A Spring Affair (14 page)

Lou started her Sunday morning as she meant to go on: leaping out of bed, ignoring her stomach’s plea for breakfast and getting right down to the business of ridding the house of yet more rubbish. The anger Lou felt at her own weakness ironically generated enough adrenaline-driven strength for her to drag the massive conservatory chair out of the back door, into the drizzling rain, down the path and heave it into the skip without so much as stopping for a breath. At least venting some frustration on an ugly, awkward old chair distracted her from bashing her own head against the wall.

Talking of ugly old things…Lou snapped off a bin-bag from the roll. In her present mood, there were some things she wasn’t going to shy away from any more.
Be sentimental by all means, but discriminating,
the article reminded Lou, as she sprinted up the stairs into the smallest spare room like a woman possessed of a demon with an aggressive penchant for spring-cleaning.

Phil’s mother had bought them a ceramic vase as a wedding present, which stood on the chest of drawers there. Neither of them had ever liked it; it was so
hideous that it was an offence even to blind people, and thoughts of taking it to the charity shop didn’t even feature. She just wanted to blast it to smithereens so some other poor sod wouldn’t have to be tortured by the sight of it.
Throw out everything ugly and broken
, the article went on.
Your space should only be full of things pleasing to your eye with pleasant emotional vibes giving out positive energy.

‘Right,’ said Lou, geeing herself up. ‘Lou Winter is
in the building
!’

Grabbing the hideous vase, she dropped it into the bin-bag. The carriage clock with the dodgy movement joined it seconds later. The repro jug and wash-basin that had been broken at some stage and glued together again, shattered in the bag, as did a grotesque warped glass ornament that had been there long before Lou moved in, and a huge carved barometer that she looked at briefly for probably the first time–it was reporting that it was minus 6 degrees and snowing. In the larger spare room there was a collection of brass ornaments that Celia had palmed off on her and which Lou had always felt obliged to gratefully display. She wiped them from the shelves into the bag with one sweep of her arm–the brass teapot, the windmill, the cat, the Aladdin’s lamp, the bell, another bell, another bell, the coffee pot, the bear, the mouse whose tail was designed to hold rings, the woman with the crinoline and especially the hook-nosed pedlar who reminded her of Des.

Next, she ripped the loathed horse-brasses off the wall. To follow were lucky pixies, castanets, maracas, some coloured glass ball things encased in knitted string which Renee had bought her as a present from Plymouth, a cheap sketch of Haworth Parsonage she had
bought as a souvenir from a trip there once, and four boring pictures of seasonal flowers painted onto silk. They had been quite pricey, as she recalled, but she was way past the stage of caring. She knotted up the bag, only to unknot it again to put in another couple of pictures from the landing of lamenting Renaissance women. One crying over a dead duck and another over a bloke who supposedly wasn’t coming back from the wars. They had a sad energy about them in their scenes of pain and loneliness and Lou needed no pictorial reminders of what those feelings were all about.

She heaved the sack downstairs like a pre-menstrual Father Christmas and swung it up onto the skip, where it made a series of satisfying smashes after she bashed it flat with a plank of wood. Her neck spasmed after that final exertion and she was forced to take a moment to rub some warmth into it to soothe the muscle.

She needed to sink her whole body up to the nostrils in a warm bath, big-time. She wished now she’d just kept the old seventies avocado bath suite that had been in the building-site room. At least then she could have filled the big ugly thing full of Radox and climbed into it and soaked herself until she was as wrinkled as a dried apricot.
Bloody Keith Featherstone.
His name brought a surge of frustration. What was she going to do about the whole Bloody Keith Featherstone business? Threatening him with legal action wouldn’t get her anywhere because he would use that as an excuse never to darken her doorstep again, even if he had any intention of doing so. Plus, thanks to her operating on a basis of stupidly placed trust, there was no proof she had paid him any cash upfront, and he could simply deny everything. She had
left another polite message on his voicemail during the week and was still waiting for him to return the call.

She settled for a steamy shower. Afterwards, still wrapped up in the towel, she found more things to be cleared in the mirrored bathroom cabinet. There were loads of free sample sachets she had been storing like a vain squirrel, not to mention bottles of body moisturizer that came unwanted in cosmetic compilations at Christmas along with their dreaded counterparts–the hand creams.

