Chances Page 10

  But his bizarre, dodgy French accent?

  She’d never heard anything like it.

  She didn’t think it was an affectation but God how it had grated on her ears and turned her off. And she felt really deflated because she wanted to really like Rick and to fancy him rotten but, though the last two days had been so liberating, so intoxicating, such fun, she felt neither. She just felt teary and very, very tired. And then she told herself off, told herself to give the man a chance, for God’s sake. But disappointment dropped down through her heavily just like the falling pears outside. She hadn’t been in this situation before and she just wasn’t sure what to do next.

  Sting

  ‘He sounded – French.’

  ‘French?’ Michelle paused. French in a “ma cherie” way? That’s quite sweet!’

  But Vita shook her head. There was something just slightly humiliating in having had bad sex on her first opportunity to have any sex at all after a long-term mono gamous relationship. ‘No – more in a comedy French way. He didn’t speak French – he just grunted and moaned and made weird noises with an exaggerated Gallic accent.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ Michelle tried to sound appalled and though she bit her lip to subdue laughter, she couldn’t help her eyes watering with mirth.

  ‘Stop laughing.’

  Michelle composed herself, momentarily. But it was short-lived. ‘What, was he all, “Allo allo mademoiselle you zexy leetle poosy chat”?’

  ‘Mushroom – stop it! It was dreadful. Honestly. He didn’t say stuff – he just did these stupid throaty noises. In French.’

  But both she and Michelle were now giggling.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Haw haw haw,’ Vita mimicked, deep and gravelly, ‘haw hee haw hee haw.’

  Michelle thought her coffee was going to come out of her nose. ‘No!’

  ‘Yes,’ Vita said forlornly. ‘Haw hee haw. H-h-hmmm! H-h-hmmm!’ She thought about it. ‘Dirty old man noises,’ she said.

  ‘But en Francais?’

  ‘Exactement.’

  Michelle banged her fist on the coffee-shop table, tears coursing as she laughed.

  ‘It’s not funny!’ Vita protested. But it was. It was actually very funny. And somehow, the post-mortem with her closest friend now managed to make light of the disappointment at the time. Now Michelle was doing an impersonation and the two of them sat there, snorting and tittering like teenagers.

  ‘I tell you something, V – in some ways I’m pleased. By that, I mean it’s a good job that it wasn’t mind-blowing sex. It means you won’t do something idiotic like fall head over heels. Look on it as getting-over-it sex, and in that respect it was good – great. It might not have been good sex – but it was sex nonetheless. With someone new. And that puts important physical distance between you and Tim. It’s a marker. It’s symbolic. It’s a milestone.’

  Vita nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘But it is also very funny.’

  Vita stopped to consider how the recounting of it all was actually more enjoyable than the act itself had been.

  ‘Candy is going to have a field day with it.’

  ‘She’ll make you feel better still,’ said Michelle.

  ‘We shouldn’t laugh at his expense. Poor bloke.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ said Michelle. ‘Of course we should.’ She paused. ‘Might sex improve? How about you confide some fantasy you have of making love with a mute. Or a Russian. Whatever floats your boat.’

  Vita thought about having sex again with Rick. ‘What it did do was obliterate the mystique of it all for me. And that was a good thing. Sex was so important to me with Tim – I used to judge myself on how often we did it, on how often he instigated it, how long it lasted, how good it was. It could affect my self-esteem. I loved Tim – and for me sex was a way of expressing that love.’

  ‘Wanker.’

  ‘Mrs Sherlock!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘The point I’m trying to make is that last night I had sex without love. That’s a revelation to me. Boom – it can be done. But do you know something – even without Inspector Clouseau demolishing my mojo, I’m not sure a casual shag’s my thing.’

  ‘But what about if you had a few more dates with Rick – not necessarily ending in bed – to see if you develop feelings for him?’

  Vita thought about it. ‘Perhaps.’ She scraped the froth from the inside rim of the cup. ‘I really liked the flirting and the build-up. I loved all that. I absolutely revelled in what Candy calls the frisson. The element of anticipation. The whole mating dance, if you like.’

