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“Stop pushing! Mr. Enemy, she’s pushing me!” George H
was crimson-cheeked and close to tears. Destinee had that hard look on her
overly knowing face that meant she was guilty as sin, but she was ready to deny
it to her dying day.
“Calm down, please, you two.” I gave Destinee my sternest
glare. “If I see any more of that, you’ll be staying in at playtime and
sharpening every single one of the
colouring pencils. Yes, even the boring colours.”
“But I didn’t do nuffing!” Destinee whined at me, her
pathetic tone belied by the evil glint in her hazel eyes. She was probably
already planning her revenge, most likely by stabbing me through the heart with
a fiendishly sharpened pencil. In sludge brown. We had a short face-off, which
ended with her making a tactical withdrawal. I wasn’t naive enough to delude
myself into thinking it was a retreat.
All was peaceful for a moment as I carried on shepherding
form 2E into St Saviour’s Church, tins and jars for Harvest Festival clutched
in tiny hands. Thirty pairs of eyes (actually, twenty-nine and a half; Jodie
was wearing a patch for her lazy eye) searched eagerly for sight of parents and
grannies. I gazed out on the sea of female and/or wrinkly faces in the pews and
wondered idly if there was any job in the world, anywhere, that was worse for meeting men than the average primary-school
teaching post. Father confessor in a nunnery, maybe? Avon cosmetics rep? Or one
of those poor sods who went round emptying the sanitary bins they put in
ladies’ loos?
I gave myself an internal nod of approval. I’d chosen wisely
for my first proper job since Crispin—
An outraged squeal pierced my eardrums and reverberated
around my skull. My head snapped around, and I winced as my neck cricked.
Destinee was kicking off again.
With a wail of “I said stoppit!” George H stumbled into Charlie, a
sensitive young man whose mother was no longer in the picture and whose father,
I’d realised, didn’t quite know what to do with him. I was rather fond of the
little chap. I was less fond of his father, who had, with criminal lack of
forethought, loaded him up with an enormous, heavy jar of pasta sauce.
Inevitably, the jar slipped from Charlie’s startled fingers.
I dived for it without conscious thought, launching myself
across the stone flags. Time slowed, the jar seeming to fall through treacle,
giving me plenty of leisure for a flashback to a long-ago missed catch for the
Loriners’ first eleven. History repeating itself, oh, bloody hell. I wondered
how many weeks it’d take them to scrub the red stuff off the pews—and me, come to that—and whether Charlie
would have stopped crying by then.
Then a pair of hefty, leather-clad arms shot out and fielded
the jar mere millimetres before it could hit the stone floor.
I slammed into said floor myself with an oof and narrowly missed knocking the
blasted thing straight out of his grasp again. Bruised and panting, I stared at
the saviour of St Saviour’s—not to mention my Harris tweed jacket—from my
supine position six inches away on the flagstones.
He grinned back at me from his. “That was a close one!”
Green eyes sparkling in a roguish, ginger-stubbled face, my opposite number
leapt back up to his feet and handed the jar back to Charlie. “Here you go,
mate.”
And then he was gone, startling smile, freckles and all.
Charlie was by my side, clutching the precious burden tight to his chest and
whimpering softly. I got to my feet, dusted myself off and cleared my throat.
“Right. Let that be a lesson to you, young Destinee. Now, carry on. We need to
take our seats.”
Heads had turned. More than that, the Head had turned. Thank God disaster had been averted. Losing
two jobs in one year would probably begin to look like carelessness. With the
uncomfortable suspicion my face must be as red as Charlie’s ragù, I carried on
herding the children into the pews and was grateful when I could finally slide
onto a straight-backed wooden seat myself. And begin courting backache;
apparently ergonomics wasn’t yet in vogue when the pews were designed. Or maybe
they were just the furniture equivalent of the hair shirt.
St. Saviour’s was an old church, the present building dating
roughly from around the time of the Black Death, when presumably ingratiating
oneself with Him on High must have seemed like a jolly good idea. It was
constructed on its exterior from the evocatively named Totternhoe clunch, a
sort of indigestible porridge of flinty pebbles in mortar, and on the inside
from large blocks of pale grey stone. Thanks to a recent sandblasting, it was
rather brighter and cheerier inside than you might expect of a medieval
building. The sight lines, though, were dreadful; the chancel was crowded with
massive stone pillars at least a couple of bear hugs in circumference and the
side chapels were all but invisible to those not actually in them.
Not, of course, that I was in any way straining secretly
(and in vain) for a glimpse of black leather, copper-coloured hair and a ready
smile. I wasn’t that daft. Sworn off
men for life, that was me. Or, well, maybe not life. Just the next twenty years or so. Maybe thirty, just to be on
the safe side. I’d be in my midfifties; surely I’d have acquired a bit more
discernment by then.
Was he a biker, I wondered? The man who’d saved us all from
the Great Spaghetti Sauce Massacre, I mean. The leather jacket might just be a
fashion statement. I frowned. Could he be a parent? I’d had a vague impression
of someone around my own age, so yes, it was possible. If he’d embarked on
parenthood when I was busy swotting for my A Levels. I pursed my lips.
