A Spring Affair

by Milly Johnson

  ‘Hello, Deb,’ said Lou. ‘It’s really nice to see you.’

  ‘Hello, Lou. How have you been?’

  Lou opened her mouth to reply, ‘Fine,’ but nothing came out.

  Deb looked just the same as always, give or take a very different hairstyle. It had been cropped when Lou had last seen her; now it was almost bum-length and made Lou realize just how very long they had been apart.

  Lou suddenly felt ashamed, unable to put this right, unworthy even to be asking. It was such a terrible, terrible thing that she had done. How the hell had she ever let that happen? Lou couldn’t speak; something roughly the size of Everest was blocking her throat and wouldn’t be gulped away. Then, against all her best intentions, Lou started to cry. And the more she tried to stop it, the faster those tears oozed out of her ducts, as if they were being pumped out by a saltwater artery.

  Deb immediately came around to her side of the table and hugged her.

  ‘Give up, you daft tart. Now look what you’ve made me do! Everyone will think we’re lesbians.’

  Lou snorted with involuntary laughter, still crying even though she desperately wanted to stop. She couldn’t bear it that she was drawing attention to herself, but Deb’s perfume was the same as she always used to wear and it hurt her heart to smell it. Scents were very powerful at dragging Lou back to a past she couldn’t otherwise access. She couldn’t smell Aramis without being back on her dad’s knee whilst he read The Magic Faraway Tree, putting on the voices of Moon-Face and the mad deaf bloke with all the saucepans.

  A young fresh-faced waiter arrived to take their order and jiggled about behind them for a while, not knowing whether to melt off and come back again in a few minutes.

  ‘Two coffees, please, and two of your biggest pieces of cheesecake if you have any,’ said Deb, in her best Hyacinth Bouquet voice which made it sound as if big pieces of cheesecake were the norm for ladies of quality who lunch.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lou said, as Deb handed her a serviette. ‘I wasn’t prepared for this. I don’t even know where to start saying what I feel.’

  ‘Elouise Winter, if I had any negative feelings about us meeting again, I wouldn’t have turned up. You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to pick up the phone and see what we could do to sort this out. I have a few sorrys of my own to say too, you know.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I bet I look gorgeous now, don’t I?’ said Lou, tipping her head up to let the last of the tears drain back from her eyes.

  ‘Absolutely gorgeous. Besides, I’ve always liked pandas,’ said Deb.

  Lou smiled a red-eyed smile as she did a quick repair job on her face with her powder puff.

  ‘How’s your mum these days?’ asked Deb, sitting back down again.

  ‘Oh, she’s…just the same. Still playing one-upmanship with her mate Vera, although Vera is up on points with a holiday to the Bahamas.’

  ‘And Victorianna?’

  On the sound of her name, they instinctively both held up their fingers in the sign of the cross and chuckled together.

  ‘She is most definitely still the same. She gets us to send over parcels of English stuff. She’s shacked up with this bloke who’s stinking rich and looks older than God’s dog.’

  ‘There’s a surprise!’

  ‘Any man on the scene for you?’ asked Lou.

  ‘There’s been a couple, but…well, one wasn’t special enough and the other one thought I wasn’t special enough,’ said Deb. ‘I’m having a rest from the unfairer sex for a while, and jolly nice it is too.’

  ‘How’s your mum then?’

  ‘Oh, we lost her last year, Lou.’

  Lou felt her eyes filling up again, especially when Deb carried on, ‘It was a toughie, I have to admit. You know how lovely she was. I had my sister there but I wished I’d had you to talk to.’ She held up a warning finger as Lou started wiping at her eyes with her serviette. ‘Look, Lou, we can’t change the past, but we’re here now, so let’s make each other a promise to not look back. Please, let’s just go forward.’

  They clutched hands over the table, just as the waiter arrived with their coffees. He had never actually seen any real-life lesbians before, and the image of these two good-looking mature women ‘at it’ would feature in a few of his future fantasies.

