In a Country Garden

by Maeve Haran

  Not appreciating this sudden opposition from a husband of all people, Daniel Forrest, to Claudia’s intense relief, disappeared into the bread shop.

  ‘Since there’s not much in the fridge I thought maybe we’d have a pub lunch,’ Don suggested.

  Deciding she ought to follow the example of all the Stepford over-sixties, Claudia took his hand in hers.

  Through the window of the post office Betty gave her a thumbs up.

  A few seconds later, by dint of pretending he wanted to point something out, Don detached his hand from hers.

  Claudia looked into his eyes, deeply relieved that he was as hand-holding-averse as she was. ‘You know, Don, I do love you. We’ve got so much in common.’

  Don raised an eyebrow. ‘First I’ve heard of it. I know your friends call me Dull Don.’

  ‘Nonsense. We’re at the beginning of a big adventure.’

  ‘No, we’re not, Clo,’ he replied affectionately. ‘As a matter of fact, I’d say we’re about three quarters of the way through.’

  Laura woke up the next morning feeling a little less brave. In fact, she would have put her head back under the duvet if it weren’t for her lovely son Sam appearing with a cup of tea.

  ‘How fabulous. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s your interview today, isn’t it,’ he asked, putting it down beside her, ‘with the lady manager who thought you had potential?’

  ‘Indeed it is.’ After Simon had left her for a younger colleague, he’d charmingly informed her that she should get off her arse and find a bloody job. So she’d annoyed the hell out of him by finding a very menial one stacking shelves in LateExpress, the supermarket right round the corner from his office. It had had the satisfying effect of shocking all his workmates and utterly infuriating Simon, who was convinced she’d done it deliberately to embarrass him.

  Laura had to admit there was a teensy element of getting back at him in her choice of job but it was also – as she’d tartly informed him – not the easiest thing to find a job when you’d been a stay-at-home wife and mother for twenty-five years. Besides, the truth was, the job might be ever so humble, but it was easy and friendly and it suited her in her current fragile state.

  Today’s interview had come about because she had impressed a rival supermarket with her management potential.

  After she’d sipped the last of the restorative liquid, she got out of bed and began to dress carefully, feeling suddenly unsure what to wear. She didn’t possess such a thing as a business suit. There were charities, she’d read, that helped disadvantaged young women dress for job interviews. How wonderful. She just wished there were a similar thing for once over-privileged women like her who were facing the management world after a huge gap. She’d worked happily stacking shelves in LateExpress – she’d actually enjoyed the camaraderie far more than she’d ever expected – but for that she’d just had to sling a nylon tabard over anything she turned up wearing. This was different. In the end she selected a black dress and cardigan and a pair of plain court shoes, hoping she looked professional rather than on her way to a funeral.

  She quickly bolted down some breakfast, feeling relieved when Sam said she looked nice, and was beginning to build up her confidence when the phone rang.

  It was Simon. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re up to, Laura?’ was his delightful greeting. ‘The agent’s just been on the phone to ask if we’re really serious about selling the house. Apparently a couple who were extremely interested couldn’t even get in yesterday because you hadn’t bothered to be there to let them in!’

  ‘It was probably a mix-up by the agent,’ Laura insisted, trying to keep calm and not let Simon make her feel stupid, something he was a past master at doing. ‘I’ll make sure I’m here for the next lot.’

  ‘Don’t bother. He’s asked me to let them in.’

  ‘You don’t live here any more, Simon,’ she reminded him, trying to stop herself sounding weak. ‘You left me for Suki, remember?’

  The truth was, when his relationship with Suki started unravelling, he had coolly assumed he could come back to her and had been livid when she’d refused him.

  ‘The property is for sale, Laura,’ he told her unpleasantly, ‘whether you like it or not.’

  Before she could answer Sam grabbed the phone. ‘Stop it, Dad. Isn’t it bad enough Mum’s having to give up her home just because you were selfish enough to leave her?’

  Laura shook her head and gently wrested the phone from her son. She knew Simon of old. Direct confrontation wasn’t the answer. To think she’d thought she loved him for all those years.

