‘I am working with a number of groups of people with mental health issues. We are hoping to establish some sort of garden project, but we lack the space. All we really have are a number of front gardens and forecourts at doctors’ surgeries. I was wondering …’
They arranged to meet in the car park behind the Geography building two days later.
When Gloria Gregson arrived wearing eminently sensible shoes Erica decided to like her.
‘I’m a Friend of Kew,’ she told Erica. ‘You have some really gorgeous trees. Would it be a good or a bad idea to have a plot near the handkerchief tree?’
‘Um.’
‘Actually we’d quite like a number of plots. You see, there’s a Refugees’ Group, and a number of different therapy groups. There might be issues around some of them working on the same ones.’
‘I hope none of them are, er, dangerous,’ said Erica. ‘I don’t want to be rude, but we do have a school with a little garden up the other end.’
‘They’ll be supervised through all of the gardening sessions.’
‘Of course it’s open to everyone, the garden,’ said Erica, feeling as though she must seem like a bigot, somebody who would call a radio phone-in.
‘I can quite understand your concerns,’ said Gloria. ‘Now, is there a shed where we can keep our own things? I have a budget for tools and so on.’
‘Lucky you,’ said Erica, ‘but I don’t know about sheds. It’s all pretty dilapidated.’
‘Well, I expect we could fix something up.’
‘There are some long-term plans for development around here,’ said Erica. ‘Some question marks over the garden’s future.’
‘Oh, well.’ They were now standing beside the stream. ‘We’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.’
Gloria Gregson tried to think of a name for the projects as she walked back to her car. Fresh Air, Fresh Start? New Ground? Tranquillity Garden Project? She couldn’t think of anything good. The groups would of course be encouraged to decide their own title for it. Mustn’t be pushy and controlling, Gloria reminded herself. How about New Leaves Together?
What have I done, what have I done? Erica thought as she walked back to the office. She wondered if there had been a point when she had actually said ‘yes’ to what Gloria was asking for. Gloria certainly seemed to think that she had.
‘Erica,’ said Guy, ‘you are the sneakiest woman who ever lived. How are you going to get that past any committee?’
‘Oh, somehow,’ said Erica. ‘How can they say no? Just a little corner of the garden on a temporary basis …’
‘Pulling in a load of people with mental health problems, and letting them start building something together – a bit of a low-down mean trick.’
‘Not really. I told her that there were plans afoot for the garden. I didn’t actually say plans to completely destroy it, but they know it might be temporary. Anyway, I don’t care,’ said Erica. ‘If it saves the garden.’
‘I expect it will end up as a leisure centre with a few raised beds in the car park,’ said Guy, staring into his tea.
Jeanette came in. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Well,’ said Guy. Erica explained what she had done.
‘Easy,’ said Jeanette. ‘Go through the Community Liaison Office. The secretary there is the V-C’s sister-in-law. He never says no to anything from there. Plus it’s such good PR. They’ll bypass that old A D & M Committee, temporarily at least.’
‘I don’t think anyone would notice anyway,’ said Erica.
‘But we don’t want you getting into trouble, do we?’ said Jeanette.
Guy decided not to mention the kick-step stool, or the espresso machine that had now appeared, or even the new blinds.
‘These health groups have given me another idea too,’ said Erica. ‘I think I’m going to write a sort of coffee-table book. Are there still things called coffee-table books? About doctors’ surgery gardens and plants. I’ve always loved them. False castor-oil plant, cotoneaster, choisia, mahonia, inner city pyracantha, snowball tree, maybe flowering currant. I might have photos of real people, say doctors and receptionists and patients, and practice managers, saying why they chose or hate particular plants. Pebble and gravel things that manage to look dusty and dark and depressing whatever the time of year or day, whatever the weather. The case against flowers …’
Chapter 28
Not long until summer half term. Erica was off to visit her mum and dad, there was to be a large family gathering, celebrating lots of birthdays. They were just the sort of family to have nearly all their birthdays close together in a big matey bunch in the summer. Parties were always huge outdoorsy affairs with lots of games and larking about. To an outsider they might have looked like a family of ponies, galloping and whinnying around their field.