  ‘He definitely thinks we’re a couple,’ said Deb, pointing at his back. ‘I think we’ve turned him on. Pervy little bugger.’

  Lou laughed. She realized then why she liked Karen so much. She was a good girl in her own right, but there were so many echoes of Deb in her.

  ‘It’s quite a varied menu here, isn’t it?’ said Deb with raised eyebrows as she read from the ornate leaflet propped up beside the cruet. ‘What the frigging hell is Olivian Chicken?’

  ‘Don’t know, but it’s offset by Simple Vegetables,’ said Lou.

  ‘How’s Phil?’ asked Deb, unconsciously making the small leap in subject-matter. ‘More to the point, how are you and Phil?’

  ‘Oh, we’re fine,’ said Lou, aware that they had temporarily strayed into Polite Land again, where they would only skim the surface of the subject. ‘We’re still together. He works six or seven days a week–he’s still obsessed by cars.’

  She didn’t say she was happy, Deb noted.

  ‘You ever…managed…did you have any…?’

  ‘No, no children,’ said Lou, saying ‘the word’. ‘It obviously wasn’t to be.’

  ‘You never went for IVF or anything?’ Deb was amazed. She knew how much Lou had wanted a child of her own.

  ‘It’s pretty gruelling, is IVF, and I know that Phil just wouldn’t do all the stuff it entails. We know he’s OK, of course, because of his twins, so it’s obviously me who has the problem. Anyway, I know he doesn’t really want children, so there’s not much point in me going to be prodded and poked, is there? I’ve come to terms with it. I’m fine, really,’ said Lou.

  Yeah right, thought Deb, changing to a lighter subject about their jobs. There would be plenty of time to catch up on what was really happening in Lou’s life. It was so good to see her, she thought. She had a couple of extra lines around the eyes since their last meeting, but so what? She looked a hell of a lot nicer than the last time Deb had seen her, reduced to the image of the gaunt, walking dead. Deb noted her friend’s still-lovely kind face and her curvy pink smile, but she wasn’t as content-looking as Deb would have expected her to be. Not after all she went through to get that piece of crap back anyway. There was definitely something going on behind those cat-green eyes of Lou Casserly…Winter.

  ‘Are you still working in Sheffield?’ Deb asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m still stuck in Accounts. Great bunch of people, except for the office manageress who is a total witch, but it’s a job. You?’

  ‘Yes, still living just outside Maltstone, still running Mrs Serafinska’s bakery, still the same bunch of Derby and Joaners working for me, plus an absolutely delicious eighteen-year-old student called Kurt. And yes, I’m still dreaming of opening up Working Title Casa Nostra and ruling the world.’

  ‘Cheesecake,’ interrupted the waiter, slightly disappointed that they just looked like two old friends having coffee now and there was no sign of any girl-on-girl action.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Deb, poking the hardened exterior of a dessert that was as fresh as one of her Uncle Brian’s jokes. When the waiter had gone to another table she whispered over to Lou, ‘We would never have served stuff like this in our establishment. This cheesecake is so old that I don’t know whether to eat it or buy it a pension book cover.’

  Lou smiled and speared a forkful of her portion. It was passable, although it had far too much sugar and not half enough lemon in it.

  Deb had another look at the menu and put it down with a huff.

  ‘The owner has been watching too much Marco Pierre White on the telly!’

  ‘You still fantasizing about him?’ said Lou with a grin.

 
‘Of course,’ said Deb. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Absolutely!’

  ‘The only man we were ever likely to scrap over bedding.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go it alone and open up a coffee shop?’ Lou asked Deb midchew.

  ‘Didn’t want to,’ said Deb. ‘Plus I don’t think I could have. It was always a joint or neither thing.’ She melted into a soft couch of nostalgia. ‘It was fun planning it all, wasn’t it? Mum was more excited than me, I think. Oh–and remember you snogging the bank manager?’

  ‘I didn’t snog him, I just hugged him.’ Lou smiled. ‘Do you know, I found the big file recently? Remember the “Brando” you were going to invent?’

