The Seven Year Itch

by Emlyn Rees

  All of which only serves to make me more self-conscious of my own mode of transport. On account of this not being official Greensleeves business, I’m in my own car (aka the Skip, Dadmobile, or General Lee, as in generally knackered). It’s a fly-abdomen grey, twelve-year-old Citroën estate, which smells like a stale bagel and makes crunching noises whenever you get into it, because of the avalanche of desiccated snacks which Ben has distributed around it over the course of his short life.

  There’s no CD or MP3 player, but there is a radio which I’ve got hooked up to an iTrip and iPod. I’m listening to The Go! Team for inspiration.

  I check out the mansions on either side as I drive past, searching for Number 5. The view makes me feel like I’m driving through a film set, the kind you always see in British romantic comedies. So much so, in fact, that as I pull up outside the driveway of Number 5, I’m half-expecting to see a suitably bookish Hugh Grant come bumbling, mumbling, muttering and stuttering along the pavement, before bumping into a sophisticated, Chanel-shaded Julia Roberts, who just happens to be an incognito American film star, and who may be outwardly hysterical and histrionic, but inwardly is lonely and just as much in need of affection as everyone else, and who will fall in love with wet but wonderful Hugh, but only after they’ve overcome a number of unlikely comedic misunderstandings (with the aid of several of Hugh’s preternaturally wise Oxbridge chums), thus allowing Hugh ’n’ Ju to conclude that love not only changes everything, but is also capable of conquering all social, cultural and financial boundaries, a startling insight which occurs to them just in time before the pastel-tinted end credits roll, while a recently exhumed nostalgic hit by Wet, Wet, Wet starts to play . . .

  What I actually witness through the Skip’s fingerprint-smeared side window, however, is a thickset, forty-something man in a dark tailored suit and aviator shades, marching down the neatly cobbled driveway of Number 5, before slinging a tan Gladstone bag into the boot of a waxed black Porsche.

  So far, so James Bond. My Hugh ’n’ Ju romcom scenario is clearly a no go. We’ve stumbled on to staple thriller turf now. Or rather we would have, but for one surreal element.

  The man has nothing on his feet. Neither shoes nor socks. Jesus style.

  Even weirder, as he slams the Porsche boot shut and opens the driver’s door to get in, he seems to be completely oblivious to this fact himself.

  Then he hesitates, and his brow furrows as, somewhere in the back of his mind, a red alert bulb begins to flash.

  Only then does he stare down.

  For a second, my heart goes out to him, as his face crumples and his veneer of manly sophistication dissolves, leaving him looking like a little boy who’s about to burst into tears.

  Then his fists clench and his expression sets into a mask of belligerent determination. He turns and stares back up the driveway. He takes something from his pocket – a hip flask, it looks like – and takes a swig, then another, then he knocks his head right back. He returns the flask to his pocket and wipes his lips on the back of his hand, before glowering up once more at the house.

  No, man, no, I will him. Don’t be a damned fool! Step away from the house. Get into your Porsche. And flee. Flee this accursed place, while your dignity’s still intact . . .

  Because it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce what’s going on here. The evidence speaks for itself: a mind sufficiently distracted to allow you to leave the house without footwear; a packed bag; a getaway car at the ready. It all points to the same woeful conclusion.

  This man is no spy. This is no thriller. And certainly no romcom, either. No, what we have here is a romcom gone wrong. A non romcom. This is a break-up, a bust-up, the end of the line, and this man is about to commit a howling schoolboy error. He’s about to walk back in. After he’s walked out. And as an ex troubadour d’amour myself, I know enough to be certain that no good can come of this.

  Because it never does.

  But the Shoeless Man has other plans. He strides back up the driveway, flings open Number 5’s front door, and disappears inside.

  Seconds tick past. I wait for him to re-emerge, shamefaced and humiliated, but he doesn’t.

  The seconds turn to minutes.

  I recheck the address Amy gave me, but this is definitely Jessie’s house. Which means that, if I am right about a bust-up going on in there, then it’s almost certainly between Jessie and the Shoeless Man.

