Sample

One

“Quick, get your kit off,” barked Juliet Parlour to her husband, “or we’ll lose our conception window!”

“Said Juliet to Romeo,” grunted Detective Inspector Mark Parlour, flopping backwards onto their king-size bed after a busy day at the station. 

“Oy, this isn’t a joke,” his wife admonished him, prodding Parlour in the concave stomach before sliding her linen skirt down her hips.

And don’t I know it, Parlour thought ruefully, wearily pulling himself upright and slipping his boxers off, which featured PC Plum of Balamory fame, complete with signature magnifying glass.  It really was time Juliet sorted out the laundry, or he’d be in Christmas undies forever.

They had been trying for some ten months now to conceive their first child, in the snippets of spare time afforded them by their respective professions of police inspector and secondary school teacher.  Like many professional couples of their age and status, they had put their careers to the forefront and children on the backburner, almost taking it for granted that at the right moment, with the mortgage sufficiently whittled down and careers established at a suitably senior level, that offspring would occur.  It had certainly come as a lesson in humility to the high-flying Parlours to discover that the Author of Life hadn’t exactly blessed them in the fertility department and that babies were not going to appear on the doorstep along with the online shopping. Not that time was quite running out yet; Juliet Parlour was not yet thirty-nine.  However, as she was only too aware, the chances of producing a healthy child decreased sharply the later conception took place, and new reports were even saying she had left it four years too late already.  So time was of the essence.

Had it not been for the deafening tick-tocking of his wife’s bio time-bomb, Parlour would have refused her sexual demands months ago.  He infinitely preferred the natural bi-weekly, post football highlights rhythm of their love-making that had hitherto characterised their eighteen year marriage to this stop-start mechanical exercise between the Jonelle sheets.

Parlour thought, not for the first time, how nice it would be to have some kind of private hidey-hole to escape from it all; a workshop at the bottom of the garden, say, or perhaps a plot at the local allotments, where he could brood in peace over a mug of black coffee.  Not that his wife’s sexual advances had ever been a problem in the past; it was just this awful, clinical, sex-on-demand that had dominated his after-work routine this past year or so that was so off-putting.  He was not the type to wash down the stresses of the day in the pub, infinitely preferring a cuppa and some banter with his wife, to communing in the bar after hours with his colleagues from Billock CID.  And in any case, as Juliet was constantly reminding him, alcohol could seriously affect the mobility of his sperm.  But it would be nice, at least, to have somewhere else to go just once in a while, some place just to sit and ponder the complexities of life.

I’ll be taking up fishing next!  Parlour grinned to himself, as he climbed in Juliet’s open window of conceptual opportunity.  Was this a midlife crisis, the desire to seek refuge from his wife?  He had never felt like this before.  No, it was just the stress of trying for a baby, wasn’t it?  Parlour dismissed the image of Deverton Allotments and distressed courgettes from his mind and tried to concentrate on his wife’s sunbed-ripened melons as an aide d’orgasme. 

As her husband pumped away, Juliet’s thoughts switched to what she could concoct with half a pack of diced chicken, one green pepper, half a red onion and a pot of crème-fraiche.  Lesley Waters eat your heart out, she smiled to herself, picturing herself finally shutting that gargantuan grinning gob of Ainsley Harriott’s as she wowed the Ready Steady Cook team with a brilliant seat-of-the-pants Mediterranean risotto. 

***

Davidson Munroe, retired headmaster and vice-chairman of the British Alliance of Senior Citizens (Deverton Division), had no problems salivating over the fruits of his labour.  Or rather, the vegetables.

And what a majestic crop of superior quality Upton leeks he had produced this year, just in time for the Best of British stall that would form part of the World Cuisine Festival to be held at Deverton Parish Church that coming Saturday.  Upright, thick and non-bulbous at the base, they were a testimony to careful handling and fertile soil.  Smiling smugly to himself, Munroe bent down to check on his recently planted crop of King Edwards, his knee joints cracking as he did so.  He grimaced, standing up straight and arching his back, feeling a twinge of sciatica as he did so.  A vain man, Munroe felt embarrassed by the little tell-tale signs of physical decline that were beginning to make their presence felt.

