The Storyteller's Daughter (8 page)

“My goodness I'm getting unfit!” she laughs. “Maybe I should start going to the gym.”

She looks from me to the young man and back again, taking in the knife in my trembling, outstretched hand.

“Meg, what on earth are you doing?”

“Mother, who is this man?” I demand sharply, already aware that I have made a horrific mistake.

“He's the gardener, of course. Who else would he be?”

She takes the knife from me and casually throws it into a drawer.

“He knocked this morning looking for work and I thought I could probably do with a hand. He's already made ever such a good start.”

“But you said you didn't want a gardener!” I shout, incredulous and acutely embarrassed.

“When did I say that?”

“Yesterday!”

“Well, that was yesterday. Honestly, darling, I don't know what you're getting so worked up about. It was your idea in the first place.”

She shakes her head and rolls her eyes in the man's direction as if to say, ‘my daughter, what a loon!'

He smiles at her.

“Would you like a glass of water, Ewan?” my mother asks politely as she starts to unpack the shopping.

“Only if it wouldn't be too much trouble,” he says, looking at me with a smirk.

I want to crawl under the kitchen table and die.

“Of course not. Get Ewan some water will you, Meg?” she asks, her head already buried inside a cupboard.

Silent in my humiliation, I pour a glass of water from the tap and hold it out to him, carefully avoiding his eye. He drinks it down in a four swift gulps, wipes his mouth with the back of his grimy hand and passes me back the glass.

“Thanks. Very kind of you.”

I glance at him briefly. His brown eyes are glistening with wry amusement and a smile is playing on his lips. The obvious enjoyment he takes in my acute embarrassment makes me want to hit him.

“No problem,” I say, forcing a smile.

I turn and leave the room, calculating how long it might take him to tidy the garden and leave so that I never have to face him again.

Chapter 5

I almost married Johnny Miller. He was nearly mine for life. It didn't occur to me that I had only been invited to his birthday party because my mother had become notorious for providing an excellent catering service, depositing me on people's doorsteps with mountains of sandwiches, fruit jellies, fairy cakes, sausage rolls and meringues. In my eyes, the fact that I was the only girl in Red Class to be invited to his party meant that Johnny must love me.

‘He definitely loves you,' confirmed Tracey Pratt as we sat writing that fateful paragraph entitled ‘My Earliest Memory'. It was the last time Tracey Pratt would sit next to me in class ever again. ‘Promise me I can be your bridesmaid,' she said. ‘I want to wear a pink dress with roses on it. I'll show you.'

She turned her paper over and started to draw a dress with huge puffy sleeves and love-hearts all over it.

‘I think he's really handsome,' I swooned, gazing across the classroom at Johnny who was flicking tiny balls of paper at Podge Parkinson's back.

‘Me too,' said Tracey. ‘I think he's definitely the most handsomest boy in the class. You're
so
lucky he loves you!'

I was in seventh-heaven and saw my whole life with Johnny stretching ahead of me like a blissful dream. I saw myself in a huge white wedding dress, doves fluttering in the sky. I saw two babies, twins perhaps, and a beautiful cottage in the country. I saw myself kissing Johnny goodbye as he set off in his big shiny car to an office where he did something important that involved wearing a suit. We would never have our gas cut off, or catch leaking water in a bucket like my mother and I had to. The landlord would never bang angrily on our door, and pipes wouldn't knock in the night. We would have kittens and a huge garden, a log fire and exotic holidays, and every evening Johnny would bring me flowers.

How could I have known that five minutes later my dreams would all be shattered? That I would be standing, red-faced and embarrassed, as Johnny Miller, the love of my life and hope for future happiness, called me ‘dumb'? That Tracey Pratt, my closest friend and prospective bridesmaid, would have turned against me and called me a liar? That I would, for the rest of that term, be shunned by my friends who no longer wanted to be associated with an eight-year-old girl who believed runner beans could run?

I will never forget that day after school when I walked up to Johnny Miller at the school gates to hand him my invitation reply slip, having proudly ticked the box that read ‘Yes, I would love to come to your party!'