  I call the contact number for Jessie that Amy gave with the address, but all I get is an automated voicemail. It’s two forty-five and I’m already fifteen minutes late for my appointment with Jessie.

  I should leave a message and split, but I keep picturing the man’s clenched fists, and that angry look on his face, which keeps getting just that little bit more warped, just that little bit more Norman Bates . . .

  I vacate the Skip and peer up at the house.

  If I were a cop, this is probably the moment I’d call for backup. Hutch: this is Starsky. Call Huggy. Or Riggs, this is Murtaugh: I’m sitting on a bomb!

  But I’m not a cop. I’m a gardener, and I somehow think that none of my fellow wage slaves at Greensleeves will be willing to sacrifice the peace and quiet of their own afternoon for the furtherance of some stranger’s domestic harmony.

  No, this is something I’m going to have to deal with on my own.

  Like A TAI-Fighter Caught In A Traction Beam

  The front door to Number 5 is still enticingly ajar when I reach it.

  I press the burnished brass bell, but it’s not working.

  What I do hear loud and clear, however, as I step inside the wide black-and-white chequered entrance hall, is shouting. And screeching. And even the occasional agonised bellow, like a cow’s giving birth.

  I stand here frozen.

  The house is so big that, at first, it’s difficult to work out where these Dante-esque sounds are coming from.

  I also feel disoriented by the switch from bright daylight outside to cool gloom in here, and it reminds me of the time I got lost in the Natural History Museum on a school trip when I was seven and couldn’t work out where my history teacher was calling me from.

  As my eyes grow accustomed to the light, I see that double doors lead off to the left and right, and that there’s a marble staircase straight ahead. A stunning art deco crystal chandelier hangs from the high vaulted ceiling, and the acrid whiff of polish is in the air. It’s an old-fashioned-looking place, with plenty of antiques-laden tables and gilded mirrors, but any effect of grandeur is ruined by the chaos of half-unpacked removal boxes scattered across the floor.

  And a smashed white wine bottle at the foot of the stairs . . .

  There’s a pause in the shouting.

  ‘Hello?’ I call out, figuring that I should announce my presence as, technically, I am now trespassing, and if I’m wrong about this being a break-up, and in the unlikely event that the Shoeless Man really is a double-O agent, then he’ll be well within his rights to blow me away with his Walther PPK.

  The only answer I get is the echo of my own voice.

  Then the shouting kicks off again.

  As I cross the hallway and the voices get louder, echoing through the air, I hear a ‘mouse-cocked mummy’s boy’, a ‘psychotic slut’, an ‘alcoholic arsewipe’, and a ‘Botoxed bitch’ in rapid succession.

  I also realise that these terms of non-endearment are coming from beyond a doorway tucked away to the right of the bottom of the stairs.

  My heart skips a beat as I hear something smash and a female shriek.

  As I hurry to the open doorway of what turns out to be an enormous atrium, however, I immediately see that I was being presumptuous.

  The shriek wasn’t issued by a female at all, but a male.

  The Shoeless Man from the driveway is now cowering directly ahead of me, behind a rattan sofa, surrounded by shards of broken pottery. He looks like a doomed extra from Platoon, who’s been pinned down by machine-gun fire.

  ‘Be reasonable,’ he shou
ts.

  ‘Me?’ comes the response from a woman who’s out of my line of sight, around the doorway, somewhere to my right. ‘Don’t you fucking dare “be reasonable” me, Roland. How fucking reasonable were you being when you took your shrivelled septic stump and put it inside that little tart?’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Roland starts to protest, ‘I already told you –’

  I lean forward to peer around the doorframe and get a better look at the woman who’s berating Roland, but then I think better of it, as a plant pot hurtles past me at head height, before exploding against the wall behind the rattan sofa and sending another cloudburst of pottery and pulped Aucuba japonica down on the beleaguered Roland’s head.

  ‘Right,’ he bellows, ‘that’s a-fucking ’nuff. Just give me the fucking shoes.’

  ‘Come and get them,’ the woman snaps.

  He twists round, like he’s about to toss a grenade over the top of the sofa, then rises up to face his foe like a man.

