The Illegal Gardener gv-1

by Sara Alexi

  “Juliet, are you serious?”

  “Apparently Albanian refugees had been renting it for ten years and, by the looks of the garden, they never threw anything away.”

  “Albanian refugees?”

  “I have counted three mattresses out there so far and that’s just what’s visible!”

  “Juliet? What on earth are you talking about? I had to call Thomas to find out where you were. He gave me this number and said you had left the country. He said Terrance knew and that you had to ‘get away.’ I thought it was some elaborate joke. What’s going on?”

  Juliet laughs, briefly. “I’m in Greece and I am fine actually. Now that I’m here, I feel great. It is so beautiful.” Her tongue drawls on the word beautiful as she looks around the undulating plastered stone walls and tiled floor. A small, green, shiny-backed beetle runs from under the faded sofa.

  The uncared-for look of the cottage had intoxicated Juliet. The traditional fireplaces whispering secrets of years gone by, the crude wooden cupboards in the kitchen telling of men with basic tools, old ways. Their chambers full of mismatched crockery, wooden bowls and tins even though human presence has been absent for some years. Piles of abandoned domestic artifacts and heaps of past lives crawl from corners. Outside, greenery climbs over unnatural shapes, hiding the debris of a disrespectful generation around a solitary old olive tree.

  Juliet looks out of the little window in the back door to what will be the garden, the two men, hunched in the bright sunlight, beginning the care.

  “I am so glad to be here. I had just had enough. Mick, solicitors, Mother, enough of people and their ways. So I decided to take a break from people. Take myself to a place just for me.”

  “Hide away, more like…”

  “What?” Juliet looks at the receiver and curls her upper lip, surprising herself as she slams the phone down. She grabs last night’s wine bottle and pours a drink. The bottle clonks, echoes, as it slams back on concrete work surface. Juliet swallows in one and throws the glass in the stone sink. Curses and the glass breaking shatter the interior’s silence, both dismissed in the wake of her stomping into action.

  Opening from the still of the greying whitewashed sitting room, with its overfilled sofa and painted chairs, is a room that brims with the passing of time. A wooden dough pan is crammed with garden implements that have escaped a museum. Brass bed ends lean against a wall cupboard, which lies on its side on the floor, one door missing, the insides spilling, promising finds and treasures. A hook on the wall supports a donkey’s bridle and a ring of several dozen large, old, rusted keys. The light streams though a cobwebbed window, picking up dust flecked in its rays that dance with Juliet’s approach.

  Her oversized washing-up gloves impede her anger as Juliet yanks the door to this room wide open. For the sake of immediate gratification with progress, Juliet pulls at the largest item in the room. The mouse-eaten, disintegrating mattress produces lung-threatening fluff and hand-gashing, rusted spring ends. Her self-righteousness brings the power of twenty and she pulls and manoeuvres, twists and bends until the remains of the bedding sit wrapped in twine like a foot-bound animal, awaiting its fate by the gate.

  Juliet flounders backwards as the mattress comes to rest, her energy exhausted. At the sun’s insistence, she slumps against the wall of the old stone house. She becomes vaguely aware of the forgotten men working around the back. Tinkering sounds, hushed voices.

  She sits, her focus on the few feet in front of her. Batteries, an odd shoe, half a plate, and blunted knives fight for space with plastic bags, empty unlabelled tins, and unidentifiable electrical circuit board pieces. The enormity of the mess begins to overwhelm her.

  Contemplating her foolishness, she finds herself thankfully distracted by a pitiful sound. A small-framed cat meows its plight and, half afraid but desperate through curiosity, it sidles from under the shade of the old olive tree towards her.

  “Hello kitty kitty.”

  The cat grows bolder at the gentle sound of Juliet’s voice.

  “Come on, then.” Juliet now as much in need of the touch of soft, comforting fur as the cat is in need of a friend.

  The cat fights the battle of fear until it succumbs to the pleasure of the ruffling and stroking of Juliet’s hand.

