by Unknown
‘Okay, I’ll grant your wish for you.’ He shaded his eyes and surveyed the garden.
‘You’re not serious?’
‘Of course I am – although I’ll need your help to get it done this weekend.’ He looked around. ‘Is there a decent lawnmower?’
Ellen had just dug herself into a very large hole before even investigating the whereabouts of a garden spade. ‘It’s way too much to ask for a tenner,’ she said quickly, dragging the smile reluctantly from her own face, but it just sprang back again at the prospect of Spurs Belling stripped to the waist emptying a grass box.
‘Three pounds and thirty-three pence.’
‘What?’
‘Ten pounds for three wishes – that’s three pounds thirty-three each.’
Ellen wasn’t the only one who couldn’t resist playing with sums, it seemed. She scuffed her trainer into the gravel. ‘In that case I should have paid a bit more. You can’t help me mow this jungle for three quid.’
‘You’re right.’ He rubbed his chin with the palm of his hand. ‘What needs doing apart from the grass?’
Ellen stared at him in disbelief.
The silver eyes were dancing now, with infectious excitement as though she’d just offered him a Ferrari for the weekend, rather than a task she had been avoiding all week. ‘I can’t promise to know a hell of lot about gardening,’ he apologised, ‘but I picked up some basics when I was on remand.’ He watched her face for reaction. When she showed none, he laughed again. ‘And the flower-beds here look as though they need some serious attention.’ He set off to inspect the closest one, stalking through the tall grass like a leopard slipping silently into the veld.
‘I wasn’t sure which were weeds . . .’ She followed him, wondering what in hell she’d just started. Pheely would be livid with her.
He stooped and pointed at a nettle. ‘You know what this is, surely?’
‘Ornamental Chinese parsley?’ she suggested distractedly, aware that she had unwittingly triggered something she wasn’t sure she could handle.
He grinned over his shoulder then leaped up and bounded into the long grass. ‘You okay if I look around and throw out some ideas? I know it’s your wish, but when I was planting cheap daffodil bulbs in uniform rows, I used to dream of gardens like this.’
‘Sure.’ She followed him reluctantly. ‘My wish is your remand.’
He pulled his hair back from his forehead and strode on down the slope. ‘The hedges badly need trimming. This pond looks like it’s crying out to be drained and cleaned – and that paddock is way out of control. It should be topped.’
‘Topped?’ She turned to him alarm, wondering if he planned to kill it off somehow.
‘Topping is mowing on a bigger scale – you tow a cutter behind a tractor. There’s one at home, but we’d have to bring it through the garden. Then again, it might do the garden – there must be half an acre of lawn here, and it’ll need at least two cuts.’ He strode uphill again.
Ellen watched him for a few seconds before she followed, trying not to notice the way his shoulder muscles moved beneath his T-shirt. This fervent enthusiasm was classic X-factor. For people like Spurs there was precious little midground between passion and boredom. If you found their on switch, it was like starting a firework display, but you usually got your fingers scorched, and the fuses burned out quickly.
He’d wandered round to the back of the cottage now where he was looking up at the walls. ‘It’s probably the wrong time of year to prune these climbers, but they could be tied back to stop them covering the windows, and I’ll clean those while I’m up there. This clematis is being strangled by ivy – and your rambling rose is hosting an aphid orgy. Nice jasmine, though. Mmm – smell.’ He held a frond under her nose.
‘Were you Lady Chatterley’s lover in a previous life?’ Ellen joked, as she emerged from the sweetest of breaths.
The silver eyes were almost incandescent now, the soft voice playful. ‘Why? Were you Lady Chatterley?’
She looked away quickly. She might run red lights, but green ones were a different matter. She knew his type too well. Flirting with him would be as easy as breathing, but people like Spurs burned so brightly that they stole the oxygen from the air, leaving everyone around them winded. It was better not to go there.
‘This is way too much to ask of you,’ she said again. ‘Three pounds would buy less than half an hour of a professional gardener’s time.’
‘It’s two days’ wages in prison.’ He smelt the jasmine, eyeing her over its lacy petals.
‘You’re not in prison any more.’
