Is There Anything You Want? (13 page)

There had been enough money, just, for her and her sister to do a shorthand and typing course. Afterwards, Rose got a job immediately in an insurance firm but only worked for six months before marrying the younger partner, much to her parents' satisfaction: that was Rose off their hands, one less mouth to feed, or so they thought (in fact, Rose was widowed within two years and returned home). Mary, though she had been much better than Rose at both shorthand and typing, took a while to secure employment. She knew why. Rose was pretty. Simple as that. Mary took her certificates, attesting to her competence, along to interviews, but they did not seem to impress. Eventually, after several humiliating weeks when she was turned down for position after position in their small town, she was offered a job in a solicitor's office. Her boss was an elderly, bad-tempered, very demanding man but she suited him. She didn't get upset when he shouted at her, or flustered when he asked her to do three things at once. Everyone else in the building was frightened of him (including the other two partners) but Mary was not. It was reckoned she could cope with him. In time, Mary became a valued employee and was treated with respect and caution in spite of her youth. She might have stayed there for ever if her parents had not died, one after the other in the space of a year, and she came into some money when the house and garden were sold.

It hurt having to watch the garden be sold, but her brothers insisted. She was determined to put her plan into action. Her plan was to train as a gardener. She was by then 23, past the normal age for college entry, but she didn't care. Her two years at Ramsbeck were among the happiest in her life. Once she'd qualified, the problem was that yet again she found it hard to get a job, not, however, because of not being pretty but simply because she was a woman. Men were preferred for all the posts
she went for. She had to go back to being a legal clerk in yet another solicitor's office, this time further south in Manchester. For a while, she'd toyed with the idea of studying law and becoming a solicitor herself, but she felt too old to embark on yet another period of study. Becoming a legal assistant, a step up from clerk, was as far as she progressed in the practice. Slowly, her life had settled into two distinct compartments: work, where she was not unhappy, enjoying her job even if it wasn't one she had wanted, and pleasure, her garden, to which she devoted all her spare time. Her friends were all male (with one exception), made through gardening, and they were good friends, who appreciated her knowledge and skills. She belonged to. a gardening club, and went on visits to gardens and to lectures about them, and had thought her life centred round gardens until she met Francis.

Every time she walked round her garden at this time of year and admired the lilac, Mrs Hibbert saw in her mind's eye Francis standing under the white lilac tree in the square opposite the office. She'd looked out of the window in front of her desk, where she was pounding away, typing out the dreary details of someone's will, and she saw a young man motionless under the tree. He had golden hair, curly and quite long, and his face was tilted up, an expression of rapture upon it. She could tell he was breathing in the scent of the lilac and she found herself breathing in too, though in the office all there was to breathe was the stale smell of too many people in too small a room with the windows closed. Later, she'd taken her sandwiches into the square to eat, but the man had gone. Every day till the lilac blossom was over, he was there, standing in the same position. One day, she managed to be there at the same time. She would never have spoken to him if it had not been for the wind that day blowing the lilac blossom into her eyes. She'd given a little cry and taken a handkerchief to flick the blossom away. ‘Let me,' he'd said, and carefully removed the bits in the corner of her left eye.

Mrs Hibbert looked up now at the white lilac, and smiled. No one knew how romantic the moment had been. Fate had brought them together, courtesy of a lilac tree. She walked on, looking at
her wrist-watch now and again, hoping this Emma girl would be on time. First of all she would give her a tour of the garden, pointing out particularly precious plants, and then she would take her into the greenhouse. There hadn't been a greenhouse when, after Francis died, she'd moved back here and bought this house. The garden had been in good shape, though, and the couple she had bought the property from had had plans for a greenhouse, though not in the position she'd selected. The Emma girl
was
late. Mrs Hibbert hated unpunctuality. She had seen this day coming, the day when she would have to start being at least partially dependent on other people. Neglect showed so quickly in a garden – even a two-week holiday at the wrong time of year could be pretty disastrous. A house could survive very well without constant care, it could remain undusted for ages and then be put to rights in a matter of hours, but a garden couldn't. She already had Martin Yates to cut the hedges and the grass but he didn't want to weed, alas. He was a good worker though and they had become friends; she valued his support when she had to do tricky things like invest in a new lawn-mower. She took him with her and recognised at once that he knew about lawn-mowers and could give her good advice. He wasn't a mechanic, but he had worked in a car factory at one time and seemed to have some mechanical aptitude. At any rate, he was good at mending things and Mrs Hibbert had begun to depend on him as a general handyman too. He was quiet and dependable, and the only mystery about him was how he came to be married to Ida Yates.

