by Maeve Haran
Three hours later he was as good as his word. He wouldn’t even accept the tenner she tried to press on him. ‘My mum got the big C when I was working abroad. I always felt guilty.’ He opened the car door for her. ‘Are you going to be all right, love? When you get home, I mean.’
‘Ricky, dear, I’ve lived on my own for sixty-three years. I will be absolutely bloody fine. If you could just stop outside this LateExpress while I pick up some supplies, that’d be quite enough help for one day.’
As he waited outside Sal filled her basket with cereal, bread, paracetamol, a lasagne ready meal, a bottle of red wine and a Crunchie. At the last minute she added sausages and mash, another ready meal for tomorrow, bread and butter pudding, plus a bottle of cava. She hadn’t actually asked the doctor about alcohol, but that was because life had taught her that if you intended to do something anyway it was more sensible not to enquire.
As she was going out she noticed a sign saying the store was looking for staff on a part- or full-time basis. If she didn’t get better in time for the new job, that might be her future. If she was lucky.
Once inside the flat, the flashing on her answering machine told her there were eight messages but suddenly she felt too exhausted to talk to anyone. Not even bothering to put the lasagne in the oven she crawled into bed and fell asleep.
Ella opened the fridge and was amazed to see that it was almost empty. She would have to do another shop.
Wenceslaus came into the kitchen and she remembered the favour she’d meant to ask him. ‘How are your woodworking skills?’
Wenceslaus grinned. ‘I am demon with power drill.’ He adopted a James Bond-holding-a-Black & Decker pose. ‘Even Minka admit this. Where is job you like me to do?’
‘The shed at the bottom of the garden. A bit of wood fell off the porch. Could you have a look at it?’
‘It would be pleasure.’ He bowed as if he were asking her to dance. Ella laughed at this old-fashioned courtesy.
‘Good to see you laugh. Where is power drill?’
‘In the cupboard under the stairs. Nails and screws are in there too.’
‘It will be right as rain by time you are back from supermarket.’
Ella hummed as she manoeuvred the car out of its parking space. How nice it was to have a competent man about the place.
She rather enjoyed supermarket shops. Of course, there was the nagging guilt that if she wanted them to stay in business she ought to be supporting the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker (actually, look what had happened to the candlestick maker), but she rather loved shopping in giant chains. There was the fun of finding some unexpected piece of cheap jewellery, or pillowcases on special offer, pretty notebooks, tights, and, once, a pair of pewter herons which now graced her hall table. And, of course, the groceries.
The only drawback was the parking. It was too far to the nearest retail mall so Ella had to negotiate the dreaded multistorey, a fiendish environment whose entrance ramp had tighter turns than the hairpin bends on Mont Blanc and pillars purposely placed to trap the slightly incompetent parker, among whose number Ella counted herself.
Aha, a space in the middle, furthest away from the dreaded pillars. Brilliant.
Ella spent a happy hour in the aisles filling her trolley with essentials, plus a bunch of roses imported from Kenya (guilt again!), Christmas crackers, rather a lot of wine, and a bumper pack of fizzy water.
She even came across a remarkably pretty scarf in the shade Julia especially liked, with small pansies all over it. She was feeling a little guilty about their recent confrontation and bought it as a small peace offering. Smiling, she texted Julia that she would drop it round.
Five minutes later, Julia texted her back. ‘Are you in Sainsbury’s?’ She knew her mother well. ‘Neil’s office is next door. He could collect at 1 p.m. on lunch break.’
‘Brilliant,’ Ella texted back. ‘Am in car park will look out for him.’
But when she went back to put her shopping in the car she was panicked to find it wasn’t there.
She was absolutely certain of where she had left it, middle floor, pillar B. Yet it had vanished. She trundled her trolley back to the lift, and searched the floor above. No sign. And then back to the lift and down to the floor below, even though she was convinced it wasn’t there. She was right.
By now her heart was beginning to race. It must have been stolen. BMWs were in demand and though hers was old, it was quite a desirable model; in fact, her son-in-law, Neil, had often suggested she sell it for something more suitable, which had made Ella want to hang on to it until it fell to pieces.
