Practically Perfect (6 page)

‘Well, it would help. Shall we follow the boys? You could have a turn holding Caroline while I push them.’

‘They’ll be all right by themselves for a few minutes; we can see them. I want to know more about you.’

‘Well, when I was working, saving to buy this house, it was what I did.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I worked as a chippy, a carpenter.’

Chloe looked even more amazed. ‘I thought you said you worked in bars.’

‘Well, I did. But not always as a barmaid. And I worked on other people’s renovation projects.’

‘But I thought you did that as an interior designer.’

‘Only when I could. Mostly I fitted skirting boards, rebuilt windows and shutters, put up shelves, made wardrobes under stairs, stuff like that.’ By now, all three boys had negotiated their way on to a swing and were pumping their legs back and forth, hoping for forward momentum. Anna took pity on them and handed Caroline to Chloe.

‘But where do you start with a staircase?’ asked Chloe, while Anna ran between children, like a juggler with a line of plates.

‘I’ve got a book,’ Anna panted. ‘It does involve a lot of sums.’

‘I like sums,’ said Bruno. ‘Can you push me higher?’

‘I was hopeless at maths at school,’ said Chloe, looping Caroline’s lead round her wrist and pushing another of her sons. ‘Still am.’

‘Practice does help,’ said Anna, going to the youngest. ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to put dogs’ leads round your wrist in case they ran off and broke it.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Chloe, putting her foot on the lead instead. ‘But Caroline doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.’ In fact, she had sunk on to her haunches and seemed quite happy to stay where she was. ‘How do you know so much about dogs, anyway? I thought you told me you’d never had one.’

‘I watched quite a bit of afternoon television when I was a student. They had loads of animal programmes.’

‘So tell me how you make a staircase, then.’

Anna wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about her staircase as she wasn’t sure she could do it, but it was too late to be coy about it now. ‘It’ll take masses of drawing and measuring and calculating. Making it and fitting it comes later.’

Chloe was persistent. ‘So how did you find out you could do carpentry?’

Anna sighed, giving in to the inevitable. ‘Well, as a student I’d made furniture out of pallets and stuff, but I learnt to do it properly when I was a designer. I did know I had a knack for it, but on practically my first assignment, this chippy refused to put in a cupboard where I knew a cupboard could go. He resented taking instructions from a woman, especially one hardly out of college, and he said there wasn’t room, and if I was so sure there was, I could bloody well put it in myself. Only he didn’t
say
“bloody”.’ She laughed at the memory of herself: hugely lacking in confidence, but stubborn as all-get-out.

Chloe laughed, too. ‘I can imagine. So what did you do?’

‘I stayed in the house all night, doing the cupboard. Well, not all night, but it was tricky.’

‘And what did the chippy say in the morning?’

‘He was impressed. In fact, he became my best friend. It changed his mind about women in general and interior designers in particular. He made me his unofficial apprentice. I used to go to the job in my spare time and he taught me how to look after tools, dovetail joints, all sorts of things.’

‘That’s so romantic! You learning your love of woodwork from a gruff old carpenter, spending every spare minute ingesting his wisdom until now you’re thinking about building a staircase.’

Anna laughed. ‘It wasn’t like that. He was quite young – the young ones are always the worst when it comes to being anti-women, or at least they are in my experience – but he did teach me a huge amount. And it was through him that I got the timber to make the staircase.’

‘You’ve got the timber already?’

‘In a storage facility in London. Fortunately, it’s mostly my sister’s stuff, so she pays.’

‘So you knew you were going to make a staircase all those years ago?’

‘Oh no. But Jeff told me that they were ripping the floors out of this old house and dumping them in a skip, and when would be a good time to …’ Anna hesitated, ‘er, relocate them.’ It was stealing, there were no two ways about it, but the thought of those lovely wide boards being burnt was a worse sin, she thought. And as Jeff pointed out at the time, if she didn’t take them some other yuppy
designer
would. ‘I had to do it on my bicycle, at night. It took about three nights, but I knew they would come in useful sometime.’

‘And weren’t you worried that someone might take them during the day?’

