Secret Keeping for Beginners

by Maggie Alderson

  It was stifling out in the yard, which wasn’t helping. Simon could feel sweat running down his back, and swiped his hand across his forehead.

  ‘Bit hot for you?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Yes, it’s pretty warm out here,’ said Simon.

  ‘You want to try carrying marble fire hearths around in this,’ said Jack, standing up to his full height and sticking out his chest.

  Totally uncoordinated pumped-up rugger bugger, thought Simon. I could mince you in a fight, beefy boy.

  ‘Keeps me fit, anyway,’ added Jack, flexing one Arnie bicep and confirming him as a total bonehead in Simon’s opinion.

  ‘Oh, very good,’ he said, as patronisingly as he could, suddenly feeling completely over the whole exercise.

  While it was not to his taste, he could see that bits of knackered industrial kit could be very effective in the right interior. He got the appeal of old radiators, doors and wash basins. He was even interested in bricks, roof tiles and floorboards, but Mushbrain was now talking in great detail about guttering and that was a step too far. Guttering was of zero interest to anyone he would be able to reach through a sophisticated marketing campaign. Salvage was sexy. Builders’ merchant was not.

  ‘What have you found over there, Tessa?’ he called out, walking away from Steroid Stan while he was in mid-flow. He was done even pretending to be listening.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tessa, looking up like a startled Bambi, ‘it’s these blue-and-white tiles. I keep looking at them, they’re so pretty, but I’m not sure if they’re genuine Delft, or something more ordinary.’

  At the moment she looked up, Simon tripped on a bit of old metal – probably a bit of Meatloaf’s bloody guttering.

  ‘Shit,’ he blurted out, just managing to right himself before he hit the deck.

  Jack was laughing. Simon ignored it.

  ‘Are you OK?’ asked Tessa, noticing he still had his beautiful brogues on.

  ‘I’m fine, but I’ve scratched one of my new shoes. Bloody idiot to wear them.’

  ‘Well, I don’t blame you for not fancying Finn’s trainers.’

  ‘Couldn’t quite face it,’ said Simon, smiling at her.

  ‘I always wear steel toe caps,’ Jack chipped in. ‘Some of the stuff I carry could take your foot off if you dropped it.’

  Simon and Tessa locked eyes, this time more in amusement than lust.

  ‘Very sensible,’ said Tessa, ‘we wouldn’t want a law suit.’

  Simon sat down gingerly on a pile of bricks next to her and as he reached over to take a tile out of the crate, Tessa accidentally caught a glimpse down the front of the boiler suit of a taut chest and stomach, which looked remarkably like the ones she remembered from so many years before. She swayed slightly, crouching on her heels, and had to steady herself with her hand.

  ‘I think they’re probably genuine old Delft,’ he said brushing the dust off the tile he was holding, a charming scene of a man with a spade. He picked up a few more. ‘They all seem to be different, too, how lovely. Shall I take a few of them back up to town to show one of my antique-dealer pals?’

  ‘That would be great,’ said Tessa. ‘It’s been nagging at me, leaving them sitting around like this, that they might get sold off as a cheap lot, when they could be something rather special.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t leave them out here.’

  Where Norman the Moron might crush them beneath his mighty steel boots, he thought, as Jack lumbered across the yard and stood over them, hands on hips, blocking the sun.

  ‘I was just going to show you the corrugated iron,’ he said, a frown between his brows, clearly not happy with being abandoned during his guttering lecture.

  ‘Ah,’ said Simon, squinting up at him, ‘it’s just I don’t think that the construction side of the yard is particularly relevant to what Tom and Tessa want me to do here. It’s more the decorative side of things they want me to promote.’

  Jack looked down at him, his eyes narrowed. Simon could practically hear the cogs turning.

  ‘Can I go then?’ asked Jack, addressing himself entirely to Tessa. ‘I’ve got some phone calls I could be getting on with.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s fine,’ said Tessa. ‘Thanks for your time, Jack. You go and do whatever you need to do now.’

