• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 333 0

them and be shocked. I was given one of her dazzling smiles. Oh, those cornflower-blue eyes. Yes, she was still my Julie Andrews. And yes, I could still skip for miles through meadows similarly flecked with cornflower blue, clasping that dainty hand with the gold bangle at the wrist. Providing she could keep up with me, of course. After all, she must be a good 20 years older than me. That, actually, was the worrying thing. Not whether she could keep up with me, but why I, a 25 year old, should feel drawn to this older woman with all the Julie Andrews connotations. Well, as mentioned previously, my mum could have something to do with it. You see, over the years she’d been heavily involved in the Light Operatic Society down in Bournemouth where she and Dad had been living for about 20 years. Early on, when I was still a young teenager, she understudied for the lead in a local production of The Sound of Music. Yes, you’ve guessed it. Maria. I got roped in to help her rehearse her lines over and over again. Until I almost knew them off by heart. And of course there were the songs. Day-in, day-out, Dad and I were bombarded with snatches of the melodies being sung over the washing-up, often with the soundtrack on our old Dansette record player blasting out from the living room. So I sort of got brainwashed. Over the years, The Sound of Music has laid buried in my psyche. Locked away until Crystal Sharpe turned the key and Maria emerged once more. A bit creepy. A bit sinister. But at least I didn’t have the hots for Christopher Plummer.

‘Paul. You all right?’

‘Er, yes … sorry. Miles away.’ In Austria actually … with the von Trapp family … but all too complicated to explain. Whatever, it seems I’d struck the right note with how I’d coped with the Richardsons. Either that or Crystal’s holiday had put her in a particularly generous mood, for suddenly the practice cottage – the one over in Ashton – was going to be at my disposal at the end of July.

‘The tenancy finished then anyway,’ said Beryl when I told her. ‘So they’d want to make sure they got you in there as quickly as possible.’

Thanks, Beryl. You make a guy feel really good. She was standing in the doorway leading to the back garden having what she termed her ‘in between’ smokes, cigarette in her right hand, with her left hand palm up, to catch the ash. Dreadful habit. But no one, it seemed, had been able to persuade her to stop smoking.

‘Been doing it for 50 years and what harm has it done me?’ she’d croaked when challenged, glaring out from a face full of wrinkles that would have done a prune proud.

She dragged on her cigarette and gazed out at the tired back lawn, worn from dog exercising, bare in patches from urine scald.

‘You know, Mrs Paget will be sorry to lose you,’ she confided. ‘Cynthia’s been a lonely woman since Henry walked out on her. Though she’s got Chico, of course.’

Ah, yes … Chico. The ankle-biting chihuahua.

‘But it’s not the same,’ she added, giving me a funny, one-eyed stare, ‘if you know what I mean.’

To judge from the look Mrs Paget had given me when she’d caught me in my boxer shorts, I knew exactly what Beryl meant.

‘She thinks a lot of you.’

I’m sure she did – especially out of my boxers. ‘She let me have some freezer space,’ I said for want of something to say.

Beryl’ s good eye widened. ‘Did she indeed? Then you were honoured.’ She stepped on to the patio and tipped the ash in her palm over a wilting clump of lavender before stepping back in. ‘Still, you’ll have all the freezer space you’ll need over at Willow Wren. Especially if you’re going to be on your own.’ I was subjected to another glassy stare.

There. I knew it. She was fishing. In my first few days at Prospect House, I’d told her I had a girlfriend in London – Sarah. I went up to see her a couple of times on my days off but she was never keen to come down to Westcott-on-Sea. Maybe she thought it too fuddy-duddy for her. Not surprising, since despite it being 2004, the town did have a mid Fifties feel about it with its sprawl of bungalows and retirement homes. Whatever – absence,