by Mary Wesley
On her way back to the street she remembered the smell on the woman’s sheets when she had stripped the bed and conjectured that there must be a new lover; and because the smell nudged some part of her brain which had been inattentive as she worked, she worried until she had located the smell and, having found it, was amused. It was the aftershave advertised in the sachets stuck in the Sunday Times magazine which Mr Patel sedulously removed for his more discerning customers; and it was to one of these customer’s houses she was now on her way, her new invisible employer, Mr Wykes, who left her money ready and notes of polite thanks. And, she thought as she hurried along, there was the garden; there might be a reaction to her hopeful proposal.
A note was propped against an empty milk bottle on Sylvester Wykes’s kitchen table. Julia read:
1. Please, Mrs Piper, clean out the drawers of the desk in the sitting-room.
2. Apropos your suggestion re garden, have opened account with Garden Centre you advise. Please tell the man to spend within reason—
Julia let out a sigh of pleasure. Then: ‘Within reason?’ she whispered. ‘Apropos? Man, what man?’ The note went on:
3. I shall be away in the US for a month as from Monday; please find cheque to tide you over until I get back plus money for the man. The man again? She frowned and read on.
4. The answerphone is set, please do not answer the telephone. In case of trouble my office number is 071 100 2157.
5. No need to forward letters, but I will be grateful if you will chuck out junk mail.
The note was signed S. Wykes, with a cheque made out to Mrs Piper stapled to it. She fingered the cheque, puzzling over the amount, which exceeded her needs, then overleaf she noticed a postscript which said: As I have not had time to get an extra key cut, could you let the man in with your key? Should this be inconvenient, perhaps you could leave your key with the corner-shop—they seem obliging—for him to collect there? Sorry about this. In haste. S. Wykes.
Out loud, Julia said, ‘What a trusting old fellow!’ and, ‘Of course they are obliging!’ Upstairs there were signs of departure: cupboards left open, the bed rumpled and unmade, a torn Pan Am label on the floor, damp towels in the bathroom and blobs of shaving cream in the basin. Gathering the sheets from the bed, Julia compared their smell favourably with those of the woman journalist before bundling them with the towels into the washing-machine. While the machine churned she cleaned the drawers of the writing desk with a damp cloth, leaving them ajar, then addressed herself to the rest of the house. It was only when all was in order that she allowed herself to step out through the french windows and view the garden.
She stood for a long time in the gathering dusk before setting off for home via the Corner Shop, where she bought herself a lettuce, some grapes and a steak.
‘A steak.’ Mr Patel raised his eyebrows. ‘Fillet?’
‘I am celebrating.’ She told him about Sylvester Wykes’s garden.
‘And I was thinking you had a new boyfriend. The Wykes gentleman asked me to keep the key perhaps. I said of course I would when he came to cancel the papers.’
‘He seems to be a very trusting sort of old man.’
‘Not so much trusting as not caring, I think.’
‘Oh?’
Mr Patel raised both hands, clutching the air. ‘A gentleman with nothing to hold,’ he said.
‘Poor old thing,’ Julia said. ‘May I see the children?’ She went through the bead curtains to the room beyond, leaving Mr Patel to serve a customer.
Mrs Patel made her tea, which she drank holding the little boy on her knee. He was surprisingly heavy, gripping the front of her shirt with a pudgy hand, wriggling his bottom into a comfortable position on her lap and gazing up with his father’s lollipop eyes. ‘He is so very like his father,’ she said.
‘Story!’ the child shouted. ‘Story!’
Shyly Mrs Patel said something to the effect that Christy, too, had been the spit of his father. Julia knew this was what she said for Mrs Patel had said it often before and Mr Patel had translated. ‘That was so,’ she agreed, ‘and I—but come on, story. Three Bears?’
The Three Bears told with squeaky noises and dangerous growls, she put the child down, kissed the sleeping baby and said she must go. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, ‘I must,’ disentangling her legs from the little boy’s grip. ‘But I will come again and teach your mum English, it’s high time she learned.’
Mrs Patel, who understood perfectly, laughed.
