In the Company of Strangers

by Liz Byrski

  Nobody’s told him what he’s supposed to do now. ‘Oh that’s good,’ Mr Benson had said when Todd had mentioned that Catherine paid him to do some jobs around the place. ‘Very handy to have someone like you around,’ and he’d run off inside the office to answer the phone. But he hasn’t said anything about Todd’s pay. Perhaps he thinks Todd does all the sweeping and the pruning, washing out the workroom and sorting the rubbish and all the other stuff for free. He might have – if it was for Catherine. He’d have done anything for her, but she always paid him on time, and she’d given him some money just before she died. The last time he went up to see her at the hospital, before Mr Benson even turned up, she’d given him an envelope.

  ‘Did you open that bank account like I told you?’ she’d asked, and when Todd said he hadn’t she’d said, ‘Well, do it today. There’s some cash in here. You should pay it straight into the account. It’s to help you get organised, get a proper job, and don’t tell anyone, especially don’t tell your mum – it’s not for her to blow on dope or flagons of wine. Just keep it for yourself.’

  The envelope contained fifty one hundred dollar notes. He’d never seen so much money and it made him nervous. He’d never been into the bank although his mum had often sent him to the ATM with her card when she wanted some cash. But somehow he couldn’t imagine walking into the bank with five thousand dollars in cash. They’d think he’d nicked it, for sure. So he’d kept it with him at the caravan for a few days and then he’d taken it to Fleur and she’d promised to look after it for him at home.

  ‘The cash is to help you get on your feet,’ Catherine had said. ‘And Declan will pay you as usual. You’ll be sixteen in a few months and you can’t be doing odd jobs all your life. You’re far too bright for that.’

  He hadn’t spent any of it yet, but he might have to if Mr Benson doesn’t pay him soon. Catherine had paid him cash every week, but Mr Benson doesn’t seem to notice him and hasn’t asked him to do any of the other hundred and one things Catherine might have asked him to do. So he’d just kept doing stuff that needed doing, and this morning he’d gone up to the office and a woman called Alice was there, and she couldn’t help him, so now he’s killing time, waiting until Mr Benson comes back.

  Todd feels helpless, something he never felt when Catherine was there. She’d made him feel safe. Now he doesn’t know what’s happening, what he should be doing, what’s expected of him, but he knows he has to be strong and watch out for himself. Catherine would have stood up for him against anyone – his mother, the police, Paula, who obviously hates him, anyone. But now she’s gone. For more than three years she’d listened to him, talked to him, bucked him up, looked out for him and bawled him out when he fucked up.

  ‘Oi!’ she’d yelled at him across the pub car park that first night when she’d found him trying to break into her car. ‘Get your hands off my car.’ And she’d grabbed him by the neck of his hoodie and pushed him up against the nearside door. ‘Bit young to be nicking cars, aren’t you? Bet you can’t even drive.’

  He was insulted. ‘I did it before,’ he’d said. ‘Took a Honda and drove it down the beach.’

  ‘And got picked up in the process, I’ll bet,’ Catherine had said. ‘Did they charge you?’

  He’d shrugged. ‘They just give me a warning.’

  She’d slackened her grip then. ‘So why’re you doing it again?’

  ‘Dunno,’ he’d said, attempting to duck away but timing it badly.

  She’d grabbed him again and shaken him slightly. ‘Maybe you want to spend the night in a cell at the police station.’

  Todd said nothing, just shook his head. She was a big woman, tall and broad, and he’d realised then that he’d bitten off more than he could chew.

  ‘So why?’ she’d said. ‘Just for kicks, is it?’

  He shrugged. ‘S’pose so …’

  ‘Get in the car,’ she’d said, dragging him round to the passenger side. ‘It’s all right, I’m not going to take you to the police. I’m going to take you home and have a chat with your dad.’

  ‘Haven’t got one,’ he’d said.

  ‘Well presumably you’ve got a mum, I’ll talk to her instead.’

