Chapter 9
THE APRICOT TREE at the back of the garden was laden with golden, juicy orbs of fruit.
There had been a bumper crop this year and the boughs were weighed down with its spoils.
Helena had been putting off the monotonous task of collecting them but the fallen fruit was starting to attract wasps so she knew she couldn’t leave it much longer.
She filled basket after basket with the perfectly ripe fruit, carrying them into the house and decanting them into an assortment of mismatched containers while she decided what to do with them.
Her brain churned with her own recipes for apricot tarts, apricot crumble, baked apricots with honey and thyme, apricot almond cake, apricot Danish pastries and turnovers.
She imagined sinking her teeth through the layers of warm flaky pastry, the sweet sharpness of the filling against her tongue, savouring each perfect bite.
But these fantasies were of no use to her.
After browsing a few recipes, she decided she would make a batch of chutney and a batch of sugar-free jam.
Having weighed out the required quantities and filled the fruit bowl she still had a huge basketful left over.
Suddenly struck by inspiration, she decided she would take some over to Margery.
Perhaps she would appreciate a delivery of fresh fruit.
They were absolutely delicious but they needed to be eaten quickly before they began to spoil.
Feeling strangely nervous, Helena locked the back door and set off to the neighbouring house with her basket of apricots.
She took care to close the gate behind her so the dogs couldn’t run out onto the road.
She had seen Margery out and about a few times since the episode with the escaped dog, but hadn’t managed to engage her in a proper conversation beyond the usual polite chitchat about the weather, the dogs and Raffy.
She knocked at the door, greeted immediately by the sound of twelve paws clattering against the floor and three excited little voices yapping as they raced to greet whoever it may be. But there was no answer.
‘Margery? It’s me, Helena!’ she called.
As she had last time, she heard footsteps approach the door, but no one opened it.
‘Margery? Is that you? I’ve brought you some apricots!’
After a pause Margery opened the door a crack, just as she had done when Helena had appeared with Tammy in her arms.
‘Oh, hello dear,’ she said, looking flustered. ‘What’s that you say?’
‘Apricots… I seem to have them coming out my ears from the tree in our garden. I wondered if you might like some?’
‘Apricots. Gosh. Well, that’s very kind, thank you,’ she stuttered, a foot blocking the dogs’ exit to the front garden. She was shaking her head and muttering to herself in a distracted manner, as if lost in her thoughts.
‘Margery, is everything okay?’ Helena asked. Clearly all was not well, she had never seen Margery look so distressed.
‘Well, not really. The thing is… I’ve had a very unexpected telephone call.’
‘Oh?’
‘My nephew… he’s coming to stay…’
Helena smiled. ‘How lovely!’
‘Well, it is rather… but…’ Margery was shaking her head, her brow furrowed anxiously. Tears glistened in her eyes.
‘Is there something I can help with?’ Helena asked.
‘You see, the thing is, I haven’t seen him for years…
he’s been living in Hong Kong all this time.
Not since my sister’s funeral. I can’t possibly say no…
he’s moving back to England, and he wants to stay with me while he finds a place to buy.
I’m his only surviving relative here, you see, and he wants to be nearby… ’
‘That all sounds wonderful.’ Helena was struggling to see what the problem was exactly. ‘It’ll be nice to see him, I’m sure?’
Margery was shaking her head again. ‘I’m just not sure what I’ll do with him, where I can put him…’ A sense of panic radiated from her.
‘Have you got a spare room?’ Helena asked, peering past her into the dim light of the hall behind her to try and ascertain exactly why Margery was so upset. ‘Please don’t worry, I’m sure we can fix whatever the problem is…’
At this an internal struggle seemed to resolve itself, a look of resignation settled over her face and Margery sighed softly.
She let go of the door, her head hanging in despair.
Spying their escape, the three little dogs yapped with excitement and raced out into the garden.
As the heavy wooden door creaked on its hinges a shaft of light flooded into the hall, softly illuminating its contents.
Helena tried to conceal the shock on her face as she surveyed the scene in front of her.
It was much worse than she had initially thought.
Towering piles of newspapers, leaflets, junk mail, cardboard boxes, envelopes and carrier bags full to bursting filled the hallway.
There was one thin pathway carved out through the junk leading through to the back of the house.
Margery’s cheeks flushed pink with embarrassment. ‘I—I am so ashamed… I don’t know how it got like this, but there’s just so much stuff. How can I let him see my home like this? He will think I’ve gone completely mad… Maybe I have?’
‘Don’t worry Margery,’ Helena said, her face softening. ‘I can help you have a bit of a clear out if you like?’
The look of shame on Margery’s face broke Helena’s heart.
She looked so helpless. Her small, sunken eyes welled with tears once again.
Helena reached out and gave her hand a squeeze.
It was unbelievable really. She would definitely have to help her, she couldn’t carry on living like this, it was probably a health risk apart from anything else.
‘Thank you dear,’ Margery managed a tentative smile. ‘I really would be so grateful. I don’t know where to start…’
‘Perhaps you’d better show me the rest of the house?’ Helena asked, curious to find out exactly how bad it was. ‘That way I’ll be able to come up with a plan to see how we can go about fixing this.’
‘Alright,’ Margery said with a small sigh.
‘When did you say he was coming again?’
‘Not for a month or so.’
‘Well that gives us plenty of time. How do you feel about parting with some of these things?’ she asked, choosing her words carefully. She remembered watching some TV programme about hoarding years ago and the man in question had found it hard to throw anything out.
Margery took a deep breath and exhaled, eyes darting around as if trying to wrap her head around the enormity of the task ahead. ‘I know I have to do it. Some things I won’t mind but others I will probably find a bit harder… you never know what might come in useful my dear…’
‘Well we will have to come up with a system. I’ll have a think. Don’t you worry, we’ll soon get this all cleared up.’ She smiled reassuringly.