There was some four-year-old suntan lotion and Phil’s old haemorrhoid ointment, which she picked up with cautious pincered fingers. Her mother said that people were putting it on their faces these days as it had skin-tightening qualities. Yuk.

She didn’t wear pink eye-shadows or lipsticks any more and yet she had a cache of them in her make-up basket, along with an Abba-blue eye-shadow complete with glittery bits. The article had said that old make-up collected bacteria and should be thrown away after six months. Whoops, thought Lou, as she spotted the actual lipstick she had worn at her wedding. It was a lovely dark-wine red that had worked beautifully with the autumn shades of her hair. It had been a nice wedding day, although it could never have been perfect because her dad hadn’t been there to give her away. She’d cried on her wedding morning because of that and spoiled her make-up, and Debs had to do it all over again for her.

The sun had shone, the wedding breakfast had been superb, and her groom was the most charming, loving, caring bloke in the world. Just like her dad. A Winter family future stretched before her like a fresh field of
snow, inviting her and her man to stamp their unique pattern all over it. They would have a lovely house, a big garden, a son, a daughter, a big bounding puppy, a summer villa on a Tuscan hillside, a car lot, a restaurant and together they were all going to live happily ever after.

Lou put the lipstick in the bin bag.

She rang Tom’s number to tell him that the skip was ready for collection and ‘Eddie’ told her that they could lift it that afternoon. Her hair wasn’t even dry from the shower when she heard the wagon reversing, and when she went out to greet it she was more than happy to see a big dog’s head framed in the passenger-side window.

‘Hi,’ called Lou, striding over sure-footedly, making a conscious effort to regain some of the elegance points she had lost last time. At least he was working, which meant his back hadn’t had any delayed shock after lifting her from the ground. She had guiltily played that scene over and over in her mind, albeit heavily edited. Now it was about ten minutes longer, full of heaving bosoms (hers) and Italian accents (his) and there was a ‘Midnight Moon’ backdrop of Mediterranean night sky and wishing stars.

‘Hi there,’ called Tom, while Clooney came straight over to Lou for a fuss and, obviously, a biscuit.

Lou fed him whilst Tom slipped the hooks onto the skip.

Looking for a point of conversation she asked: ‘Where does it all go?’ indicating the rubbish.

‘Well, it gets loaded into a massive ejector trailer and then goes off to a landfill site on the other side of Leeds.
We recycle what we can and do our bit for the environment. For instance, we get the occasional piece of old but good furniture and there are places that can redistribute that to people who need it. And if we get some decent tins of paint, we can pass them on to charities which use it. Sometimes we find old medicine and pills and take them back to pharmacies in case they fall into the wrong hands.’

‘I did wonder what happened to it all,’ said Lou. She hadn’t really; she just wanted to chat to him. Still, once he started talking about it, she found it quite interesting.

‘You can wake up now,’ said Tom.

‘No, really. I wanted to know.’

Tom narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion and said, ‘I shall ask you some questions the next time I see you and test you.’

The next time I see you!

God, she was turning into Michelle, analyzing everything he said and the way he said it. Next thing, she’d be poking about in food looking for holy images, like Michelle had done in the past, and getting on the internet to hook up with lovers on Death Row.

‘You must be nearly at the end though, surely?’ said Tom.

‘I thought I was,’ laughed Lou, ‘but I keep finding more nooks and crannies to go at. It’s neverending once you start clearing stuff out. I just can’t believe I’ve got so much that I don’t need. Or want any more, come to that.’

‘Did you get your airer fixed up?’ he then enquired.

‘Not yet, that’s this afternoon’s job. I got some pulleys from your shop. I didn’t realize it was your place until
your brother served me,’ said Lou, her lips tightening as she thought of Tom’s darker half. ‘I made a bit of a twerp of myself actually. I thought he was you.’

Tom stopped dead, trying to loop the last hook onto the skip. ‘He
was
me,’ he said with a disbelieving little laugh. ‘I haven’t got a brother.’

‘It was you?’

