‘What’s up?’ I whispered to Mac as I staggered in with a steaming tray of tea, the first of many morning cuppas.
Mac glanced round to make sure we were alone. ‘Alf’s wife’s left him,’ he confided soberly. ‘He got back on Friday night to find a note on the kitchen table. Said she’d had enough of him, and don’t try to find her ’cos she ain’t never coming back.’
‘No!’ I set the tray down, aghast. ‘Vi? But they’re on the phone night and day. I thought they adored each other!’
‘Oh, he adored her orright – couldn’t please her enough – but she bossed him around somefing chronic. She always had the upper hand, like, and he’s done as he’s told all his bleedin’ life, and now she’s up and left him, ungrateful bitch. Gone to Spain.’
‘Spain!’
Mac took his cap off and scratched his head. ‘Yeah, well, she’s always bin on about wanting to live on the Costa Brava, run a bar an’ that, sit in the sun wiv all those fat gits wiv gold chains, knockin’ back jugs of Sangria, but Alf’s never bin for it. He won’t go furver than Margate, Alf won’t – needs his family about him, and who can blame him? She don’t give a monkey’s about anyone’s family, though. She’s a right cold fish, that Vi, and I’ve always said so. She don’t need nobody, never even wanted kids, and that’s not natural, is it?’
‘Oh, so there are no children?’
‘Nah. Alf would have loved ’em, dotes on his nieces and nephews, he does, but she wouldn’t have it. She likes her own company and she’s welcome to it. Got it in spades now, hasn’t she? Fancy buggerin’ off just like that! Took the video an’ all.’
‘Gosh, poor Alf.’
I glanced across at his huge sorrowful bulk as he passed by the window, head bent, water sloshing from his buckets.
‘So, is he very –’
‘Gutted,’ said Mac, averting his head politely and spitting dexterously to the concrete floor. ‘Totally gutted. He’s given his life to that cow and then she ditches him wivout so much as a by-your-leave. Silly tart.’
Spiro sidled up beside us with a piece of skirting board on his shoulder. ‘I theenk she go with another man,’ he confided. ‘I smell rats. I don’t theenk she go alone, I theenk she go off to do Olé olé and Viva España with a toy of a boy.’
‘You may well be right, Spiro, my son,’ agreed Mac soberly. ‘She’s certainly stupid enough, but then I can’t see any man in his right mind wantin’ to give her one. She’s built like a bleedin’ matchstick, not an ounce of flesh on her, tits like teabags. Reckon she’d snap in two as soon as look at you, but then my Karen says she had enough black undies in her bottom drawer to sink a battleship, and that Bernie Mundy down the offy said she was always in there buyin’ her Baileys and giving him the eye, so who’s to say, eh?’ He blew his nose, took a peek at the contents of the handkerchief, and replaced it in his overall pocket.
‘He so sad,’ muttered Spiro, shaking his head. ‘He cry in the lorry today.’
‘No! Oh, Spiro, how awful!’
Spiro got out his hanky. ‘He say his life is over.’ He blew his nose noisily. ‘He say – he say that now it all gone pear-shaped he has nothing left to live for, and I theenk to myself – oh, bleeding heck, eet is just like poor Mrs McFarllen. All alone and lonely weeth nothing to live for either!’
Crikey. I blinked.
‘And he say he want to die. He say – he say – oooooh!’ Emotion overwhelmed him, the woolly hat came off and he dabbed at his streaming eyes. ‘And you all so nice!’ he sobbed.
I patted his shoulder. ‘Come on now, Spiro, you’re diluting the tea. Be a good chap and –’
‘Get a grip boy,’ growled Mac. ‘We’ve got a lot to do today. I don’t want any fairies sobbin’ down their tutus. I want that concrete plinth put in for that Aga toot sweet and I want it six by four, an’ I want that stove plumbed in by tomorrow, no messin’. Now get mixing, Zorba my son. We’ve got work to do!’
Spiro hastily replaced his hat and shuffled over to the mixer. Through the window I could still see Alf, bent over his plaster palette outside. I went to see him, approaching tentatively. His face was hidden as he concentrated on stirring the soggy pink mess with a trowel.
‘Alf, I’m so sorry,’ I said gently. ‘Mac told me.’