  ‘Oh yes, my Brando! I never did find anything good enough to bear the holy name. Talking of good enough, I’ve never yet been in a coffee shop where I didn’t think we could do better, and I’ve been in lots of them. I’m stuck in a state of eternal research.’

  ‘I know how you feel. It didn’t die for me either.’

  ‘Really?’ said Deb, tilting her head. ‘Because I’ll tell you this, Lou babe, it certainly didn’t die for me.’

  Their eyes locked and each transmitted something to the other that wasn’t quite formed yet. Psychic microbes made up of memory cuttings and the raw, thrilling emotions associated with them of what could have been. Lou felt a glimmer of excitement that she tried to stop reason and sense and thoughts of Phil and her mother spoiling. She looked at Deb who was feeling it too, she just knew it. This is crazy! We’ve only just met again. Let’s not get carried away. Let’s be sensible! But Lou’s mental processes were in overdrive.

  ‘So, where do we go from here?’ she said. ‘Are we going to see each other again or have I turned into a hideous old bag and you’re sorry you came?’

  ‘Yes, of course you have, darling,’ said Deb. ‘But let’s meet up anyway.’ She dropped her eyes and inspected her nails. ‘Will you tell Phil? I presume he doesn’t know you’re here.’

  ‘I haven’t thought that far ahead.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell him anything, of course. He won’t like it and it would only stir up trouble. ‘

  ‘I’ll pick my moment then tell him we bumped into each other in town. I’ll take it from there. He can’t stop me having friends.’

  But he can and he did, thought Deb. However, she stayed silent.

  Lou paid the bill as Deb said that it was the least she could do after poisoning her with old cake on their reconciliation. Lou laughed and hugged her tightly before they got into their respective cars, much to the waiter’s delight as he observed them through the window.

  Lou watched her friend drive off with a thrill akin to having a secret affair. That was how Phil would definitely see it, anyway–a threat to his marriage, an illegal union. There was no way he would countenance her friendship revival with Deb. But equally there was no way Lou was going to stop seeing her now. She realized, as she climbed into the driver’s seat, that she really hadn’t thought this through at all. She couldn’t live a lie and she couldn’t tell her husband the truth about what she had done. So, what the hell was she going to do?

  Chapter 19

  Sometimes when Lou did a crossword and couldn’t get the solution, she’d put it to the back of her mind and later, when she was least expecting it, the answer would deliver itself unbidden to the front, just like that. Maybe if she employed the same strategy now, her subconscious would chew on the problem she faced about how to bring her renewed friendship with Deb into the open, and then present her with exactly what she should do. So, after saying goodbye to Deb, she concentrated on getting those pulleys sorted out for her wooden airer and drove through the centre of town where there was a small privately owned timberyard. They wouldn’t have them but they might know a man who did.

  ‘You want to try the Ironmongers Tub,’ said the ruddy-faced owner with Noddy Holder sideburns who looked more like a butcher than a woodman.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Townend. Do you know where St William’s Yard is?’

  ‘Side of the old Tin Factory?’ Lou tried.

  ‘Good girl. That’s the place. They’ll fix you up. No bother.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Lou, as much for him calling her a ‘girl’ as for the directions. It was a simple but rare treat these days.

  Nothing much went on in the Townend, except for graffiti. Once it had been a lively quarter but the major commercial emphasis had shifted to the other end of town. The shop rents were cheap, which attracted transient cheap businesses that held little shopping appeal, and the lack of passing trade soon spelled their demise. After fifty years in business, the old Tin Factory had closed, though the building still stood. Well, just about–a good blow and it would fall over. Lou hadn’t ever noticed an ironmonger anywhere around there, but then again, she had never had any cause to go to the back of the derelict factory.

  She was surprised to find a large car park full of trucks, vans and cars there. A very old row of buildings faced her, suggesting, by the number of their doors, four shopfronts. The two on the right were unoccupied; the third, a decent-sized transport café with signage above the door reading Ma’s Café, looked healthily occupied inside, and the end one was the ironmonger’s–very Dickensian, with scrubbed small-paned windows and a swinging sign that read Ironmongers T.U.B.

