Читать книгу Summer Holiday - Penny Smith - Страница 6

On Saturday, having told nobody about her new career as an ecobod, Miranda woke up to the alarm and wondered whether she should cancel. She’d bet loads of people did, what with one bronchitis or another. She lay in bed for a minute, luxuriating in the beauty of being alone under her king-size duvet. No man-smells here, she thought. If Nigel had been there, he would have farted, scratched his scrotum and demanded breakfast in bed. And possibly nudged her with his early-morning broom handle, emerging from below his distended stomach. Urgh. Just the thought of it got her out of bed.

She meandered over to the curtains and threw them back. Damn. Raining. Typical. Maybe she wouldn’t bother to wash her hair, after all. She checked the time. An hour to get ready. She pottered into the bathroom and turned on the shower, catching sight of herself in the big mirror over the bathroom sink as she reached for her toothbrush.

Whoa. What was that? She peered closer. Bollocks. A spot at my age, she thought. That is just so unfair. And then she smiled at her reflection. She was sounding remarkably like her daughter going through puberty. The difference was that Miranda would leave the spot to do its own thing and not fiddle with it, unlike Lucy who would dig and squeeze until it virtually needed stitches and a few weeks to heal. It was amazing that Lucy’s face had survived without a scar.

Miranda stepped into the shower – and couldn’t get out again because of a severe bout of water-induced inertia. She was in the zone, just wanting to stand there for ever letting the water cascade down her back and creep round the front. What would snap her out of it? She had to make a move. Any move. A move that would break the spell. No. It wasn’t going to happen. She’d be found on Wednesday by the cleaner. Blown up from water absorption and with five days’ hair growth on her legs. Would there be maggots? Are there always maggots? ‘Yuk,’ she said, and reached for the shaver.

There was something wonderful about stepping out from a long shower into a warm mist, and it was even better not being able to see herself in the fogged-up mirror. She moisturised every available inch of skin, covered the spot with concealer, then hovered over the perfume. Was there any point? She sprayed some on the back of her neck.

She could just not turn up. Simply call in sick. How wonderfully naughty. Who would care? But she used to push the children into doing things they didn’t want to and they usually came back saying it was the best day they’d ever had. She girded her loins and walked with purpose to the plastic carrier bag from which she had not yet unpacked the requisite items on the list.

My goodness, she thought, when she was dressed. I look like the sort of woman who’s never heard of Brazilian waxing or eyebrow-plucking. In short … a mad feminist. All men are bastards. I’ll take them down with my sharp wit and disused tweezers.

She fluffed up the duvet, threw on the coverlet and the six cushions, then decided she had just enough time for a quick coffee.

Ten minutes later she was wondering why, with all her experience of life, she hadn’t put a dash of cold water into it. The burnt roof of her mouth hurt. On the bright side, there would be that strangely enjoyable peeling away of the skin tomorrow.

The green Jaguar purred into life and she put the postcode into the sat-nav as she waited for the garage door to lift. She drove west towards Shepherd’s Bush and the A40, searching for something to listen to on the radio, finally settling for XFM because it made her feel connected to Jack. Her adorable Jack. Nigel hadn’t been able to make him conform and he was now wandering the world with a clutch of A levels and a backpack. She did worry about his future and, in a secret, locked-away bit of her brain, actually wished he had gone into banking and done the hiking stuff later.

Lucy, mind you. Chip off the old block. Miranda tried out her singing voice along to some god-awful rackety piece of music.

The weather was getting worse. The rain was sluicing down as though a pipe had been uncorked. There was little traffic on the roads and she made it to the rendezvous within an hour, parking between a muddy old Fiat and a yellow VW Beetle. After she’d struggled into her brand-new, state-of-the-art Gore-Tex anorak, with zips under the armpits for letting off steam, she emerged from the car with a modicum of decorum and tiptoed to the boot in her trainers to get her wellingtons. Four people were watching her from under umbrellas. Their clothing looked like it had been stolen from a tip. They were filthy.

‘Hi,’ said Miranda, brightly, stuffing her new gloves into her jacket pocket.

The assembled group smiled and nodded, drinking tea from a flask and chatting about the work in hand. A man in a high-visibility jacket, with teeth that might have been thrown into his mouth by a blind parsnip-tosser, introduced himself as Will. ‘We’re basically going to be getting rid of the undergrowth and stuff on the towpaths so that the dredger can get through to clean out the canal,’ he said. ‘At the moment, as you can see …’ he looked around and amended that ‘… as you can’t see through this atrocious weather but I assure you is the case, the canal is all silted up and full of algae bloom and duckweed. The dredger can’t do its work until we’ve done ours.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the sky. ‘Now, apparently the good folk at the Met Office are predicting that this rain is going to blow through pretty quickly. Since we’re all here, with the exception of Alex, we may as well get cracking. At least nobody’s cried off with the “flu”.’ He made quote marks in the air as though that was a usual excuse for someone not turning up. Miranda shook her head in disgust.

