How to Break Your Own Heart

by Maggie Alderson

She was sitting in a chair next to one of her own raised beds, a trowel in her hand, wearing a magnificent pair of gardening gloves, like chintz gauntlets which went right up to her elbows.

  ‘Hello, Amelia dear,’ she said. ‘Are you pleased with your potager?’

  ‘Oh, it’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe how quickly he’s done it.’

  ‘He’s a real worker, that boy. That’s what I so admire about him.’

  ‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ I said, thinking he had other outstanding attributes to admire and well she knew it. ‘ Thank you so much for sharing him with me. You look like you’re hard at work yourself. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m planting out my courgettes,’ she said, pointing to a perky row of little plants at her side. ‘I plant the seeds in these coir pots and leave them to come up in the greenhouse where it’s nice and warm. Then, when they’re ready, I can pop them straight into the bed here, still in the coir, without having to mess them around too much. They’re a great invention, cut the work of propagation by two-thirds. I’ve already let the worms work all the compost through the soil over the winter, so just a bit of the seaweed extract, some water, and off we go.’

  I wasn’t exactly sure what she was talking about, but I was sure I would get the hang of it eventually.

  ‘You make it look so easy,’ I said. ‘And I have a feeling it isn’t.’

  ‘If you think of your plants as pets, you’ll be fine, Amelia. They need food, water, care and somewhere comfortable to sit. They need to be kept sheltered and not be interfered with too much while they are growing. That’s it. Oh, and you can’t leave them alone too long, as I told you before.’

  ‘When will I be able to start planting things, do you think?’

  ‘As soon as Sonny finishes building the fourth bed, you can put the earth in, and that’s it, you’ll be ready to go. If you order the earth today, you’ll have it tomorrow. I’ll do some planting plans for you tonight, and we can look at them in the morning.’

  I was so happy and excited I kissed her on the cheek, and she smiled sweetly at me and patted my hand.

  Sonny arrived promptly at ten the next day and got straight on with his bricklaying. I went out to say hi and to thank him for what he’d done already. Then, after spending a few minutes trying not to stare at his biceps working through his tight T-shirt as he picked up each brick, I went next door to see Hermione’s plans for my garden.

  ‘Now, I’ve put some treviso in here,’ she was saying, pointing with a coral-painted fingernail at the sketch she had done. ‘ That grows very well, and it’s terribly good in a salad, nice and bitter. Apart from herbs and lettuces, you’re too late to plant seeds for a lot of this now, so I will give you the seedlings, I’ve got so many in the greenhouse. Next year we can do the planting together from scratch and I can show you all that.’

  After lunch on her terrace – sausage sandwiches made by me and consumed with great gusto by Sonny – Hermione went up for her afternoon nap and I went back into my garden to see what I could do to help.

  Sonny pointed to the back left corner of Hermione’s drawing, where it said ‘summer fruits’ in her lovely cursive writing. ‘See that space there?’ he said. ‘Next to Checkpoint Charlie…’ He stopped and looked up at me. ‘Why does she call it that? Who is he?’

  I looked at him blankly for a moment, not understanding. ‘It wasn’t a person,’ I said slowly, as I realized what was going on. ‘It was a famous security checkpoint on the Berlin Wall, the only place you could go through from West Germany to East Germany…’

  He still looked baffled. ‘ The Berlin Wall?’ he said. ‘Is that like the Great Wall of China?’

  I did a mental calculation. When did the Berlin Wall come down? 1989? If Sonny was twenty-two, as I reckoned, he would have been four at the time. He really hadn’t heard of Checkpoint Charlie. Bloody Nora.

  ‘After the war,’ I said, ‘the Second World War’ – I hoped he knew what that was – ‘the Allies divided Berlin in two. One half was aligned with what we think of as Germany – capitalist – the rest was in what they called East Germany, and it was communist. You weren’t allowed to go from one to the other without all kinds of special documents. There were armed guards, razor wire and searchlights. It was terrible, and some families were split on either side. People got shot trying to get over it.’

  Sonny was nodding. I had no idea if he had understood anything I said, but he seemed satisfied with my explanation.

