by Maria Goodin
“Have you spoken to Dr. Coldman?” asks Mark.
Over the summer I am meant to be working as Dr. Larry Coldman’s research assistant, but I’ve barely had a chance to start. I feel terrible at the thought of letting him down, but what else can I do?
“No, I’ll call him tomorrow and explain,” I say.
“And have you spoken to your tutor about taking a year off?”
“No, not yet.”
“And you’ll need to cancel your rent. What was your rental agreement?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about your house key? Do you have any library books that need returning? Any outstanding assignments?”
“I…Mark, can we sort all this out later?”
“It’s best to get things in order, Meg. A few late library books can quickly spiral out of control, and before you know it you’ve got chaos on your hands.”
“Right. Of course. I’ll make a list.”
“Good idea. Lists are good. So I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll be there by four o’clock. Or maybe quarter past if the traffic’s bad. But if the traffic’s good I might be there a little before; it depends. If the traffic on the ring road is flowing steadily—”
“Bye, Mark.”
“Oh, bye, babe.”
***
I always wondered how I would react if I came face-to-face with an intruder. Would I scream bloody murder? Would I attempt the “stun and run” technique learned during a single self-defense class in the university sports hall last year? Would I grab the nearest weapon—a kitchen knife, a heavy vase, a poker? Would I freeze?
It turns out I do all four, in exactly that order.
I am so startled when a scruffy young man bursts through the back door into my mother’s kitchen that I scream, throw my hands up into what I think is the basic self-defense position but probably looks like I’m about to start dancing to “YMCA,” grab the nearest item, which happens to be a dishrag, and then just stand there wide-eyed and terrified.
“Wh-what do you want?” I shriek, warding him off with the soggy dishrag as if it’s a crucifix and he’s a vampire.
He freezes, one hand still on the back door handle, a startled expression on his unshaven face. My eyes dart up and down his body, scanning for a knife or even a gun. I take in the worn jeans and frayed T-shirt, the dirt on his hands. His hair is messy, long wisps falling into his eyes, and he has a streak of grime on his chin. He can’t be any older than me, maybe even a few months younger, and within five seconds I have concluded that he is living rough, certainly a drug addict, and that he is no doubt here to steal my mother’s belongings and sell them for cocaine. I take in his strong, sinewy arms and quickly conclude that although he is not much taller than me, he is clearly much stronger and therefore I don’t stand a chance.
“If you come any closer I’ll scream this house down!”
He takes a step forward.
I shake my dishrag frantically at him.
“I swear, if you come any closer I’ll…I’ll…”
“Wash me?”
His face relaxes and he looks vaguely amused, eyeing me up and down with interest. I pull the collar of my blouse tight around my neck. My knees, still weak from this morning, start trembling again.
“Wh-what do you want?”
“Just a glass of water,” he says calmly.
My mind flits back through episodes of Crimewatch, scanning for information on con artists who ask lone women for a glass of water and then murder them. I know the moment I turn my back he’ll be upon me, his dirty hands grabbing at me as he pushes me down on the floor. Or maybe he’ll just pull a knife from his pocket and slit my throat before running off with my mother’s DVD player.
“Get out of my house!” I scream, flinging the dishcloth at him with gusto, suddenly furious. It hits him straight in the face with a wet smack.
“Hey! I surrender.”
He holds his hands in the air, the dishcloth dangling from one of them.
“I’m just the gardener.”
I shake my head angrily.
“No, you’re not! My mother doesn’t have a gardener!”
I pull a knife from the drying rack. The smirk on the man’s face is quickly replaced by panic.
“Are you crazy? She hired me this morning!”
“My mother would never hire a gardener!”
“Then I guess I must have been dreaming!”
Just then I hear the front door slam.
“Hello?” calls my mother.
Suddenly my mind goes into overdrive. Should I scream at her to run? Tell her to call the police? Make a bid for freedom, grabbing my mother on the way and bundling her out the front door? I monitor the young man anxiously, watching to see if he’ll turn and run or make a move to attack. Then again, I think, taking in his mud-encrusted work boots, what if…
“Ah, you two have met, then,” chirps my mother, plonking a bag of shopping on the kitchen table. Her breathing is heavy and labored. She rests her hands on her hips and waits to catch her breath.
“My goodness, I’m getting unfit!” she says with a laugh. “Maybe I should start going to the gym.”
She looks from me to the young man and back again, taking in the knife in my trembling, outstretched hand.
“Meg, what on earth are you doing?”
“Mother, who is this man?” I demand sharply, already aware that I have made a horrific mistake.
“He’s the gardener, of course. Who else would he be?”
She takes the knife from me and casually throws it into a drawer.
“He knocked this morning looking for work, and I thought I could probably do with a hand. He’s already made ever such a good start.”
“But you said you didn’t want a gardener!” I shout, incredulous and acutely embarrassed.
“When did I say that?”
“Yesterday!”
“Well, that was yesterday. Honestly, darling, I don’t know what you’re getting so worked up about. It was your idea in the first place.”
She shakes her head and rolls her eyes in the man’s direction as if to say, “My daughter, what a loon!”
