Those Left Behind - 1. The Garden

Ludo was furious. It wasn’t Damian’s fault, after all the kid was only 10 but Ludo’s wife Jackie had landed him in the shit, and not for the first time, and of course she wasn’t around to clean up the mess.

It was Damian’s half term and during the boy’s holidays, Ludo would usually work from home, so everything worked a treat. Damian could be trusted in the house with minimal supervision, giving them few child-care issues, and Damian was thankfully quite self-contained. The kid liked spending time on his own projects or hanging out with his friend Adam, who lived within easy walking distance of Ludo and Jackie’s house, and if Ludo had a meeting at work, then Arthur, Adam’s Father would usually look after Damian.

But Arthur and Adam were away, and Ludo was in the middle of a big project which entailed spending more time than usual in the office. Jackie, acting as if she was granting him a huge favour, had organised to work from home instead. The weather had been good, she and Damian had gone to The Garden each day. Damian had got friendly with the staff and mirabile dictu, Jackie had promptly arranged for one of the gardeners to look after Damian whilst she dashed to the office. For fuck’s sake. They didn’t know the man at all, and she’d left Damian to his own devices in a strange bloke’s care, unsupervised.

Jackie had messaged him to say she had an important meeting and could he collect Damian. A message, mind, she didn’t even bother to follow through and check Ludo could manage to collect Damian, she just assumed he would. If he’d tried phoning her, she’d have been unavailable, no doubt. As was becoming usual, the needs of Jackie’s job trumped his own; he’d rearranged things at work, apologised to his boss, rushed like mad and got to The Garden just before it closed at four thirty.

The Garden wasn’t strictly a public park, it was the private demesne of the Latimer family. But the house, a huge, mausoleum-like Victorian monstrosity, was let to a college and the gardens were open to the public and tended by a team of students from the college under the supervision of professional head gardener. It was one of the big advantages of living in the town, access to the huge private estate that stretched almost to the High Street.

Ludo had arrived at the entrance in a panic and seen no sign of Damian; he asked at the information booth, and they knew exactly what he was talking about. The middle-aged lady had smiled at the mention of Damian, commenting that he was a lovely kid. Evidently, he was in the gardeners’ private section, an area of The Garden not open to the public. The woman carefully explained that to the Southern side of The Garden, beyond the grand herbaceous borders, there was a walled enclosure, with a gate with a bell, he just had to ring that. But there was no-one else about and they were going to close; the woman decided she’d be even more helpful, perhaps she was aware of Ludo’s high level of anxiety. She closed up the information booth and led him over to the private area and opened the gate for him.

His first sight was a row of brick huts and a nursery area, but he heard Damian’s voice. There, hidden behind the huts, he found Damian blissfully cavorting under a sprinkler with the head gardener, Gordy, watching. Gordy, a personable Scot with curly red hair, had grinned and said Ludo had caught them having a wee bit of time out. All harmless stuff, except that they’d both been bollock naked. Now, Damian had seen his share of naked blokes; Ludo made sure of that when they went swimming. He wanted the boy to develop a healthy attitude to nudity and the body.

But there were limits.

Swiftly enough, Damian was dressed and Gordy too; Ludo thanked the man and then he and Damian set off home. As they walked along towards the High Street, Ludo became aware that he’d been silent too long. Damian had been chattering about what they’d been doing in The Garden and about what he’d learned, particularly the trees. Ordinarily, Ludo would have been delighted to talk. The boy stared at his Father; he was very perceptive for a ten-year-old. But then relations between Ludo and Jackie had been none too good for the last year or so. Not a good environment to bring up a child and Damian seemed to be able to sense their problems.

They reached the High Street and had to stop at the Clock Tower to cross the road. They had been talking about the War Memorial Garden which lay at the head of the High Street, but when Damian held his Father’s hand and dutifully waited at the kerb, he looked up at his Father and said, cool as anything,

“We didn’t do any of that sex stuff.”

“You and Gordy?”

Damian nodded, “I was going to keep my underpants on, but he said as it was just us, it didn’t matter so much. He didn’t touch, just looked.” He looked up at Ludo, anxiously.

“You sure?”

“Mmm. Sure.” There was something else, however. “He was nice. I think he liked looking but he wasn’t anything like Mr Headingworth.”

Headingworth had been a teacher at the school. A perfect reputation, but the boys said he was a letch and ogled them. What had been most shocking was how aware the kids had been, far more so than in Ludo’s day.

