In Times Of Want

by Marie O'Regan

  Darren was amused to hear a hopeful note in the man’s voice. “Can I help?” he asked.

  The gardener shook his head. “Nah. Let’s see how it goes.” And with that Nigel was gone, back to his van for supplies.

  Leaving the gate open for him, Darren went in search of Lily – and found her in the kitchen, making tea. Or so she said. In reality, she was hovering between the kettle and the window with a troubled frown on her face.

  “Why so worried?”

  Lily turned to face him, tried to smile. “I’m not, I…” She turned to the window again, and crinkled her nose in disgust. “Can’t you smell it?”

  “Smell what?”

  “Something’s off; like drains or a septic tank or something.”

  He sniffed, waited, then sniffed again. “No, love, I can’t. Sorry.”

  “Really? It stinks.”

  He stared at her, wondering what was going on here. “We can get the drains checked if it carries on, okay?”

  She nodded. “Okay.” Then, going back to his first comment, “I’m not worried, though, I promise.”

  “Yep, you are.” He moved forward, took over the task of making the tea. “I promise you, it’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

  As he spoke he was ushering her out of the kitchen and into the living room, where he led her to the sofa and made her sit down. “I’ll bring you a cuppa in a minute, love. We’ll watch a film, eh?”

  She smiled up at him, nodded, but her expression was uncertain. Darren left her to it while he wandered back into the kitchen in search of cake.

  By the time he brought a tray with tea for both of them and some dubious-looking fruit cake into the living room, Lily was flicking through channels with the satellite remote; although judging by her blank expression he didn’t think she was actually seeing anything. He put the tray down and placed a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of her, alongside a side plate with a slice of the fruit cake.

  “Here you go,” he said, and smiled at her. “Found anything?”

  “Thanks love; not really.”

  She waved the remote control in his general direction and he took it, turned the channel to one that seemed to have her favourite sitcom on repeat. Ten years after it had finished, and it was still permanently available to view, somewhere. He sighed – whoever had come up with that idea would never have to work again, if they didn’t want to.

  Lily had made herself a nest, as usual, and sat – feet curled beneath her – ensconced amongst her beloved pillows, with a blanket over her legs. Her tea sat beside her cooling off while she nibbled absent-mindedly at her cake.

  Darren sat down in an armchair and pretended to watch with her, in the hope he could draw her into conversation somehow.

  “Blimey, we’ve seen this one a few times,” he said.

  “Mmm.”

  “Still, it’s a good one.”

  “Mmm.”

  He gave up. Darren leaned back in his chair and sipped his tea, musing on TV’s soporific qualities – at least as far as a programme like this was concerned. It was Lily’s equivalent of comfort food, and he didn’t mind, really; she’d been living on her nerves for weeks now. It would do her no harm to relax a bit.

  He was roused by a shout from the back door, and opened his eyes to see an amused Lily staring at him from the sofa. The TV was still showing her sitcom, and she seemed much happier than she had in the last few weeks. He started, thinking for a moment that he’d surely spilt his tea all over his lap, but then he heard Lily laugh and saw the cup safely placed on the coffee table alongside her own.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Must have dropped off.”

  “It’s Nigel.”

  He blinked, tried to process what she was saying, but it didn’t seem to make any sense. “What?”

  Lily sighed, and tried again. “Nigel. He’s calling you.”

  Darren blinked and sat up, then registered Nigel shouting again. “Mr Smith! Mr Smith! I need to show you something!”

  He didn’t sound happy. Darren managed a strangled “Coming!”, then hauled himself out of the armchair and rubbed his eyes, trying to rout the last traces of sleep.

  “Do you want to come?” He was pretty sure Lily would say no, but figured she’d be annoyed if he didn’t at least ask her.

  Her eyes widened, and she stared nervously at him for a moment before nodding. “Okay.”

  He tried not to show his surprise, and smiled at her before heading for the back door. Darren was dimly aware of Lily padding down the hall behind him, her footfall so light he could barely hear it.