  ‘Goodbye, Simon,’ she said, as firmly as she could, trying to keep the emotion from her voice. ‘I will talk to the agent later today. Goodbye.’

  She left the phone off the hook so that he couldn’t call back then switched off her mobile.

  ‘Chin up, Mum,’ Sam grinned, reminding her of the grubby-kneed schoolboy he used to be, ‘you’ll soon be shot of him.’

  Being so close to the river always made Ella extraordinarily aware of nature. It made her daughters hoot with laughter whenever she enthused lyrically about seeing a heron or hearing the song of a skylark, but Ella found enormous pleasure in these things. Maybe it was an age thing. When she was young she had been far too busy trying to win big cases in the law courts and show all the men in her chambers that women were perfectly competent, thank you. In fact, far more competent than they were half the time. Nature had come to her later and it gave her deep and abiding satisfaction.

  For almost a year now she’d tended her neighbours’ allotment as they travelled the globe like latter-day hippies, without realizing that it had become a cornerstone of her life. As she headed off there this morning the skies were a cloudless blue. The stretch of river in front of her was almost empty, save for a few single sculls and one rowing boat. She stopped for a moment to look and found she was a mere five feet from a rather tatty swan’s nest which must have somehow survived from last year’s breeding season. Next to it, looking fierce and protective, were two beautiful swans. And just a few feet away a lone white goose, as white as they were, but without the long slender neck that characterized them. She waited, watching, for fifteen minutes but the goose wasn’t budging.

  It struck Ella as suddenly sad. Did the goose think it was a swan? The lonely goose made Ella suddenly aware of her own single state. She had never actively looked for a relationship since Laurence had died. Not for her over-sixties speed dating or the desperate attempt to take up bridge in the hope of meeting a man. She had thought the move to somewhere smaller would help. No more rattling around in a house made for families, and in lots of ways she loved the little house, but it didn’t fill the well of emptiness Laurence’s death had created.

  Stop this self-pity, Ella! she commanded, and began to walk briskly towards the allotments. There was nothing like a bit of double digging to take your mind off things.

  Here, as usual, all was busy and bustling. Sue and Sharleen, her friends from the adjoining allotment, stopped digging and waved, and Mr Barzani, the ancient Cypriot man who seemed to spend his whole life here, grinned gnomically. The eternally bobble-hatted Bill, whom she’d come to see as the guardian spirit of the place, paused fractionally from arguing with his two cronies, Stevie and Les, about the dangers of potato blight if the weather turned nasty (which seemed highly unlikely given the perfect blue sky) and whether it was too early to sow carrots to avoid root fly, and saluted her.

  Ella smiled at them all and headed off to pick her neighbours’ strawberries to make jam. She had been hoarding Bonne Maman jam jars with their pretty red and white gingham lids for months and had had to fight her daughter Julia when she tried to insist she throw them out during the move.

  Fancy me making jam! Ella grinned to herself. Once she’d have dismissed that as strictly for the WI, but she actually found it deeply pleasurable. In fact, she was finding, along with appreciating nature, that growing things and eating them had becom
e one of her deepest satisfactions. Since she’d been looking after Viv and Angelo’s allotment she had become part of this strange and unexpected little community and gradually, along with seeing Sal and Laura and Claudia, it had become part of her life-support system. Indeed, it was the nearness to the allotments that had made her so keen on her new home.

  She had just finished picking the strawberries and was about to harvest the beans and some glossy aubergines when she saw a delegation consisting of Bill, Stevie and Les walking towards her. Improbably they were holding a bouquet of flowers. Improbably because she knew they didn’t hold with wasting good growing space on frippery blossoms. The soil was strictly for veg and spending good money on flowers was beyond the pale.

  ‘We bought you these,’ Bill, the usual spokesman of the three, offered shyly.

  ‘They’re lovely.’ Ella took them, feeling unexpectedly moved at this unlikely act of generosity. ‘But why? It isn’t my birthday, unless I’ve gone completely gaga and forgotten it.’

  ‘Because of the committee’s decision.’ Bill looked suddenly embarrassed.