  He hadn’t known what to say then because the chances of his mum being sober enough to talk to were pretty remote. And it didn’t take Catherine long to work that out once they got to the caravan. His mum was totally out of it that night, like always, and she was more interested in watching ‘America’s Next Top Model’ than listening to anything Catherine had to say. ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ she’d said, without moving or taking her eyes off the screen. She could even pour another drink without taking her eyes off the TV.

  ‘Looks like this is between you and me then, kid,’ Catherine had said. She really was pretty old, and very bossy. ‘So, here’s the deal. D’you know Benson’s Reach? Okay, tomorrow after school you come up to see me there and we’ll sort this out. Can you do that?’

  He’d nodded, kicking at a bit of gravel at the foot of the caravan steps.

  ‘Straight from school then, and you’d better turn up because if you don’t I’ll be down at the police station reporting you for trying to break into my car. Got it?’

  Todd had nodded again, still not looking up.

  She’d gripped his shoulder then. ‘I said have you got it,’ she repeated, looking closely into his face.

  ‘I got it,’ he’d said.

  ‘Good.’ She let him go. ‘Straight after school, remember, Benson’s Reach, ask for Catherine.’

  And that was how it began, every day after school and often at weekends he went there, loading, unloading, digging, carrying, cleaning gutters, anything. Sometimes she’d just sit with him on the verandah and talk. She’d helped him with his homework, taught him about books and made him read stuff; sometimes she even made him read the newspaper. A couple of months before the end she’d organised to have a great big bed brought in from where it was stored and set up in the sitting room and then he’d gone with her into town to buy a TV and DVD player and he’d managed to set them up for her.

  ‘I’ll be like a hermit,’ she’d said, and he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. Hermits lived in caves or tumbledown shacks, not great big houses with loads of rooms. ‘I’ll be living in one room,’ she’d said, ‘just one room with everything I need. Cosy, less work, less tiring.’

  She’d got quite a bit thinner by then but she hadn’t lost her sense of humour and she hadn’t stopped talking to him about things she thought he should know: politics, climate change, and what would happen if all the grandmothers in the world stopped caring for their grandchildren and their aged parents free of charge. And she’d got him to read to her; it was good for both of them, she’d said.

  ‘Get a decent job,’ she told him late last year when he left school. ‘You promised you’d stay on at school but you haven’t, so for goodness sake start looking for a job. I’ll help you.’

  She was pretty sick by then, and looked terrible; most of her hair was falling out and she wore a scarf tied around her head, and her hands shook. In December he’d got a job in the supermarket, loading and unloading the trucks, collecting trolleys, washing floors, all that stuff. Three days a week and half a day on Saturdays.

  ‘You’re better than that, Todd,’ she’d said when he told her. ‘You could’ve got a better job, full time, more money. You’re a good worker.’

  But of course if he did that he wouldn’t be able to help out at Benson’s, and there was no way he was going to leave her in the lurch when she was so sick, but now she’s left him.

  Todd leans forward, peering between the raspberry canes to the office, and sees that Mr Benson’s car is back. Might as well get up there now and catch him before someone else does. He grinds his cigarette end into the earth, stands up, unzips his fly, pees on the butt to make sure it’s out, and heads towards the office.

  Declan looks gloomily at the sheaf of papers the woman at the council has given him to co
mplete, then adds them to the pile on the desk. The first thing he has to do is go up and see Mrs Craddock, who arrived about an hour ago. Alice hadn’t liked her – ‘prickly’, she’d said – and she’d encouraged him to go up and have a chat with her.

  And maybe you could walk me through the process for checking guests in and out, so that I’ll know what to do next time,’ she’d said.

  Declan thinks he’ll go and see his new guest first and is about to turn his back on the mess of the desk when he spots Todd heading in his direction from the berry beds. Alice had told him that Todd was looking for him earlier, so he thinks maybe he’ll have a quick word with him first. He needs to know exactly who Todd is and what the arrangements are for the work and, presumably, for paying him because he doesn’t show up anywhere on the payroll.

