The New Neighbours

by Costeloe Diney

  Mavis was sitting at one of the tables helping a scruffy young man to fill in some complicated-looking form. She waved a hand of welcome to Shirley and then turned her attention back to the form.

  Shirley went through to the kitchen where she found a West Indian girl tackling a pile of washing up. “Hallo,” Shirley said, “I don’t think we’ve met, have we? My name’s Shirley Redwood.”

  The girl smiled at her. “Hi, I’m Cirelle Thomas.”

  “Nice to meet you, Cirelle. Do you want a hand with that?” Shirley looked round for a tea towel to help with the drying up, but Cirelle shook her head.

  “No, really, I can manage here, I’ve got time to finish this. You go and help Mavis outside. There’s a new pot of tea made if anybody wants some.”

  Shirley shed jacket and handbag, and went back to Vera.

  “Now then, Vera,” she said sitting down by the old lady, “let’s have a look.”

  Vera had been labouring over a sweater for months now, determined to get it finished, but her hands were arthritic, and she found the work hard going.

  “I’m not going to waste this wool,” she would say. “I’ll finish this bugger if it kills me.”

  Shirley swiftly disentangled the wool and gave her attention to the pattern. “Ah, I see. I’m afraid you’ve gone wrong right back here.” She showed Vera the mistake. “I’m afraid you’ll have to go back if it’s going to look right in the end.”

  “OK, Shirl, whatever you say.” Vera watched as Shirley ripped the knitting back to the mistake. “Where you been these last few weeks, then?” she asked. “I been stuck with this ever since the last time you was in. I brought it every day since in case you come back.”

  “I went to stay with my daughter,” explained Shirley. “She just had her second baby.”

  “Lovely,” said Vera. “Boy or girl?”

  “Little girl, they’ve called her Suzanne.”

  “Lovely,” Vera said again. “Got any snaps, have you?”

  Shirley smiled at that. “Yes, lots!”

  “With you?”

  “No, not today, but I’ll bring them next time if you like.”

  Cirelle appeared at their side. “Want another cup of tea, Vera?”

  “Oh, yes please, luv. Never say no to a cup of tea, do I?”

  Cirelle brought them tea, and as she moved on to another table, Vera said, “Nice girl, that one. Doesn’t come in very often, but when she does she’s always smiling. She’s a student you know. Up at the university. Must be a clever girl. Told me she come from London.”

  Shirley smiled. “Does she? I haven’t met her before today.”

  “Well, she won’t be here much more now, ’cos she’ll be finished for the summer, won’t she? But she’ll be back in September, she said. Going to live somewhere round here, she is, so she’ll be in more regular. Nice to see a youngster about the place, isn’t it?”

  Shirley agreed it was, and looked round again for Cirelle, but she was back in the kitchen, and by the time Shirley was able to leave Vera to her now corrected knitting, Cirelle had disappeared.

  “I haven’t met Cirelle before,” she remarked to Mavis as they snatched a cup of tea together in the kitchen. “She seems a nice girl.”

  “Yes she is,” agreed Mavis. “She comes to church occasionally, and Frank suggested she might like to help here sometimes. Several students do, you know.” She smiled across at Shirley. “I often think we don’t give them enough credit for what they do, you know, we only notice the vandals.”

  Shirley, thinking of her own reaction to the news of the student house next door, had to agree. She felt ashamed of herself. David was right, they had to give them a chance.

  Unable to restrain herself any longer, Sheila Colby phoned Shirley that evening.

  “I don’t know if you’ve heard the news,” she said. “I did leave you a note to give me a call, but I expect you’ve been too busy.”

  “Yes, I have,” replied Shirley sweetly.

  “Well, the long and the short of it is, Ned Short has sold his house at last.”

  “Oh yes, we did hear that,” said Shirley. “David met the new owner this morning actually. A very nice chap, he said.”

  “Well, it isn’t the owner I’m concerned about,” breathed Sheila, “it’s the tenants. He’s letting it to a load of students.”

