The Garden on Sparrow Street: A heartwarming, uplifting Christmas romance

by Tilly Tennant

  ‘You want to see how many bottles go out with the recycling,’ Martha put in darkly.

  ‘I haven’t and I have no idea how much she drinks…’ Nina said, cutting her off. She had, but she wasn’t in the mood to gossip about it now.

  ‘So we wondered…’ Ada said.

  Nina held up a hand to stem the flow. ‘I’ll come. Do you have a replacement bulb?’

  ‘Oh,’ Ada said.

  Martha frowned. ‘We didn’t think of that.’

  Ada gave an apologetic look. ‘How silly of us.’

  ‘It’s just a regular bulb?’ Nina asked. ‘Nothing fancy?’

  ‘Well, it switches on and off like all the other bulbs,’ Ada said.

  ‘Yes, it switches on and off just the same,’ Martha confirmed.

  The information that it switched on and off just the same as all their other bulbs wasn’t quite as useful as Ada and Martha seemed to imagine, but Nina nodded. ‘I might have a spare,’ she said. ‘Come in for a minute while I have a look.’

  Ada and Martha stepped in and huddled together in the hallway like newborn kittens, thanking Nina with every other word as she rummaged in her understairs cupboard. It took a few minutes, but eventually she found a bulb that she thought might do the trick.

  Without bothering to get dressed, she followed Ada and Martha out of the house, putting her front door on the latch to leave it open.

  Ada and Martha’s hall smelt of fried fish and it didn’t take much guessing to figure out what they’d eaten for supper that evening. The walls were lined with posters of puppies posing in various receptacles – puppies in Wellington boots, puppies in plant pots, in buckets and baskets. For two ladies apparently so enamoured with dogs, Nina had often thought it strange that they’d never actually owned one – at least not in all the ten years she’d lived on Sparrow Street.

  ‘Kitchen, you said?’ Nina asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Ada said.

  ‘The kitchen,’ Martha confirmed.

  Nina nodded. ‘Do you have some stepladders?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Ada said.

  ‘Oh no,’ Martha repeated. ‘They broke and we never bought any new ones.’

  ‘Right,’ Nina said doubtfully.

  ‘We have a chair,’ Ada said.

  ‘It’s quite big,’ Martha added.

  ‘I’ll have to make it manage,’ Nina said.

  In the kitchen, Martha dragged a chair out from beneath the table for Nina to stand on. Luckily, she was reasonably tall and could reach. Martha shone a torch at the fitting and, in another minute, Nina had managed to screw the bulb in and the kitchen was flooded with light again.

  Ada clapped her hands together in delight. ‘Oh, thank you!’

  ‘Yes, thank you!’ Martha said.

  ‘It’s really very kind of you,’ Ada said.

  ‘Very kind,’ Martha said.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Nina smiled. ‘It’s lucky I hadn’t already gone to bed.’

  ‘Will you stay for a cup of tea?’ Ada asked.

  ‘And cake?’ Martha added.

  ‘It’s a bit late really,’ Nina said. It was a bit late in the day for tea and cake and, besides, she’d been a victim of their baking before and was wiser than to accept an offer of cake these days. It was hard to shake the memory of a fruit cake so dense it had its own gravitational pull. ‘But thank you,’ she added. ‘Maybe another time?’

  ‘Oh, well I expect you’ll have some cake after the residents’ meeting,’ Ada said.

  ‘You are going, aren’t you?’ Martha asked.

  ‘What residents’ meeting?’ Nina looked from one to the other. Usually she knew about the monthly residents’ meeting in plenty of time but as far as she was aware there wasn’t one scheduled for another two weeks.

  ‘Emergency,’ Ada said sagely, as if she was the keeper of some great secret.

  ‘About the garden,’ Martha added.

  Nina frowned. ‘What garden?’

  ‘Exactly!’ Ada said triumphantly.

  ‘It’s such a mess nobody even knows it’s supposed to be a garden,’ Martha said.

  ‘But somebody wants to build on it.’

  ‘But it’s our community garden.’

  ‘And we can’t have that.’

