At number 18 Military Row in Mornington, Fergal
Spelman was sitting in his armchair enjoying the peace and quiet of the empty
house when there was a persistent knock on the front door.
He didn’t hear it initially because he had been
enjoying the peace and quiet so much he was actually asleep in his armchair and
he was certainly enjoying that.
He did a lot of sleeping in his armchair nowadays it
was the by-product of having too much time and too little to occupy it.
Fergal woke with a start and after he had come to his
senses he reluctantly got up from his comfy chair and went to answer the door
and when he did so there was a smiling girl in a long Turquoise dress standing
on the step.
“Hi I’m Charlotte” she announced
“Can I borrow a screwdriver?”
Charlotte had just moved into Military Row, the house
next door to his to be exact, number 19.
Strictly speaking calling her a girl was perhaps
stretching a point as Charlotte Gibbons was actually forty nine years old and
had 4 grown up children but she was a girl in comparison to Fergal who was
knocking loudly on the door to his seventh decade.
“Of course you can” he replied “Come in a minute”
“Thank you” she said
“I’m Fergal by the way”
“Pleased to meet you Fergal” she said and smiled
again.
Fergal thought she had a very pleasant smile in fact
he thought
Charlotte had a very pleasant face, but with sad eyes,
not sad like a puppy dog, more the kind of sad that went deep and left a
tell-tale impression on her face.
She also had a very nice figure, even taking into
consideration the fact she was in her late-forties and had given birth 4 times,
not that he knew any of that at the time, but his first impression was a
favourable one.
Charlotte herself noted that Fergal was not an
unattractive man even if he was a little long in the tooth for her taste, not
that it was anything more than a casual observation, his looks even his good
looks were immaterial, that was not why she was there, she just wanted to
borrow a screwdriver.
So although they both found the other nice to look at
there was no instant mutual attraction, no flash of lightning, no fluttering
hearts, sighing or a cascade of Mantovani’s violins.
Fergal thought she was an extremely “fit” young woman
but he’d always needed more than just mere physical attraction to light his
fire.
He had to know the person, like them and preferably
love them for true sexual attraction to take hold of him.
Nonetheless looking at an attractive younger woman
beat dozing in his armchair hands down so he wasn’t in any hurry to see her
leave so he said
“Would you like a coffee while you’re here?”
“Oh yes please” she said
“Would you like a coffee while you’re here?” he asked
“Oh yes please” she said
“You know I’ve made three drinks today already and I
let them all go cold”
Apart from noticing the obvious facts that she was
very attractive, had a sublimely attractive smile, sad eyes and didn’t own a
screwdriver, he also divined the fact that Charlotte was Jewish as she wore a
gold Star of David around her neck.
He also detected that the turquoise dress that she was
wearing was a long flowing affair that fitted well around her ample bosom and
then hung loosely to the floor, which left a lot to the imagination, which was
fine by him because he had an extremely vivid imagination.
After a brief conversation he soon ascertained what
task she was doing at home, the dreaded flat pack furniture and what type of
screwdriver she required to do it with and a small selection from the tool shed
but after having coffee with her he said
“I’m at a bit of a loose end, so why don’t I come and
give you a hand”
“No I couldn’t ask you to do that” she protested but
was hoping he might volunteer to help her.
“I insist” he said
Fergal had retired from the Mornington brewery and
lived alone, his wife had died two years earlier and his two sons had families
of their own so he had a lot of time on his hands, a lot of which he seemed to
spend asleep in his armchair.
So the prospect of getting out of the house and doing
something useful appealed to him greatly.
Although he would have had to admit to an ulterior
motive in volunteering his services, other than to alleviate his boredom and
that was because his new next door neighbour Charlotte was very pleasing to the
eye and although that wasn’t enough in itself to get his motor running, it was
a bloody good start, even if he only looked at her as a friend.
And Fergal and Charlotte did become friends, from that
first day she asked to borrow a screwdriver and he helped her with assembling
flat pack furniture.
He had enjoyed the task and her company so much that
he helped her on subsequent days with a variety of other jobs and he felt
useful again.
Which was why he came to spend the summer helping
Charlotte to decorate her house.
During the redevelopment of Mornington Field her house
was used as the site office by the site manager and although it had been
redecorated throughout by the Estate before she moved in, it was decorated only
in neutral tones, magnolia emulsion and white gloss and one thing Fergal had
noticed apart from her figure was that Charlotte was not a neutral tones kind
of person, she was a vibrant kind of woman, so she wanted to make her mark,
stamp her personality on the place.
Fergal was happy to help Charlotte, it kept him busy
and made him feel useful which gave him fresh energy and a renewed purpose and
more opportunities to feast his eyes on her and he would have been content if
that was all there was.
Although he wasn’t aware of it at the time, Charlotte
enjoyed it too, but for her it was because she was lonely, she missed her boys
and felt she wasn’t needed since the youngest one left to join the army.
But she wasn’t the only one because it had occurred to
Fergal very early on that he too had been lonely, he just hadn’t realised it
until he met her and spent time with her.
While they worked together they got to know each other
and eventually he got to find out the reason for the sadness in her eyes.
Charlotte hadn’t given birth to 4 babies as he first
thought she had given birth to 5.
Her youngest child was a girl named Ruth who at the
age of 8 was struck by a hit and run driver and killed.
“My baby girl was gone” she sobbed “my beautiful baby
girl”
Fergal didn’t know what to say, what could he say?
What empty words could he have used to console someone
who had lost a child?
No parent should have to bury their children, he felt
so inadequate and all he could do was to take her in his arms and let her cry
on his shoulder.
He couldn’t take the pain away or stem the flow of
tears all he could do was hold her while she sobbed and afterwards listen while
she unburdened herself.
In addition to losing her daughter she also lost her
husband who decided he could best help his grieving wife by shagging the next
door neighbour.
“That’s shit” Fergal said
It was little wonder she was sad and lonely.
As the summer wore on and they completed one room
after another they were both secretly dreading finishing the job.
They had done the garden already and the exterior
painting was completed by the Estate, so what would they do? What would fill
their days? What excuse would he have to be with Charlotte when all the work
was done?
And what reason would Charlotte have to ask him for
his help?
And so it was towards the end of September as summer
turned slowly in to autumn when all the work was completed, that they
discovered that amidst the wallpaper, filler and the paint fumes that they had
fallen in love.
Which was when Fergal and Charlotte realised there
were other ways for them to pass their time together that didn’t involve her
asking if she could borrow a screwdriver, gardening tools or a paintbrush.
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