by Claire Peate
“Thanks,” I said and do you have a girlfriend … am I something on the side hung in the air unsaid.
Any hopes I had, of a romantic tête-à-tête during our walk to the dig site at Hilly Fields, were destroyed by the fact that Guy was receiving endless text messages to which he was responding immediately. “It’s Eustace,” he said as he tapped in a reply, “he’s remote managing as usual…”
I walked in silence beside him thinking deep thoughts. Guy had said I looked good enough to eat and Robert had said I looked beautiful! Robert thought I looked beautiful…
I smiled as I strode beside the texting Guy, down the near deserted streets towards Hilly Fields.
“Don’t do that!” Guy said, grabbing my hand and pushing it down.
“I was only waving,” I said. “And it was only to Mr Iqbal—”
“Well just don’t look at him. Don’t draw attention to us. We are a secret society for a reason.”
“But I always wave to Mr Iqbal: he’d think it was odd if I walked past and didn’t. He’d want to know why I blanked him. That would be drawing attention to us.”
“Seriously, Edda: don’t wave.”
We continued down the High Road, Guy texting Eustace some sort of thesis.
“My friend’s gaff,” Guy looked up as we passed a grotty old pub that was in the process of being stripped out and renovated. “He’s opening a bistro soon: something ultra funky for Brockley. I’ve been commissioned for the art work but I can’t start it for another month yet – I’m just too successful, busy with my own commissions.”
I did a double take. Did he really just say that? But then artists did have a reputation for being self-assured.
“Isn’t that shop also new?” I pointed out a bookshop that had appeared where the kebab house had been as little as a month ago. “I liked that kebab house,” I said, but to no one as Guy’s phone had beeped once more and he was engrossed in replying. I stared at the new shop as we passed it. It had a very familiar look to it: was it a book shop chain? But then I realised why it was familiar: it looked almost exactly like the florist’s beside Mr Iqbal’s, and Mr Iqbal’s too, now that it was a Mini Marché or whatever he’d called it. Because it was painted in a similar dark muted shade of grey and had the two bay trees out at the front. Did all the new businesses in Brockley have to put bay trees outside their premises? Was it a requirement from the Council? Was it a particular demand by Peter “Moses” Shaw that culinary foliage be on display?
We were leaving the shops behind and the road widened out with trees on either side. It was a mild night, still damp from earlier rain and the earthy smells struck me: the memory of the smell of the countryside: Leicestershire ... Beth ...We were almost at Hilly Fields. And now there were others on the street walking in the same direction. On a late night return from the pub I would be skirting the hoodies and yardies in an attempt to avoid having a yellow police sign experience, but tonight the pavements were overtaken by guerrilla gardeners: small gangs of the Boden-clad middle classes armed with Cath Kidston gardening equipment and Fat Face jumpers. There was no glint of a knife in the street light: tonight the only glints came off Rolex watches or designer glasses.
“Do you ever come across any violence on these digs?” I asked Guy, taking advantage of a text-free moment.
“What do you mean?” Guy looped his arm around my waist.
“Erm,” the seriousness of the question was utterly ruined by the effect of an arm around my waist, “you know … from the gangs.”
“Any violence? Not really.” He said distractedly and then pulled me closer, kissing me. But then came the now familiar beep of his phone which put paid to any conversation.
Not really? What did that mean? Did that mean there was moderate violence? Or there was occasional serious violence?
We walked further up the road, Guy busy texting and me silent – thoughts running amok in my head. I recalled the meeting beneath the Working Men’s Club when one of the guerrilla gardeners had mentioned an incident involving youths. I remembered the reaction from heavy-man Jake – his ominous gravelly laugh – and then the way in which Eustace had rapidly changed the subject. Did this mean that there had actually been trouble with the South London gangs? That something had happened? Because the odds were on there being trouble for people hanging around this part of South London in the dead of night … it was a wonder we’d got away with it at the station dig. Or was Eustace taking care of that side of things…
“Look at that,” Guy pointed to a post box, “Eust’s not going to be overly impressed by that right next to a dig site.”
