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.
Chapter 26: Of Sandwiches and Steaks
Emma seemed to have either totally forgotten or had chosen to ignore her behaviour on Sunday night and was perfectly normal and cheerful at breakfast. I thought that I probably ought to talk to her about what was going on, but picked the coward's way out and opted to ignore it for now, it was probably aggravating the situation in the long run but she seemed just go through the obsession with me for a few days every so often and then get back to normal again.
We didn't have any heavy deliveries on Monday and so I had Steve, Dennis and Mikey load up the big lorry with the fencing panels for Caroline's garden; we would be starting by putting in the perimeter fence before clearing the rubble and preparing the ground. I gave Steve the directions and the key to the garden gate and told him that I would be there by the time they had unloaded.
I went back to the office, called Becca and arranged for her to meet me at Caroline's house on Wednesday, I thought that she might be able to get a better feel for the site if she saw it after the visual horizons had been set by the fencing.
Caroline had ordered a small 6' x 4' tool shed and I put the flat packed unit onto the trailer and hitched it to the Land Rover and followed the guys out her house. By the time that I arrived the team had unloaded most of the fencing and stacked it in the centre of the garden and so I left them to bring the shed in from the trailer whilst Mikey and I went round with a tape measure and markers siting the post holes for the fencing. The garden only needed fencing at the rear and one side as the other boundary belonged to the property next door. A fence already existed but Caroline had asked me to plant Leylandii along the whole length as a privacy screen.
With all four of us working at it, two digging post holes and two concreting the fence posts in place we had all the posts in place by late afternoon and decided to call it a day. We couldn't start installing the fence panels until the next day when the concrete footings were dry but I felt that the job was well on schedule and the fencing work and clean-up could be finished off with-out my being there all day releasing me for other tasks.
Tuesday, my main job for the day was going to be planting out about forty young, flowering shrubs at a large house at Quidhampton on the west side of the city. I reckoned that the task would take me most of the morning and so I had some free time to take on another job in the afternoon before checking on the days work at Caroline Brookes' house.
As Maggie was going to be busy for the full day with her assignments and I was already working on the west side of the city, Emma handed me the job card to return to a new lawn that Maggie and Kitty had put down a few weeks earlier which now needed checking and top dressing. I made up the pails of sand and seed mix and loaded them into the rear of the VW Pick-up along with the aerator roller and a scatter sieve, and put the shrubs for the first job behind them, nearest the tailgate.
I got to Quidhampton about eight o'clock and by the time that I had unloaded the bushes, and placed them out on the bed for the customer's approval I was ready to start excavating the planting holes about an hour later. Digging and preparing planting pits, teasing out root balls and correctly planting in forty bushes is hard work even for a professional and it was gone mid-day before I finished.
I decided to go straight over to the lawn dressing job which was off the Devizes Road and only about ten minutes drive away. The task shouldn't take more than a couple of hours and I would skip lunch and grab a snack when I had finished.
The house turned out to be one of a short row of recently built bungalows, each with a open plan small front garden, mostly either paved or shingled to park a car. As I arrived, the clients, an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Redfern, were just pulling out of their gate and preparing to drive away.
"We're now out for the afternoon," Mr. Redfern informed me, then unhooked a key from his key-ring and handed it to me through the car window. "That's the key to the gate, take as long as you like, old son. You can put the key back through the letter box when you are done." I thanked them and backed up so that they could drive away and then parked at the front of the bungalow.
The garden at the rear of the house was not large and I had the lawn aerated and top dressed by about one-thirty and was just finishing loading my kit back onto the pick-up when I got that prickly feeling that you get when you know someone is watching you. I ignored it at first; you always get curtain twitchers watching you from somewhere when you are doing a job at a neighbour's house, and you get used to it, but this seemed really close up. I heard foot steps on gravel coming from the garden next door and turned to look.
"Hello Jamie, I thought that it was you." The soft Scottish accent triggered recognition before she came into my line of sight. I was Laurie McLean, the soldier's wife who had shared an impromptu, surreptitious shag with me at the Christmas party.
She had obviously just come home from shopping as she was carrying a couple of bags, there was no car and so I guessed that she had used the bus. I suddenly remembered that Steve had told me that the McLeans lived out in this direction somewhere but I had totally forgotten about that until now, although I had often thought about Laurie.
"Er, hello Laurie," I smiled. I wasn't sure if this was going to be a bit awkward or not. We had met again after Christmas by a fluke encounter at the garden centre when she and her husband turned out to be friends with Steve. "How are you? You look fabulous."
Actually she did; her red hair now had fashionable darker streaks and she appeared to have lost some weight in the face which suited her, making her green eyes and pouting lips very prominent and sexy. She was wearing a plain black low neck top which exposed her throat and most of her shoulders but revealed only the slightest hint of her generous cleavage and hugged her narrow waist and rounded hips. Her black jersey leggings could not have been any tighter. She was probably early thirties with that timeless beauty that only mature women have and keep through their middle decades.
"Thank you." She smiled and tossed her hair provocatively. "Are you just arriving or just leaving?
"Leaving, I have been attending to your neighbour's lawn, and I'm now going to try and find something to eat and drink .... I missed lunch." I was only talking to make conversation really, it wasn't a hint.
"That's easily solved, Laddie," she said, starting to turn towards her own door. "Come away in, and I will make you a piece and some coffee or tea. I must have looked a bit hesitant, she laughed and added, "Jocko is away t' Germany, and I'm not going t' bite you ...."
