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.
The Touch Pt. 34 Brothers and their Sisters – Sisters and their Brothers
I did not deliberately avoid Emma for the next couple of days but as the weather was holding out we were all picking up outside jobs which had been postponed from last week and I was working through from early morning until dusk as I was putting in extra hours planting in the summer bedding flowers at Caroline's in the evenings to catch-up on time lost. The times that I did see her everything seem normal between us, there was no friction; she didn't even tease me or flirt with me but she did seem cheerful and happy and kept grinning like the cat that got the cream; my cream I guess.
Maggie and I picked up a hedging job at Paul's Dene, a suburb to the north of Salisbury, to put in a twenty yard run of Cotoneaster Franchettii, a nice evergreen shrub that was becoming very popular, partly due to the pretty white flowers that bloom in early summer and the colourful orange berry crop through the winter, a big attraction for wild birds. The bushes needed to go in quite quickly as they were starting to bud.
I had already completed a couple of other small jobs that morning and so I met Maggie at the customer's house just after lunch. Planting in twenty-five smallish bushes probably didn't really justify both of the senior partners being there but the job did need to be finished in a single afternoon and Maggie and I wanted some time together to talk, mainly about our staffing issues.
When we had planted in about half of the shrubs we decided to take a mid-afternoon break for coffee and biscuits and took our flasks and availed ourselves of a convenient garden bench seat.
We still had not been able to decide which of the two applicants for the trainee gardener jobs we should take although we had been tossing it back and forth all afternoon. Both were equally suitable and both had seemed very keen and able.
The first was a young guy who was nearly 18 named Benson Pope, he had left school at sixteen and had been working for the past eighteen months at the golf club as a trainee groundsman and so was known to Colin and came with his recommendation which put him right at the top of the list. He was really keen to work with Colin again and seemed totally in awe of Maggie.
He was a shortish, rather chubby looking lad which was deceptive as up close you immediately realised that a lot of that chub was actually muscle. He had a broad pleasant face covered in freckles and curly ginger hair which made him look a lot younger than he was, but Colin reckoned that he had a lot of potential and that was good enough for me.
The other hopeful was Elizabeth Rollesby, who liked to be known as Libby. She also came with a recommendation, from my old college tutor who had pushed her to apply for the job and had taken the trouble to ring and ask me to interview her. Libby was attractive in a rather homely way, with shortish brown hair, quite an infectious smile and a neat 'fitness regime' figure with smallish tits, a firm waist and stomach and rounded buttocks crowning quite muscular and strong looking legs.
I vaguely remembered her from college, she had started the horticulture course about a year before I finished but had dropped out after about two months. She was quite candid about her reasons; they were singularly financial...she was over 18 and could not afford to continue paying the college fees once the grant ceased, and so had been forced to quit college and take a full time job in a supermarket to support herself. I guessed that she also recognised me but probably couldn't place me, as several times during the interview I caught her looking at me out of the corner of her eye when she thought I was looking away.
Both had been more than willing to agree to the conditions that Maggie had set on the trainee job; a commitment to work for us for three years, and the willingness to take the Cities and Guilds Horticulture course and see it through. De Veres would sponsor their college fees and at the end there would be a guaranteed career with us as a senior gardener. Maggie was absolutely committed to promoting horticulture as a well paid professional career for young people... her magic had worked for me and I was in total agreement.
In truth Maggie and I were each trying to find justification for hiring both candidates and I think that the final deciding factor was that I had received a letter that morning telling me that I had been accepted for the Royal Horticultural Society Diploma course at Writtle Agricultural College near Chelmsford in Essex, subject to my attending an interview and assessment during the next few weeks.
It was a fairly rigorous three year course in about twenty parts, theory and practical; but could be taken as a part time course, mostly what they were now calling distance learning, working from study packs either at home or the work place, plus about fifty compulsory days in college for lectures and assessments. There was an optional degree qualifying segment which could be taken on completion of the whole course.
The down side was that I would be away from Salisbury for several days at a time through the year, plus possible extended on site project works at significant garden sites up and down the country in the second and third years, which made it now really critical that we upped the head count for the gardening team.
The up side was that the college had accepted Maggie as my primary mentor and that a lot of my practical work could be performed as part of my normal working schedule for the garden centre with Maggie's reports backed by an independent assessor. I knew that Maggie would always be scrupulously fair but I guess the there was always the risk of accusations of nepotism.
I hadn't told anybody about the letter as it had been delivered to home by first post; I had shoved it into my pocket and only opened it during my morning break between jobs, so Maggie was almost the first to know. I had driven to a public call box between jobs and telephoned Gwen at the hospital to tell her first. I handed Maggie the sheaf of documents and let her scan through them whilst I sat and puffed at a cigarette and watched her lovely face for an initial reaction to the news. I had been boiling over inside all morning waiting to tell somebody... no that was not quite true... not just anyone... waiting to tell Maggie.
"Oh Jamie, this is fantastic... I am so pleased for you... and so proud of you as well," She leaned over and put her arms around my neck and pulled my face to hers and gave me a long lingering kiss on the lips, not at all an aunt to nephew kiss, it was soft and compliant our mouths slightly open so that the tips of our tongues briefly touched. "You are happy about it, aren't you?" she asked smiling. The course acceptance, or the kiss? Yes, I was happy about both. I nodded my agreement smiling broadly, I could now fully understand Josh's joy at his university acceptance; I suppose that it is just one of those milestone events of your youth, but mainly I was thrilled that Maggie had told me she was proud of me.
"We need to celebrate," she told me smiling. "Why don't we all go out tonight for a meal and then party?" I must have pulled a wry face, "What! Don't you want to?"
"I don't think that I could handle another party for a little while, I'm still getting over Sunday night." Emma had made certain that everybody knew that I had got totally rat-arsed and that she had needed to help me to bed but had not mentioned any of the more intimate things that had happened between us.
Nobody knew about Cherry or the fight; I hadn't mentioned it and Josh couldn't remember anything about the party at all when I telephoned him on Monday. I still hadn't spoken to Becca and she had been out when I talked to Josh, so I asked him to have her call me when she was free, but I knew that he probably wouldn't remember.
I certainly had no intention of getting drunk again for any reason however justified, and parties or raves were certainly going to be scratched runners for some time, but I really did want to share my happiness with Gwen and Maggie and Emma. "Let's all go out somewhere nice on Saturday evening for a meal... we can make it a joint celebration when Emma passes her driving test tomorrow. I absolutely know that she will."