  Yes, you do that, dearie, thought Simon, as Jack nodded in acknowledgement and walked off.

  Simon restrained himself from expressing his relief. It wasn’t good form to criticise somebody’s staff to them, but when he glanced at Tessa, she smiled back at him, with a mischievous look in her eye, which reminded Simon for a moment of Rachel.

  ‘I don’t think Jack’s so comfortable with the decorative side of things,’ she said. ‘He’s very good with corrugated iron …’

  ‘And guttering,’ said Simon.

  ‘And he can carry very heavy things …’ said Tessa and she started to giggle, partly from the tension.

  Simon was laughing too.

  ‘He showed me his biceps,’ he said, ‘very impressive.’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t …’ said Tessa. ‘I’m so sorry I inflicted him on you, I just thought he’d be able to tell you more about what’s going on with the yard now, than I can. I haven’t had that much to do with Jack, to be honest, and I didn’t realise he was quite so …’

  ‘Guttering-y?’ said Simon.

  Tessa laughed again, nodding. ‘Of course, we do need someone with that kind of expertise,’ she added, thinking she should at least try to be a bit professional. ‘A lot of people who come here are only looking for technical building materials, but I’ve never been very involved in that side of the business.’

  That was more Tom’s thing, she thought, but didn’t want to say his name. It felt like a weird kind of betrayal saying it to Simon. It was bad enough seeing him in her husband’s overalls. Especially the way he was bursting out of them, like Superman ripping off Clark Kent’s suit.

  ‘Well, now he’s gone to do his thing, shall we get on with looking at the stuff I can successfully promote for you?’ said Simon. ‘I think you could really beef up the carry-away retail side here – you know, things people just take home rather than have delivered in a big truck. You might want to think about hiring someone else on site to work on that. Or you might like to do it yourself, Tessa. You’d be so good at it. Discuss that with Tom, because I’m sure we can work magic promoting the more decorative offer, but if it’s Desperate Dan they have to deal with when they come in to buy, I don’t think it will work out in sales.’

  He’d mentioned Tom’s name deliberately. Even despite the precarious seating and the heinous boiler suit, he felt so completely at ease with Tessa at that moment, sitting in the sunshine, a Delft tile still in his hand, he needed to remind them both of the situation they were in – but it didn’t work. It didn’t break the spell. He glanced over at her and saw that she’d turned her beautiful face up to the sun with her eyes closed. Savouring the day.

  Is this what it would be like? Simon wondered, indulging himself just a little bit longer, in the companionable silence, with a woman he found almost overwhelmingly attractive, but also really liked. Someone he could communicate with in verbal shorthand. Who got his references and his jokes. Who got him … Is this what a normal middle-aged relationship felt like, for those who were capable of having one? Comfortable, easy and nurturing. But, he reminded himself, it wasn’t his middle-aged relationship. No more getting cosy, mister.

  ‘Right,’ he said, getting to his feet and stuffing both his hands quickly in the pockets of the boiler suit, when he realised he had been just about to put one of them out to help her up from the ground, ‘how about you show me some of your finest beaten-up old crap?’

  Tessa had felt so at ease with Simon, hanging out in the sunny yard, laughing about oafish Jack, she was beginning to allow herself to hope that she was finally getting on top of the weirdness. If she could be that relaxed with him now, with no one else around, maybe it would be all right working with him. And she so
wanted it to be, because she was starting to feel really excited about being involved with the business again.

  She was already having ideas about how she could re-style the yard, so the duller builders’ merchant side of things would complement the more decorative stuff she loved, make a frame for it, rather than be off-putting. She could picture a winding path through the various areas – planks, doors, guttering, radiators all attractively ranked – making it a kind of journey of discovery. Rather than a big old mess of stuff, which it was currently.

  Feeling more enthusiastic about the business than she had for years, she took Simon into the big barn which housed Tom’s precious fireplaces, hearths and overmantels.