  ‘What decision is that?’

  ‘Didn’t your friends tell you? Some friends they are, after you’ve thrown yourself into this place body and soul, and you a nice posh lady not in the first blush, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘I don’t mind you saying at all. I just don’t actually know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘The stupid bloody committee,’ Bill persisted, his hat bobbing up and down in indignation. ‘Load of busybody know-it-alls. Little Stalins the lot of them. They turned down your friends’ application to hand the allotment over to you. They’ve allocated it to somebody else higher up the waiting list.’

  It finally got through to Ella what they were telling her. She was going to lose the allotment. She looked at the flowers, taken aback by quite how much she minded. This place had become a sanctuary, a sensory delight and a source of support. The waiting list was so long there was no chance of her getting one of her own before she was eighty. Or dead.

  ‘Here, Stevie.’ Ella placed the large container of strawberries she’d just picked into his gnarled and mud-stained hands. ‘You have these. Give them to your wife. I’m sure she’ll find something delicious to do with them.’

  Suddenly she didn’t feel like making jam any more.

  Three

  It was such a beautiful morning that, unusually for her, Sal decided to walk to the scheduled meeting at Lou Maynard’s hotel. She’d been surprised to learn that he was staying not at one of the grand conventional hotels, or even one of the smart boutique ones, but at Brook’s Hotel in Portobello Road, famous for its over-the-top decor.

  Brook’s was once the haunt of outrageous Sixties rock stars who had grown up and then grown old and now opted for the deep-pile carpets and wall-to-wall concierges of the Ritz instead of the black walls and rampant chinoiserie of Brook’s that Jimi Hendrix had loved so much.

  She decided she liked the man already.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she asked the extraordinary-looking receptionist who seemed to have continued the exotic decor over all the visible parts of his body, ‘could you let Mr Maynard know I’m here?’

  ‘He’s outside on the patio. Having breakfast.’

  Since it was 11.30 Sal could only assume Lou Maynard wasn’t one of those people who liked to pack their business trips with meetings from dawn till dusk.

  The receptionist was clearly not about to show her where this was, so Sal took the nearest corridor which happened to pass the ladies’ and gents’. Unable to resist a quick check in the mirror, she slipped into the ladies’.

  It still took Sal by surprise that when she looked in the mirror an elegant short-haired woman looked back. She checked herself out – not too bad – and then adjusted her lipstick. She’d thrown away all her purples and reds and had taken to a rusty colour that would have won the approval of Bobbi Brown for its warm naturalness. She’d even toyed with going into Selfridges and getting one of those nice young make-up demonstrators to design ‘age-appropriate make-up’. But she knew they’d probably counsel ‘more is less’ and Sal wasn’t ready for that. She still felt ‘more is just how I like it’.

  She shook out the creases in her dark grey silk dress and decided she was ready for battle.

  It was easy to recognize Lou because he was the only person occupying the patio, and also because naturally she’d googled him. She knew he was seventy-four years old, the owner of a multi-million-dollar property company in Brooklyn that specialized in lofts, three times married, with five grown-up children. He had startled the business community by recently founding a radical local newspaper which had turned out, even in these days of falling advertising and competition from social media, to be rather a success.

  He sat half hidden behind two pink orchids, sipping coffee and smiling. He wore baggy chinos, a terracotta shirt and a taupe-coloured cardigan. At first glance he looked more a kindly grandfather than a highly successful businessman.

  ‘Mr Maynard? I’m Sally Grainger.’

  Lou stood up. She was an inch or two taller than him yet there was an engagingly solid feel about him. She also got the instant impression of energy. She’d seen it before in very successful people. A room lit up when they walked into it. And then there was the twinkle. Lou Maynard had a decided twinkle.

  Please, take a seat.’ He signalled to the chair next to his. ‘So, how do you like my hotel?’ He pointed to a potted palm, the kind you’d see in every chic sitting room in the sixties, yet rarely encountered now. ‘It’s as unfashionable as I am. I find that comforting. And I like a little tacky decadence. My whole room is a scene from the British Raj. Dark green walls and curtains – oh, and did I mention the elephants? There’s one painted on the wall behind my bed and another pretending to be a lamp. Come on, I’ll show you.’

