A liar and a thief

Chapter 1

Joe Hill took the spade off the hook on the wall of the shed and went to the raised bed at the back of his garden. The bed had been constructed with old railway sleepers, piled two-high, to form a 10-foot by 10-foot rectangle in which Joe had recently poured several hundredweight of bagged topsoil. The bed was Elisha’s idea. She had demanded that something be done about the mess at this end of the garden. She had wanted structure. But now it was Joe’s turn to get what he wanted.

He stepped up onto the bed and his boots sank slightly into the soil. The excavation he wanted was marked out with string. It had to be deep, at least waist high, deeper if possible. He sunk the spade into the ground and cleaved out the first spit and tossed it to one side. Within half an hour he had removed the topsoil. The going was harder now and he needed to apply his weight to cut through into the clay. It became easier to lift the heavy clods out with his hands and hurl them out than to lever them out with the spade.

It was a warm May day and he was sweating. He stopped to draw breath and to review progress. The mess Elisha so disliked was a mound of earth, shaded by sycamore trees, on which nothing but weeds flourished. Joe had tried planting a variety of shade-loving plants but the structure to satisfy Elisha had never materialised. Underneath the mound was rubble, possibly from an Anderson shelter or possibly from the remains of a shed. The road they lived on was shed city. Most of their neighbours had at least two sheds. Next door had six of varying ages and constructions. Joe and Elisha had one shed, which was slowly rotting because Joe had not yet got round to fixing its leaking roof.

Joe thought about the next stage of digging. What worried him most was finding animal life down in the rubble. A family of mangy city foxes frequented the area and Joe had spotted them sunning themselves on his lawn. Foxes lived in burrows and the ruins of an air raid shelter would have made a perfect habitat.

Rats also liked living underground. And he had seen one in the garden as well. It had come skulking along the line of the fence while Joe was hoeing a border on the other side of the garden. Joe had frozen in terror. The rat didn’t notice him and continued its path towards the shed. Then, to Joe’s relief, his neighbour’s fat tabby cat appeared behind the rat, stalking it. The rat must have smelled the cat for it turned round and reared up on its hind legs, its claws ready to strike. To Joe’s horror the cat fled. The rat gave chase. Joe broke out of his paralysis and looked for weapons. The hoe was too puny for close quarter combat with a rat. In fact, Joe did not want to be close to the rat at all. He spotted some pebbles and gathered them instead and went after the combatants. The cat had jumped up on the fence and the victorious rat was heading back towards Joe. Joe lobbed a pebble. It bounced over the rat. He skimmed another. Again he missed. Perhaps, emboldened by Joe’s actions, the cat decided to re-enter the fray and pounced. He missed his target. The rat scurried under the fence. The cat leapt over the fence in pursuit. Joe was relieved, but soon he got to thinking about why the rat was heading for the shed in the first place. Had it created a home there? For its family?

He thought about the risk of uncovering a rat’s family home as he began levering out old bricks and chunks of concrete from the clay. His fear of rats stemmed from childhood. Mother said it began when Joe volunteered to look after the school hamster during the Easter holidays and had kept the cage in his bedroom. Both parents had to come in to comfort him when they had found him screaming in the middle of night, saying that the hamster was coming to eat him. But of more significance to Joe was the island in a lake in the West of Ireland, which his parents had bought as a holiday home when Joe was five and they were flush with cash from the success of a play they had written. They had built a wooden flat-roofed house on concrete stilts in the middle of eight acres of scrub, woods and limestone rock which lay quarter of a mile from the mainland.