  ‘You should get rid of that boy,’ Paula had said to him the other day. ‘He’s trouble. I warned Catherine but she wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ Declan had asked.

  ‘Just trouble,’ she’d said, and she’d walked off with an armful of linen destined for the cottages. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  Declan watches as Todd weaves his way between the loganberries and along the path that leads around the lavender. He seems a nice lad, quiet, works well, but he can’t remember Catherine saying anything about him. Declan steps outside the office and calls out to him. ‘Hey, Todd, can you come and have a chat with me?’

  Todd gives him a thumbs-up and quickens his pace, as if he’d been waiting for the invitation. But as Declan slips into his chair behind the desk there is a clatter of footsteps along the verandah from the opposite direction and Fleur appears in the doorway.

  ‘Got a minute?’

  ‘Well, I …’ Declan hesitates, feeling his usual sense of inadequacy when confronted with Fleur.

  ‘Good,’ she says, moving quickly to the chair opposite him. ‘It won’t take long.’

  He shrugs, ‘Okay. Ruby’s arriving this afternoon and I know she’ll want to meet you.’

  The thing is,’ Fleur says, ‘I’ve just come to give in my notice.’

  She might as well have punched him hard in the middle of the chest. ‘Shit,’ he says, ‘you’re not serious, are you? We’ll be stuffed without you – no one else knows how the products are made. What can I—’

  Todd’s head appears around the door. ‘Ah! Sorry,’ he says, ‘I thought you said to come up to the office.’

  ‘I did,’ Declan says, getting up and walking over to him. ‘Sorry, mate, can you give me a few minutes, this is urgent.’

  ‘I’ll start on cleaning the gutters then, shall I?’ Todd asks.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll catch you later,’ Declan says, giving him what he hopes is a friendly rather than manic smile, and he closes the office door and sinks back into his chair. ‘What would persuade you to stay, Fleur?’ he asks, trying not to sound desperate. ‘I mean, we could talk about money, and I was hoping you might take on managing the gift shop as well. Not working in there – I mean, just a managerial overseeing role.’

  Fleur shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says, looking away from him out through the window and swallowing hard. ‘I think it’s time to go. For me this place was really about Catherine and now she’s gone …’

  ‘But do you have to decide now? I’m sure you and I would get on, and when Catherine’s friend arrives you and she …’ His voice fades away under her unflinching gaze.

  ‘I’ll stay till you’ve had a chance to settle in,’ Fleur says. ‘A couple of months maybe, but in the meantime perhaps you could be on the lookout for someone to replace me.’

  Outside the office Todd curses silently. He can hear every word and the prospect of Fleur leaving is a blow. After Catherine she is his favourite of all the people at Benson’s. He often sits in the workroom watching or helping her to mix the oils and the lavender and the other stuff, and decanting it into the purple bottles or the little white pots with the purple labels. Fleur is the only person who knows how to have a laugh around this place, and she’s got no time for Paula; won’t even let her in to clean the workroom.

  ‘Too bloody nosy by half,’ she’d said. ‘I’d rather clean it myself. Not that I’ve got any secrets in here, just don’t want her snooping around.’

  And Catherine had agreed and told Todd she’d pay him extra to clean up in there once a week.

  Fleur is like Catherine, a total control freak, but she always does the right thing by people. There’s no way she’ll leave until they find someone else – she wouldn’t leave anyone in the lurch. Todd knows they’ll never find anyone like her, and now he’s about to lose another friend and the last person he trusts. Straightening up he heads away from the office with a sigh, remembering as he does so the time he’d told Catherine how she was a control freak but always did the right thing.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she’d said, laughing. ‘I’ve done a lot of horrible things that I’m not at all proud of, let down and hurt people I really cared about.’

