The Great Allotment Proposal

by Jenny Oliver

  ‘Please?’ she said. ‘Please just go.’

  But the guy shook his head and, lifting up his camera, started snapping again, over and over the thrumming sound like a big fat moth caught in a jam jar.

  Then, suddenly, there was a hand on the paparazzo’s shoulder and the man with the beard and Crocodile Dundee hat from the allotment next door said, ‘You heard the ladies, this is private property. You’re trespassing.’

  ‘Get your dirty hands off me,’ said the photographer, twitching out his grasp.

  Emily couldn’t really see the man’s face clearly, but she could tell from his arm muscles and the bit of un-muddied skin on his face that he was younger than she’d first thought.

  ‘I said, this is private property. You have no licence to take photographs on this land.’ The man’s voice was calm and steady.

  ‘You gonna stop me, cowboy man?’

  The man pulled off his gloves and ran his hand across his lips as the paparazzo started firing off more shots in his direction. ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  ‘You touch me, mate, and I’ll get my lawyers on you.’

  The man laughed and took another step closer. The paparazzo rolled his eyes as if this bearded gardener wouldn’t have the guts. Then, quick as anything, the paparazzo was pinned up against the cherry tree, held in place under the neck by the man’s muddy forearm, his legs squirming an inch or two above the ground. The guy tore the paparazzo’s camera out of his hand and chucked it into the puddle of water where it slowly sank, then he threw him over his shoulder and walked off in the direction of the river.

  Emily watched in fascination. The sun beat down like a beast. Annie stood with an open-mouthed smile while the man strode off like a giant, the paparazzo’s legs waggling over his shoulder. Emily looked at Annie. Annie looked back at Emily.

  ‘Who the hell was that?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Annie said.

  Emily looked blank like she had no idea.

  ‘Emily!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was Jack Neil,’ Annie shook her head as she said it. ‘How could you not recognise him? You went out with him for a year!’

  Chapter Three

  ‘No way was that Jack Neil!’

  The last time Emily had seen Jack was at what was meant to be the inaugural Cherry Pie Island Festival. Jack and her brother, Wilf, had set it up the year they’d finished school. They’d had the best day of their lives until night fell and the island was swamped with over-eager partygoers with counterfeit tickets that their limited security couldn’t cope with.

  In retrospect, the festival had been the peak of Emily’s childhood. They were living at Mont Manor with her mother’s fourth husband – Bernard – a camp, eccentric old make-up artist who had clearly only married for the companionship. Bernard had absolutely no interest in anything remotely parent like, threw wild, lavish parties and was often found lounging by the pool with a neat gin and a cigarette as the sun rose.

  It was a well-known fact that Emily’s mother had married men in the same way other people got promoted in their careers. She took them up a notch every marriage in order to give her kids the best start in the life. The problem being that she didn’t often see past the money to the character beneath. But Bernard was nothing like the previous stepfathers – he didn’t shout at Emily or try and be her friend or make her sit at the table in silence until she’d eaten everything on her plate, or sit next to her on the sofa a touch too close, or make them all take their shoes off before they came in, or make the dog sleep in a kennel outside, or get rid of the TV, or take her mum out for dinners and events every night so they never saw her. He didn’t have children of his own who would make comments under their breath about her mother the gold-digger, nor did he stand up at her mother’s birthday party and add something in his speech about how difficult she was to live with, but how most of the men in that room would understand what he was talking about. Instead, Bernard would take whimsical turns around the estate, dressed in a satin smoking jacket while her mother wore white linen and smiled a lot, and Emily would watch from the upstairs bathroom, delighted with her life. These were the years when she’d been expelled from every boarding school in the south and finally been allowed to go to the local comp and live at home in her own bed and wash in her own bath. The bare plaster on the wall and the peeling wallpaper, the Georgian glass windows with the howling draught and the Sellotaped-over cracks were all part of the fairy tale.

