by David Bowker
“Caro,” I said, “would you mind telling me what you’ve just done has got to do with transforming your attitude to others?”
She checked that the safety catches were on. “Hoping for the best from people doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be prepared for the worst.”
There was a knock at the front door. We answered it together. It was a dumpy middle-aged woman with long, straggly brown hair. She was wearing an ungainly sweater and nasty brown slacks. Her plain, disapproving face promised few liberal sympathies. “Oh, hello,” she said. “You must be the new people.”
“Yes,” said Caro and laughed.
“I’m Janet Mather,” the visitor said, and shook our hands. Her hand was cold, dry to the point of crustiness. “I’m not being funny, but I was wondering if you could do something about your front garden?”
When people say they’re not being funny, they always fucking are.
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
For the first time, I noticed that the grass of the front lawn had reached jungle height and was choked by weeds of every conceivable description, some of which appeared to be triffids.
“The house next door to you isn’t occupied,” said Janet Mather. She tried to smile, but it looked more as if a nasty wound had opened between her nose and chin. “Mr. Cragg, who lives next-door-but-one, keeps next-door’s garden tidy as well as his own. But we can hardly expect him to do yours as well.” We followed her to the front gate so that she could show us what a sterling job Mr. Cragg had done. Then she waved her arm at the wild undergrowth that started at our hedge. “So I was hoping you might tidy it up.”
“Why?” I said.
She recoiled slightly.
“Well, maybe it seems like a little quirk of ours, but we members of the village hall committee take quite a pride in our hall. In 1999, we came second in the best-kept village hall competition for England and Wales. Even a piece of litter in the parking lot can create a bad impression. So we like the square to look as neat as possible for anyone who visits.”
She nodded at our front door with its cracked and blistered paintwork. “I’m not asking you to decorate the house, although goodness knows it needs it. But if you could trim the grass and cut back the hedge a little, we’d all be very grateful. Or we could arrange for someone else to do it?”
I was about to explain that the terms of our lease stipulated that we leave the property in the condition that we found it, and that really what our garden looked like was none of her fat-arsed business, when my beautiful wife answered for me. “Yes, we’ll do that,” said Caro brightly. “It could do with a tidy-up.”
I looked at Caro, waiting in vain for the lethal put-down. Caro smiled at me. It was the kind of smile you get from a devout Christian when you admit that you sometimes hum the odd hymn.
“Well, that’s a weight off my mind,” said Mrs. Mather, already walking away. “I would be very much obliged to you.” She stopped to survey our mud-spattered car. “I don’t know whether you’re interested, but Dale, my son, washes cars. He’s very reasonable.”
“Send him along,” said Caro sweetly. “I like reasonable people.”
Mather gave us a smile worthy of a medieval torturer.
“Oh, by the way,” said Caro, “I’m Caro. And this is Mark.”
Mrs. Mather nodded curtly, as if to say “whatever,” and walked over to her car. I noticed that she leaned forward as she walked as if the weight of her huge unshapely buttocks were tipping her forward. I turned to Caro, unable to digest what I’d witnessed.
“Ugh,” I said.
“Ugh what?”
“That,” I said, “is one horrible reactionary bitch.”
“We don’t know that,” said Caro.
“Yes, we do. You heard what she said. You should have told her to fuck off.”
“I would have done, once. But that was the old Caro. The new Caro gives people the benefit of the doubt. Just because the woman has an unfortunate manner doesn’t mean she hasn’t got a point. The garden does need a bit of work. Let’s buy some gardening tools. We’ll need them anyway, for when we buy a house of our own.”
“I’m not going to fix the garden because that cow says so. She only mentioned her car-washing son because she didn’t want our muddy car parked near her marvelous village hall.”
“You may be right. Probably are. But all I’d say to you is, you don’t seem to be trying very hard. I’m trying to be nice here. You could at least join in.”