‘I'm really looking forward to it,' I said politely, feeling myself blush, still clinging onto my dream of our shared future.

Behind Johnny, Podge Parkinson and Jamie Brunt sniggered into their cupped hands.

‘Make sure she doesn't bring any beans,' Jamie whispered, ‘they might run away!'

Podge burst into wheezy, asthmatic laughter.

Johnny fiddled awkwardly with the knot of his school tie.

‘The party's been cancelled,' he said quickly, and without even looking at me he turned and ran away.

I stood forlornly, staring at the reply slip in my hand. I had planned to wear my new blue dress and slip-on shoes with the tiny heels. I was going to use all the money in my piggy bank to buy him a Power-Splash water pistol.

I didn't need to hear Johnny's mother shout ‘See you Saturday!' to Jamie's mother in order to know that the party was still going ahead.

I had been rejected because Johnny thought I was a liar and a fool.

“You don't have to be shy, you know.”

I freeze mid-step. How on earth did he hear me? I was being as quiet as a mouse. Or so I thought. I curse my mother for insisting that I bring a cup of coffee and a slice of pecan pie outside for the gardener. After all, she's paying him, I can't believe she's expected to feed him as well. Having crept down the brick path, I left the refreshments on the ground in between his discarded jumper and a row of cauliflowers, I really thought I could just creep back to the house without him noticing me. But just as I am tiptoeing away, his voice reaches me from somewhere amongst the apple orchard. The branches of the tightly-packed trees are a tangle of leaves and fruit, too dense to see through, but he is obviously in there somewhere, watching me sneaking around.

“What's up? Are you afraid?”

I spin around, my eyes searching for him amongst the leafy branches, irritated at his suggestion. He's clearly patronising me, mocking me for my reaction the other day when I defended myself against him with a dishcloth. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't think it's unreasonable to feel a little frightened when a scruffy-looking man bursts into your kitchen unannounced. I'm about to tell him so when he speaks again.

“Come on, don't be shy now, Sweetheart. Have a bit more confidence. You know, I think you could be a right little stunner if you wanted.”

My jaw drops. Sweetheart! Stunner! The cheek of him! He's obviously one of these young men who likes to think of himself as a bit of a charmer, a ‘cheeky chappie' or a ‘loveable rogue', chatting up the ladies with a naughty smile and a glint in his eye. Unfortunately for him I find these kind of men misogynistic, irritating and common, and see nothing in the slightest bit charming about them.

“You're quite a beauty, you know that?”

His voice is soft and deep as it carries on the gentle Summer breeze and in spite of myself, just for a second, I feel a smile playing at the side of my mouth. A beauty? Really? Mark has never called me a beauty. He once said I am rather pretty when my hair is neatly tucked behind my ears, but he has never used the word beautiful. But what am I doing allowing myself to be flattered? He shouldn't be talking to me in this way. If my mother will insist on having him here, he's going to have to learn that he's here to cut grass and trim hedges and that's all. I'm more or less his employer, for goodness sake.

I push my way into the little orchard, shoving branches out of my path, trampling over a ball of string, some shears and a wooden box, all of which he has discarded recklessly on the ground with no regard for anyone's safety. Forcefully parting the leaves of an apple tree, I find myself staring him straight in the face.

“I have a boyfriend you know,” I tell him, matter-of-factly, stumbling on a piece of green netting which has become caught around my feet. “He's a lecturer in physics.”

The gardener stares at me blankly. “Good for you,” he says, watching me curiously as I stumble around in front of him, kicking my feet in a bid to free myself from the netting which seems to have tied my ankles together.

“Yes, it is good for me,” I tell him, “he's very well-respected physicist.” I grab onto a tree trunk as I nearly topple over. “So I really don't think it's appropriate for you to be – ”

“Do you want some help with that?” he interrupts, reaching down to untangle me.

“I'm perfectly alright, thank you,” I say confidently, causing him to back away. Realising that all my jigging about has only served to tighten the netting around my feet, I decide to lean casually against the tree trunk with my arms folded, as if I am completely comfortable standing with my feet tied together and do it all the time.