  And to top that off, there was Jack. Possibly the coolest, most laid-back character on the island. She remembered him lying on a hay bale at the festival, cigarette in one hand, cider in the other, the hazy light of the summer sun burning down as he stretched his arm out for her to come and lie next to him. Both of them squeezed onto the warm, sweet-smelling hay, him holding her tight to his side so she didn’t fall off, laughing because her hair was tickling his face, the smoke on his breath as he kissed her, the sun blinding them into shutting their eyes.

  It was perfect. It was as life was meant to be. For Emily it was like the world had paused and said, it’ll be OK.

  But then the crowds had come. And then the police had come. And then the rain had come. And the festival was over.

  As she stood now, alongside Annie, watching as the guy in the hat dropped the paparazzo with a splash into the river and then turned and started walking back, his hands in the pockets of his black combat trousers, his white T-shirt dirty with mud, she said, ‘That’s not Jack. It can’t be Jack. Jack’s in Peru or somewhere.’

  ‘Jack was in Peru or somewhere,’ said Annie, turning to her and wiping some of the stray algae off Emily’s cheek with a tissue. ‘Here, use this, you’ve got loads more still on your face,’ she said before looking back towards Jack. ‘He’s come back. Hasn’t been around that long. And, to be honest, I only knew because other people told me. He’s living on a fishing boat apparently.’

  ‘What do you mean he’s living on a fishing boat? Is he a fisherman? I thought he was an engineer?’

  Annie shook her head, ‘I have no idea, honestly. I just heard he was living on a fishing boat.’

  ‘Where?’ Emily asked.

  Annie shrugged.

  ‘You ladies OK?’ Jack shouted as he got near.

  Emily took a couple of steps closer and peered at him. Then, seeming to finally believe Annie when he took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair, said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was you?’

  ‘You’re welcome, Emily,’ he said, one side of his mouth tipped up in a half-smile.

  ‘Did you recognise me?’ she asked, taking another few steps forward as Jack went back to his allotment and picked up his spade.

  ‘Of course.’

  Emily frowned. ‘Well you should have said hello rather than acting all mysterious and bearded. It’s unfair.’

  He laughed. ‘You have algae on your face.’

  Emily picked up the hem of her T-shirt and wiped her face with it. ‘Is it gone?’

  Jack glanced up from where he’d started digging, ‘No.’

  She wiped her face again. ‘Gone?’

  He looked up and shook his head.

  Emily narrowed her eyes and then turned to Annie, who was untangling the hose to finish watering the plot. ‘Do I have algae on my face, Annie?’ Emily shouted.

  Annie peered at her. ‘No.’

  Emily looked back at Jack who had his head down and was supposedly concentrating on digging, but she could see the smirk on his lips. She opened her mouth to say something but didn’t know what.

  No one. No one made her feel like Jack did. No one ever had. Like she was off balance. Not in control. Even his hair and his beard threw her off. Everything he did, everything he said, seemed to catch her on the wrong foot. It was all too calm, too slow, too all-seeing. He stood up and wiped the sheen of sweat off his forehead, saw her still watching him and leant against his spade to watch her back. ‘Does that happen to you often?’ he asked, tilting his head to
wards the river were the paparazzo had been unceremoniously dumped.

  ‘Fairly often,’ Emily nodded.

  ‘I don’t know how you can live like that,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘We don’t all want to live on fishing boats.’

  He snorted a laugh. ‘I need to talk to you about that actually.’

  ‘Why? If it’s to ask me to sail away with you,’ she said with a half-smile. ‘Then the answer’s no.’

  As soon as she’d said it, she wished she hadn’t. Even in jest she knew it was an awkward, stupid thing to say.

  He narrowed his eyes then sort of laughed, shook his head and went back to digging his hole.

  ‘Go on then, why did you want to talk to me about your boat?’ Emily said.

  The soil cracked under the edge of the spade. ‘Because,’ he said with a pant as he dug deeper into the earth, ‘I’m kind of living on your property. On your mooring.’

  ‘Are you now?’

  He stopped digging and looked directly at her, sky-blue eyes on a face dirty with sweat and mud. ‘Yeah. I didn’t realise the house had been sold.’

  ‘What, so I’m kind of like your landlady?’ Emily bit her nail. If she still knew Jack at all she knew that he hated being beholden to anyone. Almost as much as he hated rules and regulations.

  ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘Well I’ll have to work out some kind of rent, won’t I?’ she said.

  ‘Or you could just let me be?’ he said with a shrug of his shoulder.

  A sly grin stretched over Emily’s face. ‘And where would the fun be in that?’

  Chapter Four

  Everything Emily remembered about Montmorency Manor had been destroyed by its previous owners.

  When they finally completed, she didn’t even need a key to unlock the door, just a code punched into a panel that had been chipped into the Georgian stone.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Annie’s boyfriend, Matt, stood in the centre of the hallway and looked all the way around him. ‘What have they done to this place?’

  Gone was the sweeping wooden staircase that Emily had slid down in a bikini one summer to get Jack’s attention as he was talking to Wilf, in its place was a glass-panelled effort with silver handrails and two giant silver statue newel posts. Gone were the flagstones and the huge antique rugs and the marble fireplace next to which the giant Christmas tree had stood as the fire crackled. Now the hallway was carpeted in lime shag-pile and the walls and ceiling were painted black. They’d ripped out the cornicing and spray-painted silver skulls on the walls.

  The front door opened and Matt’s teenage son, River, sloped in with their pug dog, Buster, and hovered behind Emily and Annie.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Matt asked, glancing round Annie to see him.

  ‘Nothing, I was on the phone,’ River mumbled. ‘Can I go to the loo?’

  ‘Yes,’ Emily said, mimicking his grumpy teenage voice, but he didn’t find it funny, staring back at her blankly. Pretending to be chastised, she waved her hand in the direction of the bathroom and he slouched off, the dog trotting behind him, the spotlights along the corridor changing colour from red to blue to green as he went.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Emily asked after he’d gone.

  ‘Girl trouble,’ Annie said. ‘He won’t talk about it.’

  ‘Ah, poor River.’ Emily did a sympathetic laugh.

  ‘Poor us, more like!’ Matt rolled his eyes as they walked through into the kitchen. ‘He’s a nightmare to live with.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Emily bashed him in the chest. ‘Young love is really hard.’

  Matt just shook his head as if he’d had enough of it all and then whistled when he saw the kitchen. ‘Wow!’ he said, and went over to prod one of the huge leopard-print high stools bolted to the ground around a white island pod.

  Emily put her hands over her eyes. ‘I know. It’s hideous,’ she said, remembering the open wooden shelves covered in Bernard’s paraphernalia from various trips abroad, the white pillar-box tiles, the Aga that they’d taken turns to see how long they could sit on as teenagers, the big wooden table covered with Bernard’s make-up equipment – tool-box style boxes filled with tubes of foundation, plastic pots of lipstick and glosses, tubes of mascara and leather pouches for brushes that were stained and marked from use. She remembered the first time he’d done her make up – the flick of the eyeliner, ‘Follow the line of the bottom lash and fill in the curl from the top’, the Russian Red on her lips, the tiny splodge of colour on the apple of her cheeks, ‘You could be in the pictures, my dear.’

  She remembered when she started shadowing him on set. How he refused to admit that he needed any help, that it was starting to get a little bit much for him, but when the director of a small-time soap opera spotted Emily and asked her to audition for a role, Bernard was the first to jump in and say she was a make-up artist not an actress. It was only as she stared at this shiny, new kitchen, lamenting the loss of the old, that she realised he hadn’t perhaps needed her help as much as she had thought, but rather, perhaps he’d known how susceptible she would be to the film industry. The camera took quite a shine to the vivacious young blonde Emily and, of course, if it hadn’t nothing would have turned out the way it did.

  ‘They can’t have been allowed to do this?’ Annie said, pointing to where the original Georgian windows had been replaced by modern folding glass doors that opened out onto the garden.

  Emily shook her head, ‘No I don’t think they were, but who’s going to enforce it? It’s overlooked by no one, they could do what they like. Wait till you see the bedrooms.’

  River stalked back in, drying his hands on his jeans, ‘There are speakers in the ceiling of the toilet.’

