Saving Septic Cyril: The Illegal Gardener Part II (The Greek Village Collection Book 16)

by Sara Alexi

  ‘Oh yes, here you go.’ Aaman relinquishes the pipe but as he does so the spray of water turns back into a dribble. Cyril fiddles with the end but he cannot get it to squirt.

  ‘Put your finger there, like that – there you go!’ Aaman’s hands meet Cyril’s as he shows him what to do but Cyril does not mind his touch. ‘The water is going to spray! Now hold it low and watch the water force the dirt away – yes, like that, make it go through the gate – yes, that’s it!’ Aaman encourages him and Cyril begins to think that he likes Saabira’s husband. A rainbow forms in the water’s mist and Cyril tries to make more. But then a big piece of dirt peels off one of the flags and he remembers what he is meant to be doing.

  Watching the years of boot-impressed dung peel off the flags and skitter on the surface of the water out of the gate is a great game. He forgets Aaman is there until the yard is clean and clear, and then the water stops running and Cyril looks up to see Aaman in his own yard turning off the tap.

  ‘Do you need it some more?’ he asks. Cyril thinks about making rainbows again but his mouth will not open to say so. With an easy movement, Saabira’s husband winds the hose around his arm and then hangs it on a purpose-built rack on the wall of his house. When all is neat he takes off his gloves and puts then back in his pocket. His hair, which was all neatly combed back when he first came outside, now flops over his eyes, shiny and dark.

  ‘Saabira wonders if you need any help inside?’ He stands with his hands on his hips, admiring the clean flags over the low dividing wall. He is wearing jeans and a shirt under a V-necked jumper. He does not wear foreign clothes like Saabira.

  ‘I don’t want to interfere, but perhaps some help would be useful?’ As he speaks he leans over the wall even further and looks through the open door into Cyril’s darkened house. Cyril’s instinct is to jump to the back door and shut it, to stop Aaman’s prying eyes, but something stops him. If he doesn’t tidy, the woman from Health might come back with more people and put all his things in black dustbin bags and take it all away.

  He screws up his eyes; his upper lip curls towards his glasses. Sometimes this helps him think but today he does not think. Instead, he finds himself nodding in agreement.

  Chapter 18

  ‘I have to go the phone box at the end of the lane,’ Aaman tells Saabira. ‘Cyril would like some help, but his downstairs room is full from floor to ceiling. In Bradford, I have seen, when there is much to be got rid of, they hire something called a skip, like a big bin.’

  ‘How big?’ Saabira is playing with Jay. They are on the fluffy rug in front of the open fire and they have a tray across which they are rolling the beads to each other. Jay is giggling wildly.

  ‘Really big. They leave it on the road, you fill it up and then they come and take it away.

  ‘How civilised. But do you really think he has so much to throw away?’

  ‘It’s hard to say, but I got the impression that anything small wouldn’t be very useful perhaps? Maybe they do half-size ones.’

  ‘You have a number?’ Jay is trying to open her hand for a bead and Saabira is teasing her by making it difficult.

  ‘No.’ He smiles. ‘But I have learnt the number you dial to get other numbers.’ He puts on his coat, leaving his faded and torn gardening gloves on the table.

  He is back in only five minutes.

  ‘Didn’t you manage it?’ Saabira asks.

  ‘Not only did I manage, but I found someone who does it in the next village. They used a new expression that I have not heard. They said they were geared up to do a lot of deliveries today, with it being a Saturday.’

  ‘Geared up,’ Saabira repeats.

  ‘One customer has just cancelled so he said the skip could come to us instead. They will come in an hour.’

  ‘Really! The British, they are so organised. If it was our village everything unwanted would be left by the road.’

  ‘Yes, but at home someone with as much as Cyril has would be a rich man!’ He looks away from her to the rug, his focus gone. ‘But why would a man make his home so unusable?’ He shakes his head but he does not say it unkindly.

  ‘We are run by emotion. The only trouble is we sometimes think the things we do are helping us when in fact they are not.’ Saabira cannot look him in the eye as she says this. He shrugs off his coat and Saabira allows Jay the prize of the bead.

