The New Neighbours (7 page)

“Will the boys have to come all the way up here to use the bathroom?” she asked. “It'll be a nuisance for Ben.”

“No, no,” Madeleine explained, “there's a downstairs loo on the ground floor, and Dad says we can easily put a shower in under the stairs. That's really for the boys, and then we'll be up here.”

“Maddo, come and hold this tape for me,” called Nick from downstairs. While Madeleine had been showing her mother round the house, he had been making notes and taking measurements in the rooms that they were going to alter. The biggest alteration was to create a new room on the living-room floor. The present living room stretched the width of the house, and could easily have a section partitioned off to make another bedroom, looking back over the garden.

Madeleine ran down the stairs and dutifully held the end of the tape measure, as her father worked out exactly where the new wall would go. Gradually they worked their way round the house, deciding what they wanted to do and how the alterations should be done.

“We'll have to do something about this kitchen, Nick,” Clare called. “It's in a dreadful state. So's the bathroom for that matter.”

“Don't worry,” Nick called back. “We'll sort it all out, and when we've finished it'll be a really nice little house. I'll take care of the building and decorating side, you and Maddo will have to sort out furniture and curtains and all that sort of stuff.”

By the time they left the house Nick had made copious notes about what he intended to do, and Madeleine and Clare had made other notes on what was needed for curtains and carpet and furniture for each room.

“Let's go to a pub for some lunch,” Nick suggested, “and we can talk this through.”

“I told the others we'd probably go to the Dutch for some bar food,” Madeleine said. “I thought it would be a good idea if you met them all, Dad, because you've got to sort out the rent with them and all that. They're going to look in at about lunchtime to see if we're there.”

“Fine,” said Nick. “We'd better go then. Anything anyone else wants to do here?”

There wasn't, so they got into the car and Madeleine directed them to the Flying Dutchman.

The bar was quite busy, but they managed to get a table in a corner, and Nick ordered drinks while they decided what to eat. Before they had ordered the other four arrived and cheerfully squashed themselves into the corner, too.

Madeleine introduced them all to her parents. They had met Cirelle before, as Madeleine had brought her home on a couple of occasions, but the others were new to them. As they drank their drinks and chose their food, Clare looked round at them all and wondered how they would get on together in the house. They were clearly good friends at the moment, but would that friendship survive living in fairly close proximity? She knew Cirelle was a quiet girl, used to working hard. At first, when Maddo had brought her home, Clare had wondered what her daughter had seen in her, but as she got to know Cirelle herself, Clare had come to recognise her dependability, and the generosity of her nature. Far more concerned about the consequences of her actions than Madeleine would ever be, Cirelle, Clare decided, might be a good influence on Maddo, perhaps even exercising restraint on some of her more flamboyant doings. She smiled across at Cirelle now, and was treated to Cirelle's slow smile.

She really is a very beautiful girl, thought Clare. Her skin is exquisite, and those huge dark eyes… well, you could drown in the innocence of those.

The other girl, Charlie, was a tall slim girl with blond hair and grey eyes. She was far less exuberant than Madeleine, but she smiled and joined in the conversation readily enough, with a gentle Irish accent that Clare found attractive.

“I'm reading History,” she said in answer to Clare's question. “Unfortunately I had glandular fever last year and I missed so much I've had to repeat my second year. I can't wait to get out into a house for my final year. I was so pleased when Mandy changed her mind and Mad offered me her place in your house.”

Clare laughed. “Mad? Is that what you call her?”

Charlie looked a little embarrassed. “Well,” she said, “we all do. It sort of suits her. She says she's going to call the new house The Madhouse.”

“Is she indeed?” smiled Clare. “Sounds most appropriate to me.”

“We all call it that already,” admitted Charlie. “Don't we, Dean?”

Dean was another one Clare hadn't met before. He was small, not more than five foot eight, with faded mousy hair and a rather feeble attempt at a beard, but his rather ordinary face was redeemed by his dark blue eyes. They were wide-set and shone with a luminosity that lit his whole face, and when he smiled, as he was doing now, he had an endearing quality that made Clare like him at once.

