“Can I get you anything? Cup of tea?” she asked.
“Yeah, some tea would be nice,” I said, staring out through the French doors to the huge garden beyond.
It certainly didn’t seem ‘unkempt’ to me. There was a wide, well mowed lawn surrounded by flower beds and with a table and chairs set out on a patio to one side where the house extended in an L shape. In the distance, at least 100 feet I reckoned, the lawn came to end and there were what looked like bushes. Further than that, I couldn’t see, although there were some windswept looking hills in the far beyond.
“So, David,” she said, making the tea.
“Yes?” I said, only just managing to stop myself from referring to her as ‘Doctor.”
“Would you like milk and sugar?”
“Oh,” I said. “Yes please. Four large sugars please.”
“Did you say four?” she said, with a look of disbelief.
“Yup,” I said. “I’m not sweet enough.”
She nodded slowly and put in the sugars.
“Here you go,” she handed me a steaming hot mug.
She went back to the kitchen area, picked up a mug she had made for herself, came back over to the living area and sat on another of the sofas.
“Thanks,” I said, raising my mug to her.
“You’re welcome,” she said, holding hers between her hands and blowing on it.
She was sitting very upright, her legs crossed neatly, while I slouched back into the sofa. For some reason, I therefore felt compelled to sit up straight too. It was a bit of an effort, but I managed it.
There then followed an awkward few minutes where both of us sat, silently sipping our tea. She seemed a little on edge, and that was exactly how I felt. I was struggling to think of her as a person who made tea and chilled out, rather than a doctor. It was as if this house was merely an extension of her office, and at any minute she would start prodding me and asking personal health questions. Conversation was not forthcoming. At first this pleased me, I was happy not to contemplate the fate of that acid-mauled destitute, his ghastly screaming still ringing in my ears, or the future that lay ahead of me like a wasteland. But the more we sat there in silence, the more it made me uncomfortable. There was something a little unhappy about this woman, the way she sat and stared so plainly, a hand brushing casually over Ian or Botham’s head, whichever one it was that was sat at her feet.
“I’m sorry David,” she said eventually. “I’m a little tired now, I could do with a nap. Would you mind if I excuse myself? I’ll make some dinner later.”
“Sure thing,” I said.
She stood up and placed her mug on a table next to the sofa.
“If you need the toilet, as I said you can use the garden,” she said, walking to the French doors.
I stood up and joined her there. She pointed vaguely out towards the hills.
“If you go all the way to the back of the lawn, you’ll find a little path to the right of the bushes. Just go down there and you’ll reach an overgrown field. I don’t mind where you go but please just be careful of the dogs. They like to run out there sometimes.”
“OK, I’ll watch out.”
“Good.”
She turned and looked at me seriously now.
“I want you to just relax here, OK? You’ve got a lot to think about. We both have. Watch TV if you like, and help yourself to anything you want. I don’t bite and neither do Ian and Botham. Not unless you give us a reason to, anyway.”
With that she turned and left the room, dogs in tow.
“Sure thing, doc,” I said, under my breath.
*****
Funny me being there on my own. It was a big old house, no mistake about that. I don’t think I’d ever been inside such a cavernous place. Just the living room on its own was worth two of every room in my little box flat, maybe more. So I didn’t know quite what to do with myself. Settling in and being all natural and relaxed didn’t seem right somehow. My chilling out routine normally involved munching and drinking soda pop, but despite what she said I felt a bit hesitant to rummage through the food and things.
I flicked on the TV. A whopper of a screen it was too, filling an entire wall and hanging there all pristine like some kind of precious painting. And she had Sky. Awesome. I clicked up and down through the channels, searching for anything with lots of blasting, punching and swearing.
I found a Van Damme flick. It passed the time OK I suppose, but I just couldn’t settle. The sofa was too huge and comfy, the decor of the place too fancy and expensive looking. It just wasn’t very welcoming, despite all the money that had evidently been spent on decorations. It felt like a showroom, not really a gaff where real people could chill in their jammies, let it all hang out, have a bit of a chinwag. If you know what I mean.
*****
I took to pottering about, since relaxing didn’t appear to be on the cards. I inspected the ornaments, artwork and pictures daintily on display throughout the abode - crystal swans and painted porcelain dogs, a chest of shiny trophies, signed sports photos hanging on one wall, mostly cricketers I think, I didn’t recognise any of the faces. There was a piano in one corner, all clean and shiny. And a large painting of a yacht in some kind of sunny harbour.