“About wh—” and then I saw my kissing-women stencil and felt a sudden stab of pride. That was my work and it looked fantastic. Every detail of the stencil had come out perfectly and Da Notorious Baron had signed below with a flourish.
“Still,” Guy paused to examine it, “the artist looks like he’s improving. It’s no Banksy but it’s got merit.”
“I think it’s very good.” I said. “Although I completely agree with Eustace, of course…”
We had arrived at Hilly fields and Guy didn’t pursue the conversation. The black van was there, the black-clad people were there, gathered together and in hushed conversation.
“Better go rally the troops,” Guy said and was gone.
I was prepared for the dig this time: I’d read the blog and looked up the plans online and didn’t have to rely on paying attention to Guy to know what to do. I was down on the plans to work with a man called Roger Wendell, renovating an old bench and bringing it back into use.
“Bloody stupid task for guerrilla gardeners,” Roger moaned, after we’d pulled the bench out of thick brambles, cutting ourselves to ribbons. “The thing’s practically organic it’s so rotten.” We dragged it clear and began to examine it properly in torchlight.
“I think it’s going to be fine,” I said. “It’s got flaky paintwork and looks bad on the surface but it’s sturdy enough underneath.”
But Roger continued moaning, going on about pointless bloody deployment and Eustace pushing the damn boundaries, using phrases and words which made perfect sense when he told me, between moans, that he was a broadsheet journalist.
“I mean, how are we supposed to execute the stripping and painting of a bloody bench in the pitch dark? The task’s illogicality itself. This isn’t what I signed up for! I wanted to plant—”
“Well I’m sure it will make a difference,” I cut him off. “Now, let’s think this through…”
The dig at Hilly Fields was a variation on what we’d done before: guerrilla market gardening Guy called it. Eustace in full Victorian philanthropic mode wanted to educate the masses in the benefits of a healthy diet. “Some of them,” he’d blogged, “only ever encounter potatoes in chipped form,” and for that reason we were taking up half an acre of the sweep of Hilly Fields for tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkins, beans and on the far side redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries and strawberries. “We will combine the transformation of an area of simple grass into a potager of great beauty,” his blog had continued, “with the practicality of providing nutrition to the masses. In this dig we will deliver to the people of Brockley on two levels.”
So, watching the team begin cutting into the grass to create the fruit and vegetable patches why didn’t I feel doubly enthusiastic? Perhaps I wasn’t so convinced by this dig because it wasn’t a tatty traffic island or weed-covered approach to the station. Hilly Fields was already beautiful, and the allotment, which is what it sounded like to me, was going to be an anomaly cut into the side of it. This was Eustace imposing himself on something that didn’t need him, it was nice enough already: wasn’t he going too far?
Suddenly the vast empty silence of Hilly Fields was filled with sharp rasping. All the gardeners had stopped to look at us.
“Shit!”
Roger had started sanding the bench then instantly stopped: “Well, no one bloody well thought that through,” he threw down the sandpaper and
block. “Stupid bloody idea!”
Guy was running over to us. “You can’t do that any more.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Roger said. “The whole scheme here isn’t on, if you ask me, Guy. What the bloody hell was Eust thinking when—”
“Why don’t we try and muffle the sanding?” I took the blanket we had been using to cover the ground from paint splashes and gingerly tried to sand with the blanket smothering it. It deadened the noise enough to not draw too much attention to us.
“Better. Good.” Guy planted a kiss on my forehead and walked off.
After an hour of muted sanding followed by painting, Roger and I admired the end result.
“I know how you feel about renovating the bench,” I said to Roger, not without a hint of sarcasm, “but I do think it’s worthwhile bringing something like this back into use. It’s beautiful: someone will enjoy using it.”
“Someone did enjoy using it,” Roger said as he pulled a screwdriver out of his pocket and ran it along the edge of a plaque fixed onto the bench back.