At last, she was here. Mrs Hibbert saw the girl dismount from her bicycle and fling it down carelessly on the path. She was entirely inappropriately dressed for gardening, wearing some sort of floaty skirt and those absurd flip-flops on her feet. Mrs Hibbert warned herself not to start off this relationship by being critical. She practised speaking gently and softly in her head as she walked towards Emma but heard her own voice sounding harsh as she said, ‘I hope you've brought proper shoes and some overalls, young lady,' which was not what she had meant to say at all. Surprisingly, Emma had. She brandished a bag, and out of it she took a pair of denim dungarees and some training
shoes. She promptly put them on, pulling the dungarees over her skirt which seemed to disappear quite easily inside them. She was a pretty girl, blonde and slim with a sweet, open face and a cheerful countenance. Nothing Mrs Hibbert said seemed to offend her – she took correction very well and was quick to say sorry. She would do (that was Mrs Hibbert's verdict after the first session). Her ignorance of all things pertaining to gardening was not, after all, going to be an insuperable handicap, because she was intelligent and picked up instructions quickly. But, Lord, how she talked, chatter chatter all the time. Later on, while she was being shown how to graft cuttings one afternoon she chattered non-stop about her mother (an apparently very depressed woman who did nothing but read) and her sister (a musical genius) and her boyfriend. It was the chatter about the boyfriend which irritated Mrs Hibbert most. She moved away whenever Emma got going on how wonderful the boy was, but the hint was not taken – a full 20 yards down the garden from Emma and she could still hear her droning on. It was inevitable that, though she had no desire to, Mrs Hibbert found herself soon knowing more about Emma's problems, especially with regard to the boyfriend, than she wanted to. The girl beseeched her for her advice and that was one thing Mrs Hibbert could never resist.

He was called Luke. He had the impertinence to telephone during the third afternoon Emma was gardening and ask to speak to her. ‘It's Luke,' he said, though his diction was so frightful that this came out as, ‘It's Sluke.' He said he needed to speak to Emma as a matter of the gravest urgency and he was so convincing that Mrs Hibbert found herself almost running to the greenhouse where Emma was transferring seedlings from trays to pots. It turned out that the ‘gravest urgency' was that ‘Sluke needed to change the time of their proposed evening meeting. Mrs Hibbert was outraged and told Emma he would cry wolf once too often, but the girl didn't seem to get the reference. After this, whenever ‘Sluke rang, he was told that Emma was unavailable but that a message could safely be left for her. The messages were always the same: ‘Tell her to ring a.s.a.p.' Mrs Hibbert did pass them on but said that Emma would have to wait to use the
phone, because she was expecting an important call. (Well, she could play that game too.)

After the fourth Saturday, Mrs Hibbert realised that Emma would never be on time. She seemed incapable of punctuality and, what was worse, couldn't understand its importance. When Mrs Hibbert tapped her wrist-watch and said, ‘Emma, it is twenty past two,' Emma, just smiled, and if the time was repeated she looked puzzled. ‘So?' she said, once, not cheekily, simply seeming to be confused.
‘So,
Emma, you are supposed to be here at 2 p.m. We agreed your hours would be two to four every Saturday until you've finished your examinations.' ‘Well,' said Emma, cheerfully, ‘I'll stay twenty minutes later, all right?' It was not all right. Mrs Hibbert liked to listen to a certain radio programme on Saturdays at 4 p.m. but she didn't want to tell Emma that. It didn't sound important enough to be making a fuss about. So she just had to put up with Emma's tardy ways and, as time went on, her occasional non-appearances. Now those
were
infuriating and definitely not to be tolerated. ‘You might at least have had the courtesy to tell me about this dental appointment,' she complained. Emma was contrite, and said she had meant to. There was nothing Mrs Hibbert could then do, except sack Emma, and she didn't want to do that. She liked the girl, and she was coming along nicely and proving useful.

