The Lifeline

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘So there’s none left for me?’

  ‘That’s not so.’

  ‘Oh yes, it is. I hardly see you. You’d sooner the stroke had killed me off properly, wouldn’t you? Then you’d be free to find someone else young and fit – not an old cripple like me. If you haven’t done so already.’

  She said wearily, ‘There’s no one else, Lawrence. We’ve had this conversation before, and I’m getting rather tired of it.’

  ‘Like you’re tired of me?’

  ‘I soon will be, if you don’t stop being so unreasonable. You’re still going to the Manor, aren’t you? I thought that was working quite well. Helping you to get stronger.’

  ‘It bores me to tears, if you want to know.’

  ‘Surely it’s better than sitting here all day?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind, if you were here too.’

  ‘I’m not going to give up the shop, Lawrence, if that’s what you’re asking me to do.’

  ‘You might have to – if I don’t get better.’

  There was silence.

  She picked up the bag of shopping. ‘I’ll cook the supper.’

  While she was in the kitchen, chopping and slicing and stirring, she kept repeating to herself, ‘I won’t give it up, whatever he says and whatever happens. I won’t. I won’t. I damn well won’t! I’m not going to let him take away the life I’ve earned for myself.’

  Ruth found Johnny hoeing in the kitchen garden. She watched him for a moment, seeing how deft he’d become. He was learning so fast and doing so well that she was coming to rely on him almost as much as she relied on Jacob. She went closer.

  ‘I wondered if you’d like to borrow this, Johnny?’

  She handed him the book on gardening. It was an old copy that had once belonged to her father and which she had used as a bible when she had taken over the Manor. A simple, illustrated guide to trees and shrubs and plants – their Latin and English names, their type, their height and spread, their colours, their season, their habits, their needs; the basic facts for any gardener starting out.

  ‘You might find it helpful if customers ask questions.’

  He turned the pages slowly.

  She said, ‘You can let me have it back when you’ve had time to look through it. There’s no rush. And I’ve got lots more gardening books, if you’re interested.’

  She left him with the book on his lap, still turning the pages.

  The talk on Capability Brown at the Manor was a big success. The Colonel had been standing at the back of the packed room, listening to the story of one of England’s greatest landscape gardeners. Born in Northumberland and christened Lancelot, he had begun his working life at Stowe under William Kent, founder of the new English style gardening. At twenty-six he was already a master gardener and soon became the must-have landscape designer for aristocrats with huge estates. After Stowe came Warwick Castle, Blenheim Palace, Burghley House, Hampton Court, Chatsworth … The Capability nickname had grown from his habit of telling his clients that their estates had great ‘capability’ for improving the landscape. The excellent slides shown gave the proof.

  Naomi joined him at the end. ‘What a guy!’

  She was draped in the impressive purple kaftan recently emerged on its summer outing from her attic trunk.

  He said, ‘I’ve been wondering what the great man might have made of Pond Cottage. Do you think he could think very small?’

  ‘I think he could think any size, but the big ones paid the most. There was a downside to some of the grand schemes, though, you know. The big money didn’t like little villages spoiling their new view. They thought nothing of doing away with Frog Ends, if they got in the way. Wiped them off the map – church, manor, pub, cottages and all. I see Mrs Reed is here.’

  ‘So she is.’

  Joyce Reed was sitting on her own, he noted, at the very front.

  Naomi said, ‘I finally met her here the other day when she was working at a snail’s pace on the roses. I couldn’t quite make her out, Hugh. An odd woman. Where’s her husband?’

  ‘On the golf course, I imagine.’

  ‘I wonder what he looks like.’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Wasn’t there a photo of him with all the trophies?’

  ‘Not as far as I remember.’

  The Colonel’s path crossed Mrs Reed’s later on as he was leaving the Manor. She was quite enjoying deadheading the roses, she told him, but it made her hands ache. She wouldn’t be surprised if she was getting arthritis.

