by Jerard Bretts
‘On your own here then?’
The new next-door neighbour – Beth, was it? – leaned forward, craning her neck to appraise the hall while remaining on the doorstep. Beth’s skimpy skirt reminded Maud of her own twenties, the joy she’d found in following fashion. These days she hid her arthritic legs in shabby black trousers.
‘Just me,’ Maud replied.
Why say that Tom had died last year of prostate cancer because he refused to go to a doctor until it was too late?
‘I hope you enjoy living here,’ Maud concluded, closed the front door and hastened back to the garden. May was burgeoning in the wake of a wet winter, the rose buds on the bush that Tom had planted on the cusp of opening, their scent sweet and delicate.
Promise me you’ll look after the garden, he’d said. Sometimes, she felt he was still beside her as she weeded, or that, in the late afternoon, she would find him under the cherry tree, reading the Telegraph.
The family who used to live next door let Tom fix a trellis to the side wall of their detached garage, which formed part of the boundary. Maud wondered if Beth would have been so amenable. Anyway, now the climbing hydrangea was flourishing, a cascade of green leaves covered in tiny white flowers like stars.
***
Spring turned into a rainy summer.
There were two this time and the man – handsome, tanned – did most of the talking.
‘Water is leaking into our garage,’ he said. ‘We need to dig a trench in your garden and fill it with gravel. We’ll pay for the work, of course.’
‘Neil’s been having to broom the water out,’ Beth said. ‘It’s awful.’
All Maud could think to say was, ‘Well, I don’t know…’
‘Beth and me have a good mate, a gardener, he can come and give an estimate.’
‘We’ll pay for the work,’ Beth said. ‘You don’t need to worry.’
Maud thought about the soft sweet-scented pink roses, the profligate hydrangea, the garrya’s long silken tassels – and the wildflowers, the poker-shaped spikes of the lords-and-ladies and the swathes of blue forget-me-nots.
All to be dug up to make way for a trench filled with gravel.
***
Maud was unable to sleep the night before the gardener came. No more than a boy really. Skinny and blank-faced, he conferred with Neil and Beth on the lawn, pointing at where the flower bed met the garage wall. Maud kept her distance, remembering that she had meant to dig up the lords-and-ladies in case the grandchildren ever visited – their berries were appearing, now the flowers had died back. Devil’s lollipops, Tom used to call them.
Two days later, Neil and Beth were back, like invasive weeds she could not be rid of.
‘Here’s the estimate,’ Neil said, waving a piece of paper. ‘Look.’
Seven hundred pounds, plus VAT.
‘We only budgeted for two hundred,’ Neil said.
Maud nodded meekly.
‘But anyway,’ he continued, ‘we believe the leak is your fault and you should pay.’
‘What?’ Maud’s heart thumped. ‘No, it’s your garage. You said you’d pay and –’
‘We’ve spoken to our lawyer,’ Neil said. ‘His advice is that the courts will look more favourably on you if you pay for a survey and mediation.’
‘No,’ Maud said. ‘I’ve not done anything to your garage. Tom and I, we lived here for twenty-five years. No one raised this before. You said you’d pay.’
Maud slammed the door closed.
***
The intense August heat made Maud feel like she was wrapped in a thick woollen blanket that she didn’t have strength to throw off. She could not sleep and only picked at her food. When she tried to read or watch television her attention wandered.
She rang her eldest son for advice.
‘Well, Mum,’ he said hesitantly. ‘It would be difficult to sell the house if, say, God forbid, you ever needed to pay to move into care, with a neighbour dispute ongoing…’
***
‘It’s nice of you to invite us round,’ Neil sat on one of the three sun loungers, which Maud had placed carefully in the full sunshine. ‘And we’re so glad you’re going to do the right thing. We all want to be good neighbours, don’t we? You just need to put your best foot forward and pay my professional to put in the trench.’
He handed her the crumpled estimate.
‘It’s so hot today, isn’t it?’ Maud said. ‘How about some vanilla ice cream?’
Neil glanced at Beth.
‘Yes, please,’ he smiled. ‘We’d love some.’
‘And I nearly forgot – I’ve got summer berries. Would you like them with the ice cream?’
Neil and Beth nodded brightly.
She thought she heard a snicker as she headed for the back door.
In the cool of the kitchen, Maud tore the estimate into tiny pieces and let them flutter like snowflakes into the bin. She removed the ice cream tub from the freezer, scooped generous portions into three dishes and put on a pair of sky-blue disposable latex gloves. Her hands trembled as she opened the fridge door and fumbled for the plastic container, half full of bright, sugar-soaked red berries, more than enough for three dishes.
An avid reader of short fiction, Jerard Bretts lives in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. He completed a MA in Creative Writing in 2019. His recent flash fiction has appeared in the MinK anthologies Tales from the City and Dreams for Lammas.
