Love, Lies and Linguine

by Hilary Spiers

  ‘You shouldn’t be up!’ What he means as concern sounds like censure.

  ‘Oh, Ron!’ cries Mary. ‘Do give it a rest!’

  Rhona gently eases Mary into the nearest chair; sits beside her, still clasping her hand. She strokes her hair back from her forehead.

  Two figures appear above them, indistinct in the shadowy doorway, then one of them steps out into the sunlight.

  ‘Oh! Mary!’ calls Harriet. ‘Mary, my dear, how lovely!’

  And Mary cranes her head sharply upwards, squinting in the brightness, the memory of the fall suddenly washing over her afresh.

  She shields her eyes with one hand, the other flying up to cradle her head wound. ‘Oh, no!’

  Rhona and Ron both leap forward in concern.

  Harriet stumbles down the steps towards her, calling her name. Mary cautiously opens her eyes; finds herself enclosed in a claustrophobic circle of concern. Her gaze lights on one face in particular.

  ‘Harriet . . .’

  CHAPTER 38

  There are simple hangovers, dull, sickening, head-thumping hangovers, with an acid stomach and vicious stabs behind the eyes that leave the sufferer reeling and courting oblivion. But nothing he has ever experienced in his short and relatively sheltered life and his even shorter acquaintance with alcohol and drugs could have prepared Ben for those same ghastly torments exacerbated with even greater quantities of shame and humiliation.

  He has twice already ducked out into the garden to throw up, even though he has nothing left to bring up but bile. His mother certainly, his aunts possibly, seeing him in such misery might have felt faint stirrings of pity for his condition. Indeed, his soft-hearted mother would almost certainly have relented, despite his crimes, and packed him off to bed. But not Artem. Not Daria. Not Nats. No word of sympathy escapes their lips as he staggers out and back. The only acknowledgement he has received in the three hours since they began the herculean task at The Laurels is Daria’s frequent replenishment of his bucket with fresh water and cleaning fluid. He assumes that he is not even to be trusted with such a simple job. Each time, she slams the bucket down beside him and stomps back to her own work.

  The silence from Louisa, Jez, all his mates in fact, has been thunderous, the only communication so far this morning a timid text from his mother asking for reassurance that he is still alive. He has dutifully responded, narrowly resisting the temptation to reply simply: Just.

  At the moment, he is on his knees in the hall, scrubbing the floorboards, the hammering in his head complemented by the hammering and sawing from the landing, where Barry the carpenter, whistling and from time to time breaking into tuneless song, is cheerfully fashioning a new set of banisters. Barry, despite his initial damning assessment—‘Jesus, Artem mate, you don’t ask much, do you? A week’s work, if it’s a day’—has set to enthusiastically, sizing up the remaining fragments of the old staircase and using Ben’s photos (which had briefly elicited the merest hint of admiration from Artem when he had revealed their existence) for comparison. Barry’s enthusiasm is maintained by Daria’s regular trips upstairs with chocolate biscuits and mugs of steaming, highly sugared tea, each successive mug prompting more and more effusive thanks.

  Artem and Finbar are busy plumbing in a new basin in the downstairs loo after a lightning visit to the builders’ yard, picking up some wood for Barry at the same time; Ben will not even start thinking about how much this is all costing. Nats has worked wonders on the sitting room walls and has now left the paper to dry out, moving on to the kitchen floor, having already sanded down the mercifully shallow marks on the door. With Milo secured in a makeshift pen in the garden, Daria has taken down the stinking curtains, hauled them through to the utility room and is washing them one at a time on the lowest possible setting, since they are both perilously threadbare and also labelled Dry-clean only. The barely readable label bears the legend Marshall & Snelgrove.

  ‘I say! Hello?’

  A face appears at the curtainless front window. All activity, save for Barry’s sawing and gutsy rendering of ‘I Will Survive’ upstairs, is suspended.

  Artem streaks down the hall, vaulting over Ben, and disappears through the front door, closing it swiftly after him. Nats creeps out from the kitchen and sidles up to the sitting room doorjamb, standing out of sight of the window, listening anxiously.

  ‘Mrs Verndale!’ Artem bends down to fondle her two dogs. ‘How are you today?’

  Peggy tries to peer past him, but he stands up, his bulk managing to almost completely block her view into the house. ‘I was passing and I thought, good heavens, it looks as though The Laurels is being demolished!’