  ‘Anyway, I said we would help him.’ Aaman puts his hand against the teapot on the table, to test the temperature.

  Whilst they wait for the skip, Aaman and Saabira hide the bead in their hands and Jay tries to guess. She taps their fists with her tiny perfect fingers and shrieks with delight when she gets it right. When she is wrong she shrieks even louder, her eyebrows dropping as she grabs at their fingers, trying to pull them open.

  Presently there is the deep purring of an engine outside their front window.

  ‘I will go out and show them which house.’ Amman jumps up and leaves without his coat. Saabira can hear the sound of chains jangling and metal scraping on stone. A moment’s silence, the engine stopping and then voices.

  ‘Oh my godfathers, what on earth is that smell!’ the truck driver exclaims as he climbs down from his cab. ‘Here’s the paperwork. God, that is bad.’ He dumps the skip in the road, thrusts a crumpled sheet of paper at Aaman and wastes no time climbing back into the truck.

  ‘I am not sure what to do with the bill,’ Aaman says. ‘Cyril did not order the skip. Perhaps I should have asked him first.’

  ‘Is it very much?’

  ‘No, not so very much,’ Aaman concedes and shows her the bill. Saabira glances at it and notes the darkness that passes across her husband’s eyes. At one time this sum would have been a fortune to him, to them, but now, in theory, he has a substantial wage, although he has not received his first paycheck yet. She is not sure whether to comfort him for all he has been through or congratulate him on how far he has come. She does neither.

  ‘Then we will say nothing about it, unless Cyril does or it arises naturally.’ She returns to marking out shapes on the rug with the beads. She reshapes a circle into a triangle, giving Jay the last few beads to finish the pattern.

  ‘Will you come?’ Aaman picks his gloves up off the table.

  ‘We might come and watch in a minute.’ She hands Jay more beads.

  Cyril watches the van from inside his porch. He wonders why his neighbours have put their skip in front of his house. It also seems strange that they should need a skip after only having been here such a short time, but it is none of his business and the truck has gone now, so he returns to tidying the room. He puts three cork-lidded jars in a carrier bag. Someone will want those. He puts the bag with the jars inside a crib that is balanced on top of a large table in the front room.

  Coco growls in response to a knock on the back door. It could be Mr Brocklethwaite, in which case he will not answer. But it could be Saabira with some food, which would be most welcome. He puts his ear against the door, listening for Mr Brocklethwaite’s wheezing. After a minute or two he opens it a crack.

  It is Saabira’s husband, Aaman. He is holding his gloves in one hand, and he looks friendly, but Cyril still feels a little nervous. ‘The skip has arrived,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how much you need to get rid of but it seems like the easiest way to go about this. No matter if we do not fill it.’ Aaman is not wearing his jumper and the sleeves of his shirt are rolled up, and he looks ready for work.

  Cyril does not open the door any wider. Despite the sudden tightening of the muscles around his neck his voice carries through the gap as he hisses.

  ‘Get rid of? Skip?’

  Saabira can hear shouting from next door. It sounds like Mr Brocklethwaite. Poor Cyril. But Aaman is there and he will be able to manage the situation. But as she listens it becomes clear that it is Aaman’s voice, and Cyril’s in reply. Why would either of them be raising their voices? Aaman never raises his voice, and Cyril hardly even speaks.

  After scooping
Jay into her arms, she heads out of the back door and runs round to Cyril’s.

  ‘But I am trying to help you.’ Aaman is just inside Cyril’s back door, with one hand over his mouth and nose, and he sounds exasperated. ‘Please to tell me what I have done wrong and I will make it right.’ Saabira can hear the emotion in his voice.

  ‘What right have you to throw away my ruler just because the end is missing!’ Cyril shouts. He is further inside the back door than Aaman, and has his arms out, either side of him, his palms facing behind him as if he is protecting the whole room. As he repeats this sentence his eyes are half rolled towards the ceiling and have no focus.

  ‘Cyril, Cyril.’ Saabira passes the now-screaming Jay to Aaman. She puts her free hands on her neighbour’s forearm. ‘Cyril, no one is taking your ruler.’ She looks over to Aaman to check that what she is saying it true, but he just shrugs and shakes his head. ‘I haven’t touched a thing. I just told him it was alright if we did not fill the skip.’

