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CHAPTER ONE

It was a sweltering Tuesday in August; the kind of day when you seek deep shade and still the sweat pours from you. Oscar Aspinal was out house hunting and things were not going well for him. Slumped behind the wheel of his stationary Vauxhall Astra, his gangling frame frazzled by the stifling heat, he was cheesed off by his lack of success. Just 24 hours earlier he had sold his marital home in a speedy cash sale, and it went for an asking price which, privately, he'd reckoned his compliant agent had surely pitched too high, when demonstrably she had not. With his spirits buoyed by the sale, he had been quietly confident that he would swiftly have a replacement home lined up, ready to move into without undue delay. But things were not going to plan. Now, well past lunchtime, he had himself something of a problem: if he remained determined to live only hereabouts - and he was adamant he had to keep near Margery - he could soon find himself homeless. For none of the six properties in this south-east London location to which, after empathising with their advertised particulars, he had eagerly sallied forth to view, had he ended up keen to buy. 'That'll learn yer to let yourself be taken in by estate agents' puff!' he sneeringly rebuked himself, consigning the papers to the footwell of the accompanying seat.
     The sixty-three-year-old widower summoned a resigned smile and silently acknowledged he was wrong to deride the house-agent's prose; he should have remembered that this was what house hunting was mostly like - a frustrating and stressful task. He recognised, also, that he might just be culpable for his current predicament by restricting his search only to those properties offered on the books of one estate agent, even one who'd come highly recommended by a close friend. Oscar was on the verge of heading back for a word or two with the agent on this very point, when he remembered he had those keys - the brace of openers she had thought to hand to him right at the last minute, and which totally irrationally he had been reluctant to accept. Nor could he figure why he was still resisting them now, other than the lame excuse that this unremitting heat was enervating him to the core. Certainly, he suffered no sense of foreboding.
     Wearily, Oscar pulled himself together and, from off the passenger seat, picked up a heavily-thumbed copy of the London A-Z. Through depressed clericals he located his additional call - Delius Close - then orientated its whereabouts with where he was presently parked, which was right outside the last of the properties he'd been expected to call on, a so-called garden flat which he put away, perhaps unfairly, as being little more than a crudely converted basement.
     With a marked lack of enthusiasm he drove the mile or so to Delius Close, braking to a kerbside halt in the adjoining 'A' road on realising he had travelled beyond the turning. 'Now where did I put those details?' he mumbled to himself.
     On the back seat was where he had dismissively plonked them on setting off, and they came to hand readily. The manager's warmth for the property came to mind. Standing in her family-run business premises, which Dickens himself would have been at home in - apart from the banks of fluorescent lighting and a desktop computer or two - she'd told him: 'Mr Aspinal, this delightful property only last evening came on to our books. The vendor has landed a teaching post in Scotland and starts work there later this month. I know that she needs a quick sale.'
     That sounds more like a line for a dodgy used-car dealer to use than you, madam, thought Oscar, though he said nothing.
     'Properties there do not often come onto the market,' she twittered on. 'They're rather rare.'
     Oscar had nodded politely. 'Even so..., this little lot look promising enough to me,' he had told her, indicating the handful of bumph she'd given him to mull over a day earlier.
     But the estate agent - a small, round-faced woman whose manner verged on refined, and who wore bright, long, loose-fitting garments to conceal humps and bumps Mother Nature had given her down some fifty-something years - wasn't about to be so readily resisted. 'Nevertheless, do take these keys with you. It's Delius Close, number five. I think it could prove the most handy for you for catching a train.' And with an encouraging smile, she added, 'You never know....'
     'Is it any better than these you've already given me?' demurred Oscar, still disinclined to accept the keys.
     'Different, shall we say. Unlike them, it is a freehold property. And there is no chain, which means, should you like the place, you'd be spared the need to put your chattels into storage awhile, though I know you are prepared for that short-term inconvenience if found necessary. The property is now vacant; the vendor left for Scotland this morning, and plans to return only when the removal men call.'
     'All right, Ms Hodale, I'm sold on the idea,' he'd told her. He wasn't though.
     Beaming, Ms Hodale had released the keys and details into Oscar's charge, whereupon he had promptly spotted an omission.
     'There's no photograph of the place.'
     'I'm afraid I've not had time to take a picture. That shows you how hot off the press this property is!'
     Recognising the mind of an astute businesswoman at work, Oscar had laughed politely - get this punter to buy the property today and the firm saves cash on promoting the place. But Delius-bloody-Close - what kind of address is that for a man to be living in? Too bloody effeminate sounding for a start! That was his private thinking at the time, and that was his thinking still, whilst sat in his dark blue 'macho' motor. With foresight of purchasing, he was able to stave off encroaching hunger by snacking on a couple of supermarket sandwiches and quench his thirst on Elvian water, now sadly a touch tepid from the oppressive heat, while perusing the info on the Delius Close property. And when he did....
