David turned and walked back into the kitchen just as Jasmine entered through the other door.
“What a hassle!” She picked up her mug from the sideboard and took a sip. “Monday mornings are always like that.” She made a face at the lukewarm contents of the mug, and throwing the remainder into the sink, she walked over to the table. “Give me a minute while I clear this up, then I'll show you where everything is.”
“I suppose that that was Mrs. Newman?” David asked.
Jasmine turned from the table, her face aghast. “Oh, for heaven's sakes, I forgot to introduce you!” She picked up a stack of plates and carried them over to the dishwasher. “Yeah, that was Mrs. Newman. Jennifer, actually, she don't really like being called Mrs. Newman. She always moves like a whirlwind, so sometimes formalities just fly out the window.”
“She obviously works, then.”
“Yup, and how. She's what's called an account
ee
xecutive with an advertising company in Manhattan, so she's away mostly during the week, usually Mondays through Wednesday or Thursday. She and her husband have an apartment in the West Village.”
“Ah, right.”
He paused for a moment, wondering whether it was preferable to remain silent or continue asking questions that might be considered inquisitive. Silence sounded like the wrong option. “And Mr. Newman? What does he do?”
“Oh, he's some big shot with a computer company. He was here for the weekend but left earlier this morning. He's away most of the time.” She pushed the cereal packets into one of the cupboards and put her hand on the top of the unit, letting out a sigh of concern. “Hard on them both, I think. Don't manage to see much of each other, only on weekends, sometimes not even that.” She supplied the dishwasher with detergent, shut the door and switched it on. “But it's really hardest on Benji.”
“So what happens to him?”
“Benji? He stays here with me.” She picked up a cloth, and giving it a quick rinse under the tap, set about wiping the surface of the table. “Right now, it's just three or four nights a week, depending when Jennifer gets back, but during the winter, I'm here for the whole week.”
“Right.”
She finished the table with a flourish and hung up the towel on a hook beside the oven. “Okay, so that's done. Come on, I'll show you the garden.”
She began making for the French windows at the front.
“Er, Jasmine, would you mind if we went out the back? It's just that I want to let the dog out of the car.”
She looked at him warily. “I'm not usually very good with dogs. It's not some kinda guard dog, is it?”
David snorted. “No, it's a poodle.”
“A poodle?” She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “What in heaven's name are you doin' with a poodle?”
“It's not mine. I'm only looking after it for someone.”
Jasmine shrugged and walked towards the back door. “Okay, I think I can handle a poodle.”
Dodie was delighted to see them, leaping up and down on the front seat of the car as she watched them approach. David let her out and instantly forgave her for having had yet another obvious gnaw at the steering wheel, in that she immediately gave Jasmine a rapturous welcome before endearing herself still further by picking up a piece of wood that was twice her own body weight and hauling it in circles around them.
Jasmine unlocked the door of the wooden shed next to his car and showed him where to find everything, then together they walked round to the front of the house. The garden was much larger than he had envisaged, the trees on either side of the lawn running down to the edge of the bay. Over to the right, sheltered from the wind on all sides by a high evergreen hedge, was the swimming pool, a section of its sparkling blue water just visible through the white picket gate, and beyond this still, David made out the high wire-netting of a tennis court above the hedge. The uniformity of the layout was cleverly offset by the almost random positioning of brightly coloured herbaceous borders, although the sparsity of vegetation in some was proof enough of the brutal treatment they had received at the hands of the last gardener.
“Pretty good, huh?” Jasmine said, surveying the garden with him.
“It's beautiful. It's so, well, peaceful.”
“Yup,” Jasmine said, nodding. “Sometimes too peaceful.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, well, I'll let you get to work. You want anything, I'll be in the house.”
She smiled and turned to make her way back towards the kitchen, then stopped and looked back at him. “Have you got anything for lunch?”
“Yeah, I stopped in at the deli on the way here.”