Charlie pulled my sleeve. “Mr. Enemy?”
“Yes, young Charlie?” I whispered back.
“Why are you making funny faces?”
I froze. “My nose itches.”
He looked at me solemnly. “You should scratch it. Like
this.”
A grubby little finger plunged up an only slightly cleaner
nose and started to move around vigorously. “Ah. Careful there, Charlie. You’ll
give yourself a—oh dear. There we go.” I pulled out my handkerchief and did my
best to stanch the Niagara Falls of blood from Charlie’s abused nostril. Then I
glared at the children in the pew in front, who’d turned round to goggle at the
poor boy. “Eyes front. Haven’t you ever seen a nosebleed before?”
“Is Charlie going to die, Mr. Enemy?” Destinee asked in a
tone of relish.
“We’re all going to die, Destinee,” I said firmly. “Some of
us sooner than others. Now hush. We’re supposed
to be listening to the prayers.”
The rest of the service went rather as expected—Emily J forgot
her lines, the reception class were adorable but inaudible, somebody’s little
sister had an unfortunate potty-training accident and Mrs. Nunn, Destinee’s
mum, got told off by the vicar for chatting loudly on her mobile phone. At
least it hadn’t been her daughter she’d called.
I pasted on a smile as I strode to the crossing to lead the
little darlings in a whole-school rendition of St. Saviour’s School’s official
harvest song, “I Like Baked Beans”.
I’d spent the last three weeks coaching them in it, and I was quite possibly
never going to eat another baked bean ever again. I even dreamed about them,
the song running through my head like a radioactive earworm. If it had gone on
one more week, I’d have been at serious risk of having a nervous breakdown in
the canned-food aisle in Tesco. I could almost hear the tannoy announcement: Straitjacket to aisle seven, please.
Would a redheaded, leather-armoured knight of the road have
appeared to save me as I gibbered among the groceries? I wondered, beating time
with every semblance (I hoped) of enthusiasm. My gestures became more and more
exaggerated as tiny attention spans dwindled and expired in a puff of bad
behaviour. Destinee was blatantly not singing, her arms folded and her lips
pressed so tightly together they’d turned white. Charlie, bless him, was
bellowing out the words loud and clear in his wobbly treble, flat on the low
notes and sharp on the high. The terrible twins were playing slapsies with each
other, but as I’d had the foresight to place them behind a pillar, nobody would
ever know.
As the last notes died away, I lowered my hands, and the
parents burst into applause made riotous by their relief it was finally all
over. Unless that was just me. I turned to take a quick bow, and couldn’t
resist scanning the congregation for a glimpse of orange.
All I saw were Edward C’s pumpkins and Emily G’s basket of
tangerines. Good, I decided. I was safe. And at least Harvest Festival was over
for the year.
As was apparently traditional, the parents formed a sort of
honour guard along the path for the children as they came out of church,
although I noticed one or two sloping off guiltily as soon as they’d been let
out. Destinee’s mother was back on her mobile already, her highlighted hair
tucked behind one multiply pierced ear as she texted with one hand and lit up a
cigarette with the other in a rather impressive display of multitasking.
The Catcher in the Aisle, however, was waiting expectantly
by the path. Seen for the first time in the light of day—not to mention in a
vertical position—he proved to be tall and lean, although nicely broad
shouldered. He was wearing a turquoise T-shirt that made his green eyes glow
and washed-out denim jeans that looked as soft as velvet and fit him perfectly.
His unruly red hair sent a warning—or a promise—of danger that was only
enhanced by his battered black biker jacket. He was definitely at least in his
mid-twenties, I thought, although perhaps a few years older than me. He had a
slightly weathered look about him. An outdoorsy type.
I realised he was looking straight at me, a smile curving at
the corner of his lips. Oops. He must have caught me staring at him. I stepped
up to him before my better judgement could talk me out of it. “Excellent catch,
there! Are you a cricketing man?”
He shrugged. “Nah, football’s more my game.” I could have
kicked myself. My better judgement offered to put on a pair of steel-toed boots
and join in. Men who wore scuffed motorbike jackets and embarked on fatherhood
in their teens generally had other things to do on their Sundays than don
flannels and step up to the wicket on the village green.
Suddenly his face broke into a wide grin that just about
took my breath away. I found myself smiling back helplessly and then felt like
an idiot as I realised he was looking straight past me. “Wills! Harry! Great
singing, lads!” Two redheaded terrors—the terrible twins themselves—threw
themselves upon him, squealing “You came!”
“Course I did.
Wouldn’t miss this, would I? Good to hear you’re still singing the old song.
I like baked beans, Brussels
sprouts and tangerines…”
I slipped away. I had a class of six-year-olds to shepherd
back to school. Goodness knows what I’d been thinking, talking to the man like
that.
http://jlmerrow.com/
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To purchase, click http://www.amazon.com/Caught-Shamwell-Tales-JL-Merrow-ebook/dp/B00K1WUBG0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408833839&sr=1-1&keywords=jl+merrow
3 comments:
Had to rush out and buy a copy -- I'm a sucker for quirky, charming humor. Um, I mean humour.
Delightful.
Thanks, guys! :D
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