by Claire Peate
There was loud agreement amongst the group and a dark and portentous grunt from Mr Muscle: a man who looked like he snacked on pebbles.
Eustace’s expression had clouded over, bending down to the article. “I do so loathe the term guerrilla gardener,” he said, tapping the newspaper article with a portly finger. “Why they have to call us that is beyond me. It sounds like we’re involved in armed warfare: it’s very third world.”
“We should be armed!” a woman called Agatha said. “Do you remember that gang Eustace? The one when we were planting up—”
“That’s quite enough.” Eustace put a hand on Agatha’s shoulder, and then quickly smiling he added, “We don’t want to go frightening our newest recruit with ridiculous stories do we? Nothing happened, Edda, my dear. Lads shouting. We soon dealt with them.”
“Yeah, we did!” Jake let out a deep and sinister laugh that sounded like a rock fall.
I looked at him from the corner of my eye.
Yikes. Did I really want to sign up for something that would involve me spending time with a man like Jake, in lonely places, late at night? And however jolly Eustace Fox was he did steal police signs and Babs – fount of all Brockley knowledge – distrusted the man, so there must be something about him to warrant her suspicion.
Just how much did I really want to do this? How much did I need to have something in my life to take away the ache of losing Beth to all-consuming motherhood? I looked over towards Guy who was looking straight at me with his deep green eyes. Straight into my very soul.
Ah… I wanted to be a part of this quite a lot.
I sat on a silver deco bar stool and the world of the Brockley Spades opened up before me. The glamour of the underground ballroom, the thrill of having an attentive and handsome artist at my side and the implicit adventure of imminent middle-class illegality was intoxicating. Surely if the Famous Five had been around now and in their thirties they would be guerrilla gardeners: George, scowling, hauling enormous trees down darkened streets, Dick scurrying after George and hauling smaller trees, Timmy being a look-out for crims on the High Road, Anne providing the Waitrose nibbles and fussing over the tapas, and Julian, surely, would be a slimmer, younger, blonder Eustace Fox.
“…and the grasses totalled four hundred pounds exactly.” Eustace was cataloguing the last quarter’s “Digs”, as he called them, and summing up the use of plant stocks. It wasn’t gripping stuff and I’d tuned out for most of it, preferring instead to surreptitiously watch Guy from beneath my fringe. My God he was gorgeous, slouched in a leather arm chair, dressed all in black with his black curly hair tumbling across his face. He was practically a one-man aftershave advert.
Eustace continued on and on and as he did so the sense of adventure began to wane in the face of minutes, budgets and lists. The Famous Five never minuted any of their meetings.
As the plant stocks were listed and their values calculated, I began to wonder just how all the money was raised to support their activities. There were fifty pound trees – thirty of them. Three hundred pounds worth of lavenders, eight hundred of turf and so on and so on. Thousands and thousands of pounds – which came from where?
A creeping suspicion entered my head that Eustace funded the society by bag snatching and car stealing just like the police signs had said. Perhaps Babs had been right after all and he was a bad sort: robbing the poor to pay for the peonies.
Or was I just being melodramatic? Was the secret society of guerrilla gardeners all financed by money from his own pocket – after all he was obviously a wealthy man. Nobody lived in an enormous villa like his, or wore such flamboyant trousers as he did, without being extremely wealthy.
Or perhaps the guerrilla gardening finances came from money siphoned off from the Fox Estates business? Maybe the scheme was a tax avoidance exercise?
Or, I felt a knot in my stomach, maybe the money was raised through its members i.e. Me. Moi.
Now that I was going to be a member would I be expected to pay into some sort of Ornamental Cabbage Fund every month to keep Brockley green? No one had mentioned this to me so far, but then no one had mentioned much at all to me, and it was hardly going to be the first thing that was said on the subject: Hi, do you want to join our secret society and have the privilege of losing a hundred pounds every month from your bank account?