“Okay, but come and eat it with me, and in future, don't bother with the deli.
I'll
give you lunch.”
“That's very kind. Are you sure?”
Jasmine laughed and shook her head. “Of course I'm sure. Do I
look
unsure or somethin'?”
She turned and David watched her as she walked over to the French doors and back into the house. He looked down at Dodie, who was sitting at his feet staring up at him, her head cocked to the side, a twig now sticking out the corner of her mouth like a twisted cheroot.
“Right, Dodie, let's get started.”
He reversed the sit-on mower out of the shed and started on the lawns that bordered the drive, and from the moment that he set the cutters in motion, he felt an instant and overwhelming sense of release. It was like a coming home, his return from the wilderness, and immediately the broken lines of communication and thought that he had had with Rachel in the garden at Inchelvie seemed reconnected. He smiled to himself, relishing the sweet smell of the newly cut grass, realizing now that this had been all that he needed since leaving Scotland, his whole spirit being further uplifted and revitalized by the heat of the sun on his body as he worked.
It took him the whole morning and the first part of the afternoon to cut all the lawns. Dodie ran alongside him for the first half-hour, but then, suffering from the heat and the sudden increase to her exercise regime, she chose to retire to the shade and lay watching him from beneath one of the blue awnings that were hung over the kitchen doors. David joined her and Jasmine for lunch at one o'clock, and the three of them sat together on the paved area outside the kitchen. They talked initially about Dodie, David explaining how his charge had come as a job lot, with a house and car attached. He only took the story back as far as Carrie, never mentioning Richard or Angie, and although to Jasmine his story seemed light and unconvincing, leaving many a question unanswered, she thought better than to ask them. She liked him; she liked his polite and unassuming manner, and his natural ability in displaying a genuine interest in herself. She talked easily about her employment with the Newmans, how she had started seven years ago as a domestic help, and how it had then evolved into her becoming their housekeeper, at the time that Jennifer decided to go back into full-time employment. Lunch went on much longer than it should have, and at two-thirty, accompanied by exclamations of horror at the time, they both jumped up from their chairs. David took off once more across the lawn on his mower, while Jasmine went into the house to continue with her work upstairs.
Having spent two hours giving Benji's room a much-needed clean, Jasmine was in the process of carrying the vacuum cleaner down the stairs when she heard the sound of a car pulling away on the front drive, followed by the sound of the back door slamming shut. She put the cleaner away in the cupboard under the stairs and walked through to the kitchen to find Benji helping himself to a carton of chocolate milk from the fridge.
“Hi, darlin', how's school today?”
“Gross,” Benji replied.
“Did Germaine turn up on time?”
“She was five minutes late.” Benji poured too much chocolate milk out into the glass, and it overflowed onto the sideboard. Jasmine picked up the cloth from beside the sink and was making her way over to clear up the mess, when Benji picked up the glass and deliberately flicked his hand across the spilt milk so that it sprayed over the floor.
“Benji!” Jasmine said, “Why'd'ya do that?” She bent down to wipe it up.
“Why'd'ya do that?” Benji said, imitating her voice, his mouth turned down at the corners. He carried his glass over to the television area, put it down on the floor and, flumping into one of the beanbags, he turned on the television with the remote control.
Jasmine finished wiping up the mess and rinsed the cloth under the tap, then, leaning her back against the sink, she folded her arms and watched him silently. He had really changed so much in the past year. He always had been such good fun, so full of crazy and wicked ideas, but now, ever since moving up to middle school, he had gotten all moody and uncommunicative, something she could understand of a kid in his mid-teens, but not for one of eleven years old.
Of course, it hadn't helped being kept back a year in elementary, because now all his friends were in the class above him, and he'd told her that none of them wanted to be seen around with him, because he was one year lower. And then, of course, the fact that he had put on quite a bit of weight over the past six months didn't help matters. Not that he was hugely fat, and since he was tall for his age, he didn't look out of proportion. But he certainly was unfit-looking, and it had been enough for him to be excluded from any of the school teams. However, she couldn't really understand why this had happened in the first place. He didn't eat that much at home, and the only explanation that she could come up with was that he might well be heading off to the candy shop in Leesport at lunch-break, much against his mother's every wish.