‘What are you doing at half term?’ she asked Felix, hoping that he might actually be doing something, going somewhere, but also wanting to invite him along.
‘Dunno,’ said Felix, swishing a bamboo cane through the air. ‘Nothing as usual.’
Erica could remember the acute boredom of childhood, even with her three big brothers and a sister, and endless activities; there were times when it was all just screamingly boring.
She didn’t want to do what her mum called ‘putting somebody in a position’, but decided that she would act.
‘Guy,’ she said, ‘um, it’s my birthday next weekend, and there’s going to be a family party. Most of the family have their birthdays around now, so there’s always this big party. Next Sunday. Anyway, I wondered if maybe you and Felix would like to come. It’s half term. But I’m going down the night before.’
‘Um,’ said Guy, ‘we don’t really go to that many parties …’
‘It’s just a big all-day picnic really, with drinks. And people usually play games. I just thought Felix might enjoy it. I’ve got lots of nephews and nieces, and as it’s my birthday, it would be nice …’
‘Oh, you meant just Felix! Sorry! Well, he’s never really stayed away from home, but if he was with you …’
‘No, I did mean both of you, really.’
‘You don’t have to say that.’
‘But I did, really.’ Erica wished she had never invited him now. Honestly, what a fuss about something so little. It wasn’t that big a deal, was it? ‘It’s at my parents’ house. In Wiltshire. They’ve got this big garden beside a river. We could drive down together if you like. On the Saturday afternoon.’
‘OK. I mean thanks. Felix will be really excited.’
Guy told Felix about it at teatime. They were having Vegetarian All-Day Breakfast out of a tin, with lots of toast, and cups of water from the cooler out in the corridor because it made them so thirsty, and also because Felix loved using it so much. They had endless debates about whether the water from the blue tap was any cooler than that from the green one. They were eating off paper plates in the office where Jeanette had now installed a microwave and a toaster. Guy felt a bit guilty using them, even though he suspected that they’d been bought out of his budget.
‘So how old is she going to be then, Dad?’
‘Oh. It’s impossible to say when women are that age. Could be forty-five, could be nearly sixty. You can’t ask.’
‘Nearly sixty! Erica! No way!’
‘Oh, I thought you meant Jeanette. I was just thinking about the microwave and stuff.’
‘Dad, how old is Erica? You can ask someone if they invite you to their party.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. About twenty-five, I suppose, or something. Very young.’
Twenty-five seemed a hundred years ago. He couldn’t imagine what twenty-five must feel like now. He couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to be young. He wondered if anything really bad had ever happened to Erica, or happened yet, he caught himself thinking. It sounded as though her parents were still married and living. She seemed to have plenty of siblings. There had been mention of a river. Potential for tragedy and disaster there
. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to inhabit a world that was basically good and not full of menace. He looked out of the lab window and across the car park, all tarmac and concrete, towards the building site that was to be the Electronics department’s next phase of expansion. There were too many students swilling Coke. Too many students arriving in their cars for lectures. A few years ago they would have cycled. He could see a fellow with elaborate facial hair fly-posting some vulgar doctors-and-nurses posters for the weekend’s drinkathon. The only thing to please the eye was some ragwort breaking through the cracks in the paving slabs. Really, the world would be so much better off without human beings. Bring on the asteroid strikes. Then he thought of Felix. A flaw in the argument. Perhaps if the plants could just slowly win back control … let the bindweed choke the phone masts, let lichens grow across the windscreens, let fungi spring up out of every laptop, let buddleia flags wave from the rooftops, let grass grow high across every golf course! That made him snigger out loud, something he didn’t do that often.