He smiles at her.
“Would you like a glass of water, Ewan?” my mother asks politely as she starts to unpack the shopping.
“Only if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” he says, looking at me with a smirk.
I want to crawl under the kitchen table and die.
“Of course not. Get Ewan some water, will you, Meg?” she asks, her head already buried inside a cupboard.
Silent in my humiliation, I pour a glass of water from the tap and hold it out to him, carefully avoiding his eye. He drinks it down in four swift gulps, wipes his mouth with the back of his grimy hand, and passes the glass back to me.
“Thanks. Very kind of you.”
I glance at him briefly. His brown eyes are glistening with wry amusement, and a smile is playing on his lips. The obvious enjoyment he takes in my acute embarrassment makes me want to hit him.
“No problem,” I say, forcing a smile.
I turn and leave the room, calculating how long it might take him to tidy the garden and leave so I never have to face him again.
chapter five
I almost married Johnny Miller. He was nearly mine for life. It didn’t occur to me that I had only been invited to his birthday party because my mother had become notorious for providing an excellent catering service, depositing me on people’s doorsteps with mountains of sandwiches, fruit jellies, fairy cakes, sausage rolls, and meringues. In my eyes, the fact that I was the only girl in Red Class to be invited to his party meant that Johnny must love me.
“He definitely loves you,” confirmed Tracey Pratt as we sat writing that fateful paragraph titled “My Earliest Memory.” It was the last time
Tracey Pratt would sit next to me in class ever again. “Promise me I can be your bridesmaid,” she said. “I want to wear a pink dress with roses on it. I’ll show you.”
She turned her paper over and started to draw a dress with huge puffy sleeves and hearts all over it.
“I think he’s really handsome,” I said, swooning and gazing across the classroom at Johnny, who was flicking tiny balls of paper at Podge Parkinson’s back.
“Me too,” said Tracey. “I think he’s definitely the most handsomest boy in the class. You’re so lucky he loves you!”
I was in seventh heaven and saw my whole life with Johnny stretching ahead of me like a blissful dream. I saw myself in a huge white wedding dress, doves fluttering in the sky. I saw two babies, twins perhaps, and a beautiful cottage in the country. I saw myself kissing Johnny good-bye as he set off in his big shiny car to an office where he did something important that involved wearing a suit. We would never have our gas cut off or catch leaking water in a bucket like my mother and I had to. The landlord would never bang angrily on our door, and pipes wouldn’t knock in the night. We would have kittens and a huge garden, a log fire, and exotic holidays, and every evening Johnny would bring me flowers.
How could I have known that five minutes later my dreams would all be shattered? That I would be standing, red-faced and embarrassed, as Johnny Miller, the love of my life and hope for future happiness, called me dumb? That Tracey Pratt, my closest friend and prospective bridesmaid, would have turned against me and called me a liar? That for the rest of that term I would be shunned by my friends, who no longer wanted to be associated with an eight-year-old girl who believed runner beans could run?
I will never forget that day after school when I walked up to Johnny Miller at the school gates to hand him my invitation reply slip, having proudly ticked the box that read, “Yes, I would love to come to your party!”
“I’m really looking forward to it,” I said politely, feeling myself blush, still clinging onto my dream of our shared future.
Behind Johnny, Podge Parkinson and Jamie Brunt sniggered into their cupped hands.
“Make sure she doesn’t bring any beans,” Jamie whispered. “They might run away!”
Podge burst into wheezy, asthmatic laughter.
Johnny fiddled awkwardly with the knot of his school tie.
“The party’s been canceled,” he said quickly, and without even looking at me, he turned and ran away.
I stood forlornly, staring at the reply slip in my hand. I had planned to wear my new blue dress and slip-on shoes with the tiny heels. I was going to use all the money in my piggy bank to buy him a Power-Splash water pistol.
I didn’t need to hear Johnny’s mother shout “See you Saturday!” to Jamie’s mother to know the party was still on.
I had been rejected because Johnny thought I was a liar and a fool.
***
“You don’t have to be shy, you know.”
I freeze mid-step. How on earth did he hear me? I was being as quiet as a mouse. Or so I thought. I curse my mother for insisting that I bring a cup of coffee and a slice of pecan pie outside for the gardener. After all, she’s paying him, so I can’t believe she’s expected to feed him as well. Having crept down the brick path, I had left the refreshments on the ground in between his discarded sweater and a row of cauliflower, and I really thought I could just creep back to the house without him noticing me. But just as I am tiptoeing away, his voice reaches me from somewhere in the apple orchard. The branches of the tightly packed trees are a tangle of leaves and fruit, too dense to see through, but he is obviously in there somewhere, watching me sneaking around.
“What’s up? Are you afraid?”
I spin around, my eyes searching for him among the leafy branches, irritated by his suggestion. He’s clearly patronizing me, mocking me for my reaction the other day when I defended myself against him with a dishcloth. Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to feel a little frightened when a scruffy-looking man bursts into your kitchen unannounced. I’m about to tell him so when he speaks again.
“Come on, don’t be shy now, sweetheart. Have a bit more confidence. You know, I think you could be a right little stunner if you wanted.”