In memory of Paul Amos, who loved this park, 1911 – 1988.
“You’re not really going to take that off are you?”
“This? Of course I’m going to! Nasty cheap thing,” Roger said prising it free. “It’s not even brass it’s just plastic. Now, take a look here,” he handed me a heavy brass disc that I angled to the far off street light. Restored by The Brockley Spades, 2011. “See? That’s quality right there.”
“But don’t you think it’s sacrilegious removing the old plaque?”
“Not at all. Eustace wants to leave a calling card and this is it. He’s the boss…”
“But what about Paul Amos? His family must have paid for the bench.”
“Then his family should have looked after the bench,” Roger threw the plaque into a nearby bin. “And not been so bloody cheap with the plastic plaque. Now hurry up; let’s get the second coat on before Neil cracks open the cake tin. I missed out on the bloody chocolate muffins on the last dig and it bloody well isn’t going to happen again I can tell you.” He re-opened the can of Farrow and Ball’s Carriage Green and we painted in long smooth strokes, painting by sense in the dark, pretty much unable to make out where the first coat ended and the second coat began. Thankfully, we were working in silence, lost in our own thoughts at three in the morning: me dreaming about Guy, while Roger, no doubt, contemplated his God-given right to the muffins.
“Would you look at that! Just look at them going for the cake! Outrageous!” Roger thrust his brush angrily into the paint can. “Gannets. That’s what they are. Bloody gannets!”
I followed his line of sight – Neil and Anja had set up the table of cakes and drinks and the gardeners working nearby had swarmed around them.
“You go,” I said, gathering the tools together. “I’m not bothered about chocolate muffins.”
“Selfish bloody gannets.” Roger was already moving. “I’ll save you one shall I?” He streaked across the grass in a blur of pent-up middle class rage.
I had to stop myself laughing out loud at the sight of him speed-walking to the muffins. God help the others if they’d run out of food by the time he’d made it over there.
Paul Amos’s plaque was lying on top of the rubbish in the adjacent bin. Without thinking, I picked it up and slipped it in to my jacket pocket.
Traipsing over the dark field to the van, I could see Roger standing smug and superior with a chocolate muffin clamped in each hand. I ducked around the group to avoid him: an hour and a half in his company was more than enough. I crept over to the refreshment table from the other side.
“How’s it going, babe?” Anja handed me a hot chocolate.
“OK. I’m exhausted though – and covered in Carriage Green. Has Eustace been round? I haven’t seen him.”
“Not tonight.” Neil pressed a cake into my hands. “He’s put Guy in charge of this one ’cause he’s got some Council function to attend this evening. Eustace doesn’t give up the social events: network, network, network!” Anja punched him in the ribs and he shut up. “Yeah. OK. Sorry. Forget that, man,” he muttered. “Eustace is brilliant. Enjoy the fairy cake, yeah?”
“Hi,” Guy was beside me and made me jump. “Enjoying the cakes?”
“I will do,” I said, wrenching the paper off. Roger had a point: by three in the morning you do feel it’s a God-given right to have cake for your trouble. I bit into it and it was beyond good. Moist and sweet and the perfect thing for a cold spring morning spent in hard physical labour.
“I saw your bench.”
I had a mouth full of cake so all I could manage was, “Mmm. Nd?”
“It’s excellent. You and Rog have done a good job.”
“There is one thing actually,” I said, when I’d swallowed the wedge of lemon icing.
“And that is?”
“Eustace is having us put a plaque on the bench.”
Guy considered what I’d said. “I know.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
“And you know that the plaque names us as the Brockley Spades.”
“Believe me, Edda,” a weary sounding Guy said, “I’ve been over it many times before. This isn’t the first time he’s wanted to sign the artwork, if you see what I mean.”
“But if he names us, then people will get to know of us and it’s only a matter of time, surely, before our cover is blown.”
