Out of Step

by Maggie Makepeace

  ‘I’m six and I’m reely reely strong!’ Gavin picked up the holdall and half fell with it into the front hall, crashing into the coatstand and almost upsetting it.

  ‘He’s a bit of a bruiser,’ Mic apologised, catching it and propping her rucksack against it. ‘I reckon he’ll be a right little thug, time he’s sixteen. Where’s your kids, then?’

  ‘I parked them out with a friend for a couple of hours. I couldn’t face them going on at each other while you two were trying to get settled in. It’s a nightmare sometimes! Now, why don’t you dump your bags there for the time being, and come into the kitchen? We could have a cup of something.’ As she led the way, Gavin pushed past her legs and got there first, making straight for the toy chest at the far side.

  ‘Well, the kids won’t be a problem no more,’ Mic said. ‘Not now I’m here. Watch yourself with that, Gav!’

  ‘Thank goodness …’ Cassie began. ‘Do be careful, Gavin, that’s Josh’s best Space Lego. Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Tea, please. Milk, two sugars.’

  They sat a little self-consciously together whilst Gavin played heavily on the floor at their feet. I shall be better now, Cassie thought, now I’ve got help. And the children will have friends to play with, which will be good for developing their sociability. Josh needs to be more assertive with other children; he’s a sensitive boy. Gavin could be a great help. He’s only about six months older, ideal really, and Josh always said he wanted a brother …

  Mic put her teacup down with a sigh of contentment. ‘It’s great to have a proper roof over our ‘eads at long last,’ she said. ‘Know what I mean?’

  ‘It must have been hell,’ Cassie said. ‘However did you manage?’

  ‘Well, after that sod – not me ‘usband, thank Gawd – buggered off, we lived wiv me mum for a while, but that didn’t work out. She would keep shovin’ her oar in, she were right out of order. I put me name down fer a council flat, but they’re like flippin’ gold dust – you can wait years. So then we kipped on people’s floors for a bit. We was in bed and breakfast when I met you. I’ve never bin so glad to get out of a place in me life!’

  Cassie regarded her curiously. She still wondered whether she had done the right thing, but she couldn’t help liking Mic. She looked at her over the rim of her cup, taking in the ridiculous hair, the multiple earrings, the snub nose and crooked teeth and the tough exterior. It was on the cards that she wasn’t tough at all. Cassie could identify with that.

  And after all, she reassured herself, if Mic isn’t paying rent, then she isn’t a tenant, so if it all goes wrong then I can always throw her out. And in the meantime, I shall have some personal space – freedom from everlasting childcare – to get myself together again. I’ll probably go up to London now and then, maybe even revive my TV career. Why not?

  ‘You divorced then?’ Mic ventured. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, that is?’

  ‘Not yet. We’re right in the middle. It’s hell, if you want to know. I can’t bear to think what it’s doing to the children.’

  ‘Is he well off?’

  ‘He says not.’ Cassie gave a bitter laugh.

  ‘You wants to take him for all you can get,’ Mic counselled. ‘All men are crap, in my opinion!’

  Cassie laughed. ‘I can see we’re going to get on well,’ she said.

  Then the front door opened with a bang, and Rosie and Josh came running in. Cassie went to thank her friend for having them, and then followed them back into the kitchen. ‘Josh, Rosie,’ she said, ‘this is Mic. She’s come to stay with us. And this is her little boy, Gavin.’

  ‘Hi, you two,’ Mic said. ‘Great to see you again.’

  But Josh ran straight across to Gavin and snatched the Space Lego rocket out of his hands. ‘That’s mine!’ he shouted.

  ‘Come on, Josh,’ Cassie said. ‘That’s no way to talk to Gavin. You three got on so well together last time. Come here and give Mummy a hug, yes?’ Josh shook his head vehemently, and turned his back on her and the dispossessed Gavin.

  Cassie shrugged. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised to Mic. ‘Not the best of starts.’