When they left at the end of their first summer the rats moved in. They swam the distance from the mainland, climbed up the concrete posts and gnawed through the floor. On the family’s return the following year they opened the door of the house to find a scene of devastation. The rats had burrowed into the mattresses on the beds, soaked them with piss and strewn the horsehair innards across the floor. They had chewed their way into the food cupboards and raided the bags of flour, rice and sugar. They had scaled the bookcases and made confetti out of the paperbacks. Their rampage through the house was marked by trails of centimetre-long grains of black shit. And the scent of rat was everywhere. A pungent mustiness cut through with the acridity of urine. Joe’s family had spent a day cleaning up the mess. Father then attempted to make the place rat proof. Tin sheet was nailed over the corners of the floor where the rats had gnawed through. Metal dustbins were bought to store the food. And poison was laid under the house. A few rats took the bait and Joe would come across their bodies in the woods, stiff with rigour mortis, congealed blood around their open jaws. But the remainder just waited. And at night, as Joe lay in his bunk bed throughout the summer, he thought he could hear them scurrying about under the floor, climbing up the concrete posts and scratching at the metal sheets trying to find a way in.

The hole was now waist deep and the last traces of rubble had been removed. Joe went round stomping with his boots to firm the base of the excavation and the shelves he had cut into the walls. He sat down and admired his work. The smell of the damp earth was comforting. He had a footfall above him and then Elisha’s smiling face poked over the rim of the hole.

“Having fun?” she said.

“Yes, thank you,” Joe replied.

“Are you sure it’s deep enough?”

“Deep enough to bury you in.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say.”

“This is my hole and I don’t need you criticising it.”

“I wasn’t criticising. I was just asking a question. I was going to ask you if you wanted a cup of tea, but I don’t think I’ll bother now. And when you do come in, try not to get mud all over the carpet. You’re covered in it.”

Elisha's face disappeared. Joe thought about standing up in his hole and calling after her to apologise, but he decided against it.

“Try not to get mud on the carpet.” That is what Mother said when he had been out in the garden making complicated lines of trenches and shell holes for his plastic First World War soldiers. Instead of praising his intricate recreation of the Western Front, which included barbed wire entanglements made from fuse wire, sandbags fashioned from used tea bags and duck boards made with lollipop sticks, she had belittled his efforts. “You’re making such a mess of my flower bed Joseph. I do hope you clear it up before you come in.” And then as she left, as if taking a cue, Joe’s older brother, Nathan, appeared. “Incoming Howitzer barrage!” he screamed and started jumping on and kicking the trenches until Joe’s toy soldiers were obliterated by mud. And once the destruction of the earthworks was complete, Nathan began kicking Joe in the shins and slapping him round the head while chanting: “You’ve made such a mess Joseph.” And when Joe tried to fight back, Nathan threw him to the ground and buried his face in the mud, until Joe thought he was going to suffocate. When he eventually staggered indoors with the tears streaming down his blackened face all Mother had to say was “Oh Joseph, look at the state of you. Get to the bathroom this instant.”

Back in the house, after taking off his mud-caked boots and cleaning his hands, Joe came up behind Elisha and put his arms around her waist.

“I’m sorry I was grouchy with you. But digging the hole bought back some childhood memories,” he said, kissing her on the back of the neck.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I dunno what there is to talk about,” Joe said, sitting down at the kitchen table.

Elisha sat opposite him. “Well, what sort of childhood memories?”

“Oh I dunno. Stuff with my brother. Living on the island. My phobias. The mess I’ve made of my life. That sort of thing.”

“Go on.”

“Oh Christ, I don’t know, Elisha. It’s just that everything I do seems to turn out wrong. I’m in the wrong job. I’ve forced you to live in area you hate. We seem to spend more time arguing and fighting than having any pleasure.” He saw her eyes harden.

“I don’t want to hear this Joe. Yes I hate living in Walthamstow. It’s a shithole. But I made a choice in coming here. In the same way you made a choice about your job. We fight because you’re not open to me about how you’re feeling. You close off to me. And I can’t stand that.”

“But how can that be. I’m trying to be open with you now, but you’re saying you don’t want to hear it. I can’t win.”

“But you’re not saying what you’re feeling. You’re just coming out with the usual generalisations. You’ve got to do some work here, if you want me to listen.”

“Right, I’ll do some work. Digging the hole made me think of how awful my childhood was. How every summer I had to endure a terror about rats. About how my mother used to disparage everything I did. How I could do nothing right. How my brother used to inflict violence and torture on me and my parents did nothing. Shall I go on?”

