Page 16 of Happily Ever After
I’d learned the art of climbing out of the windows. Although I now more usually used the kitchen door in a conventional fashion, it sometimes felt too long a way from the front of the house when I needed a quick breath of fresh air or to stretch my legs. As far as I could tell, the front door was hardly ever used and I couldn’t work out how to actually open it, so I had no option but to go out of the library window. The secret of the window exit was to try to land on both feet, and to crouch as you hit the ground, so I did this and managed not to fall forwards onto the grass.
When I straightened up, everything smelled of cucumber from the freshly mown lawn. A slight undertone of earth hung in the air with a bitterness from where the shrubs which overhung the path at the far end had been clipped with the mower. Lots of beheaded daisies scattered the green, the fairy equivalent of finding a horse’s head in your bed, I thought, poking my bare toes through the detritus of the lawns, listening for the sound of the machine approaching, although it seemed to now be performing mower dressage somewhere off behind the birch grove. I wandered off in that direction.
The gardener was mowing swathes in patterns, swinging the wheel about seemingly randomly so that the cutting pattern swept from left to right and then around, blades rising and dropping in a choreographic fashion. Not wanting to be seen, or for him to think I was watching, I climbed to the top of the rise that was the icehouse, sunken into the garden but forming a small hillock, and looked down.
Unless I was very much mistaken, the gardener was cutting ‘FUCK OFF’ into the grass, only visible from above, and I found I was smiling. From ground level it was just swirls and loops but from up here the letters were unmistakeable. Well, well, it seemed that our dedicated gardener was not quite the loyal and devoted member of staff he had seemed to be when he’d been dressed up at the memorial service.
The machine puttered into silence and I decided to go down and tell him I’d noticed, just in case he was going to try to go on about my wet pyjamas. If he could hold seeing my nipples over me, then I could hold carving swear words into his employer’s lawn over him. I clambered down off the icehouse and went towards where he’d parked the little tractor.
He was standing with his back to me, half in the yew hedge which curved back to form the boundary of the garden out here. The roof of the chapel was visible way off to our left and the hedge ran down to the ha-ha which divided the garden from the field beyond and stopped the cattle from trampling the ceanothus, whatever that was. Hugo had explained it all to me the other day, when I’d been staring out of the library window, pretending to be interested in the estate but really wondering what he’d do if I asked him out for a drink.
I’d gone off the drink idea now. If I wanted to woo Hugo, I was going to have to go hardcore. I might have to try the see-through night things on him.
‘I can see what you’ve done,’ I said, approaching the gardener’s back view. ‘“Fuck off”? I do hope that isn’t directed at her ladyship.’
He didn’t react, just stayed where he was, facing the shrubbery.
‘Are you always this rude?’ I touched him on the shoulder. He gave a strangled sort of gasp and whipped around, whereupon it became obvious that he’d been having a quiet pee in the bushes, and I had interrupted him.
‘What the hell…?’ He was trying simultaneously to tuck himself back into his shorts, work out who had tapped him on the shoulder and try to pretend that he hadn’t, in fact, been spraying pee up the venerable example ofTaxusthat had been on the family estate for generations.
‘I did announce my presence,’ I said, not sure whether to be amused, appalled or, my very quick glance had informed me, impressed.
‘I’m sorry?’
He was staring hard at me, head slightly to one side, as though he was trying to work something out. He was frowning ferociously, and there were grass clippings in his hair.
‘I said, I…’
‘Hold on a minute.’ He dug around in the pocket of his shorts for a second, pulled out two tiny plastic objects, and hooked them over each ear. ‘That’s better. Say again, now I’ve got my hearing aids in.’
Oh.Oh. He wasdeaf. No wonder he hadn’t heard me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, chastened. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘No reason you should.’ Another ‘tucking’ manoeuvre and he zipped up the shorts. ‘Well, I guess that’s us quits then. I’ve seen you looking like you were entering a Miss Wet T-Shirt competition, and you’ve caught me with my dick in my hand.’
‘There’s no need to make it sound so seedy,’ I muttered, to the ground.
‘You’ll have to speak up. And look at me if you’re talking to me.’ Unabashed, he grinned. ‘These are hearing aids, not psychic receptors.’
‘You’re horrible,’ I said, more loudly now.
‘And proud of it.’ I got another grin. ‘Things not going well with Our Lady of the Veils and the son and heir?’
‘No,’ I admitted, although grudgingly. ‘I’m supposed to be looking for Oswald’s diaries and I’m having no luck, and everyone’s bonkers.’
‘The cat’s all right.’
‘No it isn’t. It keeps trying to get into bed with me. And it smells.’
A hand was cautiously extended towards me. It was ingrained with grass juice and the fingernails were filthy, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to shake it.
‘They call me Jay,’ the gardener said. ‘Who are you?’
‘Andi. And I’m not sure I want to shake a hand you’ve just been holding your willy in.’
‘That was this one.’ His other hand waved at me. ‘I’m left-handed, it’s quite safe.’
Gingerly I took the hand. There were callouses all over his palm, hidden under the dirt, but his grip was warm and firm and I felt a wash of reassurance for a second as we shook. He felt normal and seemed uncomplicated, and it was nice to be talking to someone from outside the Dawe family, with all it implied.
