There’s Always Tomorrow – Episode 05
There's Always Tomorrow by Mark Neilson
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- 3. There’s Always Tomorrow – Episode 03
- 4. There’s Always Tomorrow – Episode 04
- 5. There’s Always Tomorrow – Episode 05
- 6. There’s Always Tomorrow – Episode 06
- 7. There’s Always Tomorrow – Episode 07
- 8. There’s Always Tomorrow – Episode 08
“The sky’s important to me,” Larry said quietly. “Once it was all I could see from my hospital bed.
“I had never looked at the sky before, not properly. Never seen how it’s always changing. That was a huge discovery.”
“Your leg?” Helen asked.
The nurse in her had clocked a prosthetic as soon as she had seen him walk from his own house to hers that first day.
“Yes,” he said. “A land mine in Afghanistan. I was lucky.”
It was impossible to hold his steady grey gaze. Her own dropped to the sketch pad in her hand.
“And the painting?” she asked.
“Something they gave me to do in rehab,” he explained. “It brought me ease.”
“And helped you to discover a real talent.” Helen tried to smile.
“Anything but real,” he said wryly. “Just enough to keep me going.”
Glancing at the sky, he deliberately ended the conversation.
“There’s a squall coming in,” he said.
“Let’s go home before it hits us. I know a shortcut across the fields.”
Someone knocking on her kitchen door startled Lorna out of an illicit catnap.
Disorientated, she blinked, then the knock came again. A firm, no-nonsense knock.
Leaping from her chair, she hurried through to the kitchen and opened the door just as the fist was rising to knock again.
It belonged to a small man in rough work clothes, a grubby cap pulled down over his face.
For a moment, they stared at each other.
“Ye said ye wanted a gairdener,” he said gruffly.
“But I’ve looked at yer gairden and it’s no’ a gairdener ye want – it’s a big JCB tae rip it all up an’ start again.”
Lorna didn’t like being caught on the back foot like this.
“Are you the gentleman I spoke to on the phone?” she demanded.
Faded blue eyes studied her.
“Am I the mannie? Aye.”
“Then you’re Mr Johnston?”
“Wullie Johnston? Aye.”
Did he have to repeat every question, she wondered irritably.
He looked too small and slight to tackle the wilderness surrounding her new home.
“The garden is a bit overgrown,” she admitted, “but can you tackle it by yourself?”
“Aye,” he said. “I could use a flame thrower, but I’ll settle for a spade, a stout fork, a hoe and a rake that has a’ its tines still there. Dae ye have them?”
Lorna was on the back foot again.
“Not at the moment,” she replied. “But I can drive into Stonehaven tomorrow and buy whatever equipment you require.”
“Nae need,” he said. “I hae my tools. They’re in the back o’ my car.”
As he marched round the house, Lorna hesitated then hurried through to her front windows to peer round the curtain.
Outside was an ancient Volvo estate, its paint faded and its body covered in mud.
She scurried back to the door to meet him.
“Have you brought any references?” she demanded.
“Whit sort of references?” He sounded puzzled rather than belligerent.
“About the quality of your work?”
Wullie shrugged.
“Oh, that,” he said. “I let my work speak for itself.”
Lorna fought to control this conversation.
“And your charges?” she asked.
He turned, surveying the mess he had to rake out, cut back and dig.
“Ten pounds an hour,” he said. “But for a big job like this, I’ll make it seven pound fifty and that way I can stop once in a while, and maybe have a cup of tea afore I get started again.”
Lorna grinned.
“I can manage the odd cup of tea,” she conceded.
“Nae need. I’ll bring my own.” He straightened. “Aye, weel. Talkin’ won’t get the work done.”
He set off into the garden, rake and fork in hand.
She couldn’t help herself.
“Tell me, Mr Johnston, how do you spell ‘garden’?”
He turned and stared at her, then a crinkle appeared round his eyes.
“Gairden? I spell it the same way I’ve always spelled it,” he said, and began raking.
Helen was awakened by Tess whining and nudging the bedroom door with her nose.
She slipped out of bed, unhooked an old jacket from the bedroom door and padded down the stairs after the dog.
Slipping on a pair of wellies, she opened the door and stepped out.
There wasn’t a light to be seen.
Then, above her in the total darkness, she saw a sky full of stars, uncountable in the absence of city light pollution.
She walked into the courtyard entranced, her heart lifting in response to that countryside sky.
From behind, she heard a muffled shout.
She spun round. The cry came from the open bedroom window of the other cottage.
Someone in pain and terror.
Larry.
Nurse’s training sent her running towards trouble rather than away from it.