Strangers in a Garden Read online

‘Don’t I need water as well?’

  Vi gave her an old fashioned look and some home-made scones.

  Laura poured her mother half a cup of tea and buttered a scone to go with it. Mrs James had a table in front of her chair that swung in front of her. Laura organised the table and set down the tea.

  ‘Are you going to get my pension today?’

  ‘Mother, it’s raining.’

  She could hear it pounding on the roof and sluicing down the gutters, she could see it battering against the window. It had rained like this, non-stop, for three days.

  ‘It’s Friday. You’re supposed to collect it Fridays.’

  ‘I’ll get two weeks next Friday.’

  ‘But I haven’t any money.’

  ‘What do you need to buy?’

  ‘I must get a present for Susie. It’s her birthday.’

  Laura was determined they were not going to have an argy bargy over Susie. She told herself it was interesting, not tragic, that her mother could remember the birthday of someone she’d met only a dozen times, whereas her daughter’s birthday she’d completely forgotten.

  Penny hit the roof when she rang. ‘That’s unbelievable. The selfish old bag. Oh! I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. She’s your mother. I mean I’m not sorry she’s your mother. I’ve got the builders in to do the extension and it’s absolute hell. Three sugars love, and nice and strong. The amount of tea and coffee you wouldn’t believe… and of course I have to deal with everything myself because Richard says he’s only at the end of the phone but how can I call him when he’s in the middle of explaining to the Lower Sixth whether Goneril or Regan was the most evil of Lear’s daughters.’

  ‘Regan’ said Laura. ‘She was always goading the others on.’

  ‘Still,’ Penny said, ‘I’m glad the Susie arrangement is working out. Gives you a breather. Cheltenham’s so pretty, isn’t it?’

  Laura was due in Cheltenham the next day for her respite day off. She didn’t want to go, but on the other hand, she didn’t want to antagonise Karinne.

  The day centre was in an elegant Georgian building, with a freshly painted front door. Inside, the hall was cluttered with push-chairs and a rusty bike, with an over-riding institutional smell of disinfectant and cabbage.

  Laura returned to Spring Cottage depressed and ashamed. Everyone at the day centre had been worse off than she. There was a child aged eleven who looked after his invalid mother and three younger sisters. There was a woman who’s husband had been paralysed for the past twenty years. She had no social life and, as far as Laura could see, no hope, but her only comment on her situation was that sometimes she and her husband got tetchy with one another.

  Dutifully, Laura wrote it all up for Hugo’s committee, and then settled down to watch Top of the Pops. She loved it, everyone under thirty did, especially the girls on the show, with their ironed-straight hair and expressions so vacant that despite the obvious time they’d spent at the mirror, Laura seriously doubted whether, when they stared at their reflection, they had any idea who it actually was.

  Laura had to get her mother up, dressed and wearing proper shoes on Sunday morning as Vi had offered to take them in the car for ‘a trip out.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ mewed Kay. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Forest of Dean,’ said Vi. ‘You ought to see it, Laura. You either like it or you don’t.’

  Laura didn’t. She and Vi had a short stroll within view of the car park where they had left Kay safely locked in the A35.

  The dense forest, with its lurking air of menace, struck Laura as distinctly spooky. After all, she’d grown up in Surrey where clusters of trees were called woods, and the birches and oaks were reassuringly benign.

  ‘Can we go, Vi?’

  The drive back was worse. The streets in a village called Bream were heaving with sheep.

  ‘Where are they going?’ asked Laura. ‘Where’s the shepherd?’

  ‘Miles away, I should think,’ Vi said calmly. ‘The sheep are allowed to roam here. You didn’t see them, but they’re all over the forest as well.’

  The sheep trotted down the pavement, shitting. Mothers, with pushchairs, were negotiating the ordure with practised skill. When Vi braked sharply to avoid hitting a curious ram, Laura was close to hurling up.

  ‘Aren’t they sweet,’ beamed Kay. ‘I had a toy lamb when I was little.’

  Vi turned round to Laura. ‘It wasn’t a lamb. It was a rabbit.’

  Oh, who cares, Laura thought.

