The Stopping Place

by Helen Slavin

  ‘You know, it hasn’t been anything personal. I wasn’t denying you anything. But I have budgets. I have to manage things. Everything.’

  A month later Jeannie found that Morag had chiefly been managing her younger brother’s graduation from the Horticultural College. He was being groomed for greatness by Morag and Mr Mathieson. They were going to place him at the centre of Parks and Gardens and Jeannie had just been a stopgap.

  Jeannie arrived for work one morning to find Morag and Menzies already in the potting shed. He was a smiling young man, full of confidence and bonhomie. Morag introduced him as Bash’s replacement, Jeannie’s new boss and Jeannie knew, as she shook his hand, that this was goodbye. Goodbye, despite a beautifully rehearsed ‘thank you for all you have done here’ speech from Morag and the hastily wrapped presentation of a top quality gardener’s trowel and leather gauntlets.

  ‘You did what?’ Jeannie stopped peeling carrots. Nathan was leaning against the worktop opening the wine.

  ‘Got a couple of mates in traffic to stop her car.’ He kissed Jeannie as he leaned to fill their glasses.

  Morag whipped by an autumn wind on the side of the dual carriageway as Nathan’s colleagues had checked out her tyres, her brake lights, oil pressure, tyre pressure, windscreen wipers, paint job, anything and everything they could think of and requested her documents be presented at the police station within seven days.

  ‘Just ruffled her feathers.’

  ‘Ruffled her…? Why would you do that?’

  ‘Do what? A couple of safety checks. Nothing serious. Barry was all for frisking her. Few of them were on for a full body search. I nearly had to draw straws.’

  Jeannie looked at his face, at his eyes, the left one winked at her.

  ‘Didn’t you want revenge?’

  Jeannie admitted she hadn’t thought about it. Nathan leaned in, kissed her.

  ‘I did.’

  He chinked her glass.

  ‘Anyway. Fuck Morag. You should buy the Hanging Gardens. Barbara dropped enough hints.’

  Jeannie felt her face crease into a wry smile. She had caught the hints. They had fired up her imagination. She’d been back over at the Hanging Gardens yesterday, walked that way home instead of catching the bus. Had needed time to think. Away from Morag and the shed and the walled garden. He was right. Barbara had talked about succession and passion then too. Had in fact sought her out as she sat at a coffee shed table looking out across town. Jeannie deep in thought, thinking that the area covered by Cromwell Park seemed greener than anywhere, that birds seemed to flock and fly and hover towards that green patch in the near distance.

  ‘There are two things you should do, Jeannie.’ Nathan poured wine. Did his hand shake? Jeannie thought she saw his hand tremble, clinking the bottle against the glass. ‘One. Buy the Hanging Gardens. Agreed?’

  He handed her the wine glass, his eyebrows raised, waiting for her agreement. She nodded. Chinked her glass against his.

  ‘Two.’ Nathan leaned in close, not touching her, just whispered the words. ‘Marry me.’

  He looked at her. Jeannie felt all her breath stop.

  ‘Agreed?’

  There was just a waver in his confidence. She saw it cross the green of his eyes, like the shadow of a bird on grass.

  Cirsium vulgare

  spear thistle

  the swords of sharpened leaves offer both protection and evil

  * * *

  Mr Ted Gaffney was businesslike in his offer of a 0% loan to assist his daughter, Miss Jeannie Gaffney, to purchase the Hanging Gardens nursery and garden centre. Jeannie felt reluctant, greedy even, until Geraldine took her aside.

  ‘It’s the money he meant for when you headed off to uni. Take it. He can be a sleeping partner. Take it, Jeannie. It’s given.’

  As Jeannie worked alongside Barbara settling into her new business, several afternoons found Jeannie and Geraldine venturing out in search of the perfect dress. Jeannie was delighted to get to know Geraldine, to find out how much they had in common, their taste, their sense of humour about the pom-pom and frou-frou bridal creations. She was glad to see Geraldine’s face as she turned in at the path.

  Finally the veils billowed like overblown candy floss, tiaras glittered too brightly in twinkling cabinets in wedding-shop windows. Cinderella seemed to have left all of her pairs of glass slippers and the twelve dancing princesses could have stocked up for life on the silk-bowed footwear. Boots laced with ribbons. Pinpoint glass-effect heels.