‘Absolutely! But Jeff made a bed in the skip for his little Jack Russell, who barked like mad if anyone went near it. It meant the lads couldn’t put stuff in the skip, either, but they were very good about it. I bought them a few pints.’

Chloe sighed. ‘You have had an exciting life, Anna. I just fell in love and got married at a horribly early age. But at least I found True Love.’

Anna laughed, although not feeling as merry as she sounded. She’d found True Love too, and True Love Unrequited was a very painful state.

‘Shall we take the products of your True Love back to mine for hot chocolate? I bought some flakes; we could dip them in.’

‘Terribly bad for them, all that milk, plus chocolate, but as long as it’s at your house, it’s all right,’ said Chloe. ‘Come on, boys! We’re going to Auntie Anna’s for hot choc.’

‘Oh, please don’t make them call me Auntie Anna! Anna is fine. Oh my goodness, there’s a cat!’

After her exemplary behaviour on their first and subsequent walks, Anna became confident that Caroline wouldn’t let her down and decided to take her when she visited the small market the next Saturday morning. It was not a farmers’ market, but according to Chloe it not only had a very good fruit and veg stall, a county-famous fish stall and a van that sold wonderful cheeses that you couldn’t usually get outside France, but it also had a WI stall that made the best cakes for miles.

It was a beautiful day and, feeling pleasantly rural, Anna collected some carrier bags and set off with Caroline. As she walked she peeped into the cottage gardens outside the stone houses along the road and wondered if she’d have time to do much to her own long garden. But it was the large area of allotments that caused her to stop and gaze. Not, Anna realised, because she particularly wanted to have one herself – she would never have the time – but because they were so aesthetically pleasing. She was leaning over the wall, taking in the scene, when she realised she recognised the man busy digging as the owner of the village shop. He saw her at the same time.

‘Morning!’ he called. ‘Thinking of having an allotment, are you?’

‘Not really. I just love looking at them.’

The shopkeeper looked about him. ‘Well, some of these have been let go a bit, but we’re well represented at the flower and produce show at the back end of the year. My onions win, sometimes.’

‘Goodness me. I don’t know how you have time, with the shop and everything.’

‘Well, there are lots of people wanting Saturday jobs, and there’re the evenings. I find it relaxing, getting in among the soil.’

They chatted for a bit longer while Anna admired the patchwork effect of the different plots. There were quite a few little sheds dotted about, and she could just imagine one or other member of a couple saying they were ‘popping down to the allotment’ and having a sneaky read of the paper in the shed instead of digging.

‘I’d better press on, I suppose,’ she said. ‘My neighbour told me that if you’re not at the market in good time, the WI stall won’t have any cakes left.’

As she walked on down the slight incline, Anna met a
woman
pushing a bicycle. The basket was full of carrots with their tops still on. Several more bags were hung off the handlebars and riding the bike was no longer an option. A cyclist herself, Anna smiled in greeting and the woman stopped, panting slightly. ‘That’s a lovely dog,’ she said.

‘Yes. I haven’t had her long, but she’s very good company.’

‘So, are you new to the village?’

Anna nodded. ‘I live in Brick Row. I’m doing up my house.’

The woman nodded. ‘Oh, I know. They’re tiny, those cottages, but very picturesque.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘I did a watercolour of them last year. You should come and see it. I live in the little house behind the conifers at the crossroads.’

‘Oh yes.’ She didn’t really know where the woman meant, but she didn’t want to spend hours having it explained when she knew she’d never visit unless she was given a proper invitation.

‘So do pop in!’ the woman called, pushing her bicycle back up the hill again. ‘Any time!’

How friendly everyone was!

The village was heaving and Anna got the feeling that people came here as much to catch up with their friends as to do their shopping. Although Caroline was being very good, and was getting lots of approving glances, Anna did wonder if bringing her somewhere so crowded had been a good idea.

The old butter market, with its columns of stone supporting an ancient meeting room above and with a covered area beneath, had provided shelter for market traders for centuries, Anna had gathered from Chloe. The continuity was very pleasing and Anna loved the thought
that
people had brought their produce here, year after year, decade after decade. There seemed to be dozens of stalls crammed under the supported building, although none of them apparently sold butter. Lots of the people pushing through the crowds smiled at her and it made Anna feel she was part of a community in a way she never had in London. Downshifting was such a good idea! She must ring Laura and tell her about this market – she’d love it.

