The Time of Their Lives Read online

  Laura hung on to her good mood, only a little concerned that the address Bella had given her turned out to be a tattoo parlour, appropriately entitled Just A Little Prick.

  After all, Laura told herself, tattoos were all the thing now, even among her friends’ children. Once the exclusive choice of sailors and navvies, they were openly sported by accountants and lawyers. Celtic tattoos were particularly popular with the offspring of the middle class since, she supposed, these conveyed a more cultural message. She had even toyed with a little heart herself.

  Laura smiled, grateful she had thought the better of it. What did all those tattoos look like on now-ageing flesh? Grannies with mysterious Chinese symbols above what Bella, ever down-to-earth, referred to as their bum-crack? Crinkled flesh adorned with Day-Glo dragons?

  All the same, she did hope that Bella was not here to defile her lovely young flesh too dramatically. A woman walked out of the shop as she approached, her entire arm embellished with brightly coloured tattoos from wrist to armpit. Laura felt slightly sick.

  Just A Little Prick turned out to be small and, despite its slightly salacious name, clinically clean and well-lit, with photographs lining the walls of successful illustrations of the tattooist’s art. Laura wasn’t sure whether to be reassured or not by the sign reading A NEW NEEDLE FOR EVERY CLIENT.

  To Laura’s intense relief, it wasn’t Bella who was seated in the tattooist’s chair but a giant of a young man with long black hair and white, white skin which was exposed to the waist of his jeans. Spread around him were the tools of the tattooist’s trade: alcohol to clean the skin, green soap for removing surplus ink and blood, plus small containers of different inks. The tattooist, who was wearing a white coat and rubber gloves, reminded Laura of her dentist, although luckily for the young man in the chair, he didn’t seem to be in the habit of sticking cotton wool in your mouth before asking you a question. Laura had expected heavy metal but instead there was the oddly reassuring sound of whales calling to each other across the deep.

  Along the whole of the giant’s shoulder, the tattooist had drawn the outline of some vast and unidentified creatures.

  ‘Hello, Mum,’ Bella greeted her. ‘I don’t think you’ve met Nigel.’

  The young man in the chair insisted on sitting up and shaking her hand with the formal good manners of a retired general, before submitting once again to the needle.

  ‘He’s having a koi carp in a pond of waves that will stretch round his whole body.’

  Laura wasn’t quite sure how to handle this unexpected social situation. ‘Goodness. That sounds painful.’

  ‘He was going to have Wallace and Gromit but Stan here says they’re passé. So he’s opted for something a bit more New School.’

  ‘Right. I love Wallace and Gromit, but I can see they’re a bit babyish.’

  ‘Babyish?’ Nigel repeated in hurt tones. ‘Classic, more like, but Stan says this is more cutting edge.’

  ‘I think I might wait in the car, if you don’t mind,’ Laura excused herself. ‘I’m not that keen on needles.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ agreed Nigel cheerfully. ‘I have to look away when I’m having a blood test.’

  Walking along the street, Laura tried not to think what he might be needing a blood test for, and wondered how her generation had done it. Had their own refusal to accept they were ageing themselves, waiting till they were in their thirties or later to settle down and have a family, meant that they produced offspring who, despite being in their twenties, still seemed like children themselves, needing lifts and wanting cartoon tattoos?

  When Bella finally emerged, she was alone, which was a source of considerable relief. Although, Laura was forced to admit, it may have been the arrival of Nigel on the scene that had improved Bella’s mood.

  ‘All OK?’

  ‘Yes. He’s done the fish and is making a start on the waves. Thanks for the lift.’

  ‘That’s fine. Actually, I’ve got a favour to ask of you in return.’

  ‘Oh?’ The sullen tone was making a comeback.

  ‘It’s Dad’s and my silver wedding anniversary on Saturday.’

  ‘Bloody hell. That sounds a bit dinner-dance.’

  ‘Actually,’ Laura couldn’t stop herself smiling conspiratorially, ‘I’ve planned a surprise.’

  ‘Ah. Is that a good idea?’

  ‘Of course it is. It’s not some big party where we jump out of the broom cupboard. It’s just for Dad and me.’