I fuzzily sipped my third martini and remained silent. There was no way my new lodger money was going on ornamental cabbages. I had plans for that money. Shoe-shaped plans. And placating Mike the bank manager, of course.
“That’s a good point,” Eustace was saying and he turned to me, making me quickly refocus on what was being said. “A little while back, Edda, I set up a website which has all the information you need: digs, contacts, blogs. It’s hidden on the Fox Estates site – here’s my business card with the web address on. Once you’re on the home page look for the icon of a spade. It’s light grey and appears on the very top right of the screen: it’s so faint you won’t be able to see it if you’re not looking for it. Click on it and you’ll be asked for a password. It’s ‘Capability’.
“Because we’re capable?”
Eustace let out a loud laugh. “It’s after the great man himself, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.”
Everyone was looking at me, highly amused. “Ah, OK.” I said.
“You do know who Capability Brown was don’t you?”
“Of course…” I lied glibly. “Actually, no.”
“Well tut, tut! The man was a landscape designer extraordinaire!” Eustace held his hand up in a flourish. “He landscaped the grounds of the country houses of the rich and famous up and down the country in the eighteenth century.”
I nodded, sagely.
“The man was a genius,” Eustace continued, “he single handedly redesigned the way we thought about landscape and what was considered beautiful. In fact in—”
“Well, you learn something every day,” interrupted Guy. “But I do have to go in half an hour, so could we get back to business, Eust?”
Thank you. Thank you, handsome artist man.
“Now one more thing before we go,” Eustace said, “This Notorious Baron chap.”
“Oh he’s a pain!” the woman called Agatha chipped in.
“He’s sodding rubbish is what he is!” The journalist pounded the bar.
“The man is a blight!” Eustace cut in. “I’m all for a bit of street art – my God we can make Brockley edgy can’t we, we’re not Dulwich for Christ’s sake – but what we want is some Banksy. We want some class and some damn skill here. The chap calling himself Da Baron is completely bloody useless. Did anyone see the clown with a detonator near the florists the other day?”
“I did,” an old lady held her hand up, “but it did take me a while to work out what it was.”
“He doesn’t have a shred of talent,” Eustace said.
“So you want us to widen the remit of the Spades to getting rid of graffit?” said a tired-sounding man from the back.
“My God no! I say lets make our own Banksy. Let’s take this ruffian by his hoodie and let’s do something with him. I want him identified, I want him sent to art college and I want him back on the streets doing something worth talking about. Who do we know with connections to the Brockley underground? How do we get to him?”
I studied my shoes while he looked around the group. Now was not the time to go bringing Babs into a conversation. Because Babs would probably know someone who knew someone who knew Da Notorious Baron.
“OK, Jim, I want you and your fourth estate friends to put out feelers. I want him. I want Da Baron. Guy – I need you to find appropriate courses. Something arty but streety too. Maybe give him more of an understanding into politics: that tired thing he does with the Houses of Parliament and the blood – can we have him a bit more politically savvy? Bansky is much broader ranging isn’t he? Hey,” he suddenly looked at Guy, “you don’t know Banksy do you?”
“No.”
“Shame. An
yway, do your best guys. Let’s work with what we’ve got, yes?”
I sat silently and listened to the tirade, wondering with a heavy feeling in my stomach where the philanthropic gestures ended and the scary total-controlling began.
It was time to leave the chandeliers and the cocktails behind and I emerged with the others, through the grimy Working Men’s Club, out onto Loampit Hill.
Everything was drab and flat and smelt of chicken.
“It’s cool to meet you properly,” the dreadlocked surf-dude Neil said as we ascended the staircase from the 1880s to the 1970s. “I must have seen you and your mate every weekend in V-2, yeah? And now at last I get to say ‘hi’.”
“You always look so busy,” I said, emerging into the filthy lobby. “It seems wrong to take up more of your time for a chat: the café’s always packed.”
“Tell me about it,” Anja said, coming up behind us. “It’s a total nightmare from 8am to 6pm.”
