After Ever After (11 page)

‘Did you get that?’

He sighs and nods, looking disappointed, and, tipping his head to one side, watches me with a relaxed scrutiny. With his long straight hair and earthiness, he’s somehow faintly medieval, slightly wolfish.

‘Not really what I do, manual labour, being a fully qualified landscape gardener, but I suppose as I’ve not got too much on at the moment, what with the business being new and all …’

I shrug and let him in. He makes his way to the kitchen and looks down the length of the garden and then gives me the same assessment, making me wish for once that I’d washed my hair and put on a top that was not resplendent with baby sick; he has amber-coloured eyes.

‘You really need a tree surgeon for that,’ he says, nodding at a sprawling cherry tree. ‘But I guess I can do it. Yeah, it’s got potential, that’s for sure …’ He sighs again, wistfully, and I clutch my grid paper to my chest protectively.

‘I’ll get my stuff and get stuck in.’

Mr Crawley, who has come down for one of the mini-bottles of Evian that he keeps in the fridge, sees Gareth Jerome, opens his mouth and then closes it again.

‘Do you know each other?’ I ask, and Gareth Jerome holds out his hand to Mr Crawley, nodding.

‘No, I don’t think so. Heard of you, obviously,’ he tells Mr Crawley, who returns the greeting with an oddly grim smile.

‘All right?’ Gareth Jerome asks him.

‘I’m very well, thank you,’ Mr Crawley says, and then he turns on his heel and exits the kitchen without another word.

Gareth Jerome begins to bring through his tools, and, suddenly robbed of my purpose, I carefully fold my garden plan back into page seventy-three of The Garden Book and turn to the European laundry mountain which erupted suddenly shortly after Ella’s birth and which has never seemed to diminish since.

My spirits plummet to the tips of my toes and I reach for the iron.

I iron one of Fergus’s shirts, which I think is reasonable considering that in my adult life, which began at the age of sixteen when I’d finally felt I could leave Dad to it, I had sworn to never, never iron again. I had promised myself daily during all the years betweens Mum’s death and the day I got a residential place to gain a B. Tech in business studies at college that as soon as my life was my own I’d never touch a domestic appliance again.

Dad liked everything done around the flat the way Mum had done it. No, that’s too mild. He wanted – demanded – that everything around the flat should be exactly the same as when she was alive, everything. And I loved him and I wanted everything to be exactly the same too, as if keeping laundry day on a Monday and fish day on a Friday would somehow recreate my mum out of the empty spaces left by her absence. So I tried at first to help him voluntarily, and everyone said how good I was, a proper little lady looking after my dad, and I was proud of that. But then seven turned into ten, and by the time I was eleven I dreaded going home from school, dreaded letting myself into the long list of chores that Dad would have left out for me. The long list of tasks that I had to have finished before he got home from work. Iron Monday’s washing on a Tuesday; dust and vacuum on a Wednesday; clean the bath and loo on a Thursday; and every weekend to do the shopping and change the bedclothes, ready for the laundry on Monday. I tried telling him once that Mum never changed the bedclothes every week but every other week. He was furious, accused me of calling my mother a slut and sent me to bed crying my eyes out. After that, every night, straight after our tea, I’d wash up the pots and pans and go straight to bed to read one of my books to escape to any place but that place. It was around about that time he stopped kissing me goodnight.

Then, as I grew older, the battle of wills began, the arguments and accusations. I was ungrateful and selfish, he was domineering and lazy. We co-existed, furious with each other twenty-four hours a day for each one of my early teenage years. Even that, though, was better than the last few months I’d lived with him.

By the time I was fifteen I didn’t argue about the housework any longer because I didn’t have a choice. I’d let myself in from school and there he’d be, sitting in the corner in exactly the same place he’d been when I’d left that morning, staring at the telly. By that time I had to do everything around the house because there was no one else but me. By that time he was slowly trying to kill himself, and I refused to be dragged down with him. A lot of the people round there thought I was heartless, uncaring and hard to leave him when I did, like I did; to go to the lengths of finding a way out when I was so young. But what they didn’t know, what they didn’t realise, was that I had to go then, I had to. I was saving my own life.