‘Aren’t I?’ For a moment, he looked flint-eyed again, but then he smiled at her. ‘You’re right. It doesn’t bother you, does it?’
‘Not unless it affects your ability to mow a lawn.’ Ellen shrugged, then noticed a strange reflection over his shoulder. It was Hunter Gardner’s binoculars – trained on them through the gap in the hedge. ‘After all, the village guards are keeping watch.’ She indicated the sparkling lenses.
Spurs’ smile dropped away as he turned to look. ‘Bastard!’
‘He’s actually more interested in the dog,’ she assured him.
Spurs thrust up a one-fingered salute and the reflection wobbled furiously.
She grabbed his wrist without thinking. ‘Please don’t do that – I’ve pissed him off enough already.’
He snatched away his hand. ‘Ashamed to be seen with me too, are you?’
Ellen balked. ‘I don’t care if you bare your arse at him every time you pass his house.’ She laughed in surprise. ‘But I hardly know him – or you – and while I could really use some help in this garden, you can bugger off if you’re going to wind up the neighbours.’
Slowly the smile lit his face again. It was warmer and more compelling than ever. Within seconds, they were playing ‘smile tag’, each unable to resist the pull that made their eyes crease and laughter catch in their throats. Then he tilted his head towards hers and whispered in her ear, ‘I promise I won’t. Please don’t tell me to go home.’
He knew she wouldn’t. As he straightened up to look at her again, she felt her sweaty T-shirt shrink two sizes. Bugger, Ellen thought, as he drank her in. I fancy you, and you know it. Bugger.
Then, without warning, he reached out a hand and took off her sun glasses, the silver gaze examining her puffy eyes. ‘Hay fever?’ he asked carefully.
She nodded very carefully in return, reaching out to take her shades back.
His dark eyebrows curled up into his forehead, then he backed off. ‘In that case, you’ll need to take a few antihistamines before we get cracking. Is there a brush cutter or a strimmer here – preferably petrol-driven?’
‘There might be something in the workshop,’ she jerked her head towards it and he wandered over to try the door. ‘It’s locked.’
‘Do you have the key?’ he asked lightly. ‘Or would you rather wriggle in through a window?’
The silver eyes still marked hers as she ducked away in embarrassment, cramming her shades back on and snapping back with a cheap retort because she was flustered: ‘I thought that was more your line.’
‘Well, I could try forcing my way in with a dodgy cheque if you want,’ he muttered, checking the padlock. ‘I was banged up for forgery and embezzlement.’
‘Not drugs?’ she asked, before she could stop the question slipping out.
He let the padlock rattle against the door. ‘Good old local legend has me driving a speedboat laden with Thai opium when I was nicked. Slightly more glamorous than trying to use a stolen credit card in Dixons, admittedly, but it means that if I so much as light a fag here, the sniffer dogs are called in.’
‘How long did you get?’
‘As my mother likes to say, I worked “overseas” for four years.’ He chewed at a rueful smile as he turned and leaned against the locked door. ‘I forged a bit more than signatures. It was in all the papers – I’m sure Hunter has a scrapbook on the case that he’ll let
you leaf through if you need my references before I start on the garden.’
‘Sorry.’ She moved back hastily behind the mark she’d overstepped.
‘Forget it. I can’t get away from it – especially not here in this village. I might have guessed you’d already know about it. I still get calls from TV shows – Toffs from Hell was the last.’ He started to look around the car port.
‘I’ll fetch the keys.’ Ellen moved back into the sun, fanning her T-shirt. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger,’ she muttered, under her breath, as she left him rootling through the open barn and made her way into the house.
She pulled off the shades and stared at her face in the mirror – still hopelessly red-eyed, but now distinctly red-cheeked as well.
‘Bugger.’
This was such a dumb thing to do. She, of all people, should know better than to let someone like Spurs get close enough to play with. He was as energetic, flirtatious and fun as any bad-boy surf nut she knew and loved; he was also dangerous, edgy and reckless. He would probably wreck her parents’ overgrown garden and she would help him do it, no doubt, because he was more addictive to be around than Bob Flowerdew and an army of performing garden gnomes.
