Jack by the Hedge (Jack of All Trades Book 4) (4 page)

He rubbed his cheek where it had been kissed. And looked to where the woman was on the lawn, her machine ferociously sucking up leaves. Maybe, maybe not.

And he set back to work. Sometimes watching his hands as he struck the chisel and pulled out bricks. He enjoyed the sunshine but suggestive women sent his head spinning. He hadn’t been thinking about sex at all until she came out of the yard and seemed to be handing it out on a tray like a free sample at a supermarket. Think of astronomy, the Square of Pegasus, finding the Andromeda Galaxy. Wasn’t she chained to a rock and rescued by some Greek hero, he’d read in Astronomy Now. Sex even up there in the stars. Down here, Jack would have to rescue the woman from her machine. And then what?

The two men were sitting on one of the rolls of canvas, one of them smoking, the other pouring from a thermos into a cup. Too early for Jack’s break. He needed a decent pile of bricks, if he were to have a chance at persuading the manager. Besides which he’d been invited to the greenhouse. A real invite, rather than a tease of a dinner date. Over an hour to that.

Then she came out of the yard, as if he’d magicked her up. She had taken her jacket off, revealing green overalls, her hair was tied back.

‘Busy place this,’ he called.

‘Panic stations,’ she said with a half laugh. ‘We’ve got a big do on Wednesday with the Mayor and the local MP coming.’

‘Too busy for me to visit you for tea?’

‘Oh no. Please come. The first greenhouse.’ She wiped her brow and shivered.

‘You alright?’

‘I’ve had a bit of a shock,’ she said. ‘About my job and my house… I live over there.’ She pointed across the grass to the two cottages.

‘Nice place. All that wide open sky.’ He was thinking of his telescope, then admonished himself; she had troubles. ‘Are they going to make you redundant?’

‘It may well come to that,’ she said.

‘What, losing your job and your house together?’

She flapped a hand and sighed. ‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about it. I’ve only just heard – and I’m rather shaken up.’

‘I don’t have to come for tea,’ he said carefully. ‘If you’ve got problems you need to think out…’

‘You’ll think I’ll be a misery guts?’ She gave a half smile. ‘I just might be.’

Jack wasn’t altogether sure about the invitation. If she was preoccupied, what was the point? Except... He could show how considerate he was.

‘I might be able to cheer you up…’ But stopped himself, not so devious when it came to it. ‘That was stupid of me. I haven’t got a job and house to offer.’ Then added, ‘Not everything can be cheered up, can it?’

‘No,’ she said. There were lines etched at the corners of her eyes. ‘Do come though. I’m sure you’re good company. But you mustn’t talk about you know what.’

‘Taboo.’ He shook his head. ‘Though I am sorry about your news, even if I mustn’t talk about it.’

‘Not half as sorry as I am.’ She sighed. ‘It’s my own fault really. I should have been prepared for this.’ She shrugged. ‘But there you are, going along merrily, and bang out of the blue…’ She bit her bottom lip. ‘There’s me talking about what we shouldn’t be talking about. Do come over. I’ll give you the greenhouse tour.’

‘I’ll be along. Ten thirty.’

‘I look forward to it.’

For a few seconds they gazed at each other, neither spoke, he was reluctant to let her go, she held him too, trembling slightly as if cold. Jack wanted to touch her cheek, but she was two metres away – and it would never do. Not in so public a place.

And she had other things on her mind.

‘I don’t know your name…’ he said. ‘I’m Jack. For short and who knows for how long.’

‘I’m Liz. There’s my greenhouse,’ she pointed out, ‘and I live over there in the first of those cottages. Who knows for how long.’

‘And you like frosty mornings.’

‘I do,’ she said. ‘Ice crystals shimmering on the grass as the sun comes up. I’d miss that.’ She stopped, slightly embarrassed. ‘What do you do, apart from knock down walls?’

‘I look up at the stars.’ His arm swept the heavens. ‘The Milky Way is like a frosty morning. The stars like a ribbon of ice crystals.’ He indicated across the lawn. ‘There’d be a good place for my telescope, out there on the middle of the grass, one evening.’

‘Could be arranged.’

Of course it could. Neither spoke. Both knew it could.

‘Come at ten thirty,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some chocolate biscuits.’

‘Scrumptious.’