  Jeannie zipped and slid and sucked herself into everything the flurry of saleswomen could muster. Then she pulled herself into her sagging jacket and sat in a coffee shop with Geraldine. Nothing felt right. She did not want to get married looking like a meringue or a waterlily. She was beginning to feel uneasy. She was beginning to think too much.

  ‘None of them spoke to you. Well, unless you count “yuk”.’ Geraldine munched on a chocolate chunk shortbread, her glasses hanging on a leather thong around her neck. ‘Where’s your fairy godmother when you need her?’

  Jeannie smiled, thinking that Geraldine was a fairy godmother. Thinking, why didn’t she get here sooner, when he was younger? as Geraldine blew at the froth on her latte and drank deeply. Then half spluttered, ‘I know where she is. Christ, of COURSE I do…’

  And Jeannie found herself in Arbuckle’s Vintage Vault wearing a gown of bronze velvet Fortuny pleats and kid button boots in a rich chocolatey leather. Geraldine and the proprietress sorted through boxes of hats to find The One, and find it they did, complete with gossamer cobweb veil. Jeannie looked at her reflection and wondered why she didn’t always dress like this.

  * * *

  It was Geraldine’s Pilates night and Nathan was on a late turn. Since things were so busy at the Hanging Gardens, Ted Gaffney and his daughter had arranged a spaghetti bolognese evening. Dad left the ragu simmering and picked her up from the nursery, helped her with the tidying and tilling up, mentioned a few other jobs he could turn his hand to as only dads can. In the end he gerrymandered a few fence panels that screened the composting area from the perennials terrace and discovered a puncture in a wheelbarrow tyre.

  It was a mild evening, the light hanging around in the sky reluctant to leave. They ate sitting outside at the wooden table that Geraldine had persuaded him to buy. Jeannie thought suddenly how she had missed her dad’s cooking. There was some special ingredient that she never could quite place. Dad said it was nutmeg and bay, and pork as well as beef. But whenever Jeannie made the dish it never seemed to quite follow his recipe. That night she realised the essential ingredient had been dadness, his hand on the wooden spoon, stirring.

  Later, they played the piano, Dad pulling up the dining chair. They had spent many years since Jeannie had learned to sight-read trying to perfect ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ and it had always proved fiendishly difficult. This, Jeannie knew, was partly due to her habit of giggling and laughing when her hands couldn’t keep up with what her fingers were doing. They tangled and knotted before her and still the music came until, at last the connection was broken and the fingers untangled and slid off the keys and she was lost in laughter. Dad, raising a comic eyebrow, more laughter.

  That night, a week before the wedding, there was no laughter, no eyebrow, no tangled fingers. The Queen of Sheba finally arrived. Note perfect. When they had finished they both sat in silence, could only look at the stilled black insects of the sheet music.

  Ted Gaffney reached forward then and closed the book and said, with a wry smile, ‘It is a rite of passage.’

  * * *

  Jeannie had met Nathan’s father, Ray, on a few occasions. Nathan found Ray hard work and Ray found Nathan a challenge, so it was not expected that they’d spend much time visiting. Nathan’s father looked to Jeannie as if he was made of plastic, his face stretched and shiny and highly coloured. His hair was so darkly black it looked painted. He smoked rank, stunted cigars and lived with a woman much younger than himself.


  On the first occasion that they met at his home, the woman was Linda, a heavy-busted blonde lady of about forty who was a manageress in a local discount store. But a few weeks later when Jeannie and Nathan met up with Nathan’s father at a rugby club party, the woman on his arm was a tiny thirty-year-old red-head called Shannon who owned a nail bar in the centre of town.

  When Ray showed up at the Hanging Gardens asking for a family discount he was with Linda and gave Jeannie a heavy wink. Later, as Linda ordered coffees on the terrace, Ray admitted he had both women ‘on the go’ and mentioned a gentleman’s agreement. ‘A man must have his pleasures, Jeannie.’ Jeannie did not want to think about what Ray’s pleasures might be. And then as Ray talked to her, she became unsure what he wanted. Her silence or her participation? He was what Geraldine would call touchy-feely, his hand often glancing across her bottom as they walked back to the checkout.