  ‘Not sure about all this,’ Simon was saying, running appreciative fingers over the carved roundels on a Regency marble fire surround. ‘I mean, I love this surround, it’s like the one in my office – and in my flat actually – but I’m not sure we should promote this side of the business so much, when it’s already so well served by the TV show. That would just bring in more of the crazed fans.’

  He was holding the front of the overalls together as he spoke. It was clearly too small for him, Tessa felt bad for suggesting it. Bloody Jack.

  ‘Not that I think you should completely ignore that market,’ Simon continued, walking along the line of fireplaces, ‘there is clearly money to be made there, but it would have to be handled with subtlety, because it could very easily cheapen the Hunter Gatherer brand, which has a much longer life span, in my opinion, than the TV show.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Tessa, thrilled that he understood that.

  She knew Barney the Dinosaur was very keen on the idea of Tim Chiminey merchandising deals and was determined that Hunter Gatherer should not be in any way part of that. It was so good to know she didn’t have to explain things like that to Simon. He got it.

  ‘Come over here then,’ said Tessa, walking towards the back of the barn, ‘I want to show you the kind of stuff I think is being neglected.’

  With every step they took towards the far end of the building, away from the sunlight streaming in through the open door, it got darker. Not familiar with the layout, Simon had to tread carefully until his eyes adjusted and by the time he reached the very back, Tessa was already stuck in, pulling things out of boxes to show him.

  He did his best to admire the brass hooks, turned dark brown with neglect, pearlescent glass light fittings liberally dusted with the corpses of dead insects, and a large bundle of old roller towels, stiff with decades of accumulated dust, and tried to share her enthusiasm, while deeply hoping he wouldn’t be expected to touch any of them.

  Simon appreciated patina as much as the next highly visual sophisticate, he could coo over a flaking Italian fresco as excitedly as any overprivileged aesthete, but there was a point for him where attractive wear-and-tear went over into proper crumminess. This stuff was well beyond it.

  He tried to picture the items she was showing him, not polished up like repro, but at least washed and dusted and placed in a more congenial environment than this filthy old shed. He felt like the still-living cousins of the dead daddy long legs were crawling over his head.

  He pushed his hands back into the boiler suit pockets and then, realising it just pulled the gaping front of the hideous thing open further, took them out again and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

  Tessa picked up on his discomfort. ‘What do you think?’ she asked tentatively, holding up a stuffed crow, wings outstretched, she’d just pulled out of a tea chest. It was part of the deceased estate of a taxidermist, the rest of it stacked up against the far wall.

  Simon took a step back. Taxidermy, particularly birds, made him feel physically sick. He could practically see the fleas crawling over it.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ he said, carefully. ‘I know how fashionable this kind of gear is at the moment and styled up the way you do it so beautifully in your own house, there’s a huge market for it. I’m just not great with, um, seeing it in the wild.’

  Tessa suddenly remembered Rachel once describing Simon’s office to her – as an example of why he was a wanker. It was all white, she’d said, including the desk, which was huge and shiny and never had anything on it apart from a vase of white flowers, a pot of black biros and some exquisite bit of ancient Greek sculpture. Of course he’d hate this shed.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I forget that other people don’t feel comfortable with … this …’

  She gestured towards the stacks of old cardboard boxes, crates and pallets, with her free hand and then put the crow carefully back in the tea chest. She thought it was beautiful. She’d come back for it later and put it in the library.

  ‘Let’s go and sit in the garden, for a bit,’ she said. ‘There are some nice pieces out there we can look at and then it will be time for lunch.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Simon, blinking furiously, then sneezing dramatically.

  ‘Here we go,’ he said, sneezing three more times in quick succession. ‘I’m allergic to dust.’

  Simon walked behind Tessa when they got out of the shed, hoping she wouldn’t see him brushing his shoulders to remove any dead flies and other filth that might have landed on them. He’d never longed for a shower more.

  She turned round to see him with his head down by his knees, frantically rubbing his scalp with his fingers. She burst out laughing.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Simon, standing up quickly and running his hands over his head, knowing he probably looked like Krusty the Clown. On a windy day. ‘I just can’t help feeling I’m crawling with insects. I’m so sorry. I just hate stuffed birds.’