     'Jesus! What is this bloody woman playing at?' He spoke more with fizzle than venom, if through clenched teeth that once had lovingly gripped a briar, and which now daily had to live with vapour from tablets of peppermint he sucked to replace the smoking habit he'd quit a year back. Ms Hodale was sending him to view a maisonette which to all intents and purposes was a first floor flat! - only the hallway was at ground level. Fine in itself maybe, but not accommodation he sought, and she knew that. For the past thirty-five years he had lived in a bungalow, which was why he had been viewing only ground floor flats today, or what seems to pass for a ground floor flat these days. 'Bugger!' he exclaimed, knowing he should have looked more closely at the details before coming here.
     He creased his forehead and considered his next move. Then he was sniggering - someone, somewhere, was determined he should set foot inside the Close. His bladder had started to signal, thanks to consuming all the cups of tea on offer from some of the vendors hoping he'd buy their place. And clearly, despite him deciding otherwise, his profuse sweating wasn't capable of dissipating all the surplus liquid. He would soon need to 'go'. And what had he in his possession? Keys to a loo!
     'Aspinal, you're a silly prat. It's as simple as that. It's a house to view and might be for you. You need a pee so go and see. I'm a poet and I know it - if bloody mediocre with it!'
     Still fighting creeping lethargy, Oscar slid his specs into the breast pocket of his bright yellow, short-sleeved shirt which he wore outside of grey, seasonal strides. From the pocket of those, he withdrew a large white handkerchief and ran it, flannel-like, over his head, face and neck to remove the troublesome sweat. He was pleased to note that his under-arm deodorant, applied earlier, was even now effectively providing continuous protection as promised, so no mopping up required there. Ever mindful of the broiling sun, he next donned a floppy white cotton hat. He did not want his bald pate fried. Finally, after sending the electronically-controlled car windows up to within a fraction of closed, he gathered his wants, stepped from the vehicle and centrally locked its doors.
     The three hundred metre traipse back to the Close was a good hundred metres further than the distance he thought he'd overshot. Not that he would have been minded to turn the car round and drive there; he was far too fagged to execute that manoeuvre when he couldn't be sure of finding a vacant parking space in the Close itself.
     When Oscar saw Delius Close it in no way resembled the picture that ill-humour had etched in his mind. He had encountered nothing quite like it before. No wonder it wasn't readily identifiable on the map. The unmetalled drive was a good football pitch in length and ran to one side of the boxy housing it served. Vehicular access from the road was gained via a pavement crossover no different from most provided by councils for homeowners anywhere. It was, in fact, the same entranceway that had carried carriages to the door of the grand Victorian dwelling which had stood on this site for eighty years, until the mid-1950s. Standing sentinel-like by the public footpath were two huge horse chestnut trees, one either side of the unadopted road. And if two of these magnificent specimens were not enough for this Close, seven more were studded along the length of the lightly-rutted road, their ivy-clad trunks rising out of a broad, well-trimmed, two metre high privet hedge that separated the big white house next door from the Close itself. Beyond being a simple delight on the eye, the palmatic leaf-laden branches of these trees stretched gracefully out over the carriageway, forming a welcoming awning against a sun currently not fighting for a place in some crowded overcast sky.
     Oscar saw, too, the fruit of the horse chestnut. Clusters of prickly green bur, maturing fast, were everywhere to be seen amongst the leaves. Some were sure to drop before time, as Oscar was suddenly to see when a pair of young squirrels chose that moment to frolic skittishly amidst the branches, to brush against bur and snap a few off, sending them crashing to the ground where, inevitably, sooner rather than later they must be scrunched into the terrain by the wheels of transport in motion. And that can't be a pair of kiddies' shorts caught up in the branches, surely? Oh no - a few leaves yellowing early for some reason. Interesting.
     Trees to the left of him, trees to the right of him, and greenery and perfume-laden flowers were just about everywhere Oscar directed his gaze. And when he troubled to give it a moment of thought, the main road - relatively quiet in this, Britian's holiday month - was also tree-lined. And he realised, though very much preoccupied at the time, that he had instinctively sought shade when halting his car, and must have parked under a tree. A glance down the sun-drenched road proved his assumption correct; his motor was under the shelter of a London plane.
     'Well, well....' Oscar felt himself being pleasantly seduced by an area of quite splendid bucolic verdancy which he had not reckoned could possibly exist in this part of south east London.

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