From his childhood until he left home at eighteen, Tom’s parents forged and maintained good relationships with all of their neighbours. His family moved three times and his mum often reiterated how important these connections were. In an emergency, you might need neighbours to call the fire brigade, the police, an ambulance. Or feed your cat or dog when you were away. Maybe do a bit of shopping when you were ill. Even watch your child. Trust, camaraderie, community.
There had also been a social element with neighbours: evening drinks for his parents, barbeques, day trips with next door and their children. His mother still exchanged Christmas cards with several former neighbours who’d become lifelong friends.
He’d grown up believing that cordial connections to the people who lived on the other side of your bedroom and living-room walls, or across the street, came pre-loaded into home ownership. An automatic benefit, even entitlement. One of their reasons for getting out of the city was to find a community similar to those that had sheltered him as a child. He wants the same for Gracey. The confirmation of a safety net extending beyond her parents. So the idea that owning a home is no different from his experience of renting is unthinkable. Everyone keeping to themselves, folks coming and going with nary a nod, maybe small talk but nothing meaningful developing? Not possible, or acceptable.
Clad in his work boots and old clothes, he plods over. The dirty caravan soon looms. Another anomaly. Why would people so obsessively house-proud position the wreck outside their pristine home? The neighbouring house clearly and outwardly projects a particular set of standards. That’s no accident; the house next door is a symbol, a communication of status. The caravan makes no sense.
He really needs to straighten this issue out, and his head, then move on. He has enough on his plate. Get a quick exchange over with, then get back to work on Gracey’s bedroom. He wants the furniture assembled before teatime.
A sense of subtly passing from autumn to summer across the few metres dividing the two properties compels Tom to glance at the sky to establish how the sun shines here when cloud douses their home with premature autumnal gloom. And even though the neighbour is no longer out front, how does her garden feel occupied , even unusually alive? Maybe the frenetic insect life can account for this.
Humming bees vibrate the air and thrum the ground as if they’re discharging an electric current. He hasn’t seen a single bee in his own garden. Nor so much as a brown moth. Yet, here, not only do they have enough bees to furnish a rank of hives, a confetti of Peacock and Cabbage White butterflies also attends the floral banquet on offer, perpetually scattering about the heavily perfumed air.
Tom pads a pristine path laid parallel to the neighbours’ drive. Lamps of flowers that encroach upon the bleached flagstones light up the sawdust and stains plastering his boots. A temptation to linger and stare at the incredible garden slows his feet. The last time he saw plants so vibrant was in a botanical garden. He wants Fiona to see this too and see what they can achieve. The soil must be exceptional.
The front windows of the house are concealed by dark curtains but the front door is open, a black space. Barely discernible walls suggest the murky silhouettes of pictures and ornaments, inviting Tom to narrow his eyes to better see what appears to be a mask with tusks.
Before he can get any closer, a shrill voice shrieks behind him, ‘Yiss?’
Startled, Tom turns towards the challenge.
And sees no one and nothing save groomed shrubs, heavenly flower beds and a symmetrical hedge. Until, at the corner of his vision, a blurred figure abruptly rises from cover.
Tom starts again. ‘Shit. Sorry. I…’
The hostile tone of voice is matched by the speaker’s disapproving expression. But, at such close range, Tom is more shocked by the diminutive figure’s appearance; even more so than he is by how she managed to project her voice from a different section of the garden. But two distant sightings are no preparation for the sight of the peculiar haircut framing the woman’s cramped, fierce face: a severe fringe guttering a thatch of hair; a henna bulb hooding plain features, free of cosmetics. She appears to have too many hair follicles on the scalp of so small a head. She also hasn’t trimmed those thickets of eyebrow nearly as well as her plants and appears to be wearing a man’s clothes.
‘Can we help you?’ A second voice announces itself behind Tom. A man, his tone prickly.
Tom shifts his footing and as he turns to face the man, the manoeuvre blurs his vision as if he’s just stood up too quickly. Brilliant, florid hues and the gauzy light drenching the garden do nothing to ease his disorientation. By the time he’s blinked the glowing palette from his eyes, his vision settles upon…
No one.
Again, there is no one there. Only more of the garden and the lane beyond, funnelling through the oaks and ashes and beeches.
Until a second figure shoots upright from another section of the garden, contrary to where the voice originated. A man grinning triumphantly and clearly pleased with startling the visitor.
Tom’s surprise immediately extends to this figure’s equally absurd appearance. Earlier, he’d heard a plummy male voice murmuring beyond the hedge, but this is his first sighting of the male half of the couple next door. An embroidered waistcoat, intricately patterned an intense blue and red, covers a loose linen shirt. His tight trousers are pink. The uppers of his shoes appear woven. And the man’s baldness is clownish, a shiny dome of scalp between two muffs of groomed hair that fall to his shoulders. Like a Jacobean playwright, his snowy beard has also been trimmed to a meticulous point. Thin lips, framing a set of dark and unhealthy-looking teeth, worm moistly. The default setting of the face’s expression appears to be a smirk.