  Sal got to her feet, rather taken aback.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Lou grinned, ‘I’m too old to be dangerous. What do you British say? Not safe in taxis? I love that.’ He led the way past two lovebirds cooing in a cage.

  ‘Morning, guys, say hello to Sally.’

  ‘Actually, I’m usually Sal.’

  ‘That has a great ring to it. Say hello to Sal.’

  The lovebirds cooed at her obligingly.

  She followed him to the lift. ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured, ‘we won’t have to sit on the bed. I’ve got a suite. Besides, the elephants can be your chaperone.’

  His room, or rather suite, was truly amazing. As well as the elephants another whole wall featured the scene of hundreds of glittering potentates, watching a cricket match and looking as if they were drinking G&Ts while their punkah wallahs fanned them with feathers.

  ‘Great, isn’t it? I’ll have you know I turned down the Tudor Room and the one with black walls, Jimi’s favourite. It makes you feel as if you’re in your coffin. I’m quite near enough to my coffin without wanting to be reminded of it by a hotel room. We can sit over there.’ He indicated a huge squashy sofa covered with fabric that featured a tiger hunt. ‘Thank God they drew the line at elephant’s foot coffee tables. Okay, now, down to business.’

  Sal tried to arrange herself in a seemly manner, which was quite a challenge since the sofa was one of those pieces of furniture that was so deep you couldn’t help showing more leg than you’d intended.

  She saw Lou watching her and grinning.

  ‘You remind me of someone,’ she said, hoping it wasn’t too forward.

  ‘Ed Asner,’ he quipped back instantly, ‘the guy who played Lou Grant on the TV. Everyone says so. I think maybe it’s just the confusion over our names that stirs people’s unconscious.’

  ‘I loved that show! Lou Grant, the hard-bitten journalist on the LA Tribune! It was him who made me want to be a reporter!’

  ‘Hold your horses, Sal,’ he grinned back.’ I think I’d better remind you I’m not really him.’

  ‘You amaze me, especially as he was a fictional chara
cter and you, I understand, are real! And you did start a newspaper. Maybe he’s in your unconscious too?’

  ‘Maybe. Or perhaps I just got bored with making millions in the exciting world of commercial property and thought I’d stir things up a little bit. I hate to get bored, you see. And I have a very short attention span. It’s my worst characteristic.’

  ‘Is that what makes you interested in New Grey?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s a clever magazine. We have plenty of stuff directed at the baby-boomers but I thought New Grey was a cut above. And I felt there was a lot you could do with it that Rose isn’t doing. Holidays. Insurance. Cruises. Maybe even intelligent retirement villages. It’s a big industry now.’

  Sal laughed at the thought of Claudia’s suggestion of anti-retirement living.

  ‘You’re smiling. Did I say something funny?’

  ‘It’s just that my friend Claudia, who lives down in Surrey, that’s a bit like Westchester County . . .’

  ‘I know Surrey,’ Lou nodded. ‘My youngest daughter lives there.’

  ‘Well, she suggested that I and my best friends live in anti-retirement when we get older – a cross between a student flat and a kibbutz was how she put it.’

  ‘I love it! I was a kibbutznik myself when I was eighteen.’ Lou’s eyes sparkled with mischief at the memory. ‘I spent a happy three months picking bananas till they made me clean out the latrines due to spiritual pride.’

  ‘Where was it, your kibbutz?’

  ‘Would you believe it, near the Sea of Galilee? Though I certainly didn’t witness any miracles. Speaking of miracles, why don’t you join me for brunch and I’ll tell you all about my experiences? I only had a coffee earlier.’

  Sal mentally shuffled through her day. She had an editorial meeting at 3 p.m. but she was pretty well prepared for that. Would Rose prefer her to have brunch with Lou or, in the expression so beloved of journalists, make her excuses and leave?

  Sal had the sudden realization that she’d actually like to join him. She suspected it would be very entertaining.