  ‘No!’ Cyril shouts. He is rocking now from one foot to the other. ‘No,’ he says again but it is more of a moan. He repeats himself but the word has become a grunt.

  ‘Aaman, perhaps it is better if you take Jay home. I will talk to Cyril.’

  ‘I was only trying to help,’ Aaman says. She can see how upset he is; moisture is gathering on the lower rims of his eyes. Jay continues to cry, loudly.

  ‘I know, but please take her. I will come soon.’ Saabira tries to sound soothing. Aaman looks at Jay but then looks warily at Cyril.

  ‘Will you be alright here alone with him?’ he asks her quietly, in Urdu.

  ‘I will be fine,’ she replies, smiling reassuringly. ‘Go.’ Saabira turns back to Cyril whose head is nodding in time to his rocking.

  ‘Cyril?’ she says clearly and firmly. He does not respond. She waits and calls his name again, but still he does not respond. Maybe she should just go home, leave him to it, but she and Aaman started this so, somehow, she should find a way to get Cyril out of this state in which he is stuck.

  Gingerly she touches his shoulder, but he is oblivious. Standing beside him, she tries to halt his rocking with a firmer grip but he continues to stare and rock. She does not have the strength to force him and she is not sure what else to do. Then an idea comes to her and, slowly, tentatively, she starts to join in. Not too obviously – she does not wish to cause offence. But once she starts rocking as well, it feels as if they are doing something together, and she makes her movements bigger, rocks as much as he does, keeping time. She keeps up for some minutes and it becomes unclear who is leading and who following. Then, ever so slightly, ever so slowly, Saabira begins to slow the speed she is rocking at and Cyril follows her lead. They adjust to this new, slower speed until it is not clear who is leading and who is following again; then Saabira slows her movement again, makes each rocking a smaller action, and Cyril follows. After some time, they are standing side by side, neither of them moving. Cyril has stopped groaning but he is still staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Cyril, we are friends, are we not?’ She waits. She waits a long time but he does not move or speak.

  ‘Cyril. Are we friends?’ She makes the question easier to answer and then waits again. His lowers his gaze from the ceiling and stares straight ahead.

  ‘I think we are friends. Are we friends?’ She asks.

  ‘Yes.’ The answer almost makes her jump.

  ‘Oh, I am glad to hear that. I was worried that we were not. As friends, can you tell me about your ruler?’ He might start rocking again, he might start shouting. But to Saabira’s relief he does neither.

  ‘They took it.’

  ‘They? The same “they” that tell you where to work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’ She leaves a gap of silence. Her eyes are beginning to adjust now to the grey light coming in through the back door. All around her, it seems, there are piles of dilapidated furniture. The table in the middle of the room has one leg shorter than the rest, and a brick is wedged under it to keep it level. On its top is a child’s crib with one of the rockers missing. Around the room are armchairs with torn upholstery and an old sofa pinned under a pile of varnished wooden pieces. Everything else is such a jumble in the dark she cannot make out individual items. The floor beneath her feet is uneven. One foot is on hard but sticky flooring and the other is on a soft and slippery kind of carpet.

  ‘So why did they take your ruler?’

  ‘They said I had to tidy my room.’

  ‘I see…’ In the gloom she can make out things moving about in the shadows, animal eyes reflecting light. She panics and is about to scream and run until one of them comes into the light to reveal itself as a dog.

  ‘But what if you need things later and you’ve thrown them away?’ He sounds like a child.

  ‘That is a problem. I suppose you can make some sort of rule up for yourself. Perhaps, if you have not used something for the last month or so, it means you don’t need it.’

  He glances at her briefly but then stares back out across the moors.

  ‘But they make holes in the earth.’

  ‘Who do?’

  ‘The people who take the rubbish.’

  ‘Ah, yes, this too is a problem,’ Saabira admits. ‘But in the next village there is a shop that is selling things to make money for animals. We could start with everything that someone might want.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cyril says. He looks at her now, and almost smiles.

  ‘Then we can look and see what can be recycled.’