  ‘Just as well. You know Dad hates surprises.’

  ‘Only the embarrassing kind.’ Laura was starting to feel irritated. Bella could at least enter into the spirit a bit. ‘I’ve booked us a night away.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bella visibly cheered, no doubt planning how she could fill the house with Goths.

  ‘There is one other thing. To make the surprise work, Dad and I need to leave London on Friday afternoon. Could you make an arrangement to meet him for coffee in the Starbucks outside his office? I’ll turn up and whisk him off instead.’

  ‘But what am I going to tell him that will make him come?’

  ‘I’m sure you can think of something.’

  ‘I’m sure I can.’ Bella grinned.

  Laura marvelled, as she often did, at Bella’s astonishing competence, so at odds with her outlandish appearance. Bella, she knew, could be trusted to play her part with quiet efficiency.

  When the landline phone rang in Ella’s house it was increasingly unusual, not because she was a poor, sad, lonely person, but because no one seemed to use landlines any more. Ella herself preferred talking on them, partly because she was convinced it was cheaper but also because the person on the other end didn’t start breaking up in an irritating way. But when a friend told her that only Ella and her mother ever called on the landline even Ella considered abandoning it.

  So she was doubly surprised to hear Cory pick up the phone and to learn that the caller was her other daughter, Julia.

  She was about to rush up and say, ‘For God’s sake don’t mention the burglary’, but it was too late.

  ‘Did you hear that Mum got burgled the night before last?’ Bugger. ‘No, nothing taken. Mum’s ancient Nokia was somehow overlooked. Three lots of police came. One of them was quite cool.’ She turned to Ella. ‘Mum, Jules wants to come straight over.’

  Ella picked up her handbag. ‘I’ve got to go out, tell her.’

  Her mother’s unusual attire of jeans, old sweater and wellies caught Cory’s eye at this point. ‘What are you wearing? You never wear jeans.’

  ‘I’m allotment-sitting. I told you, remember?’

  She disappeared before she could be interrogated further. ‘The code for the alarm is two eight one zero. Don’t forget it or the whole bloody thing will go off and the cool policeman will appear.’

  ‘That’s a thought. I’m leaving anyway. Going back to my flat.’ She hesitated. ‘Unless you need someone to stay with you?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ Ella imagined Julia, with her husband Neil and the boys all moving in to offer her unsolicited masculine protection. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ve got Mr Banham.’

  ‘Who the hell is Mr Banham?’

  ‘The burglar alarm.’

  ‘You’re not giving the burglar alarm a name?’ She gave her mother a long look. The kind of look daughters give to mothers they suspect of incipient dementia. ‘You’re sure you didn’t leave the key in the door the other night? Mr Banham indeed . . .’

  ‘It’s a joke!’ Ella ignored Cory’s question and moved swiftly on. ‘Of course I’m not giving the alarm a name.’

  Ella shut the front door, relieved to have headed Cory off, and went to look for the Union Allotments.

  In the end she was grateful the allotments had a postcode because they were extremely hard to find. But that only added to their blissful peace, hidden away from concerned daughters and sons-in-law. You could easily walk or drive past without knowing they were there.

  They comprised forty narrow strips of
land, tucked away between a gasometer and two abandoned kilns. But it was the frontage that was spectacular, running along the Grand Union Canal right bang where it met up with the misty beauty of the River Thames. Ella was amazed they hadn’t been winkled out by some developer desperate to transform the site into expensive riverside apartments.

  She turned the key Viv had given her in the padlock and slipped in feeling faintly guilty, as if someone would appear and accuse her of being the kind of person who bought all their veg, clean and identikit with no unsightly lumps or bumps, from a wicked supermarket chain. All of which was true. Ella couldn’t see the point of wanting potatoes covered in mud when you could buy them ready-washed.

  The next thing she noticed about the Union Allotments was how tidy and well-kept they were, especially by contrast to the neighbouring estate, whose gardens were full of overflowing dustbins, discarded car parts and no-longer-wanted furniture.