Bewildered, Tom glances from one neighbour to the other: the grinning man, the disapproving woman. The front garden is no bigger than ten square metres and is strictly marshalled by hedges on either side, so how did they manage to hide? Or had he been too preoccupied to notice them as they knelt and attended to the flower beds?
At least the man is smiling, after a fashion. Tom clumsily veers towards him.
‘The dianthus!’ the woman shrieks. ‘You’re trampling them!’
Tom pulls up. Looks at his feet. ‘Sorry. I—’
‘Where you are is fine,’ her male counterpart says and minces towards Tom, up on his tiptoes between the plants. On either side of his nut-brown head, his bob flounces and sways like a sea creature in a rock pool. And when the self-regarding face confronts Tom at close quarters, the man’s cold blue eyes twinkle with amused contempt.
Tom extends his hand.
Rather than accepting the shake, the man taps Tom’s fingers. A gesture made with reluctance.
‘I’m Tom. My wife, Fiona, and my—’
‘We know who you are.’ The curt reply ratchets Tom’s bafflement and he futilely scratches through his thoughts to discover a reason why his new neighbours are upset. Or is this the level of disapproval they inflict on all strangers?
‘Got your work cut out.’ The man nods his head in the direction of Tom’s house, his expression disdainful at the mere sight of the building. There’s an over-familiarity to the mockery, as if he’s repeating sound advice that Tom failed to heed the first time he heard it. Without bothering to acquaint himself through small talk, this ridiculous figure, with a head best suited to the stage at Stratford-upon-Avon, is genuinely taking a tone.
An unpleasant warmth flushes Tom’s scalp. For a moment each hair follicle seems to bulge.
‘The whole thing should have been torn down years ago.’ This from the woman, the clipped enunciation again striking Tom as affected.
Tom looks at her angry face but her fierce eyes startle his thoughts into a flock of panicking birds. He lowers his eyes and focuses on her chin, which is grooved like a hairy walnut. Disgusted, he glances at the bowl-shaped thatch and recalls a picture of a knight in a childhood book, the dignitary having removed his steel helmet to reveal a foppish bob. He wonders if this pair cut each other’s hair.
And now they’re both staring. At him. Into him. They stare and stare with their piercing blue eyes, pinning him in place, where he silently writhes in a discomfort that is physical. His neighbours have the same eyes.
A tremor ripples his vision. He’s hot, breathless, dizzy, antsy, the sensation becoming unbearable. His wounded outrage intensifies the garden’s colours until they seem hyper-real.
The bald man’s gleeful grin only broadens. The woman frowns, her lined mouth sagging as she too grasps an opportunity to look askance at his new home, as if it is an insult to common decency. ‘Two properties could not be more different.’
Tom’s throat becomes a drain clogged with wet leaves. He needs to swallow but won’t because that will be visible proof of his distress at being shamed. His posture ramrods.
The man embellishes, his competitive spite matched by a viperous glimmer in his eyes. ‘Always been that way. But then we’ve always made the right choices, haven’t we, me dear. Different standards.’
Tom’s cheeks smart as if from slaps. He hasn’t felt this way since being disciplined by a manager in his first job, at twenty-one. A similar sense of being scolded at school revives, until exposure to the man’s persistent smirk finally breaks him from the enforced deference he feels when standing on their property, their turf. ‘Come again?’ His voice is higher and sharper than he intended and his thoughts continue to riot. But a desire to strike back, to confront, grows hotly.
The woman throws her thin arm in the direction of her house. ‘The fence at the back is the first thing you’ll need to address.’
‘It’s that time,’ the man contributes in a headmasterly tone, rising onto his toes. The performance is completed with an admonishing, pitying shake of the head, the drapery of white hair swaying above a grin twisting triumphantly. Points scored.
The part of Tom’s mind that produces language remains frigid, iced over. He has no words. The curious paralysis baffles him. He’s unable to release anything from behind the knot of his larynx other than ‘What?’ He wonders if he is more angry with the neighbours or with himself for failing to react with anything but stupefaction.
The woman’s face colours a brighter scarlet, matching the absurd hood of hair about it. ‘The fence. Back garden? Surely you’ve noticed its considerable disrepair?’
‘Can’t say that I have,’ he squeezes out, churlishly.
Tom has noticed the half-collapsed and algae-greened mess at the back, dividing the two properties. He’d assumed the neighbours must be used to it, so has given it scant consideration. And to his eye, crucially, had the neighbours not planted a line of ornamental trees at the very border, the posts and panels of the fence would not be falling apart. And anyway, in the scheme of things facing him, the fence is a cosmetic outlier in his plans; it is beyond his budget and the very last thing that he’ll be addressing during the renovation of the property.
The man is up on his toes again, his hands folded in the small of his back, appearing owlish as he remonstrates. ‘Been overlooked for far too long.’