She knew she couldn’t hope to control him. If he chose to, he could play with her as easily as greedy, carefree Fins played with helpless baby rabbits. She’d realised that the moment she’d failed to stare him down. Two days in his company would be two days walking on hot coals. She would have to wear very thick boots.
Suddenly she noticed the horseshoe sitting on the window-sill. She stooped to pick it up, dropped it into an empty plant pot on one of the shelves in the porch and told herself that there was no such thing as bad luck, just bad decisions. She had a feeling this had been one of her all-time worst.
However uncontrollable he might be, Spurs wasn’t afraid of hard work. Equipped with Theo Jamieson’s ancient two-stroke strimmer, he set to on the Goose Cottage garden like a man going to war, and didn’t stop until the engine blew up.
‘Jesus!’ He leaped back as smoke belched out in front of him.
Ellen straightened up from weeding a bed just in time to see a strimmer fly through the air and burst into flames.
Spurs had managed to penetrate about six feet of long lawn, leaving it pale and tufted. Half an acre of meadow still stretched in front of him, and then the paddock beyond.
‘Dad always said cutting this lawn was a merciless task,’ she said as she joined him. They watched the flames die away in a cloud of acrid smoke, the dry grasses nearby sizzling.
‘Strimmerciless,’ he said, seemingly unbothered by the exploding garden tool. He pulled off the unmatched gardening gloves they’d unearthed in the workshop and wiped his sweating forehead. ‘This is going to be harder than I thought. Fuck it, I’d better go home.’
He’d got bored even more quickly than Ellen had anticipated.
‘For heavy-duty equipment,’ he snapped, knowing exactly what she was thinking. ‘There’s an APV at the manor, and a huge brush cutter thing. I’ll bring them over with the topper.’
‘Are you sure your mother won’t mind?’ she asked, without thinking.
He gave her a withering look. ‘As long as I don’t leave my catapult by the seat, I think she’ll be okay. Besides, she’s gone to Cheltenham with Father to buy a hat.’
‘Special occasion?’ Ellen pulled off her own gloves – stupid flowery rubber ones her mother had bought from an upmarket catalogue.
‘No – she buys hats all the time,’ he said, looking at the tiny impression he’d made on the Goose Cottage wilderness. ‘Talk about one man went to slo-mo a meadow. It burns well, though.’ He kicked at the scorched patch surrounding the dead strimmer. ‘We could just torch it.’
Ellen glanced at him, pretty certain he was joking but not entirely trusting her judgement.
He was waving regally at Hunter Gardner now. ‘I hope he has a decent sunscreen – he’s been roasting his bald head ever since he put his Panama over his Pimm’s. Still, at least he’s got his priorities right. There’s nothing worse than warm cucumber. And a cold drink’s not such a bad idea.’
Then, to Ellen’s consternation, he set off across the old footpath that her mother and Hunter Gardner had paid the local councillors backhanders to close. They’d argued that the track – which ran along the bottom of their land as far as the village hall, ending in a little-used gate to the manor – was obsolete, served no purpose and for many years had only been used by riotous children, drunks and ne’er-do-wells.
But today it served Spurs’ purposes perfectly, providing him with a short-cut as he jumped easily over the imposing post-and-rail fencing that the Jamiesons had erected to make it clear that the path was no longer in use.
Hunter Gardner, his binoculars still trained as he sat on sentry duty looking out for signs of poultry-worrying, let out an enraged roar. ‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing, man? You’re trespassing!’
Ellen dashed to the hedge in time to see him standing on his decking and waving his air rifle. ‘Is that you, Belling? I don’t know how you have the nerve to set foot on the property! Get off my bloody land or I’ll shoot you!’
Spurs turned to look at him in surprise.
‘You have ten seconds or I shoot!’ Hunter took aim through his new telescopic sights.
‘Stop!’ Ellen shouted, then yelped as he swung the gun in her direction. Out of some illogical instinct, she put her hands above her head. ‘Spurs isn’t doing anything wrong. He’s helping me.’
‘He is. On. My. Land!’ Hunter swung the gun back at Spurs. ‘I mean it, Belling. Ten seconds.’
