about some shirt she had bought for him that cost more than Lou’s car. She had just got it out to show him when Phil put in an early appearance and Lou didn’t know whether to kiss him or kill him.

  He ignored the withering look his wife gave him because he had had a very profitable morning and was feeling so full of top quality beans that not even the presence of his slimy brother-in-law, his show-off sister and the 2.4 brats, presently nosying in the drawers of the kitchen dresser, could bring him down to earth.

  ‘You are looking at one successful mother,’ he beamed, threw his arms wide and sang the first four opening lines to ‘Simply the Best’ very loudly.

  ‘Mum, I’m hungry,’ said Scheherazade, sticking her fingers in her ears.

  ‘I think that tea’s probably brewed now,’ hinted Des.

  ‘I’m sure Auntie Elouise will get you something if you ask nicely,’ said Celia.

  ‘What’s for lunch then?’ said Phil.

  ‘I’m hungry too,’ said Hero.

  ‘Lou, sort us out, love!’ said Phil.

  And Lou silently got out the bread from the crock, the butter from the fridge, and from her niche in the background, she abandoned her own plans for the day in order to make lunch for a room full of people.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning, Phil stood in front of the mirror and put on his standard work uniform: a crisp white shirt, a heavy splash of a very expensive after-shave, a blue tie that complemented the shade of his still-sparkly bright-blue eyes, and a perfectly cut navy suit jacket with a subtle P.M. Autos stickpin in his buttonhole. He was wearing well and he knew it (well, except for that monk-hole in his hair). He smiled at himself and eighteen thousand pounds’ worth of cosmetic dentistry work smiled back at him. It was simply the best investment, for a crooked, tortoiseshell smile would have been terminal for business. Women customers, especially, were very judgemental about bad teeth and oral hygiene, Phil had learned. They knew bugger-all about cars and looked for other indicators that they weren’t about to be sold a duff. Women so wanted to trust you.

  Fat Jack had given him the name of his dentist. The latter had been expensive, bu
t worth it, and now Phil had a set of gnashers that weren’t so perfect they looked false, but they sent out a clear signal that Philip M. Winter was a man who took a lot of pride in himself and his business.

  He had a quick read of the Sunday World newspaper whilst he was fortifying himself for the day ahead with one of his wife’s extra super-dooper Sunday grills that he would burn off with some serious gymwork later. Then he fired up his Audi TT and set off for the car lot, practising his friendly ‘of-course-you-can-trust-me’ smile in the rearview mirror.

  When Phil had left, Lou had a banana and a yogurt in the conservatory-cum-dining room. She’d hoped to get away from the lingering smell of Phil’s bacon in the kitchen that was making her stomach growl in jealous protest. He had gone off to work, whistling like a lottery-winning budgie because of some exciting find in an old widow’s garage and his plans to start up another new business with Fat Jack selling exclusive classic cars. She had been eavesdropping yesterday whilst he was showing off to Des about it–anything but listen to Celia’s boring commentary about her latest Karen Millen acquisitions, although she hadn’t heard the whole story as she’d had to go and locate the children who were poking worryingly around the house, as usual. She was pretty sure Celia would have something to say if Lou went into her bedroom and started rooting nosily through her drawers.

  Phil hadn’t pestered her to make love that morning, which he sometimes did on a Sunday. Luckily for him, too, because she was still really angry about the Des-and-key incident. Phil, however, didn’t notice. The matter was closed as far as he was concerned. Well, the matter had never really been opened as far as Phil was concerned.