  “Hello, you cute little thing. Where have you come from?” The cat’s presence gives Juliet a new energy, a slight sense of power. The cat winds its way through Juliet’s legs. Its black and white fur leaves traces on her grey, faded jeans.

  The phone rings again inside. Juliet reluctantly shuffles to her feet, marches inside and pours herself some water before picking it up.

  “Sorry.”

  “Michelle?”

  “Yes, sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. But you can see, can’t you? It does seem a little bit—well, come on Juliet—moving out there on your own is a bit crazy for most people.”

  “But I am not most people. You know, out of everyone, that I have been stifled, suffocated, smothered, for goodness’ sake, all but strangled by that man for so long. So now I am doing it my way. Besides, what did you expect I would do? I have a job I can do anywhere. Was I expected to stay in that poky flat and just hang around waiting for a man to replace Mick?”

  “I was never for Mick, as well you know. Those that were just thought he might settle down, calm down your wild ways. You were pretty wild, you know. And it seems you still are. I mean, you have just left the country, bought a place abroad…”

  “And it’s fantastic,” Juliet says. She picks at some fluff hanging from the edge of the sofa before stuffing it back into the hole it came out of.

  “Are you expecting to get more translation work out there, or do you think just because you speak the language you will just fit in and get a job? I mean, we had a great time when we went. It was hilarious, but it was only two weeks and it was, well, ages ago.”

  “Nothing’s changed Michelle, I still feel the same about this country the way I did back then.” She looks out at the sunshine.

  “I know it really caught you, else you wouldn’t have spent all these years learning Greek, but there is more than language that separates cultures. Who are you going to spend your time with? How will you get by? What about the boys, at least?”

  “The boys are fine. Thomas is talking of coming over next spring with Cherie. Terrance sees it all as a big adventure. Anyway, Terrance is so wrapped up in his mission to save the world through his study of ‘waste management’ that what anyone else does doesn’t really matter to him. I need time out for me. If you’re not going to support me in that then perhaps this is not a good time for us to be in contact.” Juliet looks up to the faded paint of the wooden ceiling.

  “Stop it, Juliet. Of course I know what you need. But did you think I wouldn’t be surprised at this sudden move? Come on, you knew I would be, and you know everyone else will be. But isn’t that what you wanted though, to shock people, push them away?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about anyone else for a change,” Juliet says.

  “Look, Mick was bad news and you stayed for the twins, so you have done what you thought was right. But Mick just put off the inevitable. You’ve got to dig a bit deeper if you’re looking for any amount of contentment.”

  Juliet, whilst listening with the phone tucked against her shoulder, runs a finger along her arm. Her mood plummets down a familiar black spiral. The thin, translucent skin puckers like a plastic sheet, gathered where the scarring gives way to healthy skin. When her fingers reach her thumb, with force of will, she pulls herself out of the void, takes hold of the phone and bounds off the sofa.

  “I am digging deeper. I have hired help who are digging the garden as we speak. So you should be pleased that I won’t be alone.” The cat had wandered indoors; Juliet wafts her hand at it and makes hissing noises.

  “What are you doing?” Michelle asks.

  “There’s a cat, got to go. Bye.” Grabbing the opportunity, she replaces the phone. Michelle dismissed,
Juliet shushes the cat through the light-filled door into the garden, The Mess.

  The cat, surprised and apparently deeply offended that he is not given a hero’s welcome to the cool sanctuary of the house, hesitates before he disappears over the wall. Juliet had expected the cat to only go out as far as the garden. She tuts her indignity after the fickle creature.

  Juliet can see over the wall into next door’s garden. It is large, more like a small field, and is filled with neat rows of tended vegetables in heaped rich soil. A one storey house with a crumbling tiled roof is beyond the last row, and behind that, an olive tree-covered hill fades into the pale blue sky. Not a cloud, not a breath of air. Calm, sleepy.

  Juliet snaps into a decision and, completely forgetting her two workers in the back garden, leaves the rusted gate creaking on dry hinges as she marches down the weed-edged lane towards the village centre.

