The Unorthodox Arrival of Pumpkin Allan (5 page)

“Don’t panic, you’ve got umbrellas in the boot!” Mel shouted pointedly, remembering Lois’s smug minimalism.

“Umbrellas! What are umbrellas going to be any good for, it’s pissing down!” Lois grimaced, missing the point of Mel’s jibe altogether.

Mel glanced over at Lois. Her short pixie hair cut was sticking to her head, mascara was starting to run down her cheeks and she was scowling. Mel couldn’t help herself; “My God you’re ugly when you’re angry.”

This comment, unsurprisingly, did nothing to help lift Lois’s mood. She pulled the car over outside the cottage. Mel got out straight into a large, muddy puddle, waded through, unperturbed, opened the boot and pulled out the two golfing brollies. She hoisted the first one and handed it to Lois, who was still sat in the car, tears mixing with the rain that dripped down her face. The other she opened for herself. Mel, starting to feel a little peeved with Lois’s sulky behaviour, said, “Bloody thing’s going to get wet Lo, it’s an outside door!” and went stomping off up the road in search of a suitable man to help her lift a very heavy oak door out of the back of the car.

Mel was in luck, there was a farmer sitting in a tractor, eating his sandwiches a bit further along the road. She reached up and tapped on the window, which seemed to spook him a bit at first, but he then opened his door and asked “Can I ‘elp?” Mel quickly introduced herself and explained the situation, slightly exaggerating Lois’s physical and psychological condition, in the hope of increasing his sympathy for them. “Always ‘appy to ‘elp ladies in distress!” he said and climbed down from his tractor. As he started to hobble, bandy-legged towards Honeysuckle, Mel began to wonder whether perhaps she’d picked the wrong man.

When they arrived at the car Lois peered out from under the umbrella, hair soaked, eyes red, mascara trails down her cheeks. All in all not the first impression she had envisaged giving the neighbors. But perhaps this man wasn’t a neighbour; Lois thought he looked a bit rough for these parts. He was wearing a grimy looking jacket over a shirt with the buttons done up incorrectly and the tail dangling out at the back, tatty old trousers, held up with bailer twine and Doc Martin’s with one of his big toes poking through. He was unshaven and his mop of wavy, grey hair looked greasy and unkempt.

Mel shook her umbrella and put it in the boot, then did the same with Lois’s. The rain had all but stopped and Lois seemed a lot calmer. She got out of the car and despite feeling ridiculous, held out her hand to the stranger in front of her, “Lois Shenfield, pleased to meet you,” she said in her most business like voice. She regretted offering her hand as soon as she saw the colour of his. It was brown, manure brown. But it was too late, she cringed inwardly, trying hard not to allow her disgust to show, as he took her hand and shook it firmly. “Bill Riley, I’m from farm at end o’ track, Willow Farm.” Lois could only just understand his very broad accent.

Lois thought the name sounded familiar. Then it clicked. Bill Riley was the man that Charles Black had made such a point of telling her to avoid. She wondered whether she should avoid him, he looked harmless enough and Willow Farm was a stunning place, she and Tom had walked past it on several occasions when they’d driven out to admire Honeysuckle.

Right on cue, Bill asked, “’ave you met old man Black yet?”

“Um, yes I have met him,” muttered Lois, noncommittally.

“‘E’s a right dodgy bloke ‘e is. Take my advice and give ‘im a wide birf!”

“Ah, right, I’ll remember that.” Lois decided the best thing would be to change the subject and move on. She asked Bill whether he thought he would be ablea to lift the door out of the car and into the garden for her, with Mel’s help.

“No trouble luv, you just leave it t’ me!” He pushed his sleeves above his elbows and was just positioning himself to lift the door when they all heard a horse approaching from the bridleway adjacent to the cottage, then heard the rider shout.

“Oi Bill, what the ‘ell are you doing? You’ll have another ‘eart attack if you start doin’ things like that again!”

The horse was huge and had foam on it’s neck where sweat had mixed with the rain. The rider, a pretty young woman, wearing only a vest top on her upper body, was soaked through. She jumped off the horse as it pranced around. “’Ere Bill, you come and ‘old ‘im while I ‘elp with the door.”