As Julia left the shop, Mr Patel said, ‘There was a man asking—I thought new boyfriend perhaps a possibility? But then I thought, No,’ and he wagged his head, and since Julia was in a hurry and incurious he did not describe Maurice Benson.
Julia went light-footed along the street; she was hungry and looking forward to her steak, but most of all she cherished the prospect of working in Sylvester Wykes’s garden. Fifty yards from home, feeling in her bag for her key, her heart sank: the dog was waiting on the doorstep. Seeing her, it raised itself from its haunches, pricked its ears and wagged its tail.
Resolving to deny it, Julia came to a halt just as the Eddisons, coming out of the house, exclaimed, ‘Oh, it’s still there,’ as they slammed the door shut. ‘Shoo! Go away! Kick it or something, Peter.’
‘It’s a horrible stray,’ Angie Eddison addressed Julia. ‘The Fellowes say it’s been lurking all day. Perhaps one should call the police?’
Remembering occasions when Angie Eddison or perhaps Peter had called the police, Julia heard herself say as she inserted her key in the lock, ‘I don’t think this one will cause a domestic incident.’ To the dog she said, ‘Come on, then.’
Inside the house she found her knees were shaking and had to sit on the stairs where, as she hugged the dog, she heard Peter Eddison say, ‘How bloody rude!’ and Angie Eddison, ‘Stuck-up bitch, no wonder her husband left her.’
While Julia climbed the stairs to her flat with her new friend, Angie, crossing the street, said, ‘Gosh, that woman’s a weirdo! Did you see the way she looked at us? She slammed the door in our faces.’
Taking her elbow and hurrying to avoid an oncoming car Peter hazarded, ‘It’s a communal door.’
‘Of course it’s a communal door, darling. It’s a question of manners. We don’t slam it.’
Unwisely, and releasing his wife’s elbow, Peter said, ‘I wouldn’t call the way she shut the door a slam.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ Angie questioned. ‘What would you call it?’ When Peter did not reply she went on, ‘Just when we are spared the shrieks and whistles of her noisy brat, she imports a dog!’
Optimistically Peter suggested, ‘It may not bark.’
Angie said, ‘Whoever heard of a dog which didn’t? I tell you, it will be worse than thumps and bumps and obscene shouts when her ex came visiting; at least he wasn’t there all the time.’
Peter said, ‘They are both dead.’
Angie replied, ‘And the dog is not.’ Then she said, ‘Do I sniff an accusation of insensitivity? Are you reproaching me?’
Peter said, ‘Certainly not,’ and Angie said, ‘Well, then!’
But later in the pub, as they sat at a table with Janet and Tim Fellowes and some friends of theirs just back from a holiday in Kerala and eager to relate its charms, she reverted to the subject of Julia Piper. ‘You should meet this woman in the flat above ours. We hardly know her but she is thick with the family who run our Corner Shop, they come from somewhere like Kerala—Indian sub-continent. The wife can’t speak a word of English; she was imported. He’s been here for years—’
‘An arranged marriage,’ Peter interjected.
‘I know, darling, but it works, not like some; the Piper woman’s, for instance. That’s our neighbour,’ she explained to the travellers from Kerala. ‘Anyway, what I was leading up to when Peter interrupted was that, although this Indian wife doesn’t speak any English, this peculiar woman in the flat above us is great friends with her and their children were, too, until her child w
as killed in a car crash. But that’s another story. What I am really getting at is that it’s possible to communicate without words, without knowing the language. I expect you found that in Kerala—’
‘They all spoke English in our hotel,’ said the husband of the travelled couple. ‘But you were saying, they are friends, these two. What has—?’
‘They made friends when she was pregnant with the Whistleblower. They went to the antenatal clinic together,’ Peter interrupted.
The wife of the couple who had been to Kerala asked, ‘Who is the Whistleblower?’
Angie, checked in mid-flow, said, ‘How on earth did you know that, Peter?’, ignoring her new acquaintance’s query.
Peter said, ‘A chap told me, oh, ages ago. Because she couldn’t speak a word and was unlikely to understand, Mrs Patel was afraid to attend the clinic, so the Piper woman, who was going anyway, took her along.’