  Vi cooked roast beef for their lunch and chatted happily about her four-year-old grand-daughter. Laura felt envious. A child could be irritating, boisterous, constantly wanting to know why, how, WHY? Living with an old person, it seemed to Laura, gave you nothing. Sure, they had their memories, but as the lamb/rabbit conversation had proved today, their recollections were imperfect. Even before her mother got dementia, her memory had been woolly.

  From a child you got light, joy, curiosity, surprises. The only surprises you received from someone old and senile was when she had a moment of sheer lucidity, usually involving the war and a thousand and one things to do with Spam.

  At home, Laura put on a television arts programme she knew her mother would hate, so it was easy to persuade Kay to have a nap. Laura refused to allow her to fall asleep in her chair. She felt it was like sitting in a room with a dead person.

  She settled her mother in bed, and when she went back into the sitting room, Adrian was there.

  He had a slight tan. He was wearing a light jacket and an open-necked shirt. Laura wished the television could be a magic box, so she could reach out and hug him and kiss him.

  ‘And you wrote the novel while you were still at university. How did you manage that?’

  ‘I had a girlfriend who encouraged me.’

  Patricia. Bloody Patricia who stole you away from me.

  ‘Actually, I did most of it one long vac, in Cyprus.’

  ‘Preferred Lies. It’s a cracking title, Adrian. Am I right in thinking it’s something to do with golf?’

  ‘That’s right. It’s when the weather’s too bad to use the regular tees, the club provides alternatives and they’re called preferred lies.’

  Laura remembered Fiona saying that bloody Patricia had been good at golf.

  ‘Well, Adrian, congratulations, we’ve heard today you’ve been shortlisted for the Lutterworth Prize. How does it feel to be in line to win the most prestigious and the most valuable literary prize in Britain?’

  ‘Oh look. I’m up against five writing greats. I admire all of them. I’m a rank outsider.’

  ‘Rookies have a way of coming up on the rails. And we’ll be watching with interest on the night of the awards.’

  The interviewer said, to camera, ‘I’m not a betting man. But if I were, I’d put some money on Adrian Fry. And I’d advise him to have an acceptance speech ready.’

  He’s done it already, Laura thought. In his bath. While bloody Patricia soaped his back.

  The unexpected sight of Adrian brought back a tidal wave of memories. Every minute of their time together, right from the beginning when they’d sat, as strangers in a garden, confessing their secret desires. Except Adrian had done it. He’d told her he wanted to write and he had and he was up for the Lutterworth. She’d confided that she wanted to get married but she hadn’t because no one had asked her. Adrian had avoided the issue and Tom had preferred Cressida.

  Tom. They hadn’t had long together but he’d always been interesting to talk to. She remembered his thoughts on being a big rugged bloke:

  ‘Sometimes I think it would be easier being a 5’6 weed. Then when you’re in a pub and a fight breaks out, no one expects you to step in and break it up. But when you’re 6’4, they all look at you and you can see the women thinking, that big bloke, why doesn’t he DO something?’

  Ironical, really, that on his wedding day, he’d punched that actor and become something of a national hero.

  At last, it
was Wednesday and she could speed off the train at Paddington, gratefully filling her lungs with big city diesel and exhaust fumes. She had an hour to window shop, buy some black stockings, or a bottle of Yardley perfume, called Bond Street, for Susie. The purchases went into a black leather briefcase which Hugo had given her, bought in the interests of making her look as presentable as he did. Reluctantly, she had consigned the slit skirt to the back of the wardrobe and unearthed something more respectable from a second-hand shop in Chepstow.

  She had imagined, as her affair with Hugo continued, that the lunches would dwindle from the glamour of fashionable Poppy’s to a shady backstreet bistro to smoked salmon sandwiches at the hotel. But he was very considerate, Hugo. Although Poppy’s remained their favourite, often they went somewhere different, and never anywhere downmarket.

  ‘When I’m with my wife, she always likes the same places. She likes Claridges. She’s known, we’re known, we’re treated well. She has tea there with the girls she knew at school.’