  He went back to the drawing and explained that, according to Hermione’s plan, I would have raspberry canes and gooseberry bushes planted next to the hedge there, to get the best of the sunshine in that corner.

  ‘You could start breaking up the earth now, ready to put them in,’ he suggested, so I did.

  It was quite backbreaking work, but as I concentrated on using the mattock – Sonny had shown me how to lift it up behind my head and then bring it down hard, in a display I had found something of a festival of erotica – my brain disengaged in a most pleasant way.

  My whole world came down to my arms and the mattock and the ground beneath my feet, and once I got into a rhythm with the lifting and the crashing down and the heaving up, it was almost like a meditation.

  Ever since I’d seen Kiki the day before, I had been obsessing on the awfulness of the weekend with my father and then with Ed in Paris, and the issues it raised – plus what she had told me about the imminent black-ski-run state of my fertility. It had all been swirling around in my head like some kind of poisonous soup, so it was a blessed relief not to think about anything for a while. I was all thinked out.

  That evening, I was so exhausted I had a hot bath and crawled into bed at nine o’clock. I fell immediately into a dreamless sleep and didn’t stir until I heard my mobile ringing the next morning. I stumbled out of bed to find it, realizing as I picked it out from my handbag on the floor that the muscles in my shoulders and arms were screaming. I felt like I’d been stretched on a rack.

  ‘Aaaaagh,’ I said into the phone. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Oooh, that sounded very primal, what’s going on there?’ said familiar tones. It was Kiki.

  ‘Oh, hi Kiki,’ I said, climbing painfully back into bed. ‘Ow, aaaagh.’

  ‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’ she asked.

  ‘I was working in my garden yesterday and I really overdid it. Ouch. Oooh…’

  ‘Are you and Ed down in Winchelsea then?’ she asked.

  I explained he was in London doing deliveries.

  ‘Oh, you must be lonely down there on your own then, you poor girl,’ said Kiki. ‘Would you like some visitors?’

  ‘How many visitors?’

  ‘Oh, me and perhaps Ol?’

  ‘That would be great,’ I said. ‘But bring some old clothes so you can help me in the garden. You’ll enjoy it – both of you – trust me on that.’

  I rang off, chuckling to myself, because I was planning a little stunt. I’d asked Sonny to work on Saturday and Sunday too, to get things finished, and I knew watching Kiki’s and Oliver’s reactions to him would be great sport.

  Little did I know that Kiki had her own mind game planned for me that weekend. When they turned up just after lunch there were three people in the car. Kiki, Oliver – and Joseph Renwick.

  I was practically speechless when I realized who it was, but greeted him as though it was the most normal thing in the world to have the first boy I had ever kissed show up unannounced for a jolly weekend in my marital home. Actually, I felt severely conflicted about it.

  I was very happy with Joseph staying neatly where he belonged – in my adolescent past. Every time I saw him, I couldn’t help remembering what it was like to kiss him, and it was all too confusing. And it seemed especially inappropriate with Ed not around.

  Kiki’s eyes were twinkling so hard it was almost painful to look at her, but I managed to corner her in the pantry while the boys were unloading the car. I shut the door.

  ‘
You might have warned me!’ I hissed at her.

  ‘I thought you’d like a surprise – an old friend to see you.’

  ‘He’s my brother’s friend,’ I protested, ‘not mine, but anyway, just tell me quickly, what are the sleeping arrangements? There are only three proper bedrooms here, remember – Ed’s room is also his study, so I can’t put anyone in there and I don’t really want to sleep in it myself.’

  ‘I could share with you,’ she said. ‘And the boys can have a room each. Or one of them can sleep on the sofa. It’s up to you.’

  I nodded. At least I had established that Kiki and Joseph weren’t an item. That cleared up one thing, but I had another question. ‘Why exactly have you brought Joseph down here, Kiki?’ I asked her. She didn’t know about my romantic history with him, so I couldn’t see what her game plan was, but I knew she always had one.

  ‘I like him,’ she said, apparently ingenuously. ‘He’s good fun. And you know he’s pretty lonely in London, Amelia. He’s been away for a long time and I think he’s really missing his kids. I thought it would cheer him up.’

