The Peas and Carrots Series Boxset 1, page 20
part #1 of Peas and Carrots Series
‘Why are you laughing?’ she said. ‘What’s so funny? Tell me. I want to know.’
It was over a minute before Eric managed to control his breathing well enough to stand upright and wipe away his tears. ‘One day,’ he said, ruffling Abi’s hair. ‘I’ll tell you one day.’
He slapped Norman on the shoulder, hugged Maggie goodbye, and got back to planting his radishes.
Chapter 27
ERIC HAD BEEN praying for good weather all week, but the statistics were not favourable. For the last month, it had been as though nature was mocking them. Weekdays had been your stereotypical April weather. Grey, windy, and interspersed with some traffic-seizing showers, but it was nothing you wouldn’t expect from the UK in April. Provided you had a brolly and the sense to pack a spare pair of trousers, you were fine.
Weekends were a whole different matter.
In fact, every weekend from the middle of April to the start of June, it poured down. On his trips down to Burlam, the water pelted the windscreen harder than the wipers could keep up with. The car – the Audi, as taking Sally was most definitely off the cards – crawled through rushing torrents that sprouted up from the drains. Eric cursed every second of the journey down. He leant towards the glass, unable to see anything other than headlights in the blurred prospect. Praying for a break between the unending downpours, Eric repeatedly cursed his father and the ridiculous stipulations of his inheritance.
It didn’t matter when he went down – Friday night, Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon after a vegan nut roast at Lydia’s – and it didn’t matter when he got there. Every weekend, the results were the same: monsoon season.
At the allotment, everything was wet. The ground, the air, his planters; they were all soaked. His newly sown seedlings stood limp, bobbing in the waterlogged compost, while rain poured off the greenhouse and shed roofs and gushed in eddying streams towards his little patch of land. Of course, the ground was slanted in a manner that meant the first allotment to flood was his. His rhubarb and carrots were drowning, and his sparkling new greenhouse had already sprung a leak.
Still, at least there was a little escapism.
Without a doubt, Norman’s shed was the last place that Eric had expected to find equanimity, particularly with Norman there for company, but there it was. In the weeks since the incident with the Dutch coriander, the two had struck up a firm friendship. The foundations of this friendship, although still a little shallow on the ground, were built primarily on talk of old cars, vegetable growth, and Cynthia’s homemade shortbread. If Eric arrived first, he’d do what he could in his Hunter wellies and a Barbour jacket, squelching around in the mud until his fingers reached a state of prunage usually associated with Suzy and the bath. At that point he would disappear into his greenhouse and prune the surplus leaves from his tomato plants until he spotted Norman hobbling up the path. After that, it was a case of waiting to see which dried out first, the conversation or the weather. Eric wasn’t allowed in the shed, but the veranda was more than big enough for the foldable deck chairs and cups of steaming tea.
Some days the men had extra company – Hank, Cynthia, a few other names Eric couldn’t remember – but mostly it was just the two of them. Their conversation was generally light, although once or twice Eric used it as a chance to unburden some of his work stress over plans of a merger and rumours of jobs cuts. Norman tended to ignore Eric’s rants, or else divert the conversation back to the weather and how this was nothing compared to sixty-eight. The one topic they avoided, starkly, was Eric’s father.
On the two occasions that George’s name had arisen – both times through Norman, not Eric – Eric cast an immediate detour and swerved the conversation off into another direction. Still, the brief mention caused residual shudders to echo down Eric’s spine.
As it was, the weather had entirely restricted Eric in his desire to take Norman out in Sally. Each week he’d had to postpone his plans, desperate that the following week would be better when inevitably it was worse. And so, he’d taken a risk.
When Eric received the notification through the owner’s club he’d passed the idea by Suzy. When she deemed it a good one, he’d mentioned it to Cynthia. She too gave her approval. And so, weather providing, they were all good to go. Eric went to bed that Friday night with butterflies in his stomach, checking the day’s forecast in three different counties on his phone. One day’s good weather. That was all he needed.