Her phone rang and made her jump. It was Wenceslaus saying he had finished and was now at work at the coffee shop. He immediately picked up her panic. ‘Are you all right, El-la?’
‘Fine. It’s just that I seem to have lost my car. I’m in the car park near Sainsbury’s and I could have sworn I left it here on the top floor but it’s not here.’
‘Is there someone who works there who could help perhaps?’
After ten minutes’ searching she found a car park attendant who spoke no English and appeared to think she was accusing him of being responsible for her car’s disappearance.
Eventually, her hips beginning to ache from walking around again, she called 999 and asked for the local police.
She was in luck, they had a car not far off, and since it was a quiet day in Old Moulsford it was only twenty minutes before she heard the siren and saw the flashing blue light.
Two young officers, a man and a woman, stepped out. ‘How can we be of assistance, madam?’
‘This lady say her car stole,’ announced the attendant.
‘You are sure this is where you left it?’ The two officers shared a knowing smile. Ella was not the first lady shopper to have her car stolen, then discover she’d left it at home all along.
‘One hundred per cent. I wrote it down.’ She produced the notebook she always carried. ‘Middle floor, pillar B.’
At that point another car arrived in the car park. To Ella’s horror she recognized Neil’s four by four.
Ella didn’t know whether to weep or curse as her son-in-law Neil walked officiously towards them. There was something about Neil’s demeanour that had always irritated Ella. He was fond of telling people that he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and to Neil everyone bar himself seemed to fall into that category.
‘Everything all right, Ella?’ He eyed the officers in astonishment.
‘The lady believes her car has been stolen, sir.’
‘What’s the betting it’s on another floor?’
‘I had thought of that, Neil,’ Ella informed him tartly. ‘I’ve been to the other floors. Besides, I know it was middle floor, pillar B.’
A smile of sudden satisfaction lit up Neil’s face. ‘You know you’re in the east car park, don’t you?’
The stress was beginning to get to Ella. Her certainty started ebbing away. Had she come to the wrong bloody place altogether?
‘I’ll go and look in the other section,’ Neil announced.
Five minutes later, Ella could tell from his walk, quick and cocky, almost falling over himself in his eagerness to get back to them, that he’d found it.
‘In the west car park. Sorry to waste your time, officers. My mother-in-law’s getting a bit forgetful.’
Ella would have loved to have kicked him, and herself. How could she have muddled the car parks?
‘Easily done,’ replied the young officer. ‘You’d be surprised how common it is.’ He didn’t add, ‘Among the doddery old’, but the glance he exchanged with Neil said it all. Ella would have liked to have made a scene and shouted that she hadn’t lost her marbles, thank you very much, but being arrested for affray would hardly be a useful outcome.
The lift doors opened and Wenceslaus appeared, dishevelled and out of breath from running. He must have rushed straight round from the café.
‘Are you all right, El-la?’ he enquired anxiously, se
eing the police car.
‘I made a silly mistake and parked my car in the west instead of the east car park and when I couldn’t find it I thought it was stolen.’
‘Do you want I go and get it for you?’ he asked solicitously.
She handed him the car key. Suddenly, she was shaking, partly from shock but also embarrassment and anger at herself.
‘We’ll be off, then.’ The officers got back in their car with a cheery wave.
If Neil hadn’t been there, she might even have thought it was funny, a good story for the girls.
Meanwhile, Neil was watching Wenceslaus’ departing back, his disapproval almost comic in its obviousness. ‘You mean you let that character drive your car, yet you call the police because you think it’s been stolen from the car park? How do you know he won’t just take it back to Romania or wherever he’s from?’
‘Wenceslaus is from Poland. Because I happen to trust him.’
‘Well, maybe you trust him too bloody much.’
Neil was a narrow man at the best of times but the venom in his tone made Ella wonder if he suspected Julia’s feelings.
They waited another five minutes, a hostile silence hanging between them, until Wenceslaus reappeared with the car and started to help her pack the boot.
