by Judy Astley
It was a simple meal – pasta with pesto and cherry tomatoes – thanks to Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food cookbook. Now there, she thought, as she gouged out slivers of Parmesan with her potato peeler, was a man who understood the good things about lone living and eating. Nigel unashamedly praised the virtues of a real chip sandwich – thick white bread, twice-cooked chips, the sort you could really go mad for when you were by yourself. He knew a hundred ways with a single piece of chicken and the best things to put in a for-one omelette. It was all the kind of food that the lone greedy-guts most loved, yet when people were set up into couples and families it was the sort of food they pretended to scorn eating.
Neil wolfed down two platefuls of spaghetti, both the chocolate and brandy mousses Mel had been saving to have in bed after a long evening’s work, and helped her to finish another bottle of Roger’s best claret.
‘Delicious. Thanks, Mel, you know the way to a man’s vital organs,’ he said, patting his tummy in a manner that seemed strangely elderly and reminded Mel of her father.
‘No problem,’ she said as she shoved plates into the dishwasher, ‘it’s just a small thank-you for doing the shelves.’
‘Give me a kiss then, say thanks properly.’ He had her all wrapped up against him and his mouth on hers before she could say, ‘Ah, so that’s the catch.’
She didn’t much mind kissing him, in fact it was quite tasty and exciting, but it did occur to her that if the going rate for a couple of shelves was a snog, it was possibly just as well she hadn’t asked him to construct a double-size built-in wardrobe.
Thirteen
‘So how’s it going with Neil?’ Sarah was one of those annoyingly fit women who could run and talk at the same time. Even at full pelt her voice sounded perfectly normal, as if she was doing nothing more energetic than ambling round Space NK in search of a new lipstick. The gym was busy, humming with full-throttle exercise machines, booming with vigorous gee-up music that seemed to make the pace zap faster, and everyone in the building had skin glistening with the sheen of worthy exertion. Melanie, on the next machine to Sarah, was puffing at a slow trot and wondering why she hadn’t simply volunteered to take her parents’ terrier and Mrs Jenkins’s poodle for a ramble in the park instead. She could have had a lovely childlike kick through heaps of fallen leaves, checked the horse chestnut trees for early signs of next spring’s sticky buds and tried to guess which of the early morning mushrooms were the prized magic ones. At least there she wouldn’t have to pretend she was in peak physical condition, and could commune peacefully with nature and her own thoughts.
‘And what makes you think there’s any “it” going with Neil?’ she asked Sarah when she had gathered enough spare breath.
‘I called him.’ Sarah’s voice was loud to overcome the music. ‘I asked if he’d seen you and he said he’d been round doing a spot of DIY for you. And we all know what that means.’ Her eyes met Mel’s in the mirror and she gave her a grin full of nudge-nudge insinuation.
Mel laughed. ‘It means I’ve got a couple of nice new shelves where I can stash a few more books.’
‘Oh come on, Melanie, don’t be so po-faced, I can’t believe it was just shelves he was putting up, so to speak.’
A passing staff member, one of the instructors, overheard Sarah. He slowed down, eyed up Mel in a questioning way and gave her a smirk and a leer. He was a well-muscled twenty-something, stocky with cropped black hair and bum-hugging shorts. Gossip in the gym claimed he’d been a pro rugby player until a run-in with an overenthusiastic opponent damaged his knee. He winked lasciviously at Mel via the mirror and she simpered back, just to be obliging.
‘Did you see that? Bloody nerve!’ she commented to Sarah as the man crossed the room to sort out another woman’s confusion with the triceps-extension machine.
‘I did and he’s gorgeous. Your problem, Mel, is that you don’t know when to be grateful.’
‘Grateful? God, am I supposed to be? Thanks.’
‘Yeah, grateful. Who knows? He might really fancy you. You should go over and give him your phone number; I would in your position. Young fresh blood, you never know . . .’
‘Get real, Sarah, you make me sound like a vampire! All that would happen is that we’d see how fast he could run!’
‘You’re mad. There you are, every young man’s dream: an experienced Older Woman with no ties, a comfortable, warm, empty house and plenty of free time.’