Still, nothing wrong with the little man downstairs, he grinned, subconsciously cupping the package in his chinos south of his middle-aged paunch.

“What are you smirking about?” Alicia Munroe, his wife of thirty-one years enquired, the hems of her flared trousers swishing on the wooden floor as she entered their shed at Deverton Allotments.  A kind of boho Annette Crosbie in appearance, the infinitely more sophisticated Alicia found gardening about as exciting as a trip to the dry cleaner’s. However, she had learnt to regard her husband’s intense horticultural endeavours as a harmless alternative to other, less wholesome pastimes that befell middle-aged men.

“This, dear,” Davidson Munroe replied, thrusting his leek in her bemused face.  “That should wipe the smile off Mahatma Gandhi and his amazing Bombay potatoes!”

“It’s Salik Gani and Bombay potato is a dish, not a variety – as you very well know,” Alicia chided him, in defence of her good pal who also happened to own the plot next to Munroe’s.  The Deverton Allotment Association was a private initiative created for the dozens of Deverton residents who desired to experiment with vegetable growing whilst maintaining a perfectly manicured recreationallawn at home.  Or at least that was the official marketing line; lording one’s personally grown organic produce over the neighbours’ inferior shop-bought specimens also had something to do with the popularity of the DAA, for eco-snobbery was as rife in the multi-car population of Deverton as elsewhere in middle-moneyed England.

“So what brings you here, anyway?” Munroe enquired of his wife.  “Got a sudden desire to pull up some leeks?”

“I leave the pulling to you, dear,” Alicia retorted.  “Actually, I come with not so glad tidings regarding the World Food Fight.”

Munroe frowned.  “Is Pedlar refusing to grace us with his presence – consorting with the big nobs in London again, is he?”

He was referring to Roy Pedlar, the regional chairman of the BASC movement.  Pedlar was a recent addition to the Deverton community, having moved into the late Terence Haynes’s four bed detached in King Edward Mews, which had been let out several times prior to its eventual purchase by Pedlar.

“Oh no, Pedlar’s coming all-right,” Alicia replied, “it was he who bore me the tragic news…”

“For Cripe’s sake, Leesh,” Munroe barked, his greying eyebrows knitting together, “just spit it out and stop winding me up!”

Alicia pursed her lips together humorously, enjoying the suspense before lighting the fuse of her verbal bomb.  She should have brought those paint colour charts from the home improvements store to show Davidson after all; she could have had great fun matching his face to the shades of red and purple proposed for their new back bedroom. 

“Pedlar received a visit from His Holiness this morning,” she informed him, her lips twitching.

“From Beauville?” her husband frowned, alluding to the rather dashing vicar of Deverton Parish Church, the Reverend Martin Beauville.

“Uh-huh,” Alicia nodded.  “He’s banned your mob from the Cuisine Festival.”

“What?” Davidson Munroe spat out.

“Reckons you’ll hijack the event, defeat the object of the whole exercise…”

“Which is?”

“Spreading peace, love and multifaith harmony… and helping offload some ethically exchanged tinned prunes on their expiry date, of course.”

Whilst bearing the Reverend Beauville no malice, Alicia Munroe was not averse to the odd pot-shot at the local parish church and its endeavours to spread the faith with, what appeared to her at least, agenda-driven events of varying subtlety.  To be fair to Martin Beauville, the World Cuisine Festival was a pretty original idea, and looked good fun, too, with local restaurateurs providing a variety of stalls offering samples of their national cuisines.  A small charge would be levied for these starter-sized dishes, with the proceeds being split evenly between Deverton Parish Church’s Worship Wall project and Ethical Bean, a trendy new charity based in the regional centre of Billock dispensing morally sound financial advice free of charge.

“Whatever happened to One Path to Heaven?”  Munroe muttered, brushing the loose soil off his broad, suntanned hands.

“The Reverend Beauville believes there is much to learn from other faiths and cultures,” Alicia replied a mite pompously, “and I have to say, I entirely agree with him.”