“No. I’ve told you before Joe. You need to say all this to a therapist. That’s what I’m doing. And it’s very hard and very painful. But it’s the only way of moving forward.”

“I’m not going to see a bloody therapist.” Joe said, getting up from the table.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to my hole.”

“Well go to back to your bloody hole!”

Joe went back out into the garden and stood over his hole. He felt the anger churning up inside him. There was no point talking to Elisha. She played mind games with him. Whatever he said was wrong. Of one thing he was certain. No way would he see a therapist. He had seen what therapy had done to Elisha. It had almost destroyed her and him to in the process. No, what he needed was a sense of himself, as a man, as a creator. And this project he had set himself was a means to that end. He would build a pond, a beautiful pond. It was something he truly wanted.

Elisha’s acceptance of his idea of creating a pond had come as a pleasant surprise. They were visiting a garden show at Alexandra Palace. It had cost £30 for both of them to enter the event and the publicity for it had led them to expect a mini-version of the Chelsea Flower show. They were sadly disappointed. Most of the space in the Great Hall and adjoining rooms were taken up by companies selling garden accessories, expensive lighting systems, even more expensive Jacuzzis, tropical hardwood furniture and landscape design services. The handful of show gardens created were tiny and uninspiring under the artificial light of the venue. There was also little to stimulate in the collection of flowers and shrubs on display. After shuffling around the exhibition, they went for a drink in the adjoining Phoenix Bar.

“Well that was a rip off.” Joe said. “Could just as well have sent off for a catalogue.”

“I liked the Cannas. I thought they might go at the back.” Elisha said.

“There’s not enough light.”

“But we’ve got to do something. It’s a mess. It’s horrible. It needs some structure.”

“What about a pond?”

“A pond?”

“I think a pond would go brilliantly there. It would provide a focal point. We could plant interesting shade-loving plants around it. Hostas, ferns, succulents, maybe even some bamboo.”

“What made you think of a pond?”

“I dunno. It’s just come to me. But I want one. We could put fish in it and have a fountain.”

“But I can’t see how it would work.”

“Look, I’ll show you. Have got a pen and some paper?”

Now as Joe stood looking at his hole and the mounds of excavated earth and rubble surrounding it, he felt a pang of self-doubt as to whether the actuality of his project would match that vision. As darkness fell, he returned to the house, knowing that for the moment at least, some form of reparation with Elisha took priority.

Chapter 2

At work, Joe opened a spreadsheet. Columns of figures streamed down the page, the results of a student satisfaction survey. Except you couldn’t use the word student now, thought Joe. Now that they were paying fees and racking up thousands of pounds in debt, students had become customers. It was double speak. As soon as the word customer started to be deployed you could guarantee that the person so designated would be treated like shit. It was like the tube. In the past when the trains ran frequently without delay and when the signals and escalators worked, Joe was called a passenger. Now as he endured the daily sweaty crush and uncertainty of travelling into work, he had become a customer.

He reviewed the findings of survey. 60 per cent of students were satisfied with the physical condition of their learning environment. 20 per cent were dissatisfied. 20 per cent didn’t know. Didn’t know, he thought. How could they not know? And how could 60 per cent be satisfied? The university buildings were a hell hole. A mixture of mouldering Victorian Gothic and crumbling 1960’s concrete. The old buildings were freezing in winter and stifling hot in summer; the modern ones were suffocatingly hot all year round.

He opened the window in front of his desk. On the road below, in a blue haze of exhaust fumes, traffic inched its way past yet another excavation for cabling towards the City. A workman in the cab of a JCB revved his engine to begin another morning of jack hammering. Joe shut the window. The university was ugly, but the world outside was even uglier.

He minimised the spreadsheet and tapped creating ponds into the Google search box. He clicked on the first name in the list – wet&wild.com – and an animated image of a woman urinating loaded. He hit the back button fast. The next site on the list looked more promising – pondworld.co.uk – all you need to know to build a perfect pond. He entered the site. An hour later, Joe checked the weather forecast. It was not good. The next two days would be fine, but rain and wind was on the way and the weekend looked like being a washout. He picked up the phone and rang the extension of Judith, his manager. Pat, her PA answered.