  “Yes,” agreed Shirley, “his daughter and some of her friends. David met her as well. A very attractive girl he said.”

  “I had heard a rumour that it was for his daughter,” said Sheila, unwilling to admit that Shirley already had more information than she did. “I gather they are going to do a lot of work on the house over the summer. Gerald says there’s sure to be an awful mess as they do the alterations.”

  “There’s sure to be a bit,” agreed Shirley, “but Mr Richmond gave us his card so we can call him if things get out of hand.”

  “Hmm, did he indeed? He hasn’t given us one, and we just as likely to be affected by the building.”

  “Well, David made a point of introducing himself, this morning.” Shirley maintained her sweetness of tone. “Perhaps Gerald should do the same if he gets a chance.”

  “Yes,” agreed Sheila. “I think he should. I’ll tell him. But I also wanted to tell you that I’ve seen Anthony Hammond about this, because I think it’s something the Residents’ Association should be aware of. Gerald thinks we may need to take some swift action.”

  “I expect he’s right,” said Shirley, deliberately misunderstanding her. “We gave a Circle barbecue when the Forresters moved in, didn’t we? Perhaps we can do the same for the students, so that they can get to meet everyone. What a good idea of Gerald’s. Though we’ll have plenty of time to arrange it over the summer, won’t we? I mean they aren’t moving in until September, are they?”

  “She didn’t know what to say to that,” Shirley told David that evening over supper. “I wish she wouldn’t always blame Gerald for her unpleasant ideas.”

  “I expect he’s used to it,” replied her husband. “Any more pud?”

  Eight

  Madge Peters sat in her window and watched Dartmouth Circle waking up to its day. She was always awake herself by half past five these days and, knowing she would not go back to sleep again, she made herself apot of tea and took it to the sofa in the living room window. The position of her house, number one Dartmouth Circle, allowed her to see everyone who came in or out of the close as well as a small part of the main road beyond, and Madge enjoyed watching the comings and goings of her neighbours.

  “When you’re nearly ninety and don’t get out much, you start to live your life through other people,” she explained when her son Andrew teased her about being nosy and minding everybody else’s business. “I like to watch them all coming and going and guess what they’re up to.”

  “Really, Mother!” expostulated Andrew. “They’re probably not ‘up to’ anything.”

  “Of course they are,” Madge returned cheerfully. “People are always up to something, that’s what makes them so interesting. That Sheila Colby for instance, now if you’re talking about busybodying, she’s a right one. She’s been running about like a wet hen these last two weeks just because a few students are moving into the house next door to her. Did I tell you that?”

  “No, Mother,” answered Andrew with exaggerated patience, “I told you. Remember, Gerald told me one afternoon when we were playing golf, and then I told you, because Sheila thought you ought to know.”

  “There you are then,” said Madge triumphantly. “Why send me messages about her neighbours?”

  “She was concerned about you, Mother. She was afraid you’d be nervous with a crowd of students living just down the road.”

  “Rubbish,” Madge said tersely. “She just wants to draw attention to herself and feel important.”

  “I think you’re a bit hard on her, you know. Anyway, from what Gerald says, I think she’ll be coming in to see you soon,” Andrew warned. “She can if she
must,” Madge answered with resignation in her voice, but secretly she was pleased. Her visitors were few enough to make her welcome anyone coming to break up the day, even Sheila Colby.

  Now as she drank her tea and watched the exodus to work from the Circle, Madge remembered Sheila was coming today. She had rung last night and invited herself to coffee this morning.

  “Wonder what the silly woman wants,” Madge said to Spike, her cat, who lay curled on her lap as he did every morning, listening to her comments on the world outside. She spoke a good deal to Spike. He was a sympathetic listener and never queried her dictums.

