The Great Allotment Proposal

by Jenny Oliver

  ‘Never say never,’ Jane said with a shrug. Then, after a moment, asked, ‘Emily, how do you know Jack?’

  Annie sucked in her breath.

  ‘Don’t be all dramatic, Annie.’ Emily scowled. ‘You’re so annoying.’

  Annie laughed and turned to Jane to say, ‘She broke his heart by running off with Giles Fox.’

  ‘Giles Fox?’ Jane said. ‘Not the actor?’

  Annie did a little nod.

  Emily cut in, ‘I didn’t run off with Giles. Jack ran off to Spain.’

  ‘The Giles Fox?’ Jane frowned. ‘Really? The actor?’

  ‘You have been shut away with two pensioners, haven’t you?’ Annie shook her head in disbelief. ‘They were a full-on super couple. “Fox Hunter”? You must have heard of that, Jane? Emily and Giles. They were the nation’s sweethearts. Didn’t you know any of this? Everyone knows.’

  Jane shook her head. ‘I’m really bad with stuff like that. I only know who Giles is because of that Jane Austen adaptation. My mum loved him in that. Do you still talk to him?’

  Emily shook her head. She’d felt herself clam up at the mention of his name, at Annie précis-ing her past so casually. Her standard, ‘That’s private,’ answer was on the tip of her tongue, but there was something about the evening that stopped the words on her lips. Something about having got her hands dirty with these two women. They’d dug and weeded and sweated together and the wine they were drinking was like a prize and the candle light and the black, empty allotment site around them like a moment out of normality. Emily had never worked to the point that her fingernails were thick with dirt, her hair was frizzy from sweat, her skin void of all make-up, her back and arms aching, her hunger from manual labour. She was starting to feel about the allotment patch how she felt about her EHB Cosmetics products. The pride she had in developing something new from scratch. But rather than completely in control of every detail of it, she was being led by someone else. She was being told what to do. Which happened very rarely in her life. Jane had made her trust her. It didn’t matter that it was over some little seedlings and trailing sweet peas, it was trust nonetheless and Emily wasn’t used to that.

  So instead of saying, ‘That’s private,’ she found herself saying, ‘It was ages ago now. He has a whole other life. And I try not to think about it too much because I can still get upset, which is stupid because it was so long ago.’ She came back to the table and reached over to grab her wine. When no one else spoke, she found herself adding, ‘But I just think sometimes, if only I hadn’t agreed to marry him. If only I’d just let it play out without a wedding. I think then it all would have been different. Less of a fairy tale for everyone.’

  She could feel Annie watching her, unsure if she’d ever said any of this to her or not. Unsure if she’d ever said it out loud to anyone. She put the glass back on the table and walked over to the damson tree before saying, ‘But the press love that it happened. They love that there was that magic, that people got behind it. And it just built and built. They loved the engagement after so long together, they loved all the planning. God.’ She covered her face for a moment thinking about it, then looked back up at the two of them. ‘I think they just wanted us to be the characters from the film. For it to be as intense and crazy as it had been on screen. And then Adeline came along and to them, destroyed it all. She was the perfect villain. I was the poor, tragic Cinderella left standing at the altar and he was clearly led astray. And now I’m their poor, tragic spinster. Doomed to be eternally single.’ Emily raised her hands up to a damson branch and pulled against it so she was arching forward. ‘They’ve basically ruined every relationship I’ve ever had since.’

  ‘So what do you do?’ Jane asked.

  Emily let go of the branch so it flipped back and she had to do a jump forward to right herself. ‘I don’t have them any more,’ she said, and wandered back over to the table. ‘At least, not serious ones anyway.’

  Chapter Nine

  As head of the Cherry Pie Show committee, Jonathan White, Annie’s brother, had called an urgent meeting for Saturday afternoon. When the time came, they all gathered around the noticeboard in the centre of the allotment. Emily stood out from the general gardening masses, dressed in a gold and white playsuit and her wellingtons. She had a hangover from the wine they’d drunk the night before at the allotment, she’d slept really badly mulling over everything that had happened with Giles and her past, and this whole gathering was just too provincial and boring for her. She was only there because Annie had promised her a slap-up brunch at the cafe afterwards.

