Chestnut Street

Gwendoline had her half-price haddock, and her tired vegetables and for once the sheer value of it all didn’t give her a warm glow of satisfaction. She felt a bit colorless compared to the woman across the street, the woman who had spent her first night in her new home treating her movers to fish and chips and planting a window box.

  Gwendoline ironed her blouse and scarf for next morning and tried to concentrate on her book but somehow she found herself looking across the street most of the time. Carla had filled a bookcase. Imagine having all that number of paperbacks instead of borrowing them from the library, where they were free.

  Gwendoline watched as the woman across the street admired the bookshelves and then sat down to watch television. Gwendoline could just see her face lit up by the screen. Carla was laughing at something she was watching. Gwendoline scanned the channels. There was nothing remotely funny on. Maybe this woman had got herself a video.

  She seemed curiously self-sufficient in an annoying sort of way.

  Next morning Gwendoline was looking from behind her curtain.

  Carla was up and squeezing orange juice. Then she examined the contents of her window box, picking some minuscule weed that could have grown in the night and spraying the plants lightly.

  She put on her coat and so did Gwendoline. She would see which way the woman went to work. But Carla stopped at the corner shop.

  “Hallo, I’m Carla. I’ve come to live round the corner, and I’ll be a great customer,” she said.

  “Good, good. I am Javed.”

  “Is that Mr. Javed or is Javed your first name?” she asked.

  Gwendoline was stunned. She had lived here for seven years and had never known the man’s name.

  “It is my first name. My family name is Patel,” he said.

  “Well, it seems a very friendly neighborhood. I am going to like it here, I know,” she said.

  “It is fairly friendly, yes,” Mr. Patel said.

  Gwendoline had her opportunity. She could have said, “You are welcome to the neighborhood. Yes, it is a nice place. My name is Gwendoline. Why don’t you come for a cup of coffee tonight?” But you just didn’t say things like that. Not to strangers. So she just bought a newspaper and left.

  At work one of her young colleagues commented.

  “You actually bought a newspaper today, Gwendoline!”

  Gwendoline flushed with annoyance. Yes, she had said that it was ludicrous the way people spent a fortune on newspapers on their way to work and then wondered where their money went. But that was just common sense; it didn’t make her into a Scrooge, an eccentric. She found herself wondering where this Carla worked. She looked a bit bohemian, you know, slightly untidy. Maybe she was something in arts and crafts.

  The day went slowly. Gwendoline found a magazine that someone had abandoned. She sat in the canteen and read an article about doing up a patio, which was pretty pointless since she didn’t have a patio. She noticed how expensive the potted plants were. Imagine that woman across the road putting six of them in a window box up one floor.

  Someone in the office was leaving, a guy called Harold—they were making a collection. Gwendoline said truthfully that she didn’t know him.

  “So you don’t want to sign his card, then?” the girl asked.

  “No, I think not. As I say, I don’t know the man,” Gwendoline said.

  She probably imagined it but she thought she saw the others exchange glances and shrug their shoulders. But if they did, so what? She would be broke if she were to contribute every time someone came rattling a box. And, anyway, she had other things to think of—she was meeting her brother, Ken, tonight. They had to decide about a nursing home for their mother.

  Ken had suggested a ludicrously expensive café to meet, but Gwendoline had put a stop to that very quickly. He could come to her flat, she said, and bring a bottle of wine. She would cook him a meal.

  To her great annoyance, she had to work late. And to her greater annoyance, the market had closed up when she went through looking for bargains, so she had to go to Mr. Patel’s convenience store and pay far too much for her liking.

  Mr. Patel was talking about her neighbor. The new lady called Carla. She was a very good, kind person. She was a nurse, apparently, and she had bandaged Mr. Patel’s finger where he had cut himself. She had a very happy mind and she bought lots and lots of packets of flower seeds.

  Gwendoline listened impatiently. She couldn’t care less what this woman had bought. She made several calls to Ken’s mobile and left messages saying she had been delayed, but always got the answering service. If people went to the trouble and expense of having a mobile, why didn’t they leave it turned on?

  Very bad-tempered by now, she let herself in and on the hall floor was a note from Ken. “I guess you’ve been delayed. I left my cellphone at the office, but I’ll hang about and come back again about seven-thirty.” She checked to see what was happening across the road and, to her total shock, saw through the open window in the flat opposite that her brother was having a glass of wine with Carla across the road.

  Some hanging-about that had been!

  Just making straight for the nearest female who would give him a drink. That figured.

  Gwendoline was unreasonably annoyed. She knew it was unreasonable. Why shouldn’t Ken go in somewhere else? Better than hanging about in the street. It was just that it was too fast somehow, too casual, too easygoing, as if they were all students or something. Not grown-ups with responsibilities.

  Ken rang her doorbell at a quarter to eight.

  She buzzed him in and began to prepare his supper.

  Expensive lamb chops she had bought from Javed Patel, frozen peas, two small ice cream desserts, but he stopped her. He had eaten a mushroom omelet across the road. Carla was just making her supper, so he had shared it with her. He was afraid that he had opened the bottle of wine while he was there.