  ‘Yeah?’ he’d said. ‘Well I don’t know about that but you’re just, like, kind – kind to me, you treat me the same as Fleur or any of the others.’ He’d wanted to say that he was talking about respect but he would’ve felt like a dickhead saying it. That’s what it was though, respect. People – adults, teachers, and the like – always talked about respect, about how everyone should have respect for everyone else, but in Todd’s experience many of them didn’t have any respect at all for him, or for people like him.

  ‘What’re you doing hanging around here?’ Paula says, appearing around the corner of the house carrying an empty bucket and a bottle of Windex. ‘She’s not here to look after you now, you know. Nothing for you to do here now, you should just clear off.’

  ‘I’m going for the ladder,’ Todd says. ‘Got to clean the gutters.’

  ‘Gutters.’ Paula almost spits the word. ‘Just making work, you are. Well things are going to change around here, I can tell you that. You’d be better looking for a proper job instead of hanging around here sponging off other people. I heard your mother’s gone off with some bloke … Bali, they said, not coming back.’

  Todd turns away without answering. Paula’s always had it in for him, but it’s been a lot worse since Catherine’s gone, she just shoots her mouth off whenever she sees him. No respect for anyone, Paula, he thinks. No respect at all.

  ‘And mind you don’t mess up the verandah,’ she calls after him as he walks away. ‘I’ve just swept up.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself, you miserable cow,’ Todd murmurs under his breath, and he strides up the path to the old cattle shed where all the tools and fertilisers and other stuff are kept and drags out the ladder. Then, lugging it onto his shoulder, he makes his way back to the house, sets it up against the side wall and climbs up in time to see Fleur come out of the office and head back to the workroom. Mr Benson follows her out.

  ‘Todd?’ he calls, looking around for him. ‘Todd? You here?’

  Should’ve just waited by the office, Todd thinks, could’ve talked to him after all.

  ‘Up here!’ he shouts. ‘Doing the gutters like you said.’

  Mr Benson gives him a thumbs-up. ‘In the office when you’re ready,’ he says, and disappears back inside.

  Meanwhile another car is coming slowly along the rough track from the road and draws to a halt outside the office. Todd shifts his position on the ladder and watches as the driver gets out. She’s an old woman, short and sort of squarish, with thick grey hair done up in a bun that makes her look like an old-fashioned school teacher. Some bits of her hair have escaped from the bun and she pushes them behind her ears and looks around as though she’d rather not be here. It must be her, Todd thinks, Ruby, Catherine’s friend. He puts one foot onto the slope of the roof and leans forward to get a better look.

  ‘She’ll be coming soon,’ Catherine had said the last time he saw her. ‘Ruby, you’ll like her. She’ll sort everything out.’ A
nd she’d waved to him to look in the drawer in the night table. ‘There,’ she’d said, ‘that picture?’ It was a framed photograph of Catherine in one of those long dresses she always wore, standing with a shorter woman who was wearing a suit like she’d just come from the office. They were on the steps of a house – London, Catherine had said – and she had her arm around Ruby and was leaning towards her, but Ruby wasn’t leaning. They were standing very close together but Ruby looked as though she was standing there alone: very upright, a bit awkward, straight-faced, as though she didn’t really want to be in the photograph at all.

  ‘That’s us, when I went to stay with her in Islington,’ Catherine said. ‘Ruby. You can trust her, Todd. Don’t forget that.’

  Todd hasn’t forgotten, but he’s also learned to be cautious and he leans further forward now, straining to see her as Mr Benson comes out of the office to greet her. She looks okay, he thinks, and as he shifts his weight further onto the roof his foot slips, and before he even realises it the space between his legs opens up, the ladder crashes to the ground, and Todd feels himself shoot off the roof behind it.

  uby brushes her hair, winds it up into its usual tight bun and fixes it with pins. Bits of it immediately slip free and she sighs and tries to hook them back. Amanda is right, she thinks, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, she should have it all cut off; a nice short style that’s easy to look after.