  ‘Gather round, people.’ Jonathan was standing on an orange box at the front. He clapped his hands and said, ‘If you could stop talking at the back. Annie, is that you? Stop talking. This is an important meeting.’

  Annie shook her head, her eyes closed for a second or two as if she had to let anything her brother said just roll off her. Jane giggled under her breath. Emily wasn’t listening, she was messing on her phone and yawned twice before saying, ‘Do we have to be here?’

  ‘I’m afraid to say there’s been some bad news about the show,’ Jonathan started, then stopped and cleared his throat, pausing for effect like he was delivering an X Factor verdict. ‘I’ve been in discussions to try and rectify things and I hasten to add this has been quite a bit of time and trouble—’

  ‘Jesus, Jonathan, just tell us what’s happened!’ Martha shouted from where she was standing at the back. She had her rake with her and bashed it against the floor when she spoke.

  Emily glanced up from her phone and sniggered.

  ‘I was coming to it, Martha, thank you,’ Jonathan said, breathing in through his nose and glaring at the people in the back row. ‘Unfortunately we’ve been told that the primary school will be undergoing renovations, beginning when term ends, meaning a clash for the Cherry Pie Show this year. Currently there is no alternative option for a venue of that size.’

  ‘The primary school?’ Emily muttered to Annie under her breath. ‘Is that where the show’s held?’

  Jane nodded.

  ‘Are you kidding? All this work everyone’s doing and it’s held at the primary school. Where at the primary school?’

  ‘They have a little hall.’ Annie shrugged.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Annie, I’m not going to ask you again,’ Jonathan said. ‘You really are disturbing the meeting.’

  ‘Oh for god’s sake, Jonathan,’ Martha sighed really loudly. ‘Get off your bloody high horse. Or your orange box.’

  A general murmur of laughter rippled through the crowd.

  ‘Thank you, Martha.’ Jonathan tilted his head a touch and raised his eyebrows at her with a glare. ‘If you don’t have anything positive to add, I wonder if you need to be here.’

  Emily took a step closer to where Annie and Jane were standing and whispered, ‘He’s such an idiot. I don’t know how you grew up with him, Annie.’

  Martha raised her brows. ‘He’s a little toad. Always has been.’

  Jonathan clapped his hands together to silence them. ‘So what I’m proposing,’ he went on speaking really loudly to pretend he couldn’t hear the chatter at the back. ‘What I’m proposing is – and I think this really is the only option – that the event itself must alter in order to secure a new venue. My feeling–- supported by key members of the show committee – is that we make this year’s competition a more selective event. It’s something some of us have been suggesting for some time and it feels that now, with this necessary change, that the time has come.’

  While there were a couple of nods up at the front, the general murmurs of the crowd suggested they weren’t entirely convinced by this idea. ‘With this in mind,’ he went on, ‘We find ourselves looking for much smaller spaces for the competition and the possibility of creating something much more upmarket. I’ve already had a word with Barney from The Dog and Cherry and he’s happy to allow his function room to host the event. I know a lot of you have been working
very hard to take part in this year’s show, but I think this really is not only the only option, but the best option. Yes, Jane?’ Jonathan nodded towards Jane’s upraised hand.

  ‘I thought the point of the Cherry Pie Show was exactly that it did include everyone. If we make it select then we make it elitist and the heart goes out of it. Even when my mum could barely get out of bed she would make pie for the bake off—’

  ‘There won’t be a bake off.’ Jonathan shook his head.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Jane frowned. ‘What about the home crafts section?’ Jonathan shook his head. ‘The Young Photographer Award? Jonathan, you can’t just cut certain events that people look forward to all year?’