  Nigel was standing at the back door, one hand holding it open, the other on his hip. He was sweating, and extremely red in the face – although whether that was a result of working in the sunshine or anger at his apparent deafness, Darren couldn’t be sure.

  “I was calling you,” the man said, his tone abrupt.

  “Sorry,” Darren answered. “I must have dozed off for a moment.”

  “Hmph,” the man said, and no more. He might as well have shouted ‘it’s alright for some’, Darren thought, his disgust was so plain to see.

  “Anyway,” Nigel went on. “I’ve found something.”

  With that he was gone, striding up the garden towards his discovery. As Darren followed he could see how hard the man had been working; the overgrown mix of grass, rushes and weeds was gone, piled high to either side of the lawn’s edge. In their place was a neat lawn, with what looked like a roughly circular planked area in the middle. The planks were dark and rotten, and there was a smell seeping out from underneath. The air stank of something rotten, or of a blocked drain nearby. It was foul.

  “Odd place for a deck,” Darren ventured, and was rewarded with a snort from the gardener.

  “Ain’t a deck,” he said, his tone supplying the ‘stupid’ that was missing from the sentence. “It’s covering something up, innit.”

  “Is it?”

  “Course it is.” He moved forward, grabbed the nearest plank and heaved.

  The smell of putrefaction swelled, a cloud of rank air roiling towards them in seconds. Darren heard Lily gag, and turned to see if she was okay – she had her hand over her mouth and had gone a sickly yellowish-white, but she waved him forward and stood her ground.

  Darren cleared his throat, not trusting himself to be able to open his mouth without vomiting, and then – making sure to take very shallow breaths through his mouth so as to avoid the smell – said, “What the hell is that?”

  Nigel coughed, turned and hawked up a plug of phlegm, resulting in more gagging from Lily, standing well back from the proceedings. “That, Mr Smith, is a pond.”

  “A pond?” Darren tried not to feel stupid at this habit he seemed to be developing of just repeating the gardener’s words. “Well…what do we do now?”

  Nigel let the plank fall back down, and the smell started to recede. “Well,” he said, “we need to drain it, obviously.”

  “And…um…can you do that?”

  “I can,” Nigel answered, scratching his head with one fat, sweaty hand. “But it’ll cost you.”

  Darren groaned. Of course it would. How could he have thought otherwise? “How much?” he asked.

  Nigel tilted his head and considered the planked area as if it contained the world’s last treasure. “Well, we’ll have to hire the drainage equipment,” he said, “although I can work it, so that’ll save a bit.” His words trailed off as he considered the matter. Then, turning, he grinned happily at Darren. “£300, how’s that sound?”

  Darren didn’t know what to say. Three hundred pounds was a fortune to them, at least at the moment. With all the expenses of moving in, decorating…

  “Mr Smith?” Nigel was staring at him, his smile narrowing, his expression becoming markedly less humorous.

  “That sounds…fine. Thank you. How soon can you do it?”

  Nigel’s smile returned, happy now that he’d managed to inveigle a higher fee from them. “Tell you what, I’ll do
it tomorrow.”

  And with that he was gone, the garden gate swinging shut behind him.

  Darren turned to Lily, unsure of what to say, and stopped short. She was staring at the planks, a frown creasing her forehead. “What’s the matter?”

  She said nothing, just stared at him, her expression just short of terrified.

  “Lily? What is it, what’s wrong?”

  Now she looked directly at him, really focussed, and Darren flinched back from the sight. Her skin, always pale, looked somehow curdled, a greenish-yellow underlying her normal pallor.

  “I should have known there’d be a pond.”

  “Eh? How on earth…?”

  “I dreamed something splashed,” she said, “remember? And that smell… It’s the garden I dreamed, Darren, can’t you see?”

