Kelly Harte - Spitting Feathers

‘It’s no good trying to sweet-talk me now,’ his mistress said in feigned hurt tones, but she ruffled his feathers just the same. She might have looked faintly ridiculous, with a bird on her head like some bizarrely plumed hat, but somehow she got away with it. She looked over at me then.

‘Well, at least I won’t have to worry that my old friend will be pining while I’m away, I suppose.’

‘And I promise to take very good care of him,’ I said, because I thought that was what she wanted to hear and also because that was exactly what I intended to do. Apart from anything else, I was flattered that the bird liked me so much, and it’s hard not to like someone back when they make their feelings so clear. Not that he was exactly a ‘someone’, being a parrot and everything, but the way he spoke so well, and at times in just the right context, it was easy to fool yourself that he was really a miniature human in parrot costume. Quite spooky, really.

‘Amen!’ Sir Galahad said, and his mistress managed a chuckle.

When we’d finished tea, Mrs A suggested that Chris show me around the garden—which, I presume, was her way of providing an opportunity for us to get better acquainted. For obvious reasons it was important to her that we got along, and I didn’t at this stage see why we shouldn’t, despite our bad start. And it was obvious that Mrs A thought a lot of him, especially since she allowed him to live in part of her house.

‘How long have you been working for Mrs Audesley?’ I asked as we strolled slowly along the path which led from the terrace at the back of the house. The layout of the garden was fairly traditional. It was long and narrow, but broken up with areas of shrubs and beds crammed with old-fashioned flowers. I didn’t know much about gardens, but I could see that this one was very well kept.

‘Four years,’ he said. ‘Although I’ve only been in the flat for just over a year.’

It occurred to me that, although he was lucky to live somewhere as nice as this, he couldn’t earn very much. And neither would a garden this size take up the whole of his time, I wouldn’t have thought. ‘So, do you look after other gardens as well as this one?’ I asked him chattily.

He nodded absently as he took a penknife out of the back pocket of his jeans and deftly dead-headed a pale pink rose that was past its best. I don’t think he was really listening to me.

‘And what do you do for entertainment round here?’ I pressed on regardless.

He shrugged. ‘This and that, though I’m not really one for going out much. I work most evenings during summer.’ He moved ahead of me and began slicing the stems of some blowsy red flowers that I didn’t know the name of.

‘They don’t look dead,’ I said.

He turned and looked at me as if I was stupid. ‘They’re not. I’m cutting them for the house.’ He went back to what he was doing. ‘Adrienne likes fresh flowers in the house. It’s part of my job.’

It was beginning to feel like hard work, this getting acquainted with the gardener, and I wondered if this was his way of paying me back for being offhand with him earlier. Which would be a bit childish, but, since I obviously hadn’t made a very good first impression, I made a final effort to be friendly.

‘I could stick around for a while if you like. Till you finish up here. And then perhaps we could have a drink somewhere close by. Get to know each other better before I move in.’

He was kneeling on the grass now, and I realised how he came to have muddy jeans. When I finished speaking he looked up at me again briefly, and seemed to consider my suggestion.

‘Can’t, I’m afraid. I’ve got someone coming to see me at the flat shortly.’ He glanced at his wristwatch and, after muttering something under his breath, got quickly to his feet. He gathered the flowers he’d cut and, without speaking again, headed away from me back to the house.

With nothing else for it I followed him, feeling a bit of a fool. I found him in the kitchen, pouring water into a plastic bucket. I was about to say something else, some snidey remark about his attempts to be friendly being pretty short-lived, but I didn’t get the chance because Mrs A came in then, and made a big fuss of the flowers. They started talking about them, using the Latin name for the plant as they made favourable comparisons to last year’s crop, and I, who knew the English names of only about three garden flowers, felt distinctly out of it.

I saw Chris look at his watch again, and after turning off the tap and placing the flowers in the bucket he excused himself. ‘Gotta go, Adrienne, though I’ll see you before you leave, of course.’ Then he seemed to remember me. ‘Nice to meet you, Tao,’ he said, without much conviction. ‘Just give me a knock if you need any guidance on our mutual friend, and try and let me know in plenty if time if you’re going to be away from the house.’

He left then, and after a quick farewell to Sir Galahad, which involved him making the sound of a mournful trumpet that Mrs Audesley informed me was a burst of The Last Post, I left as well. Just in time to see a very striking, wealthy-looking woman in her early, possibly middle forties, hobbling down the steps in silly high heels towards the door of Chris’s basement flat.

I wandered down to the nearby shops and discovered a pricey little gift shop that I found hard to resist for two reasons. One, I wanted to get something nice as a thank-you to Sophie for everything, and two, I was feeling agitated after my brief encounter with Mrs Audesley’s gardener, and spending always calmed my nerves.

I mean, who did he think he was? Ordering me about like that, and worse—much worse—snubbing my invitation to go for a friendly drink. I tried comforting myself with the old ‘it’s his loss’ chestnut, but it didn’t ring all that true when I thought of the woman he’d turned me down for. Though what she saw in him was a mystery—unless she considered him her bit of rough, of course, I thought nastily. It is well known that some women get their kicks from dirtying their hands on the hunky hired help, and since he’d said he did gardening for other people, she might well have been one of his clients.

An unpleasant thought suddenly crossed my mind as I was examining a nice little crystal candlestick that seemed to absorb the colour of everything around it—an image of Mrs Audesley and Chris cosying up on her pale blue sofa. I ejected it with a shudder and told myself to behave. Just because the woman was on first-name terms with her gardener, just because she seemed very at ease with him about the place, that did not mean there was anything else going on between them. The woman was in her seventies, for goodness’ sake, and okay, so she might have a good neck, but a fifty-year age gap was just too revolting to contemplate.

The candlestick was one of a pair and as I tipped it over and saw the price ticket stuck to the base, it emptied my head of all other thoughts. I’d almost decided that they would be perfect for Sophie, but could I really afford sixty-five pounds? And besides, unless I left the price tag on she wouldn’t even appreciate the expense I’d gone to.

I was the only browser in the shop at that moment. Apart from me there was a smartly dressed brunette who was heavily involved in a book behind the counter. So I took the pair of candlesticks over to her and, after sucking in some air, asked if she could manage any discount.

From the look on her face it was clearly a question she hadn’t been asked before, but when her mouth finally closed she smiled at me warmly. She had strange pale grey eyes, and one of the smallest noses I’d ever seen. She reminded me of a fairytale wood creature, a nymph or a fairy, or something. Definitely on the supernatural side.