Puppies Are For Life (2 page)

Harvey Webb prised himself from the warm leather interior of his Mercedes, set his face against the wind, and threw the door shut behind him. The discreet ‘clunk’ of the lock usually pleased him inordinately, only right now it hardly registered; his mind was on other things. How infuriating that he’d forgotten to get Julia something for her birthday in town!

He’d already bought her the main present – a garnet and pearl bracelet – but she liked to have lots of little things to unwrap. And the last thing he wanted right now was to disappoint Julia.

Oh, if only he had thought of it sooner. He could have scooped up armfuls of suitable tat in Bath, but all that talk with Jerry and Adam had put it right out of his head.

Or maybe too much lager had, he conceded, looking up and down the deserted village street, although to tell the truth he always seemed to be forgetting things lately. It wasn’t as if he had much to think about either. Bugger all, in fact. But these days it seemed that the more time he had to think – and
the less he had to think
about
– the more forgetful he became. That was what redundancy did for you.

Turning up the collar of his trenchcoat he began to pick his way across the sodden grass verge in search of somewhere that might sell gifts, but all he could see ahead of him was a knitting wool shop with ugly yellow film stuck over its window and a bakery that had sold its last crumb. Unless … yes, he was sure he remembered correctly: across the green there was a craft shop of sorts. He’d spotted it the day he and Julia had moved into the Old Dairy and she’d sent him out to find milk.

And was that the biggest mistake they’d ever made, he wondered for the hundredth time as he pushed on the plate-glass door of Heyford Handy Crafts: moving out to a village, when all they’d ever known was the town?

‘It’s so, so pretty here,’ Julia had said when she’d first set eyes on the place, dancing up and down the narrow streets in unsuitably high heels, and he couldn’t help but admit that it was. Then. Hard to resist in mid-summer was the chocolate-box setting of Upper Heyford with its big round duck pond, its fourteenth-century church, its thatched public house and matching cottages – all grouped pleasingly round the obligatory patch of green.

But it wasn’t so pretty now. Harvey shivered. No, not in November. Gone were all the flowers that had spilled freely from countless basket arrangements; gone were the tables outside the Golden
Fleece. The trees were naked, the grass clogged with leaves. It looked downright dismal under heavy grey skies, and he sighed, longing for spring to come round, as he elbowed his way into the shop.

Reg Watts leaned forward on his heavy arms and leered at Susannah on the other side of the counter.

‘Well, Mrs Harding,’ he said above the jangle of the old-fashioned bell, ‘what have you brought me this time? Dried flowers? Corn dollies? Or something I can actually sell?’

‘You did manage to sell some of my flower arrangements, Reg,’ Susannah replied with icy politeness. She glanced in the newcomer’s direction, annoyed at the untimely intrusion. This was the last thing she wanted: an audience to witness her battle with Reg Watts.

The man, she noticed, had strolled to the far corner of the shop and was pretending to examine china mugs. But somehow she just
knew
he was listening to every word.

‘Yes, I know I sold a
few
of your things,’ Reg moaned, taking a mangled handkerchief from his pocket and arranging it in a pad. Judging by his nasal twang he had a very bad cold indeed. ‘But everyone’s doing dried flowers these days,’ he went on, elaborately wiping his nose. ‘They’re all going to classes to find out how it’s done. The only thing they come in here for is to pick up ideas. No, there isn’t much call in these parts … Have you
tried hawking them round the shops in Bath?’

The stranger had picked up a glass paperweight and was holding it up to the light. Or was he using it as an excuse, and really studying Susannah?

‘Coals to Newcastle,’ she snapped. ‘Every other shop in Bath seems to be stacked to the eaves with dried flower arrangements. But I didn’t come to talk about those, Reg. Take a look at this.’

Under Reg’s cynical gaze she pulled back layers of tissue from the parcel she had placed on his counter. ‘Now, you don’t have anything like
this
in your shop, do you?’

‘Hmm.’ Reg reached out reluctantly to grasp the item with both hands. He tipped his head backwards to view it from under his glasses, then ducked his head forward again to peer at it over the top. Susannah wondered why he bothered to wear the things when they so obviously didn’t help.