  He had known others with that affliction. ‘I hope not.’

  ‘I’ve learnt to take the rough with the smooth, Colonel. One can’t always pick and choose in life. If I could, I would prefer not to have Mr Deacon as a fellow worker.’

  He was surprised by her remark. ‘Has he offended you in some way?’

  ‘In several ways. He gets a lot of pleasure from offending others. But I choose to ignore him. He’s nothing, you see, though he’d like to be. In my book, he doesn’t count.’

  EIGHT

  The Frog End summer fête was a big success and voted one of the best ever. The weather had been more than kind – not a cloud in the sky, let alone a raindrop – and attendance figures had been up, as well as the takings.

  The Colonel, counting coins and notes at his treasurer’s post in the Manor study, sensed a new record in the making. The church roof would be safe for another year.

  He had opened the window wide and could hear the silver band working through its customary repertoire with a new addition from ‘The Sound of Music’ – the familiar tune about the hills being alive. Rather too familiar for his liking. He remembered reading somewhere that the United States Army had once devised a new and subtle form of torture for their more recalcitrant military prisoners by playing them a recording of that very song on a continuous loop for days and nights on end. No rack or thumbscrew had been necessary, apparently. The prisoners were soon ready to talk and cooperate with anything if only the music would stop.

  The dog show had attracted a large turnout and the Dog Most Like Its Owner had proved a very popular category. It was won by Mrs Warner who had temporarily deserted her bric-a-brac stall to take part with her spaniel. The old dog waddling alongside her certainly bore an uncanny resemblance.

  Ruth had come in with a cup of tea for him and stayed to chat for a while. His godson was apparently sleeping soundly up in the nursery, undisturbed by the band or even the periodic fortissimo megaphone announcements from Marjorie Cuthbertson.

  He asked Ruth how the gardening therapy was going.

  ‘I don’t think Lawrence is enjoying it much but Tanya seems a lot happier and there’s definitely some real progress with Johnny. He’s managing incredibly well.’

  ‘That’s very good news.’

  ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? I lent him one of my gardening books to take home in the hope that he might take a peek at it and his mother said he read it from cover to cover. Usually he just stares at motorbike magazines. I’ll keep on lending the books.’

  They could turn out to be a lifeline for the young man, the Colonel thought, and for his mother.

  ‘How about Mrs Reed?’

  ‘I’m not sure how long she’ll last. She’s working her way very slowly through the roses. For a while she was convinced that she was developing arthritis in her hands but Tom managed to reassure her that she wasn’t.’

  The band had returned refreshed from a tea break and launched into a spirited rendition of ‘The Dam Busters’ march. It reached the Colonel through the open study window as he was counting another pile of coins and he stopped to listen. It was impossible not to be stirred by the image conjured up of daring young men flying mighty Lancasters at tree-top height across enemy territory by night.

  On guard at the Bottle Stall, the Major was wondering if he dared take a nip from the flask he had brought with him for medicinal emergencies. You never knew when someone was going to faint from the heat, or from anything else.
He didn’t feel too bright himself, as a matter of fact. Standing killed his feet and he wished he’d had the foresight to pinch one of the chairs from Teas when the harridan who was in charge wasn’t looking.

  There had been the usual fight over the trestle tables with Cakes which had left him with one miserly table. His bottles were crammed together so you couldn’t see the damn things properly – not that there was anything worth seeing or winning. He’d lost count of the grimy bottles of homemade wine that people had foisted on to him, handing the stuff over as though it were five-star Veuve Clicquot.

  He decided to risk a quick swig from the flask for the sake of his feet and ducked down behind the stall out of sight. When he emerged, wiping his mouth, some woman was standing there, holding out her tombola money and glaring at him.

  He kept a good lookout for the golf widow during the afternoon, ready to duck down again if she turned up. He had spotted Tanya once or twice but she hadn’t come near his stall so far. There was such a thing as playing it too safe in his opinion.