  I decided to accept what she said at face value. Just another bit of Kiki’s well-meaning social engineering, this time for Joseph’s benefit.

  I made some tea and then took them out to see the garden. Well, I took Kiki and Joseph – Oliver said he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in some tragic old mud patch and that he was going to go upstairs for a nap. I wasn’t about to tell him what he was missing out on.

  ‘So this is going to be my vegetable garden,’ I said proudly to the others when we got outside. ‘And that bed over there by the hedge is going to be my summer fruits – raspberries and gooseberries. I dug that myself yesterday, that’s why I can hardly move this morning.’

  ‘Did you do the bricklaying?’ asked Joseph, examining it. ‘It’s beautiful work.’

  ‘No, I have a gardener who’s done all that for me. He’s just popped out to get something, he’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Why have you got a large hole in your hedge, Amelia?’ asked Kiki. ‘I’m sure that wasn’t there before.’

  ‘That’s Checkpoint Charlie,’ I said, enjoying the bemused looks on their faces. ‘We put it there so my lovely neighbour Hermione and I can share the gardener and her tools, and visit each other without having to walk miles around to the front gates.’

  ‘Is she the old duck we met the last time I was down?’ said Kiki.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But she’s no duck. She’s as smart as a whip. We’ll go round and see her later, you’ll love her. Oh, look, here comes Sonny now.’

  He couldn’t have made a better entrance if it had been directed by Sofia Coppola. The sun was behind him, just as it had been the first time I saw him, and he was carrying a bag of cement on one shoulder, which made the muscles on his arms and chest pop out.

  Kiki whimpered. It’s the only word for it. A sort of squeak and a moan combined.

  ‘Holy shit, Amelia, where did you find him?’ she whispered to me.

  I chuckled. ‘He’s Hermione’s toyboy. Hi, Sonny,’ I called. ‘Come and meet my friends, they’re going to help us.’

  ‘Too flipping right we are,’ said Kiki. ‘I’ve just remembered how much I love gardening.’

  19

  The rest of that afternoon was like Carry On Gardening. Kiki had taken one look at Sonny and run inside to change into her gardening gear, which turned out to be a pair of jeans cut off into very short shorts – which I later realized she had done there and then with my kitchen scissors – and a singlet, worn in the Charlie Dimmock style, perky nipples ahoy.

  She wiggled, simpered and bent over at every possible opportunity, announcing that she was Sonny’s personal assistant and had to stay at his side at all times so she could learn from him. He was very patient with her and just got on quietly with his work.

  Joseph was clearly off on some kind of macho fest of his own, lifting piles of bricks with one hand and taking his shirt off, quite unnecessarily, after just a few minutes. He did have a surprisingly good bod for his age, I couldn’t help noticing.

  An image of the eighteen-year-old Joseph, hot and sweaty in his school rowing strip on a summer afternoon, flashed across my mind. I pushed it away, only to have it replaced by the memory of how his stomach had felt when I’d put my hand up his shirt that fateful night we’d kissed all those years before. It had been as hard as cobblestones.

  It looked as though it probably still felt that way, but now it had a line of hair down it that I really thought I’d better not look at. It was all too weird and wrong.

  Kiki nudged me and jerked her head at him, waggling her eyebrows up and down suggestively. I threw a gardening glove at her and shook my head disapprovingly. But then we were both distracted by Sonny.

  ‘Would you mind if I took my shirt off, Amelia?’ he asked me.

  ‘Of course not,’ I squeaked, determined not to catch Kiki’s eye.

  ‘Oh great, it’s just that Mrs Hart doesn’t like it, so I always keep it on over there, but I wouldn’t mind working on my tan.’

  He smiled in that guileless way of his and started to pull his T-shirt over his head. Kiki stood upright for what seemed like the first time all afternoon, and the two of us blatantly stopped and watched him. I glanced over at Joseph and he was looking too.

  It was a very tight T-shirt and Sonny seemed to get it stuck on his head, so for a few golden moments we had a ringside view of the best torso I had ever laid eyes on.