My jaw drops. Sweetheart! Stunner! The cheek of him! He’s obviously one of these young men who likes to think of himself as a bit of a charmer, a “cheeky chappie” or a “lovable rogue,” chatting up the ladies with a naughty smile and a glint in his eye. Unfortunately for him, I find these kind of men misogynistic, irritating, and common and see nothing in the slightest bit charming about them.
“You’re quite a beauty, you know that?”
His voice is soft and deep as it carries on the gentle summer breeze, and in spite of myself, just for a second, I feel a smile playing at the side of my mouth. A beauty? Really? Mark has never called me a beauty. He once said I am rather pretty when my hair is neatly tucked behind my ears, but he has never used the word beautiful.
But what am I doing allowing myself to be flattered? He shouldn’t be talking to me in this way. If my mother insists on having him here, he’s going to have to learn that he’s here to cut grass and trim hedges and that’s all. I push my way into the little orchard, shoving branches out of my path, trampling over a ball of string, some shears, and a wooden box, all of which he has discarded recklessly on the ground with no regard for anyone’s safety. Forcefully parting the leaves of an apple tree, I find myself staring him straight in the face.
“I have a boyfriend, you know,” I tell him, matter-of-factly, stumbling on a piece of green netting that has become caught around my feet. “He’s a lecturer in physics.”
The gardener stares at me blankly. “Good for you,” he says, watching me curiously as I stumble around in front of him, kicking my feet in a bid to free myself from the netting, which seems to have tied my ankles together.
“Yes, it is good for me,” I tell him. “He’s a very well-respected physicist.” I grab onto a tree trunk as I nearly topple over. “So I really don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be—”
“Do you want some help with that?” he interrupts, reaching down to untangle me.
“I’m perfectly all right, thank you,” I say confidently, causing him to back away. Realizing that all my jigging about has only served to tighten the netting around my feet, I decide to lean casually against the tree trunk with my arms folded, as if I’m completely comfortable standing with my feet tied together and do it all the time.
“Anyway, I have a boyfriend,” I continue as if nothing is amiss. “So I really don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be addressing me as ‘sweetheart’ and commenting on my appearance. Plus, just for the record, nothing about you scares me in the slightest, other than the fact that you burst straight into my kitchen yesterday without having the courtesy to knock.”
The gardener just stares at me, bemused, as if I’m speaking another language. I try to remember if I inadvertently used any complicated words that he might not have understood. And then, slowly, a look of realization spreads across his face.
“Oh, you didn’t think…I mean, I wasn’t talking to you if that’s what you thought.”
I look around me, confused, as if there is any chance that somebody else might be hiding in the orchard. And then it dawns on me. I see what he’s doing. He’s embarrassed now because he knows I have a boyfriend, so he’s trying to backtrack on his suggestive and rather sexist comments. He might even be afraid that my boyfriend is a six-foot-three part-time body builder, who would flatten him in a fit of jealous rage if he knew that words such as stunner had been directed toward me. Admittedly, the only time I have ever seen Mark in a jealous rage was when I beat him at Countdown, and even then it was less of a rage and more of a sulk, but the gardener isn’t to know that.
“Oh, okay,” I say, nodding disbelievingly. “You weren’t ta
lking to me. So obviously you were talking to”—I look about, pretending to be searching for someone—“this caterpillar, I suppose?”
Mark always says that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but to be honest I rather enjoy it. There is quite clearly no one else here he could possibly have been speaking to, so he’s just going to have to admit that he was trying to chat me up and that he has completely and utterly embarrassed himself. I have never liked the phrase “out of your league” because it sounds rather arrogant, but at the end of the day my boyfriend is a physicist, and he’s…well…what on earth did he think he was trying to do?
The gardener shuffles awkwardly and tries to conceal a smile I assume must be borne out of guilt and embarrassment at his own impropriety.
“No, I wasn’t talking to the caterpillar,” he concedes, studying the revolting, furry, yellow creature that is crawling along a nearby branch. “I’d hardly refer to him as a ‘beauty.’ Or as ‘shy,’ for that matter. I was chatting to him earlier and could barely get a word in. No, I was actually talking to this tree.”
He pats the trunk of the tree he’s standing next to, and I almost laugh at his ridiculous lie. Is that all he could come up with? To say he was staring at his own reflection in a mirror and talking to himself would have been more convincing. But as I roll my eyes in a way that is meant to say, “Oh, please!” I notice that he looks perfectly serious.
I raise an eyebrow quizzically.
“What?”
“Well, look at her,” he says. “She’s not bearing any fruit. All her branches are turning inward like she’s trying to hide away. Her leaves are small and dull in color, as if she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. She clearly feels ashamed of who she is. She’s the classic example of a shy tree.”
I study his face, searching for a sign that he’s joking.
“A shy tree?” I repeat, thinking that might be one of the strangest phrases I’ve ever heard.
“One of the most timid trees I’ve met. And it’s a shame, because as I was telling her,” he says slowly and with emphasis, “she could really blossom if she just let herself go a bit. She’d be quite a beauty, in fact. I was trying to give her a bit of positive encouragement.”