  The lane gives way to the road, which is a short distance from the square. A dog crosses her path, collarless and dirty, cowering at her glance. She feels power and empathy. A cockerel crows in the distance, out of sync with the hour. The day’s heat demands submission of all.

  The kafenios, full of retired farmers, masculine domains that fringe the square, full with murmurs of tongues that drift with the aroma of strong coffee. The conversations ebb and flow as Juliet passes. Nothing changes quickly here. Juliet’s face, a relatively new one, deserves a short conversation.

  As she nears the door of the corner shop and with the necessity to speak approaching Juliet notices the insecurities rise within her. The demons of not being heard, the goblins of not being understood, the imps of not being considered important, and the fight between them confuse her thinking into a shade of panic.

  The cool cavern of the village shop is a cornucopia of practicality. Goat bells hang next to hairnets. Bottles of bleach jostle with jars of local honey, local eggs sit in a brown paper bag nest on the counter top. The shop owner rises from amongst cartons of cigarettes and bundled shepherd’s crooks and wishes Juliet “Good Welcome.”

  Juliet swims in delight at hearing her Greek spoken by a native.

  “Thank you.” She feels rusty. Her hard fought-for business translating documents has increased her love of the language over the last two years, although speaking out loud still feels unfamiliar, but exciting. Juliet shuffles her feet and structures her sentence before breathing it to life.

  “I would like some box of match and a stamps please.” She can hear her mistakes but it is too late to retract them. She knows what she should be saying but her tongue is unpractised. It is like being back in night class all those years ago after that spontaneous holiday with Michelle. That moment of warmth, sea, and friendly people who made eye contact and then slowed down time to make room for her. It was the visit that shifted her soul from its plinth never to feel settled again. It was the beginning of the end for her and Mick.

  The shopkeeper frowns briefly. Matches appear with a strip of stamps torn from a large sheet. The exchange goes well. Juliet gains strength. She envisages her next sentence written on paper and then gives it life. The shopkeeper holds her breath anticipating an unintelligible request.

  “I need a box of bleach, something for wood to wash, to be good, and that which is metal and you use it to wash pans that have been baked in the oven.” Juliet is thoroughly aware that, although a competent academic translator, her conversational skills lack fluency.

  After another brief frown, the woman behind the counter reacts as if she has been given a jump start. She is either relieved that there will be no English to struggle with, impressed by Juliet’s moderate abilities or flattered by the importance of her mother tongue. Whichever it is, she is roused to be as helpful as possible, pulling one item out after another until it is ascertained that ‘that which is metal’ is a pan scrub and that it is polish that will ‘wash wood and make it good.’

  The very language transports Juliet to the world she has imagined is Greece, lazy days and soft-spoken people, quick tempers and forgiving natures, friendly faces and open houses, welcoming families, and always one extra place for the latecomer, a place she had sought after and studied for all these years.

  She quickly learns the new words for polish and pan scrub and stores them away.

  After the items are gathered, Juliet adds a goat bell which she likes the sound of for the front door and a wooden carved stamp, which the lady says is for impressing a mark on the dough for the traditional Easter bread.

  The shopkeeper is curious. Surely Juliet is not alone? She busies herself displaying candles to sell for Easter. Where is her family, her parents? Her father is dead; oh she is sorry, and so young. Sometimes we grow strong from these things. Not close to her mother! Oh dear, well, it happens. Where are her children? Where is her husband? Ah she is sorry; she too has a daughter who is divorced. When was that? Oh so recently. Is she OK? Was it her choice? Oh good, it is better if the women decide these things. What will she do now? How can she work through the Internet, no please don’t explain it, it doesn’t really matter. Does she have friends here in the village? No! Well, now she has one. Marina. She pats her house-coated bosom and smiles.

  Juliet skips out of the shop having dealt Goliath a mighty blow. The language is real, her ability to speak fluently is returning quickly. She has the power to be understood, to survive. She dances three steps before quickly returning for her stamps and matches and another enthusiastic departure.