Melanie switched off her machine and started on a few calf stretches. Sarah was also slowing down and leapt gracefully to the floor. ‘Just imagine, you could have your very own oooh young man situation. You could run a string of them,’ she suggested.
‘Actually,’ Mel was thoughtful as they walked to the changing room to get ready for a swim, ‘it’s only just occurred to me, but I think one of my neighbours thinks I’m up to no good with her son. I’ve been so caught up with finishing the book and watching what Max is up to in the garden . . . Jeez, she does think that. I’m so slow – I’ve only just realized what she meant.’
‘Who? What?’
‘Perfect Patty. Number 14. Her son Ben comes in now and then to use Rosa’s computer. Except he doesn’t come as often as his mother thinks he does, mostly he just used me as an excuse for a couple of weeks so he could go next door and get it on with old Mrs Jenkins’s granddaughter. She’s gone to Europe for a while, back tomorrow I think. Patty was giving me a warning about “encouraging” Ben. And she thinks I get him pissed. I was covering for him, so I didn’t think to deny it. She’s been a bit sniffy since then.’
‘Well, you’re a woman on your own – it’s like being the village witch.’
‘I’ve even got a cat.’
‘There you are then. This woman will be round any minute checking your shed for a broomstick.’
Mel laughed. ‘I haven’t got a shed.’
‘You’re not denying the broomstick, then?’
‘Or my trusty cauldron. There’s a lot to be said for a good witch.’
The plants arrived in the afternoon. Max and Melanie had been waiting like anxious parents expecting an overdue homecoming child, and they were sitting on the bench under the kitchen window with their third mugs of tea when the truck drove carefully down the narrow alleyway at the back of the house. It was a gloomy but calm day, the sulky sort where you expect rain but it never quite falls, and dusk was already gathering, far too early, as if the sun had given up and gone home. It seemed to Melanie completely the wrong season and weather for the exuberant kind of plants associated with sun, warmth and light. As the truck progressed along the line of back-garden fences, the palms’ fronds and the bamboos’ whippy stems, safely bound together by tape, were waving their graceful leaves in the breeze like royalty acknowledging an admiring crowd.
‘Poor things, they look like brave refugees,’ Melanie commented. ‘I hope I’m giving them a home they’re going to like.’
‘It’ll be a bloody expensive mistake if you’re not!’ Max laughed. ‘You shouldn’t worry so much. They’re strong, Mel, don’t underestimate them. They’ve got plenty of resistance. Lighten up and enjoy! This is always the best bit, when everything’s been completely prepared and it’s all waiting for the final stage.’ He looked at her, serious for once. ‘I hope we’re not going to have a falling-out about what goes where.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Melanie assured him. ‘Anyway, won’t it be like your original design? I liked the look of that.’
‘Yeah, but when the stuff actually gets here . . . there’s always room for a bit of juggling, a bit of artistic licence.’
‘Well, you’re the artist . . . you choose. I’ll just sit here and supervise!’
‘Hmm – not sure how that’s going to work.’
The plants in their containers were manhandled through the gate by Max along with the nursery’s deliverymen. Mel carried in the dozen bamboo plants and arranged them in a line along the back fence where Max had planned for them to go. They were q
uite small plants now but in the spring would start to grow fast – up to a foot a day, according to Max, though she wondered what he’d been smoking when he worked that one out. The variety of their stem colours was astounding, even in the grim November light – the many shades of yellow, green and black would glisten and change hue like rippled water when the summer sun played on them, and their leaves would shiver and rustle in the lightest breeze. Exchanging the miserably tangled old clematis for this, she thought, as she placed them carefully beside the fence, was like stripping off a stifling tight wool suit and putting on a simple thin silk shift dress.
The truck had a small crane attached to it and when all other possible unloading had been done, the three largest plants were manoeuvred into a roped tarpaulin cradle and winched over the fence. Each of these containers was at least three or four feet wide and of similar depth. It was a delicate, tricky procedure and was also the point at which Melanie realized the operation was being closely watched by just about everyone in the neighbourhood who could get a view into her garden.