Tom stops swivelling within this ambush but remains reluctant to move his feet in case he tramples a valued flower. They’re everywhere. Barely any lawn, and only one or two flat stones offer any hope of egress in any direction. He might have blundered into a minefield. The neighbours must prance between them like strange, angry birds. But he’s trapped, rooted.
The slow drain of adrenalin finally loosens his limbs. His jaw unlocks. ‘Look—’
‘On the left. Your side. Your responsibility. A priority!’ So ardent is the woman’s emphasis her tongue lisps on the last word, pwiowity .
Tom glares at her.
She glares back. ‘An eyesore! All needs replacing! Every panel and post. Use concrete posts. Wood will rot.’
On the other side, the man positively beams as his wife berates Tom. ‘Your predecessor never managed it. You can afford it, I hope?’
‘Come again?’
‘First home, is it? Bit late in the day, eh? Hope you have deep pockets.’
Tom’s dog finally bolts. ‘How deep were yours when you picked that up for a couple of grand? When would that have been, 1970?’
The figure can riposte with nothing but an odious grin that, at least, is no longer so assured. But before Tom can capitalise on this subtle alteration in the balance of power, the wife chimes in, her voice more strident than ever. ‘It’s falling onto our trees! A disgrace! We don’t have broken fences in this village.’
Regaining ground quickly, the man seizes a chance to jab low, working under Tom’s first defence. ‘Don’t skimp on the height of the panels either. We enjoy our privacy.’
Involuntarily, Tom’s left eyelid flickers and he feels a delinquency sidle into his emotions. An instability. Yet he fails to think of a reply to the double-act and what must be an unleashing of their stored grievances against the house next door. But their manner is unacceptable and he will soon have nothing to offer his neighbours but a roar of animal rage. He even feels ready to spit into their faces.
They understand how he feels too. That’s the worst part. And he intuits that they are amused, even energised by his discomfort. They show no inclination to stop the taunting and the hint of their satisfaction makes Tom grow cold. And colder until he catches a welcome glimpse of Fiona approaching. She must have been listening. He’d left the front door open when he’d popped next door.
Fiona’s smile is tense from restraining her own irritation. She works as counter-staff in a bank and is used to dealing with the rude, the stupid, the hapless, the aggrieved, the general public. ‘Look, Mister?’ She slips in front of Tom, forming a human shield before her cornered husband, until they stand united upon a tiny patch of available grass.
Immediately, the female neighbour appears scandalised by the sight of Fiona’s bare flesh. She’s wearing denim shorts and a vest, a pair of old trainers on her feet, in which to work in the warm grubby confines of their home.
Grinning lecherously, the male half, however, cannot restrain himself and leers at Fiona’s bare legs with undisguised appetite. Brazenly, before Tom’s very eyes, the freak’s gaze then crawls up Fiona’s body and lingers upon her chest. ‘Moot,’ he says, grinning at Fiona’s breasts.
Brack! A gun might have exploded behind Tom and Fiona. They both flinch.
‘Christ!’ Fiona says.
Together, they turn to the source of the bang. The front door of the Moots’ house is now closed, has been slammed shut. The female half has disappeared from the garden.
Dazed, the explosion of the front door ringing in their ears, Tom and Fiona return their attention to Mr Moot.
Who grins some more, enjoying their shock.
Tom tries to speak. ‘I don’t—’
Fiona interrupts. ‘We’ll make a note of the fence, Mr Moot.’
‘Magi Moot.’
‘Right. But it’s on a very long list. I’m sure you can appreciate that. The place has been in a state for a long time. And after what happened… Yeah? You’ll understand how much work we’ve ahead of us. So you’ll just have to be patient.’
Fiona looks to Tom, then nods in the direction of their house.
Magi Moot turns his back. And so swiftly, Tom flinches as if the man is about to throw a punch. But Magi Moot, if that could possibly be his real name, casually picks his way, light on his toes like a dancer, back to where he was gardening. He doesn’t look at Tom or Fiona again. Unruffled, he crouches and his secateurs resume the snipping that infuriates Tom even more than the barrage he’s just endured; his rage is now augmented by the added humiliation of his wife needing to rescue him. He remains immobile and mute with his hands extended, his palms open, sharing his astonishment and shocked disbelief with his wife.
Raising an eyebrow, Fiona glances at Tom’s hands and nods. ‘Gracey’s wardrobe’s about that size. Let’s crack on.’
Tom still can’t seem to move his feet with so much left unsaid. Until Fiona squeezes his forearm and whispers, ‘Assure them we’re a nice quiet family?’
A rash of shame finally enlivens his muscles and he falls into step behind his wife. But as they leave the illusion of summer and return to the grey air and blackening greens and peeling facade of their property, a reckless tailwind of confidence suddenly invigorates him. He becomes giddy. ‘What a pair of pricks!’ His voice might have carried all the way to the village.
Fiona turns. ‘Ssh. Don’t make it worse.’
‘Did you hear all that?’
‘In the scheme of things facing us, Fred and Rose are a footnote. Come and see what I’ve found under the kitchen sink.’
‘What?’
‘Mouse mother-ship.’