  ‘So we’re going to ask the council to let us make it nice again.’

  ‘And then nobody will be able to build on it.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Nina’s frown deepened. ‘I don’t want to be the one to pour water on the fire here, but I don’t see the council giving up the land just like that if they have a buyer for it, not just so the residents can plant petunias in there. And what on earth could we do with it anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ada said.

  ‘It’s all Nasser’s idea,’ Martha said.

  ‘He’ll have something up his sleeve,’ Ada said firmly.

  ‘Oh, he will,’ Martha agreed with a confident smile. ‘He’s very clever.’

  ‘So you’re coming?’ Ada asked.

  ‘You must,’ Martha said. ‘You’re ever so good in meetings.’

  Nina shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her dressing gown. ‘When is it?’

  ‘Friday,’ Ada said.

  ‘At seven o’clock,’ Martha finished for her.

  Nina didn’t see a lot of point in any of this but she was a part of this community and liked to contribute where she could, so she nodded.

  ‘Of course I will,’ she said.

  It wasn’t like she had anything better to do anyway.

  Chapter Three

  The community centre always smelt of damp, sun or rain, winter or summer. It was a new building, less than ten years old, but everyone in the town of Wrenwick agreed that it had been thrown up in rather a hurry and on a tight budget by a contractor who’d simply been out for maximum profits and wasn’t all that concerned about how well the structure lasted once they’d done their bit. Already there were gaps between the window frames and the walls, cracks in the ceiling and loose flags on the path outside. Today the wind whistled into the main hall and set everyone shivering with every chilled gust, despite the heating being at full capacity. But since the council had sold off their eighteenth-century beauty – a former merchant’s house that had been in use as a meeting room and community centre for many years – to a hotel chain, the residents didn’t have a lot of choice but to use this draughty old box.

  Wrenwick was a pretty town, but Nina often felt that the prettiness of Wrenwick might also be its undoing. Its elegant old buildings were in demand from the retail and leisure chains sweeping through the rest of the country, swallowing places that had been blessed with their own distinct identities before the chains had arrived and turned them all into clones of the last place they’d overrun. Nina hated that. Gray had hated it too – it was one of the many things they’d agreed on. They both hated to visit a new place and find that it contained just the same things they had in their own town. Nina loved independent, quirky shops and cafés; she loved to be surprised when she walked into a store, to find things she couldn’t find anywhere else. They still had some in Wrenwick, but with every passing year they got harder to find.

  Nina sat next to Robyn now, who had taken her coat off but still had a thick woollen scarf wound snugly around her neck.

  ‘I can’t believe you talked me into this,’ she hissed in Nina’s ear. ‘You do know there are more exciting Friday nights to be had, don’t you?’

  ‘You mean like watching the soaps?’ Nina whispered back with raised eyebrows. ‘Your brain will rot if you watch too many of those.’

  ‘My brain will rot here,’ Robyn shot back. ‘At least I’d be entertained in front of the telly.’

  ‘Give it a chance,’ Nina said. ‘You love a good fight and I’ve got a feeling that a good fight is what we’re going to get here when it all kicks off.’

  Robyn grinned. ‘Fisticuffs? Why didn’t you say so in the first place; I wouldn’t have complained about coming.�
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  It was Nina’s turn to grin now. But then their attention was drawn to a rickety lectern situated at the front of the room where a short, balding man was clearing his throat as his gaze swept over the people seated in front of him.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ Robyn said in a low voice. ‘It’s about to go off.’

  ‘Thank you all for coming,’ the man announced as the chatter in the room died down. ‘My name is Nasser—’

  ‘We know!’ someone in the crowd shouted. ‘We move your bins from our driveway every Wednesday!’

  There was a ripple of laughter around the room, and when it died down, Nasser began again.

  ‘Quite,’ he said with a smile. ‘I just thought I’d introduce myself for anyone I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting before. But as most of you seem to know me, you’ll probably also know why I’ve called this meeting.’