He nodded, but I could tell speech was going to be difficult. Even more so than usual. He didn’t raise his head and kept on mixing. I was about to tiptoe away, when finally he managed, gruffly: ‘You’re orright,’ which I’d come to learn was East London for anything from, ‘No, thank you, I don’t take sugar in my tea,’ to, ‘Yes, please, I’d adore to be King of the Pygmies.’
I left them to it. Mac seemed to be marshalling his troops with a power and a vigour hitherto unseen, barking out orders and strutting about like a mini masonic tyrant. Lance appeared from the caravan and fell in seamlessly, greeting me with a low ‘Have you heard?’ – to which I nodded back my sympathies, and then the three of them scurried around under Mac’s direction, hammering, mitring and plastering like whirling dervishes. Presumably Mac thought that if he got them working flat out it would take their minds off their troubles, and who was I, the mere recipient of their labours, to disagree?
Work had been occupying my mind lately, too. I was dimly aware that I’d promised both myself and Angie I’d write to the Physic Garden, offering my services. The trouble was, though, that every time I sat down to draft a letter, I’d wonder why on earth they should even consider me, rather than the hordes of fresher, cheaper, younger graduates who flooded out of Cirencester’s gates each year, or even the older, far more experienced gardeners whose seamless careers were uninterrupted by childbirth, house restoration, or even marriage restoration. And what about all those smart young London gardeners, fingers on the horticultural pulse, who exhibited at Chelsea and charged a grand for a morning’s consultation? Why me? At this point I’d gulp insecurely, doodle a bit, sigh even more, gaze out of the window, screw up the paper and finally wander out to my own little patch, where, I told myself, at least I was improving my practical skills, even if I was only deadheading the lilies or restraining the Rambling Rector from strangling Madame Hardy.
On this particular morning, I dutifully sat down for the obligatory doodle, sigh, gaze and screw, but as I got up guiltily from the writing desk, pushed open the French windows and ambled out into the blazing sunshine to till my soil, it occurred to me to wonder why on earth I would even want to slog to London on an overcrowded commuter train, and spend a back-breaking morning in a stifling greenhouse tilling someone else’s soil, before slogging back home again? It wasn’t as if I needed the money – although of course it would come in handy. No, it was the independence, I told myself sternly. I knelt down amongst the frilly and abundant Alchemilla mollis and tugged at a dandelion root. Who was it said that work was the only dignity? Scott Fitzgerald, or someone equally dissolute, but he had a point and, let’s face it, I was pretty short on personal dignity at the moment. I shuddered as I remembered yesterday’s débâcle. And of course the ability to write my own cheques without drawing on the joint account would certainly show Johnny. Show him I was making my own way. And then, of course, there was the stimulation, I thought wearily, reaching for my trowel. I sat back on my heels for a moment. Yes, let’s not forget the sodding stimulation, eh? What did that really mean, I wondered? When people bandied that word around? Did it mean talking to people? Because I could talk to my friends, who were far more intelligent than a lot of the gardeners I knew. Using my brain, then? Well, surely a good book would do more for the grey matter than pricking out dahlias? No, what it really meant, I decided, was no longer feeling guilty about doing nothing. It gave one a badge to wear, a tick to put by one’s name. Olivia McFarllen has a job. She occupies her time with more than her house, her garden and her child. She stood up and she was counted. And, of course, at the moment, it was more important than ever that I was seen to have a life, because I couldn’t even include ‘getting my husband’s supper and ironin
g his shirts’ in the domestic equation, as Claudia had so succinctly pointed out to me on the way to school this morning.
‘Mrs Chandler’s got a job now,’ she’d informed me sternly, ‘and Mr Chandler was really impressed by that. Said it was more than his increasingly expensive strumpet had.’
I cast my mind back, at the same time trying not to go up a lorry’s backside. ‘Mrs Chandler? Chloe’s mother?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Whose husband left her?’
‘Yep.’
‘But … wasn’t she the one that went off with some loose-limbed youth from B&Q, whereupon Mr Chandler came back with his tail between his legs?’
‘Ah yes, he did,’ she twisted excitedly in her seat to face me, ‘but you see it’s all changed now. Mr Chandler did come back, but then his strumpet –’
‘Must you say that word, Claudia?’