  ‘Is he just a bit dull, then?’

  Vita thought about it. She could say yes and just end the conversation easily. ‘Sometimes he was very funny, but sometimes he was a bit—’

  ‘A bit arrogant?’

  Vita shook her head. ‘He was a little sharp when he spoke about his ex. A little unkind, perhaps.’

  ‘Might’ve been nerves. What if he calls?’

  Vita shrugged. ‘I won’t answer?’

  Michelle shook her head. ‘Wait and see how you feel. That’s what dating’s all about – playing it by ear. Or perhaps not, in your case. Haw hee haw.’

  ‘Stop it! I bet you if he doesn’t call I’ll feel strangely rejected!’

  ‘Oh, he’ll call,’ said Michelle. ‘I’ll bet you anything. Anyway, you ought to give him another chance – and yourself. Don’t look for the deep-and-meaningful. Just have a bit of fun, girl. You may decide a bionic dick is worth a weird accent.’

  Vita nodded. She liked the way Michelle simultaneously made light of the situation and yet cast great clarity on it. It came down to Vita having something different to think about – and some things to not think about at all. She looked at her watch – she was ten minutes later than she’d told Jodie. Still half a day at work to go, with all the Bats in their Hats or Dogs in their Clogs to unpack and display.

  ‘I’ll get this,’ Michelle said, settling the bill. The two-for-one lunch offer wasn’t on this week.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’d rather you spent your money on kinky knickers or Mac make-up. Treat yourself!’

  * * *

  Vita hadn’t been out in the garden for days. Not since before the trade show and that was well over a week ago. It was not on account of the parakeets or whatever they were – they were still coming each morning with their cacophonous capacity for a violent breakfast and there were plenty more pears on the tree. It was that she simply hadn’t had time. She’d gone round to Candy’s one night and had recounted the shenanigans to much mirth. Candy’s French accent was almost as good as Rick’s and she was now texting Vita at regular intervals, haw hee haw hee haw. She’d gone to her mother’s another night and had stayed over, feeling cosseted in her childhood bedroom, remembering when the walls were bedecked with posters of pop stars, when real men had seemed an exotic species she couldn’t believe she’d ever really meet. On other nights, she’d so enjoyed luxuriating in the Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir bath oil she’d splashed out on, that she’d gone straight to bed to stockpile sleep until the parakeets’ rude awakening. Rick had texted her – just larkily – so she’d responded in a friendly way. But today he’d called and she’d let it go to voicemail and his message said, Call me, I want to see you, I’m around tomorrow in your area, call me. So tonight her only plan was to return Rick’s call. She felt she’d know how to play it once she heard his voice. She poured some juice into a glass and took her phone out into the garden. The busy-lizzies needed dead-heading and the chives needed watering. A pecked-at pear, now browning, had fallen into the middle of the deckchair. Lots to do, Vita saw. But first, Rick.

  Walking barefoot onto the grass, she sipped her juice. She looked at her phone and started to compose how to say hullo. Hi. Hey there. Good evening. She sipped again. And, finally, she dialled. Almost immediately, she felt a stab of hot, hard pain on her thumb so sharp it took her breath away. Then another, on her arm. She was und
er her pear tree, under attack. Wasps were suddenly everywhere, their battle cries deafening. She threw the juice down in a panic and waved her arms wildly. The juice was dripping down her leg. The wasps were coming at her. Her ankle. In her hair. She bolted the short distance to the back of the garden wondering all the while why the hell she hadn’t run inside. She could see the wasps now swarming around the glass that had held the juice.

  Her heart was pounding, the stings were excruciating, she was in turmoil. In a split second, from the relative safety of the creosoted fence, she assessed what was happening. All around her tree, the detritus of the parakeets’ breakfast buffet now lay in a mushy, decaying, rank mess. On each plundered fruit, wasps were gathering. Now she’d added apple juice to the mix. How had she not seen? Had she been that pre occupied with nerves about making a Dear John phone call to bloody Rick?

  Oh God! The phone. She’d dropped that too. She could see it now, amongst the pears, amongst the wasps.

