Mending with a Young Neighbour

She lived on a run-down council estate of non-descript modern houses set amongst a pair of three-storey apartment blocks, all of it close to the main road that led out of the village and up to the motorway. The road, which narrowed for a short stretch as it went over a humped and redundant railway bridge, was a rabbit run that drivers sped along, the noise sometimes reaching her bedroom if she left the window open on a warm summer's night.

The two-bedroomed terraced property was robust, if a little tired. The pallid sandy-cream brick façades were set under a moss-covered red pantile roof, the flaking paintwork of the windows and the front and back door needing some attention. She thought of it as her home, a refuge for a woman in her late forties still blessed with a slender figure, long russet brown hair that fell onto her shoulders and was beginning to show the first strands of grey, good looks, and breasts that were slowly headed south but still filled a blouse or summer top nicely. She didn't have the money to live to excess and made ends meet, worked as a caterer in the village secondary school whenever she was needed, and did cleaning jobs most weekday mornings. Otherwise, she drew on what remained of their savings and her late husband's money that had not been frittered away on drink and too many fags.

"Joanie, you're too damned house-proud," her dissolute man would mutter. "It's not as though the house is ours."

"No, but I have my standards to keep, Alan," she would often answer him and then get on with the tasks that she had set for herself.

Now, she said it to herself and did so again as she looked at the state of the front path that led from the gate and up to her front door. The council didn't have the money to fix things and, when they did, they would take their time to do it. So, she decided to take matters into her own hands and she had ordered what was needed; bags of sand and paving slabs that would match what had been laid some time ago and were now uneven and cracked, the weeds growing through.

She had even found someone to relay them all and to add a few to the small patio she had at the back of the house, a suntrap. There, she would sit and sunbathe and enjoy the myriad flowers in the earthenware, and glazed, pots that she had assiduously planted so that there was some colour and variegated foliage to look at when she was out there or looked at from the kitchen window as she did the washing up.

As of this morning, she had a problem. The local tradesman who had said he would appear, and do the work, had let her down, 'something cropped up on another job' and that was it. She was left in limbo and was now worried about the materials that lay both in her garden, by the front hedge, and out on the pavement and that she had paid for.

She was on nodding acquaintance with many of her neighbours with whom she got on better than others, the worst being guys parking their trades vans and blocking pavements and making it difficult for people to pass, women with kids in pushchairs in particular.

Of all her neighbours she got on with, Tracey Jones was one of the best and she was relieved to see her walking along the pavement towards her, shopping bags in hand, and being trailed by her son Alfie, a tall gangly youth in his early twenties with a head of unruly hair that he was seen to sweep back quickly. He was engrossed and looked at the screen of his iPhone as it was held in one hand and in the other a shopping bag.

She was taken by his lean physique, his strong arms, and a mane of unruly hair that the breeze kept blowing down onto his high-cheeked face. He stood a head taller than both she and Tracey, and whereas she had a ready smile and open personality, her son was more withdrawn, even subdued, although he had lively grey-blue eyes that seemed to be taking in her appearance as his iPhone was held up as if to look more clearly at the screen but one finger moving over that contraption that he devoted so much attention to.

Was he actually taking a picture of her, dressed as she was in faded denim shorts and a white crop top that shaped her? It all left little for him to imagine, shaping her breasts as it did, the round neck revealing her breastbone and strings of gold necklaces, one with her initial letter hanging there and drawing the eye, perhaps to feature in whatever he was doing with that iPhone.

"Is something wrong?" Tracey asked as she looked at her and then down into the garden, the palisade gate left open. "I see that you've got in a load of sand and some slabs."

"The damned workmen I arranged to be here and relay the path have stood me up," Joan grumbled, sweeping back her hair in irritation. She was aware of Alfie holding that phone as she spoke and looked at him. "Now I'm left wondering what to do and how to get the work done. It's way too much for me to do on my own."