‘Yes, I like it – his Strrrr-umpet,’ she trilled, ‘mounted a huge campaign, cycled past his factory gates with her shirt undone and no pants on, that sort of thing – and he went back to her.’
‘Right,’ I’d said weakly, negotiating a roundabout. ‘So, then Mrs Chandler got herself a job, in – don’t tell me –’
‘B&Q.’
‘Naturally.’
‘And now she’s selling rotary saws and that type of thing, and all on commission, Mum. Chloe said she made an extra eighty-four pounds last week.’
‘Excellent,’ I said faintly. ‘And, um, her young man?’
‘Oh, well, Mrs Chandler claims she got bored with him and gave him the boot, but Chloe says she was sitting in the back garden with him only last week and Mrs Chandler came out in a bikini to sunbathe looking really hideous – you know, flabby white tummy, saggy underarms and those spongy bits on the tops of the legs, like you’ve got, Mum, only much worse – and Chloe said that Len – that’s his name – took one look, made a face like he was going to be sick, and legged it. They’ve never seen him since.’
‘But …’ I struggled with this information as I swung into the school gates, ‘but surely he’d seen Mrs Chandler before?’ I was dimly aware I shouldn’t be having this conversation with my ten-year-old daughter, but couldn’t quite stop myself.
‘What, you mean nudey?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘No, because Chloe says they always did it with the lights off.’
‘How would Chloe know?’
‘Because she peeped through the keyhole, der-brain. Crikey, Mum, get real. We’ve got to get some sort of sex education before we go up to the upper school. If it wasn’t for Alice Cassidy’s parents, who are practically naturists and wander round the house naked and do it in the conservatory, we wouldn’t know what was going on.’
I pulled to a halt in the car park. ‘Well, three cheers for Mr and Mrs Cassidy. Sorry Daddy and I were never so obliging. I hope you don’t feel too deprived.’
She shrugged as she got out. ‘I’ll survive. Oh – it’s OK, Mum,’ she said quickly as I went to get out my side, ‘I’m a bit late so I’ll just run in. Oh, by the way, that letter’s for Sebastian. Can you put it through his door? Plus the one from you, too,’ she added meaningfully.
I glanced down at the note she’d left on her seat as she scampered off. So. My daughter no longer wanted me to accompany her to the classroom door. Didn’t want me to make a fool of myself, no doubt. A bit of a loose cannon, these days, Claudia’s mum, and, of course, what with her husband’s mistress up there, who knows what she might do. I sighed and picked up the letter. It was sealed, of course; show me a child who doesn’t lick an envelope. I turned it over and wondered what she’d written. Sorry about my barking mother? She really should get out more, sell a few rotary saws and cycle round St Albans with no pants on? I sighed again, put it down. No, she was right. I must pop it through his door, and add sincere apologies of my own, too. I riffled around in the glove compartment for a bit of paper. No point going home and agonising over the Basildon Bond, I’d write one in the car right now, on any old scrap of paper, pop it in, and then that would be the end of it.
I finally found an old shopping list on the floor under my seat, scribbled out ‘Domestos, butter, Immac’, and wrote on the back –
Dear Sebastian,
I’m so sorry. What must you think of me? I got totally the wrong end of the stick yesterday, made a complete fool of myself and couldn’t be more ashamed.
Best wishes,
Olivia McFarllen
There. Short, gushing, and to the point. Perfect.
On the way home, I stopped outside his house and ran up the steps. I slipped Claudia’s note through the letterbox, and was about to add mine to the doormat when I suddenly realised I was being watched. I glanced down and saw the mother, her toothy, ferrety face pale and watchful, staring up at me from the basement window below. I hesitated. My note wasn’t actually in an envelope, and she’d most certainly read it, and then what on earth would she think? Why was I so ashamed? So foolish? What stick, exactly, had I grasped the wrong end of? And on a scrappy old shopping list, too. No no, I thought hastily, I’d go home, write it out again, do it properly and then drop it by later.