  She felt ridiculous but she was in pain, in shock, and the only thing she felt she could do just then was cry. It hurt. It was shocking. She’d been stung in childhood but didn’t remember it hurting this much. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to be back in the house, away from this stupid garden and these bastard bastard wasps. She could hear them. She could actually hear them from where she was: an arrogant drone as they wriggled and humped over the half-eaten fruit and writhed inside the glass. They were a few metres away, terrifyingly close, really. Why hadn’t she stayed calm and stock-still, as her father had trained her so fastidiously to do on a number of childhood picnics? She considered climbing over the fence into Mr Brewster’s garden but if he didn’t drop dead of heart failure and if he did let her through his house, what use would that be? Her front door was shut anyway. The only way in from the garden was through the kitchen door and the only way back there was to pass the pear tree.

  The stings, the pain. It was horrible. She didn’t dare move. She felt quite sick. She thought back to the pub in Highgate, to the wasps that had buggered off at dusk. She’d just have to wait it out.

  And she did.

  Two hours more, she stood at the back of her garden, her limbs throbbing, her thumb swelling, pain on the left side of her face. Then she ran for it. She left the phone where it was; her only concern was to be inside.

  That sodding tree with its parrots and pears and wasps. And remember all that brown mulchy stuff that the blossom became? The estate agents didn’t make mention of all of that on the particulars, did they? The local authority searches didn’t pass comment at all, did they?

  Negligent!

  What to do? She’d been stung four times. She tried cold water but it seemed to burn, and lukewarm water seemed too hot. She remembered walks on the beach with her father and him always imparting the same advice. If you are stung by a jellyfish, pee on it. On the jellyfish? she’d asked, as a child. On the sting, sweetface! her dad had laughed. Why wee? she’d asked, a little older, when hearing the same story again. You can use vinegar too, he’d said, but you may not have a bottle on you, on account of being in a bathing suit, darling. Pee, he’d said, was an excellent alternative.

  Vinegar. She had an unopened bottle of balsamic in the cupboard which Michelle had given her along with fancy oils and fine herbs, as a house-moving present. She dripped a little onto her arm. It looked like iodine. Or treacle. It didn’t smell good on flesh. And it didn’t help.

  ‘It doesn’t help, Dad,’ she said sadly. And then she remembered how he also told her that if cows chase you, run towards them yelling like a madwoman. The left-field advice that so summed him up. She missed him now, missed him dreadfully. And her mum, whose first-aid box had everything in it. And Tim, who’d swat wasps and remove spiders from the bath with his bare hands and tease her and call her Miss Muffet.

  What do I do now?

  Vita wished she wasn’t on her own. She hated it. She hated the fact that she had to deal with things she didn’t want to, didn’t know how to. Everything was so lopsided being only one instead of two. Yin and yang were not possible if the one had not the other. She just didn’t want to have to cope with everything all on her own, she was fed up with her Brave Face. She looked at the house phone and then cursed her mobile phone for holding all the numbers she needed and, in doing so, for having taken away any need to remember numbers by rote. She didn’t even know Michelle’s number. Or Candy’s. The only numbers she knew by heart were her mum’s home number and Tim’s. But what would her mum be able to do anyway? She’d worry. And Tim? What would be the point of phoning him? It wasn’t his job to look after her any more, even if she’d walked into a hornets’ nest. Anyway, say Suzie picked up?

  So Vita stood in the kitchen shuddering, rifling through the local phone directory, choosing Pest Off because it implored her to Fone Any Time. But not, it seemed, on a Thursday evening. Instead, she searched the bathroom for some Savlon and daubed her cheek, her thumb, her ankle, her arm. She wasn’t in the mood for Jo Malone. Jo Home Alone. She went to bed feeling sore, silly and acutely aware of her on-her-ownness.

  Those bloody birds.