  She didn’t like Ray much. When he asked if she could help him out with a bit of landscaping Jeannie wanted to say no. Nathan said it for her, later that evening, shouting down the phone, very loud, very clear, when he found out about his father’s request.

  No. And she doesn’t want to see your bastard etchings either.

  Just before the wedding Nathan’s colleagues in uniform were called out to a fight in a pub which turned out to be Linda and Shannon battling it out for Ray’s favours. It was like a scene from a porno western, one colleague had joked, with half-naked saloon girls, tits out, scrapping on the beer-soaked carpet for the cigar-smoking sheriff.

  It hurt and embarrassed Nathan, made him surly and grumpy. Jeannie couldn’t put it right. She tried talking and she tried bed but nothing worked for a few days. A couple of mornings he left for work without even looking at her. They had had tiffs and rumbles before but this was the biggest, the gloomiest. Jeannie felt closer to him in a way, almost pleased that he could reveal himself. He didn’t have to hide now, they were together. But she did notice he tired very quickly if she felt out of sorts or crossed him in any way.

  She was at the Hanging Gardens and it had been a busy day. Now the rush was off and she was going over a new landscape display. She had been digging the bed over and leaned, sweating, on her spade. Suddenly Nathan was there behind her. She turned to him, his face blocked out by the sun behind his head. He didn’t say a word. He picked her up, put her over his shoulder and strode down to the new display of summerhouses, a new line they were going to sell with lead-lined minaret style roofs. He chose the farthest one. Shut the door. He looked at her, intense. Jeannie didn’t even blink. She reached around him and turned the ornate key.

  Pulled the blinds. No words. Just a taking off of clothes. And as Jeannie straddled him it felt as if her body opened up and she moved into another place, as if the sky peeled back to reveal the blue of midnight and thousands upon thousands of stars burning pinpoints in the universe

  And then Debbie, outside, tapping on the door. ‘Everything all right in there?’ in a quiet voice and further away the two lads from the college laughing and saying, ‘Leave it Debs. For Christ’s sake…Leave it…At it…’

  They lay together then on the cushions from the wicker chairs. Jeannie inhaled the scent of linseed and newly sawed wood and Nathan’s sweat and thought there was nothing in the world except being with him.

  At the wedding, after a beautiful ceremony and Geraldine laughing because she looked like a panda with her mascara all over her face, Ray approached Jeannie. He had bided his time, waiting until Nathan was busy with the best man, sorting out some telegrams and bouquets.

  ‘You made it then.’ Ray took the cigar out of his mouth for just a moment. Flicked ash into a half-drunk cup of coffee on the nearby table. Jeannie looked directly at him, into his eyes, a hard wooden brown. She saw an evil glint. It was forthright—it almost had a little sign attached: evil glint. She had never seen evil before. Never thought to make a note of it since she didn’t plan on seeing it again.

  ‘Last one didn’t.’ He puffed at the cigar again, inhaled, let the smoke channel out through his nose so that now he looked like a fire-breathing demon in a hired morning suit. Jeannie felt herself flush and Ray made an annoying sigh of sympathy.

  ‘Didn’t let you know about her then, did he not?’ A tutting sound. A conspiratorial wink.

  ‘Have you had enough to drink?’ Jeannie asked, wanting to be mean back and yet also wanting to be polite. ‘I’m sure we can find you some lighter fuel or some meths.’

  Ray’s evil eyes flamed with delight. ‘Get to know me Jeannie. You’d like me.’ He took her hand, held it vice-like. Jeannie felt herself resist. He kissed her hand. ‘Me and Nathan, stallions from the same stable.’

  Jeannie stopped resisting. Just get this done with. She didn’t smile and she didn’t lower her gaze. Ray pulled her towards him. Moved in for a cigar-scented kiss, the shiny plastic of his face brushing against hers. He whispered.

  ‘Best of luck girlie.’

  And Jeannie was about to smile and be gracious but he halted her as he squeezed her left buttock and said, ‘You’ll fucking need it.’

  * * *

  Time spins now. Like one of those gyroscopes. At first it flows smoothly around and around itself and then, you can’t see the exact second that it changes, but it begins to slow, it begins to lose momentum. It tips. It falters.

  ‘Christ in pinstripe pyjamas why is there never any fucking JUICE.’ He was rootling around in the fridge, standing with the door wide open. Jeannie was trying to move around him, her arm sliding around his waist.