“Oi Sissy, wot ‘ave I bleedin’ told ya ‘bout droppin’ yer H’s. I spen’ a fortune on tha’ posh school. Now talk proper!” Bill took the reins of the horse as the girl mumbled, “yeah, yeah Bill, wha’ever!” Lois thought that if he had heart problems, the last thing he should be doing was holding this enormous beast, who was now jogging on the spot, but both Bill and the girl were totally unperturbed by the horses behaviour.

“Hi, I’m Sicily from Willow Farm, let me give you an ‘and with that. Over by the ‘ouse, yeah?”  Sicily grabbed either side of the door, heaved it to boot level, where she rested it to rearrange her grip.

Mel hovered around her, “How can I help?”

“Keep out o’ the way I reck’n!” chortled Bill as Sicily lifted the door and carried it to the front of the house, where she gently put it down and leant it against the wall.

Both Lois and Mel were practically speechless, amazed at Sicily’s strength, considering how tall and skinny she was.

“Gosh Sicily, you’re incredibly strong, it took two men to put the door in the car,” said Mel as Sicily rescued her horse from Bill. Sicily shrugged.

“It’s from working with ‘orses, soon muscles you up, don’t it Bill?” She glanced at Bill who was now leaning against the boot of the car, his huge beer belly busily testing the strength of his buttonholes. “Well, some of us anyway!” she laughed. By this time the horse was totally beside itself and either the car or one of the bystanders were in danger of being damaged. Sicily led it a few yards up the road, literally leapt on and was away up the lane at a brisk trot.

“What a delightful girl,” said Lois to Bill.

“She’s the apple of me eye,” Bill said as he watched Sicily disappear from view. Then he said abruptly, “Must be getting’ on, busy, busy, busy!” and hobbled back towards his tractor.

Lois and Mel went to inspect how wet the inside of the car was. They were just contemplating whether it would be better to put the roof back up in case it rained again, or leave it open to the air to help with the drying process, when they heard the front door of the next cottage shut and footsteps scrunching across the gravel driveway. They looked at each other and Lois nodded towards the house and mouthed “make a run for it?” But it was too late. An unusually tall woman, with short blonde hair, appeared around the newly trimmed holly hedge and strode slowly towards them, two spaniels trotting behind her, a somewhat sheepish expression on her face.

“Hi, I’m Annie Nutter, from next door, are you our new neighbours?”

“Hi,” Lois paused, feeling slightly anxious that she was introducing herself to a psychopath, “I’m Lois, your new neighbour, myself and my boyfriend Tom. This is my friend Mel.” Lois tried to visualise this rather gentle looking woman being responsible for all that hideous screaming and crashing that they had witnessed coming from next door. “Nutter by name, nutter by nature?” Lois thought to herself, trying desperately to keep a straight face.

“When did you arrive?” asked Annie, nonchalantly, praying that it wasn’t the previous day.

Lois didn’t know whether to lie about their time of arrival or about the fact that they had been able to hear, what was presumably Annie’s, horrendous outburst, quite clearly through the walls of their new house. Lois was just clearing her throat to speak when she heard Mel give a tiny snort, the kind that escapes when one is trying very hard not to laugh. Lois shot her a threatening glance, at which point Mel could no longer contain herself. They started as quiet titters, then when Annie said “Ah, you were here yesterday then,” with an embarrassed smile, Mel’s titters developed into hysterical laughter, which Annie and Lois found themselves drawn into and soon the three of them were laughing helplessly.

When they were once again able to speak, Annie offered to fetch them some old towels to mop up the car and invited them into her cottage for a cup of tea.

As they walked round to Annie’s, Lois noticed that Bill was still sitting in his tractor a little further up the road, which seemed odd, him having said he was so busy. He noticed them and gave Lois a friendly wave. She decided he must be waiting to meet somebody and thought nothing more of it.

Annie offered Lois and Mel a shower and to put their wet clothes in the tumble dryer, an opportunity at which they both jumped. Lois went first and came down to the kitchen in a gorgeous, white, fluffy dressing gown, which Annie had given her to wear.

“That feels wonderful, thank you so much!” said Lois as Annie took her wet clothes for the dryer. “I’m so sorry to be a pain.”