So, to be an ironing expert – not to mention cooking, cleaning and washing aficionado by the age of eight – seemed very unfair to me both at the time and for ever after. In fact, no sooner was I settled into my shared room with an ex-public school girl called Sara from Dorset than I made it my task to instantly forget all thoughts of housework for ever, and the pair of us, free at last of our entirely different oppressive regimes, practised as much slovenly behaviour as was possible without contracting a flesh-eating disease. My general tidiness did gradually improve over the years, but the ingrained resentment I felt towards any kind of domesticity had never left me. I have always suspected, even now, that I should be out playing in the park instead.

I’d explained this to Fergus not long after we’d met, and he had held me all night long, silent and shocked, as most of the people that I’ve told the story to normally are, but not so afraid by it or horrified that he couldn’t look me in the eyes. If by that time I
had
had any doubts about how much I loved him, it was his unflinching certainty that whatever had happened to me in the past would make no difference to our future that made me believe that I really could be happy.

Then, after I left work, and after we’d left London, his understanding over my stance on ironing subsided somewhat. Out came the whole ‘I’ve got to commute and work all day while you stay at home with the baby’ speech, and although the motherhood thing was equally as hard (equally! Ha!) and important as his job, it was his job, after all, that was paying the mortgage, and the very least I could do for him was make sure he had a shirt to put on in the morning. And I agreed, secretly thinking that after giving birth to his baby, suffering stitches, losing any hope of a good night’s sleep, seemingly for ever, and gaining a stone that didn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon, it did seem the very
least
thing I could do for him. But I agreed to do it as I supposed he had got a point, even though the thought of him being half right made me baulk and, what’s more, anxious. Somehow, to have laughing arguments over ironing was something I’d never considered a consequence of marriage, but I’d shrugged off the discomfort and told myself to grow up. Marriage is about compromise; all the magazines say so.

And so every morning he has one clean ironed shirt hanging on the bedroom door, but everything else, including all my clothes, can stay creased, just like me. Well, it’s a compromise, isn’t it?

I wait a long time for Camille’s message service to pick up her number. She must be in a meeting or, more likely, on the phone to her mum.

‘Hi, Cam. It’s Kitty. Look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for running off yesterday. I just, well, you know, suddenly got hot flushes and went a bit bad. Apparently it’s quite normal, but I’m sorry anyway because I was looking forward to seeing you and Dora. Will you tell her I said sorry? I’d call her too but I’m really pushed for time.’

I let the lie crackle and fizz down the line. ‘So, call me then, we can catch up,’ I say despondently, unable to keep the down notes out of my voice, and hang up.

Camille will call me back, I know, this afternoon maybe, or tonight. And so will Dora sometime in the next couple of days and we’ll talk, and laugh and gossip, but really everything’s changed. Yesterday showed me that, and now I have at least to try to let myself go with the flow, otherwise I’m going to go insane. I have to embrace my new life; I have to actually live it.

Today is the day that I am definitely going to the One O’Clock Club, Berkhamsted’s premier and, as far as I can make out, only secular mother and toddler group. I’m definitely going in this time. I’m not just going to
say
I’m going and then decide to stay home to watch
Crossroads
at the last minute. I’m not even going to get Ella ready and put her in her pushchair and then go to the garden centre instead to browse happily alone. Or even wheel her right up to the town hall door and stand there for five minutes until another mother comes along and catches my eye with a friendly smile, sending me scarpering in the opposite direction as fast as the buggy will allow me.

This time I’m definitely going in. After all, I am one of them. They are no different from me, no more competent, professional or able than I am. Ella and I can go to the mother and babies club too. I’m sure that we can, and anyway, Mr Crawley says that once I’ve met some other mums I’ll realise what a good job I’m doing and I’ll stop worrying about everything I can think of.

So, today’s the day, and after all I can’t go with dirty hair.

Unable to wait for the bathroom to be finished I wash my hair in the kitchen, trying my best to ignore its distinctive sink smell, and as I wrap a tea towel round my head I watch Gareth – mentally dropping his surname in a bid to think of him in more friendly terms – as he fills green plastic bag upon green plastic bag with weeds. Every now and then he’ll stop and crouch down, fingering a plant with the kind of intimate care I reserve only for Ella and Fergus, take a notebook out of his top pocket and jot something down in it.

