was stickily hot today after the thunderstorms yesterday. Should’ve cleared the air a bit but it hadn’t. There’d be no working in the garden today. Not that anything really needed doing. But Raymond did like to potter, liked to keep on top of things. Before Simon had rung and said he was coming round to see them today Raymond had thought it best to put his feet up and chat to Dianne in their favourite spot. Isn’t that what long hot summers were for? Relaxing? Yet he could have easily fallen asleep in the sun if it wasn’t for Simon calling round.
When Raymond gave up his carpentry business and Dianne retired from nursing, they’d decided to sell the family home and retire to this little one-bedroomed bungalow. They’d also given Simon and his wife, Jo, a cheque for £10,000 from the proceeds of the sale of their house, ‘to help with anything you need help with!’ and then they’d gone on the journey of a lifetime, visiting the famous blossoms in Japan, sightseeing in New York and finally staying with Dianne’s sister in California for three weeks, before hanging up their travelling hats to spend the rest of their days, enjoying being near to their family and grandchildren.
Dianne had loved their little garden when they first moved in. It wasn’t so big that they’d be constantly working on it. Neither of them had wanted that. It was just right. It was one of the reasons they’d bought the bungalow, six years ago.
‘We need to get something manageable now we’re retired,’ Raymond had told her in the garden centre, when they’d first moved in. ‘Slugs like all the little colourful perennials and annuals you like! And you know I don’t like killing slugs.’
She was the one for flowers but she’d relented.
‘Okay, but we’ll still have a little patch of my favourites as well as your shrubs,’ she’d laughed. ‘Or I can put them in a raised bed.’
‘Ah, but slugs can climb, my love!’
Yes, he was a shrub man, through and through, he’d told his son, which had made Simon laugh.
‘Sounds like you’ve got a beastly ailment when you say it like that, Dad; doesn’t it, Mum? Or you sound like a superhero! Not Superman but Shrub Man!’ Simon had grinned.
Simon was a postman and had married his childhood sweetheart, Jo, a hairdresser and they’d had twin girls.
‘You see? I get to have girls in the family, after all!’ Dianne had informed Raymond proudly, all those years ago, when Jo had let her hold them at the hospital, a few days after their birth. Their skin tone was a soft caramel, much like hers; their hair in dark wisps, too. She’d always wanted to present Raymond with a daughter but it hadn’t happened. Yet now she had two girls to mollycoddle. Oh, it had been joyous babysitting them, whilst the twins were growing up and then keeping up with their exploits when they went off to college, unsurprisingly, both wanting to be hairdressers and opening their own salon.
‘Confusing to your customers though,’ Dianne had said when the girls had told her what they wanted to do.
‘But we have to be together, Gran,’ Maya told her. ‘It’s what we’re about. We’ll make it work. I’ve told Esha I’m happy to dye my hair if there’s a problem.’
And she had, too. Aubergine purple! Dianne couldn’t imagine a worse colour but it actually suited her. Luckily her sister Esha never had to dye her wonderful dark curly locks, although in the course of their work she had experimented with lots of different ‘looks’. But Dianne and Raymond had been completely proud that their granddaughters’ business had been a roaring success. Both girls were married now, with tiny babies of their own.
Raymond loved to reminisce in the garden with his wife, especially on beautiful summer days like this. It was their thing. They always took their tea together, at the bottom of the garden where the hedge shaded them from their neighbours, near Raymond’s crimson azaleas, until they fell or his lacecap hydrangeas for which – they were both surprised – he’d won prizes several years ago!
‘We do have to make the most of life, though, don’t we, love.’ Raymond smiled but the air around him was warm and still, apart from a couple of sparrows squabbling in the bird bath.
‘Well, I went to the second afternoon tea party at the community centre yesterday as you know,’ Raymond told her. ‘And I took my suggestions, as Simon recommended I should. It’s so nice to have your say and be heard, sometimes, isn’t it, dear? Did I enjoy it, you ask. Well …’ He looked down at the grass between his toes. He liked the feel of his bare feet on the cool lawn, even though Simon had mentioned earlier that his father ought to have been wearing sandals, in case he trod on something unpleasant. ‘There was some trouble there, unfortunately. One of the ladies was very rude to a young girl who I can tell has problems of her own.’
Raymond finished his tea; his wife’s had gone cold when he picked up her mug.
‘I think I might just try it again next week, too, love. I’m starting to make some new friends there and I know you said you wanted me to do that sort of thing when you got ill. Wouldn’t have dreamt about going anywhere without you at first, though, would I? But I’m improving now because they’re an easy crowd to get on with, in general.’
He stood up with a bit of a wheeze as the deckchairs were quite low; perhaps he should buy some new ones, more upright, easier to get in and out of. But he and Dianne had had those deckchairs forever. So it was quite hard for him to think about giving them up. Just like it was hard to give up his darling wife to the dreadful accident she’d had last year.
‘We’ll leave you alone now, love; Simon’s taking me to go watch the footy again with him. That’s nice isn’t it? He looks after me now his Jo’s left him. That was a shock though, wasn’t it? Never saw that coming, did we? The girls are good about taking turns visiting them both, though. So he’s not too lonely. Truth be told, I’m still a bit lonely, love. But on the whole, life’s not too bad. Anyway, we’ll speak later.’
He kissed the top of the urn, sitting proudly in centre stage of the bird bath, at the bottom of the garden by the hedge, shaded from their neighbours, surrounded at its base with all the pansies, peonies and marigolds that Dianne used to love and enjoy when she was alive.
‘For God’s sake, Dora! You’re like a flibbertigibbet. Go find something useful to do instead of moping around like some gangly teenager. It’s a shame your father treated you like a ruddy princess when he was alive because, as I constantly need to remind you, real life comes with hairy armpits. And will you leave your ruddy face alone? It’s how God intended,’ her mother, Yvonne, bellowed.
At forty-nine, Dora was fed up of life.
It hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped because she’d never really known what she’d wanted to do in life. At school, the careers advisor had tried to encourage her with things like hairdressing, floristry or nursing. But none of those professions had appealed to her. And whereas her friend Jodie always knew she wanted to be a beautician, Dora never had aspirations in any particular direction. And because she knew her father would always be there for her, picking up the tab, no matter what happened, she’d drifted through life, cherry-picking, knowing she never really needed to have any career aspirations.
‘If I choose wisely, I can always be looked after by a wealthy husband,’ was her comeback, whenever her mother had asked what she intended to do in life.
‘Better
