Everything in the Garden

by Jo Verity

  Bill was out too, at the dentist, and they decided to walk down to the village and have a drink at The Lion. All the way to the pub, they talked about Frank Hill or Flora and Luke. Anna took the lead and, uncharacteristically, Sally seemed happy to listen.

  They bought drinks and found a table in the beer garden.

  ‘It’s silly coming down here, when we have all that open space at home,’ Anna said.

  ‘It’s good to be silly now and again, don’t you think? At least there’s a bit of life here, if you can call it that.’ Sally indicated the other customers, mostly farmers on their way home for a mid-day meal. She lit a cigarette, shutting her eyes and dragging the smoke into her lungs. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It’s not illegal.’

  ‘It’s such a shame, when you went through all the agony of giving up.’

  ‘I’ve given up so many times, I’m quite good at it.’

  ‘Well, you’re old enough to know what you’re doing. How’s Carol?’

  ‘Fine, as far as I know. I haven’t actually seen her since Christmas.’

  ‘I did wonder. Look if you don’t want to talk…’

  ‘God, I’ve done nothing but talk since I’ve been back but I’m obviously speaking a foreign language. Bill sits there, refusing to understand. I - am - leaving - you. I - have - had - enough. What’s difficult about that? I’ve tried to let him down gently but he just tells me how nice it is to have me home, and how we’re going to make a fresh start. How can I make him understand that it’s over?’

  This didn’t come as a surprise but it was distressing to hear it, nevertheless. Anna watched the bubbles rise through the lemonade, her warm fingers damp with the condensation that had formed on the outside of the glass. ‘You two always seemed so well-suited.’

  ‘Put on a great performance, didn’t we? When I think back, we lost the plot years ago. It was pretty bad before we moved. Stupid to imagine that coming here was going to solve anything. Being stuck in that god-forsaken house, in the middle of nowhere, has just about finished me off. Now the kids have gone, there’s no reason to stay together. Bill may be prepared to wind down to a dead stop but I’m not. He’s turning into a caricature of himself, and it’s getting to the stage where I can’t bear to be with him. He irritates the hell out of me.’

  ‘Where did you go? He was in a dreadful state.’

  Sally took a drag of her cigarette, expelling the smoke slowly before replying, ‘His name’s Tim.’

  Anna watched an empty crisp packet drift across the stone slabs and lodge in a lavender bush. Had she misunderstood what Sally was saying?

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, Anna. I feel crappy enough as it is.’

  This was her friend, maybe her best friend, and she must not be judgmental. ‘Is it serious with … Tim?’ It sounded like dialogue from a bad play.

  ‘D’you mean, am I sleeping with him? Yes, I am. And it’s fantastic. Bill and I haven’t made love since Christmas. It’s wonderful to feel that someone fancies me. But no, it’s not serious. It’s what I need, at the moment, to help me make the break. I’m scared I’ll weaken and give in.’

  ‘Maybe you just need to make your point.’ From Sally’s face she could see she was making a bad job of this. ‘Sorry. You must have been over and over it but it’s new to me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. Or do. Or think.’

  ‘I know you want to help, Anna. And you’ve always been a wonderful listener. But the trouble is, you love happy endings. You want everyone to be friends and live happily ever after. Good luck to you, if you can make your life work like that. I can’t. It’s reducing me to a zombie.’ She lit another cigarette.

  Was this how she came across, a lover of happy endings? Perhaps Sally would be interested to hear about the episode in the outhouse. How her ‘caricature of a husband’ had been lusting after her best friend. What’s more, Bill had obviously been aroused that night. She could vouch for that.

  ‘What about counselling? Relate, or whatever?’

  ‘Anna, I want to leave. I have absolutely no interest in resurrecting our marriage. Everyone will think I’m a bitch but I don’t care. I’ll miss you and Tom, of course, and perhaps, one day, we’ll be able to be in touch again. If Bill stays living here, he’ll need all of you. I’m perfectly happy to be cast as the Wicked Witch of the West, if it makes it easier to have someone to blame.’