  “Thanks a lot,” Gwendoline said sourly.

  “No, I mean, she did give me my supper—it just seemed right,” Ken said apologetically.

  “Sure.” Gwendoline wrapped the lamb chops in foil and rammed them into the small freezer compartment of her fridge.

  “You’re not going to eat?” he asked, surprised.

  “No point now. Let’s talk about Mother.”

  “It’s simple, I’m afraid. She won’t go into a home, Gwenny.”

  “I hate you calling me that. And you’re right. It is simple. She’ll have to go into a home. She’s not safe on her own.”

  “But she’s not going. She’s adamant.”

  “So you suggest that you and I should spend our whole lives going round to her house, picking up after her and cleaning and fetching and carrying …”

  “No, I don’t suggest that. I suggest that Millie and I go and live with her,” Ken said.

  “She won’t accept that. You and Millie aren’t married.”

  “I think she’ll find it better than a home, which is the only alternative.”

  “It’s not the only alternative. I’m in the picture too. I expect you think she’ll leave you her house.”

  Ken shook his head. “No, I don’t expect that or want that, but we will have to take in a tenant to help meet the costs.”

  “What costs? Won’t you and Millie be living there rent-free?”

  “We have to get the house adapted. Ramps for Mother, a bedroom downstairs, a bathroom adapted to what she can manage. And we have to pay something towards an extra carer. Millie and I will be out all day working.”

  “And where do I come in? I suppose you expect me to give up my weekends.”

  “No, Gwenny … I mean, Gwendoline … I don’t expect that; neither does Mother.”

  “Oh, she does—wait until she’s on the phone about it.”

  “Does she ever ring you, as things are?” Ken asked.

  “No, but that’s only because she’s afraid that I’m going to mention the home to her.”

  Ken was silent.

  “So, why are yo
u here then, Ken, if it’s all arranged?”

  “Because I don’t want to start making changes in Mother’s house without letting you know.”

  “Or your house, as we will soon learn to call it.” Gwendoline’s mouth was a hard, thin line.

  “Mother is making her will tomorrow; she is leaving the house on Chestnut Street to be divided equally between us, at my request. It was quite hard to persuade her, but I wouldn’t agree to the arrangement otherwise. She said that you were cold, hard and unforgiving and mean of spirit. I said that you were just lonely, and eventually she agreed.”

  “She said all that about me?”

  “Only because she gets frightened when you threaten her with an old people’s home. That’s how she sees it—a threat.”

  “But it’s not a threat! It’s for her own good,” Gwendoline said.

  “This might be for her better good.”

  Ken stood up to leave. There was no more to say. Gwendoline didn’t offer him tea, coffee or wine. She was standing by her window looking over at the flat across the road. Carla was watering the window box again. Really, the woman was obsessive. Ken watched his sister.

  “She’s nice. She’d be a good friend for you, Gwenny.”

  “I don’t need a friend. How dare you say I’m lonely—I most certainly am not.”

  “No,” he said, and left.

  Gwendoline watched him look up at her window but she made no sign that she saw him. She watched him wave up at Carla and the woman waved back with her little watering can.

  The night felt very long to Gwendoline but she would not allow herself to brood about what her mother had said. It was true she and her mother did not get on well together, but then most mothers and daughters didn’t. Mothers always preferred their sons. It was a known fact.

  She wasn’t hungry. That food would do another evening.

  But when it came to bedtime she was wide-awake. They often said that a breath of air was good. She would walk around the block.

  At the far end of the street, to her amazement, she saw Carla with a trowel and a paper bag digging at a big, neglected-looking flower tub.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Gwendoline said, before she could stop herself.

  Carla looked up and smiled a big broad smile. “Oh, hallo. You live opposite me. I’ve seen you going in and out.”

  “But this isn’t your flower pot.”

  “No, I know—isn’t it terrible? It’s crying out for someone to look after it, poor old thing.” She patted the pot affectionately.

  “And why are you planting things in it?” Gwendoline was suspicious.

  “Why not? I always put seeds in people’s tubs or window boxes. It’s a little hobby of mine. You’d be amazed how many of them flower. Some of them die, of course, but a good percentage come up. It’s like magic looking at the street begin to bloom.”

  “But people mightn’t want you to put flowers in their property,” Gwendoline said. And even as she spoke she realized how ridiculous it sounded.

  “Most people are pleased when they see the flowers, surprised but pleased,” Carla said. Then she reached out and took Gwendoline by the arm.

  “I’ve finished here. Why don’t you come back and have a cup of coffee with me, Gwendoline?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Your brother told me. He was upset because you weren’t home when he called. He was nervous about breaking the bad news to you.”

  “He talked to you about me? I don’t believe it.”

  “Come back with me. We’ll have a chat about everything. Old people can be so difficult, you know. Tell me about it—I work with them all the time. Your mother doesn’t hate you—it’s only from fear that she lashes out like this.”

  He had told her all their private business.

  Gwendoline had a choice: she could have gone back to the flat with the window box and talked to this obviously well-meaning woman. Or she could go back home.

  “Thank you—it’s kind of you, but coffee would keep me awake,” she said and left.