  It must be fate, Nell thought. After all the stops and starts, and ups and downs, it really is going to happen. In a couple of weeks’ time, by mid-April (barring all unforeseen circumstances, and fingers crossed), Bottom Cottage will belong to me! She wasn’t sure why Rob had changed his mind, only grateful that he had. Indeed she was so happy that she could even find it in herself to feel a little sorry for the first man who had lost it. I am meant to be there, she thought. I knew it from the first time I ever saw it. Thank you, God – whoever you are.

  She rang Rob to arrange to go to inspect the points mentioned in the survey as needing attention, but she did it rather nervously, remembering how she had shouted at him the last time they had spoken.

  ‘When would you like to come?’ he asked at once.

  ‘This weekend? Look, I’m sorry I was so ratty last time. I –’

  ‘Quite understandable,’ Rob said. ‘Actually, this weekend is a bit problematical. It’s Josh’s birthday, and I’m supposed to be doing a party for him and half a dozen of his schoolfriends from Boxcombe.’

  ‘How lovely,’ Nell said, thinking of the parties she’d never had.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that. I’m just hoping it won’t be an unmitigated disaster. You’re a good cook, can you suggest the sort of food I might attempt?’

  ‘Oh …’ Nell said, considering, ‘well, I don’t have any experience of cooking for children, but off the top of my head … I suppose a special cake, and maybe a hedgehog made from an orange and cheese-on-sticks, and a trifle, or gingerbread people, or –’

  ‘Hang on,’ Rob put in. ‘I’ll just get a pen and jot this down.’

  While she waited, Nell imagined him all on his own, and having to cope, and wondered …

  ‘OK, got all that. Anything else?’

  ‘Um, pinwheel sandwiches? Celery boats? Maybe a jelly in the shape of something? That sort of thing?’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Rob said. ‘If I manage half of that I reckon I’ll have done well. I don’t suppose …?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, it would be an imposition. Forget it.’

  ‘No, go on.’

  ‘Well, I was going to invite you to come too,’ Rob said. ‘Apart from the party, we could kill several birds with one stone. There are various tricks I ought to show you – how to conquer the woodburner, that sort of thing – but perhaps you’d prefer to do that some other day?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Nell said cautiously. ‘You see, I loathe and detest party games of any sort.’

  ‘Oh, there won’t be any,’ Rob assured her. ‘These days I’m afraid one just hires a video. I shall try to get the little toads out for a good walk to the sea and back first, but definitely no games. I hate them too.’

  ‘Well… can I think about it?’

  ‘Of course. But I’d like you to meet my children; it’s high time.’

  Nell put the phone down thoughtfully, remembering what Anna had said: It’s serious – the equivalent of being taken home to meet the parents. No, she thought, not in this instance. He’s just being polite. But then her curiosity got the better of her. She would like to see what his children were like, and this time Rob had invited her, rather than the other way around … I’ve had my own way about the cottage, she thought. I can afford to be magnanimous.

  After half an hour, she rang him again. ‘Have you got a birthday cake for Josh?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Rob said. ‘I suppose I’ll have to buy one.’

  ‘Don’t do that. I’ll make one for him,’ Nell offered. ‘Does he have any special interests?’

  ‘At the moment it’s penguins,’ Rob said. ‘He wants to be an explorer like Scott of the Antarctic.’

  ‘Right,’ Nell said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  On the following evening she made a standard fruit cake, and then spent her entire free Friday aftern
oon having fun decorating it. Crisp white icing made good snow. She stood the cake on a board and made it into a snowy island on a thick icing-sugar sea, dyed blue with food colouring and sculpted into rollers and breaking waves. She had bought two small plastic whales to frolic in it, and some sugar penguins, and found the rest of the characters she needed in her old childhood toybox. On the island she built an igloo from glacier mints stuck together with ‘snow’, clothed several small plastic figures in bits of fake fir to make them into Eskimos, and dotted the island with the penguins and her favourite old model polar bear. Then she finished it off by constructing the up-turned prow of a wreck in the sea at the bottom of the cake cliff, made from two bits of After Eights melted together along their leading edge, with masts and spars of chocolate orange Matchmakers, lashed together with cotton.

