by J M Gregson
The silence gave the car’s driver the entrance of a distinguished visitor. The small, dark-blue Vauxhall Corsa seemed to have been expected for a lengthy period by the time it turned into the close, and one or two of the spectators had to resist an impulse to applaud. Lisa Holt must have been conscious of her audience, but she was in no hurry to acknowledge it. She parked the car carefully near her new front door and made sure the handbrake was firmly on before she undid her seat belt. Then she slid from the car, gathered the various plastic bags containing her purchases, and turned towards the entrance to her house.
Only when she was almost there did she call a cheerful ‘Good evening!’ to acknowledge the attention of her new neighbours.
It was Ron Lennox who responded. ‘Have you got a minute, Mrs Holt?’ he said. It sounded a stiff form of greeting, but he was not sure what the correct address was for a newly divorced woman. And Lisa made him a little nervous in any case, as an older man; Ron found his mind leaping back over half a century, to the days when his father had taught him to raise his cap automatically to any adult female. Indeed, his hand moved a little towards his thinly-covered pate, then, as if it were disconcerted to find no hat there, dropped foolishly back to his side.
Lisa came back down the drive and stood at her own gate, only a few yards from the rest of them. They all stood close together but carefully just inside their own boundaries, as if these demarcation lines were a protection against an intimacy which might be embarrassing, either to them or to the people they addressed.
It is an odd relationship, that of neighbours; you are not automatically friends, but you certainly cannot remain strangers. Lisa Holt was more determined than any of them to preserve the barriers, until she decided just how far she wanted to venture out beyond them. She forced a smile, tried not to sound too brusque and dismissive as she said, ‘You look almost like some sort of committee waiting for me. What was it that you wanted?’
Phil Smart looked appreciatively at her dark-blue trousers and her red kitten-heeled shoes and decided this was a moment for gallantry. ‘Only your excellent presence, Lisa. A presence which would of course grace any occasion, formal or informal.’
‘We were just discussing some sort of gathering to mark our arrivals here,’ said his wife hastily. ‘We thought something quite informal. And we might even manage something outdoors, at this time of year. Rosemary has just put up the idea of a street party.’ Carol’s nervousness made her speak a little too quickly, so that the information came tumbling out like a collapsing house of cards.
‘It was only a suggestion,’ said Rosemary Lennox. ‘I just thought that with all the trials of moving in, none of us wants to be making formal meals yet.’ Or inviting any of these relative strangers into our houses for dinner parties, she thought. Let’s keep it all outdoors and informal, so that we can all of us back away from anything closer if we choose to; there’s at least one person whom I shan’t be inviting round for dinner.
‘A gathering like that sounds a good idea to me. It could be quite a lot of fun, if we get the right weather!’ said Lisa Holt. There was a collective but silent sigh of relief, and the other women wondered why it seemed that it was Lisa who was being asked to give final approval to their suggestions.
‘Robin has already offered to get us booze at a discount,’ said Phil Smart. ‘And his lovely wife has already offered to rustle up one of her splendid cheesecakes for us.’
Carol Smart threw her husband a look which was neither loving nor domestic, and Rosemary Lennox said hastily, ‘We could discuss that nearer the time. I’m sure we could all provide some simple food. It’s just a matter of co-ordinating what we do, so that we don’t duplicate each other’s efforts.’
‘In about a fortnight, we thought,’ said Robin Durkin. No one had suggested a time, so he thought he’d nip in and secure a Saturday which was convenient for him. He was often busy on Saturdays, with activities which he couldn’t discuss with anyone here. ‘And of course, we wouldn’t expect you to prepare anything elaborate, Lisa. After all, the rest of us are couples, whereas there’s only one of you, and—’
‘But an excellent one. One who more than makes up for the absence of a significant other,’ said Phil Smart unctuously.
