Olivia’s Luck (2000) (24 page)

I gasped and leapt away.

“We can see your feet, Mummy,” explained Claudia. “Under the door.”

“Oh! Oh no. I – I was just wondering if you wanted a cup of tea?”

“Well, we can make it ourselves, can’t we?” came back Claudia, witheringly. “We’re the ones in the kitchen.”

“Of course, darling, sorry,” I trilled back. Crikey, she sounded so – chilly. Still cross, I suppose, for humiliating her in front of Sebastian.

I crept shamefully off to the garden to wait; picked up my trug from a bench. Well, they could only be talking about me, couldn’t they? I reasoned bitterly. What else was there to talk about? I went to the end of the garden and buried myself in the herbaceous border, savaging a piece of ground elder that had seeded itself around the delphiniums, taking advantage of my abstraction these past few weeks. As I straightened up to chuck it on the lawn, I saw movement through the caravan window. I squinted. Ah, so Lance had made himself scarce in there, had he? Well, that showed a degree of tact, anyway. In the dim, distant past of all of three hours ago, I seemed to recall that he was supposed to be my lover, my boisterous young lothario, but in the light of a missing child, I didn’t think having a spare lothario about the place was necessarily a good thing. I heard the back door open and crouched down again, busying myself amongst the earthworms where I belonged, waiting for them to come to me.

“I’ll be off then, Liwy,” said Johnny from a short distance.

I gave a little jump, just to show I’d been totally absorbed. As I turned, though, his blue eyes held me. Squeezed my heart. He shaded them with his hand against the sun. I wiped my perspiring face with my hand and realised it was covered in mud. Yes, yet again, I thought bitterly, I’d dressed up for Johnny. Scratched and battered by brambles, and now covered in earth, I’d made myself utterly desirable. I thought longingly of the cream linen dress and my kitten-heeled shoes upstairs.

“Bye, then,” I said with a cheery grin. “See you in a couple of weeks.” I went to go back to my border.

“Look,” he took a step closer, “I’m just going to pop in and thank that chap down the road. It seems he did Claudia a really good turn.”

I swung back. “Oh! Hang on, no, don’t do that, Johnny!”

“Why not?”

Claudia strolled up beside him. I shot her a nervous glance. Had she…? No, bless her, she clearly hadn’t told him about the bellowing harridan episode.

“Oh, well,” I faltered, “because – ”

“Because Mum wants to. Don’t you, Mum?” She eyed irie beadily. “We thought we’d go together.”

“Yes, that’s it,” I breathed. “Take some flowers, do it properly, you know.”

He shrugged. “OK. But be sure you do, won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” I bristled. God, anyone would think I was a child.

“Bye then.”

“Bye.”

He hesitated, and for an awful moment I thought he was going to kiss my cheek. Like social acquaintances. I quickly bent down to collect my trug, concentrating on separating weeds from stones. By the time I’d straightened up, he was on his way – back up the lavender walk, through the rose arbour and round the side of the house. I watched him go. Claudia had gone with him, and I could hear her now, clattering about in the kitchen. I picked up my trug and walked slowly back to the house. Whatever happened, I thought, I mustn’t ask her what Johnny had said in the kitchen. That would be an intrusion on her privacy and on her relationship with her father. I put the trug by the back door, breezed in, humming a little tune, and put the kettle on. She was reading an old
Beano
annual at the kitchen table.

“All right now, darling?”

“Yes, thanks.”

My hand went for the tea caddy. I paused. Turned. “Um, Claudes?”

“Hmm?”

“What did Daddy say?”

She glanced up from her book. “What?”

“You know, your, um – little chat.”

“Oh. Oh, just stuff about wishing it didn’t have to be this way. Hoping I’d understand when I was a bit older. The usual bollocks.”

“Claudia!”

“Sorry. Just a bit fed up with it all at the moment.”

She got up and left the kitchen. I dithered for a moment, then hastened after her into the sitting room.

“Claudes, how about helping me make some pancakes? And then when we’ve eaten them, we could trough our way through a packet of biscuits in front of the telly!”