He walked towards the Land Rover and bent over, his large trousers gathering in an elephant’s bottom of grey as he rummaged. ‘I’ve got a collection of implements in here. Come and take your pick. Not literally.’ He laughed – it was obviously a line he’d used before. Miranda smiled. Might as well show willing.

The others had obviously done this work before, since they showed no hesitation in lunging for the tools, leaving her with nothing but a pair of enormous leather gloves and the job of picking up litter. ‘It’s like being at home with children,’ she commented to the woman in front of her. Her name was Teresa: she had hair like a newly shorn sheep and a wart near her nose.

‘What? Walking along wearing protective gloves?’ Teresa asked, with a confused expression.

‘No, having to pick stuff up. All their toys and things. Socks. Although usually I didn’t wear big leather gloves to do it. Do you have children?’

‘Cats,’ responded Teresa, briefly.

‘Lovely. Hairy ones?’

‘Yes. Well, one short-haired and two long-haired.’

‘Rescue cats or pedigree?’ Like she really cared.

‘Rescue.’

‘Lovely.’ Bloody hell! She had to stop saying ‘Lovely’ – she was beginning to sound like a game-show host.

They stopped speaking as they reached the rest of the group.

‘Here’s where we left off last week.’ Teresa nodded to a newly cut section on a bush.

Will was hunched over, talking to one of the men, but turned and said something to Teresa, who moved forwards, leaving Miranda standing alone. She sniffed the air appreciatively. The rain had stopped, leaving a damp, green smell. It reminded her of finding a little patch of camomile in the corner of the garden and lying on it to see how comfortable it was. When Nigel had found it, he had covered it with weed-killer.

‘So, Miranda,’ said Will, ‘you’ve picked the short straw, and are doing the tidying up. It’s one of the most important jobs, but also one of the most unloved as it plays havoc with your lower back.’ He rubbed his own and grimaced, his lips slightly parted to reveal one of his yellowy parsnip teeth. ‘I’d recommend that you stand up and stretch it out frequently or you’ll wake up tomorrow unable to walk. And try not to get too close to the cutters – they can get a bit carried away, if you know what I mean.’

Miranda nodded, although she wasn’t sure she did know what he meant. She added a smile, then turned quickly as loud running was heard through the gloom, followed by the sudden appearance of a superbly scruffy man with dreadlocks, wearing a jumper with so many holes that it resembled a string vest.

‘Alex!’ exclaimed Will, warmly, clasping his outstretched hand and clapping him on the shoulder. ‘We were wondering where you’d got to. Thought you must have been struck down with summer flu or some other lurgy.’

‘Camper van sprang a leak in the middle of the night. I’ve been doing emergency repairs. Couldn’t leave until I’d made sure it was watertight. Don’t want to get back and find all my Armani pumps wrecked, do I?’

‘Ha-ha. No. You betcha you don’t,’ Will said jovially. He pointed a big square finger. ‘I saved you a machete.’

‘Can I have a machete?’ asked Miranda, moving closer.

‘Ha-ha!’ He laughed again. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not on your first day.’ He strode back to the Land Rover, his boots sliding on the muddy path.

‘Alex,’ said Alex, holding out his hand to Miranda.

‘Miranda,’ said Miranda, shaking it and looking into the greenest eyes she had ever seen. They were leaf green. Ireland green. Ridiculously green.

‘First time, then.’ He smiled down at her.

Miranda was tall, but he was taller still – and what her friends at school would have called ‘well tasty’. Although she wasn’t sure about the dreadlocks. Didn’t you have to be seriously grubby to get them? Not wash for months? She sniffed cautiously. He didn’t smell. ‘Lovely fresh air, isn’t it?’ she exclaimed, to cover herself, and then answered his question: ‘And, yes, it is my first time. I wanted to get out of the city and do something constructive.’

‘Which city?’

‘London.’

‘Which part?’

‘Notting Hill,’ she said semi-apologetically. Ever since the film Notting Hill, she’d felt something akin to embarrassment about living in a place that was synonymous with a romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.

‘Nice,’ he said, as he accepted the machete from Will. ‘Shall we?’

‘“Lead on, Macduff,”’ she said, even though they were already where she needed to be to start picking up rubbish.

‘“Out damned spot,”’ he threw back, as he advanced into the undergrowth, the crotch of his baggy trousers catching on foliage and shooting raindrops in arcs.

Was he flirting, Miranda wondered. How lovely. That bloody word again. ‘Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely,’ she said, under her breath, to use them all up. ‘Lovely, luvverly. Luvverly bunch of coconuts. Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely? And the new word of the day is …’ she paused, putting a big lump of greenery into the bag ‘… gorgeous. Scrumptious. Handsome. Steady on, Miranda.’ What was happening to her?

She gave herself a stern talking-to. ‘I am a forty-three-year-old woman with two children, one of whom is probably about the same age as he is. It’s disgusting. Nigel’s eyes would literally come out of his head on stalks if he knew what I was thinking. No, not literally – particularly with all that lardy, piggy flesh holding them in.’