“Anyway, I have a boyfriend,” I continue as if nothing is amiss, “so I really don't think it's appropriate for you to be addressing me as ‘sweetheart' and commenting on my appearance. Plus, just for the record, nothing about you scares me in the slightest, other than the fact that you burst straight into my kitchen yesterday without having the courtesy to knock.”

The gardener just stares at me, bemused, as if I'm speaking another language. I try to remember if I inadvertently used any complicated words that he might not have understood. And then, slowly, a look of realisation spreads across his face.

“Oh, you didn't think… I mean, I wasn't talking to you if that's what you thought.”

I look around me, confused, as if there is any chance that somebody else might be hiding in the orchard. And then it dawns on me. I see what he's doing. He's embarrassed now because he knows I have a boyfriend, so he's trying to backtrack on his suggestive and rather sexist comments. He might even be afraid that my boyfriend is a six-foot-three part-time body builder who would flatten him in a fit of jealous rage if he knew that words such as ‘stunner' has been directed towards me. Admittedly, the only time I have ever seen Mark in a jealous rage was when I beat him at
Countdown
, and even then it was less of a rage and more of a sulk, but the gardener isn't to know that.

“Oh, okay,” I say, nodding disbelievingly, “you weren't talking to me. So obviously you were talking to – ” I look about, pretending to be searching for someone, “this caterpillar I suppose?”

Mark always says that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but to be honest I rather enjoy it. There is quite clearly no-one else here he could possibly have been speaking to, so he's just going to have to admit that he was trying to chat me up and that he has completely and utterly embarrassed himself. I have never liked the phrase ‘out of your league' because it sounds rather arrogant, but at the end of the day my boyfriend is a physicist, and he's… well…. what on earth did he think he was trying to do?

The gardener shuffles awkwardly, and tries to conceal a smile which I assume must be born out of guilt and embarrassment at his own impropriety.

“No, I wasn't talking to the caterpillar,” he concedes, studying the revolting yellow fury creature that is crawling along a nearby branch. “I'd hardly refer to him as a ‘beauty'. Or as ‘shy', for that matter. I was chatting to him earlier and could barely get a word in. No, I was actually talking to this tree.”

He pats the trunk of the tree he's standing next to and I almost laugh at his ridiculous lie. Is that all he could come up with? To say he was staring at his own reflection in a mirror and talking to himself would have been more convincing. But as I roll my eyes in a way that is meant to say ‘Oh,
please
!', I notice that he in fact looks perfectly serious.

I raise an eyebrow quizzically.

“What?”

“Well, look at her,” he says, “she's not bearing any fruit. All her branches are turning inward like she's trying to hide away. Her leaves are small and dull in colour, as if she doesn't want to draw attention to herself. She clearly feels ashamed of who she is. She's the classic example of a shy tree.”

I study his face, searching for a sign that he's joking.

“A shy tree?” I repeat, thinking that might be one of the strangest phrases I've ever used.

“One of the most timid trees I've met. And it's a shame, because
as I was telling her
,” he says slowly and with emphasis, “she could really blossom if she just let herself go a bit. She'd be quite a beauty, in fact. I was trying to give her a bit of positive encouragement.”

It takes me a moment to absorb the fact that, firstly, he is obviously completely serious; and secondly, if he is completely serious then that means… “I wasn't trying to chat you up,” he says, “sorry if you got the wrong end of the stick.”

Despite the fact that he is trying to sound sincerely sorry for my discomfort, I can see him battling with a smile, and it is clear that, once again, my mistake has provided welcome fodder for his amusement.

“I didn't think… I just,” I stammer, wondering how I can cover up my mistake. I can't believe I thought he was saying those things to me! But hang on, why am
I
the one feeling silly?
He's
the one who's been talking to a tree!

“Who in their right mind talks to trees?” I ask, rather harshly, trying to turn the focus back onto him and divert attention from my embarrassing mistake.