A Whiff of Scandal

by Carole Matthews

  In reality, it was hopping round the bedroom floor with one foot stuck in your boxer shorts and a quick dive under the duvet because you’d come back from the pub fancying a quickie and the central heating had gone off hours ago. It must be something to do with living in the warmth of California that made Hollywood producers think everyone spent hours making love.

  He must have been such a disappointment to Gardenia over the years. He had never wanted Hollywood with her. If their love-making had been a film, it would have been a video nasty. A very short one. He didn’t want reality with Rose. He wanted fantasy, stimulation of every sense, a journey of limitless imagination and a climax that would leave them breathless, weeping and reaching for their handkerchiefs. He wanted to spend hours uncurling the tight budded petals of her before him. He wanted to undo her bra himself.

  It would hurt him to ask Gardenia to leave, they had been together a long time. Too long. Far too long. But that didn’t make it any easier. He hated spiders, but he still couldn’t kill them. There was something that turned his stomach about squashing them. Every time he found one in the house, he had to endure this self-inflicted performance of coaxing the wretched multi-legged thing into a glass with a newspaper, before bracing himself to carry it to the garden and depositing it on the grass to live another day.

  So. How exactly was he going to coax Gardenia into a glass so that he could deposit her outside Builder’s Bottom without any bloodshed? She might not have as many legs as a spider, but she could certainly be twice as scary if she put her mind to it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Basil was contemplating the building of a compost heap. It was a pleasant preoccupation that didn’t, at the moment, involve any work other than leaning on the rake and looking determinedly at the ground. A compost heap was a necessary addition to any eco-friendly garden. Not that Basil was overly concerned with eco-friendliness. There was probably nothing green about shooting squirrels. But without a compost heap where else could you dump the grass cuttings?

  It was to be situated at the far corner of the garden, underneath the branches of the hawthorn hedge that bordered the field behind, well out of view of the house. Basil stood and surveyed the site, silhouetted by the early snowy-white blossom on the hedge. Not that there would be any grass cuttings to put on it just yet. Someone had been blessed with the good sense to plant swathes of daffodil bulbs under the large specimen trees which graced the end of the garden, thus providing a wonderful excuse for not mowing the lawn until all the daffs had died.

  They were out in flower now and would have looked splendid if it had not been raining persistently since first light. Their heads were bowed, sheltering from the weight of water that stooped their fragile stems. He had thought about not coming to do Rose’s garden today. After all, it had been a very late night, what with the trip to hospital with Anise and then the nightcap with Angelica. It had been way past the witching hour when he had finally retired up the stairs to Bedfordshire. And then he hadn’t gone straight to sleep. He had lain awake thinking not of Anise – the poor old bat, laid up in hospital with a gammy leg – as might have seemed appropriate, but very definitely of Angelica.

  She was a fine woman and he wondered why he had not noticed it before. Her style was elegant and understated, well-suited to a woman of her advancing years. There was a strength of character to her that belied her gentle exterior packaging, a softness to her demeanour that had passed her elder sister by at full gallop. Her calm in the face of a crisis was something to be admired. Plus she made damn good tea, a fine strong brew, not overdone with milk so that it tasted like rice pudding. One could ask for little more in a woman.

  Besides, he was getting nowhere with Anise. The Viking evening had shown him that she was simply toying with his affections. She had been singularly unimpressed with his fleet-footedness on the dance floor. Her ulterior motive in courting his suit had simply been to get him to spy on Rose. He could see that now. Basil looked up at the house. She was outlined at the kitchen window in her white uniform, washing dishes at the sink.

  It was late afternoon and the light was beginning to fade, but if he screwed up his eyes he could see her brushing her hair tiredly out of her eyes with her hand. She was a nice young thing. And, as far as he could tell, there had been no untoward comings and goings, no string of gentlemen being entertained as Anise had intimated. In fact, she could probably do with entertaining a few gentlemen to put a bit of colour back in her pasty cheeks. Despite his initial misgivings, Rose had turned out to be a breath of fresh air. A welcome addition to the village – a bit like mains gas.