Davidson Munroe snorted.  His Jesus was decidedly white and middle-class and undoubtedly would have voted Conservative and read the Southern Parishes Express, were He to have His time on earth again.  Munroe’s mind travelled elsewhere as his wife continued a much practised monologue on the values of an open mind in today’s diverse society.  Alicia was just as middle-class and selfish as himself, Davidson thought.  He didn’t see her re-mortgaging the house to support one of the charities she was forever banging on about.  And what did a few ethically exchanged bananas here and there do to alleviate the crippling debt that hung over many developing countries?  Try as hard as he could, Munroe just could not see how democracy was achieved in military dictatorships by supporting whiney do-gooding rock-stars, who were simply out to boost their public profiles and revive flagging CD sales.  The trouble with Davidson Munroe was that he was quick to point the finger, slow to pull it out and do anything useful himself.  Alicia, despite her disinclination to leave the comfort zone, and her rather tokenistic attempts at altruism, at least made an effort to do the right thing.

“Hello, not disturbing anything am I?” a slightly high-pitched voice chirruped, a bony brown hand tapping on the side of the wooden shed.

“Dave was just waggling his biggest, juiciest Allium ampeloprasum porrum in my face,” Alicia smiled humorously at her good friend, Salik Gani.

“Alicia, will you please refrain from calling me Dave like I was some spotty oik in a white van come to service the boiler!” 

Munroe hated his wife’s constant niggling wind-ups.   This was her latest attempt to undermine him: - shortening the forename which he held so dear and which had been in his family as far back as the tree could be traced using the latest online technology - or at least the free CD-Rom that came with the Sunday paper.  Or so it appeared to him.  In all his self-important pomp, Munroe failed to notice the fond twinkle in his wife’s eye and the way the left-hand corner of her mouth turned up as she pulled him a little further down the saddle of his high horse.

Salik Gani was used to such waspish exchanges, occupying as he did the neighbouring allotment.  He was one of the rare members who did not boast a garden of his own, residing as he did in a small downstairs flat opposite the newsagent run by his family. Gani had purchased the plot from a legacy bequeathed him by a distant relative.  He also owned a small, green-washed potting shed, containing several shelves of gardening products.  Gani boasted a selection as global as Reverend Beauville’s array of Ethically Exchanged foodstuffs, though, Munroe suspected, not imported quite so ethically into the country in the distant past.

“So what can we do for you?” Munroe enquired in the condescending, rather sneering tone he reserved for Alicia’s less desirable friends.  He could not see the attraction this wiry little man who helped run the local convenience store held for Alicia.  The friendship had lasted too long to be another of her do-gooding projects.  Had Gani not been so, well, undersized, Davidson would have been more than a little threatened by his frequent sorties with Alicia.  As it was, he was simply a minor irritant, just another friendly little fly buzzing around Munroe’s tomato plants.

“I gather the Reverend Beauville has banned the Nazi Pensioners from the Cuisine Festival,” Salik grinned.  Alicia snorted in delight.  That was what was attractive about Salik Gani.  He didn’t give a flying fuchka about the ruling classes in the fearfully snobbish hierarchy that existed within the town of Deverton.

“How do you know that?” Munroe frowned, the hackles of his eyebrows rising as he looked down at the smaller man.

“Heard Pedlar ranting in the street to Beauville’s new sidekick – what’s her name?”

“Penny Rocket,” Alicia grinned, referring to the rather down at heel ordinand serving time at Deverton Parish Church for the next couple of months as she trained for full-time ministry.

“It’s Roquet,” Munroe frowned at his wife.  “Was he mad?”

“Spitting blood, rivers of the stuff,” Gani replied humorously.  He revelled vicariously in the petty rivalries that dominated the suburban enclave and took great delight in observing and reporting back to his friend and confidante, Alicia Munroe.  

“Good Lord,” Munroe replied, “I better get hold of Roy and calm the man down.  Convert all that energy into a positive plan of action – these leeks demand an audience!”

Alicia groaned and placed her head in her hands in mock desperation.

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