Patty was leaning out of Ben’s bedroom window. ‘Goodness, aren’t we going exotic!’ she called.
‘It’s certainly different,’ came a gruff voice from next door, which Melanie identified as that of Gerald, a retired tax inspector whose preferences, garden-wise, were fat, velvety roses, hanging baskets and a stripy, close-cropped lawn. The voice didn’t sound approving.
‘Not your sort of thing, Gerald?’ she called over his fence.
‘It won’t give you much to do outside,’ he replied.
‘That’s exactly what I wanted!’ she told him. ‘But wait till next spring, when everything’s properly in and starting to flourish. You might find you like it.’
‘No proper flowers . . .’ The disgruntled voice faded away and there was a sound of a door being firmly shut.
‘I’ll call that a vote against, then, shall I?’ Melanie said to Max as he, Pablo and Brian from the nursery unhooked the biggest plant, a massive, many-branched Chamaerops Humilis, from the crane and pulled it into place at the far corner of the garden.
‘Ooh, look at this! It’s like abroad!’ Mrs Jenkins came through the fence gate to see what was going on. She was warmly wrapped against the autumn day in her favourite grey fleecy coat and her pink crocheted hat.
‘What do you think? Do you like them?’ Max wiped his earthy hands down the front of his mud-coloured sweater.
‘You need to get your wife to wash that, dear,’ Mrs Jenkins told him, pointing her yellow mitten at his chest.
‘I don’t have one,’ he replied, with an expression of mock-regret.
‘Oh, don’t you? Melanie?’ she called to Mel, who was talking to the deliverymen. ‘Melanie, do you hear that? He hasn’t got a wife! So there you are!’
Brian and Pablo looked with speculation from Melanie to Max and back again.
‘You are so embarrassing,’ Mel told her. ‘I’ve only just offloaded one useless husband, I’m in no hurry to get another!’
‘Well, thanks for that,’ Max said. ‘I do all this work for you and I’m written off with every man on the planet as useless. You wait till spring and you want this lot dug in.’
‘The useless referred to husbands,’ Mel told him. Max leaned back on the wall and grinned at her. ‘Lucky I’m not one, then,’ he said. ‘Especially yours.’
‘Oh good grief, you know what I mean.’ Mel stomped into the house, thoroughly flustered. She’d heard the doorbell ringing – two long rings, Sarah’s signature tune. As she went back in through the kitchen door she could hear Mrs Jenkins telling Max, ‘Brenda comes back tomorrow. They wanted me to go to Paris but I’m eighty-two . . .’
Sarah, Cherry and Helena – the painter whose work Melanie had been to see – were on the doorstep.
‘You said this would be plant-delivery day, so we thought we’d come and have a look. And we brought this!’ Sarah handed over a Waitrose bag that clanked and bulged with bottles of wine. ‘And Neil’s on his way over too, he seems to think he might be able to help.’ She followed Mel into the kitchen and opened the drawer in search of the bottle opener.
‘Does he?’ Melanie laughed. ‘With what? Telling Max what to do? I’d like to see him try!’
‘Mel, you’re mad – Neil’s a lovely, available bloke with all his own teeth . . .’
‘That I haven’t checked.’
‘. . . who takes any excuse to be with you and what do you do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Exactly.’ Sarah stabbed the end of the corkscrew into the first bottle and gave it a vicious twist. She was sounding quite fierce, as if Melanie had a lingering illness and was refusing to try a well-proven remedy.
‘Sarah, there’s nothing I want to do. I like him as a friend but I didn’t ask him to want to be with me.’
‘Now if it was me . . .’ Sarah wasn’t in the mood for hearing reasons or excuses. As she reached into the cupboard for glasses, she looked out of the window to where Max was hauling the last of the three Phoenix Canariensis into position halfway along the left-hand fence.
‘Well, no wonder!’ Sarah declared, turning to Mel with a grin. ‘Just look what you’ve been keeping on the premises all this time! You sly cow! Why didn’t you say? Did Cherry know?’
