A Bit of Earth

by Rebecca Smith

  ‘Do you want to bat?’ Erica said. She offered him her stick. ‘I’ll throw one and you see how hard you can whack it.’ The first one he missed. The second he hit so hard that it went whizzing right across the garden and landed on the roof of a greenhouse. Through the milky glass they could see the shape of Guy looking up, startled.

  ‘Ooops,’ said Felix, but they both sniggered.

  ‘See if you can bat it higher than that tree,’ said Erica, jerking her head towards a young willow. Another child would say ‘Easy!’ even though it wasn’t. Felix seemed to be without bravado. But he did it. The arc was high and wide and true.

  ‘Wow,’ said Erica, ‘you’re pretty good. That was as big as a rainbow!’

  ‘Do you want a turn?’ Felix asked politely.

  ‘OK.’

  Each time one of them made a great hit they would shout as loud as they could, ‘Rainbow!’

  Erica worried that there were quite a few things that Felix might never learn to do. Swimming was one of them. Was riding a bike another? She wondered if she could mention it to Guy without seeming to be critical or interfering, two things that she definitely thought she was. Also, why was Felix in the garden nearly every afternoon? Shouldn’t he be going to tea with people, or having them to tea? Or doing some activities. Perhaps she would invite him to tea again, or make a picnic for him and some of his friends in the garden.

  ‘Felix,’ she said, the next time she saw him, ‘would you like to invite someone to tea in the garden? I could make you an autumn picnic. With maybe a friend or two. Or even three,’ she quickly added, remembering how two could gang up on one. It wasn’t that long since she had been at school.

  ‘The other children are all always busy,’ he said. ‘They get collected and go to each other’s houses and drama club and football, and piano lessons, and tennis, and cricket, and cubs, and Kumon maths. And the girls go to other stuff too.’

  ‘Don’t you want to go to any of those things?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You could ask your dad, I could ask him for you.’

  What were the other mothers playing at? Why weren’t they constantly inviting this motherless child to things? Suddenly she quite hated Guy. He was failing this child, big time.

  ‘Do people invite you to things?’

  ‘Sometimes. I just say I can’t go.’

  ‘Oh Felix, you could go! Of course you could go!’

  ‘I just say I can’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The truth was that some of the mothers didn’t even know about Felix’s plight. It had happened four years ago now. Nobody gave it that much consideration any more. Their swoops on the Junior School playground were too swift for them to take much in. Those who had previously tried with Felix had been met with so many rebuffs that now they no longer bothered. By Felix’s age most children were dictating their own social lives. The enforced inviting of other children to tea was over.

  It occurred to Erica that Felix might not be very popular. Some people just don’t have many friends. After all, she had hardly any that she actually liked.

  At least she had a gingerbread man in her bag for Felix, and one for herself. They sat on the badger house and ate them. Felix was kind of odd-looking, she supposed, compared to most contemporary children. He always looked pale and what her mum called ‘peaky’, despite all the time he spent outdoors. His shoes were lumpy and too sensible, and why were his cuffs always so frayed? Other boys of his age wore trainers with integral stopwatches. Their hair was in styles, and the girls, well, they were something else.

  ‘You know, Felix,’ she said, ‘there are lots of things you could do, things in clubs, or by yourself. You could collect things, or be a metal detector, I mean someone who finds things. You could have your own garden.’

  A coffee break in the lab. Erica and Guy didn’t usually speak, just sipped in silence and looked out of the window, across their corner of campus to the waving trees that bordered the garden. Today, Erica had decided, things would be different. She pulled a sheaf of leaflets out of her rucksack.

  ‘I was at the pool today and I picked up these for you. I hadn’t realised that they did all this stuff for kids. There’s lots here that you and Felix could try, and it’s right on the doorstep. Very reasonable too. Does Felix like swimming?’

  ‘Er,’ said Guy, ‘um.’