  ‘Not at all!’ says Artem. ‘We are just preparing a surprise for Hester and Harriet. A—what do you call it?—a spring-clean?’

  The unmistakable sound of saw meeting wood rings out, coupled with the dying chords, tortured almost to death, of Gloria Gaynor’s masterpiece.

  ‘Spring-cleaning?’ sniffs Peggy suspiciously. She has always thought her friends naively trusting of these Eastern Europeans, appearing out of nowhere with their tales of woe. Not that she would dream of voicing her misgivings: the whole village seems smitten with them, everyone vying to champion their cause more energetically than their neighbours. She would hate to be thought xenophobic. ‘Is that a saw I hear?’

  ‘Precisely,’ says Artem, lowering his voice confidentially and skilfully easing the dogs, and thus their owner, slowly back down the path. ‘We discovered some . . . what is it? Little creatures in the stairs.’ He looks to Peggy for help.

  ‘Woodworm!’ exclaims Peggy in horror, as Artem nods vigorously. ‘Good Lord, it can run through a house like wildfire! The furniture will be ruined.’ Not that in her opinion there’s much decent furniture in the house to ruin.

  ‘Exactly so. We thought—Daria and I—that if we simply sorted it out, Hester and Harriet need never know. It would only alarm them. My good friend Barry is just now replacing the bad wood with good.’

  ‘It’s a very extensive spring-clean,’ says Peggy, her concerns largely allayed, but still conscious of her neighbourly duty to watch out for the sisters. ‘The carpets. The curtains . . .’

  ‘Oh, my sister!’ Artem laughs conspiratorially. He has got Peggy and the dogs as far as the lane now. ‘Once she starts! What is that English expression? If a job is worth doing . . .?’

  ‘It’s worth doing well,’ finishes Peggy. ‘My motto in life, too.’ One of the labradors pulls at his lead. ‘Well . . . I’d better get on. Leave you to it, then.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Verndale,’ says Artem, hand to grateful heart. ‘I wonder, though, if I might request a favour?’

  Aha, thinks Peggy. I knew something was up.

  Artem bends forward from his great height. ‘The ladies, the sisters, are so, so generous. As their dear friend, you will know this only too well. If they discover that we have been working so hard cleaning and repairing in their absence, there will be offers of money, of recompense. This we do not want at all. It is our gift to them, small though it is, for their many kindnesses. So, please, I beg of you, say nothing to them about—’ he waves his hand at the cottage ‘—all this. Ever.’

  Peggy is simultaneously chastened and ashamed at having harboured such doubts about his motives. ‘Of course, of course. You are very good people. The best of luck to you.’

  She takes a few steps, then turns back with a frown. ‘The only thing is, Artem, won’t they notice? You know, if everything is so spick and span?’

  The idiom does not defeat him. He responds with a wry smile. ‘Mrs Verndale, they have many virtues, the ladies, I’m sure you would agree. But . . .’ he spreads his hands, ‘being houseproud—that is the right term, yes?—forgive me, is not one I would put on the list. Would you?’ He invites her complicity with the raising of a mischievous eyebrow.

  Peggy is lost. ‘You naughty man!’ She giggles. ‘How rude! But, I’m afraid, true!’

  She trots off down the lane, still
giggling.

  Nats claps him on the back in admiration as he staggers theatrically back into the house and closes the front door firmly behind him. Smiling, he returns immediately to the loo to find Finbar’s feet protruding into the hall as he lies on the floor siting the pipework beneath the basin. Artem takes in a lungful of fresh air before plunging back into the foetid atmosphere that habitually cloaks the old man. Except that for once it doesn’t. True, there is still an underlying whiff of ancient sweat and clothes unwashed for years, but the top note, though chemical and artificial, pleasantly recalls freshly laundered sheets. Artem cautiously sniffs again in perplexity as Daria taps him on the shoulder and, warning finger to lips, waves a canister of Febreze under his nose. He stifles a shout of laughter. Signalling silence, she then warily lifts a garment, so seamed and impregnated with grime it is impossible to determine its original colour, off the doorknob where Finbar has hung it while he works, and tiptoes away towards the utility room.

