And then I heard a knock at the door.
(It’s necessary to point out at this juncture that knocks on my door are almost as rare as pirate ships in the Grand Canyon. Nobody visits me, you see, so who is there to knock on my door but the odd contractor, or the postie in the rare event that he or she needs a signature for something? A sense of intrigue crept into my mind so I opened the door to see who it was.)
Three people stood a little way along the path: a large, middle aged man, a woman of around thirty (pretty as peaches with perfect teeth and a smile to wake the wind in the Sargasso Sea) who I assumed to be his wife, and a little boy of around nine or ten whose visage carried the merest hint of a scowl. I got it straight away, didn’t I? Of course I did, and the man’s opening gambit confirmed it:
‘What a beautiful garden you have,’ he began, smiling (though nothing like as prettily as the pretty-as-peaches thirty-something with the perfect teeth.)
By now I’d realised that they were obviously here to sell me a lifetime subscription to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. (I had the same experience with a couple of Mormon missionaries once when I was young and impressionable. ‘Thank you for inviting us into your beautiful home,’ they began, and it didn’t take me long to work out that they’d say the same thing even if your ‘beautiful home’ was a cockroach-infested hovel with nothing but a tea chest for furniture. Religious missionaries are, after all, just door-to-door salesmen.) I offered the first thought that came into my head:
‘It’s a mess.’
‘Oh no, no, it’s beautiful,’ he continued to enthuse. ‘If my wife were here she would love it.’ (Actually, he probably said ‘was’ because few people of the common persuasion have ever even heard of a subjunctive, much less know how uncommon they are in English or when their use is appropriate. I can’t be certain of that, however, because I was still reclining three miles down with the last of my funnels rusting quietly away.) ‘There’s something wild about it, like a true cottage garden.’
At that point my brain took a single reef out of the mainsail and offered two thoughts. The first was: are cottage gardens supposed to look wild? I never knew that. And then it occurred to me that if his pretty-as-peaches companion was not his wife, and if she had a little boy lurking reluctantly about her left leg, she was probably married to somebody else and so I must endeavour not look at her too often in order to avoid the suspicion of inappropriate attention. But then I decided that I really needed to have some breakfast and the encounter should be truncated without further delay.
‘If you’ve come to talk to me about religion and spirituality, I’m afraid there wouldn’t be any point,’ I offered. ‘The subject has been something of a lifelong obsession with me. I’ve reached the position where I know nothing, believe nothing, and am content to continue in such vein.’
But then he got me.
‘Let me ask you one question,’ he began with the air of man about to give the coup-de-grace. ‘Do you believe in God?’
Oh my giddy aunt. Do I believe in God? He got the lecture, which must have lasted at least ten minutes, after which he said little of substance, or at least little that I remember. I decided to demonstrate that I was quite a nice person really, and so I turned to the little boy and asked: ‘Are you a bit bored with all this?’ He moved even closer to his (presumptive) mother’s leg, kicked one of his feet with other, but said nothing. His (presumptive) mother continued to smile prettily. And then came the closure.
‘I’m (something or other), this is (something or other), and this is (something or other.)’
‘I’m Jeff,’ I offered cordially.
‘Well, Jeff, it’s been good talking to you.’
Has it, I thought? And then they all trotted off, while I went back into Titanic mode for about two hours and missed Ms Pretty-as-Peaches for about the same duration. And have you noticed that the man did all the talking? You can tell which book they must have sitting on the bedside table, can’t you?
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