  Late on Saturday morning she lowered the whole creation carefully into a cardboard box, with a folded towel at the bottom to prevent it sliding about, closed the lid and carried it out to the back seat of her car. Then she set off for Bottom Cottage. Halfway there she began to feel apprehensive. Doing the cake had been the easy bit. But what did one say to children? She had virtually no experience to guide her. She wished Elly were with her. Elly always knew how to amuse; she was good at games and knew heaps of knock-knock jokes and silly rhymes. Nell began to feel more and more inadequate, and by the time she arrived, she had decided just to deliver the cake and leave at once.

  Rob met her at the door with a long face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I tried to phone, but you must’ve already left.’ He eyed the box. ‘And of course it’s far too late as far as the cake is concerned. Shall I carry it?’ He took it from her, and led the way.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Nell asked, following him indoors.

  ‘You could say so. The Mad Cow rang me ten minutes ago to say that (a) Josh didn’t want to visit me today, and (b) that she and a friend I’ve never even heard of are taking all the children to some theme park instead, and I’m not to bother telephoning the other parents because she’s already done so!’

  ‘Oh no!’ Nell exclaimed. ‘Talk about a fait accompli!’

  ‘Bitch!’ Rob said. ‘Sorry and all that, but it’s the only word for her. She seems to take a malicious delight in doing this sort of thing – messing up my arrangements at a moment’s notice. I suppose I should be used to it by now but it gets to me every time.’ He looked defeated.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Nell said gently.

  ‘No. I should be apologising to you for all the effort you’ve put into this,’ Rob said, putting the box down on the only corner of the kitchen table that wasn’t already covered in plates of food.

  He had obviously tried to do his best for Josh, and what he lacked in finesse, he had made up for in industry. There were thick sandwiches with crusts, sausages on matchsticks, crisps, bought cheese straws, and sausage rolls. There was a bowl of mixed tinned fruit and a turned-out green jelly which had stuck to its mould, so the resulting rabbit was only just recognisable. It brought a lump to Nell’s throat.

  Rob opened the top of her cardboard box and looked inside. ‘Oh Nell!’ He lifted the cake out, letting its box fall to the floor, and set it down admiringly. ‘This is terrific! It must have taken you hours to do. What a shame. No, more than that – what a bloody awful waste of all your time and effort. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Nell said. ‘It will keep for a week or two, you know. All is not lost.’

  ‘Oh good.’ He looked round gloomily. ‘But that’s more than can be said for the rest of the stuff… I hope you like jelly for lunch.’

  ‘Love it.’

  ‘Just as well! Shall we begin at once?’

  They ate their way through a quantity of sausages and egg sandwiches. Rob cleared away all the fizzy lemonade and produced beer instead. ‘I suppose I could take some of the soft drinks back to the shop,’ he said.

  ‘And some of the food would freeze,’ Nell suggested.

  ‘Haven’t got a freezer.’

  ‘Well, I have. I could store it for you until the next time. When’s Rosie’s birthday?’

  ‘End of the month.’

  ‘There you are then!’

  ‘Thanks,’ Rob shrugged, ‘but who knows where I’ll be by then.’

  ‘You haven’t found anywhere to rent?’

  ‘I’m working on it.’ He looked again at the cake. ‘This is a work of art, you know. I’m so grateful to you for taking such trouble over it.’

  ‘Have you spotted the deliberate mistake?’ Nell asked, pleased.

  ‘Um… No, what?’

  ‘Well, you don’t get polar bears and penguins at the same pole, do you? Just as well really, or the one would eat all the others!’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure Josh won’t notice that small detail.’

  ‘No, that’s the point, you see. I’d like you to tell him. I believe children love it when adults get things wrong!’

  ‘That’s very perspicacious of you.’ Rob was smiling warmly at her. ‘Clever. I’m so glad it will be you, and not that man living here.’

  ‘Why did you change your mind?’ Nell asked.

  ‘Because you were right,’ Rob admitted. ‘Simple really.’

  Nell thought: Martin would never have said that in a million years! At last I’ve finally met a man big enough to be able to admit that he can be wrong. So, what next?