  ‘What if Flora and Luke get together?’

  ‘Let’s worry about that when it happens, shall we? Come on, I’ve got to pick up my bits of shopping.’

  They left the pub and walked along the main street. The heat had driven everyone inside and Cwm Bont had become the deserted village.

  Inside the shop, a neat woman wearing a pale blue tabard was tidying the shelves and manning the till. Anna needed stamps and, while Sally loaded her wire basket, she went to the post office section, beyond the groceries and stationery. She was glad to see that it was Mrs Prosser, not her husband, waiting to serve her.

  ‘A book of first class stamps please, Mrs Prosser.’ She pushed the money under the glass screen. And that’s where she found her earrings. They were dangling from Mrs Prosser’s ear lobes. She stared at the blue-green beads.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I get you anything else, Mrs Wren?’

  ‘No. No thanks.’ She had to say something about them. ‘Lovely earrings, Mrs Prosser. I’ve got a necklace just like them.’ She tried to sound off-hand. When it brought no response, she ploughed on. ‘Did you get them locally?’

  ‘My husband gave them to me. I’m not sure, myself. They’re a bit fancy for me but a change is as good as a rest, or so they say.’

  They walked back to the house, Sally talking more about her reasons for leaving. Anna tried to make a useful contribution to the conversation but she was distracted.

  So Prosser had removed the box from the wall. He must have watched her put it there because there was no chance he might have come across it by accident. If he saw her put the box there, he must have been spying on her. And if he’d taken to spying on her, what else might he have seen? It had been dark that night in the outhouse but it didn’t require a genius to work out what she and Bill had been up to.

  Sally was still talking as they toiled up the drive. ‘I don’t know what to do about Emily. I don’t even have a contact address. She phoned a week ago and we’ve had a few emails. But, once I leave here, I don’t know how I’ll stay in touch.’

  ‘Does she have any idea that you and Bill are splitting up?’

  ‘No. It didn’t seem right for her to find out by telephone, when she’s on the other side of the world.’

  ‘She’s got to know sooner or later.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ Sally massaged her temples with her fingers. ‘The trouble is, Bill’s in denial. If she phones and asks to speak to me, he’ll tell her I’m at the hairdressers or something.’

  ‘You can’t be at the hairdresser’s for weeks on end. She’s bound to work it out eventually.’

  They decided that it would be a good idea for Sally and Bill to compose an email to their children, setting out the essential facts and reassuring them that they were both fine. ‘Now all I’ve got to do is get Bill to face up to these “essential facts”.’

  ‘Can I tell Tom?’ Anna asked, as they reached the house. ‘Or should I wait until Luke and Emily know?’

  ‘Of course you can tell him. It might even persuade Bill to take his head out of the sand, knowing that Tom knows.’

  Bill’s car was there and Sally kissed her before going inside. ‘I’ll see you before I leave.’

  Anna was losing heart in her project. If Sally went, she could hardly present everyone with mugs and bowls with ‘Paradise’ emblazoned across them. She looked at the eight mugs sitting on the shelf above her wheel. Sally’s was squat and round. Almost hemispherical and decorated with circles in burnt orange, raspberry pink and cream, echoes of her friend’s freckled skin and re
d hair. She pushed it right to the back, where it could hardly be seen.

  In the cool of the kitchen, a sadness settled on her. She wished that Tom would come home and she wished she could ignore the earring fiasco. After all, it was insignificant stuff compared with the breakdown of a marriage. What on earth had made her think that Bill had left them for her, anyway? If Tom had come across a packet hidden amongst his tools, would he assume it was from Celia?

  She wandered around, gathering a load for the washing machine. While it clicked and whirred in the utility room she took out her sewing. The baby was due in a couple of months and she’d started to make a small patchwork quilt, to fit a cot.