  ‘There are speakers in the ceiling of every room,’ Emily said. ‘And the fireplace is now a video screen of a fire that you control on another wall panel. It’s ridiculous.’ She sashayed over to stand by River, who visibly blushed at the nearness of her and bent down to pick up Buster for protection. ‘I hear you’re having girl trouble,’ she said, scratching the dog’s head.

  ‘Emily—’ Annie cut in, but Emily waved her away.

  River’s eyes had gone wide, like he couldn’t handle the confrontation. Buster yelped to get down.

  ‘Don’t look so terrified, darling,’ Emily said, taking the dog from him and plopping him back on the floor. ‘I’m just going to say, if it feels worth it don’t bloody blow it. Yes? Buy her something that she’ll like, apologise and tell her why you did whatever it is you did.’

  Matt was standing by the leopard-print stool, Buster at his feet, one hand rubbing his forehead, clearly thinking Emily was making a mistake.

  But to all their surprise, River said, ‘She won’t listen.’

  ‘Of course she won’t seem like she’s listening,’ Emily said. ‘But she is listening, trust me.’

  ‘Well she doesn’t seem like she’s listening.’

  ‘That’s because she wants you to try harder,’ Emily said, then she paused. ‘Actually, I have no idea what I’m talking about. My relationship history is terrible.’

  River sniggered.

  ‘But…’ she paused. An image of Jack and her on the hay bale flashed into her mind. ‘I think women want to be fought for. I think we want to know that we’re worth it. But that might just be me,’ she laughed, then did a big, dramatic sigh and said, ‘Right, people, as much as I want to show you round all the other ghastly rooms in this house, I have to love you and leave you. You’re welcome to stay and have a nose, but I am needed at a very lavish charity ball at the Dorchester and I cannot go looking like this.’ She pointed down to her red cotton shorts and bright-blue mesh T-shirt.

  Half an hour later, as Matt, Annie, River and the pug were exploring the second-floor bedrooms – one of which had been turned into a mini-gym and sauna – Emily came flying down the stairs wearing a backless, full-length, slinky turquoise gown. Her hair had been plaited into a complex series of knots, her make-up was so flawle
ss and she looked so beautiful that they were all rendered speechless for moment.

  ‘OK?’ she asked, doing a mini side-to-side twirl.

  Annie smiled and nodded as the two men next to her just stared. ‘You look amazing,’ she said.

  Emily did a little clap of excitement, then peered out the window. ‘There’s my car,’ she said. ‘See you later. Have a swim in the pool if you like,’ she called out behind her. Then she was gone. And the three of them stood there, almost in shock. It was as if, with Emily there, they had been standing an inch above ground and suddenly, with her gone, they were all back down on the floor again.

  Chapter Five

  It was still light outside when Emily came home. She’d left earlier than she might normally. The paparazzi on the red carpet had put her through the ringer. It was one big club; hurt one and you hurt them all, and they’d given her a vicious verbal beating for the earlier incident at the allotment. Then they’d shouted all sorts of nonsense to get her attention, none of it good. She knew the photos from the event would have her looking startled or purposely caught at odd, unflattering angles. She’d smiled as they snapped but knew it wasn’t the right smile – tight and unfocused, lacking her usual control.

  She slipped her shoes off as she stood in the hallway of the manor and breathed in the cool silence as the moonlight cast its glow through the high Georgian windows. She was positive the house she once knew was still there, underneath all the layers of paint, graffiti art and feature wallpaper.

  But even just resting her hand on the stainless-steel banister, she knew she had a lot of work ahead to find it.

  Upstairs, in the fading half-light of late evening, all the removals boxes in the garish master bedroom felt like a mountain looming over her. The spotlights in the ceiling glared out at full beam as she tried and failed to work out the dimmer option on the control panel. In the end she turned them all off in frustration and had to change out of her evening dress in the dark, hanging it carefully in the built-in mirrored wardrobe ready to go back to the designer in the morning. Her pyjamas were folded on her bed but it felt too early to put them on and she was too wired for sleep. So instead she pulled on a pair of grey jeans, a darker grey silk T-shirt and a pair of red leather flip flops and jogged down the stairs and out the house via the big glass kitchen doors.