Lisa Holt looked at him coolly. Her calm grey eyes sank his lechery suddenly down to the soles of his well-worn sandals. ‘Oh, you can put me down as a pair,’ she said with a smile at the company. ‘I’m sure I shall have someone with me on the evening in question.’
Three
They eventually agreed that the street party should be on Saturday the ninth of July. That was a little later than they had originally intended, but the first date which suited all of them.
It was agreed after a short debate that children would not be present on this first celebratory occasion. That was no problem for the Smarts, whose daughters were working in the north of England, or for the Lennoxes, whose single son was now at Cambridge university. Lisa Holt had suggested this Saturday for the party because this was one of the weekends when her nine-year-old son was spending the weekend with his grandparents.
The Durkins had no children; it was generally the opinion among the parents who inhabited the rest of the close that they would have enjoyed a much fuller existence if their union had been blessed with offspring. But people who undergo the more extreme trials of this life are normally anxious that others should have a taste of suffering.
The British weather is much maligned. It does not exhibit the extremes which cause such havoc in the rest of the world. Earthquakes are not a problem; hurricanes and floods are rare and not usually as destructive as elsewhere on the planet. But one undisputed fact is that no one can arrange an outdoor function in Britain and be certain that the day will be fine. So it surprised not a single occupant of Gurney Close that, as soon as they had set a date for the street party, the weather broke.
The new residents had some heavy rain, and even some unseasonably chilly days, in the three weeks between the setting of the date and the event itself. Rosemary Lennox said they must make contingency plans to take account of whatever the elements might throw at them. All the residents gallantly offered to use their new living rooms if necessary, but it was eventually agreed that in an emergency, they would use that of the Durkins, since they were awaiting the delivery of a new three-piece lounge suite and would thus have much empty space.
‘If necessary, we’ll all move in with our glasses and our garden chairs, but hopefully it won’t be,’ said Rosemary Lennox.
It wasn’t. The weather was unusually cooperative. It took up again a week before the party, and on the evening of Saturday the ninth of July, there was not a cloud in the bright blue sky, and but a zephyr of a wind from the Wye to rustle the fresh green leaves of the oaks at the end of the close.
The tasks of the evening were resolved along traditional gender lines. The men set up two long tables in the Durkins’s back garden, one with the copious supplies of drink which Robin Durkin had obtained at wholesale prices, the other with the food which the women had prepared, covered with linen and wire at the beginning of the evening to protect it from the unwanted attentions of insects and birds. The participants arrived together, carrying with them a variety of garden furniture to supplement the expensive wooden set which Alison Durkin had just purchased for the small patio beside the newly laid lawn.
It was a small group, and one which did not seem to promise a lively party. It was composed almost entirely from the people who had moved into the three new houses and the single bungalow between three and five weeks ago, rather than from old friends with many previous occasions to recall. Admittedly, they now felt that they knew each other quite well after exchanging notes on the various deficiencies of builders, water boards, electricity providers and local councils.
There was just one person who was not a resident of the close. Or, as Carol Smart suggested darkly, not an official resident. Jason Ritchie’s physique had been much in evidence around the house of L
isa Holt during the last three weeks. He had a splendid torso, which had become increasingly bronzed in the very warm June sunshine of the last few days. The tattoos on the upper arms were no doubt not to everyone’s taste, but they were a phenomenon as modern as the bearer himself.
Jason Ritchie was twenty-three years old. As far as Gurney Close was concerned, he was a gardener. It was not clear how knowledgeable or experienced he was in the field of horticulture, but he had toiled with some success towards the establishment of a garden in what had been the building plot of Lisa Holt’s house. His arrival and his activities had been observed closely by the other women in the new development, and with considerable dismay by Philip Smart, who had been indulging lascivious ideas of his own about the glamorous divorcee of Gurney Close.
