29. The real Samuel Sweeting
29
THE REAL SAMUEL SWEETING
‘Tek a biscuit.’ Mrs Sweeting shoved the plate under Doogie’s nose. He didn’t really want one but after yesterday, he decided it was best to just take it.
‘You want tea, coffee or lemonade?’
‘Tea’s fine.’ He’d have said water but as far as he could see, Mrs Sweeting was easily offended and he’d already offended one woman in the last twenty-four hours. Actually two, if you counted Claire whose calls he was avoiding.
He was standing next to the hedge, juggling some ancient garden shears, the biscuit, and the T-shirt he’d just pulled off because he was sweating, while trying to decide whether he was supposed to sit in one of the green plastic garden chairs.
The old lady came back out with two drinks. She put them on the sun-faded but spotless green plastic table, sat down and pointed to a chair. ‘Tek a seat.’
That was his question answered then. He left the shears on the grass and sat down.
He hadn’t even finished the biscuit before she pushed the plate over to him. ‘Tek another one.’
‘I should be getting back on. It’s a big hedge.’
‘Is it too much for you?’
‘No. There’s just a lot of it and you’ve only got these old shears. It’s gonna take a while.’
‘You got somewhere to be?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I was just saying.’
Mrs Sweeting nodded at the plate. ‘You got time for a break then.’
Doogie sighed and took another one. Now he had one and a half biscuits to finish. Actually, they were pretty good. They tasted like fig rolls. It made him think of Mary who’d lived next door to them when he was a kid in Nottingham. She’d loved fig rolls. Whenever he went round there, which was a lot, she used to have a packet waiting for him. They were a little family, his mum, Mary and him. When she died, it was like losing a nana.
‘I suppose you’d better tell me your name,’ said the old woman.
‘Doogie. Doogie Chambers.’
‘Doogie? That your real name?’
‘It’s Dougal. Dougal Macrae Chambers to be exact. But I usually go by Doogie.’
‘Hah! I can see why. Where you from?’
‘Nottingham originally, but I live in Scotland now. Right up in the Highlands.’
‘What’s a man like you doing living all the way up there?’
‘I like it. My family’s from there. My mum’s side that is.’
‘And what about your father, where’s his family from?’
‘St Kitts. He’s moved back there now.’
‘You see him much?’
‘Not really.’ Fucking hell, this was like being under interrogation.
‘You don’t get on.’ It wasn’t a question, so Doogie didn’t feel the need to answer.
‘I said you don’t get on?’
Ah, so it was a question then. Doogie shrugged. ‘We’re not close.’
The old woman sat back in her chair and folded her arms. She was waiting. Doogie knew what she was waiting for and even though he didn’t want to, he found himself giving it to her. ‘He had another family. He lived with them. Me and my mum had to fit in around it, until she decided she’d had enough.’
‘And you felt left out?’
‘I suppose so, when I was a kid. I don’t really think about it now.’
‘That so. Well you’re lucky it hasn’t affected you. It’s hard for a boy to grow up without a father. It’s hard for girls as well, but boys need a man around.’
‘Only if he’s the right kind of man.’ Doogie was thinking about Arthur Wilde and his stepdad, Clive. They were the right kind of men. It wasn’t that his dad was a bad man. He paid his taxes, never broke the law and tried to behave like a real father, but he had too many conflicts. Conflicts lead to casualties. And the casualties always seemed to be on Doogie and his mum’s side. They were always the ones having to drop everything because Nevin Chambers had turned up without notice, having found an hour to squeeze them in between his other commitments. Doogie was always the one who had to go to his dad’s other house and mix with his other family, even though they teased him for being too white and even though his dad’s wife hated his guts.
Mrs Sweeting swilled the tea around in her cup and watched it slopping from one side to the other. ‘Them people at the allotment, they all think Samuel was the right kind of man.’
‘Wasn’t he?’
She put the cup down. ‘Let me tell you about Samuel. Not their Samuel, my Samuel. He was a waste of space. We had four children. Three girls and a boy. You’d think being a father to that many kids would keep a man occupied, wouldn’t you? But not Samuel. He had another family as well, and he preferred their company to ours.’
‘He had another family?’
She clucked her tongue. ‘Not that kind of family. Them friends of his at the allotment, they were his family. He spent every spare minute with them. His precious vegetables meant more to him than his own children. You know, he’d bring home a few peppers and tomatoes and put them on the table like he was God on the sixth day. Never mind that his son was smoking pot and his daughters were tekking up with unsuitable men. All he cared about was the allotment association. And that woman.’
‘Woman?’ Doogie already had a fairly good idea which woman she was referring to but he asked anyway.
‘Ur-su-la. I told him, you think me an idiot, you think me can’t see the way your eyes light up at the mention of her name? She was welcome to him. Let him waste her time. Mine was already full-time tekken up with keeping my kids out of trouble.’
‘Are they all right then, your kids?’
‘You could say that, but no thanks to Mr Samuel Sweeting. The pastor sorted my boy out. He’s an estate agent now in Milton Keynes. He visits me every month and cuts the hedge. You’ve saved him a job. The two oldest girls are divorced and the youngest never married. They’re very intolerant in that regard. I suppose that was one thing Samuel did for them.’ She threw the last of her cold tea into the flower border. ‘You’d better carry on, Doogie.’
He picked up the shears. ‘Yeah. Thanks for the tea and biscuits, Mrs Sweeting.’
She nodded. ‘You can call me Priscilla.’
She was warming to him. The thought made him smile. ‘Priscilla.’
‘You do remind me of him a bit.’ She held his eye for a minute then snatched up the plate. ‘But I won’t hold it against you.’
‘Did you read the letter?’ he said, as she started to head back into the house.
She stopped but didn’t turn back to him. ‘Not yet. Me probably won’t bother.’