  She liked the idea of sewing much more than the reality. Once she had rounded up the scraps of cotton, cut the hexagons and decided on the layout, she was impatient to see it finished. Her stitching, so neat at the outset, became larger and less accurate. ‘It’s the effect I’m after,’ she’d explained to Tom, when he expressed his surprise at the ambitious undertaking. ‘After all, the baby will only dribble on it and chew it.’ Her secret hope was that it would turn out to be the child’s comforter, taking its place in family legend alongside Flora’s square of red fur fabric.

  She was pegging out the washing when Tom came back. She wanted to kiss him when he climbed out of the car but such a public display of affection might be upsetting to Bill or Sally, if they happened to be looking out of the window. Catching his hot hand, she led him into the house and poured him a drink of barley water. Once she’d checked that the meeting had gone well and that the client had liked what Tom had showed him, she told him about Sally’s confession.

  ‘Hasn’t Bill said anything? Dropped any hints?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Nothing at all, but he’d probably be more likely to discuss it with you.’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘You two get on so well and old Bill’s a bit of a ladies’ man.’

  They shared their regrets and speculated on whether Bill would want to stay on at Pen Craig alone. ‘He shouldn’t make any snap decisions. Sally may change her mind once she’s had time to mull it over,’ said Tom.

  ‘You didn’t hear what she said to me.’

  ‘Well, either way, there’s nothing we can do, so we might as well go and have another look for the box. Come on.’

  In the few days since their return from Sidmouth, Tom and Anna had spent hours hunting for the earrings. Tom made her re-enact exactly what she had done on the afternoon when she had dropped the box. He made her put on the same clothes and place the empty necklace box in her pocket, to replicate the conditions. She had stomped about, leaning and bending, trying to make the thing fall out and prove that it could have happened. Somehow, she’d been drawn into this and had almost come to believe that this was, indeed, how the earrings had been lost. But it was hard to continue the charade now that she knew exactly where they were.

  They went up to the vegetable garden and Tom continued his search. She watched him, full of remorse that he was wasting his time in the scorching sun looking for something which wasn’t lost.

  ‘Any chance you dropped it in the compost bin?’ he shouted.

  They gave up after an hour and started back towards the house, Tom kicking at the grass and peering under bushes.

  ‘Lost something, Mr Wren?’ It was Prosser. She wasn’t sure where he’d sprung from but he must have been watching them for a while.

  ‘Afternoon,’ said Tom. ‘Yes. My wife’s dropped a little box. Black. Much like this one but smaller.’ He held out the second box, to show Prosser.

  ‘Did it contain anything of value?’ There was an insolence in his wheedling tone.

  ‘Earrings. They weren’t terribly expensive but they were a present.’

  ‘We’d better find them then, hadn’t we?’ said Prosser. He bent down, peering in the grass at the foot of the wall, exactly where she’d hidden them ten days earlier.

  17

  ‘Well I think she’ll come back,’ said Jenny, ‘once she gets whatever it is out of her system. She’s got too much to lose.’

  Anna knew that she was referring to money and status and shook her head. ‘I’m not so sure.’

  When she’d watched Sally drive off early that morning, her car crammed with cases and bags, Bill was nowhere to be seen and Sally had asked her to break the news to the others and spare him the embarrassment. They’d agreed that it would be best to be vague about the reasons for her departure, and certainly not mention Tim. Anna had plumped for ‘I think the relationship ran out of steam,’ when she, Jenny and Celia met for coffee.

  ‘Poor Bill,’ Celia shook her head, her pale eyes welling with tears.

  ‘How are things with you, Celia?’ The risk of a protracted discussion of Celia’s problems was preferable to further conjecture about the Davises’ separation.

  ‘Much the same. The doctor’s put me on tablets and I think they’re helping me to cope.’

  Jenny, sitting out of Celia’s line of vision, mouthed ‘Prozac.’

  ‘And what about the headaches and insomnia?’

  ‘No change. They don’t seem to have a clue what it is.’ Celia smiled suddenly. ‘Actually Judith’s coming home today. Mark’s found her a little car. It’ll make life a lot easier for her.’

  Tom appeared, needing help to net the ripening strawberries before the birds developed a taste for them, and the party broke up.