“Is she there?” Joe asked.

“No Joe, she’s working at home,” Pat said. “Alright for some isn't it. Can I help?”

“Yes, I’m not feeling too good. I think I’m coming down with the vomiting virus.”

“Oh poor you. My daughter had that last week. It’s not nice. It started with the squits and then she starting chucking up. She made a right mess of my carpet.”

“Pat, do you need to go into the details?”

“Sorry. But don’t worry, she was right as right as rain within three days. You need to drink plenty of water.”

“Thanks for the advice. Could you mark me down as sick?”

“Course I will darling. Now you go home and rest up.”

Leaving work, Joe felt a sense of liberation. It was easy. No one would question him. He smiled as a memory came into his head. An early morning when he didn’t want to go to school. Creeping into the kitchen and mixing up a mess of cereal and the leftovers of last night’s dinner with water in a cup and then chucking it into the toilet pan. Scooping up the dregs with his fingers and smearing the mix on his chin and then rubbing a bit of cold water through his hair leaving droplets on his forehead before staggering into his parents’ bedroom to say: “Mother, I’m not feeling well.” And she bought it. The vomit in the toilet was the deciding factor, earning him a day of peace in bed reading comics and eating grapes.

On the way back on the tube Joe planned his next steps. He came out of Walthamstow Central in brilliant sunshine and his spirits soared as he walked through the cats-cradle of streets north of market admiring the daffodils, tulips and pansies blooming in the little front gardens of the red-brick terraced houses.

Reaching his own house, he opened the front door and went through to the kitchen. The door to the garden was open. Joe’s first thought was burglars, but as he stepped outside he saw Elisha down at the end of the garden with a man who was inspecting the hole he had dug. Joe recognised him as Roger Barton, an English teacher who used to work at Elisha’s school. As he walked down to join them, Elisha gave him a puzzled look and Roger grinned.

“What are you doing here?” Elisha said.

“I decided to go sick? What are you doing here, I thought you were on an Inset?”

“We were, but the trainer cancelled at the last minute and Roger gave me a lift back. What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Just fancied some time off. Hello Roger.”

“Hello Joe,” Roger said and stuck out his hand for Joe to shake. “Nice seeing you again.”

“I thought you’d quit teaching and were travelling round the world on your motor bike?” Joe said.

“I did, but the bloody thing packed in while I was doing the Inca Way in Peru and so I came back. I decided I missed the masochistic pleasure of being abused by stroppy teenagers. Plus I needed the cash.”

“Well, I think you’re bonkers”, Elisha said to Roger.

“Not as bonkers as the people in my new department. Do you remember Henry?”

“Oh God, do I? He tried to strangle the deputy head.”

“Well he’s my head of department in the school,” he said chuckling. “It’s a madhouse.”

Joe looked at the laughter in Elisha’s eyes and did not like it. “Do you want some tea?” he asked Roger.

“That would be fantastic,” Roger said.

“What about you, darling?” Joe said to Elisha.

“Yeah okay,” she said, but without much warmth.

Joe walked back to the kitchen. He had met Roger on a few occasions, mainly in the pub down the road from Elisha’s school. He had a passion about life and a reputation as an inspirational teacher. Elisha had told him how Roger had once taken a class of the saddest, baddest and maddest 14-year-olds in the school, many of them refugees from African and Middle East war zones where they had experienced terrible things, which was acted out in the class room in violence against other and against the teachers. And to these terribly damaged kids, Roger had introduced Paradise Lost and told them the story of how Milton had written the poem while he was going blind and how his eyesight had steadily disappeared until all he could see was a little chink of light, but how this did not stop him completing the epic poem. And the kids were captivated by this and they had told all their other teachers about John Milton and his chink of light.