‘Try not to forget where you park it next time.’
‘Neil, whatever you think, I am not a stupid, senile old woman.’
Before he could say anything, Wenceslaus backed her up.
‘El-la not stupid. El-la is bright spark.’
Neil regarded him with dislike. ‘Well, make sure this bright spark doesn’t burn the bloody house down or we’ll be holding you responsible, matey.’ He turned to Ella. ‘Julia said you had something for her?’
Ella delved into one of the shopping bags. ‘Just a silly little thing. A pretty scarf I thought Julia might like.’ She handed it over and Neil stumped off back to his car.
‘Why is this Neil so angry with everyone?’ Wenceslaus asked when Ella got in the car. ‘With you? With me? With wife?’
‘I really don’t know. I wonder if he knows himself.’
‘Is time he learn. I finish shed, by the way.’
Ella had forgotten about the shed in all the excitement and panic.
‘Is amazing place. Big enough to live in.’
Ella grinned. ‘I’d forgotten your fondness for sheds. When my husband was alive we used to have barbecues down there. It’s quite hidden away, isn’t it?’
‘Like other world entirely.’ He stared into space for a moment, his blue eyes fixed on some distant point, and she wondered if he were thinking of his home. Life for migrants, she suspected, was a lot harder than people like Neil ever imagined.
CHAPTER 14
‘Bella, darling, are you really sure about this baby?’
It might seem a cruel or tactless question but Laura couldn’t bear it if the baby had been conceived to serve Simon right. Bella’s face, lit up by that fiendish little smile of triumph, had haunted her mother all night. ‘I mean, it wouldn’t be fair on you or the baby if you were doing it, even a little bit, to get back at Dad.’
‘Then it’s just as well I’m not, isn’t it? I think the timing’s quite funny, admittedly, and I will take a certain delight in telling him, but actually it happened by accident.’
Laura was sitting on the sofa in Nigel’s incredibly untidy flat. She glanced around her. The place had come furnished with odds and ends no one wanted and Nigel had supplemented this with pieces he’d found abandoned or in skips. There was a single light bulb lighting up Sleepy Hollow posters and a vampire bared his blood-soaked teeth from the other wall. Laura found herself wondering what baby Goths wore and had to shake herself back to reality.
‘Going ahead with it is different, though.’ She reached for Bella’s hand but Bella snatched it away.
‘Look, Mum, I know you’ve come to try and talk me out of it. I don’t earn enough, blah. This place is a dump, blah. Nige isn’t exactly an investment banker, blah. But I know all that, Mum; I’m twenty-four, not some pregnant schoolgirl wanting a free council flat. And the answer is yes, I do want this baby.’
Laura couldn’t help feeling a free council flat wouldn’t be that bad a thing.
‘But how are you going to support a baby?’
‘Nigel’s found a job.’
Laura found herself wondering what that might be. Bouncer at a Hell’s Angels convention? Body double for the Incredible Hulk?
‘He’s going to do supply teaching.’
‘Don’t you need training for that?’ Laura could remember all the horror stories Claudia’s Don told them about supply teaching. How they were given the worst pupils in the worst classes at the worst schools and even then the pupils traded mercilessly on their unfamiliarity with the place. Poor Nigel. Though maybe pupils would be less likely to try it on with a giant Goth.
‘Well, actually, he is trained.’ There was a hint of pride in Bella’s voice.
‘What as?’ The words slipped out before Laura had thought them through. ‘A football coach?’
‘An RE teacher. He studied theology at uni.’
Laura was lost for words.
‘OK, Mum,’ Bella’s tone took on a sudden intensity, ‘You obviously think this is a disaster, that I should be getting on the career ladder, making money and all that, but I really want this baby. Life’s made so much more sense since I found I was pregnant. I’m going to keep it safe and protect it! Always.’
Her fierce determination cut Laura to the quick, for implicit in her words was the fact that Laura herself had not succeeded in protecting Bella always.