“Oh, not at all. It’s the least I can do to make my new neighbour feel welcome,” she said, handing Lois a large mug of tea, “after all, you can’t have thought I was very welcoming yesterday. I’m so sorry! To be honest you could not have picked a worse day to arrive. I have never, in my entire life, lost my temper. In fact I hardly ever get cross, I promise, I’m really very mellow. But yesterday, I don’t know, something inside me just snapped!”

When Mel arrived downstairs, Annie was explaining to Lois the predisposing factors that had lead to her outburst. It warmed Lois’s heart to hear that she loved living in this place so much. Annie’s strength of character and openness were also growing on Lois. She wouldn’t have believed it yesterday, but today she had a strong feeling that they were going to become good friends.

Lois was tempted to start asking Annie questions about some of the other neighbours they had so far encountered, but she had no sooner mentioned Bill’s name, than there was a knock at the door. It was Adam, looking for Lois. He’d come to fit her new front door. Annie invited him in for a cup of tea, but he was eager to get on with the job.

“I’d give you a hand,” said Mel, “only I’ve nothing to wear.”

“Fine by me,” Adam smiled.

Lois looked at Mel to see if she was blushing. But no, she was lapping up Adam’s attention, with a broad grin on her face.

“You can borrow something of my daughter’s if you like. She’s about the same size as you,” said Annie.

“That’s really kind Annie. Oh, hang-on, I’ve just remembered. Unlike Lois, I came prepared for getting soaked,” said Mel, “I’ll go and fetch my clean, dry clothes from the boot of the car!”

Annie was delighted to have Lois stay for a bit longer, she found her very easy to talk to and she was happy to have somebody different to chat things through with. It seemed extraordinary how quickly the two of them had clicked and Annie felt very excited at the prospect of having a next-door neighbour with whom she got on really well. She now felt more determined than ever that she and Dave should stay in Lilac cottage.

“Anyway, enough of me and my problems, when’s the baby due?” Annie asked Lois.

“Middle of September. Not too long now. Hopefully we’ll get the cottage straight in time, we had no idea so much would need doing.” As they drank tea, Lois filled Annie in on Tom’s accident and the unexpected problems they had so far encountered with the house. Lois laughed, “Well at least it looks like the soundproofing can be crossed off my list!”

When Lois’s clothes were dry, she changed back into them and Annie took her to see the garage loft-space, garden and paddock. After much discussion the previous night, she and Dave had decided that along with the boat, the paddock should be the first thing to be sold and was secretly hoping at this point, that Lois and her other half may be interested. The paddock backed onto both Annie and Lois’s cottages and had direct access to the bridleway, which ran down the side of Lois’s garden.

Despite the paddock being wildly over-grown, Lois loved the idea of buying it. She had always wanted to own a horse, but living in London had made the prospect too impractical to contemplate. This seemed like an opportunity too good to miss as far as Lois could see and she asked Annie what price they had in mind. Annie had apparently spoken to a couple of land agents that morning and the figure that they were throwing around, was in the region of one hundred thousand pounds.

Lois tried to disguise her disappointment. She knew Tom would just laugh at her if she suggested putting in an offer. They had really stretched themselves to buy the house, let alone adding on another hundred grand. Lois had thought the figure would be more like ten thousand for a couple of acres of overgrown land. Annie explained that the most likely thing was that they would put it up for auction. Lois’s thoughts were divided between it going for a pittance, so they might have a chance of buying it, and going for a fortune to help Annie and Dave stay in the house.

Arriving back in the kitchen, Lois thanked Annie profusely for her hospitality and made her way back to Honeysuckle, armed with tea for Adam and Mel, with Mel’s dry clothes tucked under her elbow. Annie’s parting comment was that Lois and Tom could use Lilac cottage as their own while Honeysuckle was in turmoil.

Lois crossed Annie’s drive, smiling to herself. She couldn’t believe that after her fears of yesterday, she now felt confident that Annie was going to make a fantastic neighbour. A car approached as she walked the short distance along the road to Honeysuckle. The driver opened the passenger window as he pulled up alongside Lois. A broad set man, with a seriously receding hairline and a big smile, leant over. “Hi, I’m Dave” he said, grinning broadly. “I’m assuming you’re our new neighbour and that you’ve met my wife,” he nodded at the mugs she was carrying, which he clearly recognised. “Welcome to Harewood Park. I hope you’ll be as happy as we are here!”