  His chest was clearly defined into two mounds which were so curved they almost had a cleavage, and his stomach went down into his low-slung jeans like a kind of suit-of-armour plate of hard muscles. It was extraordinary. Not one of those awful Ninja-turtle stomachs you see on artificially pumped-up gym bodies but a naturally fit young male physique, hanging off the finest pair of shoulders you could ever hope to see.

  And that was the moment Oliver looked out of the bedroom window into the garden. He’d missed out on the whole thing up till then, sleeping off his hangover upstairs, but we knew he was awake when we heard his unmistakable tones through the bedroom window.

  ‘Jesus Christ, look at the tits on that,’ he clearly exclaimed.

  We all looked up at the window, and then I saw Sonny’s head, now having emerged from the T-shirt, swing over to me and then to Kiki, to see who the voice had been talking about. I was secretly thrilled he had looked at me first.

  ‘I think he was talking about you, Sonny,’ said Joseph, who’d clearly clocked the whole thing.

  ‘Me?’ said Sonny, but before we could say any more, Oliver had arrived in the garden, panting for breath. He must have run down the stairs.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he said to Sonny, standing right in front of him, his hands on his hips, his unshaven cheeks quite flushed.

  ‘Oh, hi, Ollie,’ I said. ‘You’ve woken up, have you? This is my friend Sonny, he helps me with the garden. Sonny, this is Oliver. He’s a hairdresser.’

  ‘Hi, Oliver,’ said Sonny, putting out his hand after wiping it first on the seat of his jeans. Lucky hand, I thought.

  Oliver had a look on his face I’d never seen before. He looked transported.

  ‘You are the most beautiful man I have ever laid eyes on,’ he said. Then he took the large hand with dirt under all the nails that was being offered to him, raised it to his lips and gently kissed it. ‘And I’m going to spend the rest of the day gazing at you.’

  I looked anxiously at Sonny. I knew that Oliver could reduce quite sophisticated people to spluttering heaps with his outrageous frankness, and I didn’t want Sonny to be too embarrassed. He might resign. But he just laughed.

  ‘Be my guest,’ he said, shrugging his perfect shoulders. ‘And when you get bored of that, you can help with the work.’

  I was expecting Ollie to start carrying on like Kiki had, removing most of his clothes, making crass innuendoes, constantly bending over, etc., but he didn’t. He went very quiet. He sat on the wall of one of t
he finished beds, smoking a cigarette and following Sonny’s every move.

  After about ten minutes of that, Sonny stopped what he was doing and went over to him.

  ‘Come on, lazybones,’ he said. ‘I want to get this garden ready for planting tomorrow morning and you can help. I’m going to start shovelling the earth into the beds now – there are two spades, so you can do it with me. And pick that cigarette end up.’

  I watched in amazement as Oliver did what he was told. Then he spent the rest of the afternoon pitching dirt into my vegetable beds and chatting quietly to Sonny. Kiki and I kept looking at each other and opening our mouths in pantomime astonishment. Oliver was usually only quiet when he was asleep or sulking.

  With the five of us working flat out, by just past six all four beds were full of earth.

  ‘Let’s call it a day, everyone,’ I said, as we applauded Sonny shovelling the last spade of earth into the final raised bed. ‘You have all done fantastic work, and I think we’ve earned ourselves a drink. I’m going to get Hermione, so would you chaps mind putting your shirts back on? And Kiki, could you go and get the drinks started? There’s some cassis on the dresser, so we can have kir royale.’

  When I came back through Checkpoint Charlie with Hermione, I saw that Sonny had got the sun lounger out of the shed ready for her, and he literally tipped Oliver out of it so she could sit down. Oliver just lay laughing on the lawn where he’d been dumped. I still couldn’t believe the change in him.

  I went inside to help Kiki with the drinks, and he followed me in.

  ‘Amelia,’ he said, in a stage whisper, ‘can Sonny stay for dinner?’

  ‘Do you really think he’d want to?’ I replied.

  I assumed that a twenty-two-year-old would have more interesting plans for a Saturday night than hanging out with a load of middle-aged people.

  Oliver looked shifty. ‘Well, he’s already said yes…’

  I pretended to clip him round the ear. ‘You are so naughty, but of course he can stay. I love Sonny.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Oliver and ran back out to the garden.