‘Another thing, Mum.’ Bella reached out a hand covered in its new spider’s web tattoo. ‘I’ll really be needing your help. There’s no way I’ll be able to cope without it.’
In spite of her misgivings, Laura felt unbearably moved. ‘And of course I’ll be there in any way I can.’
If Bella was going to go ahead, there were practical issues to be sorted. ‘When is the baby due?’
‘In June.’
‘June? Then you must be . . .’
‘Nearly four months pregnant. I must have been pregnant long before Dad left, I just didn’t know. So, you see, no one can accuse me of doing it to get at him.’
Joyous relief flooded through Laura.
‘What a lovely month to have a baby.’
‘Yes,’ Bella agreed. ‘All those roses out and Wimbledon on the telly. Maybe we’ll call her Venus or Serena.’
‘Or might it have to be an Andy or a Roger? Or do you know already?’
Bella shook her head. ‘God, can’t male tennis players have more exciting names?’
‘I suppose there’s always Jo-Wilfried.’ Laura opened up her arms and Bella slipped into them. ‘I’m really happy that you’re so happy.’
‘I am, Mum, I really, really am.’
Laura felt a huge wave of relief that at least something good was coming out of all this pain. Even if the relationship with Nigel didn’t last and Bella failed to protect this baby and keep it safe forever and always, the baby was being born out of love, not revenge, and that at least had to be a better beginning.
Ella decided that after the stress of quarrelling with Julia and being dismissed as a demented old bat by Neil, she needed the peace of the allotment. Viv and Angelo were extending their globe-trotting still further, one destination seemed to be segueing into the next with all the blithe insouciance of New Age Travellers. Except that they were Old Age Travellers. Now they had emailed Ella to suggest she just keep digging until somebody made a fuss.
How very pleasant for them to feel that all they needed was each other.
Ella felt a pang of sudden loss. Would she and Laurence have wandered the world, free as two kids, as Viv and Angelo were doing? She didn’t think of him quite so often these days and wasn’t unhappy with her life, and yet now and then there was a yawning sense of what might have been if he had only lived . . .
To restore her sense of calm she would choose a task she’d been looking forward to: making her wreath out of veg. But when she arrived at Grand Union she could tell there was something unusual in the air.
‘It’s Stevie and Les,’ said Sue from the next-door allotment. ‘Les has accused him of nicking his January king cabbages.’
Stevie and Les, usually as inseparable as Morecambe and Wise, stood in Les’s neat allotment staring at the leaves from which his cabbages had been removed.
‘There were three there yesterday, plain as the nose on my face, all beauties.’
‘And you think I’ve had ’em, do you?’
‘And two winter caulis.’
‘And why would I want your bloody brassicas when I’ve got spring greens and Savoy cabbages of my own?’
‘Quality,’ announced Les. ‘Your greens have been ruined by root fly so you helped yourself to mine.’
‘Now, now, lads,’ intervened Bill, as solemn as Solomon, ‘it’s probably a fox or even a badger. Mr Barzani says he’s heard both of them down here at night time.’
‘A badger? Round here?’
‘There’s a sett in Kew Gardens. You can sign up to see it,’ offered Stevie.
‘Well, it must have been a bloody brilliant badger,’ Les exploded, pointing at the neatly cut leaves, ‘or a fox with a Swiss army knife.’
Everyone needed cheering up, Ella decided, or she’d never get her peaceful wreath-making done. Fortunately, she had the ingredients to achieve if not world peace, then at least a degree of harmony. ‘Come on, one and all, back to my shed for a whisky Mac to warm you up!’
Once she’d poured them all the seasonal mix of Scotch and ginger wine she sought their advice on what would work in her wreath.
‘You’re making a wreath for your front door out of vegetables?’ Ella thought Bill’s eyebrows might nest in his bobble hat. ‘What’s wrong with pine cones and slices of dried lemon?’
‘And cinnamon sticks,’ added Les.
‘Don’t forget holly berries,’ Stevie reminded.
He and Les glanced at each other, enmity forgotten, reunited and restored in condemning the middle-class madness that led to wreaths made out of garden vegetables.