  As she heard the sound of her own feet walking up the street Gwendoline wondered if there were flowers around every house, if these packets of seeds worked, would the property value improve? Would the street go up, after all?

  The whole problem was Finn’s future.

  Finn was only seven, so by anyone’s standards he had a lot of future left. I had met the child only a few times because it seemed better to stay out of it all. But I talked about Finn a lot—boy, did I talk about him and his future—Dan could think of little else.

  Dan and Molly had separated when Finn was three. Oh, I don’t know what it was all about, really. Some fellow Molly had at work; she was a receptionist at a leisure center. Dan being away too much on business; he was a salesman. Molly wanting to be near her family and not near Dan’s family.

  Basically they just fell out of love. That was all. But it wasn’t like going off someone when we were all young and single. There was Finn to consider, and his future. And unlike normal separated couples, Dan and Molly were quite unable to come to a satisfactory arrangement about the boy they both loved, even though they didn’t love each other anymore.

  Dan didn’t want to be a Saturday father, taking his son to the zoo or for a hamburger and making awkward conversation. Molly didn’t want her only child to go and sleep in a strange house with the Lord-knew-who-else who might be around, and no proper heating and maybe a bed that wasn’t aired.

  They discussed leaving Finn with his grandparents on either side for Dan to visit his son there. But that didn’t work either. Molly’s parents thought that Dan was worthless and the less contact that the beloved Finn had with him the better. Dan’s parents thought that Molly was a tramp and that if Dan had any guts he would sue for full custody. So this was a nonstarter.

  And then I met Dan, adding yet a new element to the problem. I had my own house on Chestnut Street. It wasn’t in a fashionable part of town but at least it was a house with three little bedrooms and a garden. And we were getting married so it wouldn’t be a house of ill fame or anything. And I had a job as a nurse in the local hospital so I wouldn’t be a wild, irresponsible bit of fluff who would ignore Finn and let him die of malnutrition.

  But Molly didn’t like this at all. She was more adamant than ever that Finn didn’t come and stay.

  “We have to think of his future,” she would say. “He doesn’t want to grow up confused, not knowing where he lives, where he belongs.”

  And then Dan would say that he was thinking of Finn’s future, and he didn’t want the boy to think he had abandoned him, which he hadn’t.

  So do you wonder that I stayed as far out of it as I could? I used to fantasize sometimes that Molly would get a job as an exotic dancer on a cruise ship and she would leave Finn with us for three months and when she returned he would say he was so happy in our house that this is where he would stay.

  And I got one of the rooms ready for him. Put in a little desk, where he could do his homework, and bought a dictionary for him and a book of facts, and an atlas. I even got nice, bright orange curtains and a duvet cover because I heard he liked bright colors.

  But still Molly persisted: she didn’t want Finn getting sucked into another life; his father was perfectly welcome to come and visit him in her home at weekends. And she added that any court in the land would say that she had been generous about this.

  And poor Dan would come home from these visits glum and upset. Finn apparently would ask him at the end of each visit why did he have to go.

  “This is your home, Daddy. Don’t go,” he would say and Dan would stumble and bluster and say it used to be but now he had his own place, and Molly would just shrug as if none of it were her doing.

  So Dan and I got married, and my family, who loved him from the start, wondered would little Finn be coming to the ceremony. But apparently not.

  Molly said that it would make Finn anxious about his future if he were to be part o
f anything like that.

  And then, when he was seven, Finn started at a new school, which by chance was not too far from where we lived. So Dan tried again. Could he collect the boy a couple of days a week and bring him back to our house? He would give him milk and whatever Molly suggested. But all Molly said was that we would wait and see.

  And this particular morning I looked at Danny’s sad face across the breakfast table, a nice, round table looking out on the garden, where Finn would probably never play because it was going to be unsettling for his future. And I got a surge of rage against Molly. How dare she deny that child all the love and welcome that was waiting for him in this house? How dare she make Finn’s father so wretched and inadequate about his lack of parenting since he was only dying to do it?

  But I would not, under any circumstances, heap fuel on the fire by telling Dan that his ex was the most selfish woman to walk the earth. Nothing could be gained from that. I would smile and tell him that since I had a day off I would go shopping today and make him a steak-and-kidney pie. And his sad face brightened up and he said he was a lucky man.

  But I was still a restless and annoyed woman. And as I set out to go to the shops I decided to go past Finn’s school. The children would be in the playground about 10:30. I could just have a sneaky close-up look at this boy whose future was actually wrecking our present and our future as well.

  I saw him immediately. He was practicing juggling with another boy. They managed to keep the little clubs in the air with great skill. Soon a small crowd had gathered around them.

  Dan loved juggling too. Had he ever been able to teach this to his son or had the boy picked it up by himself? I would probably never know.

  A few other people stood watching the children through the big fence. There was no access to the yard—you would have to go in through the school. How times had changed, I thought. Children have to be protected from strangers looking at them through the bars of a playground. Then I realized, of course, that I was the kind of person they would want to keep out. The second wife of the father of one of the pupils. Bound to be trouble there. Thank God nobody saw me here. It would look very suspicious. Then I glanced over at a woman who was looking at me intently.