  Darren couldn’t see what she meant. He saw the planks, soil-stained and warped, looking almost splintered in places. He saw the darkness of the ground underneath the willow tree further down (he should have realised there was a pond, he thought. Weren’t they normally near water?) and the general mess that was still at the far end, the detritus of Nigel’s efforts so far piled high on either side of the garden.

  He took Lily’s arm, turned her gently towards him. “It’s just a dream, love. It’s not this garden.”

  “But…”

  He saw she was starting to panic, and stepped in, desperate to head this off. “It’s just a pond. You’ll see, once everything’s cleared away and we’ve made it nice, you’ll see it’s not this garden you’re dreaming about.”

  Lily said nothing, just stared at the rotting planks, but her disbelief was plain to see.

  Darren woke to screams, and the sound of someone begging for their life. He sat up quickly, fighting free of the covers as they sought to pin him down.

  His breathing was ragged as he slammed a hand down on the button that flipped the bedside lamp on, and whirled to face the room as it was flooded with light, intent on facing whatever menaced them head on.

  There was nothing. Lily was the source of the screams; she sat there, staring blindly into the room, scream after scream pealing from her throat.

  There was nothing there. Darren tried to see what she was staring at, what she was so scared of, but there was nothing there. He eased an arm around her shoulder, stroked her cheek as he whispered, “Lily, it’s okay. It’s just a dream. Lily!”

  Slowly, her screaming tapered off to whimpers, and colour started to rise in her cheeks as she blinked and rubbed her eyes before turning to Darren.

  “You didn’t see it?”

  “See what, love? There was nothing there.” He kept a hand on her back, rubbing gently in an attempt to calm her down.

  “It was right there!” she said, and started to cry. “It was standing at the bottom of the bed!”

  “No, love, it was another dream, that’s all. Just a dream.”

  She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, her ribs shaking with the effort. Darren kept a hand gently on her back and made comforting noises, but couldn’t stop thinking about how thin she was – he could see every rib, pretty much; and there were bluish hollows in between each of them where the flesh sank in.

  Finally she leaned into him and let him wrap his arms around her, her sobs tailing off as she got herself under control. “It was so real,” she said, and burrowed against him, eager for his warmth. “It was just standing there, reaching for me. Staring at me with its icy eyes.”

  “Icy eyes?”

  No answer. Darren shook her gently, but there was no response. Exhausted by the nightmare and her tears, she’d fallen back asleep. Darren eased his arm from around her and laid her down, before lying beside her and pulling the duvet up over both of them. She turned towards him, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulled her close – as much to free himself from a sudden chill as to keep her warm.

  Icy eyes, she’d said. What the hell had icy eyes?

  He was woken by sunlight streaming through the bedroom window, and the sound of the back door slamming shut behind him. He fumbled his feet into his slippers and reached for his dressing gown before thumping down the stairs.

  “Lily?”

  She was nowhere to be seen. Darren glanced quickly into the living room on his way to the kitchen, but both rooms were empty. Crossing the kitchen, he grabbed the handle of the back door and swung it wide.

  There she was. Lily was standing very still, head cocked to one side, just this side of the planking at the bottom of the garden. She seemed to be listening to something, but Darren still couldn’t hear anything. The sun was already warm on his skin and the garden was calm, secluded – and as it was a Sunday there didn’t seem to be much traffic. Darren sighed and stepped forward, slowly making his way across the lawn to his wife’s side.

  She didn’t notice him at first, just kept staring ahead at the willow tree, head cocked to one side.

  He spoke gently when he tried to gain her attention, fearful of scaring her. “Lily?”

  She shivered, and slowly her eyes started to focus on her surroundings. As she did this, her disquiet grew, until she stared at Darren with eyes like moons – terrified.

  “How did I get out here?”

  “I’m guessing you walked,” he said, and smiled; hoping to defuse her terror.

  It didn’t work. She took a step closer to him, grabbed his hand. “I don’t remember…”

  “Maybe you were sleepwalking, love,” he said. “Don’t worry, eh? Big day yesterday, bound to upset you.”

  “You think?”