  He shuddered involuntarily.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Tessa, ‘I had no idea you felt that way, or I never would have shown it to you.’

  ‘No,’ said Simon, ‘the fault lies with me, I’m being very unprofessional. I’m fine now and isn’t your garden lovely? I didn’t get much of a look at it last time I was here.’

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth he could have punched himself in the face. Just when things had been starting to feel a little bit normal – and he’d actually been oddly pleased to be revolted by her salvage junk, as it had put a little bit of much needed distance between them. Now that gap had closed over in an instant.

  And it wasn’t just him. He saw it on her face too, as soon as he said it, her expression changed and her eyes went down to her feet. Then they came up again and of course, he was still looking at her, frozen with the stupidity of what he’d just done and there they were, back where they’d started, gazing into each other’s eyes in a dizzy wonder of attraction.

  Simon sighed. They had to have that conversation. ‘Is there somewhere we can go and sit?’ he asked.

  Tessa nodded and he followed her along a path, mown through a meadow of wild grasses and flowers, butterflies flitting about – sent by Central Casting, thought Simon – towards a stand of trees, which he could see, as they got closer, were all starting to bear fruit.

  ‘It’s an orchard,’ he said out loud.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tessa, ‘it’s my favourite part of the garden.’

  And the orchard is my very favourite part of my mother’s garden, thought Simon, my sanctuary, but he kept that to himself. He had enough to deal with in the here and now, without opening that conversational portal. Oh really, where does your mother live? Do you see her often? Next question please …

  They followed the path between the trees to a small clearing where there was a fringed swing seat, the cushions upholstered in faded yellow linen.

  ‘Now that’s my kind of salvage,’ said Simon. ‘What a lovely old thing.’

  ‘I got it out of a skip,’ said Tessa, laughing.

  ‘Well, that’s where you salvage scavengers have the edge on me. I miss out on these kinds of treasures, being a prissy clean freak. It doesn’t look too dirty,’ he said, inspecting the seats.

&n
bsp; ‘It’s not,’ said Tessa, sitting down. ‘Someone was gutting a lovely old house in Tunbridge Wells and I found this and a lot of other great things in the skip outside, all in perfect nick. People are just too lazy to sell stuff, so they chuck it out.’

  ‘And clever magpies like you swoop down and pick it up,’ said Simon, sitting down next to her and immediately wondering if he’d taken leave of his senses.

  Sheltered beneath the floral fabric roof, the white fringe waving back and forth with the gentle movement of the swing, he turned to look at Tessa. She turned at the same moment and the two of them were locked there, inside the embrace of the seat, the sun shining on their legs, birds singing in the trees around them.

  Tessa felt her stomach turn over. She’d felt so normal and at ease with him earlier, sitting in the yard, and then his obvious distaste for the things she so loved in the barn had finally made her feel the desperately needed separation had taken place. And now this.

  Simon decided to stop thinking. He didn’t have a sensible thought in his head, so he wasn’t going to listen to any of them. He was just going to be. He reached over and took Tessa’s hand. She didn’t pull it away. And then they just sat there, rocking gently in the swing, in the sunshine, in the orchard. In the moment.

  Tessa knew she should let go of Simon’s hand, but she didn’t want to. It felt so right sitting there with him. It was like the previous twenty-five years had never happened. This was the day after the night before. Instead of her slipping away while he slept, they’d woken up together, they’d come to the orchard and they were sitting in the swing. Twenty-something years old. The whole of their lives to come.

  Neither of them knew how long they’d been sitting there, when they heard a bell clanging in the distance.

  ‘That means Mum needs help with the lunch,’ said Tessa.

  ‘We’d better go in then,’ said Simon.

  They turned and looked at each other again. Simon tried to remember when he’d last felt so happy and when they stood up, it seemed perfectly natural to walk back along the path, towards the house, still hand in hand.