  ‘Bill’s ears must have been red hot this morning, poor sod,’ he said as they stretched the netting over the strawberry patch.

  ‘D’you think there’s anything we can do? We can’t carry on as if nothing’s happened, although I have a feeling that’s what he’d prefer.’

  ‘She’s being very selfish.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Spoiling it for everyone. I can see us all selling up.’

  ‘That would be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘Bill might go but…’

  ‘It would put a blight on the whole venture. There might be some excuse if she were going because of a job or something.’

  They pegged the netting down and Anna returned to the house, leaving Tom to consider the problem of the two fields of knee-high grass. On the way past she gathered the washing from the line, dropping the bone-dry clothes into the wicker washing basket. It had been ridiculously expensive. A plastic one would have done the job just as well but it delighted her whenever she used it. Its rich colour and the twist of its handles. How it creaked when she lifted it, full of clean washing.

  It was only as she unpegged the last garment that she realised something was missing. There should have been two bras and four pairs of knickers hanging on the line with the rest of the things and they were no longer there. She checked the drum of the washing machine, knowing that she wouldn’t find them. Nor were they in the laundry basket, on the ground beneath the clothes-line or in the pile of clothes on the bedroom chair. Her skin goose-pimpled at the thought of a stranger coveting her M&S bras and pants. Her fear turned to shame when she remembered the state the garments were in. They were old and discoloured, having more than once found their way in with the coloureds. Finally she felt sick. Knicker thieves were not nice people.

  When Tom returned they ate lunch and she listened to his plan to invite the neighbouring farmer to make the hay from the fields. ‘He could take half and we could keep the rest as animal fodder.’

  There were no animals at Pen Craig but she let it go. ‘Someone’s stolen my underwear,’ she blurted out and told him what she thought was missing.

  ‘We’d better ring the police.’ Tom’s face was stern.

  ‘That’s a bit drastic.’

  ‘There may have been other thefts. It might help them spot a pattern.’

  She said she would check with Jenny and Celia, to see if they had lost anything, before involving the police.

  They took their library books and sat outside the summerhouse in the afternoon sun. Within minutes Tom was asleep. She watched him like a mother watche
s a new baby. How precarious it all was. How unlikely that two people could put up with each other for the whole of their adult lives. What was it that kept them together, after the lust and the thrill of the chase had waned? They’d been married for only a year when Flora was born, distracting their attention from each other to the awesome responsibility of child rearing. Then Madeleine had arrived and they had to more than double their efforts. Tom had suffered a few setbacks with his job. There had been bereavements – first his father, then her mother. Throughout, they had taken the other’s love and loyalty for granted. In the Davises’ case this bonding agent, whatever it was, had dissolved and they had become disconnected, one stuck in a rut and the other spinning off into the unknown.

  She leaned across and touched the back of his hand. Without really waking, he took hers and squeezed it. His hand was hot but perfectly dry. One of the first things that she’d noticed about him was that he never had sweaty hands.

  Peter and Jenny joined them inside the summerhouse, where they had retreated from the sun. Peter rarely found the time (or was it the inclination?) to socialise. Jenny was forever boasting about lectures he was giving or papers he had to write. Then there was his endless list of patients. ‘Pete’s got the perfect job, if he ever fancies philandering,’ Sally had bitched. She was a fine one to talk.

  ‘I’ve just seen Bill,’ Peter said. There was currently no other topic of conversation. ‘He’s in a bit of a daze but I think he’s OK. I told him that we’re here if he wants to talk.’

  ‘He won’t,’ said Anna. ‘Sally says he’s in denial, or whatever the jargon is.’

  ‘I think we should leave him alone. That’s what I’d want,’ Tom said.

  As usual, the Redwoods were dashing off somewhere. They all walked back to the house together and, passing the clothes line, Tom was prompted to ask whether Jenny had lost any underwear.

  ‘I’m not sure I’d notice. Mrs. P. usually sees to the washing. I put it away, of course, but I can’t honestly say I keep tabs on every single bra and thong. And Celia finds underwear embarrassing. She always dries hers inside.’