  I have to admit, the timing couldn’t be better.

  He stands.

  She throws.

  He ducks.

  Too late.

  The first shoe (the left, I think) clocks Roland smack on the side of his jaw. The second cracks against his knuckles as he raises his hands to protect his face.

  It would be funny if this was an episode of The Itchy and Scratchy Show, but Roland is a real person, who’s now shrieking out in pain and scrabbling round on the floor, trying to gather up his shoes, like they’re as slippery as a brace of fish.

  It’s even less funny, because no sooner has he pulled his shoes on, than he spots me.

  ‘Who are you?’ is his first line of enquiry. ‘Who the hell is he?’ is his second, directed to the hidden part of the room, when I fail to reply.

  ‘Who the hell is who?’ demands the woman who’s still out of my sight.

  ‘Er, me,’ I say, finally risking stepping out into the open.

  It’s only now that I get to take in the full magnificence of the room. You could fit a couple of doubledecker buses in here side by side and still have room for a snooker table, but instead it’s full of plants, big plants. As in Jurassic Park big. The kind that look like they might, just might suddenly lean down and bite off your head.

  My eyes skip from Pogonatherum saccharoideum to Convolvulus to Yucca gloriosa– before finally settling on her, the woman who’s been doing all this shouting.

  Woof!

  She’s like a Wonderbra advert sprung to life (a fantasy I have to admit to having indulged in several times before). But this is real. She is real. And tall. And dark-haired. And yoga’d up. And in her early forties. And seriously curvy and seriously stacked.

  She’s also wearing nothing but a white bra and pants.

  She picks up a half-smoked cigarette from an ashtray and takes a long, cool drag, before staring past the hanging plant leaves like an Amazonian warrior – at me.

  And wow . . . it’s quite a stare. I feel like one of the TAI-Fighters in Star Wars caught in the Death Star’s traction beam. Or a rabbit in the headlights of a speeding car. I know this stare is dangerous, but I just can’t seem to move.

  It’s mesmerising, demanding, irresistible . . .

  ‘How did he fucking get in?’ Roland demands, as he hurriedly ties his laces. ‘Why has he fucking got keys?’

  I’m expecting her to tell him the truth (in suitably fucking vulgar language): that I’m a fucking gardener who’s fucking here to fucking talk about her fucking garden, O fucking K?

  But she doesn’t.

  Instead, I notice a vicious twinkle in her eyes as she stubs out her ciggie in a plant pot and snaps, ‘It’s none of your damned business who he is. Who I choose to see hasn’t got anything to do with you, Roland. Not any more.’

  Whoah, I’m thinking. Who I choose to see? This isn’t looking good.

  I’m no longer a gardener.

  I’ve become a sexual taunt.

  I turn to face Roland, who’s just emitted the same kind of noise a cobra would if you trod on it barefoot during its siesta.

  As he advances towards me, I wish I had my Greensleeves overalls on (and, yes, they do actually have green sleeves). Or that I had some kind of ID I could flash at him, LAPD style.

  It’s quite all right, sir. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ve not actually been boning the Missus at all. My business here is strictly of a professional nature. I’m a qualified landscape gardener, you see.

  But what I actually say is, ‘Hey, dude. You’ve got it all wrong.’

  Roland stares at me like a live bat has just crawled out of my mouth.

  ‘Did you just call me dude?’ he demands.

  I can understand his cynicism and, yes, revulsion, over this term being applied to him. I mean, I can hardly believe I just said it myself. I’ve never called anyone dude before in my life. I don’t even know what dude means. I must be more freaked out by this situation than I thought.

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I insist.

  But Roland’s not listening to me any more. His attention’s back on her.

  ‘I knew it.’ His face purples in exactly the same way that Ben’s does when he’s filling his nappy. ‘I knew you had someone else as well, you hypocritical fucking bitch.’

  Perhaps I should come back later.

  I actually mean to say this out loud, but I don’t; I actually just think it.

  ‘Don’t call her that, you arsehole.’

  I actually only mean to think this, but I don’t; I actually say it out loud.