“Says she's going to have a house sign made,” he laughed.

“He's very easy-going,” Maddo had told her mother. “Never gets stressed about anything. Should be an easy guy to live with.”

“Provided he does his share,” murmured Clare.

“Yes, well, we'll all have to do that,” agreed Madeleine. “I must say his room's usually a tip, but that won't matter if he keeps his door shut.”

“And if he doesn't leave the same tip in the kitchen,” said her mother.

“He won't.” Madeleine spoke in the long-suffering voice she kept for simple-minded parents. “He'll be fine, OK?”

Clare looked across at the last of them. Ben was obviously older than the rest, not just in years, but in experience. Clare thought him attractive. He was a big man, tall and broad with powerful arms, and Clare supposed if she could have seen them, powerful legs as well. She knew from Madeleine that he was a rugby player, and looking at him she could well believe it. He was good-looking, too. Not in a classically handsome way, but with a strong face, with deep-set dark eyes and a firm mouth and chin. He wore his thick, dark hair long, tied back in pony-tail, though wisps of it curled forward round his ears. Clare was only gradually coming to terms with men who wore their hair in pony-tails, she always felt that it was rather effeminate, but there was nothing effeminate about Ben Gardner. The strength of his face was echoed in the strength of his body, he seemed charged with a masculinity that Clare could almost touch. She wondered if Maddo was as aware of it as she was. There seemed to be nothing but friendship between them, and of course Maddo had Dan, but Clare knew if she had the choice which of those two she would choose. As she watched Ben talking with Nick, she was struck by the confidence with which he conversed, treating Nick with the ease of an equal. He seemed much older than the others, not only in age where the difference was not really that great, but in experience where he seemed to outstrip them by miles. Would the difference in age and experience make for difficulty in the house she wondered? Something told her that Ben's room would not be a tip, nor would he tolerate fools gladly. There would be no rivalry between him and Dean, Clare was fairly certain, but, she thought, there would be no close friendship either.

Ben caught her studying him, and raising his chin he let his eyes run over her in an equally appraising fashion, finally holding her own with a quizzical smile. He waited for her to speak and eventually she said, “Maddo was telling us that you're a keen rugby player.” Even to herself it sounded trite and rather patronising, but it was the best she could think of on the instant.

However, Ben answered easily enough. “Yes, I play for the university.”

“Is it a good team?”

“Good enough.”

The conversation suddenly seemed to be going nowhere and Clare was glad when Madeleine broke in to demand of Ben what he was going to eat and she was able to turn and speak to Cirelle.

While they munched their way through jacket potatoes stuffed with a variety of fillings, Nicholas explained to them all how the finances of the house would be run.

“There should be no problems if we all stick to a few elementary, but unchangeable rules,” he said, and went on to outline what these would be. Most of them were simple common sense and everyone readily agreed to them.

“I shall get these written down as a sort of contract, so that we all know where we stand, and that part will all be safely on a business footing. Your own house rules are up to you!”

They parted outside the pub with the general feeling that everything was going to work out perfectly. Madeleine walked back to the car to see her parents off.

“I'll be getting my men over some time in the next couple of weeks,”

Nick promised her. “The problem is being so far away.”

“Only an hour.”

“Yes, but it's an hour at each end of the working day. It is just one more thing to be organised. But don't worry, we'll sort it out. They seem a nice crowd,” he added as he gave her a hug. “I should think you'll have a lot of fun living with them.”

“Though goodness knows what their neighbours will think,” Clare said as they drove away.

Nick shrugged. “They'll just have to put up with them,” he said.

The news of the student house percolated gently through the Circle and was met with various emotions ranging from unabashed delight from Chantal Haven aged fifteen through complete indifference of several of the working couples to the fear and indignation of Sheila Colby.