  ‘Because he loves the sound of his own voice,’ someone behind Nina said in a carrying whisper. Nina threw a quick glance over her shoulder but couldn’t see who it might have been. She looked at Robyn, who’d clearly heard the quip too and returned Nina’s look with one filled with mischief. Nina knew her well, and she knew that heated discussions were her favourite type. In fact, Robyn didn’t consider a meeting to have been a proper meeting at all until someone had been insulted or shouted down.

  Nasser had moved to Sparrow Street a few years before. Nina knew he was a refugee but she didn’t know where from and he didn’t often talk about what he’d been through before he’d arrived in Wrenwick. She thought that, perhaps, whatever he’d experienced was so horrible he didn’t want to talk about it and so she’d never asked. She’d heard he’d been a doctor or a lawyer or something very important in his home country, but nobody was really sure about that either.

  He could be a tad officious and it was true that if ever there was a crisis on the street – real or otherwise – it was a pretty safe bet that he’d be getting involved somehow. He thought of himself as the street’s unelected representative in all things civic, but while some people found him irritating because of that, Nina had no issues with him at all. As far as she was concerned, it was good that someone cared enough to take action, even if some ridiculed him for it – and perhaps even despite the fact that he was probably aware of the ridicule. He’d always been very kind to Nina too, and she had no doubt that he had a good heart and what drove him was the community’s best interests. Certainly, she was more than happy for him to take charge now.

  ‘As many of you will be aware,’ he began again, ‘we have information of a plan by the council to sell our community garden.’

  This announcement wasn’t greeted with much of a reaction at all. People liked their outdoor space, but perhaps a lot of them were worried that they were just about to be asked to do something that would involve giving up their own time and money.

  ‘It does look like a tip,’ someone said.

  ‘That’s because nobody has ever taken responsibility for it,’ Nasser said sternly. ‘It doesn’t have to look that way if we do something about it.’

  ‘It’s winter,’ someone else said. ‘What are we supposed to do about it now? It’s nearly Christmas. Gardens are for summer.’

  ‘So gardens disappear during the winter?’ Robyn turned to the speaker. ‘What a load of crap. You can still make them tidy and plant for the summer months.’

  ‘Actually,’ Nasser put in, ‘that brings me to my second point, and I have only just come to discover this for myself. Due to budget cuts, there will be no Christmas decorations in Wrenwick this year.’

  This time there was a collective gasp of horror. Take away the spare ground that was mostly home to the odd Twix wrapper and people were mildly annoyed because they thought they ought to be, but take away their Christmas street decorations and they were genuinely incensed. Not that the decorations in Wrenwick had ever been anything spectacular. Like the town itself, they’d been pretty but fairly unassuming – a string of lights from this lamppost to that, some silvery snowflakes hanging from the odd tree, a giant ‘Merry Christmas’ motif at the entrance to the town hall. It didn’t seem plausible that they’d be too expensive to put up again this year, but if Nasser’s report was right, the decision had been made for some reason that nobody outside the council understood.

  ‘They can’t do that!’ someone cried.

  ‘They are doing that,’ Nasser replied steadily. ‘Along with the closure of the mobile library and the playgroup on Chaffinch Road.’

  ‘Disgusting!’ someone shouted.

  ‘So you see,’ Nasser continued, ‘the upkeep of our little community garden is probably very low on their list of priorities. But I, for one, think it would be a great shame to lose this space. Before we know it some private investor will be building shops or flats on it and then we’ve lost it forever.’

  ‘So there isn’t a buyer for it?’ Nina asked, thinking about what Ada and Martha had told her.

  ‘Not yet,’ Nasser said. ‘I’ve heard that somebody might be interested but there’s nothing concrete yet.’

  ‘Who’s told you that?’ Robyn asked.

  ‘I can’t say,’ Nasser replied with a tap to the side of his nose. ‘I will say that if it continues to stand there covered in weeds and rubbish the council will decide it’s a liability worth getting rid of.’

  ‘I won’t miss it!’ someone at the back of the room shouted. ‘I’ve got enough to do with my own garden!’

  ‘Lucky it’s not all about what you want!’ Ada cried.

  ‘Yes, lucky!’ Martha agreed.

  ‘Never mind the garden,’ someone else said, ‘what about Christmas?’

