The Irritating Gentleman (part two)

‘Wow,’ Martin got out and looked around at the garden which was very overgrown. Everything was unnervingly tall; white shasta daisies reaching up to the sky and hollyhocks at eight feet tall towering above his head.

 

‘Come in,’ said Hayley cheerfully as she opened the stiflingly hot porch, full of wrinkled cacti coated in dust.

 

They went through another door which was unlocked and entered the kitchen. ‘This is very old fashioned. Gosh, I haven’t seen a patterned lino floor like that since I was a child.’

 

‘Well, this was my grandmother’s house. She left it to me and my sister.’

 

Martin followed her into the pantry which was dark and piled up with lots of the same few grocery items. ‘That’s a lot of Lucozade,’ he said.

 

‘It was all Grandma would consume in the final chapter of her life so we ordered loads because it was cheaper.’

 

‘How long were you expecting her to live?’

 

Hayley shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We were hopeful for a few more years. Lucozade can make certain people immortal..but in the end it was about five months. She had it on a drip. We set up a hospital bed in the lounge.’

 

‘Is it still in date?’

 

‘Yes, my sister went through it all and she tipped the out of date bottles onto the garden,’ she took two glasses out of the cupboard and poured the fizzing orange liquid out and took a sip. ‘Mmmm that’s the good stuff. Take a seat, Martin.’

 

Martin pulled out the wooden kitchen chair, the seat was padded with a red plastic covering. ‘You know, me and Ben started up an estate agency,’

 

‘Oh really?’

 

‘Yes. We’re doing really well. I go into lots of houses. I haven’t seen such dated decor in a while though. There was one bungalow, out of town, further than this, it was right in the sticks. That went to auction. You should do this place up, it’s a big plot, you could make a lot of money.’

 

Hayley shrugged. ‘We like it like this, it’s homely.’

 

Martin unstuck the palms of his hands from the tacky, oil-coated table cloth. ‘I try not to have too much sugar. I follow the, you know, high protein, athlete, body builder type diet.’

 

‘I thought you were quite sluggish back in the pool today,’

 

Martin’s eyes widened. He looked just as if he’d been slapped in the face. ‘Oh wow, well okay, we don’t all have thick sturdy thighs, made for swimming. I’m better at athletics as it happens. Long slender legs were always very handy for high jump when I was at school. They run in my family, we all have them, long legs, like giants.’

 

Hayley knocked back the rest of her Lucozade and exhaled loudly. ‘What about all those long black hairs covering them?’

 

‘They’re from my mother. Half from my father perhaps. I say half because..’ his voice faltered slightly, ‘he lost one of his legs in an accident at the biscuit factory.’

 

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Hayley cleared her throat and after a long pause said, ‘It’s not as if you can just grow another one is it?’

 

‘Well they do good fakes now,’ Martin laughed, ‘legs..not Hobnobs.’

 

‘Lidl do a good fake Hobnob. They’re better than the originals actually.’

 

Martin stared at her sternly. ‘I doubt that Hayley,’ he snapped, anyway, I tend to avoid cheap German supermarkets.’

 

‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’ she shrugged.

 

‘So then,’ he folded his arms and gave her a hard stare, ‘what are you up to these days, job wise I mean?’

 

‘Well I walked out of Temple Recruitment as you probably remember. Then I worked in a blood bank for a while, stock control, that sort of thing. Now I work at the university.’

 

‘Oh that sounds very clever. What do you do there, Kayleigh?’ She rolled her eyes. He shook his head and cleared his throat, 'I mean, Hayley,'

 

She ran her tongue over her front teeth. ‘I look after the insects.’

 

‘Insects?’

 

‘Yes. There’s a breeding programme, and then they get used in experiments, pesticides, bio-control, you know. And I have to monitor their life cycles, depending on temperature, light levels etc and how quickly they can destroy certain crops.’