Roger also had a reputation as a ladies man. According to Elisha, he had charmed the knickers off a considerable proportion of women staff at the school, from class room assistants to senior teachers. They went for his combination of strong earthy masculinity (he had once told Elisha that he never washed with soap) and his emotional honesty. This emotional honesty usually entailed telling his latest conquest that he was ending the relationship for their sake, to stop them getting hurt. He had also admitted to Elisha that he didn’t like wearing underpants as they constrained him and that he preferred going commando.

Joe came out with three mugs balanced on a tin tray to find Roger with his nose buried in the candyfloss bloom of a lilac tree. He inhaled deeply and turned to Joe.

“Fantastic. I love lilac. Reminds me of Proust. La Recherche du Temps Perdu.”

“That’s what I thought when I planted it,” said Elisha.

“Have you read Proust?” Roger asked Joe.

“I tried to. A bit florrid for me. Too many words,” Joe replied handing out the mugs.

“Oh no,” Roger said. “It’s like poetry. Everyone word counts in all of the 20 volumes. Absolutely fantastic.” He took a sip of sip tea. “Eli says you’re building a pond? Mind if I take a look?”

“You should ask Roger’s advice Joe. He knows a lot about ponds. He’ll tell you if you’re doing it right,” Elisha said.

Joe stifled his rising anger and said. “I’d welcome any advice.”

Roger walked over to the hole, kicked at the edges and then jumped down inside it. “You’re doing well. But I would make it a bit deeper if I was you. You’re having fish right?”

Joe nodded.

“Well if it’s only this depth the water will freeze solid in winter and you’ll have fish fingers. You need to dig out about another two feet. You’ll also run into problems unless you get the edges level. Chuck me a spade and I’ll show you how.”

“Nah, that’s alright. Why don’t you continue your nice chat with Elisha. I was planning to go to Homebase to get a lining and other stuff.”

“There’s a bit of an art to putting the lining in. You need to get the folding right.”

“I think I’ll manage,” said Joe walking away and giving Elisha a dirty look.

Chapter 3

“Fuckwit,” Joe thought as he wheeled his trolley through the aisles of Homebase. You’re a bullshitter, Roger. There aren’t 20 volumes of In Search of Lost Time, there’s only seven. And you’re a bullshitter too Elisha. You didn’t plant the lilac. I did. You just sat in a fucking director’s chair supervising me. “

The anger was boiling up in him and he felt tempted to ram the metal trolley into the fat backside of the woman who was dithering in front of the paint shelves, blocking his way. Instead he manoeuvred the trolley sharply around her, clipping her leg in the process. The woman yelped.

“Terribly sorry,” said Joe, driving on and smiling. But then he heard a howling behind him and turned to see the woman had crumpled to the floor and was holding her calf. Blood was spilling out through her fingers and onto the floor. He stopped the trolley and started walking back but several other customers got to her first.

“It’s my varicose vein,” the woman was whimpering. “That man cut my varicose vein”.

The other customers turned to look at Joe.

“It was an accident,” he pleaded. “It’s the bloody trolleys in this place. They’re wheels are wonky. Here let me help. I know first aid.”

“Stay away from me,” the woman screamed.

A shop assistant carrying a first aid box pushed through the gathering crowd around the woman. Joe backed away.

“Trolley rage,” he heard a woman say. “Men like that get sight of a power tool and get all aggressive.”

Joe hurried away to the garden section where it took him half an hour to find everything he needed. By the end of the expedition his trolley was fully laden and he was £500 out of pocket.

Elisha was sitting at the kitchen table marking a large pile of workbooks when he staggered through carrying a large bag of sand. She looked at him coldly but did not speak. After he had made a fifth trip through to the garden and dumped his last purchase, the solar powered fountain, he came back into the kitchen and stood in front of her panting.

“Roger gone?” he asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“No need to snap at me.”

“You were very rude.”

“I thought I was very polite, considering…”

“Considering what?”

“Considering he’s a patronising bastard and he’s full of bullshit. ‘Oh Eli this is fantastic. Reminds me of Proust’. Bollocks. I don’t believe he’s read In Search of Lost Time. I know for a fact that there aren’t 20 volumes. There are only seven.”

“Oh stop being pathetic. You’re just jealous.”