One coffee table did have what looked like a small collection of family pics and I spent a few minutes examining them. There was one of the doc and her hubbie. She was sort of smiling, but not quite. That seemed to be her way. The hubbie had a big smile though. A middle-aged guy with a dusty brown crown of hair laid like a bush around his shiny bald crown, and wearing a very nice suit. His smile looked completely fake to me, like he was putting on a show, or a dinner party for guests he hated. There were one or two pics with all four of them, the two parents with their two grown up kids, around about my age. The boy and girl both looked very smart, the boy in a posh dark suite and the girl in some kind of frilly white dress. They had the same fake smile as their dad too. Perhaps it was just a photo posing thing, I guessed. I wouldn’t know myself, we never did such things in my family.
The dogs left me alone while I was snooping around. One of them had gone up with the doctor, while the other had settled down for a nap on one of the sofas where their appeared to be a special blanket for him. I could have sworn he was watching me, but every time I looked at him his eyes were closed.
I went for a piss in the garden as instructed. Down the lawn it was getting chilly now, a bit of icy wind in the air. I slipped down the path to the back of the lawn and found the opening at the side of the bushes there. I walked through it. The bushes were overgrown and tall, so it was like entering a little forest, the branches and leaves around me on all sides, like sneaking through to another world. Then all of a sudden the big field appeared before me, frost hovering over the tall grass, all crooked and wild, and a big fat red autumn sun sinking on the hills behind. Kind of cool.
I pushed myself a bit of the ways into that field, stomping out a path through the mess of greenery. When I reached a certain point, I felt ready to go, so I just came to a stop.
I unzipped and let it rip. There was nothing to fear here. No people, nothing to damage or be damaged by. I enjoyed the moment I can tell you. Yes, the grass did all burn away. Yes, there was a strange smell, this time sort of like a bonfire. Yes, I left my mark on that field, a roughly circular space where all plant life had been obliterated, leaving just a smooth and wide brown hole of dead and polluted earth. A bird above might have noticed it, but that was it, this was a big field out in the middle of nowhere, and it would take a hell of a lot of pissing to ruin the whole thing. It was bliss, to be honest, just being able to pee again, free from worry.
I zipped up and had a little thought that gave me a chuckle. Perhaps the doc wanted her field cleared? Perhaps that’s why she’d asked me here, to do some bothersome gardening for her? Perhaps I could have myself a new role in life? Dave, human weed killer?
Chapter 10
Having had the first uneventful pee of the day, I walked back
to the house with a nice sticky sense of peace and harmony, all smothered in it. Things seemed just about tolerable, even a mite better than tolerable.
The doc had woken up again when I entered the kitchen, and she seemed content to play some kind of a mother routine with me now.
“So, what would you like to eat David?” she said, all smiles.
She had changed and was now wearing just the kind of comfy garb I liked to chill in, sort of a furry tracksuit, albeit it with a middle-aged-feminine sort of a vibe, brown and beige colours and whatnot.
“Oh I don’t mind doc,” I said. “Whatever you’ve got.”
“Hmmm…” she said, opening the fridge. “Got some leftover veggie lasagne. And a lentil curry. And…” she stuck her head right in there, it was a vault of a fridge and all. “Some smoked mackerel too.”
I didn’t want to be rude but none of those options appealed to me in the slightest. I was very much a fast-food man. High carb, high energy intake was my order of the day, each and every day. I ran a very strict diet for myself. Never any of that vegetarian nonsense on my menu, and fish was only to be consumed deep fried and with mountains of thick cut chips.
She looked at me and I think she sort of got where I was coming from.
“Well,” she said, crossing her arms. “Since you’re here, and Chris is away,” I guessed Chris to be her hubby, “why don’t we just order in a pizza?”
“Oh yeah, pizza,” I said, trying not to sound too relieved, both about the pizza and the husband. “Can’t go wrong with a pizza.”
“Fine,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “I do love pizza myself actually. Only Chris is on this big health kick. Strictly low carbs and fresh fish and veggies. Do you know, I don’t think we’ve had pizza in over a year…”
She seemed to go off into a little waking dream.
I didn’t care. Takeaway pizza. She was an angel. A true lady. And this Chris, well, the less said about him the better.
*****
It was a strange little nugget of an evening, make no mistake.
She called for that pizza - a medium thin and crispy Hawaiian for her, an extra-large thick-cut Meat Feast with cheese filled crusts for me - giving me a look when I gave her my selection, what I’d call good-humoured disbelief tinged with disgust, and then it was straight to the fridge, in and out and back to the table top with a chilled, half-drunk bottle of French white.
