Lots of Love (29 page)

He had settled beside her and started replanting the perennials she’d been dragging unceremoniously from their homes. Silently and patiently, he collected them from the barrow, carefully cupping the soil around their roots, and buried them back in the peaty soil that had softened to mulch with the pond water.

He was on his fifth delphinium before he spoke. His tone was soft and coaxing, deliberately seductive. ‘What’s up?’

She pulled out a carpet of phlox. ‘Nothing.’

‘Is it Richard?’

She jumped in surprise and turned to stare at him.

‘You mentioned his name. So did Joni.’ He rescued the phlox and started to bed it back in.

She snorted and sat back on her heels again, glancing at him warily. ‘It’s a popular name.’

‘Is he your husband?’

Ellen sensed this was another game. ‘We never married.’

‘But you were together a long time?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Horses and married women.’ He laughed softly. ‘Two things I know a hell of a lot about. What was it? Seven years – eight?’

He was good – but he wasn’t that good. ‘Thirteen.’

‘Jesus.’ He whistled. ‘You look bloody good for your age.’

‘We got together at sixth-form college when we were sixteen.’

‘And you’ve been together ever since?’

‘Until a month ago.’

‘Ever strayed?’

‘No.’

‘Did you have many lovers before him?’

She rolled her eyes at him. So that was the game. Well, she was happy to let him win. ‘It was Taunton.’

That, at least, seemed to shut him up. He replanted a few semi-massacred lupins. But he had been biding his time: ‘So, let me get this right. You’ve slept with just one man in your entire life?’

Ouch. Victory. And way too personal. She’d been too hot and bothered to see the sting coming.

‘I’ve done enough for this evening.’ She stood up. ‘I need a shower, and Snorkel needs a walk before it gets dark. Thanks for all your help.’

‘I haven’t granted your wish yet.’

‘Yes, you have.’ She pulled the horseshoe nail from her back pocket and handed it to him. ‘You cut the lawn. Three pounds and thirty-three pence well spent.’ She detached Snorkel from her lunge line and walked inside without a backward glance.

By the time she’d showered and changed, he and the mini-tractor had gone. To her surprise, he’d put all her parents’ gardening equipment neatly back into the shed, including the pump. The black pond liner now held just a few inches of green slime and pebbles, and what appeared to be a paper boat floating in the algae. Ellen fished it out with a stray bamboo stick and unfolded it. Something small and metallic fell out and landed by her feet. She read, ‘Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away.’

She creased her forehead, reading and rereading it, trying to remember where she had heard the line before, in a poem or a song.

Then it hit her. It was Joni Mitchell: ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’.

She took a sharp breath and her tear ducts threatened to convulse. Then she crumpled up the note and threw it back into the slime. He was playing games with her head.

Feeling around underfoot, she found exactly what she expected: a single horseshoe nail. One small piece of metal as hard and twisted as Spurs Belling’s heart. And he wasn’t going to be allowed to hammer it into hers. That was already broken.

She carried it over to the horsehoe, which was lying on the garden bench, and carefully slotted it back into its hole. Then she took the entire thing to the pond and dropped it in.

Ellen’s eyes snapped open at dawn, back on the early shift. She lay listening to the birds, taking in the strange strumming top note.

Who the hell was clipping hedges at this time in the morning?

It only took a moment for waking question to connect with waking answer.

Spurs.

She rolled out of bed and looked out of the window. The first thing she saw was a huge pile of hedge clippings, spread out across the lawn to form the word ‘Sorry’. Apologising with flora and fauna seemed to be something of a village tradition. Then, as she shouldered the window-frame, her chuckling yawn turned into a groan.

‘Why do you need to say sorry?’ she asked five minutes later, as she walked outside with two mugs of tea.

He turned round, stopped the clippers and pulled his goggles on to his head. ‘For coming back.’ His face had caught the sun the day before, his high, reddened cheekbones and freckled nose throwing those pale eyes into even greater relief.

‘And why did you thank me in rose petals?’

That sun-kissed face smiled, happy to acknowledge the gesture, making the red dawn hide bashfully behind a cloud as it realised it was being outshone. ‘Because you bought my lot.’ He put his arm round Snorkel. ‘I
was
invited in.’

‘And did you take your PlayStation back while you were here?’

The moment Ellen said it, she knew she’d got it wrong. He tilted his head in confusion, utterly baffled. ‘I haven’t played in stations since I was little.’

She pressed her lips to her mug, steam and tannin waking her, furious with herself for cross-examining a man already on a crucifix. She cast her eyes guiltily around her. He’d already weeded the remaining beds and edged them, as well as training the creepers back from the downstairs windows. She turned back to him in amazement. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘A couple of hours. I couldn’t sleep.’

Snorkel hadn’t barked. She was a hopeless guard dog.

‘I apologise if I was a bit full on yesterday,’ he put down the clippers and pulled off his gloves, not looking at her, ‘but from the start, I just madly fell in love with . . .’ he paused ‘. . . this garden.’ He looked up, almost knocking her off her feet. Although apologetic, the silver eyes were as playful as the day before.

Ellen met them, blinked, and realised that they were her ultimate wake-up call: Play with me and you play with your own wounds, they warned. You know me. You know me. You know me. I am bad. I hurt people, just like you do. Let’s be bad together. Let’s be bad together. Let’s be bad together.

She scuffed her toe against the stubbled grass as she handed him a mug. ‘I was in a crabby mood. I hadn’t managed much sleep either. Maybe I’m the one who should be apologising.’

‘You should
both
be apologising!’ snapped a furious voice. They were greeted by the remarkable sight of Hunter Gardner wearing striped pyjamas and a checked silk dressing-gown, glaring at them over his half-clipped garden hedge. ‘Have you
any
idea what time it is?’