She looked hopefully at the young man before her. He was in and out of work, so Tracey had told her a while back, but his luck was on the up and he was going to start new work in construction, a college certificate in the subject getting him through and convincing his future employer to take a calculated risk with him. She understood why, could not miss that his chino shorts hung low and that the waistband of his pants, or boxers, showed a brand name that everyone had heard of. All that, along with a mane of rebellious hair and a tattoo on one bicep, suggested a young guy with his own take on life.

Tracey glanced at her son and sighed in some annoyance at his behaviour. "You could help her out, couldn't you, son?"

'Help Joan out, you mean,' Alfie retorted, hating being called 'son' in front of a stranger as his gaze shifted to Joan.

'I'd be grateful if you could, Alfie,' Joan smiled yet feeling troubled by his attitude towards her. He gazed at the work to be done. His T-shirt hung loosely over those baggy cargo pants, all of it lending him a studiously shabby look, but he looked strong, and her unease that she might be asking too much of him melted away. "I'll help you as there were supposed to be two guys relaying the path for me. I hope that's okay with you, Alfie?"

"Yeah, sure it is, Joan. I'll come as I am, shall I?" he grinned and stepped past her. "I'll go and grab some gear, some protective gloves, and my toolbox, and then I'll be with you."

"Thanks, I appreciate it!" she called after him.

"We'll just see how it goes!" he replied on a moment's look her way.

"Okay, fine," she said, but it was only in Tracey's hearing. "Is he always so cocky, so confident with people?"

"Some, with only some. He's way too forward and as you say, cocky. It's got him into no end of trouble at work and he's paid the price. He has some time to cool off while he waits for someone to say he's got the job." Tracey had seen her son's quick, yet unmistakable and appraising glance at the woman Joan was seen to be. "Just send him packing if he gets to be too much for you. I'll make sure he has his house keys with him as I'm going out to work. It's my late shift so he'll just have to fend for himself."

Joan didn't doubt that Alfie could do so. She did wonder how she would deal with the young man who'd come onto her and in Tracey's presence.

It hadn't happened before.

She had one of those 'pay-as-you-go' phones and used it sparingly, not as Alfie was seen to do as he stood beside her and assessed what the scope of the work was that she needed help with.

"It's not level anymore and I want the path to have a few more slabs in by the front door. I've dug out some plants already to show you where they're to go."

She had walked away from him and he had followed her progress as she spoke. Now, as she turned, Alfie was again holding his iPhone and she realised that he must have been doing so as she leaned forward to pull some weeds out of the cleared patch as more had taken root. As her hand flicked back the tumble of her auburn hair, and her blouse stretched as she moved, so he had taken pictures, of her tanned and slender legs in full view and how the straps of her dungaree shorts shaped her.

"Go on," Alfie grinned, undeterred by her look his way, "I'm listening."

"I do wonder about that," she retorted with a pouted smile, "so put that darn iPhone away, will you?"

What had made him show such a sudden interest in her where none had been shown before? Was it the clothes she had chosen to wear and that she had not thought to be provocative, but suited to the warm weather they were having? She felt only too comfortable in the blouse and cut-off dungarees, the clunky boots on her feet just the footwear for what they now set out to do, Alfie putting the blade of a shovel under the broken slabs and soon lifting them away and putting them to one side.

"I'll set up a string line to mark out the route of the path again, shall I? It will also help in checking the levels we have to work to."

"Good idea, although I haven't got a level."

"I have!" he beamed and brushed past her and returned with a two-foot yellow painted spirit level that he soon used as the string was tied to pegs, Joan kneeling to help him and acutely aware of his presence and eyes on her as they reset the line of the path. "I'll do the lifting while you rake things over after I've brought the sand to lay it all out on."

"Taking charge now, are you?" she couldn't help but laugh and was pleased to see the change in him, how easily he worked, Alfie's arm muscles flexing as the shovel was pushed into the hard clay soil, dried out by the recent dry spell of weather.

"Only if you'll let me." He said it even as Joan stood up and moved away, liking the sight of her tanned legs and those clumpy boots. He couldn't stop himself from looking at her and how she kept brushing back that hair of hers and what he saw move under that blouse as she did so.

"My house phone's going! I won't be long!" she said suddenly.

"Go for it, Joan!" He hadn't heard a thing.