‘Hell, Sarah, Max is just the gardener! I pay him to be here!’
‘Mm, so would I,’ she murmured, pouring a large glass of red wine and opening the door. ‘Hi!’ she shouted. ‘Could you fancy a glass of something warming?’
‘Sarah’s such a lying slapper,’ Mel was saying as she took glasses and a bottle through to the sitting room to Helena and Cherry. ‘She’d never cheat on Nick – she’s just window-shopping and . . .’ Melanie’s voice wavered. Cherry and Helena were sitting close together on the sofa, holding hands. Cherry looked up, eyes sparkling, her face alight with a new adoration. ‘Mel, there’s something we want to tell you . . .’
Roger watched Leonora undressing. He lay back on the pillow and tried to remember what she’d looked like when she had a waist. She still wore clothes that he thought were too dangerously tight, as if she was deliberately ignoring her expanding centre. There was a livid dark red band round her middle, the top of her trousers must have been squeezing in against the baby. It couldn’t be doing it any good. Which bits would it be pressing against, he wondered, the tiny brain, its tender tummy?
He knew better than to raise the subject with Leonora. He’d said something about maternity clothes just once and she’d laughed. A huge, in-your-face insulting kind of laugh, as if he’d committed the most ludicrous faux pas. Worse, she’d made it quite clear that the term was entirely, utterly out of date, passé, hopelessly from the middle of the last century if not the one before. ‘Nobody wears that stuff any more!’ she’d shrieked, clutching her sides with sheer hilarity. He’d only meant . . . well, what had he meant? That it looked, to him, more than a bit odd, wearing clingy tee shirts, trousers that followed every line, every curve of the new bump. In the house she was often too hot and wore skimpy little vest-tops that rode up and exposed the tight vulnerable skin. Her navel stuck out like a puppy’s nose. There seemed so very little padding to protect the baby beneath. He supposed he meant that she was still going round looking as if – as if she was still trying to attract someone. It bothered him. He knew it shouldn’t, he knew it was just what women (especially young ones) wore, but it bothered him.
‘I suppose if it was down to you we’d be all swanning around in billowing smocks!’ she’d scoffed, curling her lithe legs beneath her on the sofa and delving a spoon into yet another tub of her favourite mint-chip and double-choc ice cream. The baby would be mottled green and brown like a tropical snake if she ate much more of that, he was completely sure.
‘Not at all,’ he protested. ‘I just wonder if you’re really comfortable like that, all tight and trussed up.’
‘But I’m not all tight and trussed up. That’s the miracle of Lycra,’ she explained slowly, teasing h
im as if he was the oldest man on Earth. Sometimes he felt as if he was.
Tonight, watching her pad around the room naked, Roger could feel little desire for his luscious young wife. She wanted sex often just now. Hormones were doing something to her libido, she claimed, and when they made love she seemed to be far away in a primitive, sexually fervid world of her own. He could, at those moments, as he watched her closed eyes and almost snarling, almost animal expression, be absolutely anyone, anyone at all with a fully functioning penis. It frightened him. He wasn’t, in the coming years, going to be enough for her. She would move on. He would have been a useful and formative phase. Eventually, he could tell, sometime in years to come he would be living alone. He would end his days in a lonely flat with a cat or two, and the hope that his children would find space in their full lives to visit him. He would stay late at work, putting off the moment of getting home to switch on the lights to a soulless scene where there was existence but not life. He wished he could talk to Melanie about it, but she would be the last one to want to know. He could just hear her now: ‘You should have thought of that.’ Melanie’s unforgiving voice went through his head.
He smiled to himself as Leonora climbed into bed and, misinterpreting his expression, leaned her swollen breasts against him and squeezed his thigh. More in duty than desire, he slid his hands round her eager body.
It was after midnight when the last of them left. By then the house looked as if thirty teenagers had been in having a good time. There were empty bottles all over the place, cigarette ends and Max’s roaches in every saucer Mel possessed, and the kitchen surfaces were a sticky mess of toast crumbs, grated cheese, smeared Marmite that had missed its target and crumbs from the chocolate cake contributed by Patty.