  Laura knew by now that Diddly Om’s friends had names like Boo and Bubbles.

  ‘But I think with you, Laura, it’s politic not to be seen in the same haunts every time. Good thing about London is that there’s lots to choose from.’

  He was always on time, seated at the table as she arrived. He stood up as she approached and as she sat down and unbuttoned her jacket, his cool blue eyes would register satisfaction that, as instructed, she was not wearing a bra.

  ‘You don’t need one. Your breasts are wonderful. Firm, nice big nipples, lovely deep pink nipples, and your breasts have movement. I like seeing them lift as you move your arms over lunch. I like thinking about how I’ll jiggle them about later on. Make those rosy nipples really stand to attention.’

  All this was uttered with a grave face, inbetween waiters to-ing and fro-ing, so unless you could lipread you’d have thought the two of them were having an everyday business lunch. Since she was being paid by Hugo’s committee, Laura was assiduous about preparing a fortnightly report on My Life with Mother and this she duly took from her briefcase and passed to him over her large G and T.

  ‘I came home the other day and found the floor covered in roses. Vi had given them to her and she threw them all on the floor, shouting, furious, How could she do that, give me roses. Roses with all those thorns!’

  Hugo kept Laura’s report on the table ‘referring’ to it occasionally as they chatted and once the first course had been cleared he’d murmur, almost with a frown, ‘Go and take your knickers off.’

  When she came back from the Ladies’ Room (and if it was a new trendy restaurant, there’d be the usual grapple with an impossible tap) he’d appear to be gazing thoughtfully round the restaurant , but really, he’d positioned himself so Laura was clear in his sightline.

  ‘A woman walks so differently when she’s not wearing knickers. You feel it, don’t you? More sensuous. You swing your hips more freely. Your cunt is open to the air. Open to me. I can see you feel it.’

  There was no groping under the table, but from then on he liked her to sit with her legs as far apart as her long skirt would allow. If he caught her crossing her legs (it was so easy to forget) later, he’d make her do an extra turn crawling round the hotel room in her black stockings.

  At the restaurant, they never lingered over coffee or pudding. He’d offer her a brandy, but she always refused because she knew what the next line would be.

  ‘Perhaps some champagne?’ he’d say and when she assented, it was his cue to call for the bill. A couple of times, when Susie had a crisis and couldn’t stay too long with Kay, Laura had to decline the afternoon refreshment and make her way to Paddington. In a way, she was always relieved to get home, to make sure mother was all right. Laura lived with the nightmare of her dying dramatically while she was with Hugo, prompting headlines featuring poor pensioner widow abandoned while daughter has sex romps with MP.

  The normal routine was that outside the restaurant they’d shake hands and take separate taxis to the hotel. Hugo would be waiting with chilled champagne and her taxi and train fares. He never forgot and he was so matter-of-fact he never made her feel embarrassed about taking the money.

  Laura would have a quick wash. She had to be quick, he didn’t like being kept waiting. He’d watch her walk into the room, stripped except for suspenders and stockings. Once, when Richard sent money for mother’s birthday, Laura thought she’d surprise Hugo by decking up in a scarlet basque.

  He tore it off. ‘You don’t need it. Basques are only for women with floppy tits.’

  He liked everything to be the same, every time. Laura sat on the cane chair, her legs wide apart, facing the mirror while he stood behind and played with her breasts. Then he undressed and sat on the end of the bed, issuing precise instructions about how she was to sprawl, breasts on the floor, and crawl.

  ‘Legs wider. Wider!’

  ‘I can’t Hugo. It’s hard to move.’

  He was curt. ‘You can do it. Do it! Come on.’

  Afterwards, he made himself some tea while she finished the champagne. He’d watch her dress, and check the bed, the room and the bathroom for dropped ear-rings, any telltale debris.

  She said, ‘When you chose me, how did you know I’d be discreet?’

  ‘There was nothing brassy about you. Nothing nasty or calculating. You just seemed very natural, very nice. And you know, in my job, I have to be a good judge of character.’