Deflated, Angie said, ‘Oh, really?’ Then, aware this was a social occasion, she laughed and said, ‘They must have looked pretty comical toddling off together, bean-pole Piper and tiny Patel, arm in arm I expect like a huge choc-ice.’
At which Janet, who up to now had sat silent, exclaimed, ‘That’s a thoroughly racist remark,’ and Tim, taking fright at this turn in the chat, hastily demanded a full report on their friends’ holiday.
SIXTEEN
IT WAS AS THOUGH someone deciding to till the garden had lost heart before they began. There was a fork, a trowel, a hand fork and a pair of secateurs, all brand-new; and in a paper bag a pair of gardening gloves with the price label still attached.
The earth in the beds round three sides of the oblong was grey and dead. Among residual stalks of last year or the year before’s annuals, not even a dandelion showed life. Julia forked the earth, turning it, breaking the gritty clods, digging as deep as she could, bending to extract bits of glass, snippets of Cellophane, rusty nails and plastic flower-pots which some foolish instant gardener had stuck in the borders, pot plant and all, leaving them to do or die, and die they had. Working the sterile earth she considered the glories of compost and farmyard manure and, as she dug, she vowed to rejuvenate this sad little London garden, surprise it, give it a shock.
The beds dug over, she fetched a broom and swept the paving between the beds. She noted with pleasure that it was not, as she had expected, of some cement composition but lovely Delabole slate. Sweeping the debris from the flower-beds into a heap, she shovelled it into a bin-bag. Then, taking the secateurs, she set to work on a wistaria clinging forlornly against the house. While pruning its excess of brittle tendrils with utmost severity, she dreamed of how in the spring the vine would bud and produce exquisite bunches of scented pea rather than waste its energies in a profusion of leaves.
She had left the dog in the street, partly because she hesitated to take it into her employer’s house, and perhaps too to see whether it might after all come to its senses and return to where it belonged. Twice as she worked she heard it bark, and at one moment growl loudly and savagely at some person, a man by the sound of his curses, but drowned in her thoughts and plans for the garden she did not pause to see what was up. Wearily at last in the gathering dusk she viewed her oeuvre, visualized the garden as it would be when she had planted it, the beds full of scented delights and between the flagstones cushions of aromatic herbs.
The dog barked again, calling her this time with impatient yelps. Reluctantly she went into the house, locked the french windows, put away the tools and, hitching on her coat, went out to the street. She was tired, but felt a lightening of spirit she had not experienced since Christy’s death. Gardening was therapeutic, she thought, and of course the dog was company. ‘I suppose I shall have to find you a name,’ she said to the animal as they set off together along the pavement.
Patel’s Corner Shop was still open. The dog waited outside; she went in.
‘Dog food?’ exclaimed Mr Patel. ‘You have a dog?’
‘I seem to have.’
‘A dog! Well, well! Winalot or Chappie?’ Mr Patel’s rendering of the word Chappie was upbeat and seductive.
‘I had better have one of each, please.’
‘Do not spoil the brute.’ Mr Patel put two tins of dog food into a bag. ‘Mrs Patel has taken the children to visit her sister,’ he said.
‘Oh.’ What I would love to put on those poor flower-beds, Julia thought, is some real farmyard manure, and some of the compost we made, Giles and I—but how to get it?
‘You are tired? Pot of tea?’ Mr Patel broke in on her thoughts, leaning across the counter radiating affection and sympathy.
‘No, thank you, dear Mr Patel.’ Should she buy dog biscuits? She looked round the shop. ‘You don’t happen to know of a van I could hire, or a car?’
‘A car? A van?’ His voice rose.
‘Ours, I mean mine was smashed.’ (Oh bloody, bloody Giles.)
‘Of course, oh, of course.’ She was afraid he would mention Christy, but he said, ‘Insurance? They pay up?’
‘Not enough.’
‘Very bad, very bad.’
‘I need to go to the country.’ The need grew in urgency as she spoke. ‘I want to walk with the dog and I want to fetch real manure, compost.’
‘Compost? What is it?’
‘Stuff you dig into earth to make things grow, and breed worms.’
‘What for?’
‘Did I not tell you I am working on Mr Wykes’s garden?’