  On the lane to her house she meets the cat. He winds between her legs and trots to keep up.

  “OK, I cannot stop you walking with me or hanging around, but let’s be clear, cat, you do not come in the house.”

  Halfway up the lane, she remembers she has the workmen at her house and she has left all the doors open. Hurrying the rest of the way, she has visions of her laptop, her work gone, and her passport along with it.

  The cat chases her.

  Chapter 3

  The front door is wide open. Bugs buzz in and out of the shade and cool. Juliet rushes in to see her laptop safely on the sofa, her handbag hangs, untouched, from the kitchen chair. The house has the chill and silliness of a church after the heat of the sun. She peeps out of the back door. The two men are still working. She smiles, she relaxes. This is Greece.

  Watching the two men bent over, up to their knees in weeds and rubbish, she estimates, judging by the amount they have done, that the garden will be clear within a couple of weeks. Then the slow process of digging the rich dense red soil will begin, turning it over piece by piece, taking out the stones. Maybe she will need to add something to make the soil more manageable, drain better, before the fun of planting trees and flowers, sowing grass seed and deciding which vegetables will go where.

  Mahmout stops and turns to smile at Juliet.

  “Madam appears happy.”

  Juliet snaps out of her daydream and looks at him blankly.

  “I am thinking Madam is happy to see two such good workers making her home very lovely?”

  Juliet is shocked and resents the intrusion into her thinking. She bought the house for the silence it offers, the escape from people, a place where she can choose to be quiet. But here is a man taking that quiet away, demanding answers to unimportant questions. Juliet sees the flaw in the plan of using workmen. She weighs the choice between answering him politely and self-preservation.

  “Get on with it.” She returns inside through the back door, eager to make a distance. Flopping on the sofa, the cat looks up at her.

  “Out!” She scrambles to her feet and chases the cat through the front door. However, once the sun touches her skin, she is reluctant to return indoors. Her movements slow in the warmth, and she turns her face to the sun, allowing herself to be still. The sound of goat bells come from a nearby hill, a farmer calling to slow them down as the hollow clonking of the bells speeds up, a slope maybe.

  After some time passes, minutes, or maybe hours, it doesn’t matter, Juliet looks over her arms to see if she i
s tanning. She notices a big weed by the toe of her sandal. Lazily she pulls at the weed; it pulls away like a knife from melted butter. She pulls the one next to it, which is followed by another and then another. Energised by progress she begins to pull weeds as quickly as the roots will allow. Some come away with a slight tug. Others, she digs her fingers into the soil to claw away around the tap root, snapping the hair-fine roots as they come free. She waves a lazy buzzing insect away, her nails filled with soil.

  After a few minutes, Juliet finds her gardening gloves and wheels the wheelbarrow near where she is working. There is a traditional adze in the wheelbarrow. The more stubborn weeds come up swiftly and smoothly using the adze, and the wheelbarrow fills. Juliet works until sweat drips from her brow and her gloves feel too hot and sticky. The adze is heavy with the clinging red earth.

  Pulling the gloves off, she returns indoors, sighing in the comparative cool. She selects a tall, thin, hand-blown glass and fills it with chilled water from the fridge. The water and the cool revive her, and she continues to drink before rolling the cold glass across her forehead whilst she wanders to the bedroom. Here, unseen through the gauze curtains, she watches the men working at the back.

  The grinning one is not grinning now; he is squatting and picking at little things which he puts in a rubble sack. The smaller one is pulling large items from the abundant bindweed and manhandling them around the corner towards the gate. He has found an old padded chair with wooden arms. He stops and looks at the house, up to the roof. Juliet tries to follow his gaze but he is looking beyond where she can see. He pulls the cushions off the chair and takes them around the corner. He returns and jumps on what remains of the chair and piles the pieces just the other side of the bedroom window.

  He was looking to see if there is a chimney!

  Juliet moves to pull the curtain aside and open the window to talk to the men but thinks better of revealing herself. She puts the glass of water down and returns through the kitchen to the back door.