CHAPTER THREE
It's the lawnmowers that get me most,' said Helen to Christine Summerfield.
'Lawnmowers in summer. Trimmers, hedge cutters, tree clippers, anything electrical. In winter it's hammers and drills. Lawnmowers are worse.'
`Did you have a garden in London?' Faraway London, as if it were another planet. All of twelve miles away. A lifetime.
Oh, yes. Had? Still have. And a lawn, even. Well, a sort of a lawn. I clipped it with shears after the push- and-shove mower gave up the ghost. Rusted beyond repair, seemed undignified to use it in old age. I hope they – the tenants, I mean – look after it. But I never had a high-pitched machine, not like these things sounding like a swarm of angry flies.'
Christine was immune. She had lived here longer, relished the sounds of rural suburbia. 'Won't take a minute,' she said cheerfully. 'Only a small patch of lawn. Anyway, sitting still is so much my favourite pastime I can stand any accompaniment.'
`This is the point,' said Helen. 'I should formally thank you for your company. You saved my sanity in the High Street.'
`Thank me? It's your house, your coffee, your Saturday morning. Such formality. Does that mean you want me to go?'
Oh, please don't. Have some more coffee, piece of cake, gin and tonic. Stay and talk.
Otherwise Geoffrey gets an earful when he gets home. No, I only mean I'm grateful for a kindred spirit, if that's the right phrase. Eat the cake, anything to keep you.'
Eat the cake? Encouraging me, you thin hypocrite. You can afford to eat the cake. I can't, but I'll eat it all the same.'
Inside me,' said Helen, 'is a fat person trying to get out. Six more months of domestic bliss in Branston and this damaged butterfly will have gone back to chrysalis. Fat chrysalis. I can't afford cake, either. Cake and country: why do they go together? Eat your calories, get lethargic, sit back and listen to the butterflies. OK, for once I admit the pleasure of it.'
The two women were a sharp contrast to each other. Christine Summerfield bore a seasonal name for a buttercup nature, resembled an attractive advertisement for dairy food – pleasantly plump and fair, heavy bosom, blue eyes, and expression of shrewd honesty. On first sight her role as professional caretaker of man or animal seemed obvious: she looked like what she was. Helen had guessed nurse first, then social worker. Right the second time.
Christine resembled the kindly guardian she was, sympathy implicit in every line of her face, while Helen – so easily ridden with pity, guilt, confusion, and fury, so prone to every surreptitious kindness or mercy her job or her life afforded – did not carry her compassion like a flag in her eyes.
She was small and dark, slender but muscular, occasionally fierce. She had a slightly lined face full of hidden humour, huge eyes, and a scar on her forehead. Christine considered her beautiful; Bailey did, too. Helen's previous Boss had called her a stubborn little brute.
Vividly attractive on any estimate, but unlike Christine, not a thing to be embraced soon after shaking its hand. She was too quick in wit, too articulate to present as the immediate comforter, the bosom for all sorrows, as Christine patently was, and yet they found Helen, the lamed and the disgraced, the troubled and the children.
Can we play in your garden, miss? Can we sit in your car? Of course you can. Tell your mother where you are, and if you eat the plants or puncture the wheels, I'll brain you, understand? Any use for these biscuits, have you? Thought you might. Staccato common sense, endless generosity almost gruff in the giving, parameters firmly set. Old men in pubs, young women in shops talking while she listened and understood, patient with fools. An instinctive grasp of what was important in any tale.
Christine the caretaker knew herself drawn in the same way to that calm understanding which was quite devoid of criticism, was charmed and relieved when the confidences that had poured unbidden from her own mouth and into Helen's ears were rewarded by confidences in return. Incomplete confidences, but still something tantamount to shared secrets. 'Dear God,' she had said to Helen, 'social worker and prosecutor, I ask you. By tradition we sit on opposite fences, but we manage to talk for hours.'
Opposite fences?' said Helen. 'Rubbish. We're all on the same side. Two professionals doing a job. Tradition has a lot to answer for.' They had gravitated beyond such considerations, still discussed them.
I like it here,' said Christine. 'But I can see why you don't. You're playing second fiddle to Bailey – professionally, I mean.'
I've always played second fiddle. That's what solicitors do, after all. We never make big shots, in public at least.'
But you don't even deal with big shots, not here.'
`True, ' Helen admitted. 'It's a bit lower-powered than I'm used to, but that isn't what I mind, most of the time. Some of the time, but not most of the time. It's a bit of relief, and if the truth were known, the small cases are often as complicated as the big ones. Shame they don't get the same attention.'
`What about your little-shot clients, if that's the right word for them? Do you ever have any doubts about their guilt?'
I very rarely doubt their being guilty as charged, if that's what you mean, especially here, where truthful witnesses are less at a premium. But I still think them innocent in many respects. Fault and blame are so often irrelevant.'
They were content to sit in silence, Christine waiting, Helen finally restful.
`Damn that lawnmower. I never understand how an age that forces people to live in closer proximity than ever before should give them all the tools to make it impossible.
Stereos, lawn mowers, food mixers, such a bloody racket. London was quiet compared to this.
Speaking of proximity, how's Antony? Come on, tell me.'
Helen was well aware that her companion had been waiting to tell for the last hour, only needing a cue, ever since they had met in the High Street, grinning over the heads of the shoppers, she buying for Bailey, Christine for Antony, Helen making heavy weather of chores Christine took lightly. Oh, I can't make up my mind. What the hell shall I buy? There's so much of it. Decisions in shops were far harder than professional ones. Even their love affairs were different.
Antony? He's at home making lunch.' Christine blushed slightly. 'He likes cooking, actually.'
Now there's luck for you. Still love, I take it?'
Yee… es. With open eyes. Early days yet, very early, but optimistic. I know what he is, you see, and I don't mind.' She curled up in the garden chair, which Helen found the only comfortable seat in the house, settled to the telling. 'I know he's a dreamer, been a bad lad in the past. Knee deep in poetry, bewailing his lot teaching Shakespeare to reluctant kids. Likes it, really. He has this peculiar ability to teach. I'd forgive him a lot for having that.'
`What's peculiar about it? Any special technique?'
`He makes children want to write,' said Christine. 'I don't know how. He says that's the essence of teaching English. Gets them to write down everything they think and put some form into it. They seem to love it, although the results are hilarious and sometimes disconcerting. Tell it like a story, he says to them, and they do.
Then, lo and behold, the little blighters began to like reading, too.
Much in demand, our Antony. All for his talent of getting them to record their lives on paper.'
I like that,' said Helen. 'He goes romping up in my estimation.
So that's one thing you love about him. You were just beginning on the reservations.'
`Well, he can't help looking like Byron. It's rather turned his mind, given him this fatal attraction for the opposite sex, which includes me, of course. Says he is redeemed by the love of a fair woman, and provided I can put up with that kind of nonsense as well as the naivete that seems to have survived school, which I can, he's a lovely, generous, open-hearted man.
