Georgia Hill - While I Was Waiting

Thanking them for their hospitality, she promised she’d visit again soon. She half ran to where she’d parked her car, her mind on fire with possibilities. The idea of the book could work … it just could.

‘You never know, Hetty,’ she said, as she turned the key in the ignition, ‘we could be on to something with this. Here’s to a long, and hopefully, fruitful relationship!’

Rachel willed her groaning car up the steep track to the cottage and parked it in a swirl of dust. Her visitor was already there, waiting.

Stan Penry was leaning against the horse chestnut tree, which dominated the parking space in front of Clematis Cottage. He was enjoying some shade and a cigarette.

Rachel stared at him for a moment, preparing what she wanted to say to him. She’d found it surprisingly easy having Gabe around, which was just as well as he often was. To have yet another stranger invading her privacy might be a step too far. She wanted to be alone, so she could be the person she really wanted to be, not beholden to whatever others forced her into being.

On the other hand, she thought, ruefully, looking at the overgrown front garden, she could really do with the help.

She pondered on what Gabe had told her about the old man. Stan was seventy-three and recently widowed. He lived with his son and daughter-in-law in one of the new ‘executive’ houses, which flanked the church, in the village proper. Ripped away from his beloved ramshackle cottage and smallholding by well-meaning relatives, who worried he wouldn’t cope on his own, he’d been given a home in their magnolia-painted modern house. Stan hated it, according to Gabe, and was keen to find somewhere he could grow his fruit and vegetables while he waited for an allotment to become available. In return, Gabe had assured Rachel, Stan would be happy to do some general gardening for her.

Rachel looked at the man, drawing him with her eye. He had on a pair of those trousers of indeterminate colour and shiny fabric that elderly men adopt and a short-sleeved white shirt. He was very thin with a slight stoop and a sour expression on his face, made more so as he sucked on a roll-up.

She got out of the car and made her way over to him. ‘Hello,’ she said, cautiously, ‘you must be Mr Penry.’

Stan came away from the tree almost grudgingly. ‘Miss Makepeace?’

Rachel held out her hand and found it enveloped in a calloused and nicotine-stained grip. ‘Rachel, please.’

‘Ar. That’d be Stan, then. You got a bit o’ work for me then, like?’

‘A bit of work?’ Rachel smiled at the understatement. ‘Well, yes. If you’re interested, that is.’ Rachel pointed to the front garden, knowing perfectly well that Stan had given the place the once-over before she’d arrived. She half-hoped he’d say it was too much for him and leave her in peace. After her conversation with Roger and Neil she couldn’t wait to get back to Hetty’s story again.

‘You know what you want doing with it?’ Stan squished his cigarette between finger and thumb, fished out an old tobacco tin from his trouser pocket, placed the butt inside and immediately began to roll another.

‘Erm, no, not really,’ Rachel said, a little helplessly. This hadn’t begun well. She couldn’t ever see herself warming to this man and certainly didn’t want him prowling around her garden.

‘Mrs Lewis used to have a fine old clematis growin’ up that wall.’ Stan gestured to the side of the front door. And she had hollyhocks and suchlike growing up in front. It were a rare old sight. She liked her gardening, did old Hetty.’

Rachel stared at him in astonishment. ‘You knew her?’

Stan met her look. His eyes were full of a wicked humour. It was in direct contrast to his pinched and thin mouth.

‘Knew her a bit, like. When I was living in the village afore. Before I got married to my Eunice, that is. Never had much to do with Hetty. Bit of a loner, bit scary, like.’ Stan leaned over to Rachel and winked. ‘But me and Eunice, we used to come up here to do a bit o’ courting. We’d have a good old look at the garden before she’d come out and shoo us off. Reckon she had a fancy man up here, I do. Made Eunice giggle, it did.’

For a second, Stan’s face clouded.

‘I’m sorry for your …’ God, how was one supposed to say these things and why was it so hard? ‘I’m sorry to hear about your wife.’

Stan took a deep pull on his cigarette and looked away. He cleared his throat. ‘Ar. Never enough time with the ones you love, is there?’

Thinking back later, Rachel realised it was that moment which made her decide to take Stan on. That he’d known Hetty, even at a distance, was a draw, of course, but it was that statement which did it. Unsentimentally said, but with such feeling. Such love. She was getting quite good at making snap decisions!

Instinct told her Stan would be unwilling to accept any gesture that smacked of charity. She adopted a bracing tone. ‘So, it’s a lot of work. The garden, that is. Have you – have you got any ideas about what I could do with it?’

‘Might have.’

He was obviously a man of few words. ‘Look, Stan, why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?’ She smiled at him.

‘Don’t mind if I do. Coffee, though.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Don’t drink tea. I likes me a coffee. Milky, three sugars.’

‘Coffee, then,’ Rachel said slowly and wondered if he was making this deliberately difficult. Then she saw the expression in his strange yellowy-green eyes. He was teasing her. Well, in that case, she could get her own back. ‘Oh but –’ she stared pointedly at the cigarette.

Stan scowled at her. ‘You another one o’ them anti smokers? Just like my Sharon. Me daughter-in-law. She can’t abide it neither.’

‘Well, if you wouldn’t mind not smoking in the house, I’d be grateful. Come on, let’s get the kettle on and we can get going with some plans for the garden.’

And so it had been decided. Quite easily in the end. Stan would begin by clearing part of the garden for his vegetable beds; he’d share some of the produce with Rachel. In return, he was willing to get the rest of the garden into shape.

‘Might take a deal o’ time, though,’ he warned her.

Rachel didn’t mind and assured him so. It occurred to her that she was adapting to the slow pace of the way things happened around here. And what’s more, was happy about it.

‘Thank you, Gabe,’ she whispered, as she lay in bed that night. It was one more favour to chalk up to him. ‘And thank you, Hetty,’ she tried out, tentatively. There was no answer, but Rachel heard what might have been a giggle. Content that, if Hetty’s ghost was haunting the cottage, she meant no harm, she turned over to face the sigh of breeze that floated in through the open window. She heard the house settle around her and fell asleep, feeling blessed.

It was one of those gifts of a summer morning, when it was a privilege to be awake with the dawn chorus.

Rachel had been woken at five by Indignant the Sparrow. The bird had got into the habit of sitting on the roof above her bedroom, cheeping loudly and, well, indignantly, until the moment she leaned out of her window and he took fright.

As she did so this morning, the view took her breath away and stole time. After heavy rainfall in the night, the sun shone, jewelling the landscape. It was a morning washed clean. After two months of living in the cottage, the trees had greened up even more, making the bucolic scene teem with life. The sky was still pale and cold, but even Rachel, with her rudimentary knowledge of weather, could tell it was going to be a wonderful day. It was shaping up to be a fantastic summer.