* * *
IN THE morning, as I was coming down for breakfast, Janet Mather’s son knocked on our door. I’d only just got out of bed. The boy, Dale, was about fifteen. He was carrying a hose, a car vac, sponges, and leathers. I was discussing terms with him when Caro appeared behind me. She was dressed only in a T-shirt and panties. Dale was visibly embarrassed, but that didn’t prevent him from staring down at the soft mound of Caro’s crotch. Possibly inspired by the sight, Dale began to sponge down the Audi as if it were a big-breasted woman in the bath.
Later that morning, we received a phone call from James, our estate agent. James, whom I’d met in Richmond, was one of those spoiled, empty-faced young men who are only interested in money. James informed us that someone had offered six million, four hundred thousand for Gordon’s house. “That’s no good,” said Caro. “We asked for six and a half million, and that’s what we want.”
Ten minutes later the estate agent rang back. The buyers had raised their offer by another fifty thousand. I would have accepted this, but Caro was having none of it. “If they can afford what they’re already offering,” she said, “they can afford the extra fifty thousand.”
Half an hour later, the phone rang again. We’d got our six and a half. Caro hugged and kissed me. “See? It’s karma. This has happened because we’re being nice.”
“Nice?” I said, laughing. “There was nothing nice about the way you held out for that money.”
“Being nice,” she said, taking a bottle of Bollinger RD out of the fridge, “does not involve letting other people trample all over you.”
It was eleven-fifteen on a Monday morning. We were loaded and we were drinking icy, expensive champagne. Caro slipped a CD into the stereo and we danced around the kitchen, cheek to cheek, listening to “Way Too Black” by Bleep and Booster.
Let’s not forget I was upset
And that is why I blacked your eye
You got me back and threw a knife
That missed me and impaled my wife
It served her right
She was too white
But your attack was way too black.
When we’d had two glasses of champagne each, Caro guided my right hand down her trousers. We undressed each other, and my tongue explored the area of outstanding natural beauty between her legs. We had a half-dressed leisurely fuck on the kitchen floor, and then Caro started shrieking. I felt pleased with myself, convinced that I was a thrilling lover and she was crying out in carnal bliss. Then I lifted my head and saw what was really exciting Caro. There was a mouse under the kitchen table.
* * *
WE PHONED a company called Pestkill, who sent a man around to search the house. His name was Ron. Ron didn’t inspire confidence. He was disheveled and obese and he reeked of ancient sweat, so that being in close proximity to him was only marginally less distasteful than being infested by rodents.
“What did it look like?” he asked us.
Small with brown fur and little shifty eyes.
“Sounds like a field mouse,” said Ron. “They come in from the fields in the winter. What they’re mainly looking for is food and warmth.”
Ron found mouse shit on the floorboards of the airing cupboard. “Looks like at least two mice to have made that many droppings. We could leave out poison, but if they die under the floorboards or behind a cupboard somewhere, then you’ve got the smell to contend with. So I’d recommend traps. Which do you want? Lethal or humane?”
“Humane,” I said.
“Lethal
,” said Caro.
Ron showed us a lethal trap. Resembling mousetraps from Tom and Jerry cartoons, it was armed with a nail, designed to impale the mouse in case the trap didn’t kill it instantly. The humane trap was like a little house with windows, only cruel if you forgot about it and went on vacation, leaving the captive mouse to starve to death.
“The idea behind the humane traps is that you take them out into the country somewhere and let the mouse go. But you have to drive at least twenty miles or they’ll run straight back home again.”
Caro was appalled. “You mean they know where we live?”
Ron chuckled.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll drive the mice wherever they want to go. I’ll be their personal chauffeur.”
Caro couldn’t believe it. “They’re vermin, Mark. I say we execute the little fuckers.”
I said that was fine as long as she was the one who disposed of the cute little corpses with blood oozing from their noses and their heads hanging off.
Sullenly, Caro gave in. But when the traps were laid and Ron had left, I refilled our champagne glasses and turned to see my bloodthirsty bride staring at me. She didn’t say a word, but in her pale eyes I saw the first glimmer of doubt.