“Excuse me if I have a drink,” she said, pulling out some glasses from a nearby cabinet. “It’s been a bit of a day. Would you like one?”
“Probably shouldn’t,” I said. “But that’s never stopped me before. Go on then. I haven’t had the easiest of days myself.”
“No you most certainly haven’t,” she said, pouring the wine.
We both took our glasses, she raised hers and I felt a bit awkward again because I wasn’t used to drinking in such a civilised fashion. She looked at me and smiled and sort of burst into a little giggle, the like of which I would never have expected to see from her.
“For Gods sake, relax,” she said, clinking her glass onto mine and taking a large sip.
I shrugged my shoulders and took a decent pelt myself. It was nice, proper wine. Cool to the tongue and bursting with fruity grapes. I could almost picture those grapes being picked from the vines, being handled by the dainty fingers of buxom farm maidens riding white swans to their French villas in the sunshine.
“Ah…” I let out my traditional exhalation of appreciation. “Good stuff this.”
“Isn’t bad is it,” she said. “We have a dealer in Provence, Chris gets him to send us a case now and again.”
“Really?” I said, trying to sound interested. “That’s… cool.”
“I suppose,” she said.
She was giving me a searching look now, sort of a frown, but a friendly one that I took to mean she seriously expected me to relax now and not to treat her like a distant relative at a wedding.
“Can’t just pick up a bottle in Tesco’s then I guess?” I said.
“No!” she said, bursting into laughter. “Look, it’s just wine. You drink it like any other.”
“It is good stuff.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Now, since you are here, please just do me a favour and relax, OK? Do you want to watch the TV? We’ve got Sky Movies. You can choose. Anything you want.”
“Alright,” I said, following her to the sofas.
We sat down, she curled into a corner of one of the giant sofas, and me spreading myself into one of the armchairs. She threw me the remote and I switched on the big screen and chugged through the channels. There were plenty of decent flicks to watch, loads that I imagined she would be into - period dramas and the like - and a whole different bunch that were more up my street - action flicks and gory sci-fi thrillers and what-not. I hovered at one or two such gems, but found myself reluctant to choose.
“Oh you are a one,” she said. “I told you I don’t care.”
She stood up, came over and took the remote from me. Standing there, she flicked through and eventually arrived at what I considered the least likely film she could have chosen.
“Sharknado?” I said. “Seriously?”
“Why not?” she said, heading back to her corner of that sofa. “Change it if you want…”
“No, that’s fine,” I said, so confused by her I can’t even describe. “It’s a classic.”
*****
So we watched Sharknado. A belter of a film, that’s for sure. Maybe not Oscar material but the doc was loving it, sipping her wine and laughing her head off at all the right moments. I was in awe of her I can tell you.
When we got to the bit when this guy with a chainsaw slices this flying shark in half, the doorbell rang.
“Pizza!” cried the doc, all excited.
She got up in a flash and went to the door. I was about ready to murder that pizza, imagining all that bubbling thick cheese and those plump mega-juicy morsels of meat dolloped all over it, all nice and evenly distributed. I heard the door close and stood up to help the doctor lay out our eats, and was surprised when she came back empty handed, instead accompanied by a smart young man in a pin-stripe suit, pulling a small travel case on wheels.
We eyed each other suspiciously, well him more suspiciously I think, since I had already clocked him from the pictures. It was her son. He looked from me to the TV, wincing at the sound of screams and the throttling of a chainsaw.
“Who’s this?” he turned to the doc.
“Well Daryl,” she said, “I was just about to tell you but you came straight in. This is David. One of my patients.”
“Hello mate,” I said, forcing what I am certain was a horribly weak smile.
“Bringing your patients home with you now?” he said, ignoring me.
“Daryl…” his mum growled.
He left his bag where it was and came over to me, putting out a hand, obviously finding my overweight frame, slouchy clothes and general laddish decorum not to his taste.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, holding my hand as floppily as it is humanly possible.
“And you too mate,” I said. “Call me Dave.” I added, for some reason thinking that would ease the situation.
He raised an eyebrow and wrinkled his spindly nose, as if a nasty smell had just materialised inside his nostrils.
s“What’s this?” said the doc, looking at me. “Dave straightaway is it, when there I was calling you ‘David’ all day long? Who’s buying the pizza, hey? Me or him?”
Man of Ruin_Episode One Page 9