  From the house opposite, she saw Paul Forrester leave for work, followed soon after by his wife, Alison, taking the children to school. Madge liked the Forresters. They were a sensible no-nonsense couple whose family life was how Madge felt a family should be, as her own had been. Paul went out to work, Alison did not. She stayed at home with the children to run the household and make it the place to which everyone was pleased to come home. The children were escorted to and from school, played with, read to and generally given their mother’s attention when they were at home. They played in the Circle garden, laughed and shrieked and yelled and were generally rowdy like any other six and four year olds, but they were not unruly and were very affectionate. Sometimes Madge was invited over for tea, and she really loved going. After tea they played games or had a story, and though Madge did not always participate in these pastimes, she always enjoyed watching them.

  “That’s the way a family should be,” Madge had said to Mary Jarvis when she came to tea one day and they were watching Alison pushing Harriet and Jon on the swings. “Children and mother doing things together, not the children coming home with latch keys and left to their own devices.”

  “Happens more and more these days,” Mary said. “Most young mums want to have a job. Let’s face it Madge, most mums need to, to make ends meet.”

  “Maybe,” said Madge darkly, “but it isn’t doing their families any good.”

  “I agree with you,” Mary said. “But we’re old-fashioned, you and I. The modern thinking is that it makes the mother a more complete person to have interests outside the home.”

  “You sound like a women’s magazine,” sniffed Madge.

  Mary laughed. “I probably read it in one,” she admitted. “Still, some families manage very well with two working parents. We shouldn’t be too critical, you know just because it isn’t how it was in our day.”

  “This is still my day,” Madge replied tartly, and Mary laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “we’re not writing you off yet.”

  “I should think not, even if I am old enough to be your mother,” at which they both roared with laughter.

  Madge thought about this again as she watched Alison walking round the Circle holding Harriet’s hand while Jon skipped happily beside her.

  “I’m glad I’m old-fashioned,” she remarked to Spike. She looked at the clock. “Now where are those Haven girls? They’ll be late if they don’t get a move on.”

  Even as she spoke, Chantal erupted from the house, followed at a more sedate pace by Annabel. Angela had left some time earlier, relying on the girls to get themselves off to school on time.

  Sad that the husband upped and left, Madge mused. They had seemed a happy family, never any breath of scandal there, and then suddenly…

  . They should keep an eye on that older girl though, Madge thought, watching Annabel trail past her window towards the main road. Madge had noticed how often she was later home than her sister. Two or three times Madge had seen her scramble out of an old van at the corner. Did her mother know about that van… or its driver? Madge wondered. Not my business, she thought, but she watched with interest nonetheless.

  “I’m not a gossip,” she said to Andrew. “It’s only wrong if I talk about what I see, and I don’t. But simply watching gives me something new to think about, makes me feel involved in life.”

  She saw Jill Hammond taking her little girl, Sylvia, to playgroup, and soon after watched the au pair setting off to town with young Thomas in the buggy.

  She saw the two doctors, Harry and Fran Davies, leaving in their separate cars for their surgery in the health centre half a mile away. They had two other partners, Ella Garrett and James Durbin, as well, but so that the two Dr Davies’ did not get muddled up, they were always referred to as Dr Harry and Dr Fran.

  Madge was one of their patients and liked them both, but was particularly grateful to Dr Fran for encouraging her to stay in her own home as long as she could manage, despite her physical difficulties. Andrew had wanted to move her into sheltered accommodation in Belmouth, near where he lived, but Madge was determined to stay in her own home.

  “I don’t want a lot of people fussing round me all day,” she said. “I don’t want to go into a home. I’ve got a home, and it’s here.”

  “No one’s asking you to go into a home, Mother,” Andrew said patiently, “but a nice little bungalow by the sea, with a warden on hand just in case you do need anything, instead of this great big house.”

  “Andrew,” she replied equally patiently, “I have lived in this house ever since it was built, and I have every intention of staying in it.”

  “But it’s on three floors, Mother,” Andrew pointed out. “You have to do stairs every time you want to go out.”

  “And every time I want to go to the bathroom, or to my bedroom. I know. But I’ve talked to Dr Fran about it and she suggested we looked into getting one of those stair lifts.”

  “You’d need two,” Andrew said flatly, wishing Dr Fran at Jericho.