He was woken the next morning by Suzy. It was an unpleasant awakening as Suzy threw off the duvet and Eric’s immediate reaction – besides yelping with shock at the cold – was to grab his phone in order to once more check the weather situation.
‘You don’t need that.’
Suzy plucked his phone from his hand before striding over to the window and drew the curtains. She was wearing a tiny cotton night slip, and any other Saturday he would have delayed his plans by at least six minutes, but today time was too important.
‘Coffee’s waiting for you downstairs,’ she said, then threw him a towel off the radiator. ‘Don’t forget to say goodbye to Abi. I told her she could have a lie in, but she’ll be gutted if you don’t pop in.’
Eric drank his coffee, showered, and dressed, then poked his head around the corner of Abi’s door.
‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you tonight. Look after your mum.’
‘Dad?’
‘Yes, pumpkin.’
‘I hope Uncle Norman has fun today.’
‘I’m sure he will. See you later.’
‘Love you.’
‘You too, princess.’
The drive down from London to Burlam was all that Eric could have hoped, with empty roads and not a drop of rain in sight, but the cornflower blue skies and spun-sugar clouds did nothing to alleviate the niggling nerves. This was England. Sunshine in the morning may be nice, but it didn’t guarantee a thing. Eric had informed Cynthia of their early start at the beginning of the week and she’d suggested he swing by the house and collect him, saving them all a journey to the allotment.
Norman and Cynthia lived on the outskirts of Burlam where the big houses dominated but before the new-builds started. Eric cruised around the bends and passed the Welcome to Burlam sign, then signalled left down towards the quay. His stomach churned.
It was over a year since he last took this turn. New cars graced the driveways and many of the hedgerows were higher than he remembered, but other than that, everything was the same. The wych elms, the cedar cladding. The oversized windows and red brick chimneys. It was the same as last year, same as the year before, and every year Eric could remember from his childhood. He slowed to park up outside Norman’s front gate, hesitated, then kept going for another fifty yards until he reached the last house on the road.
It was impossible to ignore the glaring green For Sale sign with its deliberately askew Sold placard nailed over the top. Eric climbed out of Sally and took a step towards it. The grass in the front garden had all gone to seed, and the windows were veiled in ochre dust. Through the glass he could make out the shadows of the curtains, though there were no longer the rows of photograph frames sat on the ledge, there from his mother’s time. He wondered first how much the house had gone for and second, who it had gone to. The who it was gone to question lingered longer in his mind. A family probably. A well-off one. The type where both parents work, and the kids are brought up by a nanny. Perhaps a family trying to escape the rat race of city life. Perhaps they’d come into their own inheritance lately and that was how they managed to afford it. Behind him, the elms rustled in the breeze. Eric came back to the moment, turned around, got into Sally, and headed back up to Norman and Cynthia’s.
Cynthia answered in her slippers. A pink cardigan was draped over her shoulders and a pastel flowered button blouse. For a second Eric thought he may have had the wrong house, and it was only then he realised he’d never seen Cynthia without her sturdy green wax jacket and a pair of wellies.
She frowned, equally confused for a moment, before shaking her head clear.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I completely forgot. Oh dear. It’s today, isn’t it? Oh, what a nuisance.’
‘Is he ready? We’ve got quite a journey on us. If we can get going now, we can hopefully avoid the traffic.’
Cynthia bit down on her bottom lip. Eric waited.
‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘today’s not too good. I’m so sorry. Had I remembered, I would have called you. Saved you the journey.’
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Oh yes, yes. Fine. Just his cough. Had him up a lot of the night, you see. It’s so nice of you to offer to do this, but I’m not sure he’s up to —’
‘Cynth? Who’s at the door?’ Norman’s holler barked through from the back of the house. ‘If it’s those bloody internet —’
‘No, no. Don’t worry. It’s only Eric.’