* * *
THAT EVENING I went out alone to the nearest pub, the Jolly Sailor. I ordered a pint of bitter and was about to pay for it when the man standing beside me told the barmaid to add it to his tab.
I turned to thank the stranger. He introduced himself as Ricky Cragg, the man who lived next-door-but-one, he of the neatly manicured lawns. Ricky looked to be in his sixties, a nice old toff with slicked-back nicotine-yellow hair and a thin, spivvish mustache.
“I know you,” he said genially. “You’re the layabout who lives next-door-but-one. The chap with the bloody gorgeous wife. God, I do love a blonde. Wish she’d grow her hair, though. Wouldn’t fancy making love to a skinhead. Already been through that with my ex-wife. How come neither of you work for a living?”
I told him we didn’t have to.
“Oh, well done,” he said. “Good luck to you, I say. I tried to marry a rich woman but ended up falling in love with a pauper. Now she’s left me and I’m stuck in this godforsaken hole.”
It was only eight o’clock, but Ricky’s breath was already flammable. I realized that he was probably the merry drunk I’d heard staggering home the other night.
“You don’t like it here?” I asked him.
“Good heavens, no.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Almost forty years. It was the wife’s idea. She thought it’d be good for the children, you see. Growing up by the sea, fresh air and whatnot. Didn’t matter to me. I was away most of the time. RAF, you see. Now I’m stranded.”
“You could always sell up and move away.”
“Yes, but where to?” he said, wrinkling up his nose. “At least people know me here and I know them. And to be brutally honest, I don’t think I could face the strain of being uprooted at my age. They say moving house is one of the great traumas of life, don’t they? Right up there with bereavement, divorce, and losing a twenty-quid note.”
Warming to the old airman, I drank his health and asked him what he thought of Janet Mather.
Ricky winced as if he’d tasted something nasty. “Can’t stomach her,” he confided. “Bloody awful woman.”
“But I thought you tidied the gardens in the square for her?”
“Is that what she told you? I garden because I like gardening. Not because of any fondness I have for the Mathers.” He gave a convincing shudder. “Have you met Dale yet?”
“Briefly. He washed our car for us.”
“Notice anything unusual about his hands?”
“No.”
“The next time you see him, take a look at his right hand. It’s a mass of scar tissue. Want to know how he got it?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. I had a feeling an unpleasant anecdote was on its way.
“The boy isn’t Mather’s real son. I doubt she and the supremely charismatic Philip have ever had sex. They may have tried, but it’d take a very sick man indeed to be aroused by the sight of Janet Mather in the nude.”
I grinned. “You know that for a fact, do you?”
“Call it an educated guess. Anyway, Dale was the Mathers’ nephew. His parents died in a crash, so when he was about eight years old, he came here to live with an uncle and aunt he barely knew. The boy was disturbed, and who can blame him? Anyway, one morning he came into school with his hand all bandaged.
Naturally, his teacher wanted to know what had happened. The boy told her that Janet Mather had branded him. Well, phone calls were made. Social services were called in. It turned out young Dale was telling the truth. Because the lad was so screwed up and didn’t want to be living with the bloody Mathers, he got into the habit of playing with fire. Taking live coals out of the fireplace with a pair of tongs and dropping ’em on the carpet to see what happened.
“Well, old Janet caught him at it. And she decided he needed a lesson in how dangerous fire can be. So she grabbed the boy’s wrist, thrust his hand into the fire, and held it there.”
“Fucking hell!” I said.
“My sentiments exactly. Anyway, the authorities investigated the matter, and nothing was done. You know what useless buggers these social workers are. No charges were brought against Mather. The bloody woman got off scot-free. A few months after the event, my wife got talking to her at some Women’s Institute event. Asked her why she’d done it. Know what Mather’s answer was?”
I obliged him by shaking my head.