  The reason I only meant to think it was because, in this context (i.e. a row where this woman’s already accused Roland of being an unreasonable, tart-shagging, mouse-cocked mummy’s boy), his equally profane language cannot fairly be regarded as an escalation of verbal hostilities.

  The reason I actually did just call him an ‘arsehole’ out loud is because the phrase ‘hypocritical fucking bitch’ was my dad’s drunkenly slurred barb of choice in the horrendously unpleasant, downwardly-spiralling, gin-and-tonic-fuelled, Punch & Judy period he and my mother went through shortly before he walked out and ‘upgraded to a younger bird’ (his recent description, not mine).

  I never had the guts to stand up to my father then, on account of the fact I was eight, and he was an intimidating, bullying bastard, and even though me and Dad have been civil to each other for most of my adult life, not having it out with him is something I’ve regretted ever since. So much so, it’s now becoming apparent, that my subconscious has decided to go looking for some closure on it.

  And Roland is a prime transference target, make no mistake. For starters, he’s older than me by at least ten years. He’s stockier than me, too, just like my dad. Only where my dad’s weight was largely the result of drinking Guinness and guzzling pies, this guy’s bulk – I now notice, as he steps up into my face – is of the seriously gym-sculpted variety.

  It’s too late to back down now.

  And besides, how hard can a guy called Roland really be?

  If he was called Gary, then fine, I’d have cause for concern. Gary’s more guttersnipe, more street. Gary might have grown up on an inner-city sink estate and know a nasty trick or two. The names Dave or Tel would also set the old danger bells ringing. Hard bastard giveaways, the pair.

  But Roland? Roland? As in roly-poly-pudding-and-pie. Well, it’s not like the annals of history are exactly littered with many Roly the Impalers, or Roland the Destroyers, is it? (In fact, the only Rolands I can even think of are the speccy porker out of Grange Hill, circa 1982, and the stroppy one out of Tears For Fears– and the only thing remotely frightening about him was his wet gel frizzy mullet.)

  ‘What did you fucking say? What did you fucking say?’ This Roland really does say this twice, like he might not have been yelling it loud enough at me the first time.

  Which he was.

  Either that, or he’s got a speech impedi
ment of some sort, whereby he’s unable to stop repeating himself, in which case we may be here for quite some time.

  A fleck of his spittle lands on my cheek. He’s so close to me that I can see his contact lenses (tinted blue, the big faker) and smell his breath (a meaty and foetid tinned lasagne tang, reminiscent of the rancid pigswill Mrs Smith and Mrs Davies, the dinner ladies from Hades, used to serve up at my primary school and laughably refer to as ‘lunch’).

  ‘You know,’ I say, trying to sound simultaneously in control and urbane. ‘The fucking bitch thing. It’s not nice.’

  He looks me dead in the eyes. ‘Do you want to know what else isn’t nice?’

  Well, I’ve got a whole list, I’m thinking. There’s broccoli, bullies, Advocaat, tripe, Advocaat and tripe combined, divorce, exams, kids’ parties, and not forgetting, of course, Roland’s pestilential, bottom-popping, bilious Beelzebub breath . . .

  But then I realise that Roland’s question is not one in search of an answer. It’s the way he says it that’s the giveaway. It’s rehearsed, like a line he’s heard in a movie – and probably a crap movie at that. Probably one starring Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone, or Vin Diesel, where Chuck or Sly or Vin distract some credulous, hapless goon with just such a rhetorical quip, a second before they whip back their fist and –

  The Florence Nightingale Effect

  Splat.

  I spin in slow motion, like a ballroom dancer reaching out for his partner’s hands, but there’s no one here to catch me and I crash ignominiously to the ground.

  The room becomes a blur. My head starts buzzing. It feels like it’s swollen to ten times its normal size, like a beach ball that someone’s just hooked up to a car tyre air pump.

  As my vision begins to clear and I lie here flat on my back, I stare up through the assembled atrium foliage at the jigsaw of blue sky far, far above.

  I didn’t even see the punch coming, I dazedly muse. If indeed it was a punch, I consider, and not an Uzi bullet, or a lead baseball bat wielded by a steroid-abusing gorilla – which is certainly how it feels.