  “Then I’ll have two,” snapped his mother. “I can afford them, and with the other things Dr Fran has suggested, there isn’t any reason why I can’t go on living here at present.”

  “It worries me to think of you here on your own, that’s all,” Andrew said, and Madge knew the battle was won.

  “I know it does,” she said more gently, “And I couldn’t wish for a better or more caring son, but this is my home. You don’t have to worry about me. I have the entry phone on the door, I have the panic button round my neck, the neighbours are very good about popping in, and that Jenny from the Social comes three times a week to give me my bath. Mrs Price comes in two mornings to clean and do the washing, I have meals on wheels on weekdays and I manage very well by myself for the rest of the time. And let’s face it, Andrew, I live bang opposite my own doctor. She can be over in a moment if I need her.”

  Yes, if she’s there, and if you’re in a position to actually call her and not lying on the floor with a broken hip or having a heart attack, Andrew thought, but he didn’t say it. He knew when he was beaten, he had never in his life succeeded in getting his mother to do anything she didn’t want to, and it was clear he wasn’t about to start now.

  He wondered whether he ought to offer to move in with her yet again. He had offered once, but his mother’s refusal had been swift and absolute.

  “Certainly not, Andrew. It’s very kind of you, but it would never work. For one thing I wouldn’t want you to give up your own home because of me, and for another we’ve both lived alone for too long to start living with someone else now.” Her voice softened. “I love you dearly, but we couldn’t live together comfortably now, we’re both too set in our ways.”

  Andrew had really been relieved. She was quite right, he certainly didn’t want to leave his own home in Belmouth. It had been his home all his married life, and when his wife died at forty-five nearly twenty years ago, he had stayed there alone.

  No, living together still wasn’t the answer. After all, he was getting on himself now, and he didn’t want the day-to-day responsibility of looking after his ninety-year old mother. He still would have preferred her to be closer at hand and in some sort of sheltered accommodation, but at least he had to agree she was very well organised where she was.

  “All right, Mother,” he conceded, “we’ll get the lifts installed and see
how you get on.”

  Now that she had no further problems with the stairs, Madge found her life very much easier than before. It didn’t matter if she’d left her book by the bed, of if she’d forgotten to go to the loo before she came down, she could simply glide easily upstairs again; and if she wanted to sit in the Circle garden for a while, she no longer had to struggle with the stairs in either direction; her lift carried her downstairs and she simply let herself out of the front door. She didn’t go much further than the garden these days, though occasionally Mary Jarvis took her in the car to St Joe’s, and she always enjoyed that. She had been one of the founders of the day centre some years before, and she missed being able to go regularly, but at least she could still go into the garden by herself on warm sunny days if she wanted to. Her independence was very important to her. Even Spike was taken care of, he had a cat flap in the garden door, so she didn’t have to bother about him, he could come and go as he chose. Everything was taken care of, and she managed very well.

  The roar of a car engine drew her back to her view in time for her to see a red sports car pass her window and pause at the mouth of the Circle to pull out into the traffic. The roof was down, and Madge could see it was driven by a woman in her thirties, her hair tied back with a scarf and wearing a huge pair of sunglasses. Madge didn’t know who the woman was, but she did know which house she had come from, for she had seen the car parked outside Mike Callow’s the evening before. Madge’s lips tightened. She didn’t approve of Mike Callow, or his lifestyle. She knew he was separated and lived alone, but that was no excuse for the stream of women who passed through his house. Some of them even stayed when his children were with him, which Madge considered unforgivable.

  “How he conducts his own life is his business,” she remarked to

  Spike, “but he shouldn’t involve his children in his goings-on.”

  Mike Callow worked from home and was often about the Circle in the daytime. If she were sitting in the garden when he walked by, he never failed to wish her good morning and often stopped for a chat, and Madge found herself responding to his charm, in spite of herself. She distrusted his dark good looks, his easy manner and his lopsided grin, but she always found herself smiling back at him, and realised how attractive he must be to most women, how easy it must be for him to find willing partners to bring home.