“Jealous? Jealous of what? Jealous of a man who doesn’t wear underpants?”

“What is it with you and underpants? Why does it bother you if someone doesn’t wear them?”

“Because it’s unhygienic, that’s why.”

“You’re repressed Joe. You’re repressed and you’re jealous of someone who’s passionate about life and you’re not. You know something? I’m sick of you and your depression and insecurities. You’re like a bloody great damp black cloud every time you come into the house, spreading misery everywhere. “

“I’m very passionate about life. What makes me miserable is you. What’s this?” Joe said picking up a brown and grey striped woolly rug which was draped on a chair.

“It’s a present from Roger.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s a llama throw. Now put it down before you dirty it.”

“So who’s worried about hygiene now?” He held the throw to his nose. “Have you smelt it? It smells like rotten cheese. Roger’s probably been using it to wipe his foreskin.”

“Oh stop being so bloody childish.”

Joe put the rug down. “Look. I didn’t take the day off today to have a fight with you. I’ve got things to do," he said, walking out into the garden.

Once back in the hole, Joe attacked the bottom with a spade. He recognised that Roger was right about the depth but, with every inch of clay he hacked out, hated him for being right.

Elisha’s hypocrisy was outstanding. She was the one who told him about Roger’s lack of underpants and personal hygiene and now she had turned it round so that he was the one who was repressed. Of course he didn’t have a problem with underpants. It was the lack of them that bothered him.

Mother had never appreciated the importance of underpants and was quite content to let him go to infants school without them. This hadn’t concerned Joe until the nativity play when he had been picked to play one of the wise men. Joe had run home all excited and had told Mother that she would need to make his costume. She fashioned a tunic out of an orange and brown striped cushion cover from the battered sofa in the living room and made him an Arab headdress out of a tea towel and a length of curtain cord. Joe tried the costume on and was told that he looked the part and he had bought it into school in a bag and given it to his teacher for safe keeping until the afternoon of the performance. Rehearsals were conducted in normal school clothes, which in Joe’s case was a pair of blue ski pants and a jumper.

When the big day came, a classroom was turned into a dressing room and the teachers helped each child get ready. Joe slipped into his tunic and began putting on his headdress when a teacher came across and said: “You will need to take your trousers off, Joe. The wise men didn’t wear ski pants.” “Can’t I keep them on?” Joe had asked, hearing giggles from the girl playing Mary who was standing next to him. “No you will look silly, Joe. Now you don’t want to look silly in front of your Mum and Dad, do you?” It was with mortification that Joe complied and carefully pulled his trousers down making sure that no one could see that he wasn’t wearing underpants. “That’s better” said the teacher. But it didn’t feel that way to Joe. He felt extremely vulnerable, a vulnerability which turned to shame once he climbed the stage in the assembly and found himself looking down on the audience; an audience who were all in a prime position to look up his tunic. He could still feel the shame now, despite the passage of time. His little private parts had been put on display to be laughed at and his mother had allowed it happen. Instead of the opportunity to show his acting potential, the little Joe was reduced to trembling at the back of the stage with his knees tightly pressed together.

He banished the memories and focused on straightening the edges of the pond, using a spirit level to get them right. He then unrolled the black PVC pond liner and laid it out on the lawn. The liner was thinner than he had expected and he questioned whether the sand he had bought would be sufficient to use as a protective base to stop stones coming through the soil and puncturing it.

Elisha came out. “I’m going to the shops. Do you want anything?”

“No.”

He watched her go back up the garden and thought hard until his lips formed a mischievous smile. After a few minutes, when he was sure she was out of the house, he went into the kitchen. He grabbed the Peruvian llama rug from the chair and bought it outside. He opened a bag of sand, shovelled it into the base of the hole and then smoothed it out with his feet. He placed the rug on top of the sand and patted it into the contours of the hole. It fitted perfectly. He lowered the liner on top of the rug and carefully pushed it so that it fitted the hole snugly. He then unrolled and turned on his garden hose and began filling the hole with water. As the weight of the water pulled the PVC tight, he made careful folds in the liner around the sides.

