Page 4 of Old Girls Go Greek
‘I like the smell of a bonfire,’ I said, ‘as long as you’re not planning on burning car tyres.’
‘I shouldn’t think so, although we do have one. He’s got some idea he might paint it white and turn it into a planter.’ Anita looked at her watch. ‘I must get back and make some lunch, but why don’t you come round to my house tomorrow about three for a cup of tea and a Jammie Dodger? Rick’s planning to spend a few hours in his greenhouse, and if you are there, he can’t expect me to come and help. He was washing the glass panes the other day and even after all these years he still thinks I will find it as exciting as he does. What do you say? You’d be doing me a massive favour? And I have a hidden agenda. And I can make up for my lack of hospitality at the same time.’
‘I’d love to,’ I said.
‘Excellent, you can tell me everything about yourself. Word is in the village you are a rich widow looking for a new husband, one of the new brand of London escapees who any day now is going to complain about the smell of the farm up the lane.’
‘Totally wrong on every point,’ I said. ‘I’m a divorcee from Bristol. I’ve moved up here to be closer to my daughter and her husband who live in Cheltenham.’
‘Lower Begley is a nice village,’ Beryl said. ‘You’ll like it as long as you don’t get involved in local politics. I’ve lived here most of my life. I watched the new estate by the old post office being built, and your house too. I remember when all this was green fields. That’s the sort of thing old people say, isn’t it? Still, I suppose people have to live somewhere.’
Gwen came out of the cupboard with a triangular floor brush that was taller than she was and started sweeping up some debris, fretting about the paint water spillage and wondering if she needed to do anything more about it.
‘Stop making such a fuss. It’s just a splash, Gwen,’ Dennis boomed across the hall. ‘The new girl made more of a mess than you did. There’s a splodge of her purple paint by the window, and by the way, you’ve missed a bit. I sharpened my pencil over there.’
‘I’ll blooming sharpen his pencil for him,’ Gwen muttered through gritted teeth.
‘He did call me a girl though,’ I said.
2
The following afternoon, I cleared away my rather unsatisfactory sandwich lunch (cheese and pickle) and fed the cat for the second time as evidently the first offering wasn’t acceptable.
‘Is that better, my booosiful boy?’ I said in the squeaky voice I sometimes used when speaking to Ivan.
My cat returned a baleful stare and looked pointedly at the cupboard where I kept the Dreamies.
‘Does he want a treat?’ I said, trying to annoy him. ‘Does he?Does he?’
Ivan almost sighed with impatience and if he could, I think he would have tapped his claws on the floor.
He rewarded me with a couple of meows, and heaven help me, I meowed back.
I’d read somewhere that people meow more to their cats than their cats do to them, and it looked as though I was slowly sliding into cat owner senility. I would be buying him seasonal-themed collars next. And little hats. It really was time I got out more.
I slung a few random treats into Ivan’s bowl, the one decorated with a smiling cat, which was so far from Ivan’s nature as to be ridiculous, and having told him where I was going and assuring him that I wouldn’t be long, I walked down the lane to Anita’s house. It really was the most beautiful part of the country, with broad fields, distant views of the Black Mountains and wildflowers just beginning to emerge from the hedgerows.
It was certainly a lot different from where I used to live, a house that Malcolm and I had bought together forty-something years ago, just after we had married and where we had raised our daughter Nicky. Originally we had been on the edge of a small town, but over the years new housing developments had gradually eroded the fields and enclosed our garden, and Malcolm had become increasingly tetchy as a result.
Then six years ago, his branch of the bank had closed down and he had been offered early retirement. And shortly afterwards it had all come out about the affair he had been having with his secretary, his dissatisfaction with life and with me. How he needed to ‘find himself’. Possibly under some rock, I had suggested.
Once things had been put in motion, everything had changed, not just my marital status. In fact, it had almost been a relief when he agreed we should sell up as part of our divorce, and I had left the noise and muddle of the new ring road and moved to the countryside where traffic disruption usually involved two tractors or some cattle being moved up the lane to a new pasture.
When I went through the front gate that afternoon, I saw Anita hanging out some washing while a small brown and white dog leapt and barked encouragement at her feet.
‘Ah, there you are,’ she said with a wide smile. ‘Come on in. Don’t take any notice of Bonzo, he’s just excited to see you. Although he gets excited at everything. I’ll give him some peanut butter, that will shut him up.’
I followed her through the back door into a large kitchen where wooden cabinets and cupboards surrounded a scrubbed pine table and chairs. There were bits of shredded dog toy and a tumbleweed of dog hair under the table. Bonzo pounced on the remains of a dismembered toy dinosaur and raced outside into the garden. Anita closed the door behind him with a sigh of relief.
‘Excuse the mess,’ she said, picking up a pile of paperwork and unopened letters and dumping them at the other end of the table. ‘Now then, tea or coffee?’
‘Either,’ I said.
‘Express a preference,’ Anita said, holding up her hands, ‘otherwise I would have to decide and I’m no good at that.’
‘Tea,’ I said.
She flicked the kettle on and took some mugs out of a cupboard.