‘Eric?’ Then after a pause. ‘What does he want?’
Eric was about to offer a reply when Norman shuffled out into the hallway. His home attire consisted of plaid flannel pyjama bottoms and a long blue vest that made him almost unrecognisable from Eric’s gardening mentor. He walked with a hand against the wall, scuffing his feet against the carpet as he coughed and spluttered. Eric’s toes fidgeted in his shoes. This wasn’t quite what he’d expected.
‘Sorry to drop in on you,’ Eric said. ‘Cynthia said you weren’t feeling great.’
‘Nothing wrong with me bar being nagged constantly,’ Norman grunted.
‘Well, I should probably head back, anyway. Suzy could do with having me at home. Abi seems to be developing her teenage genes five years early.’
Norman grunted towards Eric then peered his head around him. His eyes widened.
‘Is that what I think it is?’
With an implausible change of pace, Norman pushed his way past Eric, out the front door, and across the drive. Both Cynthia and Eric did a double take and by the time they’d reached him, Norman was standing barefoot on the pavement in his pyjamas, cheek flat against Sally’s bonnet, pawing at the metal work with his hand.
‘She gets more beautiful every time I see her,’ he said.
‘Norman, what are you doing? You’ll catch your death. At least go and put some slippers on.’
Norman turned to Eric, tactlessly ignoring his wife. ‘Are we going for a spin? Give me five minutes for a cuppa and I’ll be good to go.’
After he finished speaking, he promptly broke into a coughing fit that saw flecks of saliva fly out onto the windscreen.
‘Well, I’m not sure …’
‘Oh, don’t worry about this,’ he attempted to wipe the spittle away with the bottom of his vest. ‘Had this cough for the last thirty years. It’s not killed me yet.’
Eric turned to Cynthia. Outside the house and without the guise of her jacket, she’d shrunk to a person of Lilliputian proportions. Eric imagined her, next to Janice, together in a small house built into the stump of the tree. She looked from her husband to the car, a heavy sigh built between her lips.
‘Since when have I been able to stop you doing something?’ she said. ‘But you need to take it easy, mind? Rest. And none of that junk food either. I’m making you both a salad sandwich to take while you get dressed.’
While Norman showered and dressed, Eric sat at the breakfast bar watching as Cynthia buttered slices of bread and filled them with home-grown produce. It must have been a beautiful house once, and it still was to some degree; it certainly kept with the same fastidious sense of order that Eric had come to associate with Norman. But it was tired. The kitchen was in need of a refit, with its faded lino flooring and veneer edging peeling back from the corner of the cupboards, and from what he saw, the rest of the house was in a similar state. Smells of homemade jams and piccalilli abounded around him, while through the window a view stretched all the way down to the river. Eric sipped at his cup of tea as Cynthia worked. It was peculiarly weak.
‘How long have you been here?’ Eric asked.
‘Forty-seven years,’ Cynthia said proudly.
‘Wow.’
‘Bought it off the plot. We probably should have moved at some point, you know, got smaller, moved closer to town, something like that. But when you’re young you don’t think about being old, and when you’re old, you don’t have the energy to do those type of things.’
‘Still, forty-seven years, that’s impressive.’
She folded aluminium foil around the sandwiches.
‘There aren’t very many of us originals around here anymore. Until a few years ago, we were still going strong. Then one by one, it’s nursing homes and retirement villages. Of course, we’ve been to a fair few funerals too.’
‘I can’t imagine you and Norman settling into a retirement village just yet,’ Eric said.
‘No.’ Cynthia smiled. ‘Neither can I.’
Her gaze drifted off, and Eric was thinking of some way to break the silence when Norman’s voice boomed through.
‘Well then, are we getting on the road or not?’