‘He’s having opinions,’ I think to myself. ‘He’s planning my garden, damn him, secretly. Well I’m not having it.’ I wring my hair out in the sink and head into the garden. Despite the spring sun, the chill of the morning air greeting my damp hair sends a shiver down my back. He stands to greet me, tucking his notebook back into his overall pocket. He’s not really skinny, I notice, just exceptionally tall, taller even than Fergus, I think, whose chin fits perfectly on the top of my head.

‘How’s it going?’ I ask, looking pointedly at the notebook pocket.

‘Piece of cake.’ He shrugs his shoulders and looks around at the few square feet he’s cleared so far. ‘Grunt work, that’s all. Not the creative stuff I usually do.’ He sounds defensive. ‘I reckon you’ll need to lay new turf, though. This grass has gone to pot. Do you want me to rotovate this when I’ve cleared it and get it ready?’

I open and close my mouth. Do I? I haven’t got to lawns in my book yet.

‘Ummm, well, er, yes, I suppose I do. I mean, I do, definitely. Yes please.’

He seems to suppress a smile and nods in affirmation of my hesitant command. Crouching again, he beckons me over, and lifting the branch of an overgrown conifer out of the way, says, ‘See here?
Viola odorata
. Sweet violets, a delightful little plant. Shy but tenacious and really very beautiful.’

As I crouch down next to him and try to think of the last time I heard a man’s voice say ‘delightful’ without sounding camp, I imagine that I can sense his glance brushing my cheek. I look up quickly but he is still examining the plant.

‘There’s still quite a lot of lovely plants in this garden that you could preserve if you wanted to, some really marvellous rose bushes at the back there and a lovely Clematis over there.’

He looks at me with a level assurance that I find obliquely disconcerting. There’s something about him, his poise and personality, that seems familiar. Maybe he reminds me of a film star or someone I once knew. No, that’s not it …

‘It seems a shame just to pull them out after they’ve struggled so long to keep growing in amongst all these weeds,’ he continues with a half-smile.

I hold his amber gaze for a moment, mildly distracted by the dramatic sweep of his dark brows, and silently curse him for knowing more than me, although, granted, next-door’s cat knows more about gardens than I do, and I nod my head.

‘Well, leave what you think is worth leaving, then, and I’ll incorporate them into my plan if I agree, okay?’

He nods and softly bites his lip, turning his face away from me for a moment. He’s trying not to let me see he’s laughing at me, damn him. He takes a second to compose himself and then turns back to face me.

‘Okay. Cool. Whatever you say.’ He smiles at me then and it’s all I can do to stay balanced on my heels. In that second every aspect of his face, his body and his presence conspires against me and knocks the wind out of me. I feel my heart race, my skin tingle and fizz, my stomach tie into knots. All the sensations I believed to be null and void spring suddenly, stupidly, back into life. Gareth Jerome is a very attractive man and I now know where I recognise him from: from girlhood dreams and adult fantasies. Gareth Jerome is my type.

I blink at him, stupid with shock and shame, and scramble to my feet, turning back towards the house and shouting, ‘I’ll make you a coffee’ over my shoulder. Whatever happened to me then was written all over me, and he saw it. He saw, and what’s more it made him smile.

First of all, I hate men like Gareth Jerome. Good-looking men who know it and think it’ll get them whatever they want with the flash of some dimples and a bit of feigned sincerity, and secondly, I am suddenly aware of my wet hair hanging lank round my shoulders and yesterday’s milk-stained T-shirt and my still-too-tight jeans. I stand at the kitchen sink and compose myself. Although a steaming pot of fresh coffee bubbles on the hot plate, I take a jar of instant out of the cupboard and spoon it into my worst mug.

This Gareth Jerome, he comes in here, he takes over my garden, he flicks his hair around like some bloody male model and then he goes and acts all handsome, and frankly I don’t have time to be worrying about my hair and eyebrow stubble regrowth.

I don’t want a man I’m going to find attractive hanging round the house, it’s just not on, it’s far too Lady Chatterley, and I especially don’t want one who’s going to think he’s got a bored, sexually repressed housewife on his hands. Doesn’t God know I’ve been spending the last few months trying to fancy my husband again, and the last thing I need is some other man to go and kick-start the engine? It’s obviously some kind of anomaly in fate’s grand plan for me, and I’ll just have to take it into my own hands to correct it. I force myself not to look out of the window at him and peer steadily into the larder until I can be sure that my cheeks have returned to their normal pallor.