  Here nature ran its course in ordered discipline. Neat rows of leeks, carrots and spring onions delighted the eye next to lavish tunnels of runner beans, their flowers finished for the year, and the last few pillar-box-bright tomatoes on their straggling plants. Orange pumpkins and bright green cabbages vied with tawny or green winter squash. Stripy marrows and glossy courgettes filled the raised beds made of old railway sleepers. Tempting russet apples and a few last pears in espaliered trees lined the far wall. The only sign of the unruly intrusion of the non-allotment classes was in the form of an abandoned car, so buried in brambles that it looked like something from Sleeping Beauty waiting for a wake-up kiss from Lewis Hamilton.

  A faint odour of manure hung in the air, reminding Ella of visits to pongy city farms with the girls when they were small.

  ‘Can I help you?’ a gruff voice penetrated her rural reverie.

  She turned to find a bearded figure in overalls and gum boots with copious grey hair topped with a bobble hat. ‘I was looking for the Taylors’ allotment. I’m taking care of it while they’re away diving in Mexico.’

  The newcomer grunted in what sounded like disapproval though whether it was for her, Viv and Angelo, scuba diving or Mexico it was hard to discern. He didn’t look LGBT or whatever the acronym was. More Campaign for Real Ale. She knew if the girls were here they would censor such thoughts, but, hey, they weren’t.

  ‘It’s this one over here.’

  He pointed to a well-kept strip with vegetables one end, then a flowerbed in which a few late roses nodded in the breeze, next to a last hollyhock and some orange and purple blooms. Ella, not much of a plant-spotter, decided they were chrysanthemums. At the far end by the river was an ornate bench made of iron and wood. No doubt this was where Viv and Angelo admired their plot with a glass of wine in hand.

  ‘Isn’t it pretty!’ Ella exclaimed. ‘What glorious chrysanths!’

  ‘Dahlias,’ her guide corrected disdainfully. ‘We don’t hold with flowers here. Allotments are for produce if you ask me. Gardens are for flowers.’

  ‘But what if you don’t have a garden?’ She held out her hand to make peace. ‘I’m Ella by the way.’

  He raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘Bill. How-de-do.’

  Ella wondered if there was a Ben too. There she was back to the LGBT again.

  ‘I’ll just do a bit of weeding, then,’ Ella offered.

  Bill continued to stare at the allotment, disapproval apparent in his every feature. ‘We’re not sure about your friends, see.’

  Oh dear, not reds under the flowerbed, surely? Ella wondered.

  ‘We suspect they may be chemical users.’

  Ella tried not to giggle. Angelo looked like an old hippie who might be into nefarious substances.

  ‘Only the ladies next door are seriously organic.’

  Ella couldn’t wait to see what seriously organic ladies looked like.

  She got out the secateurs from her shoulder bag and began her allotted task of deadheading and tidying. This led to a little weeding and watering, and then to gathering the last few windfalls from the espaliered apple and pear trees. It was all surprisingly absorbing and in no time she saw it was getting dark. She must have been here for more than two hours.

  ‘Cheer-o, then,’ Bill’s bobble hat appeared from behind the fruit canes, followed by the rest of him, festooned in fresh veg and carrying an enormous marrow. ‘I’m off now. You’ll lock up, will you?’

  ‘Absolutely. I won’t be long myself.’ In case he thought that sounded like an invitation for him to wait for her, she started to assemble her tools. ‘I might as well leave these in the shed. No point carrying them to and from the allotments every time I visit.’

  ‘That’s right. Sound little shed that. Some of them are left in a terrible state, I can tell you. You won’t believe it, but he’s only got an Italian coffee machine in there.’ Bill shook his head at the strangeness of middle-class peculiarities. ‘Keeps offering us espresso. What’s wrong with tea, I’d like to know?’

  Ella nodded sympathetically, thinking she wouldn’t mind an espresso herself.

  The last rays of the evening sun were dipping into the Grand Union Canal and the interior of the shed was growing darker by the moment. It smelled wonderful, of drying onions and herbs tied up with string, and there was just a hint of the scent she remembered from her childhood of apples being stored over the winter, each wrapped up individually in newspaper.