  Chapter Nine

  On 19th April, a week after her move, Bottom Cottage began to feel like home for Nell. By then, all the essentials had been unpacked and put into place and she had begun on the inessentials, which are what really matter. As long as her books were in boxes, and her pictures in bubblewrap, then she was in transit. But once the bottom of the bedroom wall was obscured by bulging bookcases, and higher up by familiar paintings, she knew she had finally arrived.

  As she looked out of the upstairs window where Rob had sat each day, she saw the first swallow of the year winging its way across the river towards her, and thought, I must make a note of the date! Then it occurred to her to begin keeping a diary every day to record the unfolding, flowering and withering of all the years ahead. Maybe she would also put up a rain gauge to record the monthly totals, so she would know what was really going on, and whether the weather had genuinely begun to change in response to global warming, as people were saying. Of course many decades of data were required for such studies, but she intended to be there for a significant number of years to come. The idea of accumulating a wealth of information about this one place pleased her. The more knowledgeable she became about it, the more she would feel she belonged, and this was important as it was the first time she had ever been able to put down roots of her own choosing.

  Nell lay in bed next morning staring dreamily at a shaft of sunlight which shone between the ill-fitting curtains, making a pool of light on the wooden floor. April is the perfect time to begin a new life, she thought, when all of the natural world is also starting afresh. A scratchy sound outside the window alerted her to the presence of some animal, and she got up to investigate. In a new place there were strange noises and unfamiliar things to react to, or to learn to ignore. She pulled the curtain aside and looked out, just in time to see a small unidentifiable bird flying away. In the garden below, the last of the daffodils were heavy with dew. All presented their yellow trumpets to the sun, except for the double ones which were bent right down to the ground and seemed in danger of snapping in half. Design fault, Nell thought. They’ve been ‘improved’ so much by hybridising that their heads now hold too much water! Far better to have left well alone.

  She sat at her desk, which did service as a dressing table, brushing her hair, and wondering how much of her new garden she would leave to be wild, and how much she would try to impose her will upon. She decided to wait a whole season before doing anything, to find out what was in the soil already, and give it a chance to declare itself. A quicker way, of course, would be to ask Rob, but she had decided to wait for him
to telephone her. The last time he had been in touch was the day before she had arrived at the cottage, to say he was in the process of moving out.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Caravan the other side of Boxcombe,’ he said briefly.

  ‘But what about your furniture?’

  ‘In store, what was worth keeping, which wasn’t much. I broke up a lot of it for firewood. It’s behind the woodshed under some plastic sheeting. You’re welcome to use it if you want. Makes good kindling.’

  ‘You could have got a firm in to clear out the things you didn’t want,’ Nell said. ‘That’s what I did, and I was amazed at how much money they paid for what I considered to be utter junk. I had a skip too, for the real dross. It’s a ghastly hassle, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not to be repeated in a hurry,’ Rob agreed.

  ‘If you ever want to visit…’ Nell hesitated, ‘do drive down.’

  ‘Thanks. Well, best go. Lots to be done, and all that.’

  ‘Yes of course. Good luck then.’

  ‘And you.’

  Nell would have liked to talk for longer, but realised that he was probably being terse in order to remain in control of his feelings. Poor Rob, she thought. It must be hell to have to leave here. I’m sure his children will be upset too.

  The scratching noise outside began again, and Nell looking up, saw a long-tailed tit gathering the gossamer threads of spiders’ webs from the outside of her window-frame, and flying off with them into the thickest part of her garden hedge. She imagined the new nest in progress, with moss and animal hair being woven together with the cobwebs into the perfect domed shape, and then covered in lichens for camouflage and lined with feathers for comfort. Then she looked at her ancient curtains and the bare floorboards and thought, I could do with a few new rugs underfoot, and the walls do need painting. I suppose a sensible person would have had the place professionally decorated before moving in, but I’d rather it was an evolving process entirely connected with me and my own efforts. I want to do all my nest-building myself.

  ‘You’ve got terracotta freckles!’ Cassie said, coming in and looking up at Mic’s face. ‘I thought this brand was meant to be non-drip.’