  The next morning, she yelled out the window at them but they ignored her. She felt ridiculously intimidated by them. Though she was sure it was too early in the day for wasps, what if the parakeets dive-bombed her? Or pecked off pears to hit her like cannonballs? Her mobile would have to stay where it was, alongside the discarded glass from which she decided never to drink again. She went to work with the stings looking like boils and her thumb unable to bend. She called Pest Off as soon as she arrived.

  ‘I’ve been attacked by wasps.’

  ‘Have you seen a nest?’

  ‘I have a huge pear tree.’

  ‘Is the nest in the tree?’

  ‘I have been stung a million times. I just don’t dare go outside.’

  Three o’clock that afternoon was the earliest he could do. Jodie couldn’t cover for her. She didn’t want to phone Tim. It all sounded so pathetic. I’ve been stung, I’m scared of the wasps, can you watch the shop for me?

  She’d just have to close up early.

  Mr Pest Off was young and larky and arrived in a T-shirt. He looked silently at the tree from the kitchen window before going out into the garden for closer inspection. Vita made him tea. She always felt compelled to make tea for tradesmen, somehow believing that if she was nice to them, they’d like her and be good to her and go the extra mile, do a proper job and not rip her off. It hadn’t really worked so far – previously, the plumber, the electrician and the carpenter who she’d asked to make the warped doors close again had all drunk her tea, eaten her biscuits, spent an awful lot of time chatting and never quite finished the jobs. But here she was, feeling beholden to Pest Off Man, making tea and rooting around for digestives.

  ‘There ain’t no nest, love.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘There’s a lot of wasps – you’re right there.’

  ‘Can you – get rid of them anyway? Is there anything you can spray on them?’

  He laughed. ‘Not with so many pears about. They’ll be back in the morning.’

  ‘There are parrots who eat the pears – then they fall down and go mushy.’ This isn’t relevant. Just focus on the wasps.

  ‘Pears fall down – then my little friends come.’

  ‘Do you seriously like wasps enough to call them little friends?’ Stop talking to him, just make him do something.

  ‘I don’t mind them, really. Bit misunderstood, really.’ He was standing in the open kitchen doorway. Vita was standing well back.

  ‘Look,’ she said and she showed him her arm, her thumb – the stings had now settled into what looked like old carbuncles.

  ‘That’s wasp stings all right.’

  ‘I know,’ Vita said, trying to sound plaintive. ‘Is there nothing you can do?’

  ‘Not really. You can keep on top of the pears – keep clearing them away, wash it all down. Prevention, you know.’

  �
��I’m not going out there – not till the winter.’

  He laughed. But she was really quite serious. ‘Do you think you could pick up my phone for me?’

  He glanced over his shoulder to the tree, sauntered over and retrieved the phone, returning to find Vita even further back in the kitchen.

  ‘You don’t need pest control, love,’ he said, handing her the phone which she took between finger and thumb as if it was contaminated. ‘What you need is a tree surgeon. It’s a big old brute – close to the house, too. Get someone to chop it down.’

  That tree. Her tree. The magnificent bare winter branches making monochrome stained-glass designs against a sky, the bride-beautiful blossom in late spring. But now the pears, the parrots, the wasps. She mustn’t be sentimental. That tree was not a cathedral of the natural world, it was a hellish place of killer wasps and mad birds. She could do the karma thing and just plant something else in its place, something fruitless and small.

  ‘Can you recommend anyone?’

  ‘I have a brother-in-law what’ll do it,’ he said. ‘He’s not a tree surgeon by trade. But he’s good.’ He scribbled down a number. Then he charged her an extortionate call-out fee and helped himself to two more biscuits on his way out. Vita thought to herself, Your brother is the last person I’ll be calling.

  * * *

  ‘Can you take it?’ Oliver called down to Spike who retrieved his mobile.

  Spike cleared his voice and tried to sound official. ‘Good afternoon, Arbor Vitae?’

  ‘I have a dangerous pear tree in my garden which needs to come down.’

  ‘Dangerous?’

  ‘Extremely.’

  ‘Hold on.’ Spike pressed the mute button on Oliver’s phone – Oliver didn’t know it had such a function. ‘Boss? Some woman – sounds mad – says she has a dangerous pear tree.’