  She was about to put her trowel down on the potting bench when she thought she heard a slight movement and almost screamed. Oh my God, there was an animal in here! A rat, perhaps, or maybe a hedgehog. That was bloody stupid, she told herself; she hadn’t seen a hedgehog in London for thirty years.

  There it was again. A faint rustling in the darkest corner of the shed, behind the makeshift shelving where Viv and Angelo stored their flowerpots. Now the shelves seemed to be moving, as if someone was pushing them out of the way. This time Ella did scream.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said a disembodied voice, clearly foreign, ‘I did not mean to frighten you.’

  At that moment Ella’s hand, which had been scrabbling for the door handle, came across a light switch. Of course, they’d need power here for the espresso machine. Without even knowing she was doing it she switched it on.

  In the harsh light of a sixty-watt bulb a young man stood before her. And not just any young man, but the most dazzlingly good-looking young man she had ever laid eyes on. He wore a dark green sweater with holes in it, very like the one of Laurence’s which she was wearing herself. He had longish curly dark hair, two or three days’ stubble on his chin, and the most extraordinary blue-green eyes which, were they featured on a paint chart, might well be called teal.

  Behind him on the floor she noticed a sleeping bag, a backpack with clothes spewing out and a half-drunk bottle of milk. ‘You broke in?’ she demanded, suddenly angry on behalf of her friends.

  ‘It was not locked.’ It was true there were no windows broken or other signs of forcible entry. ‘I had been walking along canal. This place look warm and dry.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘I saw coffee machine.’

  ‘And you thought you’d take it?’

  ‘No, I thought at least here I can sleep and make coffee.’

  ‘But why did you sleep here at all?’ She could hear Julia’s voice asking a question in her head. What the hell were you thinking of, making conversation? The man could have robbed you or hurt you.

  ‘I had quarrel with my girlfriend. She chuck me out. I have not been in London long. I had nowhere to go.’

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘I am Polish. From Warsaw. My name is Wenceslaus.’

  Despite Julia’s voice, Ella found herself smiling.

  The young man smiled back. ‘You are thinking of Good King Wenceslaus?’

  ‘Your English is very impressive.’

  He grinned. ‘No. Everyone say it to me, first thing, so I google it:

  Good King Wenceslaus looked out

  On the feast of Stephen

  When the snow lay rou
nd about

  Deep and crisp and . . .’

  ‘Even. It rhymes with Stephen,’ Ella supplied.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you have a job? How are you living?’

  ‘I will get building job. It is not so hard, I think.’

  Ella thought of all the exhausted East European builders with their big boots and grey faces falling asleep on the tube. This young man didn’t seem at all like them. When she was first in London it used to be the Irish, collectively called The Lump, made up of quite old men, who stood waiting in sad little groups at the side of the street to be picked up and taken to work digging roads; they were cheaper than using heavy machinery. A sudden sense of the unfairness of it, the accident of where you were born and how strong your economy was, overwhelmed her. Laurence used to shout at the radio whenever Tory politicians complained about scroungers and layabouts.

  ‘You are smiling. It is good. Like sun coming out.’

  ‘I was thinking about my husband.’

  ‘Then he must be nice man.’

  ‘Was a nice man. Yes. He died three years ago.’

  ‘I am sorry. I did not mean to—’

  ‘I know.’ Ella suddenly realized quite how mad this was, having a conversation about Laurence with someone who had broken into her neighbours’ shed. ‘Look, do you have any money?’

  Wenceslaus stiffened, his whole demeanour suddenly rigid. ‘If I can sleep here tonight, tomorrow I will get job, no need for money.’

  ‘Have you at least eaten?’

  His silence answered her question.

  ‘Look, I passed a greasy spoon down by the towpath. Let’s get a bite for you there.’

  He hesitated, then shrugged gratefully. ‘What is greasy spoon?’

  ‘You’ll soon learn, if you’re a builder. A cheap café where they fry everything.’

  He picked up an old parka from a hook nailed into the wall.

  Ella grinned. ‘I don’t suppose we need to lock up the shed.’

  Wenceslaus took the key from her hand and locked it up. ‘We do not want other builder moving in.’ He laughed again. ‘Perhaps they read review on TripAdvisor.’