She didn't see him take a picture, his iPhone soon fished out of his pocket as he skittered away, her hair flying and her blouse failing to prevent the tantalizing sway of her breasts.

"Jeez," he muttered as he resumed the work they had set out to do. "How could I have missed what she brings until now?"

He knew the answer soon enough. His mother, Tracey, was always around when they all met. It might all go differently now...now that Tracey was away at work and he could be alone with Joan, the woman who was slowly winding his clock the longer he was with her.

He wouldn't say 'no' to a taste of her if he got the chance to try it on with the woman he now saw through different eyes. He fancied pegging her and discovering someone new and different from those he'd shared the heat with up until now. Joan didn't look the sort to leave a love-bite on his skin so that people would know what he had been at.

"Shit! Shittity...shittity...shit!"

Alfie glared down at his thigh. He'd been careless with the packaging knife that he kept in his toolbox and brought along to help get the job done for Joan. The binding had given way easier than expected and he had gashed his thigh as he had followed through. He tore the bandana from his head and, sweaty or not, he now placed it on the wound. Blood soon welled up again when he took it away.

There was nothing for it.

He rushed along the side passage that led to Joan's kitchen door and felt a damned fool for what he had chosen to wear for this job, but the day was just too hot to get all togged up and Joan had agreed with him. She looked so darned good in those cutoff denim dungarees and that loose blouse, her auburn hair getting in her eyes as she worked and she brushed it back whenever the need arose.

He'd wanted to be of help and get a darned bit closer to her. A few snaps had been taken, secretly, on his iPhone when she wasn't aware and worked on raking over the route of the path, bending forward at times, and he'd gotten an eye full of what she had under that blouse. He'd have time, back at home, to check out the images, but Joan sure looked fit for a woman her age, slender-legged and something of a 'babe' in what she was wearing.

"Joan, sorry, I'm sorry, but I was well on with laying out some slabs then this happened! I cut myself."

She had seen his bulk fill the doorway but she had scarcely heard him as she chattered on her iPhone to his mother and said how it was going. "Better than expected! We'll get through the work in no time...if we're not interrupted."

Now, as she held the phone away from her ear, she shivered. Alfie had pulled away the bandana, he had been seen wearing, and she stared at the wound on his leg.

"Yes, Tracey, I'll send him home when we're finished!"

She now drew a little closer, her eyes darting over him. Alfie's arms were scratched in places from brushing against the hedge that lined one side of the path, but she saw only the strength in them and the tattoo on one shoulder and down over a toned bicep. The young man was wild in his looks and what he wore, even in how he behaved, now, as he stared at her with appraising eyes. It was crazy to be possessed by an interest in him that their easy chatter, as they worked, had brought about. It was also utterly wrong and disloyal to Tracey to be feeling this way about her son, but she couldn't keep all thoughts of him, and of them working and sweating together, out of her mind.

And yet...

"Don't touch that cut with your dirty fingers!" she scolded as she made him pull the bandana away once more and she hesitated for a moment before she crouched down to look at the wound. "I did warn you to be careful!"

"And I should have warned you that I want some pictures of us together!" he laughed, holding the iPhone and taking a picture that could only be of her tits as her blouse opened and she tended to his cut as she knelt to do so.

"Don't be daft!"

"Not daft but liking what I see of you."

The cut would have to be steri-stripped to stand any chance of closing it. At any other time, she would have sent him home and have Tracey deal with it, but his brazen and flirtatious ways, a young guy coming onto her even as they worked, persuaded her to keep Alfie with her and she'd mend him. In any case, Tracey was out at work so what good would it do for her to send him away?

"Alfie don't do that! Don't keep touching it!"

"It frigging hurts!" he gasped as she made him sit still and she tugged an antiseptic wipe from a battered First Aid box she kept close by the kitchen door, in a tall broom cupboard. That too had seen better days but it was functional and how it looked was the least of her worries.

Deeply concerned for him now, and enervated by this turn of events, she pushed away his grimy hand as he sought to touch his thigh's blood-stained skin. I shouldn't be doing this. I shouldn't even be thinking about this happening, me having to dress his wound and so to touch him where I've never touched him before. A moment's clarity of thought had risen in her.