Jason had worked long and hard, full of the energy and enthusiasm which went with his years. He had unearthed a bewildering variety of broken concrete, rusting metal strips, lengths of wire and other unwelcome constructional detritus, and taken them away to the tip in his battered white van. On several evenings, he had laboured with pick, spade and fork into the last of the summer light. And when his work was over, he had enjoyed a well-earned beer with his employer. And perhaps other rewards as well.
Phil Smart peered from behind the new curtains hung by his efficient wife and speculated darkly about the activities of this young stud. Jason was in his view the classic ‘bit of rough’ which educated women of Lisa Holt’s age and background were rumoured to find attractive. Phil feared the worst, which was that Lisa had not only taken this brawny young man into her bed, but would as a result find what he himself could offer her in that department lacking in both vigour and imagination. This breezy young ruffian had cast Phil Smart into an unwonted gloom.
And now Lisa had insisted upon inviting him to the party. ‘He’s almost one of us, really,’ she said cheerfully, running her eyes appreciatively over his shining biceps. ‘And you must admit, he’s done more to knock our new environment into a manageable shape than any one of us.’
The others looked at the front gardens of the new close and admitted glumly that Lisa was probably right. Of the little patches at the front of the houses, Lisa’s was the one which was nearest to a garden. There were still some ugly lumps of intractable clay evident, but the ground had been cleared of builders’ rubble and battered into something like submission. Where the rest of them were still laboriously unearthing half-bricks and bits of electric cable from earth which the long days of sun seemed determined to turn into concrete, Ms Holt’s little rectangle already had turf, installed two days earlier, and the shapes of flower borders were now clearly defined. Indeed, a couple of pot-grown roses had already been transported from the garden centre in Jason Ritchie’s white van; they now blazed defiantly crimson and yellow in the evening of the perfect day.
All of them had been working hard during the day, but they had disappeared into their residences for an hour before the party began, to shower and prepare for this evening of pleasant celebration. The women, at least, showed the benefits of forethought and effort. They emerged in a variety of colourful and becoming summer dresses, estimating each other carefully, even among the compliments they flung out cheerfully as they arrived in the Durkins’s back garden at around eight o’clock.
The men were chivalrous in exactly the sort of way that was expected of them. There was not too much variation in their leisure shirts and chinos and sandals, the male uniform where al fresco informality was determined to be the order of the day. Philip Smart, startlingly vivid in a bright green shirt and sage trousers, was very complimentary about Rosemary Lennox’s newly shaped hair and her dark-blue dress, singling out the oldest woman at the party for his attention with uncharacteristic tact.
Robin Durkin fondled his wife’s bare shoulders in a display of uxorious attention which bordered upon the embarrassing, as she told him sharply when she had had enough of it.
Ron Lennox felt emboldened to assure Alison Durkin that her dark hair looked very splendid. He had not seen it done before in this loose and carefully informal style, which she had chosen for the party. The normally boisterous Ally seemed rather muted at the beginning of the evening, and Ron was rewarded with something very like an unexpected blush on her rather pale face.
Phil Smart took a huge breath and plunged in at the deep end. ‘You light up the whole close,’ he assured Lisa Holt. ‘I don’t know how you manage to work so hard in your new house and still come out here looking like something out of Vogue.’
‘I don’t think Vogue deals much with Marks and Spencer’s summer dresses and sandals from the seconds shop,’ said Lisa dryly. ‘But thanks for the thought all the same, Phil.’
‘And don’t kid yourself she works that hard.’ Jason Ritchie came round the side of the Durkin house, an immaculate white tee shirt stretched tight over his muscular chest, the barbed wire tattoo winding its way impressively around his biceps to disappear beneath the cotton. ‘There’s only one person does the work around Lisa’s place, and that ain’t the owner.’ He bathed the divorcee in a look that seemed to Phil Smart altogether too proprietorial; it roamed unhurriedly from her blonde head to the well-pedicured feet upon the grass. Jason’s labours, the look seemed to say, extended far beyond the garden. And the way in which Lisa Holt grinned back at him implied that the work he delivered in every different area was accounted wholly satisfactory.