 

‘Gosh..and I just sell houses! Who knew there were jobs like that,’ he looked at her for a few seconds and tried to decide if he genuinely fancied her. She wasn’t too bad for an off day but she seemed a little unhinged. ‘Hey, do you mind if I use your toilet?’

 

‘No of course,’ she got up and rushed to open the back door, ‘do you mind using the one outside. It’s just in that brick building in the garden.’

 

‘Oh,’ Martin looked out and there hidden among the extremely tall dahlias and nettles was a ramshackle, red-brick shed type thing. ‘Don’t you have a bathroom inside?’

 

‘Yes upstairs but my sister has filled it with junk so it’s probably easier if you just use that one.’

 

Martin wandered up the slender remainder of a garden path as bees and other insects buzzed around him and long brown spikes of coarse grass scraped on his tracksuit bottoms. The old painted wooden door was reluctant to open and he had to yank it but then it wouldn’t shut properly, let alone lock.

 

Inside was an old toilet with a cracked seat and a chain flush, a tiny sink and a rock hard blue tablet of soap, also cracked. He caught his reflection in a mottled mirror and adjusted his damp hair. ‘I need to get out of here soon,’ he whispered to himself.

 

As he relieved himself he noticed several large spiders hanging around in the corners and above the tank from where the chain hung down. ‘Ew,’ he shuddered and hurriedly washed his hands, wiping them on his t-shirt and rushed out of there.

 

‘Everything alright?’ said Hayley as she stood at the old fashioned cooker, stirring a pot on the stove.

 

‘Yes. There are quite a lot of spiders in there,’

 

‘I know.’

 

‘I didn’t know if you wanted me to get rid of them for you,’

 

‘No, they’re alright. They all mean something different to me, you know, when I’m sat there…and I spend a lot of time in that toilet. Not that I’d have been too upset if you squished them but I’ve got to know them over the months and years and I chat to them.’

 

‘Okay,’ Martin edged closer and tried to look at what she was cooking. ‘Hey what’s that?’

 

‘Well you know you said that you were on a high protein, athlete’s diet?’

 

‘Mmmm yes,’ he was scared now as he glanced at the brown liquid which was steaming.

 

‘This is my grandmother’s recipe. It’s made from mushrooms from the garden, we collect them in autumn and dry them, then they get rehydrated in bone broth. To be honest it’s the secret of my ultra fast swimming. I thought we could have some before getting to know each other properly.’

 

Martin was torn now. There was a part of him which had become excited and another part of him which was terrified and the two mixed together made for a strange sensation which he quite liked although he really didn’t want to try the soup. ‘Okay. Shall I sit down then?’

 

‘Yes. Can you get the bowls from that cupboard with the glass door? And the spoons are in the drawer.’

 

As soon as he turned his back, Hayley swiped a load of dead flies off the window sill and threw them into the pot, stirring all the time. 

 

‘I have to say, it smells quite nice,’ he said as he laid out the bowls, placing them on little circular straw mats which were piled in the centre of the table.

 

‘It tastes even better,’ said Hayley as she ladled it out.

 

Martin spooned some up and then blew on it. It didn’t look that appetising but it smelled like melted butter and he was feeling extremely hungry after his swimming. ‘Tastes alright,’ he said, ‘it’s quite grainy though.’

 

Just as he swallowed it down, Hayley stood up and waved a wooden spoon at him while chanting a funny little rhyme. ‘Avoidata, annoydata, arachnoidata!’ she said and within seconds the irritating gentleman was transformed into a black hairy spider.

 

He stood motionless on the patterned lino floor, staring up at Hayley with eight eyes all shocked and confused. She bent down and scooped him up and carefully carried him out, through the back door, along the narrow path and into the outside toilet where she dumped him unceremoniously in the corner and went back to her old fashioned house to throw away the rest of the soup. 

 

She whistled a tune as she switched on radio three, poured a glass of wine and put a Lidl lasagne into the oven for dinner for her and her sister.