  ‘Recycled?’

  ‘Yes. Some things can be used again.’

  ‘Yes’ he says, with a little more energy in his voice, and she sees his shoulder drop.

  ‘Then we are left with things that no one wants. My guess is some of that might be wood – we could chop these to burn. After that I don’t suppose that there will be much left.’

  ‘It will be tidy?’

  ‘The room will be tidy.’

  ‘Like before Archie died?’

  Saabira looks at him. Cyril looks back. It feels to Cyril like he has made an agreement and there is a bubbling feeling in his chest.

  ‘So, shall we start?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ The bubbles in his chest pop and a tight band has replaced them.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Saabira reiterates. She contrives to looks him in the eye for a minute, as if she is searching for something there. He does not know if she has found what she is looking for, and he begins to feel nervous, but then she stops searching and says ‘Tomorrow,’ again, and she stands and leaves.

  Chapter 19

  After she is gone, Cyril looks around at his gloomy room. There is a lot of stuff, and he doesn’t use any of it. He doesn’t know what most of it is. A book of wild flowers, which he found up by the triangulation station one day when it rained so hard Gorilla Head ran home on her own, rests on the arm of the sofa. The pages have dried crinkly and stuck to each other, and one falls out as he tries to flick through the book, arcing its way to the floor, the last curve taking it under the sofa. He hasn’t used the book yet, but who knows when he might come across a new plant on the moors and need to identify it? That’s the thing about throwing stuff away. You never know if you might need it the next day. He rests the book on the only free corner of the table. The crib that covers most of the tabletop is also in poor shape. The missing rocker makes it useless but someone might want to repair it. Maybe Saabira could use it. He lifts it from the table and puts it on the floor. The tabletop looks sparse now, open. His breathing quickens and it reminds him of the days after Archie was first gone. The whole house felt empty then, after the hospice nurses came and washed his stiffening body to prepare him for the funeral men who they said would come, still talking to him like he was alive. Then the men took him away, impersonal and cold; Archie’s body was all covered up, rigidly half-sitting on a stretcher that they rammed through the front door and out again, clattering into the back of the Volvo estate they arrived i
n. That was the last he saw of Archie.

  Then there was just him and Archie’s dog and a few sticks of furniture, and the sitting room and the open kitchen felt huge. The dog died not long after. It never settled after Archie was gone. The poor animal would sit whining at Archie’s bedroom door for Cyril to open it, and once inside would circle the empty room and crawl under the bed, still whining. Cyril watched it grow thinner and thinner upstairs, poor thing. No matter how hard he tried to encourage it, the animal refused to eat, and then one day it came downstairs. Cyril thought it was a moment to rejoice, but the animal whined by the back door and when he opened it the dog went out on weak, shaking legs, through the back gate and up onto the moors. It never came back. After that the house echoed to the sound of Cyril’s own footsteps, his breathing, his heartbeat, his loneliness.

  Thank goodness for Coco showing up a few days later, sniffing round Hogdykes Abattoir, thin and hungry. Beautiful Coco filled some of the empty space. He made her a kennel and put it in the backyard but when it started to snow he brought both the kennel and Coco indoors and there they stayed. Blackie Boo came next, and with her arrival the emptiness subsided a little more.

  He did a lot of thinking after that, walking for hours on the moors, first with Coco and then with the other strays that came his way – walking and thinking to avoid the emptiness of the house. People left rubbish behind on the beautiful, wild, open moorland. Some of it wasn’t even rubbish; some things he found just needed repairing, like the rucksack with a broken buckle, and the thin waterproof coat that needed a new zip. Taking them home with the intention of repairing them meant that the moors looked nicer and also they were saved from the dustbin men who would throw them in big holes in the ground. Matron Jan once watched a television programme with him that showed how beautiful places were turned into horrible places that smelt and burnt with the rubbish that was thrown away. The more things he brought into the house, the less he noticed Archie was not there. The things broke up the large room downstairs into smaller spaces that felt containing, comforting somehow. When he put the bookcase, the one that Mr Dent from number five threw out, against his front window, the room also became dark. Instead of finding it impractical he felt it made the room more comforting.