“No thanks, I’m going upstairs. I’ve got some homework to do.” She reached for her book bag behind the sofa and brushed back past me again. I bit my lip.

“Claudia, I’m sorry. I’ve said I’m sorry. I was worried about you, that’s all.”

She turned. “Well, I’m worried about you, Mum. You really lost it today. You’ve got no brakes.”

“Of course I’ve got brakes!”

“You haven’t, you’re out of control. I was talking to Lucy’s mum about it.”

“Claudia!”

“No, she was really helpful.”

“Was she indeed!”

“Yes, she said that she got a bit unhinged after her last baby. Said maybe you should take up yoga.”

“Yoga!”

“Yes, Lucy’s mum does yoga and she’s really calm. Really tuned in.”

Is she, by jingo? Well, she wasn’t so flipping tuned in today. I nodded thoughtfully, though, pretending to take it on board. At least it wasn’t the men in white coats. “Right, yoga. Yes, that’s sounds fun. I might look into that.”

“You should. Lucy’s mum can put her ankles behind her ears.”

Diverted that this should calm me down and not have me screaming for the fire brigade to come and unhook me, I nodded again. “Right. And…you think that might help me, Claudes? Feet behind the ears?”

She shrugged. “It might, you never know. Might stop you overemoting.”

My mouth hung open as she turned and mounted the stairs. Overemoting? Christ! She was ten! Bloody ten! Where was she
getting
all this? I gazed incredulously after her.

Later that evening I rang Molly.

“Where’s it all coming from?” I whispered, aware that Claudia was still working upstairs. “Do the teachers feed them this rubbish, d’you suppose?”

“I blame the media. You only have to open one of those innocent-looking
My Little Twinkle
comics to find it’s full of psychobabble. “Dear Tina, I feel a bit depressed at the thought of having to do my homework…Dear Jessica, have you thought of getting some counselling?” Honestly, they’ll all have disappeared right up their backsides by the time they’re teenagers. Why’s she so concerned about you, anyway?”

I confided the details of my hideous day, graphically depicting the ghastly Sebastian episode.

“Well, I’m not so sure you weren’t right,” she said slowly. “In fact, I’m not convinced you didn’t do exactly the right thing. I mean, why did he take her back to his house? Why not your house? It’s just as close. And I don’t like the idea of her handing over her clothes to him, either.”

“Don’t you?” I yelped, reaching for a cigarette.

“No, but having said that, I’m quite prepared to accept that I’m totally paranoid and I’ve only got like this since I’ve had children. If you’d told me that story three years ago I’d have said, “Gosh, what a perfectly sweet, helpful man,” but now I’ve got Henry I see paedophiles at every corner. I can’t read him
Fireman Sam
without wondering if Sam’s waving his hose about in a rather provocative manner. It’s biological, I’m afraid. Once you’ve had children all that a-stranger-is-a-friend-I’ve-yet-to-meet crap goes right out the window. A stranger is a potential child molester. It’s symptomatic of our overprotective natures.”

I sighed. “Perhaps, but you should have seen me, Molly. I was like a mad woman in there. I reckoned if I’d had a knife in my hand instead of a rake, I’d have stabbed him with it.”

“So he was lucky then. Just the tea and biscuits. I really don’t know what you’re worrying about, Liwy, and I’d certainly forget about the flowers. That might put all sorts of ideas into his head. In fact, I wouldn’t even bother to apologise in person. Just pop a little note round saying you’re sorry if you got the wrong end of the stick. But make sure you keep that ‘if’ in there. Because if ever I heard an iffy story, it’s this one.”

T
he builders were back the following morning, and with them, an uncharacteristic air of doom and gloom. As they unloaded their spluttering, terminal lorry and dragged in the usual hundredweight of cable, copper piping, planks, bags of plaster, bolts and brackets with which to decorate my kitchen, their faces were long, their voices muted.

“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 bugering’ 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 Ole ole 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 palate 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 ef 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 dead-heading the lilies or restraining the Rambling Rector from strangling Madame Hardy.