‘I think you clean the house,’ said Mr Patel.
‘But I am working in his garden, too, did I not tell you?’
‘You did not.’
‘I thought I had.’
‘Stick a notice,’ suggested Mr Patel, pointing towards his notice-board. ‘I will not charge and I will enquire, but this compost, does it smell?’
‘Not much, but manure might.’
Mr Patel sighed. ‘I will write a notice. Now pot of tea?’ he suggested.
Julia shook her head. ‘Thank you and bless you, but I must go back and feed my new chum.’
‘Pedigree Chum!’ Mr Patel exclaimed. ‘I have that too, is excellent.’
‘Another time.’ Julia thanked him and went on her way, the dog trotting beside her. Because it did not occur to her that she might be followed, she failed to notice Maurice Benson who, snooping until she had let herself into the house where she lived on the top floor, retraced his footsteps to the Corner Shop and engaged Mr Patel in conversation and presently, to keep Mr Patel sweet, made one or two purchases.
Perambulating the shop he came to a halt by the notice-board and began reading the cards. As he read Mr Patel came up behind him, opened the case and pinned a new notice on the board. Wanted to Hire, Car or Van. Maurice Benson read it, and put two and two together. The telephone number he observed was the same as on several other cards, presumably the number of the shop. Mr Patel would take messages and pass them on to people wise enough to cherish their privacy like Julia Piper. Having selected a few items, Maurice returned to the counter to pay. Mr Patel took his money and gave change. ‘I see someone wants to hire a car or van,’ Maurice said. ‘I’d be interested. I have a car which does not earn its keep.’
Mr Patel said, ‘Oh, yes?’
‘I’d be ready to rent it, or drive it for that matter for whoever—’
Mr Patel said, ‘Oh yes?’ again.
‘So how do I get in touch?’
‘The person is already suited.’
‘But I just saw you pin the notice on the board, the person can’t be,’ said Maurice.
‘The person is,’ said Mr Patel.
‘But I just saw—’
‘In India it is custom to keep all notice-boards full. It is old custom, good for custom.’
‘Do you mean to tell me that half your notices are bogus?’
‘Bogus?’
‘Fake.’
Mr Patel laughed, not trusting Maurice Benson.
‘So no kittens neutered in need of a home?’
‘Kittens? Yes, sir, there are kittens, you want a—’
‘What about the goat?’
‘No goat.’ Mr Patel laughed again. ‘Is joke. You want Kit-e-kat?’
‘No, I do not,’ said Maurice Benson.
Mr Patel watched him leave the shop and, later that evening, when Mrs Patel had returned from visiting her sister, he telephoned Julia Piper and offered her the use of his van.
SEVENTEEN
THERE WAS NO RADIO in Mr Patel’s van; the windscreen wipers creaked across and across, sluicing the rain with a noise both soothing and monotonous.
The dog sat upright and anxious at first, but presently settled to lie across the seat with his jaw pressed warmly on Julia’s thigh; with London behind her, her thoughts yet stayed with the little garden so starved of attention and the first aid she planned for it.
She found herself comparing it with the only garden she knew well, her mother’s, and the work she and Giles had shared during arduous but agreeable hours of labour.
Long before planting the camellia hedge, the cost of which had so startled the village, there had been the weeding and trenching, raking and levelling of the entire area to Giles’s design. She had worked with him willingly, for it took her out of the house and the proximity of Clodagh’s constant demands and nit-picking criticism. Even so, propped on a sofa, her broken leg in plaster, Clodagh had overseen their activities shouting suggestions and directions through the open french window, her strong voice carrying, as Giles said, ‘as through a loud-hailer’, a remark which had made her laugh.
From time to time he would leave her at work to chat with Clodagh or, with the excuse that he had an idea for the book he was writing which must be noted before he forgot it, he would go to his room where once, needing to go to the lavatory and passing his open door, she had seen him asleep, sprawled on his bed, and been too soft-hearted to rouse him, excusing him for he sat up late keeping Clodagh company when she was, she said, in pain and sleepless. At that period she had judged Giles a kind and caring man to be so good to her difficult mother.