‘Yes, of course! That’s why I held your money up to check it–to see if it wasn’t one of your counterfeits.’ He grinned.

Lou sifted through her recollection of buying the pulleys and mentally slapped her forehead with the heel of her hand. It seemed so obvious in retrospect that he had been having her on. How would he know about the airer if he hadn’t served her? She felt her brain blushing and the heat radiate out to the surface of her skin.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Tom. ‘I thought you guessed. I wondered why you ran off when I went to get you a receipt.’ He laughed heartily. ‘Didn’t you hear me say “you must be thinking of my big, handsome brother” or something like that?’

Is that Clooney?
she had asked as well.
No, it’s his brother.
God, she was so thick, she deserved to be laughed at. A stupid, silly woman, two prawns short of a cocktail, who was having stupid, silly daydreams about a man who took her rubbish away. The enlightenment hit Lou like a lump hammer, and then her imagination took it and ran with it and embroidered a Bayeux tapestry around it.

He had probably had a good laugh about her to all the skip lads. Maybe that’s why different blokes kept delivering them, because he was sending them all up to have a look at her.
Clooney knocked her over and I nearly broke my
back lifting her up. And
–
you won’t believe this bit–she actually took in all that crap about me having a twin, the silly fat bag. I think she has the hots for me as well. Guess what, lads, she’s even got biscuits in for the dog!

Lou felt momentarily sick, as if the six-million-watt light bulb that had just switched on had drained her system of stomach stabilizers.
When will you ever learn, Lou?
said a weary inner voice.
When are you ever going to realize that you are just one of life’s stooges?
Jaws, Phil, Renee, Victorianna, Michelle, Bloody Keith Featherstone–they all thought she was a bit of a joke. And now him–(drum roll)–Mr Funny Skipman and his amazing performing brother. Why didn’t she just get out the red nose, stick it on her face and change her name to Charlie Cairoli? Tom Broom laughing at her felt worse than the rest of them put together.

Some little part of her that used to be Elouise Angeline Casserly flared up inside her and defied Lou Winter to spill those tears that were gathering behind her big green eyes. Instead, it pushed up her chin and, with reclaimed dignity, forced herself to make a semblance of joining in with the hilarity and say, ‘Silly me, yes, I see my mistake now.’ Which indeed she did.

It made her give Clooney a final pat on his great soft head and say a courteous goodbye to Tom Broom. Then it gave her the strength to walk calmly back to the sanctity of her kitchen without giving into an all-escaping run. There, it decided for her that there would be no more skips or contact with Mr Tom ‘Mick-Taker-Extraordinaire-Egomaniac-I’m-So-Clever’ Broom again. She didn’t need anyone else around who made her feel inadequate; there were too many of those already. She
had thought he was different, but he wasn’t. And she didn’t need rubbish like him in her life.

Phil walked in at four o’clock to find Lou putting the finishing touches to the airer which she had just screwed into the kitchen ceiling beams. Lou knew her way around a toolbox, thanks to years of trailing after her DIY-mad dad and learning from him. He bought her a set of power tools at fifteen and set her projects to do. Her dad had made some beautiful things for the house in his cellar workshop and she would watch him, sitting on the little chair with the heart-shaped hole in the back that he had made for her. Her mother was grudgingly grateful–it was obvious she would rather have impressed the neighbours with some posh furniture van delivering what she wanted.

Phil could wire up a plug but was terrified of drilling holes in case he hit a water pipe or cut through a cable and gave himself a free perm. He watched her screwing some metal thing into the wall and wondered how she could be bothered. She still hadn’t told him what all that buttering-up meal business was about yesterday, but he knew he wouldn’t have to wait long to find out. Lou couldn’t keep secrets. She would have been hopeless having an affair, not that Lou ever would have an affair, that was an impossibility. Lou would never do that to him. Lou was a lovely person, even if she did have a bit of an arse on her these days, unlike the trim Miss British Racing Green Eyes. He really would have to watch that. Phil was going places these days and it wasn’t enough for him that Lou was nice inside; he needed her to look good on his arm. He didn’t want people laughing at him,
like they laughed at Fat Jack when he brought Maureen out of her coffin to socialize.