But then again, she never felt like questioning him about it. She walked over to him and bent down and patted him on the shoulder. “Want a swim?”
“I'm all right,” he said, not taking his eyes off the television.
“Suit yourself,” she said, raising her eyebrows in defeat. She turned and was about to walk away when she heard above the noise of the television the sound of Dodie barking in the garden. Benji heard it too, and he raised his head and looked out of the French doors, craning his neck to see where the noise was coming from. “What was that?”
“That's Dodie. She's a poodle. She belongs to David, the new gardener. He's from Scotland.”
Benji got to his feet and slumped over to the French doors and looked out to where David was working near the swimming pool. Jasmine followed, and standing quietly behind him, they both watched Dodie dancing around on the lawn with an old tennis ball, desperately trying to get David to throw for her. He turned from his work in the flower-bed and gave it a kick across the lawn. Dodie headed after it as fast as her legs would move and, having retrieved it, she made her way laboriously back to him, the ball slipping out of the side of her mouth every so often. Then, dropping it at his feet, she would let out another yelp, and David, in his own time, would start the process over again.
Benji leaned against the French door, his hands thrust into the pockets of his long baggy shorts, rocking himself back and forth against the doorpost as he watched this happen three or four times. “He's not wearing a skirt,” he said glumly.
“What d'ya mean, a skirt?” Jasmine asked, perplexed by his statement.
“Scotsmen are
supposed
to wear skirts, Jasmine,” he replied with a sigh of impatience at her ignorance.
“Now, for once you're wrong, Benji, 'cos I know they're called kilts.”
“Skirts, kilts, what's the difference? All seems pretty girly to me.
And
he's got a girly dog.”
Jasmine smiled and shook her head in despair at his mood. She turned away from the window.
“What do you want for supper?”
“Don't care much.”
“Okay, I'll give you fried flies on toast, then.”
“Jasmine?”
“Yuh?”
“Do you think what's-his-name knows anything about bikes?”
Jasmine turned back to look at him. He was still leaning against the doorpost, gazing out into the garden. “David? I dunno, Benji. Why?”
“Do you think he could put the pedal back on my bike?”
Jasmine smiled to herself. “I reckon he probably could. That is, if you ask him politely and start to remember his name properly.”
Benji remained where he was, so Jasmine, thinking that a little active encouragement was in order, walked back towards him, pulling the pedal out of the flowerpot as she passed the table.
“Tell you what. If you put on your swimming trunks, then go get your bike and ask him to put the pedal back on, you can have a swim while he's doing it, okay? But you'd better hurry, 'cos I think he'll be headin' home pretty soon.”
“Okay!” With a sudden air of excitement, he grabbed the pedal from her grasp and ran through the kitchen into the house. Jasmine watched him go, then, tilting her head to the side at this unexpected hint of hopefulness, she went to make a start on his meal.
It was Dodie who first alerted David to the boy's approach, suddenly rushing off across the lawn, yapping loudly. David turned from his work in the flower-bed to see what the commotion was about, and recognized the young boy he had seen earlier in the day getting into the BMW. He was dressed only in a pair of surf shorts, and was slowly pushing a bicycle across the lawn towards him. As Dodie reached him, he turned his bare legs in towards the bicycle in an attempt to protect them from her claws as she jumped up to greet him.
“Dodie!” David called out sharply. “Come here!”
For once, the little dog did as she was told, racing back to stand guard over her tennis ball, while the boy, eyeing her every inch of the way, continued warily towards him. David put down the hoe and stepped out of the flower-bed, wiping his hands on the back of his jeans. The boy stopped in front of him.