“But you still have to be careful. Not all pederasts are nasty old men.”

Damian nodded; they’d had this conversation before; Ludo didn’t want to labour the point, make too much of the incident, after all it was never going to happen again, was it? He’d bloody make sure of that.

They stopped in the High Street to buy a treat for tea, rather than getting something out the freezer. The High Street was an attractive mix of buildings, from 19th-century to modern. Pleasant enough but of little architectural merit and rather like plenty of other middling Midlands’ towns. The real interest lay in the Victorian clocktower and The Garden beyond. Ludo and Jackie hadn’t selected the town on architectural merit, however, but because of other facilities. There were plenty of fast trains to London, decent road links, good schools and plenty of open spaces including not only The Garden but the Common and more, whilst the High Street still actually had shops all within walking distance of their house.

In the past, the High Street had been the hub of the town, but now it was more varied with rather too many charity shops, bars and coffee shops. When it came to buying food, there wasn’t a lot of choice, and their food shopping was usually done via a car trip to Waitrose. But the butcher’s had some chicken pies left, Damian’s favourite; so, with broccoli and new potatoes that was tea sorted. Jackie would be late, and Ludo would eat with Damian. He wasn’t much of a cook and could really only assemble food. Pie was something he could cope with, it just required reheating, and for Damian it was a treat.

The house was a short walk from the High Street, a small enclave of modern houses built on what had been semi-industrial land. As with most such developments, it was not uncontroversial, and Ludo was aware that many people had thought that the space should have gone to low-cost housing. He rather agreed but was torn because the house was ideal for them; within walking distance of a good school, plenty of space and a decent sized garden. It was blandly neo-Georgian, but Jackie had liked it and the layout worked for them. So here they were.

After tea, then helping to clear-up and finishing his project work for school, Damian went upstairs, and Ludo relaxed in front of the television or at least tried to. The image of Gordy’s naked body got to him. Was he annoyed about the afternoon because of worry about Damian’s safety, or because Ludo himself had found a naked bloke attractive? And make no bones about it, Gordy was attractive. Lithe, slim and fit without being over muscly, the guy had shown off to the best advantage and revelled in it.

Ludo’s sex life was non-existent. Jackie didn’t even use work as an excuse anymore. They had a comfortable modern house, big enough to have his and hers studies and be a short walk from all that the town had to offer, an attractive healthy and well-adjusted son, and yet, and yet. Jackie was spending increasing amounts of time on work. Since Christmas there had been a new project with the Strasbourg office, involving a German colleague.

Ludo’s phone pinged; it was Arthur. Just back. Adam was Damian’s bosom buddy, so his Father, Arthur was a regular part of their lives, to and from school, after school activities, holidays and such. One lack in Ludo and Jackie’s lives had been that they had never really developed joint friends in town, Jackie’s life just revolved around work, colleagues (current and former) and family. But somehow, Arthur had gone from being just another parent to becoming Ludo’s close friend. Bringing up Adam on his own after his wife died, Arthur didn’t work full time and his help with picking up Damian from school had moved from simple neighbourliness to something more.

The odd invitation for Ludo to join Arthur in a beer when he came to collect Damian from Arthur’s house had developed into more regular events for the two men on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If, as was likely, Jackie was working late, then Ludo would go round and the four of them would spend time together. He and Arthur had found they had a lot of tastes in common. That the boys got on and were happy to spend time together in Adam’s bedroom meant that Arthur and Ludo would be able to have a beer and watch TV together. Jackie was scathing. After one such evening, when she asked what they’d done, and Ludo had replied that they’d cooked and then watched an old film on TV she had said ‘how suburban’. But Ludo liked Arthur, and it was a relief to have a friend who wasn’t part of Jackie’s circle, who was completely separate and with whom he could simply chill and relax.

When she got in that evening, Ludo tried to have a rational conversation with Jackie about Damian, but she did her tired-after-working-hard act and failed to understand how Damian cavorting naked with a strange man was a problem at all.

Jackie was tall, slim with long dark hair, attractive, charming, and completely infuriating. When they’d met, his career had been as high profile as hers. But she’d over-taken him, and now if he complained too often about the demands the job made on her time, she simply said he was jealous.

Was he?

Ludo re-arranged his work plans for Friday and spent the day at home, albeit glued to his computer with endless video conferences. Still, Damian was delighted to have his Dad around and Ludo’s mood improved even more when Arthur messaged to ask if they wanted to come over for a meal that evening. Jackie would be late, again. So, why not?