‘No,’ was the ultimate verdict. ‘No, I don’t stock anything like this. And do you know why?’ Reg beamed at his victim triumphantly. ‘Because there isn’t any call for the likes of this either.’

Susannah gritted her teeth. ‘But how do you know there isn’t going to be a demand for something,’ she persisted, ‘if you never actually display it?’

She glanced round the shop, avoiding the stranger’s eye. It was crammed with useless junk. In all honesty there was no room for more, and her teapot stand would be lost among the chaos. The
world was full of hopeful artists, potters, and makers of useless knick-knacks. What chance did she stand? Then she saw the stranger’s hand reach out towards a rag doll.

‘Display it?’ Reg was muttering. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. The thing is –’ He twirled the stand in one hand. ‘Well, what I mean to say is … what exactly is it?’

‘It’s a teapot stand, of course! Or any kind of pot stand for that matter.
Anyone
can see that.’

Susannah whipped round in amazement; Reg’s only other customer had come up behind her and stolen her very words. She found the man smiling disarmingly above her head – and rewarded him with a hostile stare. Oh, how she already hated him for his suave, easy-going confidence. Clearly nobody had ever made
him
feel small, insignificant, and utterly, utterly useless. It was going to take more than a frozen expression from her to knock him off his perch.

‘Harvey Webb,’ he told her, nodding at her agreeably and reaching across to pick up the stand for a closer look. He turned it over in his hands while Susannah cringed. She now wanted nothing more than to throw the thing in the bin, forget the whole project, give up the idea of doing Something and being Someone. Criticism from Paul was bad enough; criticism from the rest of the world was unbearable.

‘This is really rather nice,’ Harvey murmured eventually, his thumbs sweeping the mosaic surface
in obvious appreciation. In silence he studied the frame. ‘You made the whole thing yourself?’ he asked, slanting Susannah a glance.

‘Yes!’ she hissed back, taking them all by surprise, and she snatched the piece from his hand. There was one thing worse than criticism, she decided, and that was male condescension. Arrogant sod. At least Paul had been honest. ‘Yes,’ she went on, lisping childishly, ‘I made it all by my little self. Now isn’t that just amazing? And Daddy didn’t help me at all.’

The two men gawped at her as she thrust the stand back in a carrier bag.

‘Now,’ she said, her voice normal again as she dusted off her hands, ‘if you’ll both excuse me, gentlemen, I’ll take up no more of your time. I’ll just run along home and amuse myself some more.’

She pulled open the door, stumbled over the threshold, and let the door clang closed behind her. Reg and Harvey were left still gaping, their eyebrows raised in bewilderment at the swinging ‘Closed’ sign.

Outside on the pavement Susannah ducked her head into the wind and headed blindly down the street, feeling hot-cheeked, light-headed and unreal. She wiped her forehead with a shaking hand. What had got into her lately? She had never behaved like that before in her entire life. Well, not often. She could take a lot of ‘aggro’, but sometimes something would snap and she would go hurtling over the edge. She wished she hadn’t made an
exhibition of herself just then, though.

‘Hey!’ a voice said behind her, ‘you forgot to pick this up.’

She stopped. Harvey what’s-his-name hadn’t actually followed her, had he? Not after the things she’d said? But he had. And he was holding out her black leather handbag with SWH stamped on the flap in gold. She had forgotten she had put it on the counter.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, taking it sheepishly from his outstretched hand, and expecting him to go straight back to the shop. But he didn’t. Somehow he had managed to position himself ahead of her so that he was standing in her path, and she realised for the first time how stomach-churningly good-looking he was, in a Richard Gere-ish kind of way. He stood looking directly at her, his hands now stuffed into the pockets of his trenchcoat for warmth, an infectious smile twitching at the corners of his lips.

Time kicked its heels while she eyed him back belligerently, but eventually she felt that one of them had to say something, so nodding at the doll he carried tucked under his arm with its felt feet sticking out, she said, ‘I hope Reg doesn’t take you for a shoplifter. Hadn’t you better go back?’