  Basil regarded the potential compost heap site again and adjusted his position on the rake before he got cramp. The rain had let up slightly, but showed no signs of stopping for the day as that complete no-hoper Michael Fish had promised. Whatever had happened to that soft-voiced, sex god Francis the weatherman? He and his mizzle were something that could always be relied on. If Francis said frost, you could be absolutely sure that you would wake up to frozen pansies and blackened magnolia buds.

  With that thought nestling pleasantly in his mind, Basil decided to go home before he risked being called on to do some work. Not that Rose was one to crack the whip. She paid up happily without questioning what he did for his money, unlike Anise who had wanted every blade of grass accounted for. He vowed that he would work harder for Rose tomorrow. And he also vowed that he would no longer be Anise Weston’s dupe. She could do her own dirty work from now on.

  Basil glanced at the house again. Rose had gone from the window, but – Basil paused and peered through the relentless drizzle. That was odd! He removed his monocle briefly and polished the raindrops from its surface with his sleeve to give him a clearer view. There was a movement at the side of the house. A distinct rustling of the leylandii, caused by more than a stirring of the rain-soaked wind. He narrowed his eyes and stared intently as a man wearing a beige belted Mackintosh, collar up against the pelting rain, emerged from the shadowy recess of the hedge and stood surveying Rose’s cottage with more than a passing interest. Wiping the rain from his eyes, Basil watched as the man walked to the door, glancing around him suspiciously. Here was a shifty-looking character if ever there was one. Could he be Rose’s pervert? As a stalwart of the Neighbourhood Watch, there was only one thing to be done – he must follow him.

  Basil dodged behind the Thuja plicata ‘Zebrina’ to keep a watch on him unobserved. Fortunately he was wearing his tweed ensemble today as there was precious little in the garden that could camouflage a lilac shell suit. He looked again at the dark-haired stranger. A handsome sort of fellow he supposed. Particularly for a pervert. City-type, neatly knotted tie and highly-polished brogues. He glanced down at his own mud-caked Nikes with disdain and a seed of sartorial dissatisfaction lodged itself deeply in the complex convolutions of Basil’s brain, twisting his mouth into a grimace. He crouched down and his keen eyes followed the slow progress of the stranger.

  Basil, his Nikes sinking deeply into the soggy grass, lurked in the shelter of the leylandii as the man approached the front door, dodging the puddles that were forming in Rose’s gravel path. The furtive visitor looked round, glancing back down the lane. He raked his wet hair from his forehead, adjusted his collar and hesitated, his hand held aloft, before rapping loudly on Rose’s front door.

  Basil strained to hear the sound of the door swinging open and he pressed himself against the hedge, ready to spring into action – should action be required. He risked a glance from his leafy hiding place and Rose’s face looked ashen and troubled. A heavy, elongated rush of breath escaped from her lips which carried on the wind above the pitter-pattering of raindrops. She lifted a hand to her mouth and Basil noticed it was shaking. There was a distinctly uncomfortable silence before she spoke. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  The man smiled uncertainly and buried his hands deep into the pockets of his Mackintosh. ‘I could ask you the same thing,’ he said.

  Chapte
r Thirty

  ‘Where are you going?’ Dan had arrived home from work to hear the sound of wardrobe doors being slammed with a vengeance. The large suitcases that they normally took on their increasingly exotic holidays were open on the bed and Gardenia was flinging clothes into them as though it was her last task on earth.

  A black and threatening scowl marred her beautiful face. ‘What do you care?’

  Dan sank on to the edge of the bed, out of the direct firing line of clothes. ‘Of course, I care.’ He sounded bemused. ‘Are you going on holiday?’

  Gardenia’s mouth was set in a thin tight line and she regarded him coldly. ‘Give me a break!’

  ‘I don’t know what this is all about.’

  Gardenia paused with a handful of frilly lingerie in mid-air. ‘You may think I’m a little green around the edges, but I’m not a total cabbage, Dan.’ She flung the frillies at the case. Impressively, she scored a direct hit. ‘I don’t even want to hear an explanation about where you were last night!’