  “I do.” He started back towards the house, leading her firmly by the hand. “Cuppa?”

  “Please.” She came with him willingly enough, only looking back once. When she turned to him, he saw Lily wanted to put it behind her; she didn’t want to think about sleepwalking, or why she might have done it. She smiled at him, and his heart leapt. “Toast?”

  “Dunno,” he said, and looped an arm around her shoulder. “I mean, it might be a long day again; Nigel’s doing the pond.”

  “Still?”

  “Course,” he said. “How do you feel about a fry-up?”

  “Silly question.”

  They reached the door and stepped back into the kitchen; Darren pretended not to notice Lily locking the door firmly behind her.

  He made for the fridge and started rummaging. “Have we got any bacon?”

  “Yup, bottom shelf. Don’t forget the butter.”

  “As if I would.”

  While he’d been searching in the fridge, Lily had found the eggs and a crusty loaf. The big frying pan sat ready on the hob, and Lily had already put some oil in it and turned it on to heat before grabbing the kettle and heading for the sink.

  Darren slipped some bacon into the pan and broke in a couple of eggs, then cut four slices of the bread and stuck them in the toaster. Behind him, he could hear the kettle starting to boil, the sound of Lily retrieving cups and the milk from the fridge. She’d already started to hum, a sure sign she’d forgotten about wandering into the garden, about whatever fright she’d had. He decided not to mention the locked door; if it made her feel safe, then so be it.

  Ten minutes later they were sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast; Lily’s nightmare and subsequent wandering seemed very far away. She looked at the clock, then at the garden, before turning to Darren. “What time is Nigel coming?”

  “Same time as yesterday, I expect; he didn’t say exactly. Why?” he asked, slathering butter on a slice of toast.

  “I just don’t want to have to rush,” she said, and gestured towards the food.

  “We should have plenty of time,” Darren said. “And we’ll have a better idea of what we’re dealing with once it’s all drained.”

  “Dealing with?”

  “You know, do we want it cleaned out and re-lined, re-filled; or do we want it filled in and turfed over?”

  Lily stared, mulling over what he’d said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”


  “You hadn’t?”

  She shook her head. “No; I’d only got as far as Nigel draining it and cleaning it all out.” Lily stood, taking her plate across to the sink and leaving it on the worktop. As she came back for her tea, she said, “I guess we wait and see what Nigel’s dealing with.”

  Nigel turned out to be dealing with quite a lot. He showed up halfway through the morning, as he had the previous day, and made much of having hired a lorry armed with some kind of pump so that he could drain the pond. Darren and Lily tried to stay out of his way as he tramped from the lorry to the planking, lugging a massive hose over his shoulder, muttering all the way. They watched as he pulled some of the planking up and dropped it at one side of the pond, then fed the hose down into the thick mess that passed for water in its depths.

  At that point, Lily flat out refused to go outside until it was all done. “Think of the stink!” she said, and that was it – she wanted nothing more to do with outside until everything smelled as it should again.

  Darren watched, bemused, and decided he wasn’t entirely sure when that was going to be; and he had to wonder if part of the reason she was hiding indoors was that she was still frightened of whatever they might find. Nigel had gone back to the lorry, and after tinkering inside the cab for a moment or two, had rushed back to the yard with a shouted, “Won’t be long now!”

  When Darren had gone to the back door to view things better, he’d seen Nigel struggling to keep hold of the hose, which was now pulsing as whatever was left down there was sucked back up into the depths of the lorry. The damn thing looked like it had a heartbeat.

  Finally, it was done. The hose was now making the kind of noise that the dentist’s drain did when there was no more saliva to suck up; it was causing Darren to feel more than a little sick. Then Nigel went back to the lorry and the pulsing stopped, followed by the gardener’s return – he dragged the hose out of the hole, its end now covered in a black, tarry substance that, judging by Nigel’s reaction, stank. He lifted it over his shoulder, holding the end up, and slowly made his way back to the lorry one more time.