  ‘Jane.’ He held up a hand. ‘Let’s not get too emotional—’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake!’ Jane waved his comment away and took a couple of steps backwards.

  Jonathan carried on. ‘We have to work within the parameters, I’m afraid, Jane. I know there are people dabbling in handicraft who want their patchworks to be seen by everyone, but we have to see what the big hitters are and that’s always the flowers and the vegetables. The committee will decide on the select criteria of entry.’

  Annie turned away, rubbing her hand over her face. ‘I cannot believe I’m related to him,’ she sighed.

  Emily was watching the crowd – Martha shaking her head with her eyes closed, Jane flushed pink on her cheekbones, visibly fuming, two elderly ladies in the middle of the crowd whispering, Annie's mum looking round anxiously, a couple of the guys in the front, including Jack’s brother Ed and his dad, all had their hands raised to ask questions.

  She thought of her evening with Annie and Jane the night before and tried to remember when the last time she’d made a new friend was. She had hundreds of acquaintances but who, in the last five years, had she talked to quite so frankly about Giles? No one. She’d seen “A friend said…” written in front of enough quotes about her in the papers to stop talking honestly to anyone just in case. Yet last night, as the tea lights flickered and the bunting flapped, they’d sat there into the night talking like they’d all known each other for ever. It wasn’t just Emily who’d opened up, but Annie had talked about what it was like having a new stepson in River and how hard it was to get Matt and him talking like equals. Jane had sipped her wine and slowly said more about what it was like living with her dying mother. And Emily had seen in her – the woman who had turned up in crappy clothes and who she’d instantly judged as having a sweet but dismissible demeanour – a core of strength that came from watching a person you love deteriorate. Her whole life held on pause so her mother could have her final years as she wanted them.

  Would Emily have done that for her mum, she had wondered as she lay in bed. Their relationship was full of so many little knots burrowed too deep to even try and untie. A lifetime of Emily’s hatred of the different stepfathers she’d had to endure duelling with her mother’s insistence on getting them a start in life by any means possible. And yet now her mother had admitted that perhaps it might have been a mistake – now that she herself had married for love.

  For Emily that had shaken her base instinct for life: You did it by whatever means possible.

  If that was a mistake – the traipsing round after the money and the lifestyle – then that meant things could have been different. And if they had been different, would they have been better?

  Giles Fox had been the holy grail. Rich, successful, famous. And, ten years older than her, he would protect her, keep her safe. As her mum had said, eyes bright, Emily would never want for anything. Except, as she soon discovered, love. But that had never been on the tick box agenda. Along with being treated like an adult. Never quite being allowed to feel part of the crowd. Part of his gang. Her mum was on the phone from France telling her to go for it, get to LA, move in with him ASAP, while Enid – in retrospect her main touchstone to reality – was saying, ‘Calm down,’ telling her to watch what she was doing and who she was doing it with. To be careful. But what was the point of telling that to a wilful seventeen year old – headstrong, beautiful and broken-hearted – with the reins to her own life at an age where any little steer of rationality was going to be determinedly ignored.

  That’s what she’d thought lying in bed last night. That’s what had rolled over and over again in her mind till she finally dozed off in a hazy half-light of early morning.

  Now, as she stood looking at the women next to her, all she could think about was friendship. Friendship grown here, on Cherry Pie, gave the impression of having roots sturdier than any of the ones she’d forged in her normal day-to-day life. They were the bloody bindweed of relationships.

  It was only then that she remembered they were doing all this for Holly. Their friend. And for Enid. A woman with a personality as big and strong as Emily’s, who she had butted heads with and refused to listen to but who she would now like to go back to and say, ‘You were right.’

  She couldn’t let Jonathan turn it into some miniature Chelsea Flower Show. The Cherry Pie Show was loved because it was haphazard and bizarre. Because people knitted tea cosies and felted little animals and baked cakes that didn’t quite come out as hoped. Because there was a prize for the ugliest vegetable as well as the best.