“But it’s better than being stuck in an office.” I thought about the beigey hell of working for the Council. “At least you’re living the dream. I’d love to have my own café.”
They laughed out loud and Peter, standing by the open door, shushed them. “Quiet now,” he hissed. “There’s still some activity on the High Road. We don’t want to give ourselves away!”
“I’ll walk you home, Edda.” Guy appeared beside me, buttoning his coat.
I grinned in delight, completely unable to play it cool, or act – in fact – like a calm and elegant person with a fiery inner passion. I was aware that I just looked stupidly happy.
“Well, you do know where I live…” I said.
We said goodnight to Eustace who was preoccupied by making sure we all disappeared quickly and silently: a glut of middle-class types on Lewisham High Road near midnight might raise unanswerable questions and we were, Eustace insisted on repeating, first and foremost a secret society.
But the streets were deserted, save for us guerrilla gardeners heading back to our homes. Guy was in high spirits, chatting about a commission, “it’s a portrait in blues and greys but the sitter is such a vibrant, lively personality. Really only a red palette could capture the essence of them, the life within them, you know, but my hands are tied. There’s a struggle in me,” at this point he pounded his chest, “between the artist and the practical business man who has to turn out a portrait conforming to the commission…”
But I was only half-listening. Because I was going to be a guerrilla gardener! Me! And I’d plucked up the courage to go along to the meeting on my own and it had been good. Except for the enormous great big question of funding – but apart from that…
Things were looking up.
“Here we are.” We drew to a halt.
“Oh!” I said. We were at my garden gate already. I hadn’t paid attention to where we were going at all. We would have walked straight passed Beth’s flat and I hadn’t even noticed. Surely that must be a good sign – a sign that I was moving on. Quite literally.
We paused at the front gate. “Your accent,” he said. “I hear a hint of Scottish in it.”
“Well, I lived up there a long time ago.”
“Ahh but you can never tame the passionate red-head: I expect your ancestors were crofters were they? Hacking a desperate living on the barren Highland slopes against a slate grey sky. Dispossessed by brutal landowners. Forever burning with an inner anger.”
“Erm. Maybe.”
Guy looked deep into my eyes. “There must be a reason for that flame in your hazel eyes: a deep passion that fires you up. Goodnight, Edda. You will be coming to the next dig won’t you?”
“Yes. I will.” Eighty-five percent of me was certain it would be a very good thing to do but fifteen percent of me still had money/moral issues to come to terms with. But then Guy was very attractive…
“So, I’ll see you on the fourth!” He had already backed away and was walking in the direction we’d just come. “I’ll call for you on the way to the dig.”
“Sure. OK. Thanks…” I stood in the garden and watched him go, melting into the night in his black garb with his inky black hair. With all the smouldering and arm-touching and inner-fire comments, I’d rather thought a kiss might have been on the cards. Instead I was alone in the dark beside an enormous pile of wilting plants with a hungry looking cat perched on top of it.
I turned to face the house, glancing quickly over towards Babs’ house in case she was standing at her doorway listening in. If Babs had heard any of this the secret society would be secret no more: they would be talking about it from Catford Market to Peckham High Street. But from her open bedroom window I could hear panting and, just faintly, a regular jangle jangle jangle that could only be coming from my belly-dancing outfit.
“Oh, that is so wrong,” I said to Finley as I collected him from atop the weed pile, “That a woman in her seventies ends her evening having her bells jangled and I end mine emptying your litter tray.” I paused on way through the hallway to check my appearance in the mirror. But I couldn’t see any fire, just eyes.
The following day at work I had an almost uncontrollable desire to stand on my chair and shout across the beige office to all the beige office people: I have joined a secret society and we meet in an abandoned ballroom on the High Road!
But I didn’t. What I did do was stare blankly at my computer, a report and a memo, and attended a meeting where I stared blankly at the wall. Just another day at the office. The dispossessed crofter with a burning anger of injustice and a passion for hatchets was spending another day in beige civil service despondency.