By the end of the day Joe was exhausted but happy. The basics of the pond were there. He sat until darkness drinking beer and admiring his craftsmanship.

Chapter 4

Elisha was marking at the kitchen table when Joe came indoors. He ignored her, went through to the living room and slumped on the sofa in front of the TV. He felt very tired and closed his eyes.

He awoke to find his hair being wrenched from his scalp. Elisha stood over him.

“Where is it? Tell me where it is?”

Joe tried to grab her wrists but she twisted his head around. He felt the skin on his face being stretched. “Let go for Christ’s sake.”

“Not until you’ve told me what you’ve done with it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please let go of me.”

She relaxed her pull for second and Joe twisted free, feeling some of his hair being ripped out in process. He rolled over onto the floor and scrambled up as Elisha advanced on him. He pushed his palms out to ward her off.

“Elisha stop. Just stop.”

“Roger’s present. What have you done with it?” Her fists were balled and her eyes were blazing.

“I haven’t done anything with it. Where did you leave it?”

“It was on the kitchen chair and now it’s gone. You’ve done something with it. I know you have.”

“I swear to God I haven’t.”

“There are only two of us in this house. I didn’t move it. So you must have done.”

“I didn’t. Maybe a fox came in and took it.”

“A fox? Why would a fox take a llama throw?”

“It might have thought it was a dead animal. You know how badly it smelt.” Joe tried to stifle a smile.

“Don’t laugh at me Joe. This isn’t funny.”

Joe advanced with his arms open. “Elisha, look. I promise you, I didn’t touch the throw. I swear. It’s probably around somewhere. Let me help you look for it.”

“Why is it I don’t believe you?”

“I don’t know. Look this is silly.” He tried to embrace her.

“Don’t touch me.” There were tears welling up her eyes. “I want that throw back. Do you hear.” She broke away from him and left the room slamming the door.

Joe sat on the sofa and rubbed head. His scalp was very tender. The ferocity of the attack shocked him. And also the fact that she had caught him unawares. It was like the time his parents had confronted him about stealing money. He was nine years old.

The trigger for his crime wave had been a bus journey he had taken with Mother. On the wooden floor of the red Routemaster, he had spotted a crumpled blue five pound note. He had put his foot on it and dragged it near before snatching it up. Excitement flooded through him. He was rich. He had nudged Mother and unballed his fist to let her see his find. She had smiled.

“Oh Joseph, aren’t you lucky.”

“Finder’s keepers, loser’s weepers?”

“Finder’s keepers. But it’s a lot of money, Jospeh, why don’t you let me look after it. I’ll keep it safe for you in my purse.”

“But I’ll be able to buy stuff won’t I?”

“Of course you will darling. We’ll go to the toy shop together.”

Joe had handed over the note and began to imagine what he could buy. He decided on a whole model army, but not plastic, metal. Lifeguards with shiny helmets and breastplates on white horses, Grenadier Guardsmen standing tall in their bearskins lead by a drummer in a leopard-skin, kilted Black Watch Highlanders with bagpipers, Indian troops in turbans and, best of all, cannon drawn by teams of four horses, perfectly detailed down to the miniature ram rods, cartridges and water buckets attached on little hooks on the underside of the gun carriages. That night, he could hardly sleep with excitement.

But the next day all Mother had allowed him to buy was one cannon with a gun carriage and two horses. After the man in the shop wrapped the cannon, they went home with Mother saying how lucky he was; Joe silent and seething.

His revenge was subtle and protracted. Everyday when he had the opportunity he went to Mother’s purse and stole some pennies. He calculated that she probably counted the notes and the silver but not the coppers. He began hoarding the pennies in a jam jar which he hid under a broken floorboard beneath his bed. As the jar filled, he gained in confidence. Soon he was taking money from the purses of Mother’s friends when they visited and then from the mothers of his own friends. He graduated from coppers to silver and then to £1 notes. Soon he needed a bigger jar. At night under the cover of darkness and using a small pocket torch he unearthed his cache and allowed the light to play over the shiny treasure within.

