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. 21 - Of Commitments and Consequences
The garden centre was really busy that week, it was Mother's Day on Sunday and we always sold a lot of potted indoor plants and gifts that weekend. This year Maggie had bought in a nice range of decorative bowls from Holland which Jack's team had planted up with early crocuses and had put a dedicated special Mother's Day display in one of the smaller units.
I think that a lot of customer's were also visiting us out of curiosity; the new arboretum structure was visible from the main road and was drawing a lot of interest and we had all commented on the large numbers of new faces passing through the centre. At Emma's urging Maggie had also persuaded the main suppliers of our garden buildings and greenhouses to put up a row of flag poles along the perimeter fence, two of them would eventually hold flags with our own logo, but even the manufacturer's flags that were already in place added visual interest. I was pleased to see that Colin and Jack had finished laying the turf and planting up the rose beds by the entrance so that the whole of our road facing frontage was now smartly landscaped.
Grace Jackson, the new catering manager had arrived that week and had immediately set about organising her new domain. As promised she had arranged for her choice of assistant cook to come in to meet Maggie. Suzan Li was also Chinese, she was small, about 55 and really charming, from what I could gather she was some distant cousin to Grace but more importantly had worked with her before and was a very experienced all round cook. By Friday they had got the kitchen working and had made trips to the cash and carry wholesalers and were cooking up a storm, so that Maggie could sample the dishes that they had agreed for the provisional menu. The added bonus was that all the staff got to have a cooked breakfast, lunch and cakes for afternoon tea on Friday and Saturday; everybody agreed that the food was excellent.
The restaurant was going to be one of the projects under Maggie's supervision and so Grace, Emma and she spent most of the week together, finalising menus and unpacking and organising the furniture for the dining room. Grace and Maggie had arranged to start interviewing candidates for the kitchen staff and waitresses for the restaurant the next week. The intention was to have the catering project up and running a week before the official opening to iron out any issues.
Mother's Day was one of those celebrations that had never really caught on in a big way for our family, when we were kids Emma and I would get Mum a posy of flowers and we would usually have a nice cooked lunch at home, but that was it. The last couple of years since I had been working I had bought her a decent bouquet and had paid for the three of us to go out to lunch at a pub somewhere and that had been my intention this year as well. As she was on her own I had insisted that Maggie join us for the day.
I had already booked the restaurant and ordered the bouquets for Mum from Emma and me, to be delivered to the garden centre on Saturday so that we could take them home with us at the end of the day ready for Sunday morning. I had also spoken by telephone to the twins in France, and arranged for a bouquet to be sent to Maggie on their behalf. This year, because everything had changed in the last couple of days, what I really would have liked was to have taken Mum out to lunch alone and then spend the afternoon making love to her, but that definitely wasn't going to happen, we needed to put on a face of family normality. We had also discovered during the intervening days that we needed to create for ourselves a whole new concept of what was to be normal for our changed situation and part of that was making sure that we did not become so wrapped up in each other that we pushed the other people that we cared for away, especially Emma who in many ways was still emotionally fragile and reliant upon both of us.
I had spent a fair amount of time thinking about what we had done. I had no real moral issues with the idea of incest between Mum and I, we had been more like intimate friends than mother and son since Dad left, and becoming lovers seemed to be quite natural.
Thursday morning Mum and I were both still pretty euphoric if also a bit stunned by our joint surrender to longing and passion the previous night. After our talk, I had followed Mum into the hall and then swept her up into my arms and carried her back to her large bed and we had spent the rest of the night in each others arms. We did not make love again; we just held each other and talked and then finally slept spooned together until morning.
The really strange thing was that from Thursday morning onwards everyday life had been pretty well normal. We got up, we took our showers separately; got dressed and had breakfast all much the same as any other normal day, except, on that morning we checked the house before leaving for work to make sure that we had not missed any tell-tale thing that was out of place.
As I did virtually every other morning I told Mum how sexy she looked in her nurses' uniform and even though we were alone in the house we both treated it just as flirtatious banter.
"Just keep the sexy uniform on and we can both stay at home for the morning," I joked. At least I think I was joking.
It wasn't going to happen, not today anyway, that was just the sort of irregular behaviour that would draw unwanted attention. She gave me a playful slap on the arm and then slipped her arms around my neck so that we could have a final long, deep indulgent kiss before leaving the house. That was a luxury we would need to forgo when Emma was at home. I rode in to work with the feel of her breasts imprinted on my chest and the taste of her lipstick on my mouth.
It wasn't the going in to work that caused me concern, it was the coming home again that evening. I had several jobs to catch-up with as I had not been in the previous day and I wanted to call in to see Mark Dwight at his farm on the way home. We were intending to open the farm produce shop on Wednesday and I needed to speak to him about the delivery of the first consignment of fruit and vegetables and run an idea past him. I arrived at the Dwight farm sometime after seven and by the time that Mark and I had shared a beer and sorted out the detail of the order and delivery schedules it was getting close to eight o'clock.
"There is one final thing, Mark; it is about what we want to call the shop." He looked a little puzzled. "Maggie and I thought that I would be nice to call it, 'Gracie's Fruit and Vegetables' in memory of your mother...... after all it was originally her stall for over thirty years."
He smiled broadly and clapped me on the shoulder. "That would be great, really great," he enthused. "Mum would have loved that idea and Dad will be really touched, he still misses Mum a lot."
"I'm glad you approve. I needed to run the idea past you tonight so that we can get the sign writers started early next week. Oh, one more thing, will you speak to your father for me... Maggie and I would really like it if he would agree to come along and officially open the shop at Easter?"
It was about eight fifteen when I got home. Mum's car was in the drive so I knew she was in ahead of me. I suddenly felt bloody terrified! The memory of being with Mum the night before had filled me with warmth all day and I had been looking forward to seeing her this evening, but suddenly I was filled with doubt. What if, she had had a change of heart during the day? What if, she thought that I was late because I was avoiding her and was feeling hurt? I just sat outside on the Vespa for as long as it took me to smoke a cigarette, my legs were like jelly and my balls felt like stones of ice.
When I finally plucked up the courage to go indoors, I found Mum and Emma in the kitchen. Both seemed happy and cheerful and everything appeared totally normal.