  ‘Well,’ Nasser said. ‘I did take the liberty of making a few phone calls to the council offices. Unfortunately, because of health and safety reasons, they won’t allow us to put up street decorations ourselves. We can put lights and other festive things up on our own properties, but they say there’s a risk to town infrastructure if we put things up on the street.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’ Nina turned to see that Ron, one of her closer neighbours, had spoken. He was a bullish-looking man with grey bristles for hair.

  ‘I suppose it means that we might damage phone lines and things,’ Nina said with a shrug.

  ‘We can fix the garden!’ Ada said, her small voice quivering as she struggled to make it heard.

  ‘Yes, we could do that,’ Martha agreed.

  ‘Nobody cares about the garden,’ Ron said.

  ‘You mean you don’t,’ Robyn retorted. ‘What, have you taken a poll or something?’

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?’ Ron said. ‘You don’t even live here!’

  ‘She lives close enough,’ Nina replied.

  ‘Close enough isn’t here on this street.’

  Nina chose to ignore Ron’s retort and turned to Nasser, though she addressed the room as a whole. ‘If we can’t put decorations up on the street and we have a piece of spare ground doing nothing except gathering rubbish, couldn’t we utilise that ground to put up Christmas decorations?’

  A slow smile spread across Nasser’s face. ‘We’d have to clear the ground to use it for our decorations so it would then be ready to plant if we wanted to prepare a garden for the summer,’ he said. ‘That’s a very good idea. But we’d have to get permission from the council to do that. I’ve put the question of a garden to them and they are going to get back to me on that, but I didn’t ask about decorating it for Christmas.’

  ‘I don’t see what the difference is,’ Nina said.

  ‘I’m sure the council would be able to find one,’ Nasser said with a wry smile.

  A young woman on the row in front of Nina put up her hand. Nina recognised her as Kelly, the neighbour that Ada and Martha had tried their best to gossip about the night they’d come for help with their light bulb.

  ‘Yes, Kelly?’ Nasser said.

  ‘Surely,’ Kelly began slowly, ‘the council ought to be glad to dump the responsibility of all this o
n us, especially if they can’t afford to do it. I don’t see why it would be an issue if it shuts us all up and gets another problem off their desks.’

  ‘Because,’ Nasser said patiently, ‘town councils are notoriously counterintuitive when it comes to common sense.’

  Kelly frowned. ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘It means they’re thick and stubborn,’ Robyn cut in and everyone laughed, the tension immediately draining from the room.

  ‘Thank you…’

  ‘Robyn,’ she replied with a brisk nod at Nasser.

  ‘Not quite how I’d have phrased it,’ he continued, ‘but in a nutshell, it’s safe to say they don’t always take the most rational approach to a problem. So if everyone here is happy to allow me, I propose to take a petition signed by you all to put forward our case.’

  ‘To do what?’ Ron asked with an unmistakable scowl. If the rest of the room was coming round to the idea of saving their garden, it didn’t look as if he was.

  ‘To tidy the garden and decorate it for Christmas.’

  ‘Waste of time,’ Ron said. ‘It’ll just be a mess again in the new year.’

  ‘Not if we look after it,’ Nina said. She turned to Nasser. ‘Should we approach them about keeping the garden beyond Christmas? Like, for good?’

  ‘And how much is all this going to cost?’ Ron cut across Nina’s question.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nasser said steadily. ‘I’d done some rough calculations for the street decorations before I’d been told that we couldn’t have them and I’d worked out somewhere in the region of five thousand—’

  ‘Pounds!’ Ron spluttered, veins popping in his forehead now. ‘We haven’t got that sort of money!’

  ‘We’d have to do new calculations based on the new idea,’ Nasser said, sending a pleading look for patience to the rest of the room as a new mutter of dissatisfaction spread through it. ‘But I’m sure whatever we need we could raise between us.’

  ‘I haven’t got time to muck about with that,’ Ron said.

  ‘I’d help with that,’ Nina said. ‘I have time on my hands and I’d be glad to do what I can.’

  Nasser smiled. ‘Thank you. It’s good to know we can count on your support.’