‘Must go now,’ she said. ‘The manager’ll be out in a minute, and I’ve had too much of him already this morning.’

And with a wave, she was off.

Chapter 6

It was a pity that switching the bowling green was so speedy. Zar savoured the lash of it, the wide sweep of the glass fibre rod, the drops flying in the air, sparkling in the sunlight, dropping tingling cold on his neck and face. Best not tell Ian he liked it or he’d have him off it and sweeping paths.

He’d like to switch a golf course, walk the whole 18 holes on a misty autumn morning, switching each of the greens from 1 to 18 before the first golfers. Alone, without expectations from anyone.

It was why he liked working in the open air. Space, plants, distance from people. He’d spent a month in his uncle’s accountancy office – and hated it. In a dark suit, stuck in front of a screen all day, his uncle trying to impress him with the good money qualified accountants earned, how he could get a big house and garden, have a wife and family. Be secure for the rest of his life, a respected member of the community.

He did not say – but uncle, I am gay. That wasn’t a Muslim thing to say. Not to an uncle who was on the committee of the mosque. Or to anyone in his family when it came to that. Or to anyone in their circle. There was already talk of finding him a wife, but he was only twenty, plenty of time his father said. Pass your accountancy exams, Zar – and they’ll all want you. You could take your pick.

And have a mortgage and work in an office for forty years in a suit in front of a screen with figures, rows and rows of figures. Good times, bad times, the figures keep coming. Relentless columns of income, expenditure, cash flow, bank account, creditors and debtors; the world explained in pennies, pounds, dollars, and euros.

One bored morning in his uncle’s office, he’d calculated how many numbers he might input in his working life. His uncle could see numbers on the screen so was happy Zar was working, but in fact he was calculating out how many seconds there were in forty years of working life, so that if it took a second to input a number how many numbers he would input in total, assuming seven hours a day, subtracting coffee breaks and meetings, holidays, and allowing time for chatting about football and whatnot. The figure he’d come up with was 189 million or so. For which he’d be well paid and could take his pick, when he’d passed his accountancy exams.

And be a respected member of the community.

But then again, when you get senior enough, your minions put the numbers in for you. You are responsible for them, but you don’t do the drudgery. You pull in others to input the numbers in to the columns.

There was a nonsense in the world, a pointlessness, so clear to him in that office. So depressing. Columns of numbers. Years and years of them.

He’d once asked his uncle why all this bookkeeping was necessary. His uncle was taken aback at his naivety, but then explained that any business to succeed must be on a sound footing. And it was the firm’s job to make sure its clients lived within their means.

For which you will get well paid.

And will input 189 million odd figures, or your minions will on your behalf. He felt as if he were one ant in a cell of an infinite ant hill. And all the banter of football, births, marriages, deaths, Eid, who’s going on the Haj – was a sort of decoration, the ants convincing each other that they were happy. That it was all meaningful.

His uncle had gone as far as booking him on an accountancy course at college, one day a week plus two evenings, when Zar had told him this wasn’t for him. Uncle was disappointed, so were his mother and father. His elder brother who worked for the council thought he was dumb. He said he himself would never get anywhere near earning the money an accountant could make.

Birdbrain.

Once free of the office, Zar knew he had to work outside. And got the job in the park. His family were horrified at the wages. He couldn’t make them see that he needed to work outside, that office work crushed him. And that was without saying he was gay, that he didn’t know what he was doing or where he was going, because they’d simply talk about money and marriage and getting a mortgage, and having children. The future they saw for him, an imitation of their own. And not his at all.

He’d finished switching. The creamy green had been lashed off, leaving the area a dazzling, sharper green. He wondered whether the effort really had any effect on diminishing the effects of fusarium and other fungal diseases. Was it just green keepers repeating the lore they’d learnt? Or were there experiments – with some greens switched and others not. And lots of numbers thrown into computers, showing switching removed 99.9% of all known fungi.

Reluctantly, he laid the switch on the bank and took up the long-handled edging shears. As far as he could see the bank hardly needed any edging, grass barely grew this time of year, and would stop dead in a few weeks. But the Mayor was coming and would spot a single blade of grass sticking above regulation height.