  ‘Oh, that!’ he said with something bordering exasperation. ‘I can explain that!’

  ‘I said I didn’t want to hear.’ Gardenia put her hands over her ears to emphasise the point.

  ‘If you care to look,’ Dan carried on regardless, ‘you’ll see that I spent the night in the spare room. The crumpled duvet is a bit of a giveaway.’

  ‘Any idiot can crumple a duvet! It’s where you were before that I’d like to know.’

  ‘I was at Milton Keynes hospital with Anise Weston,’ he explained in a studiously calm voice. ‘She fell off her stepladder and broke her leg. The tibia,’ he added for good measure. ‘It took five hours for her to be seen and I didn’t think you’d appreciate being woken up in the wee small hours to hear about it.’

  ‘What was a woman of her age doing up a stepladder?’

  Dan toyed with the fringe of one of the myriad cushions that Gardenia piled high on the bed for artistic effect. They served no other purpose as far as Dan could tell, although at this moment they were proving quite useful for avoiding eye contact. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said cagily.

  ‘I bet it is,’ she huffed. ‘And why were you there to witness it?’

  ‘I didn’t witness it,’ he protested. ‘I arrived just after it happened.’

  ‘From where?’ Gardenia put her hands on her hips, an expectant look fixed rigidly to her face.

  You had to get up early to put one over on Gardenia, Dan thought testily. Much earlier than he had. ‘I thought you didn’t want to hear,’ he said flatly.

  ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with Rose, would it?’ She couldn’t say her name without putting on a simpering voice.

  ‘Why do you insist on blaming her for all of our domestic altercations?’ Block a difficult question with another question – he had seen it done every week on Question Time. It was amazing what you could learn from politicians – the art of wriggling off the hook, for one thing.

  ‘So this has nothing whatsoever to do with Rose?’ Gardenia persisted.

  ‘Er, not exactly.’ It obviously didn’t work so well for him. Damn!

  ‘Not exactly?’

  ‘Not in the biblical sense of the word,’ he said feebly.

  ‘You left here – no, – let’s get this right. You hobbled out of here sometime during the afternoon without telling me where you were going and then reappear a day later, not hobbling, without a word of explanation.’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you now!’ Dan raised his voice in frustration. ‘If only you’d listen.’

  ‘I think I’ve done more than my fair share of listening to you, Dan.’ There was a chill to Gardenia’s voice that he hadn’t previously detected. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in alarm. ‘And I’ve done my fair share of watching you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to hear this.

  ‘I’ve seen the way you look at her.’

  It was pointless to ask at who.

  ‘You’ve never looked at me like that.’ She started to slam her array of perfumes – all hideously expensive and all hideously smelly as far as Dan was concerned – into the waiting cavern of her vanity case.

  ‘Like what?’

  She stopped and narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You lust after her like a Weight-Watcher lusts after a cream cake in a baker’s window, your hot little breath steaming up the window, your grubby little hands dying to touch it, and your mouth watering with expectancy.’

  Did he? It certainly wasn’t the image he was hoping to project. He hoped Rose didn’t think of him like that. ‘I don’t!’ he said emphatically.

  A momentary flash of sadness stole across Gardenia’s harsh features and accusing eyes. ‘You’ve never looked at me like that,’ she repeated quietly.

  It was true. He couldn’t deny it. The last thing in the world he would ever compare Gardenia to was a cream cake. A sick, guilty weariness washed over him. ‘So where are you going?’

  ‘Far enough.’

  ‘Do you have to go now? Right at this minute?’

  ‘There’s no need to prolong this, is there?’

  ‘But it’s raining.’

  ‘I won’t shrink, Dan,’ she said tersely. ‘Besides, there’s no point waiting around to be made a fool of. A laughing stock. You know what this place is like.’ Gardenia shrugged tightly. ‘They probably all know more than me already.’

  ‘There’s nothing to know,’ Dan said softly.

  ‘You can’t fool me, Daniel Spikenard. I know you too well.’ Gardenia gave a hollow laugh. It sounded pained and for the first time in a very long time, Dan wanted to hold her. ‘Can you say that you don’t love her?’