But she was concerned by how deeply Emma was in thrall to ‘Sluke. He came to collect Emma once and Mrs Hibbert's dislike of him increased. He had long fair hair tied in a ponytail (with what looked like a bit of pink wool) and wore torn jeans (though Mrs Hibbert knew enough to recognise that the tears were deliberate and therefore fashionable, she supposed) and a T-shirt with ‘If You Want Me, Have Me' on the front. Mrs Hibbert happened to be in the greenhouse when he made his appearance, but she heard Emma shout and heard her drop her trowel, and when she looked out of the greenhouse it was to see the girl flying down the garden path towards this creature, her arms outstretched. They stood swaying together, bodies locked together, faces squashed together. Mrs Hibbert turned her back on them and focused her attention on her tomato
plants. She looked at her wrist-watch: ten to four. Emma had been fifteen minutes late, so was not due to finish until four-fifteen. She waited. As she expected, Emma duly appeared at the door of the greenhouse, looking flushed and very happy. ‘Mrs H . . . .' she began (Mrs Hibbert was quite amused to be called Mrs H. and had allowed it) but then, seeing her employer's expression, she stopped. ‘It's just,' she began again, ‘that Luke thought – I mean, he's here, and . . .' ‘I have eyes, Emma,' Mrs Hibbert said. She could hear the boy kicking stones along the path as he patrolled impatiently up and down, not even having the good manners to come and introduce himself. ‘I'm afraid,' she went on, ‘that I need you to finish planting those geraniums. Rain is forecast for tomorrow and I wish them to be bedded in.'

Emma didn't say a word. There was no argument. She raced back to where she had been putting the geraniums into the soil, and picking up her trowel began planting them. ‘Sluke stood and watched her. She was finished in record time, and ran to get the watering-can and water the plants in. ‘Sluke, of course, could have been standing ready with the can filled, but he hadn't moved. Before Emma could come to the greenhouse again Mrs Hibbert called out that she could go now, after she'd cleaned her trowel and put it back in the shed and disposed of the empty trays the geraniums had been in. She watched as, all this done, Emma once more embraced ‘Sluke and then they went off together, having difficulty walking straight because they were so closely entwined. ‘Sluke's hand, she noticed, cupped Emma's right buttock. She could see what was likely to happen. It didn't take a genius. Emma, to use an old-fashioned phrase, was going to get into trouble. Mrs Hibbert only hoped that that bookworm mother of hers had talked to her about birth control, or that she didn't need to because Emma was already on the pill. But even if she was, other versions of trouble loomed. The foolish girl would do anything ‘Sluke asked. If he asked her to live with him, she would, and Mrs Hibbert knew where and how he lived. Emma had described, excitedly, his squat. Mrs Hibbert had thought squatting belonged to the 1970s and only happened in big cities, but apparently not. ‘Sluke and two of his chums had
taken over a hut in a children's playground. Mrs Hibbert hadn't been able to understand how this could be possible, but Emma, full of admiration, had explained that ages ago ‘Sluke had noticed a playground where the asphalt surface was all cracked and broken up, and the swings chained together, and that the park-keeper's hut had been boarded up and had a notice on it saying that the playground was closed until further notice owing to the damaged asphalt. He had kept an eye on it for a few weeks and when still no work had begun, he'd climbed over the railings and investigated the hut. He found that it had a sink, and a lavatory (though the water had been turned off) and a small Belling cooker. So he'd taken it over. He left the boards over the windows, so it was pretty gloomy inside, but he spent the nights there often and had a paraffin lamp which, Emma said, made the little room really romantic. Mrs Hibbert had stopped her at that point. She didn't want to know about the so-called romance since she felt that if she'd been told she would have been honour-bound to inform Emma's parents.

She worried about the girl. Emma was impressionable in a way Mrs Hibbert knew herself never to have been, and easily deflected from her studies. Mrs Hibbert had asked Emma about her GCSE results and which A-levels she had just taken, and knew she was a clever girl who had a conditional place to study medicine at Newcastle. This pleased Mrs Hibbert enormously, and she was moved to tell Emma about Christine, her niece by marriage, and how well she had done, and what important work she was involved in at St Mary's. But Emma hadn't really listened. She'd said, to Mrs Hibbert's alarm, that Luke wanted her to go travelling with him and she was attracted to the idea. She didn't, she confessed (a confession which made Mrs Hibbert feel ill), want to lose him. He was ‘special', he was ‘different'. With that, Mrs Hibbert could agree: ‘Sluke was different, different from the clever, hard-working, and up to now ambitious Emma. He was ignorant, lazy and had no ambition except to ensnare Emma and get out of her anything he could. This included the money she earned from her gardening – Mrs Hibbert's cash. She had seen Emma hand it over when ‘Sluke came for her, and when she'd tackled the girl about this she'd
been told that Luke bought food for both of them and it was only fair.