The Postcard by Fern Britton

Author:Fern Britton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007562985
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

20

Spring in Pendruggan was beginning to blossom. In the vicarage gardens the borders, tended by local gardener, Simple Tony, were brimming with primroses and snowdrops. Little Jenna was following Tony around, putting her pudgy fingers into his earth-caked hand and Penny was watching them from her chair outside the back door.

Simple Tony was Pendruggan born and bred and although, to outsiders, his name was anything but politically correct, it was the name his parents had called him, and the name he liked. That, or Mr Brown. He would correct anyone who called him just Tony.

Penny watched as his head, hair black and sleek as a mole, bobbed up and down next to Jenna’s, pointing out the woodlice and earthworms. Socially awkward around adults, with Jenna he was himself.

‘Jenna? Mr Brown?’ called Penny from her seat in the February sun. ‘Would either of you care for a drink?’

Simple Tony lifted his head and gave her his childlike grin. ‘Yes please, Mrs Canter.’

‘Ribena is your favourite, isn’t it?’

‘Yes please, Mrs Canter.’

Tony enjoyed Ribena and jam sandwiches. Anything not on that list made him agitated.

He lived in a Shepherd’s Hut in the garden of Candle Cottage, which was owned by Paramedic Polly. She’d taken him in after his parents died. He lived in the hut peacefully and independently, nipping over the garden wall to use Helen’s outdoor privy, which she’d given him as his bathroom.

‘Come and get it,’ said Penny as she carried a tray outside with the jam sandwiches and Ribena she knew Jenna would love as much as Simple Tony.

She sat and waited for them to join her, lying back in her chair to feel the breeze playing on her skin. She was thinking about the last couple of weeks; of seeing Adam, of how much she trusted and liked him, and how much better she was feeling in herself. She was eating well, had cut back on the booze and she and Simon were getting along really well.

She watched as Simple Tony put Jenna in his wooden wheelbarrow and pushed her towards her.

‘’Ere we are, Mrs Canter,’ he said above Jenna’s squeals of delight. ‘She’s going to be a proper gardener. That’s what my dad used to say when he pushed me in his barrow. Only he said he and not she.’

Penny smiled. ‘I can see you as a little boy in there.’

Simple Tony looked confused. ‘Can you? Where?’

She smiled again and pointed to her forehead. ‘In here. In my imagination.’

‘Oh.’ He gave a little shiver. ‘I don’t like imagining.’ Then his face brightened. ‘But I do like dreaming.’

‘Oh, so do I,’ said Penny.

Tony lifted Jenna out of the barrow and put her on the lawn. Then he tipped the barrow on its side and sat in it like an armchair. Jenna loved it when he did this and she clapped and ran to squeeze in next to him. Penny offered him a sandwich and as he munched he said, ‘Sometimes I dream about the time Alan Titchmarsh came to judge the show.

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