He spent his treasure carefully at first, on sweets to handout at school. But then he got bold. His best friend Raymond came into school with a brand new Timex with a leather strap. Megan Rowlands, who both Raymond and Joe fancied, was very impressed. Joe wanted her to be impressed with him and on a Saturday he retrieved the handful of pound notes from his stash and went to the jewellers on the high street. The next Monday in school he proudly showed Megan and Raymond his new Timex, which had an expandable steel bracelet like James Bond’s watch. Megan transferred her affections to him. He was careful for the next few days and made sure that he took the watch off before coming into the house and then hid it in his cache. But on the Friday he forgot and Mother saw it.

“Where did you get the watch, Joseph?”

“Oh my pal Raymond’s just bought a new watch and he let me have his old one.”

“It looks very new to me.”

“That’s because he got it as a Christmas present. But he got a better one as a birthday present and so he gave it to me.”

The matter was left at that and Joe though his explanation had been good. That night as he lay in bed, he heard raised voices from downstairs. He could only make out snippets.

“You’ve got to do something Jeffery.”

“Now don’t get me upset, Rebecca.”

“This can’t go on. You’ve got to act.”

The voices stopped and Joe rolled over to go to sleep. Then the door to his bedroom crashed open.

“Where’s the money Joseph?” Mother screamed.

“Tell your mother, Joseph,” Father said.

Mother came over the bed, she was spitting with anger. “You thieving little brat, I know you’ve got it hidden here.”

She grabbed the mattress and turfed Joe out of bed. As he cowered on the floor Father knelt down and grabbed his pajama jacket. “We know you weren’t given that watch Joseph. Now tell your mother where the money is?”

Mother had upended the bed and was scrabbling on the floor. She ripped up the loose floorboard and put her hand into the hole.

“I’ve found it Jeffrey. I’ve found it.”

Over the course of the weekend, Joe tried to explain about the injustice of the five pound note. His parents had none of it. He was a thief and liar and that was all there was to it. For punishment they stopped his pocket money for two years.

A liar and a thief. Joe rubbed his head. No longer a thief but still a liar. Using the llama throw to line the pond was childish but it was done now. There was no way that he could be expected to empty the pond and remove the liner. But if he told Elisha that is exactly what she would expect him to do. Maybe he would tell her when things had cooled down. They could have a laugh about it. It was only a smelly rug after all.

Chapter 5

It was May again. It had been a miserable wet winter but now it seemed as if summer had arrived. Joe sat in a director’s chair basking in the warm sunshine, sipping a can of ice-cold Grolsch and gazing meditatively at the pond. The solar-powered fountain was sending up a three-foot spray of water crystals in which a mini rainbow shimmered. The downward drops of water splashed on the lush leaves of an Iris, rocking its delicate purple flowers and puckered the surface of the pond. In the clear water a little gold orfe nosed gently, feeding on insect larvae. In the corner of the pond, protected by the overhanging paving stones, two frogs poked their heads above the water and kept watch on the black tadpoles darting around the edges. Ribbed leaves of hostas bowed down towards the water. Small insects, pond skaters and water-boat-men flitted across the surface. Above in the trees, Joe heard the song of blackbirds.

Joe drained his lager and crushed the can in his fist. He had created a pond and it was a beautiful pond, but it was all meaningless. The whole point to creating beauty was to share it, but his action with the llama throw, the foundation of his pond, had lost him the one person with whom he wanted to share his creativity.

The smelly rug had achieved a kind of monumental symbolism. Its disappearance turned the cracks of distrust and anger between him and Elisha into a chasm. He couldn’t admit his lie and Elisha couldn’t tolerate his dishonesty. His attempts after the attack to make things better had been treated with even more distrust until he began to feel that his feelings for Elisha were also one big lie. They lived together in the house for a while in angry silences. Joe spent more and more time in the garden consolidating the pond and Elisha spent more and more time in the pub after work. In late July she went on holiday on her own. In August she moved out and Joe was left with his pond.

(c)Jake Arden 2011