Perhaps it would do them good to get away. He quite liked Wiltshire. Even though he’d grown up with an idea of it as quite unpleasant. He’d had a wooden puzzle of the counties of England and Wales. Wiltshire had been large and mauve. The image on it had been a pink and black pig. Other counties had all sorts of things, lots of different things each, combine harvesters, important buildings, power stations, apple trees, mountains, even gold coins for some part of Wales. All Wiltshire had was a pig. The artist must have just got very bored. Wiltshire could have had Stonehenge, or Salisbury Cathedral, or army bases and tanks. There must have been plenty of things to put on besides that pig. If they were making that puzzle now they could even give Wiltshire great bustards.
He’d always known how fat Wiltshire was. They’d driven through it so many times on the way to Cornwall when he’d been Felix’s age. Why not go to Erica’s party and then on to Cornwall? He smiled. They would have a real holiday.
‘We should get some puzzles or something up here for you to do,’ Guy said. Felix was looking out of the window too now, sitting on Jeanette’s chair, swivelling and swinging. Jeanette had a bad back and that green chair had been brought in specially. It had taken several visits from someone in Human Resources and a lengthy debate between them all about which green was the nicest. In the end Jeanette had asked Felix to decide. Green was his favourite colour, and he always went for the same shade if he had a choice. It was what people called ‘sea-green’. Guy couldn’t recall ever seeing a sea that colour. One would probably have to go to a South Sea island.
‘I don’t really do puzzles much anymore,’ said Felix. ‘All my puzzles are too easy now. Puzzles seemed to stop after I was about five.’
‘Oh,’ said Guy. Here was yet another way that he’d failed without even realising. Non-provision of puzzles. ‘Well, we could get you some harder ones.’
‘No thanks,’ said Felix. ‘But I might have some more water. Do you want some?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Blue or green?’
‘What are you having?’
‘Green.’
‘I’ll have blue. I know, get one of each and we’ll take their temperatures. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that before.’
‘OK, Dad.’
By the time Felix had struggled back through the swing doors and the office door with the plastic cups full to their brims, Guy had fetched a thermometer from the lab.
‘Cor, I wish we had one that long at home,’ said Felix, carefully putting the cups down on the table.
‘Right. Now the truth will be revealed. Write this down. Sample A, the cup next to the window … now Sample B … right, which is which? B is half a degree warmer. Is that the blue one or the green one?’
‘Um, I think it’s the blue one, but I got a bit mixed up when I had to balance them on the photocopier whilst I did the doors, it seemed to be a bit, um, hot.’
‘The mystery remains unsolved,’ said Guy.
Chapter 29
It was hot. They arrived on the Saturday afternoon. There was a wooden five-bar gate at the start of a long drive. Felix got out to open it, and then shut it once Guy had driven through. It looked very heavy, but he managed. Guy had always loved doing gates like that. It was such a holidayish thing to have to do. If only, he thought, I could have a holiday from being myself.
He had been expecting people to look him up and down, but that first night it was just the Misselthwaites and Erica and her parents. They ate noodles with lime and chilli. He realised that Felix had never been given noodles before, or quite possibly lime or chilli either; but he ate them all up. Felix seemed predisposed to love everything. The moment they’d arrived Erica’s mother, Rosemary, had taken Felix off to look at the river. Guy had been left standing there like a lemon, saying, ‘Well!’ and knowing that his heartiness was too, too transparent. Then Phil, Erica’s father, gave him a mug of tea and Guy saw how deeply muddy and blackly creased his hands were. Ah, a gardener, or possibly a charcoal-burner. All would be well.
Felix and Guy were given a tiny spare bedroom in an attic. Felix was on an ancient camping bed that groaned at his every breath. In the end Guy hauled him, still sleeping, across the gap, and they slept together in the huge nest of ancient eiderdowns and blankets that Rosemary had thought necessary for an attic room in May. Guy could feel individual feathers through the old cloth, spiky and soft through the silkiness. Perhaps, he thought, we should stay here for ever. Then he fell asleep.
He didn’t hear Erica at 2 a.m. standing at the bottom of the little flight of creaky wooden stairs that led to the attic. He didn’t know that she was wearing her new cotton shortie pyjamas which were yellow with white polka dots. She was hardly breathing at all. After a while she decided that she was being ridiculous, and went back to bed.