Ricky lit a cigarette. I saw that his fingers were stained brown with nicotine. “She said, ‘I couldn’t think what else to do.’ Now, there’s imagination for you. An eight-year-old kid has lost his entire family, he’s so angry and desperate for attention that he’s resorted to pyromania, and all Mather could think of to do for him was burn his hand.”
“The woman’s a genius.”
“Hanging’s too good for her,” said Ricky.
* * *
WHEN I opened the front door, there was Caro, pointing the Kimber handgun directly at my face. “Fuck,” I said. “What’re you doing?”
She lowered the weapon. “Where have you been?” she demanded. She was almost crying. “It’s midnight. Where the hell have you been till this time?”
I told her. “What’s the big deal?”
“I’ve been hearing noises.”
She’d heard someone try the back door handle. Then she thought she saw something moving in the back garden. When she phoned my mobile, she found it was turned off. Unwilling to phone the police, she had resorted to sitting on the stairs, holding the gun.
“And you haven’t taken anything?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. A pill or anything.”
“You mean am I hallucinating?”
“Even weed can make you a bit paranoid.”
“We’re out of weed, remember. I’m clean, Mark. And I’m telling you, there was someone out there.”
I took the gun and a flashlight and went out into the back garden. There was nobody there. “Look,” I said. “Nothing.”
“There’s no one there now,” she said impatiently. “There was definitely someone there before.”
We went to bed, and I placed the gun on the bedside table. When the light was out, I made a clumsy attempt to seduce her. Caro took my hand off her breast and gave it back to me. “I’m scared,” she said.
“What of?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “If anyone tried to kill me, you’d protect me. Wouldn’t you?”
“With my life,” I promised.
* * *
IN THE morning, we found a mouse imprisoned in one of our humane traps. Now we had to drive twenty miles to humanely release it into the wild. We stopped at a lonely spot on the coast, released the gate on the trap, and watched the little bastard scamper
off toward the sand dunes.
“You know, you were right,” commented Caro. “It’s better to live and let live.”
On the way back, Caro saw a sign for a garden center and turned off.
“There’s no need to do any gardening,” I said.
“What’re you talking about? I told Mrs. Mather we would.”
“We’re not going to do anything to oblige Mrs. Mather. Not ever.” With a certain sadistic glee, I told Caro about the hand-burning incident.
I could see that Caro was outraged, but she pretended not to be. “So? She did something bad and stupid. Who are you to judge anyone? You pushed somebody under a tube train.”
“You want to play friendly neighbors with Vlad the Impaler? Go ahead.”
“I just want the garden to look nice. I’m doing it for us, not for Mather.”
At the garden center we bought a spade, a rake, a hoe, some shears, and some seeds. I couldn’t believe how expensive this stuff was, but Caro said it was an investment.
“No, it’s not,” I argued. “An investment gathers value with the passing of time. Classic cars and rare books, they’re investments. A garden rake just gets more and more worn out until its head breaks off.”
Driving back, our journey was delayed by a line of funeral cars traveling at about fifteen miles an hour. Caro refused to drive past the cortege, having read somewhere that it was unlucky to overtake a corpse. We crawled through a village called Bloxham, drawing to a complete halt outside its little church. Caro waited until the flower-topped coffin had been carried into the churchyard before driving on.
* * *
IN A sudden burst of activity, Caro went out to test her new spade on the garden, digging away at the weeds like any proud householder. I made her some hot chocolate and took it out to her. While we were chatting, me leaning against the car, Caro leaning on the gate, Mrs. Mather came out of the village hall and walked over to us.
“Look,” said Caro, pointing at two square feet of freshly dug soil. “I’ve started.”
“Very good.” Mather nodded and frowned. “But, you see, that’s no use. You need to remove the weeds.”
“Which are the weeds?”
“These,” said Mather, pointing at some green things with the toe of her shoe. “All you’ve done so far is move the soil about. If you don’t uproot the weeds, the garden will be in as bad a state as before.”