  When she’d been living on Cherry Pie as a teenager, the show hadn’t been held at the primary school. It had been in a marquee on Montmorency land. Bernard had thrown the doors open, stalking round proudly as he tasted pineapple upside-down cakes, judged the dog show and handed rosettes to the vegetable prize-winners. It was the Cherry Pie Show that had inspired Jack and Wilf’s disastrous festival.

  She thought of the photograph of them all pinned above Jack’s bed.

  ‘You want somewhere to hold the Cherry Pie Show?’ Emily shouted just as Jonathan was about to step off his orange box, the new plans a fait accompli.

  He paused and glanced at the voice, surprised. ‘I’m sorry, did someone say something?’

  Emily moved herself to the side of the group so she was standing alone for the crowd to see her. ‘Yeah, I said something,’ she said, suddenly feeling everyone’s eyes on her, big and wide like cows at a fence.

  Emily wasn’t rustic, she wasn’t homemade jam and handmade quilts, she wasn’t a cup of tea and a slice of vanilla sponge, she wasn’t community, she wasn’t tradition. But she was suddenly about friendship. About the things in her past that had made her happy. The things that, being here, she was remembering. The things that when she took hold of them made her feel like her feet were on the ground rather than scurrying through the air at a rate of knots. ‘I said, do you want somewhere to hold your show? Somewhere big enough so that everyone can be a part of it?’

  Jonathan shook his head and said, ‘Sorry, Emily but there just isn’t anywhere.’

  ‘There is somewhere, Jonathan,’ she said, thinking maybe, Enid, this is how I tell you that you were right. ‘There’s my bloody house. You can have your show there. And we’ll make it the best goddamn show you’ve ever had.’

  She heard Martha laugh, deep and husky. Jonathan looked puzzled, as if trying to work out how he could quash this new option. Annie clapped her hands together with delight. And Jane smiled, nodding at Emily, almost to say well done, to say that she was proud of her.

  ‘It’ll be the Great Cherry Pie Show,’ someone from the crowd shouted.

  ‘Exactly!’ said Emily. ‘The Great Cherry Pie Show.’

  Chapter Ten

  After the meeting, everything suddenly got a bit more serious. Emily got her assistant to talk to a man about a marquee, Annie designed the poster – all bunting, cherries and rosettes dotted around the scrolled Great Cherry Pie Show lettering. Holly called from France to say that her and Wilf would be back the weekend of the show but they didn’t think their ice cream van would make it. It was arranged that the Dandelion Cafe would cater the event with one stall selling cherry pie and tea and another, run by Ludo the cafe chef, would be a big barbecue with a suckling pig and a
ll sorts of tapas. Barney from the pub would get some barrels in and The Duck and Cherry would decamp for the day into the grounds of Mont Manor. But, most of all, people started preparing in earnest. The bakers among the island decided whether to make a lemon drizzle or a coffee and walnut, the young photographers got snapping and the quilters knuckled down to their wall-hangings – a perennial favourite of the competitions. Most babies on Cherry Pie Island had a quilted wall-hanging in their nurseries purchased from the show.

  The tension at the allotment increased dramatically. Not only were they competing against each other, there was now a clear divide between Jonathan’s horticulturists and Emily’s amateur gardeners. The latter being the majority; Emily had become a mini-celebrity of a different kind now. No longer the revered famous person suspected of causing mayhem where ever she went, she was now the saviour of the everyman. She had given to the community and expected nothing in return. Now when she walked through the allotment in her Hunter wellies and designer shorts, she got big waves of hello and a couple of free courgettes.

  The girls’ allotment now had a schedule. Annie would water and hoe every Monday and Wednesday after work. Emily had Tuesdays and Thursdays. Jane would do the weekends. And Friday was on rotation. The sole aim was no longer just to keep everything alive, there was now a desire to grow something of merit. Something that they could display on one of the competition tables. Something that might prove them worthy. Something that would do Holly and Enid’s memory proud.