‘Quite early.’ Ellen cleared her throat.

‘It’s a quarter to six!’ he snarled. ‘And I hardly think you can call this a reasonable time to be running garden appliances, can you?’

To Ellen’s surprise, Spurs immediately apologised. ‘I had no idea it was so early – don’t wear a watch, you see, and I knew we had a lot to do today. I’ll do this later. Hope we didn’t disturb your sleep too badly.’

Hunter gaped at him, then nodded a gruff acknowledgement of the apology. He turned back to his house. ‘And don’t let that blasted dog near my chickens,’ he called, over his shoulder.

Spurs turned to Ellen and smiled. ‘See what a good influence you are on me?’

She narrowed one eye speculatively.

‘Do you still love me?’ he asked, only a hint of mischief in his voice.

‘A bit.’ She yawned. ‘You?’

‘To death – anyone who brings me tea like this wins my heart.’ He took a long gulp.

‘I didn’t think you had one.’

‘Grew it back last night.’

‘I’ll notify the tea ladies of Britain.’

He grinned. ‘So I’m allowed to finish granting your wish?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, please.’

In the intimate, warm cloak of another humid morning, they worked together, clearing away the huge piles of cuttings and weeds to build a bonfire they would light later. They talked quietly, mostly nonsense, the jokes and games of ‘verbal catch’ never allowed to get dark and dangerous as they had the day before; the little snippets of information they passed on about themselves scattered like pearls that dropped naturally rather than being prised from shells.

Working before the sun got up to strength meant that they powered through the tasks, hardly noticing the speed at which they were exerting themselves. It seemed laughably easy, compared with the stings, aches, heat and irritation of the day before.

By the time Hunter marched past to fetch his Sunday paper (as always timing it so that Joel would be unlocking the post-office stores at precisely the time he arrived), Ellen and Spurs were sitting on the bench drinking coffee. They waved at him cheerfully. He lifted his chin in return and managed a squinting, unfriendly smile.

‘I wonder why he never married?’ Ellen mused.

‘Gay.’ Spurs offered her a biscuit.

‘Never! He’s always ogled on my mother.’

‘Is she very bossy?’

‘Fairly. She was a school teacher.’

‘There you go. Mother complex. He’s definitely queer – tried to grope Rory at the fête when he was eight. Hunter was judging the fancy-dress contest. Aunt Truffle should have known better than to dress him as a sailor. Asking for trouble.’

‘Was that why you set light to his garage?’

‘Among other things. It was a long time ago.’

‘Do you really have an aunt called Truffle?’

‘Patricia – yes.’

Not long afterwards, Giles Hornton panted past in his jogging shorts, moustache gleaming. ‘Care to join me today?’ he called to Ellen.

‘Another time.’ She waved him on.

He cast Spurs a hard look, and jogged off towards the church.

‘Another admirer?’ Spurs turned to her teasingly.

‘Another?’ She wondered, rather stupidly, whether he counted himself as one.

‘Your date at the Duck?’

‘Oh, him.’ Ellen didn’t want to think about Lloyd. ‘That was just a one-off – I mean, it’s nothing serious.’

‘Too soon after Richard?’ he asked lightly.

She studied his face, wondering if this was a game. But it wasn’t. ‘Yes, too soon after Richard.’

Later, leaning against the ladder while he cleaned the windows above her head, Ellen watched the sky for signs of a storm. ‘It has to break soon.’

‘It will. Tonight,’ he promised.

‘Where do you suppose it is?’ She scanned the horizon.

‘Now? Throwing its weight around in your old neck of the woods.’

‘Cornwall?’ She looked up as a cascade of soapy drips rained down on her. ‘It’ll take hours to get here, then – I took almost four, and I had a jeep.’

‘Storms drive faster than women.’

‘I drive very fast.’

‘I bet you do. But you’re not a woman.’

‘What am I?’

‘You’re Ellen.’ He passed the bucket down, then hopped off the ladder, lit a cigarette and walked away to admire his weeded flower-beds.

Ellen poked out her tongue at his retreating back, then headed inside with the bucket and splashed her face at the cold tap as she filled it, listening to Joni Mitchell starting up in the garden. Spurs had clearly deemed it a respectable hour to start the noise pollution – although to Ellen’s mind there was nothing as pure as Joni’s poetry and her sweet, cracked voice.

The soggy piece of paper with its crumpled line from ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’ still floated on the pool of slime left in the pond, and hidden below it was the horseshoe. Ellen wondered whether she could retrieve it without Spurs seeing.

When she carried the bucket out, he was playing ball with Snorkel, the cigarette dangling between his lips.

‘She needs a walk.’ Ellen watched her exploding like a sprung coil after every throw.

‘So let’s take her.’

‘Dilly’s coming over,’ she reminded him ‘Why don’t I do it while you finish the windows?’

‘I want to come with you.’

‘You might miss Dilly.’

Joni was singing about Christmas and longing for a river she could skate away on. Her timing wasn’t great. The only thin ice to skate on in steamy Oddlode was frosting Spurs’ eyes as he shook his head. ‘She’ll come at exactly the same time as yesterday. She’s a teenager. They calculate things like that carefully. She’ll have thought about me all night.’

Ellen pulled back her chin and snorted at his arrogance. It prodded her to ask, ‘Did you lose your nerve when you broke your leg?’

‘No.’ He threw his cigarette butt into the clipped hedge. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Yesterday you looked frightened when Dilly asked you to ride Otto.’

‘Oh – no, it wasn’t nerves. It was something she said.’

‘What?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Just a stupid thing from my past. Haunts me sometimes.’

‘So you weren’t frightened?’

‘No.’ He looked at her levelly. ‘Horses don’t frighten me.’

‘What does?’