  They stop for a late and very welcome lunch of bread and cheese. Ben is famished but he hangs back, waiting for everyone else to fill their plates first. He collects several hunks of cheese, the heel of the loaf and retreats to the garden bench. Animated conversation issues from the kitchen, laughter, the bass rumble of Artem’s voice, Daria’s excited chatter and Milo’s gurgles. Once, the baby crawls to the kitchen step, one hand clutching a plastic toy, which he holds out to the boy. Daria’s arm appears and scoops him back into the kitchen, closing the door. Ben has never felt more alone.

  He waits until he hears the scrape of chairs on the tiles as everyone returns to work, then quietly slips back into the kitchen to wash his plate. A fresh pail of water stands waiting for him in the hall. As he goes to kneel, he sees Nats standing in the sitting room doorway opposite the cleaned wall, inspecting it critically. She registers his presence. For the first time since her outburst in Daria’s kitchen, she addresses him.

  ‘Won’t do, will it? Shit.’ The wallpaper has dried in bubbles, the pattern rubbed almost to invisibility in places, residual beer stains spotting it here and there. Even with the pictures rehung, and however myopic both aunts may be, they would need to be virtually blind not to notice the damage.

  Despair washes over him. All morning he’s been clinging to the slim possibility of getting away with it, buoyed by Artem’s detailed plan, all his faith invested in this disparate group beavering away so hard. He looks at the bare windows, at the streaked and stained floor, the remaining stumps of the wrecked staircase and across at the ruined wall. It’s hopeless.

  ‘Shit,’ says Nats again, rolling her shoulders to ease her aching muscles. He longs to place a hand either side of those thin shoulders and massage the tension away, like he does for his mother sometimes. His hands remain where they are.

  ‘Artem,’ calls Nats, ‘got a minute?’

  Artem extracts himself from the cramped toilet and lopes down to join her. They regard the wall together for a moment or two.

  Artem sucks his teeth; shakes his head. ‘No. It will not do.’

  ‘No,’ says Nats sadly. ‘Sorry. I tried.’

  Artem lays a huge paw on her shoulder. ‘You did your best, Natalie.’ He sighs. ‘I don’t know what else we can—’

  ‘Repaper,’ says Ben quietly behind them.

  ‘Repaper,’ repeats Nats scornfully, rolling her eyes at Artem. ‘Like anywhere still stocks this design? Looks like it’s been up here for centuries. Like, even if we locate some, we can get hold of it at—’ she consults her watch ‘—three thirty on a Saturday afternoon? Oh, and like anyone has the first idea how to redecorate a room? You volunteering?’

  Ben holds his nerve. ‘We’ve got paper,’ he says.

  Nats turns to look at him properly for the first time. ‘We have? What, this exact pattern?’

  ‘Think so. Yeah, I’m sure. In one of the sheds. There’s a box with loads of rolls of wallpaper in it.’ He remembers shoving it into a corner when he and Louisa were stowing the sofa.

  ‘You sure?’ Her flinty eyes soften a fraction in thought. ‘Worth a try?’ she says to Artem.

  ‘Anything is worth a try.’

  There are dozens, hundreds, of YouTube clips showing complete beginners how to hang wallpaper. Ben and Nats huddle over his phone and watch a couple of them.

  ‘How hard can it be?’ says Ben, a little of his customary confidence seeping back. He had been right. They’ve found four rolls of the right paper, two of them a little damp-stained at the edges, but Ben reckons they can cut those bits off and patch if necessary. He’s finding the challenge quite energising.

  Nats sounds a note of caution. ‘There’s got to be a reason why people employ professional decorators.’

  ‘Only ’cos they’re too dumb or busy to do it themselves. Or too rich. I mean, you’re just sticking a bit of paper to a wall.’ It occurs to him that, thrifty as his parents are, they always get someone in when the house needs decorating. He decides not to share that.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Nats is skimming through a discussion thread for DIYers. ‘This bloke reckons it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done. Oh God, and there’s a woman here says, whatever you do, don’t start with a patterned wallpaper. Oh, great . . .’

  Ben is determined not to be beaten. They’ll just follow the instructions step by step and it’ll be okay. Two intelligent people—for fuck’s sake!