I tucked it in my pocket and glanced down nervously. I couldn’t actually see her now, but I was sure she was still there, hovering about in the shadows. I hurried back down the steps, feeling those sharp grey eyes in my back all the way to my car. I shivered as I got in. Perhaps Molly was right. Perhaps there was something ‘iffy’ about that whole setup there; perhaps she was his accomplice or something. She certainly looked like she could have been an embalmer in a previous life. I shot off down the road, scurried up the drive to my house, ran in, and shut the door fast behind me. Home.
The day limped on, and by mid-afternoon, the temperature had hit the nineties. Claudia was dropped home by a friend, and lay in a cool bath for half an hour before taking to her bedroom. I, meanwhile, wilted restlessly on the terrace, listening to the sounds of banging and crashing as the boys ploughed on. At one point Lance and Spiro beetled off for more supplies, but other than that, relentlessly, unceasingly, through the heat, with no radio blaring, no chatting, no whistling, no breaks for tea, no stops to execute the perfect roll-up on an upturned milk crate – on they toiled. I was astonished, but deeply impressed. Later, when they’d finally drooped back to the caravan to collapse, I crept in to inspect their handiwork. I was even more impressed. Golly, I thought as I gazed around in wonder, all this in one day. Just shows what they can do when they really pull their fingers out.
The flapping blue tarpaulin had gone, and in its place, the ceiling and walls were pink and plastered. The soggy concrete floor had also been replaced, by a gleaming, reclaimed wooden one. At the far end of the room, the huge, concrete plinth was in situ, ready for the Aga to be enthroned, and around the perimeter of the room, some of Lance’s carefully sculpted oak cupboards were already in place. I scurried across the shiny floor and pulled out a drawer. Smooth as silk. I spun around, a delighted smile slowly spreading across my face. My goodness, yes, it was really taking shape, and it was perfect! Just perfect. And just as I’d imagined, too. Finally, after all these months, it was beginning to come together.
The old sash windows had been restrung, deep skirting boards were nailed in and ready to be painted, granite work surfaces were propped up waiting to be fixed, but what really surprised and pleased me was that I could get pleasure from it. Yes, even without Johnny here beside me, admiring it too, it made me smile, and I’d thought that would be impossible, you see. Thought it was all tied up with him, this dream house, and I was astonished to realise it might not be. Was I actually getting stronger then, I mused as I wandered around, or was it just time healing, as people so often – and thoughtlessly – told one it would? Perhaps a bit of both.
By way of celebration, I went back to the old scullery, poured myself a glass of chilled Sancerre from the fridge, and strolled out to the garden, making for the cedar tree where I always sat on a summer’s e
vening. Claudia was tired and had gone to bed early, and all was quiet. The garden seemed to breathe at me, to open its arms, and I sank contentedly into its embrace, the air heavy with the musky whiff of tobacco plants and trailing jasmine. Soft cascades of broom brushed my skirt as I sauntered down to the seat beneath the tree, but as I got close, I realised – damn. On the opposite side of the stream, directly in front of me, the lads had spilled out too. Out of their caravan and on to the grass, lying stretched out or propped up on their elbows. I hesitated. I could hardly sit here drinking just a few feet away, could I? Perhaps I should sit on the terrace? But on the other hand, I wanted to sit here. I always did. And this was my garden, damn it. I sat, firmly. Mac turned and caught my eye. I raised my glass.
‘Kitchen looks great!’ I trilled merrily.
‘Yep. It’s coming along.’
Silence. I smiled inanely into my lap.
‘You like yer war?’ he ventured.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, d’you like yer floor?’
‘Oh yes, very nice!’
Lance glanced across, smiled. I smiled back. Looked down into my lap again. I shifted uncomfortably. Heavens, this was ridiculous. They were only a few feet away, and the whole point of sitting here was to gaze into the sylvan scenery, not at them.
I cleared my throat. ‘Um, listen,’ I called. ‘This seems rather silly. D’you want to come across and have a celebration drink? There’s some wine and beer in the fridge?’
It was as if I’d cast a magic spell. As if I’d snapped my fingers and – abracadabra – they were across. The stream was leapt – or in Spiro’s case, waded – and in an instant they were beside me; sitting on the grass around my chair, grinning up at me like delighted pixies. Lance instantly became barman.
‘Right, lads,’ he said, rubbing his hands together, ‘beer or wine, or shall I bring both?’ He looked at me for confirmation.
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