  ‘I loved it when I was a kid. Often the kids who aren’t that good at other sports are strong swimmers. Not that I’m saying Felix isn’t good at other sports. He’s really good at tree climbing and so on …’

  ‘Um, yes,’ said Guy, which wasn’t actually an answer. He took another sip of his coffee and then looked back out of the window. ‘I’m interested in hailstones,’ he said. ‘I wonder if anyone has studied their properties. And the air around hailstones. Have you ever noticed how peculiar it feels? Everybody knows about the importance of lightning in fixing nitrogen in the soil. I wonder if anybody has studied hailstones …’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Erica, and looked out of the window again too.

  He left the leaflets on the table, which she thought was rather rude, but the next day they had gone. She didn’t know whether it was the cleaner, or Jeanette being efficient, or whether he had actually taken them home.

  ‘Oh cool!’ said Felix. ‘Dad, could we really go swimming? You have to do swimming at the beginning of Year 4. It would be so cool if I wasn’t in the bottom group.’

  ‘I guess we better had then,’ said Guy.

  When he phoned the pool it seemed that you had to book lessons several years in advance. Felix could go on the waiting list. They might get a cancellation. He set the leaflets aside.

  Chapter 18

  Guy sat in the greenhouse with really, it seemed, very little to do. He was thinking of the garden at home. The lawn was in a condition that other people would consider ‘in need of a mow’. It was only a small garden; once he had left it to Susannah. Nobody would have guessed that it was the garden of a botanist. The fences were looking precarious and although the bulbs that Susannah had put in still faithfully came up along with some self-seeded annuals to greet, he thought, nobody, there was nothing much of interest there now. Those hydrangeas could go, so could the Symphoricarpos albus laevigatus that Susannah had called snowball trees (and had worried about in case Felix ate the berries). So could the berberis and the cotoneasters and the forsythia and the flowering currant. He almost hated some of those so-called ‘useful shrubs’. And then that depressing, pointless expanse of greenish yellow, the lawn. Its usefulness as a habitat and its beauty were zero as far as he was concerned. In the middle of it stood a broken plastic slide and a very small swing. Felix hadn’t been on them in years. They could go too. He really did quite hate that garden.

  He supposed that in other situations a lawn might be required for games or entertaining. There were some deckchairs in the garage, if he remembered right, but they must be rotten by now. With a rush of decisiveness he decided to make a wildflower meadow. He would uproot the lot of it. Perhaps he could borrow one of the grounds staff’s miniature diggers. Why not do the house while he was at it?

  A wildflower meadow, yes, that was the answer. A few cuts a year, possibly with a scythe, that would be all that was necessary. He began to make a list of species on the back of some student’s assignment.

  And grasses, of course. And there was a particular variety of herb Robert that he would like, the Solent one. Now that would be quite something. He could leave it all to the birds and butterflies. At least he would be doing something good for once. The list finished, he looked up and saw a peacock butterfly caught in a strong gust of wind, its wings flapping uselessly. What was it doing out here so late in the season? Why didn’t it just surrender to the breeze, and let itself be blown to wherever? Perhaps it had some purpose, somewhere it was intending to go. Did butterflies make plans and have memories? He remembered being about Felix’s age, going in sea
rch of a lost marble, and finding five peacocks spending the winter asleep on the back of his mum and dad’s chest of drawers. He hadn’t told anybody about his discovery for fear that they would put the butterflies outside and let them die in the cold.

  Felix could help him with the wildflower meadow if he wanted. Then suddenly Felix’s pale little face was there, peering around the greenhouse door.

  ‘Dad,’ he said.

  It must mean that school had finished again. Guy smiled. He looked down at the trays of spleenworts. He was meant to be logging variations in the circumference of their spores.

  ‘Dad,’ said Felix, ‘might I have a bit of earth?’

  Guy looked down at the seed trays on the shelves in front of him, full of compost but waiting for life, the four-inch pots stacked up and growing nothing but cobwebs, the sacks of compost that sat under the bench, where some of them had been for years. The last one he had opened had contained a secret hoard of tiny pearls, snails’ eggs.

  ‘Please, Dad. Somewhere to make my own things grow. Not in here, not one of those trays. Outdoors in the garden. A garden in the garden, I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy, ‘of course. I don’t know why you didn’t have one before. Of course you can have your own …’ He had been going to say ‘plot’, but of course he couldn’t. He hated the word ‘plot’ now, and all its connotations.