“It'll be great to have some real guys living here,” Chantal enthused to her sister Annabel when they heard the news. “Anything's better that the Crosshills' crowd.”

Annabel agreed, adding in the silence of her own mind, except for Scott, and aloud to Chantal, “Not that they'll look at you, you're far too young.”

“I am not,” Chantal shot back indignantly, “and anyway they won't know how old I am if I don't tell them.”

“And if I don't.”

“You won't,” Chantal said sweetly.

“Oh, really? And what makes you so sure?” asked Annabel. She, of course had Scott, so that a houseful of students conveniently across the road was of little real interest to her; but if they did turn out to be a good crowd, she didn't want Chantal tagging along. She, herself, was just finishing her lower sixth year at Belcaster High, and in October next year would, she hoped, be entering the world of university somewhere. Chantal hadn't even done her GCSEs.

“Because if you so much as breathe anything about me, I might just let slip to Mum about Scott Manders.”

Annabel was momentarily stunned as Chantal slipped this thrust under her guard, but recovering swiftly and with amazing control over her voice she managed to say carelessly, “Who?”

Scott Manders was the centre of Annabel's life. She ate, drank and slept Scott Manders, and with the connivance of her best friend Avril, she managed to spend much of her out-of-school time with him. He had never been home to Dartmouth Circle of course. Scott wasn't the kind of guy you brought home to meet your mother. She wouldn't understand someone like Scott, and certainly Annabel knew, she wouldn't approve of him. He'd dropped out of the sixth form at Crosshills to start his life for real; he was cool and he was streetwise with stubble hair, stubble chin and an earring in his ear and Annabel adored him.

She had met him one Friday evening as she struggled home from school with a weekend's homework in her bag. As she passed the entrance to the park a small gang of Crosshills lads emerged and Annabel's heart sank. It was the Crosshills Pack. She recognised them only too well with their leader, a stocky red-headed youth, called Martin Collins. Teasing and bullying Belcaster High School girls was one of their favourite pastimes, and his face lit up as he saw her. Immediately they were round her, penning her in against the park railings.

“Hallo, darlin',” grinned Martin. He shoved his face into hers. “I could really fancy you!”

Annabel jerked her head away, pressing against the railings at her back. Emboldened by their leader, the pack began to torment her.

“All right, darlin'?”

“Want to feel my cock, do yer?”

“Needs a mouthful of cock, eh Denzer?”

“Nice tits!” The one addressed as Denzer made a grab at Annabel's breast: “Give us a feel, then.”

Again she jerked away, shouting, “Go away! Leave me alone! Get lost!” But she was surrounded. Her bag caught on the railings and ripped so that some of her work fell out. With a whoop of delight, Martin pounced on it.

”What a good little worker,” he crowed, tossing files and papers in the air. “Mummy's good girl. Ain't you got no time for fun, darlin'? We could show you a good time.” He grabbed at her again pulling her blouse out of her skirt.

Annabel did her best to fight him off, kicking out and screaming abuse at him, but the street was empty and her tormentors, discarding her bag and its contents, moved in on her—in a pack.

Suddenly she was not alone. Someone erupted from an old Bedford van parked across the street. Another guy, a little older and very much bigger than any of the pack tormenting Annabel, charged across the road, and picking up Martin Collins as if he were a doll, tossed him against the railings. He crumpled into a heap and lay still. The result was a moment of frozen astonishment and then the pack began to back warily away.

“Pick it all up!” the newcomer bellowed, and to Annabel's amazement the Pack, the Crosshills Pack, of whom all the younger children and the Belcaster High girls were terrified, had scurried into the gutter and over the fence into the park retrieving folders and sheets of paper and text books, and had stacked them neatly on the pavement in front of her. Scott stood in a silence more terrible than his explosive wrath until they had finished, then he prodded the still crumpled form of the red-headed leader and said, “Take him with you and bugger off. And remember if I see one of you fuckers within a mile of this woman again, you'll lose your balls. Right? Now, fuck off!”