Margery nodded and lead the way through to the rest of the house.
Helena followed her as they made their way through the sitting room, the kitchen and upstairs to the bedrooms. Each room looked as if someone had picked up the contents of a skip and emptied it inside.
It was completely bizarre that anyone could find themselves living in such a state.
As a naturally tidy person, Helena struggled to understand how it could happen.
She consciously kept her features fixed in a neutral expression, trying not to wince at the musty, unpleasant smell of the place.
The sitting room had a piano against the far wall that was piled high with music scores.
There was a grotty floral sofa which was mostly clutter-free, and a patch of floorboards was visible in the middle of the room with an old television on a table in plain view of the sofa, but the rest of the room was full of objects: a moth-eaten rug, several rolled up carpets, a broken lamp, boxes of papers, lever arch files, stacks of pictures and frames, towering piles of books and plastic bag after bag full of unidentified possessions.
The kitchen wasn’t much better. A small amount of the kitchen table was visible, presumably where Margery cobbled together her meals, and the electric oven and hob, the fridge and sink were just about accessible, but the rest of the room was again stacked with empty jars, tins of food, dog food, empty milk cartons, empty boxes, plastic bags, Tupperware, a stepladder, and even some sort of garden statue with an arm missing.
An unused dark green Aga thick with dust was barely visible.
Flies darted about in random directions, buzzing loudly.
Upstairs was a similar story. By the end of her tour Helena was itching to get a pair of marigolds on, fetch her tub of cleaning products, and start blitzing the house.
But she knew that she would have to be careful how she played her next steps, in order to support Margery but not to upset her – it was clearly a sensitive situation.
‘You see, dear, I really don’t know where to start…’ Margery sighed. ‘I’m not sure how I got so much stuff. I suppose I never know what to throw away.’ Margery’s forehead was so creased with concern she looked older than her seventy-odd years.
‘I completely understand. My granny was the same,’ Helena lied.
A white lie, she reasoned, was perfectly justified if it made Margery feel less alone.
She had only known one of her grandmothers, and she had actually been a complete neat and cleanliness obsessive.
‘She used to say it was because of the war, that she had grown up not wanting to waste things.’ That much, at least, was true.
‘Yes I suppose it could be that,’ Margery smiled weakly, the first glimmer of positivity Helena had seen since she’d arrived. ‘I don’t like to waste things… you are right about that.’
‘Are you sure you would like my help? I am more than happy to, but I don’t want you to feel as though I’m intruding.’
Margery nodded gratefully. ‘I would love your help, dear. I can’t possibly do it by myself, and I so want Johnny to be able to stay, to be comfortable here, for as long as he likes. It’s high time I got this situation under control.’
‘And how do you feel about… getting rid of probably quite a few of these things… only things that you don’t need or that you don’t have any particularly fond memories of, of course?’ she added.
‘Well, I might need your help there, my dear. To help me decide what I should keep and what I shouldn’t…’
‘OK. As long as you’re sure. Perhaps we could start on Wednesday?’ That would give her enough time to stock up on cleaning supplies. ‘I could come over after I drop Raffy in the morning, around 9.15 a.m. if you’d like?’
Margery agreed and Helena felt happy to leave her now that she seemed a bit more cheerful.
There was no way she could allow Margery to continue living like that, and although it had become out of control, she wasn’t at the stage yet where she couldn’t imagine parting ways with some of the junk, as she remembered the poor man in the TV show had been.
They could at least make a start and see how things went.
There was no need to tell Noah about it. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.
*
‘Can we have spag bol for tea?’ Raffy asked from the back of the car several hours later. ‘My tummy’s rumbling.’
‘We don’t have any bolognese I’m afraid Raf, but we have pasta. We can make pasta pesto? How does that sound?’
‘With cheese?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Dee-licious!’ Raffy beamed. ‘I dropped my sandwich on the floor and Miss Maitlin threw it in the bin so I didn’t get much lunch.’
‘No!’ Helena gasped. ‘How did that happen?’
‘Ben Mitchell knocked it out of my hand. He got in big trouble.’
‘Didn’t they offer you something else to eat?’
‘They said I could have school dinner, but it was fish curry. Dis-GUS-ting. No thanks.’
Helena chuckled at the appalled look on his face in the rear-view mirror.
Raffy sighed. ‘It’s because I didn’t go to his party. That’s why he was mean to me.’
‘Oh Raffy, I’m sure that’s not right. It was probably an accident.’
‘It wasn’t. He was looking right at me when he did it. And smiling.’
‘Well if that’s true then it wasn’t a very kind thing to do.’
‘Why can’t I go to parties?’ Raffy looked pleadingly at her. ‘It’s so unfair…’
‘It’s really up to your dad, Raf. I’m afraid it’s not up to me.’
‘But it’s not fair. For Max’s birthday everyone went rock climbing. And they had ice cream. And I never get to go to anyone’s house either. I miss out on all the fun.’
Raffy sighed loudly and crossed his arms in a huff.
Helena didn’t know what to say. Her heart went out to him.
If she had her way, he would go to every party, and have playdates at least once a week.
She knew how important it was for children to develop their friendships outside school.
But there wasn’t much she could do about it.
Raising it with Noah had never worked in the past. She suspected that it was precisely because she had pushed it that he had imposed an outright ban on playdates in the first place.
As she drove the last few miles home, she reminded herself there was no way she could tell Noah about her planned intervention at Margery’s.
She knew he wouldn’t understand why she was getting involved, and to be quite honest she didn’t feel like explaining herself.