  Susannah’s plot was not the usual sort of plot. There was a tree in a woodland burial ground. He was surprised that it hadn’t been called a ‘Woodland Burial Centre’. There might have been scope for an exhibition and gift shop. It must only be a matter of time before such a place existed. Actually it had been very nice, if such a place could be called nice. A tree had been planted in her memory. He had made the unusual choice of rowan. Now he wondered if there might have been an element of spite in his decision. Perhaps he should have gone for oak, like most people. There was a bronze plaque which he had never seen, maintained by an annual direct debit. The woodland burial ground had seemed the only option, but also horribly appropriate, just a few miles from where that car had hit the tree, that sycamore. Nasty, tall interlopers … Perhaps he and Felix should drive out and visit it, the rowan, not the sycamore stump.

  ‘A bit of earth. Where then, Dad?’ said Felix.

  Guy had forgotten that he was there.

  ‘Oh, I was thinking of the woodland.’

  ‘No, Dad, near the meadow, where there’s nothing. Dad, I wish your thoughts didn’t take so long!’

  ‘Sorry, Felix. You can have it anywhere really. What will you grow?’

  ‘Strawberries,’ said Felix, ‘nice things with pink petals. Big things like pumpkins. Giant. Nothing dark, or itchy.’

  What was he thinking of? Dark, or itchy … burrs, nettles, borage, euphorbias, rue, not that that was very dark. Had he ever really talked to Felix about plants? He had somehow just expected the boy to be interested in them and absorb the information by osmosis, or perhaps, more accurately, by some sort of wind-based pollen dispersal method. Of course he must have a garden of his own.

  ‘Where again?’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Felix. He offered his father his hand and they went outside together. Felix had a place in mind, just below the terraces. It was sunny and sheltered and not too dry. A fine choice. ‘Can I borrow your tools?’

  ‘Of course. And we’ll get you some seeds. Now will be a good time to start the digging, before it gets too cold.’

  Guy’s pleasure was tempered by a huge boulder of guilt. How could he have let his son get to be nearly eight and not have a garden of his own? Why had he not bought him some tools, good quality child-sized ones? He thought back to the Christmasses and birthdays since Susannah had died, many of them now merged into one, his forays into the city and his impulsive, impatient purchases of things that Felix often seemed to find baffling. But books. At least he made sure Felix had plenty of books.

  They chose the place for Felix’s garden and Guy fetched a ball of brown twine.

  ‘I like this sort of string,’ Felix said. ‘I once had some in my stocking.’

  They marked out the area with twine twisted around some short bamboo sticks that Felix quickly found. At school the following Monday, Felix had something to write about for ‘What I Did At The Weekend’:

  ‘I have got my own garden now. Dad is going to get me some tools, or Erica or Judy if he forgets. Small ones but sharp. Also they will give me some seeds. The digging has started!’

  Then there was a neat diagram, a plan of his garden with strips of flowers, a bridge, and a perfectly round pond with ducks, lilies, frogs and newts. An arrow showed where the fountain was to go.

  The teacher, Mrs Cowplain (who you would have thought by now would have the imagination not to ask children like Felix how they had spent each weekend), put his book in a special transparent folder up on the wall, where everyone could look at it. ‘Nice work, Felix,’ she wrote. ‘Very imaginative.’

  ‘Ha,’ said Esther, one of the girls on his table, ‘Felix reckons he’s getting a fountain!’

  ‘I might!’ said Felix, jutting out his chin.

  Chapter 19

  Dear Prof Lovage,

  [said the note pinned to her office door]

  Please could I have a week or so’s extension on my essay? I am a bit behind with work as I have had rather a lot of commitments to cope with.

  Max Cooper.

  Using an envelope or providing a better excuse would have got him the week straight away. It was nearly the end of term, nearly Christmas. Everybody had, Judy thought crossly, ‘rather a lot of commitments to cope with’.

  Dear Max,

  [she wrote on the bottom of his note]

  See me!

