WARNING TO READERS - This is a long, rambling, multi-part story and VERY British. The individual chapters will make more sense if read in sequence.
Pt.18 Of horses and hand-jobs
The week that followed was quite hectic for all of us. With less than a month to completion the building work at the garden centre was coming along in leaps and bounds and you could now see that it was going to look terrific. Most of the re-built units were completed, the big glass and steel canopy and arboretum that enclosed the old yard was finished and we were already allowing the public access and had moved a lot of the stock plants from the temporary marquee into their new homes. We would be hanging on to the marquee to use as a hospitality tent during the re-opening week. As a last minute addition Maggie and I had decided to add a covered walkway from the main structure joining up the customer entrances to the greenhouses.
Monday I got a telephone call from Kristen. She was still cool about our relationship and sounded happy and bubbly and told me that she was going to stay with her mother in London for a couple of weeks. I knew that her parents kept a flat in town as their law firm had a London office.
"I didn't want you to think that I was avoiding you or that I was upset about anything after Friday," she explained. "I still feel all tingly inside!" She giggled. I had already decided that it would be unfair to my dick if I did not see her again and so we agreed that she would call me when she got back to Salisbury.
The garden centre was really busy, following the storms of the previous week we had dozens of customers looking for replacement plants, trees and flower pots and had also sold an incredible thirty greenhouses, two sheds and several rose arches. It looked as if I was going to be totally occupied for a couple of weeks or more with erecting the greenhouses, but Steve came to the rescue. He told me of a friend, another ex-squaddie, who was looking for part-time work and would be willing to put in a couple of weeks help with the deliveries and erections. I asked him to bring him in the next day; his name was Dennis, he was mid-twenties, seemed competent and keen and so I took him on there and then, paired up to work with Steve. They turned out to be a first class team and together were delivering and erecting two structures a day as well as doing all the deliveries. Maggie was impressed and suggested that I should offer Dennis regular ongoing erection work on a casual basis if he wanted it.
Emma had also taken about twenty calls from customers asking for one of us to visit their garden to quote for garden maintenance and post storm repair work, or assess damage to trees. She had efficiently typed each onto one of the new job sheets she had created and Maggie and I split them between us and got Emma to call back and make appointments with the clients. There was one from Becca Hill, Josh's mother; one of her trees had blown down during the storm. I took the job sheet out of the batch and slipped it into my pocket; I would call round to see Becca myself.
Wednesday, I had college in the morning and in the afternoon I was booked in to take a proficiency course at a driving centre in Swindon which would allow me to use the new fork lift truck in the public areas,. Steve already had his certificate as well as a heavy goods driving licence and Maggie and I had sat down with him one morning and officially offered him the job of delivery driver and handyman with a good pay hike, which he was only too pleased to accept. We desperately needed somebody who could regularly drive the big lorry as I was legally prohibited from driving heavy goods vehicles until I was twenty-one which meant that one of the older guys needed to drive for me if it was necessary to take the big lorry out anywhere. It was one of the reasons that I had bought the flat bed trailer, hooked behind the Land Rover it was a combination that I could legally take onto the road. I passed the test without problems, mainly because Steve had coached me and I had had some practice on our own machine, it was mostly health and safety theory anyway.
I had ridden up to Swindon on my moped and managed to whiz through the rush hour traffic and was home in good time to shower and change to ride into the city to meet Janet for our date.
There was a parking space on the bike stand in New Canal right opposite the Odeon and so I was a little bit early and waited for Janet outside the bank next to the cinema. She was dead on time but I almost did not recognise her; I had only ever seen her wearing a nurse's uniform, with her hair in a utility pony tail, and she looked so completely different. It was the first time that I had seen her wearing make-up and her mousey blonde shoulder length hair was crimped into a mass of tiny ringlets. Her outfit was really trendy; a stone washed denim skirt with black spandex leggings, a grey off the shoulder top and a short brown leather zip-up jacket. I had thought that she looked cute in her nurse's outfit, but ragged up she looked quite sophisticated and sexy.
The Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Red Heat, was OK; the important thing was that Janet enjoyed it. I put my arm around her in the cinema, she seemed happy with that and leaned her head against my shoulder, but I wasn't getting the vibe that she wanted to go any further. After the film we walked around the corner to the burger bar in the High Street and sat over beef burgers, chips and coffees and talked for a while. Janet had moved down to Salisbury from Leeds about six months ago to take up the job at the Cedars after spending a year at college getting her care worker certificates. She was chatty and cheerful and nice to be with. I discovered that our tastes in music and books could not have been further apart, but that in itself added interest to our relationship. I walked her back to her car which was parked on the New Canal car park; she had a pale green 1970s Citroen 2CV and we stood by the car talking for a while.
I tipped her chin up and kissed her lightly on the lips, she didn't object and so I pulled her in to me, she slipped her arms around my neck and her lips started to respond to mine our tongues gently probing until they found each other and I could feel her relaxing against me, her knee quivering ever so slightly against mine. I slid my hands down to her waist and drew her closer and she responded by wriggling tighter against me and I could feel her starting to breath a little more heavily into my mouth. She pushed her hands lightly against my chest and broke away, both of us panting slightly.
"I need to go," she said, "Mrs. Harvey doesn't like us coming in late, in case we wake the residents."
"I will be coming over to The Cedars in the next few days," I told her. "If you would like to go out again we can fix something up?"
"Yes, I would...very much." She said, "Thanks for a lovely evening, Jamie." She reached up and kissed me briefly on the lips and then got into her car. The engine spluttered into life and I watched her drive away and turn into the High Street, then went across to my moped and just sat on the bike for five minutes and smoked a cigarette. It had been a pleasant evening, just a normal first date, I was happy to leave it that way, as I knew that her kiss had held the promise of something deeper and wilder, I felt that there was a lot more to Janet that was just waiting to be discovered.
Friday turned out to be busier that I had anticipated, Maggie had taken the day off and had gone into town for a sister's day out with Mum, and so I ended up trying to juggle the needs of the garden centre with the outside appointments that I already had in my diary. In the morning I took the small van and went out to visit a couple of the customers who had called in wanting estimates for work to be done. I had two afternoon appointments, one with a salesman from one of the major seed companies and the other with Geoff Mallet, the tree surgeon to discuss various contract works that we wanted him to undertake for us.
As I had arranged to ride with Janice on Sunday, when I got home, I went through the big chest in the garage where I kept my old gardening clothes; I knew that in the bottom somewhere was a sports bag with my riding gear. My hat was fine, it just needed brushing off but both pairs of riding britches were now far to small, but then It was a good two years since I had last worn them and I had filled out a bit since then. I dumped them into the waste bin and searched out my riding boots from the lobby cupboard. Obviously my foot size had not changed a lot as they fitted fine which was a relief as good quality leather boots were expensive to replace. The nearest decent tack shop was at Devizes and so I rode over there during my lunch break on Saturday and bought myself a new pair of good quality, dark grey utility breeches.