The two men, with almost thirty years and a ton of resentment between them, stared hard at each other, hostility hardening in this least appropriate of contexts. But Carol Smart, with a world-weary expertise born of long practice, thrust a beer can into Jason’s hand and a glass of wine into her husband’s, and said, ‘I’m sure we all wish we were making the rapid progress you are in Lisa’s garden, Jason. But then you have youth and strength on your side. I suppose I can’t expect the same rate of progress from Philip.’
Jason looked at the attractive forty-three-year-old appreciatively. It suited him sometimes to play the young stud with more brawn than brains, but he understood exactly the sort of diplomacy which Carol Smart was attempting here. He smiled, looked deliberately away from the panting Phil Smart, and said, ‘My dad always says that you can’t rush gardening. You make mistakes if you try to rush it.’
The moment passed. It had been a tricky one, the kind which could easily have got the evening off to a bad start. But once the drink began to flow, the strange dynamics of this diverse little group of people took over and things bowled along happily, even hilariously. The only common factor they had was that of beginning life anew in the close, but it was a surprisingly helpful one. The fact that they had moved in at this time of year, when the days were longest and the weather at its best, meant that they had seen a lot of each other as they moved their possessions into their houses and began the struggle to create gardens out of a building site. They had spent hours of digging, tugging and cursing in equal measure, commiserating over aching limbs and backs which seized up after hours of abuse.
Now they exchanged stories and recalled the more entertaining disasters of the last month, which were already being embellished with the hyperbole of nostalgia, as alcohol assisted imagination and the participants relaxed into a perfect English summer evening. The food was excellent, and Rosemary Lennox’s organizational skills had ensured that the selection of dishes they had brought to the trestle table in the Durkins’s garden was both varied and complementary. And the drink flowed, loosening tongues and weakening inhibitions.
The laughter became more genuine and more prolonged over two hours of recollected disasters and plans for the future; the decibel level rose higher and higher, until any listener from a hundred yards away would have thought that there were far more than eight people involved in the party. But there were no near neighbours for them to disturb. The fishermen a mile away down the river wondered about the source of this noise and laughter as the evening moved into dusk, but they were too busy with their own concerns to have any real interes
t in such speculation.
Robin Durkin had paid the builder to construct a small, unofficial gate in the back fence of his garden, to give him access to the land behind. He smiled and tapped the side of his nose when the others asked him about it. ‘All strictly speaking illegal, I’m sure,’ he said airily, in answer to their queries. ‘There’s no official footpath until you get to the banks of the river, but it’s only pasture land and I shouldn’t think anyone’s going to bother about it.’
Emboldened by drink and the courage which comes from being in a group, they went out together and walked for a few minutes beside the river, admiring the deep crimson sky where the sun had disappeared over the Welsh hills, watching the numerous rings disturbing the still surface of the water as the trout rose towards the invisible flies. There was no one about here, but the occupants of Gurney Close found themselves whispering, perhaps because they felt themselves conspirators in this minor trespass, more probably because they did not want to disturb the peace of these magical moments by the river.
And then they were back, lounging in their garden chairs with glasses refilled, full of good humour and relaxed reminiscence as dusk moved into darkness. The last of the breeze had disappeared with the sunset, and the night retained its summer warmth. There were not many better places in the world to be than the heart of England on an evening like this, Ronald Lennox announced appreciatively, and the others nodded sage agreement and sipped contentedly.
It was at this time that Philip Smart made an unexpectedly graceful and well-turned speech about the excellence of the food, the quantity of the drink, and the brilliance of Rosemary Lennox’s original concept of an evening of celebration like this. It reminded all of them that he could be more than a lecherous bore when he chose to be: Phil caught the mood of the moment; the sense of general bonhomie; the pleasant, uncritical, alcoholic lassitude which seemed to be overtaking all of them.