  Laura liked these small insights from the corridors of power. They made her feel important. Once, when she had her period and there was no sexual action that afternoon, Hugo had arranged for her to sit in the Strangers Gallery in the Commons. Afterwards, he took her to the Members’ tearoom.

  ‘I’ll say you’re my researcher.’

  ‘Will I meet the Prime Minister?’

  ‘Doubt it. He never appears in the tearoom unless there’s a tricky vote coming up and he needs to lobby. Anyway, what did you think of the debate?’

  She hesitated. ‘It was all so – noisy.’

  Hugo laughed. ‘My wife, Dinah, she gets irate about that. Really, Hugo, she says, all this yahboo public school shouting. You’re not like that at home. If you were, Daddy would never have let me marry you. What she resolutely refuses to understand is that if I don’t shout and jump up and down, the Speaker won’t notice me, and then my constituents will want to know what the hell I’m playing at.’

  Laura knew that he dreaded his Saturday morning surgery, when the constituents were free to barge in and voice their complaints.

  ‘And your son. What does he do?’

  ‘I got him a job in television. He thought he’d be running the whole bang shoot, but so far all he’s done is run errands.’

  And the daughter, Laura thought. The girl who had died aged five. Hugo never mentioned her, a sure sign in a man like him that the tragedy had cut deep.

  At the hotel, on a fresh spring day in May, Laura said, as Hugo was doing his ‘sweep’ of the room,

  ‘Presumably, at the House, you do have a researcher?’

  ‘Well, I have a secretary. I have to share her. So she farms the non-confidential stuff out to the typing pool. Why?’

  ‘You’ve heard about Adrian Fry? The one who’s up for the Lutterworth prize? I wondered – I’d just like to know if he’s married.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh. I used to know him.’

  ‘Look, all you have to do is call the publisher. They’ll have a fact sheet.’

  ‘Yes, but I wouldn’t want him to know I’d been asking. If he found out –‘

  ‘Have you read the book?’

  ‘No. I’ve only just heard about it.’

  ‘Right. We’ll go and buy it. You can read it on the train home.’

  Typical Hugo. He’d already chosen her lunch in Poppy’s, and now he was telling her when and where to read Adrian’s novel.

  In the bookshop, Hugo studied the cover photograph of Adrian. He was wearing a blue shirt.


  Hugo said, ‘Good looking guy.’

  Stab.

  Laura did start the novel on the train home. The reason, she realised, that Preferred Lies had caused such a stir was that this was a young, contemporary man writing in the first person, as a woman.

  She nearly fell off her seat when she read the first paragraph. A tennis party. A girl in a green dress with daisies round the edge. But she doesn’t go to Glasgow, to be a copywriter. She lands an executive job and she’s like a leopard stalking men who are hiding up trees.

  Lions don’t climb. Leopards do. They get up there, and they watch and they wait. God help you.

  Laura was so fascinated, she almost forgot to get off the train. On the bus home, she thought, it’s me. But not me. He’s changed me into some dynamic business woman. The type who rules the earth. And she had to ask herself, did Adrian, deep down, want me to be like that?

  And is bloody Patricia like that? Is she the leopard, lurking up the tree?

  Adrian had obviously got the business end of it from Logan. All those hours banged up with a nerd talking newfangled management jargon, on and on and on. And Adrian had had the imagination to turn the appalling Logan into a woman. A sexy woman. A woman who could take the initiative, like she had in the porch at Roadnights, when she’d got hold of his cock and, to her brother’s disbelief, given Adrian a demonstration of what the builder had taught her.

  Adrian hadn’t forgotten. It was all in print.

  Hugo rang the following afternoon. ‘Just to let you know. Adrian Fry is not married.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Interview in the Scotsman.’

  He wasn’t married, he wasn’t married! Bloody Patricia hadn’t nailed him yet.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Wednesday after August Bank Holiday, Hugo said over lunch, ‘Your boyfriend must be in a right state of nerves.’

  ‘What boyfriend?’

  ‘Adrian Fry.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, that was all over ages ago.’

  ‘Come off it, Laura. You should have seen your face when you talked about him, when you saw his picture on the dust-jacket. You’d have him back like a shot, wouldn’t you?’