  Judy Lovage.

  She put it in an envelope and left it in his pigeon hole. She would give him the extension, but only when she had found out why he was behind. There would be no slip-sliding on her courses. There was also, she knew, a possibility that the boy might be in need of help, trouble at home perhaps, even though his note had been so annoyingly casual.

  Max knocked on her door the next morning. He looked very tired, but clean and rather scrubbed. Some marks for trying then. When he plonked his rucksack down between them she caught a whiff of fried food and lager, old collected smells trapped in the fabric by the rain. She smiled at him encouragingly and tried not to show her distaste.

  ‘Hello Professor Lovage. Um …’

  ‘So tell me, Max, why do you need the extension?’

  Bloody hell, thought Max. I’m only asking for a week. Why did it have to be such a big deal?

  ‘Um. I’ve got a bit behind with my assignments. I’ve had to do lots of extra shifts at work.’

  ‘Oh, and where do you work? I love to know what you all get up to. Students today work so hard. A few years ago almost none of my students had jobs during term time.’

  ‘It’s only T.G.I. Friday’s,’ said Max. ‘It’s really boring. But they’re very busy, what with Christmas. God knows why. Can’t think why anyone would want to go there for a party.’

  ‘Death of the soul, would you say, Max?’

  He rolled his pinkish eyes. He really did look very tired.

  ‘You could put it like that. I’ve got to do lots of extra shifts.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, want to really, I suppose. I’m saving up. I’m going to Seattle if I can.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Well, I did want to go over for a couple of weeks now to just have a look, then I can go in the summer when I’m done here, and maybe stay. That’s the plan.’

  ‘And what are you going to do in Seattle, apart from drink very good coffee?’

  ‘Beachcombing.’

  Goodness, she felt like saying, aren’t there any beaches nearer? And to go at this time of year …

  ‘Beachcombing?’

  ‘A lot of exciting stuff is going to be washed up in the next few weeks. I want to be there. And try and make some contacts for
the summer. Trouble is, I’m still a bit short. I’ve got the fare, but I need a bit more …’

  ‘I haven’t given an essay extension for beachcombing before. But I will. You can have a week.’ (If you bring me something exciting back, she felt like adding.) ‘Remember that your degree should be coming first at the moment.’ She smiled. ‘Now if you’ve time, tell me about this beachcombing.’

  ‘Well, I grew up on the Isle of Wight, but I’m trying to get away from there, and I started when I was a kid. Just finding stuff on beaches. Then I found out about these people who track things. There are websites and whole networks, communities of people. Did you hear about the Nikes?’

  ‘I must just be living in a backwater.’

  ‘There was a whole container, you know, a massive one, with a huge street value, that went overboard. Anyway, they all washed up along this stretch of coastline. East coast, that one was. This guy took it upon himself to help people match up pairs. It was beautiful. There’s stuff like this going on all the time. One of the first really famous ones was those Weebles. Toys from the seventies. ‘Spect you remember them.’ He leapt to his feet, blew his cheeks out and demonstrated how they had wobbled but not fallen down.

  ‘Yes, I’m ancient enough to remember the seventies. You are a very convincing Weeble.’ Sadly, she added to herself.

  ‘Thanks. Actually, they’re back being advertised again. And did you hear about the bath toys? Thousands of plastic ducks and turtles and that, adrift for years, all the colour bleached out of them by the sun. They’re tracked, and then at last they wash up. There were these containers of Action Men, lost overboard six years ago. They’re expected to wash up next month, around Seattle, where lots of the top combers are. I just have to be there.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Judy, ‘I can understand that.’ She pictured the Action Men on the last gruelling leg of their journey, swimming bravely on towards the shore. ‘I wonder which way up they’ll float. On their backs, I hope. You must tell me. And whether they’ll have acquired any additional scars.’

  ‘There were all types lost,’ said Max. ‘You know, lots of different uniforms, soldiers and astronauts and so on. Vehicles and some horses and sabre-tooth tigers too. I had one of those. He was meant to be fighting the tiger, but mine were friends.’