  He looked away from her and stared out of the bedroom window. It was still raining. All day it had been wet and horrible, the sort of day that made you long for summer and calmer weather. The evenings were getting lighter and it would soon be the first day of spring. A new beginning. A fresh start.

  ‘We can’t just end it like this, Gardi,’ he pleaded. ‘How long have we been together now?’

  ‘The riposte too long is very tempting,’ Gardenia replied with less venom than she might have used.

  ‘Don’t just leave, Gardenia. We need to talk things through.’

  ‘Why?’ She sounded tired and weary.

  ‘That’s what people do. We’ve been through a lot together. You can’t just walk out.’

  She shut the lid of her vanity case. ‘Talking is what they do on EastEnders and Emmerdale and Home and Away. I don’t need to talk.’

  ‘You should, it’s the best therapy.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ she laughed. ‘Rose?’

  Dan sighed. ‘This has nothing to do with Rose.’

  ‘It has everything to do with Rose.’ She started to rearrange the clothes in the cases so that they would at least shut. ‘She’s been like a nasty little fly in the ointment since she arrived.’

  ‘I think that’s grossly unfair,’ Dan said. ‘Things were going wrong long before Rose arrived.’

  ‘She just gave you an excuse to stop trying.’

  ‘It takes two to hold a relationship together, Gardenia.’

  ‘But it only takes one to break it up,’ she shot back. She examined her fingernails, before looking at him again. ‘I saw you leave together after the Viking supper. You spent the night with her.’

  ‘That was entirely innocent! Nothing happened.’

  ‘By design or by default?’ She fixed him with a withering stare.

  ‘By virtue of the fact that I’d drunk more of Reg’s Carlsberg than was good for me.’ Dan rose to his own defence by jumping from the bed and pacing the bedroom carpet. ‘I passed out on her sofa, for heaven’s sake. How do you think that makes me feel?’

  ‘Like a prat.’ Gardenia was obviously in no mood to commiserate. ‘Particularly if you were trying to seduce her.’

  ‘It did cross my mind,’ he confessed miserably. There seemed little point in pretendi
ng otherwise now, either to himself or to Gardenia. He fell silent and leaned against Gardenia’s now empty wardrobe, adopting a pose that looked suitably wretched.

  ‘Anyway,’ Gardenia continued, clipping the cases shut with a snap that spoke of finality. ‘Whoever told you that talking was the best therapy obviously doesn’t know much about shopping. Believe me, it beats talking, bingeing and hypnosis hands down every time.’

  ‘There’s one small snag with retail therapy, Gardi. Who’s going to pay for it now?’ Dan asked without malice.

  ‘That’s really no concern of yours any more, is it?’ She manhandled her cases from the bed to the floor. ‘I know you think you’ve been the great and wondrous provider, but I’m sure I’ll manage without you.’

  Strong words, but nevertheless Gardenia’s face crumpled. Dan felt even more wretched than he looked.

  Gardenia sniffed. ‘I think it’s time I was going.’

  ‘Do you have to?’ Dan stepped forward. ‘I didn’t want it to end like this.’

  Gardenia tilted her chin and looked at him defiantly. ‘But you did want it to end.’

  Their eyes met and they looked at each other levelly and with more honesty than they had ever managed before. Dan nodded.

  Gardenia shrugged and gave small sigh. ‘Then I wasn’t completely mistaken.’

  He shook his head. There was a lump in his throat the size of a cricket ball. ‘No,’ he said softly.

  She bent to pick up her cases. Dan stepped forward. ‘Let me carry those for you.’

  ‘Can I take the Merc?’ she asked.

  Dan nodded again. ‘It’s got a full tank,’ he added when the cricket ball had shrunk and he was sure of his voice.

  They walked to the Mercedes in silence. Partly because Gardenia’s bags were so heavy that carrying them wasn’t conducive to continuing a conversation. And partly because it seemed they had run out of things to say. Perhaps Gardi had been right about shopping being the best therapy. Talking had done them precious little good. Maybe it was just a case of too little, too late.