"You'd better go home, Alfie...and dress it, there...but for God's sake clean the wound properly first and also your hands! The day here is done for you. You can help me finish things tomorrow if you're able to."

Alfie licked his fingers again, and he...

"Stop that, I said. Just stop!" she cried out, preventing him from touching the wound with a flick of her hand to his arm. "Don't you ever think first? Infections...the germs are everywhere! I don't want that on my conscience too, you getting blood poisoning!"

"Along with what else, such as us being here, working and talking when we've not really done that before? I sure like being here and seeing what you're wearing..."

"Don't talk daft or get any ideas!"

And yet she was again wracked by doubts about how she felt to have him with her and that she was able to touch him; a young guy who was inexplicably coming onto her and brazen in the ways that he talked to her.

"What? What is it, now?" he prompted.

"Nothing, you've only gone and cut your leg open!" Joan flared, but her eyes looked over him, wonderingly. Glib, he may be, but he also possessed an uncanny way of getting under her skin. "Just go and wash your hands at the sink and use the soap in the bottle! I'll do the same in a moment! Now go! Go on! Go!"

He stood up and brushed his fingers over the bare skin of her arm as he did so. "You've become someone else to me, now, and I won't say anything about it, I promise."

"There's nothing to say, so get away!" she answered with a flick of her hand to her hair, his eyes following every move that she made

She shook her head violently as if to deny what was happening, a horny young guy was coming onto her and might even try to suggest that they get together, that they fucked while he was helping out with laying her paths. A disbelieving laugh escaped her lips as that thought came to her.

"Go home, Alfie...go home," she whispered upon seeing him standing there, streaks of blood from the wound marking their course in the dust and sun-bleached hair on his tanned leg. Things were happening too fast for her to think clearly about changing circumstances; about the vaguest of possibilities that caring for another might lead to. "Just go home and deal with it there. I'll give you some steri-strips to take with you."

What she continued to feel was simply crazy; the bewildering speed of it; the overwhelming tumult of emotions that had been aroused in her on first seeing him and now having to tend to his wound; from having to touch him and all that she could so readily concede to if the chance came her way.

Alfie decided on it for them both.

"No, Joan. You patch me up and then we'll get on with things, outside that is." His grin again teased her, along with the words he had just used.

"What? And get dirt in the wound all over again?" she shouted in dismay and giving voice to her ragged feelings. Alfie seemed a foolhardy sort of guy. "Stop and think about it, will you, Alfie? Just stop and think!"

"I'm doing just that!" he snapped, unbothered by how it sounded. "I'll finish...I want to finish what you asked me to help you with! Besides, I want to be here with you and not alone at home. I've never seen you look quite so good before."

"I should make you leave, talking to me in the way that you do and have done almost from the moment we started work!"

She wasn't angry and simply stated a fact about how things were playing out between them.

Alfie slumped down on a kitchen stool, his leg muscles tensed and he glared up at her. He now eased his wounded leg until it almost blocked her way. Joan had to step around him to reach the First Aid box that was stowed away. Once again, she pushed the fingers of one hand through her tangle of hair, her reflection seen in the mirror set into the inside face of the door, and that she often used to check on her makeup, before removing the sealed box.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you, again. You also have your ways, a temper on you, you know."

"You're not the first to tell me that," she managed to smile, her eyes meeting his look upon her. That damned iPhone was again in his hand. "What do you keep taking pictures of?"

"Mend my leg, then I'll show you," he laughed, an appraising look again to be seen in his eyes.

She nodded, suppressed a smile on hearing him speak to her in that way of his, and stared at him. She now felt deeply engaged with the young man before her. Who was to know what could happen between them? Tracey was out at work, doing her shift in the local Cooperative Store, and they would be undisturbed if things went so far, given the way he behaved and flirted outrageously with her.

Alone with Alfie, she could touch him...and...and one thing could so easily lead to another. Tracey had spoken before of his reckless ways and those he had chased. Did she really want to be added to however long his list of conquests was?