Even Caroline seemed a good idea, judging by the number of people who stopped to talk to her. Animals were a channel of communication, Anna realised, and began to feel slightly less foolish for having taken Caroline on.

‘Is it good with children?’ asked one woman carrying a wicker basket full of interestingly shaped brown paper parcels, and surrounded by little ones. ‘Can they pat her?’

‘If they’re gentle,’ said Anna, having checked that the children in question did not look like miniature psychopaths. ‘And go one at a time.’

Caroline stood patiently while each child stroked her head and murmured, ‘Nice doggy!’

‘I haven’t had her long, but she’s very good,’ said Anna to their mother.

‘She’s gorgeous.’ The woman sighed. ‘We can’t have a dog. My husband has allergies.’

After another smile and pat from the children, they moved on, and Anna felt it was time to get down to her shopping. What a contrast this jolly scene was to the heaving aisles of a supermarket on a Saturday morning.

The smell of samosas being freshly made floated across to her, giving the quintessentially English scene a mouth-watering touch of the exotic. She paused, wondering where to go first.

Across the way, Anna could see a stall selling rustic benches, unusual boxes and a chest of drawers big enough for only very small items. A stall with second-hand clothes on a rail and boxes of china and kitchen utensils could prove useful, and a large banner advertising home-made organic dog biscuits seemed a ‘must visit’ for Caroline and Anna.

‘We’ll go there later, darling,’ Anna whispered to Caroline, ‘but I need some fruit and veg first.’

‘Good morning!’ said the stallholder, a man in his fifties with a serious expression. ‘Looking for apples? Wrong time of year, really, but there are some New Zealand Coxes if you must have apples.’

Anna smiled shyly. In the part of London where she had lived there’d been no neighbourhood market and she wasn’t used to banter. ‘Yes, please. About five.’

‘It’s about half-ten, actually, my love, but we won’t split hairs.’ Seeing him put five apples into a bag told Anna that beneath his lugubrious expression the man actually had a very dry sense of humour. ‘Now, what else can I sell you? Got some lovely grapes? Spuds?’

With Caroline taking up one hand, Anna didn’t let herself get too carried away but moved on to the fish stall. Here every sort of fish seemed to be on sale and judging by the queue of people, it was obviously extremely popular. She overheard the pretty girl scooping up mussels and putting them into a bag saying that the stallholder had been up at three in the morning to get the fish from Brixham. When her turn came, she bought two fillets of sole and put them on top of the apples.

While she was moving away a man with a child on his shoulders stepped on her foot. He had a huge black beard and a hand-knitted jumper that nearly reached his knees. The child, his fingers entwined in the man’s dark curls,
wore
a hat made up of concentric circles of startling bright colours and wailed loudly as his father nearly toppled over Anna.

‘Sorry, mate! Must mind me big feet. I never saw you!’ The man was mortified. The child was lifted off his shoulders so he could apologise properly, and then the little boy had to pat Caroline.

‘I’m Aidan,’ the man introduced himself. ‘You’re new here, aren’t you? Thought so. We would have recognised you by the dog.’

Anna laughed. ‘I am new, but I’m beginning to feel I’ve lived here long enough to know a few people.’

‘That’s what’s good about this area. Now, if you fancy circle dancing, or Five Rhythms dancing, it’s on at the Institute on Wednesdays, during termtime.’

‘It does sound … fascinating, but I’m a bit busy just now.’ What on earth was circle dancing? She must ask Chloe.

‘Well, the new term starts in just over a fortnight’s time. It’s very good exercise, although you probably don’t need help getting that with her.’ He smiled down at Caroline. ‘I make musical instruments, by the way.’

‘If ever I need a lute, I’ll get in touch,’ Anna promised solemnly and the man laughed.

‘Come on, Ocean.’ He heaved the little boy back on to his shoulders and went striding off through the crowds.

Anna watched him fondly before moving on to the cheese counter, which did, she was pleased to note for the sake of the continuity of the ages, sell butter.