  Lou pushed the door open and a bell tinkled. She walked into an Aladdin’s cave of floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves, drawers and huge apothecaries’ cabinets that gave her the feeling she’d just broken through a time barrier into the past.

  ‘Two ticks,’ said a man’s deep voice from the back.

  A movement to her right caught her eye. The paws of a big dog on the floor there twitching in sleep. It looked like…

  ‘Can I help you?’

  The man who had called out to Lou came into the front of the shop. He was out of his skip-wagon context, which confused her for a brief moment.

  ‘It’s you!’ exclaimed Lou with a surprised grin.

  He didn’t look as bulky in jeans and a denim shirt as he did in his skip overalls, but the small shop only served to emphasize his height and bigness. The pint of water in his hand looked like a half-pint glass; his shoulders looked as if they might jam in the doorway if he walked straight at it.

  ‘I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on,’ she joked, although it sounded a lot funnier when Eric Morecambe said it.

  ‘I think you’re thinking of my twin, Tom,’ the man said. ‘Big handsome bloke, black hair? Runs the skips?’

  Oh, pants. Was she going to make a total arse of herself in front of his whole family?

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Lou, feeling herself go warm on the inside, a sure indicator she was going red on the outside. ‘You’re so alike.’

  Best to get down to business quick. Then she could go home and drown herself. ‘I’m looking for a couple of pulleys for a wooden airer,’ she said, adopting a business like tone. ‘I’ve been told you can knock me up with some.’

  Tom’s brother turned quickly away to look through some boxes. He appeared to be biting his lip. Did they all do that in their family–laugh at people, she wondered. If so, it must have been like growing up in a house full of Frank Carsons.

  ‘Here we are,’ said the brother, reaching up about twelve foot and bringing down a box. Lou would have needed crampons and oxygen to get up that far.

  ‘Crikey, that was quick,’ she commented. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you would know where to find them in here.’

  ‘A place for everything and everything in its place,’ said the brother, tapping his nose as if letting her into a big secret which, of course, it had been until she had commenced her clutter-clearing exercise.

  This man was the spitting image of Tom. She had known a few sets of twins in her time, but only one other set of truly identical ones. She had gone to junior school with Robert and Robin Ramskill. The teachers had asked their mother to send them to school with some identification as they w
ere always pretending to be the other, so she had knitted them both jumpers with RR on them.

  ‘You’ll need a single pulley and a double one, if you want a workable system. I presume you want to pull it up and down and not just hang it up as a decoration.’

  Lou nodded and Tom’s twin brother got a piece of rope out from a drawer and fed it through the pulley wheel to show her how to set it up. It looked fairly straightforward with a little thought applied to it. He had big meaty hands, neat nails and no wedding ring either.

  ‘I’ll need a cleat as well,’ said Lou, taking care not to make it sound anything like clit (thereby avoiding giving the Broom brothers an aneurysm).

  ‘Call it three pounds fifty, please,’ said the nameless brother.

  ‘That all?’ queried Lou, who had been expecting to pay at least a tenner.

  ‘Pay more if you like but that’s what they cost,’ he smiled. ‘It’s a pound for the single one, two pounds for the double. Which leaves fifty pee for the cleat.’

  He mirrored her pronunciation of the word: ‘cleeet’. The length of the vowels wouldn’t have sounded out of place in a spaghetti western about Mexican bandits.

  Lou flashed him a look but he was totally straight-faced. They were too similar and it crossed Lou’s mind for a moment that he didn’t have a brother at all, and this was actually Tom himself. But that would be taking a joke a bit far, wouldn’t it?

  She handed over a five-pound note which he held up to the light to inspect. Cheeky so and so, Lou bristled. She hated it when people did that. Usually cocky little blighters in supermarkets who wouldn’t spot a fake Queen if she had eyebrows like Noel Gallagher. And though she and Tom might have shared the jokes about counterfeit money, she didn’t know this bloke from Adam to take such a liberty.