  She leaned up to him to plant a kiss. ‘There’s orange juice. They didn’t have any fucking juice.’ She kept her voice light, jokey. There was orange juice, in a carton on the top shelf. She could see it, until he wheeled around, grasped her wrists, yanked her towards him, slamming her into his body.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ he demanded, ‘I’m SORRY?’

  Jeannie’s mouth babbled and he whiplashed her away from him, she knocked her hip against the opposite worktop, stumbled, caught her cheekbone on the open fridge door.

  ‘Watch the fucking fridge door,’ he snarled, his hand shooting out, the palm smacking her square in the face. The other hand slamming the fridge door so that all the magnets and messages fell.

  She thought it was because he had worked very hard and not been promoted to detective sergeant. She thought it was because they had chosen to promote Barry above him. She thought it was better not to think about why. She thought it was better to be quiet and wait this one out.

  ‘I’m making coffee. Want one?’ he was saying, as if nothing had happened. The magnets and messages back in their places. After a few hours, she knew, it would seem that she had dreamed it.

  A year and a half they had been married and somehow it seemed. Well. Longer. The business was doing well. They seemed to be doing well. He phoned her all the time and at first it seemed romantic. It seemed he reached out that way. His voice small and sorry. But after a while Jeannie knew. It just wasn’t. He was keeping watch.

  No was his answer for everything. If she mentioned a birthday evening out with the horticulture students, a leaving do, an engagement party it was No. Or a more subtle version.

  ‘You? And a bunch of teenage students? You’ll look like their mum.’

  She drifted into a state where if she had the day off she didn’t know what to do with it. He wouldn’t approve. He wouldn’t let her.

  Whenever his work allowed he could be found at the Hanging Gardens. No. Don’t. Watching her. No. I wouldn’t. Waiting for her. No. You don’t really want to do that? Taking her home. No. Not really you is it? He was charm. No. He was love. No. They all thought how lucky she was. No. He was so gorgeous. No. So attentive. No. Jeannie thought she was dreaming. No. She was mad. No. She was unfair. No.

  It was an illusion and she couldn’t see the mechanics. How had it begun? Just a few well-chosen words? Stupid. Bitch. Neurotic. Stupid. Neurotic. Bitch. Like a mantra. Had it begun with him taking the car keys f
rom her? ‘I’ll drive,’ and ‘Give me the keys then.’ The big hand, the beckoning gesture. It was hypnotism.

  Stupid.Give.Bitch.Keys.Stupid.Give.Bitch. Stupid. Give. Stupid. Neurotic. You stupid fucking neurotic bitch, give me the keys now.

  She couldn’t seem to change a lightbulb. Stupid. She began to lose confidence in everyday abilities. Bitch. She began to draw boundaries around herself, wary of the things that might set him off, upset his mood. Stupid fucking neurotic bitch.

  He spat the food at her. Surely he did, she had felt it spatter into her face, could even see the mark on her top where the sauce had stained. And yet, had he? Suddenly the kitchen was cleared. No plates. No sauce. And weren’t they on the sofa now, his hand down her jumper tuning her nipples to Radio Sex? His hand unzipping his fly, putting her hand inside his jeans.

  Jeannie was accommodating, polite at best and cowardly at worst. She couldn’t look back from where she was at any given time—opening the gates at the delivery bay for a huge bulb lorry from Belgium—and see exactly what had happened. It just seemed that now she had to ask for permission. Even buying fish in the supermarket was starting to take on hidden danger.

  ‘I’m not eating this.’ Like a hairy, petulant child. A look of revulsion. Of a man being fed poison. ‘Full of fucking bones.’

  The plate shoved away as if it contained toxic waste. It seemed that Jeannie’s cooking skills had been a delusion. Since her marriage she’d served Nathan a diet of ‘shit’ and ‘slop’, from fricasee to what-the-fuck-is-that. It became a strain to glide her trolley through the supermarket doors. The bright commercial lights glared at her and she seemed to spend hours indecisive over pork steaks or chicken fillets.

  The honeymoon was over. Well, of course it was, Jeannie thought to herself. Life is not a honeymoon. No. But what was this?

  Work. That was her theory. His job was hard and stressful and he didn’t talk about it. When she had tried early on in their relationship he had said he didn’t want to.