Norman stood in the doorway to the kitchen. His shaggy beard had been brushed straight, along with his mane of hair which was lying flush to his head, glistening with water in perfectly combed lanes. He had on a tweed jacket, which hung well in the arm but a little loose around the middle, and carried a matching tweed flat cap in his hand. Eric stood up and straightened his own collar, feeling decidedly underdressed. ‘I guess we should be getting on then.’ He kissed Cynthia goodbye, then turned to Norman.
‘I’ll be right behind you,’ Norman said.
The car show smelt of petrol and hog roast. There was a bouncy castle on one side of the field while on the other side a small stage was set up. As they arrived, a troop of boys were performing what Eric could only assume was a breakdance – disturbingly choreographed – while the poster promised the best Elvis impersonator in the UK as the afternoon entertainment. Following the arm signals of the men in hi-vis, they crawled across the grass and parked up next to a classic red 1955 Spider and a slightly less classic silver Porsche 924.
‘It’s been a long time since I’ve been to one of these,’ Eric said, dodging the quagmire as he stepped outside. ‘I don’t think I can even remember the last time.’
‘’Spect it was around your O-levels. Your dad said you stopped going to things with him after then.’
The comment came matter-of-factly out of Norman’s mouth and caught them both by surprise.
‘I suspect it was,’ Eric said, thinking about it. There was a minute’s pause before he spoke again.
‘So, what do you want to do?’ he said. ‘I’ve got chairs in the back, so we can sit out here, although I hear there’s a 1954 300S somewhere in the grounds and a couple of E-types if you fancy going for a wander?’
Norman sucked in a breath with a wheeze. ‘I think I’ll stay with the old girl for now, if that’s all right with you? Although.’ He paused. ‘I wouldn’t mind you picking me up one of those hog roast rolls if you have a mind.’
‘What about your sandwiches?’
‘You know what? I think I forgot to pick them up.’
Chapter 28
ERIC WEAVED HIS way between the metal work and rubber. Norman was right, he thought. It must have been his A-level year the last time he came. After a few more minutes’ contemplation, he was certain. Joining a queue for coffee, he raked through years of well-repressed memories. Of course it had been during his A-levels; it had been this time of year too, possibly even this show. He remembered it now because of how fiercely he didn’t want to go. Exam season was upon him, and the pressure to get as far away from Burlam and his father was ever increasing. His father had turned up at school unannounced, on a Sunday, and expected Eric to drop everything and go with him.
‘I’ve got work to do. Revision. Exams,’ Eric had said. ‘They start next week. I can’t spend a whole day away.’
‘Revision, pff,’ his dad had harrumphed. ‘With soft subjects like you’re doing? They’re not going to get you anywhere. Anyway. I’ve told your housemaster you’re coming, so you’re coming.’
Eric had taken his books with him and spent the whole time sitting outside the car. Whenever anyone approached Sally, he buried his head deeper into the pages and offered disgruntled grunts as answers to their questions. He ate the bacon butty his father brought, but only because his stomach was growling so loudly he was finding it difficult to read. In the car ride back, he rested his head against the window and pretended to sleep. Four long hours of his revision lost, not including the drive there or back. That was how he had viewed it then.
The clouds were making a play for centre stage, and Eric shivered against them as he took his drink. The coffee was far better than he’d expected for a standard boot-sale food truck, and he made a mental note to come back to the same truck later. While the paper coffee cup heated up his hand, he wandered between the cars. Abi would like it here, he thought. And Suzy too.
Treading down the long grass, Eric admired the paintwork, leather interiors, and restoration projects. He ambled at leisure, moseying about with no fixed pattern or system to his route, revelling in the luxury of no children or deadlines. Once or twice he thought about heading back to check on Norman, but for now, he figured, there was no rush.
It was about fifteen minutes into his amble when Eric realised that he was now part of a strange and apparently obligatory club; one that he appeared to have settled in with remarkable ease and enjoyment.
He also soon noted that he, and other members of said club, followed a somewhat predictable pattern.
First, he would stop by a car and run his eyes over the body, or wheels or some other such feature. Next, an owner would appear by his side.