Guy leant in, his mouth against my ear, whispering, “That’s the problem with dealing with egotists like Eustace Fox,” he said the last three words in nothing but a whisper, his lips brushing my ear. “But forget all that and come back to my place, my fiery red-head.”
Sixteen
Beth’s mother did it and my aunt did it: filling perfectly acceptable silences with inane chat. It was something Beth and I had vowed would never ever happen to us when we grew up, along with making small talk with waiters and smiling at complete strangers in the street. The last one was a guaranteed no-no: in South London smiling at a stranger would end up with becoming a statistic recorded in one of the yellow police signs that so irritated Eustace: Smiling Woman Set Upon, any witnesses…
But now, at four in the morning and with dawn breaking behind us Guy and I were striding back to his place with all the promise that that brought. And I was filling what would have been a deliciously charged silence with inane chat.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Probably, it was because I was so ecstatically happy that Guy was taking me back to his place and all that that meant. He really might not have a girlfriend after all … it was all I could do to stop myself skipping along beside him and bursting into song. Which would have been worse than inane chatter. But only just.
“Oh, just look at the beautiful colour of the sky,” I gushed. “And the birds are waking up. It’s amazing. Don’t you think? Wow the sky is a sort of peachy colour isn’t it what colour would you say it is?”
Guy shot me the look I so deserved.
But it was so beautiful that it just had to be talked about. How often was the sky the same colour as a perfect ripened nectarine? And I had never seen the streets and houses look so unreal as they did at that moment, like a dream sequence in a film. Maybe it was just nerves that were making me chatter on. I wasn’t very comfortable with silences. Summoning up all my willpower I forced myself to shut the hell up and enjoy the walk in a dignified manner.
“This way,” Guy said after a few minutes, reaching out for my hand and pulling me down a gravelled lane between two vast white villas. He kept hold of me, his fingers closed tight over my own. The lane turned to run behind the villas and on either side high yellow-brick walls closed us in, honeysuckles and jasmines tumbling over from the gardens behind.
“It’s beautiful!” I said – I couldn’t help myself – and Guy laughed, pulling me onwards.
The lane was widening and in a few more steps a group of buildings came into view – old coach houses huddled beneath oak tre
es like a miniature secret village. The world of guerrilla gardening was opening my eyes to a parallel Brockley: one that had existed side by side with my old mundane world and Babs’ grittier version. Eustace Fox had been right: Brockley was a gem.
We had reached the nearest coach house. “This is my place.” Guy bent down to a geranium pot and took a large iron key from beneath it. “Welcome to my home!” He unlocked the door and stood aside to let me in.
It was tiny: just one loft-style room with a kitchen at one end, and an old leather sofa on the opposite side in front of a giant wood burner. But it oozed cool: the walls were bare brick, the wood floor was waxed and right before us an old iron spiral staircase wound up to a mezzanine level.
Guy closed the door and I turned to face him. For a moment we stood before one another then he reached over and began to pop open the buttons on my jacket, one by one, easing it off my shoulders and letting it fall to the floor where it lay crumpled on the doormat.
He was asleep. Beautifully asleep. His black hair curled and twisted on the white pillow obscuring his face. I watched him, unmoving, for what seemed like an hour, running a finger over my stubble-chafed lips.
He really was completely and utterly beautiful and, asleep, there was a vulnerability beneath his artistic swagger: finally I had seen the man beneath the Milk Tray.
The change in him had been so sudden: one minute he was a black-eyed animal and now, a few hours later, he was just an innocent dark-haired boy asleep on his pillow.
I lay back down and stared up at the ceiling.
It was strung with fairy lights criss-crossing between the wooden beams. How many women, I wondered, had looked up and seen those fairy lights? How many women had watched this man sleep? I propped myself up. Guy stirred. I watched him again for a moment, hoping he would wake up. But no: he was fast asleep and no matter how beautiful he was there was only so long I could watch him. So I turned my attention to the room itself.
