3. Filling the Grave

Tania would be wise to be careful...

“I think there’s something really wrong with that bloke next door,” mumbled Tania to her co-habiting yet estranged husband Kevin who had come down to the kitchen for something to drink.

“What do you mean?” he asked, warily, “don’t he look at you with come-to-bed eyes and say sweet nothin’s to little innocent you? An’ don’t you lap it up?”

“You wouldn’t know what I meant if it stared you in the face!” snapped Tania, “he’s crying like a baby and sitting in an old deck chair as if he was on Skeggy beach and the sun was shining like it isn’t. And he’s looking into that hole he dug as if there might be someone in there, someone who wants to get out, maybe.”

“Rubbish,” sneered Kev, looking out of the window. “Look, he’s sorting his bins out as if that was the most important job in the world. Don’t they empty the recyclable stuff tomorrow? What is it? Green bins?”

“I’ve put ours out already,” agreed Tania. “Now get out of my life. I’m going to do a bit of weeding before it rains. The forecast’s for rain, you know.

“In the garden so that your new fancy boy can make eyes at you? Is that why you’re dressed like that? In that come-and-get-me short frock?”

“Kev, don’t. If it wasn’t for that jealous streak of yours we’d still be together and sharing a bed instead of how we are. As it is, you’re the loser, and you know it. I did love you, and in a way I still do, you know.”

Kevin sniffed and decided that he’d defended his right to have a wife who only ever looked at him and ignored the rest of the world, and done it enough times to have made the point, and he sauntered out of the room, She heard his footfall on the stairs and shook her head.

They’d been married since her late teens and in her head they still were, though they had been living totally separate lives for the better part of a year since one particularly nasty explosion from him. However, the cost of housing the way it was, he’d accepted that maybe it made more sense for him to stay where he was (the house had been Tania’s parents’ property when they’d been alive and she’d inherited it) and she’d agreed. Not that the arrangement was ideal because he still behaved as if she was his own private property and she just about put up with it.

Tania wasn’t at all happy about the situation, but there it was. Even though they’d agreed to live separate lives bar the housing situation Kev was still often spitefully jealous even though she didn’t feel that there was anything tying her to him. He watched her when he didn’t need to, and her only way out of his obsession would be if he left the house altogether, and sometimes she thought that must be inevitable. After all, it was her property, all the paperwork was put it in her name and he had nothing to do with it. She could tell him to get out of the place, even get help in evicting him, but she couldn’t bring herself to even think of doing that.

Sulkily, she made her way into the garden and couldn’t help noticing that the young bloke next door was refilling the very deep hole he’d been digging during the night, and doing it as quickly as he could with huge sweeps of his shovel which would probably have shifted more soil if he’d used less violence..

When he looked up at her he was scowling for no reason that she could think of, his eyes still red as a consequence of the tears he’d been shedding and, by the look of it, was still only just holding back.

“There’s nothing to see here,” he growled, “so keep your eyes off my business.”

“I don’t mean to pry,” she said with one of her brightest smiles, “but why did you dig such a big hole only to fill it in next day?”

“My mother’s gone for a walkabout and when she comes back, staggering probably, I don’t want her to fall into it,” he replied. And then, as a second thought, he added “and I dug it because it loosens the earth if you dig deep enough, makes it loose so I can sow some potatoes. I like gardening carefully and properly. I believe in giving the spuds room to grow.”

”Oh,” she replied, wondering why he had produced two very different reasons for what he was doing. Still, she thought, it was none of her business and she set about trowelling between rows of peas and runner beans that she had sowed earlier in the year. They looked to be doing well and she was hopeful of a good crop. Home grown vegetables, to her mind, were always better than those sold at the supermarket.

David Rozelle, no longer able to see he now that she’d bobbed down, trowel in hand, made his way to the three foot high fence that separated the two gardens and looked over it. He saw what she was doing, carefully ensuring that any nutrition in the soil was available to her vegetables rather than being stolen by unwanted weeds.

He would have been happy if she hadn’t noticed him, but she did. She merely glanced up and flashed a smile at him, and the very sadness of so much sweetness made him turn away and walk slowly towards his house. But he wasn’t to reach it without interruption. Not before Steven Beachus, Claire’s husband, stomped out towards him and, in a loud voice, shouted “there’s blood everywhere! where’s it come from? And where’s Claire?”

Tania heard him and stood up, staring towards her neighbour’s house.

“She cut her finger,” explained David, “quite badly,” he added. “She’s gone out to buy a tin of plasters. She won’t be long…”

“That’s nonsense!” exclaimed Steven Beachus, “there’s too much blood for it to be a cut finger, and anyway we’ve got plasters! But there’s blood everywhere! I’ve phoned the police!”

“Oh dear,” sighed David, “you just shouldn’t have done that. No sir, you shouldn’t. Now just you come inside and I’ll explain all about how fingers can bleed… I’m a teacher, you know, and understand such things. You phoned the police, you say? What did they say? Poor you! Won’t they laugh when you tell them the truth! About her finger bleeding! You’ll be the laughing stock of Brumpton Nick for ever and a day! Wouldn’t it be best to tell them you’ve made a mistake? For your own peace of mind? I tell you what… I’ll ring them and put it straight…”

“No!” almost shouted Steven Beachus as they disappeared into the kitchen. But Tania heard him loud and clear, even over the sound of the blues and twos that filled the air with the sudden shriek of an emergency being answered.

© Peter Rogerson 22.05.24