  It had to be said, the Major admitted to himself, that his plan with the raffle tickets had not gone as smoothly as he had hoped. When he had rung the bell at Tanya’s flat at the Hall, she had opened the door but instead of inviting him smilingly inside, as he had hoped, she had left him standing there while she went to fetch her purse. And as soon as she had given him the money and he had handed over the raffle tickets, she had immediately shut the door again – not in his face exactly but very close to it. Even worse, only one of the other occupants at the Hall had been interested in the confounded animal shelter and he had ended up buying the rest of the tickets himself. Miss Butler had been quite overwhelmed by his generosity.

  His back-up plan of ferrying the fête bottles over to store at the Manor had not borne fruit either. Whenever he had managed to track Tanya down in the gardens she had been too busy to stop whatever she was doing to talk to him – though he’d spotted her chatting to the Turner boy in his wheelchair several times. All in all, he was beginning to ask himself if she was worth the trouble. There were other fish in the sea, though not so many these days, it was true. On balance, it was probably worth hanging on. Sticking to his course. Playing the game. But now that the fête was over, he must think up another excuse for calling at the Manor.

  The new idea came to him later that evening when the fête was over at long last and he was pouring himself a reviver. It was Marjorie’s birthday soon, though God knows how old she was now. He’d stopped counting long ago. All women liked flowers – he’d learned that useful lesson very early on in life – and Marjorie was no exception, though he didn’t very often remember to get them for her. He’d noticed some good-looking plants flowering away in pots at the Manor. He’d pop by and buy her one as a present. Ruth would keep it there for him until the day. She was always a good sport.

  The Major was easy enough to cope with, Tanya had found. He might be a bit of a nuisance but he meant no harm. Lawrence Deacon was another matter. He seemed convinced his wife was having an affair and had tried to talk to her about it. She had stopped the conversation immediately. He wanted her sympathy and she felt unable to give it or to encourage him in any way. She had seen how he treated both Johnny and Jacob and had not been impressed. In fact, he disgusted her. Once, he had deliberately let his hand brush against her. After that she had kept a safe distance away from him.

  He had always repelled her physically. Now, she found herself disliking everything about him. She had seen the mocking way that he had treated poor Jacob and how spiteful he had been to Johnny, criticising his valiant efforts in his wheelchair.

  Not only did she dislike Lawrence Deacon, she was afraid of him. There was something dark and disturbing about him.

  But Lawrence was the only thing she didn’t like about the Manor. Everything else was good. The terrible depression was finally lifting. No more long and lonely days in the flat. She now went to the Manor almost every day. There was always something to do, someone to talk to, something happening. She was starting to live again. She wasn’t going to let him stand in her way and spoil her chance of a new life. Not now.

  ‘Did you have a nice day, Johnny?’

  ‘Nothing special.’

  But Sheila could tell from the way he looked and spoke that the day had gone well, and she saw, also, that he had another book on his lap. One of the gardening books that Mrs Harvey kept on lending him. He didn’t talk about the books, but he read them all. When she went into the sitting room these days she’d find him deep in the latest one, studying the pages – the pile of hateful motorbike magazines left untouched. He had even let her see one or two of the pictures and told her the names of plants when she’d asked. He was learning a lot about them. What kind they were, when they flowered, where they liked to grow, how to look after them – all sorts of interesting things.

  She pushed the wheelchair down the Manor drive, round the edge of the village green and down towards The Close. The Major looked out of the front window of Shangri La and waved. Johnny waved back. He did that quite often now.

  The pelargonium that he had given her was in its glory. She’d bought a big blue glazed pot for it and stood it outside the bungalow front door where it seemed very happy. It made her happy, too, to see it there as they went in and out, just as it gladdened her heart and soul to see the way that Johnny was coming back to her from his dark place. It was like a miracle.