However, my boss, unbelievably, noticed a difference in me. Rosemary usually spent her working day quietly at her desk avoiding people with her head down and trying to look busy. Which she never was. She pretended to work – apparently she’d spent the last twenty years pretending to work – and last week I’d caught her reading a paperback period romance, the book hidden in between the pages of a Council report on proposed traffic calming measures in the borough. The Sea Captain’s Passion intrigued me and when she’d left her desk Amanda and I had managed to rifle through its pages to the juicy bits: apparently the eponymous Sea Captain’s passion was aflame and uncontrollable. Briefly, around lunchtime, Rosemary looked up from her ‘report’ saying, “You’re very yawny today, Edda. You should get more sleep,” before going back to the Sea Captain.
Yes Rosemary, that’s because I’ve joined a Secret Society and was up all night. “Yes. A bit.”
I felt like I was going mad.
My dull monotonous job was just about bearable when things were running along normally. But now that I was lusting after artists, joining underground societies and getting a lodger, my dull routine work had become completely undoable. I had no motivation to get the memo written or the tedious report actioned. And I couldn’t even summon up enough interest to reply to the all-staff email about a night out at the local pub. I wanted to hot-foot it over to Planning and grab Peter Shaw by his M&S lapels and say, That club house is so unbelievably amazing, what else have you secret society people got up your sleeves?
When my boss slunked off for an inescapable meeting I opened up the internet and, checking around me in case I was being watched, typed in the address of Fox Estates. Work was impossible: instead I was going to check up on the secret society’s secret website.
Welcome to Brockley! Welcome to a haven of tranquillity on the brink of Central London. Click to enter.
I clicked. I entered. And there before me was a picture of Eustace Fox, all loud golfing trousers and ruddy face. He was smiling magnificently at the photographer and shaking hands with the mayor of Lewisham, whose own smile was a little more tight and tired. The photograph had been taken in front of the Fox Estates office in Brockley. The chains, I noticed, had been removed from the bay trees for the day.
Brockley, SE4, was once an escape to the country for Victorian London’s wealthier merchants and industrialists. Described by many as a h
idden gem (Baverstock) and undiscovered idyll (D B Hornby), Brockley – with its conservation area full of villas and coach houses, the early Victorian terraces and the many open spaces – is on the rise once more. Welcome to our website. We hope you find your dream home and will join the new merchants and industrialists of twenty-first century London, along with the burgeoning art and literature scene that has developed over the last thirty years. Fox Estates, Brockley’s premier estate agency, looks forward to seeing you soon.
Brockley
Like Broccoli
But not. You call to me
Call to me
With hushèd whispers down the
Elm-lined streets and stuccoed houses
A haven of London unspoilt ours is
So hold back you developers with your diggers of despair!
And discard your petty plans for cheap buildings everywhere!
For all should be wary of developing
Wary of ruining, wary of enveloping
Belovèd Brockley
Of destructing what’s here the planners are warier
Thanks to our delineated
Conservation Area
Pippa Fortheringay (Tresillian Avenue, Brockley)
Click here for a link to Brockley Poetry Society
Even though there was the excitement of a secret society page buried on the website, the homeowner in me couldn’t help but pause to take a look at the properties to see how much I could sell my house for. I navigated through the first few pages which were filled with examples of Eustace’s grandiose turns of phrase: this sceptred islet within London, this seat of architectural Majesty, this green and pleasant Transport Zone Two, this Brockley…
The flats and houses were all at the upper end of the market and my house, for all its size, would probably be in the more ‘homely’ end of the market if it was for sale now. When I’d bought it from Fox Estates it had been given what looked like a hasty lick of paint and while it looked presentable it had never been in the category of these highly polished properties. I clicked through the property web pages: chandelier, chandelier, chandelier in the bathroom … and then I saw Beth’s flat and I froze.
