Page 43 of Pansies

Which was full of flowers. Standing in buckets.

Gothshelley snickered intoSuffering.

Fen’s hand had somehow slid into Alfie’s as he led him into the back room and to an immense, wobbling stack of plastic buckets.

Alfie peered up Mount Bucket. “Oh.” And then slanted a sideways look at Fen. His lips were pressed so tightly together they were little more than a pale line. “Are you laughing at me?”

A little shake of the head. But then, as if he couldn’t stop himself, Fen smiled. Wide and slightly goofy, cutting two deep brackets into his cheeks and showing slightly pointy, slightly crooked teeth. Alfie grinned in return and squeezed his hand. And to Alfie’s surprise, Fen squeezed back before letting him go. “If you need anything else,” he offered finally, “just ask me. I’m sorry I…um. What Shelley said.”

Alfie shrugged. “Mate, it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to be grateful. And I should be. I mean I am. Because truthfully, I probably couldn’t pay to have someone come in, and there’s no way I could do it myself. So…” Fen lifted his eyes to Alfie’s. “Thank you.”

Alfie was entranced, caught in a green-and-gold fairyland, and touched by the possibility of trust. Which made this a truly terrible time to admit he didn’t have a clue what he was doing. So he busied himself with the buckets, snagged one from the pile, and escaped to the bathroom. As he ran the tap, he couldn’t help daydreaming a little, imagining his life was something like this—DIY and a man to take care of—instead of the work-and-play treadmill of London.

When the bucket was about a quarter full, he tried to add approximately the same amount of plaster. This turned out to be a lot trickier than he had expected. First, none of the stuff wanted to come out of the packet, then nearly all of it did, so he had to add more water to balance it out, but then it went too runny, so he added more plaster, and eventually he had an entire bucket of lumpy sludge. So he got another bucket, decanted off the worst of it and tried again. And then he had two buckets of the lumpy sludge. Which was probably a bit much for one smallish bit of wall. He prodded at the mess with the tip of his trowel. It looked kind of like the lightning sand inThe Princess Bride.7

Well, maybe it was supposed to be like that.

He optimistically battled some of the rapidly hardening goop onto the trowel and then tried to get it to stick to the wall. It sort of did. But when he tried to smooth it down, it just rolled over and over itself until it was covered in fluff and flaky bits of old plaster, and looked, frankly, terrible. Worse than before he had started fixing it.

Alfie’s dad’s favourite saying was, “When you’re in a hole, stop digging,” and it was a good one, but Alfie wasn’t sure that it applied to plastering. Because if he stopped now, all he had was a bigger mess than when he’d started. No, probably the thing todo was keep going. Add another layer. It would cover everything up, and there was no way it could be as bad as the first.

It was as bad as the first.

There were still random bits of crap stuck in the grain, along with the trowel marks even Alfie’s best efforts left over the surface. And the more he tried to make it better, the more weird and lumpy it got, like he’d murdered a mouse and attempted to hide the body in the bathroom wall. It briefly crossed his mind that he could replaster the entire room. Then the new bit wouldn’t be so obvious because everything would look the same. By which he meant, uniformly shit.

Sweating and panicking, and swearing under his breath, but still refusing to give up, Alfie went in for a final attack. The trowel was in open rebellion now, just like everything else, and he somehow managed to get a long slug-spiral of plaster looped across the edge of the bath.

Never mind. One thing at a time. He could clean that up later.

All was not lost. He was starting to get the hang of things. Or, at least, he was getting a better handle on all the ways it was going wrong. Which meant, when he put the trowel back down, he was left with something that looked onlyquitebad. The whole experience had broken Alfie’s spirit sufficiently that he was prepared to accept this as a positive outcome. Still slightly high on the closest he had come to success, he stepped back to admire his handiwork. His foot banged against one of the buckets, and he leapt away just in time to avoid a concrete boot.

Of course, it also meant he knocked the bucket over.

There was this fairy tale Alfie remembered called “The Magic Porridge Pot.” It was kind of like that. Except plaster, not porridge. But, fuck, the stuff was everywhere. He actually had to climb into the bath to avoid the flood. When it seemed safe, hereached gingerly out to rescue the trowel, only to discover it was stuck to the floor. Really seriously stuck to the floor.

“Oh God. Oh fuck.”

So much for cups of tea and cheese sandwiches on the stairs.

But looking on the bright side… Okay, there was no bright side. He’d essentially just redone the bathroom floor. In cement.

Alfie sat, awkward and cross-legged, in the bottom of Fen’s scummy bathtub and took stock of the situation. In basic terms, it was pretty much the opposite of good. Not least because he still hadn’t finished the job he’d actually come here to do. How was he supposed to face Fen now? He’d been so sweet and grateful, and had trusted Alfie, when he had no reason to, and Alfie had made a pig’s ear of everything. Was ruining someone’s bathroom better or worse than bullying them for years? He honestly couldn’t tell. He just knew Fen was going to hate him again. And offering up his head for a bogging probably wasn’t going to cut it this time.

Basically he had two choices: give up and admit he’d made a big mess, or finish up what he could andthenadmit he’d made a big mess, only less of a big mess than it could have been. Both were awful, but there was no way he was leaving Fen to deal with it. His dad was very clear on that sort of stuff: men saw things through.

Alfie hauled himself up and prodded very gently at his plasterwork. Unlike the floor, it hadn’t turned into insta-concrete. It was, in fact, very slightly soggy. Typical. The packet said you should leave it to dry overnight, but since he wasn’t going to be working with that bit of wall, it was probably safe to fit a new bracket and hang the rail. Right? He reasoned that he’d already done the hard bit, that it would be plain sailing from here on out, except he must have buried his confidence with the trowel, because he wasn’t convincing himself. All he felt was stressed andinadequate. Disappointed that he wasn’t very good at this. When he should have been. He should have been.

He found a good spot, a little to the left of the original hole, took out his thankfully unplastered tape measure and marked everything up very precisely. It helped him feel a little better. At least he’d get something right. He readied the bracket, laid out his screws in a neat row on the edge of the bath, and set up the drill. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d used one, but the principle was pretty straightforward. Turn on, apply to wall, what could possibly go wrong? But then he’d thought the same thing about plastering. Unfortunately, he was sort of committed now. He was the Winnie-the-Pooh of DIY: couldn’t go backwards, couldn’t go forwards. Maybe Fen could use him as a towel rack.

Alfie lined everything up, braced himself for some unimagined disaster and…

It was fine. Perfect, even. There was the bracket, pinned to the wall by one skilfully drilled screw.

He held his breath as he did the second.

Still fine. Still easy.

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