  An hour later, they’ve managed to get most of the old paper off the wall, having lost a good twenty minutes trying to remove the glass shelves. Barry had eventually come to their rescue with an electric screwdriver and whipped them in seconds. ‘Don’t forget to fill the holes,’ he says, bounding back up to the landing. Thirty minutes later and they’re on their third sheet of paper. The first piece Ben had cut too short. They had had words about that, so Nats assumed responsibility for measuring thereafter. Ben managed to tear the top of the second sheet. Now they are trying to line the third sheet up by eye, Ben having assured Nats they don’t need a plumbline.

  ‘Just use the top of the fireplace as a guide.’

  ‘What if that’s not straight?’ says Nats.

  ‘How can a fireplace not be straight?’ says Ben. ‘Everything would slide off it.’

  ‘Depends on the slope,’ says Nats.

  Ben climbs the stepladder and offers the paper up. Weighted with wallpaper paste, it flops back over his head before he can smooth it into place at the top.

  Nats laughs. ‘What were you saying about a piece of piss? I wouldn’t give up your day job just yet.’

  Ben looks at the expanse of wall they have to cover and panic begins to stir. He retreats down the ladder and lays the strip glue-side up on their improvised pasting table. ‘You’re so clever, you do it.’

  His phone rings. He doesn’t recognise the number.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Ben? It’s Ralph. Is this a good time?’

  A good time? For what? Oh, shit, yes, his revision session.

  ‘Oh, man. I’m, like, a bit tied up at the moment, Ralph mate.’

  ‘Oh, right. Revising another subject?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ An expectant pause. ‘It’s just, I’m helping out a mate with some emergency decorating—you know, like, wallpapering . . .’

  ‘Oh . . .’ The guy sounds really disappointed. There’s a moment’s silence. Then he says tentatively, ‘I’ve done a bit of decorating in my time. I could come over if you’d like a hand?’

  CHAPTER 39

  Harriet and Mary are whispering in Mary’s temporary quarters.

  ‘It’s driving me round the bend!’ Mary rolls her eyes. ‘It’s like being on suicide watch. It feels like they’re trying to outdo one another in the compassion stakes. I could scream!’

  Mary had managed to hiss, ‘My room, fifteen minutes,’ in Harriet’s ear as Rhona and Ron had manhandled her up from her chair and hustled her back into the hotel after her little turn in the garden.

  ‘Can’t be too careful,’ Ron had said.

&nbs
p; ‘I told you not to do too much too soon,’ Rhona had scolded.

  Harriet had had the presence of mind to fill a plate with cheese, bread and olives and now the pair of them are guiltily consuming them like schoolgirls enjoying a midnight feast, ears pricked for any sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. Harriet had felt like a criminal sneaking into Mary’s room. The dismay on both Ron and Rhona’s faces when Mary had welcomed Harriet with such warmth (and, Harriet thought, relief) had been almost farcical.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asks through a mouthful of pecorino.

  ‘God alone knows. I never did get my coffee! There’s me saying seize the day, but now I don’t know which day to seize. Whatever I do is going to create the most unholy mess.’

  Harriet, privately wondering why Mary, apparently a rational, intelligent woman, hadn’t thought this through before, can’t help but agree: stay with Ron, and Mary has a constant reminder of her affair living the other side of the fence; choose Rhona and her marriage will implode, never mind the fallout in terms of domestic arrangements, finances, children—

  She looks up to see Mary’s eyes filling with tears. ‘Hey . . . hey . . .’

  ‘I’m such a selfish cow,’ murmurs Mary. ‘Dragging you into all this. As if you didn’t have enough on your plate. It’s just . . .’

  Harriet squeezes her hand. ‘I know: it helps to have a sounding board. How’s the head, by the way?’

  Mary flaps her hand dismissively. ‘Flesh wound only. It’ll heal. My hair will grow back. It’s fine.’

  ‘Okay. Sorry.’

  Mary looks aghast and grasps Harriet’s wrist. ‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just—’

  ‘It’s all a bit much, isn’t it?’

  Mary manages a shaky smile. ‘You are an absolute brick, Harriet, as my dad used to say. Thank God you’re here. Anyway, never mind me, I haven’t even asked you about your own troubles.’

  Harriet tells her about contacting Marion (‘No, I didn’t want to accuse her on the phone. It seemed too brutal’), then makes light of Hester and Lionel’s burgeoning romance by regaling Mary with her abortive property search. This has them both helpless with laughter by the time she has finished describing, with outrageous embellishment, the hovel she is likely to end up in if her worst fears are realised.