‘It’s a public path.’ Spurs looked relaxed. ‘I have every right to be here.’
‘We had it closed, so you do not.’ Hunter strode forward, gun still cocked. ‘A lot of things have changed for the better in this village since you’ve been gone, Belling. And we’re no longer willing to put up with your insolent nonsense. Now, get off my land! Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .’
Still smiling, Spurs folded his arms.
‘. . . seven . . . six . . . five . . .’
‘For God’s sake, get out of there!’ Ellen shrieked, but he didn’t move a muscle.
‘. . . four . . . three . . .’
She closed her eyes.
‘. . . two . . . ONE!’
When Ellen opened her eyes, Spurs was running along the path, laughing his head off as he passed the wall that divided the field from the village-hall car park, then leaped the manor gate like a steeple-chaser. He certainly had a swift turn of foot.
‘Damned impudence!’ Hunter uncocked the rifle and marched up to the Goose Cottage hedge. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re playing at,’ he raged at Ellen, ‘but from what I’ve seen so far your mother would be very disturbed indeed to hear of it. Very disturbed.’
‘I shook out the pigtails years ago.’ Ellen sighed.
‘That may be so, but I cannot stand by and watch you entrust yourself to that – that poisonous piece of filth.’
She was taken aback by the vitriol in his voice. ‘He’s only helping me with the garden.’
‘Don’t let him into the house!’ Hunter warned, his porcine eyes burning into hers.
‘What is it about him everyone hates so much?’ Ellen asked, then stopped. ‘Sorry, I heard about him burning your garage . . .’
‘That,’ Hunter’s fleshy neck unfolded as he thrust out his chin, ‘was one of his least evil misdemeanours. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll shut up the house, get into your car, lock the gate behind you and take a very long drive.’
Ellen rolled her eyes at him in a way that was better suited to a young girl with pigtails, and wandered inside to make coffee. Then she dug around in her parents’ shelves for gardening books. After two cups, a chapter of Alan Titchmarsh and half an hour’s more weeding (she was better able to identify the weeds now, thanks to a handy pull-out chart), she decided that Spurs wasn’t coming back.
&
nbsp; She was surprised at the leaden feeling of disappointment. She had probably been rather unfriendly to him, but the short encounter had cheered her up. And she badly needed his help.
She lobbed Alan Titchmarsh irritably into the long grass, pulled off the flowered gloves and did a handstand against the wall to cheer herself up. Just as the blood started rushing to her hot head, she heard an engine puttering along the lane.
Spurs looked as though he had equipped himself to declare war on the Goose Cottage lawn and its sniper neighbour. He was riding astride a mini-tractor with an absolutely huge strimmer-type device slung over one shoulder like a bazooka, goggles propped up on his forehead and a fag clenched between his teeth. Rattling behind him was a small trailer laden with spades, forks, backpack sprays and other useful hardware.
He looked even more bizarre upside-down, and Ellen righted herself dizzily.
There was nothing self-conscious about him, she realised, as she went to open the gates. He looked a mess – faded T-shirt covered in oil, denim shorts grey with dust, scratches on his ankles and one toe torn from his trainers – yet he was about the sexiest thing she had seen in years, particularly when he was shooting her that mesmerising smile.
‘Can you believe Hunter Gatherer almost took a potshot at me?’ he said, as he swung into the gates and jumped down, cutting the engine.
‘Gardner,’ Ellen corrected him.
‘I’d rather you called me Spurs,’ he told her, eyes sparkling. ‘I’ve never been good at job titles. Did Hunter warn you off me?’
‘Of course.’ She checked over her shoulder but Hunter’s lookout was shielded from where they stood by the cottage.
‘Why were you doing a handstand?’ he asked, glancing at the stone walls against which she’d been tapping her feet.
‘It helps with the hay fever.’
‘I’ll have to try it – although I swear by cold beer.’ He reached into the trailer and hauled out a chill-box, which opened with a vacuum-packed hiss to reveal several cans of smoking-cold Stella.
Ellen laughed. ‘Isn’t it my job to provide the refreshment?’
‘It’s your wish come true, remember.’ He handed her a can.