Back bent, a hand on each of the handles, he began snipping, the cuts dropping into the gulley surrounding the bowling green. And thought about the bracket fungus he’d seen on the yew tree at the back of the shrubbery. That incredible yellow, a shock of a colour. He’d taken a picture of it on his phone and now thought he knew what it was.
Laetioporus sulphurous,
chicken of the woods, edible when young. He must get some, take it home. Get his mum to cook it.

At lunchtime usually, he wandered the park with one of his books. He knew all the trees and had recently become excited by the variety of fungi. Liz told him about the plants in her two greenhouses, how they were propagated. And he’d got himself a book on that too.

The two got on like rain in the desert, each enjoying the enthusiasm of the other. He might tell her he was gay. Maybe not.

He had no idea what he was going to do with his life, not accountancy, nothing in an office – that was for certain. He knew he loved plants and the outdoor life. And the best he could do here was get on day release, learn – and see what came up. Except Ian always said, don’t bother me now, whenever he mentioned day release, as if payment for it came out of his own pocket. Zar could of course find an evening class himself, in fact might have to, but if the council would pay him to study one day a week then why not? Except for Ian, and his ‘don’t bother me now’.

He was racist, Zar was sure. Ignorant and proud of it.

He’d reached the section of bank near where the bricklayer was working. He was curious about what the man was doing with the axe, and so wandered closer to see.

‘Ah, you’re reclaiming the bricks,’ he said.

‘Well spotted,’ said Jack, brick in hand, knocking surplus mortar off it with the back of the hand axe.

He put it on the pile of cleaned bricks and took up another with the old mortar clinging.

‘Those bricks in the yard are all the wrong colour for this wall,’ said Zar.

Jack screwed his nose up. ‘Dead right, mate. You don’t just order any old bricks. You take one to the merchant – and say ‘how close can you get to this?’’

‘Or you reclaim the old.’

‘Takes time,’ said Jack. ‘And I shouldn’t be doing it, but I’m going to carry on till I get told otherwise.’ He sighed. ‘Builders have got into a lot of bad habits. We have to be pushed to change. We’re too used to throwing everything out. Cheaper. It’s what we’ve always done. Never mind all the materials and energy that’s gone in to making it – dump it. That’s no good, is it? Not in the long run.’

‘We’ll die out if we go on like that,’ said Zar. ‘Become extinct. Like the dinosaurs.’ He bent down and said almost secretly, ‘Do you know about evolution?’

Jack laughed. ‘I’m a builder, not a professor. But I know,’ and was almost quoting from one of his astronomy mags, ‘how suns form from dust in space that amasses due to gravity, growing bigger and bigger, until at a certain size gravitational pressure sets nuclear reactions going, until you’ve got a huge, glowing atomic reactor like that one up there.’ He pointed out the sun with his axe.

‘And in four billion years it explodes to a red giant,’ said Zar.

‘Oh, so you know about stellar evolution.’

‘I do,’ said Zar. ‘Not exactly Adam and Eve though, is it? The Big Bang and all that – and us developing from apes. Well, we are apes, except with big brains and opposing thumbs…’ He stopped then added, ‘I’m not supposed to believe that stuff; it’s not in the Quran.’ He sucked his lower lip, then added, ‘And I’ll tell you something else too. I’m gay.’

‘That’s all right by me. But not by your folks, I would reckon.’

‘They don’t know.’

‘So why have you told me?’

‘Because you know things, like evolution. And…’ he shrugged, ‘you’ll be gone in a few days. And you don’t know anyone in my family.’

‘What would happen if you told your mum and dad?’

‘They’d have a heart attack. Not literally. But lecture me about the family honour, how wrong being gay is, against the Quran and our culture. They’d take me to see the imam – and I’d get more of it, chapter and verse. They might try to send me to Pakistan.’

‘You could leave home.’

He nodded. ‘I’m going to, but I have to work things out. Everything I’ve done so far has been with my culture, school, college, mosque, all our family stuff. This park is the first time I’ve been out of it properly, with so many English people…’ He stopped, and gave a short laugh. ‘I know every tree in the park. They don’t lecture you, or feed you crap.’ He shook his head. ‘I wonder what I’m doing here sometimes. I’d like to go on day release, get some qualifications, but Ian doesn’t listen… He’s scared I’ll know more than he does. Though that wouldn’t be much.’ He pointed behind him. ‘That bank doesn’t need trimming.’