Her mind rambled on aimlessly as she bent to her task. She didn’t notice the time slipping by because she had wandered into a rich seam in the creases of her brain and hopped incrementally to a reverie about Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then she stood up. ‘Ow,’ she squeaked. A searing pain had shot up her back and exploded tiny pinpoints of light through her retinas.

Will ambled back to check she was all right.

‘Yes. And, yes, I know you told me to stand up and stretch, but I got into a rhythm and completely forgot,’ she panted, rubbing the base of her spine.

‘Stand with your feet apart and drop your body forwards from your hips,’ he ordered. ‘Go all floppy. Take the strain off your lumbar region.’

She hung forward and felt her anorak slip up past her nose, so that she was breathing into the zip and smelling something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Was it man-made-fibre scent? She suddenly realised what it was: the smell of hard work, alias sweat, and she had obviously forgotten to put on any deodorant. How very, very … in a weird way, almost pleasant. If acrid.

She stood up to get away from it.

‘Feeling better?’ asked Will.

‘Yup,’ she announced – although, actually, she felt a bit sick from standing up so fast. ‘Onwards and upwards,’ she said, with determination.

She reapplied herself to the task in hand, stretching every few minutes and admiring the clean and tidy state of the path. Well, tidy but muddy and a damn sight better than the view in front, with its branches and undergrowth melding together. She could just see Alex’s dreadlocks whipping to and fro as he sliced the heads off unsuspecting plants.

It felt like days since she’d had her coffee.

She waved Will over.

‘Problem?’ he asked.

‘Er, I hope not. I was suddenly overcome by a wave of hunger but I haven’t brought a packed lunch with me. Which I seem to recall was on the list. A bothersome omission. Is there anywhere I could get something when we stop?’

‘Yes – most of the regulars bring their own because they don’t want what’s on offer from the nearest shop. I’ll warn you now, it ain’t exciting. There might be a pie but it’ll be more pastry than filling. And if the filling’s meat, it might be a part of the animal you aren’t familiar with.’

‘A dollop of testicle, a dash of oink and an earlobe, eh? Beggars can’t be choosers, as they say. That’s what I’m going to have to do when we break. Which is when?’

Will checked his watch. ‘Half an hour. Can you last that long?’

On cue, Miranda’s stomach howled, like a small woodland creature in pain.

He laughed, and jerked his head upwards, revealing hairy nostrils. ‘I’ll take that as a no. If you could possibly hang on for a quarter of an hour, that would be better for us. We’re dealing with a knotty branch and it would be nice if we could get that sorted before we have lunch.’

‘I’ll keep my stomach on a short leash, and tell it to pull its horns in, if that’s not too much of a mixed metaphor,’ she promised. She bent forward and pushed a great wodge of vegetation and sticks into her bag, suddenly noticing a stripy snail stuck to one of the leaves. She picked it off and it retreated quickly into its shell. She held it until it came out again, then gently touched one of its antennae. It retracted. She poked the other.

‘Aw. Leave him alone,’ said Alex, who had arrived at her side without her noticing, absorbed as she had been in the snail’s defence mechanism.

She smiled and put the snail on the side of the path where they watched it unfurl from its shell and make off. ‘Racing home to his wife and daughters,’ she said. ‘Or her husband and sons. Having said that, they’re hermaphrodites, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, they are. And the way they mate isn’t what you’d want to be doing if you were out on a date. They twist themselves round each other and cover themselves in frothy slime. Then they both set off to bury their eggs in a mulchy bit of ground. They cover them with mucus, soil and excrement, and about a month later, bingo, loads of tiny snails are ready to munch their way through your prized garden plants. Some snails live to fifteen and they’re excellent fodder for birds, toads and snakes.’

‘Snakes?’ she queried.

‘And that’s all you’ve taken from that superbly informative lecture?’ he said sadly, shaking his head.

‘Of course not,’ she told him, ‘but I don’t know why, I thought snakes went for fast food. Mice. Rats. Humans, if they were hungry.’

‘And the last time you read about a human in Britain being eaten by a snake?’

‘Yeah, okay, Mr Biology. Although we’ve all heard about the bloke going to the loo and finding a huge great python.’

He smirked.

She blushed.

‘Does a snail really vomit to move, as someone once told me?’ she asked quickly.

‘Well, it’s a gastropod, which literally means “stomach foot”. And I suppose it does essentially secrete mucus, which it slides on. So, yes. Vomit. Slide. Vomit. Slide.’

‘Existing on a liquid lunch. And dinner,’ said Miranda, beginning to walk back along the towpath. She could feel her stomach on the verge of making another announcement. ‘Quite nice, though, to bury your eggs in the garden and let them hatch on their own, rather than spending nine months incubating them and several years saving them from themselves,’ she threw back, over her shoulder.

‘How many have you got?’ he asked.

‘Two. But they’ve gone now. So I’m foot-loose and fancy-free.’

‘No father of the children?’ he enquired, kicking a stone into the grass.

‘He’s gone too.’ She flashed him a smile. Really, she thought, this is going to have to stop.