‘What?’ He looked vaguely at the shop, then at the upturned doll. ‘Oh, it’s all right, don’t worry. I chucked a plastic card at him on my way out. I’ll go back and settle up properly when we’ve had our cup of tea.’

‘Our –?’ She looked at the hand on her arm – a moderately large hand with broad, straight fingers.

‘Well,
I
could certainly do with one.’ His eyes roved over her face. ‘And I rather think you could too.’

There was no question of refusing; he didn’t give her a chance. He hustled her down a cul-de-sac before she could even begin to think what was happening. And in no time at all they were sitting opposite each other in the Copper Kettle with the doll propped against a sugar bowl as chaperone.

‘Not as comfortable as I’d hoped,’ he remarked, grimacing as he tried to settle himself on his chair. ‘One of those places that looks better from the outside than it actually is, I’m afraid. I haven’t sat on one of these horrible things since my Sunday school days.’

As he bent to examine the cane seat she saw that his hair grew thick and strong down the back of his head and was hardly streaked with grey at all. Paul’s was entirely grey and it didn’t grow right from the forehead like it used to either. There ought to be a way, she mused silently, of telling a man’s age by the amount his hair had receded. Like the rings on the trunk of a tree. A decade per half-inch perhaps? But that wouldn’t work; it would make this man young enough to be her son, which he was patently far from being.

‘Oh dear,’ he said, coming up a little flushed, ‘I suppose that dates me horribly, doesn’t it, talking about cane seats in Sunday schools?’ It was as if
he’d read her mind. ‘In this day and age it’s probably pre-formed plastic, if they have them at all. I mean, I don’t know … do kids still go to Sunday school these days?’

Susannah hesitated. She didn’t want to sit drinking tea with a perfect stranger, making polite conversation about chairs and Sunday schools, of all things. And he hadn’t even asked her if she’d wanted to come; just assumed she’d be delighted to have his company. She firmed her lips and stuck her jaw out a little, making up her mind to answer him only in monosyllables. But he was a difficult sort of person to dislike and she relented almost immediately.

‘Mine went to Sunday school for a while –’ she told him, smiling faintly in spite of herself – ‘until they learned to vote with their feet, that is. But – that’s going back quite a few years now. I don’t know what goes on these days either. Anyway, if it’s any comfort to you, I remember having chairs like this at Sunday school too. So there; that dates me as well.’

And don’t you dare come out with any pat little ‘Oh, surely you’re not that old’ nonsense
, she silently warned him. But he didn’t and she felt disappointed. Nor did he pick up on the mention of children, from which she deduced that he didn’t have any of his own or he would have leaped at the chance to talk about them, which was a shame because he looked as if he would have made a nice dad.

But now he seemed to be gazing about him and wondering what to say next. No doubt he was already regretting having brought her here and couldn’t wait to get away again.

‘Ugly little trollop, isn’t she?’ he came out with in the end, the laughter lines round his mouth deepening good-humouredly. ‘Our friend here, I mean –’ he inclined his head in the direction of the doll and added in a stage whisper – ‘not the waitress.’

Susannah glanced at the elderly waitress shuffling from table to table and allowed herself another small smile, then she smoothed creases from the doll’s dress with hands that she didn’t know what to do with. She suddenly felt warmer than she had all day. This man was turning out to be quite a charmer. But – she pulled herself up sharply – didn’t she know better by now than to put trust in charming men?

‘Why did you choose this doll,’ she wondered out loud, ‘if you really think she’s awful?’

‘Well –’ he watched Susannah’s deft fingers tweak the doll’s clothes into better shape – ‘there was another one sitting beside her, dressed in a creamy lacy underthing and a coat of green – um –’

‘Velvet.’

‘Is that what it was? Yes, I suppose so. Well, I’d have preferred that one if it had been up to me. Much more tasteful, I thought. But I knew Julia wouldn’t agree with me. She never does. She’s more a frills and ribbons type, you see.’

‘Uh-huh. Julia being your … daughter?’