  She began to dare to think about a future and she had a plan. She would learn to drive and when she had passed the driving test she would take out some of her savings to buy a car. A car with room for a special folding wheelchair. She had seen them in Dorchester when she had gone in on the bus and had watched people using them. The wheelchair could fold up and fit away in the car boot and then unfold when you lifted it out. And off you went. Easy! She would be able to take Johnny wherever he wanted. A whole new world would open up for him. She had looked in the phone book and found the name of a driving school called Never Fail which sounded very encouraging. But it would be better not to say anything to Johnny yet, she decided. She would keep it as a surprise.

  She bought a road atlas in WHSmith and started to look at what they could do and where they might go in Dorset. The sea wasn’t far away. They would be able to drive to Weymouth on a green road to look at the beach, even if they couldn’t actually get down on it with the wheelchair. Then they would go past Portland Bay where there was a castle, marked in small red letters, and down to Portland Bill to see the lighthouse. There was a museum and shipwreck centre marked in red too. Johnny would be bound to like those.

  Afterwards they could drive west along the yellow coast road by Chesil Beach and on to Abbotsbury, Burton Bradstock and Bridport. She’d never been to any of them but they were nice names and she could see that in some places a yellow road went very close to the sea.

  She followed a bendy red road further west, tracing it with her finger, and it led her to Exeter in Devon. After that, a yellow road went all the way across the middle of Dartmoor. Beyond that was Cornwall. Cornwall! It would be like travelling to a foreign country.

  Once she’d done the driving lessons and passed the test, she’d tell Johnny and they could look at the map together and he could choose where he’d like to go. She’d take him anywhere he wanted. Anywhere. Till then, she’d keep it a secret. Hug it to herself and dream.

  Then one day, without any warning, everything changed. From light to darkness. From hope to despair.

  She’d gone to collect Johnny from the Manor as usual and she could see at once that he was in a very bad mood – hunched down in the wheelchair, head turned away.

  ‘Is everything all right, Johnny?’

  ‘Don’t ask stupid questions, Mum. It’ll never be all right. You know that.’

  She pushed the wheelchair down the drive in silence. Experience had taught her that it was always best to keep quiet when he was like this.

  As they reached the gates, he said suddenly, ‘
Mr Deacon was preaching at me today.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Rubbish as usual.’

  ‘You mustn’t take any notice of him, Johnny. He’s not a very nice man.’

  ‘He’s a bloody bastard! Do you know, he’s glad I’ll be spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair. That’s what he said to me, Mum, if you really want to know. Glad! He gets a kick out of seeing me like this, being pushed everywhere like a baby. He told me his son had been killed riding on the back of a motorbike and the bloke driving it had got off scot-free when he ought to have been smashed up and crippled for life, like me.’

  She stopped the chair, shocked. ‘It’s wicked to say such terrible things. I’ll speak to Mrs Harvey.’

  ‘No, you won’t. Don’t you dare interfere, Mum. I can look after myself. I’ve told you that before. I’ll get my own back on him, don’t you worry.’

  When they passed Shangri-La, the Major waved his glass from the window. Johnny took no notice. As soon as they were back in the bungalow, he picked up one of the motorbike magazines.

  It was a while before the Major was able to get over to the Manor on his birthday plant quest. Other duties had called. Jumble sales, cake and coffee mornings, an unnerving lecture by a frightening woman entitled Training Your Dog and You, a very boring talk by someone else about The Jurassic World of Dorset which seemed to have happened a hell of a long time ago, not forgetting the annual endurance test of the village hall AGM.

  Strenuous efforts had been required of him for all these events – unstacking and restacking the chairs, carrying stuff here, there and everywhere, hours spent hanging about waiting for things to start and, eventually, for them to stop. He had found himself with no time to call his own.

  When Marjorie finally went off to one of her committee meetings, backing the protesting Escort out of the garage and narrowly missing the gatepost, he watched the car bounce away with relief. Peace at last! A quick snifter to set him up and he was off across the green towards the Manor.