The next day, the day of the party, was something else entirely. The people began arriving after breakfast. It seemed that Erica actually had about a dozen brothers, each one taller and more athletic-looking than the last. One by one they pumped Guy’s hand, and introduced him to a partner and some kids. There was no way of telling them apart. There were aunts and uncles and grandparents and neighbours. And everybody had crazy non-names. They were all called things like Dagger and Spaniel and Plops. Guy thought that he might just have been able to pick out the neighbours. The people related to Erica all had the same long limbs. Then he began to suspect that some of the Greys had married some of the neighbours.
Rosemary was making salads. Erica was snapping peas. Felix helped her, thinking it exotic. Some giant pieces of flesh were being prepared for the flames. Somebody had arrived with wicker baskets of strawberries and blueberries. Convention on Walton’s Mountain, thought Guy. He wondered aloud what would happen if it rained.
‘Oh, it never rains on our parties!’ someone told him. Guy helped himself to a beer and went outside. It seemed that Erica had tipped her family off. Not once was he asked the whereabouts of his wife, and he trusted that nobody asked Felix about his mum.
There were three giant barbecues going. He wandered away across the garden to stare at the sheep in the field next door. They were Jacob’s sheep, all spotty and stripy; his very favourite sort of sheep. He hoped Felix would come and join him, although he had seemed happy doing those peas. Guy drank the beer and walked down to the river that ran, so obligingly, through the garden. There were trout in the shade of a willow, and watermint and kingcups were in flower. Perhaps if he sat here all day, beside these irises, nobody would notice. He could hear that a game of rounders was getting under way. Suddenly, on silent bare feet, Erica was there beside him.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said politely. She was wearing a skirt. He didn’t remember ever seeing her in a skirt before, let alone a spotty one in shades of pink and red, that was all crinkly.
‘I used to come down here all the time to get some peace when I lived at home. There are water voles. Dad thought he saw an otter
last summer.’ She put her glass, empty but for a sprig of mint and some pink stickiness, down on the grass and took a step closer to him. Good God, thought Guy, she might be about to kiss me. He stood very still. Something made them look up. Felix was sitting by himself in the willow tree.
‘Hi Felix!’ said Erica, smiling, and not missing a beat. ‘Would you like to come and play rounders?’
‘Um, no thanks, I don’t think anyone would pick me.’
‘It’s not like that. It’s not like at school. Everyone is picked. It’s just for fun.’
The yells and whoops and cries of ‘Get ‘im out!’, ‘To third base!’, ‘Butterfingers!’ sounded exactly like school to Guy and Felix.
‘Are you going to open your presents?’ Felix asked her. ‘We brought you a present but we didn’t know when we were meant to give it to you.’
‘Now would be nice.’
They walked back to the house together, Felix and Erica holding hands.
‘I like your skirt,’ Felix told her. ‘It looks as though it would rustle, but it doesn’t. I hate it if clothes make a noise.’
The present was wrapped in paper that could only have been from a sub-post office.
‘It’s something from Amazon,’ Felix said. ‘Dad is always ordering stuff on Amazon.’
‘Wow! This is lovely. And some of these will be from the Amazon. Thank you. I’ve always wanted to read more about sea-beans.’
It was Sea-Beans from the Tropics: A Collector’s Guide to Sea-Beans and Other Tropical Drift on Atlantic Shores. Guy had ordered it for himself weeks ago and then forgotten about it. It had arrived conveniently when a present for Erica was required. He had thought it ideal, but was reluctant to part with it straight away. He hoped he might get to read it too.
That evening Felix and Guy left for Cornwall, driving west into the sunset and then the night. Felix slept. Wasn’t there something in the life force, some animal instinct, some migratory pull to go west? Guy felt footloose and in control, like someone in a movie. Really, he and Felix shouldn’t be so tied to routine. They could go anywhere. He had the radio tuned to some bonkers show that kept on playing songs like ‘Everybody’s Talking’ and ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’. Hours later he was almost sorry when they arrived at the hotel. Felix woke up enough to make it upstairs to bed.
A Bit of Earth Page 17
