Growing Season

by Seni Glaister

  Danny recognised that piloting a confidently nimble course through these exchanges was an essential part of career progression, so he was careful to be polite and maintained what he hoped was a courteous interest in the conversations around him, but he really preferred not to blur the boundaries between his work and home. Experience had taught him, however, that even if he successfully dodged the endless questions asking him what he had achieved since the previous day (Monday mornings were the worst, with a whole weekend of updates required), common manners would demand that he reciprocated with a ‘and how was yours?’ Over the years, the answer had remained fairly constant, though the context had changed. From ‘knackered, mate, on the lash Saturday night’ through to ‘exhausted, we’re teething at the moment, God help me’. Regardless of their stages in life, it appeared to be a competition about who could arrive at their desk on a Monday morning with the greatest sleep deficit.

  Had Danny been truthful in his responses, he would probably win that competition hands down. He’d not actually had a solid night’s sleep for some years, but he did not feel that this was a competitive arena he ought to enter, particularly armed with truthful responses. Over-sharing fed the cesspit of gossip, and worse, invited opinion. Opinion offered in formal appraisal was just about bearable, but opinion given by the inexpert with a fraction of the salient information at their fingertips was unforgivable. Sitting in his train seat, leaving the countryside behind him and hurtling towards a minefield of unwarranted and unsought viewpoints, Danny massaged his temples while counting his inhalations and exhalations, desperate to rid himself of the idea of other people’s inexactness.

  Danny switched his attention back to the view and wondered, very briefly, whether he had attention deficit disorder. He hadn’t finished a book for years, let alone a train of thought. Sam blamed his tendency to flit from one thought to another on a very demanding job that prevented him from switching off but Danny feared a deeper-rooted problem. Danny’s life was a carefully choreographed mesh of entrenched worries and self-taught coping mechanisms and he zigzagged precariously between the two whilst maintaining an outward appearance of introverted competence and sincerity. Now, as he applied a small amount of antibacterial gel to his palms, rubbing his hands together methodically, he sought inspiration and answers from his new routine. The view from a train window might be soothing, mightn’t it? If he secured this seat on this train, five days a week, he’d see the seasons change, notice the small differences that made the fickle landscape predictable, providing you were prepared to commit to the long view.

  He really did like this seat. He didn’t like to face the direction of travel, he found the information too quick to process – just as he would find something to focus upon, it would already be behind him, particularly those objects in the foreground which raced past him alarmingly, barely taking shape. Seated backwards, he could spot something of interest: a small terraced house with an unlikely boat in its garden; the curious storage area of a big brand DIY centre, and then, as the train roared towards the city, a twisted oak dead and dead-centre in the middle of a square field. He liked this geometry amid the swirls and curves of nature. He hoped these features would become reassuring waymarkers on his journey and he vowed to focus his attention on these new pointers and then watch them for as long as his eye-line remained uninterrupted.

  Danny had always felt more comfortable with a plotted course in front of him. But it was complex, wasn’t it, he thought, as he eyed his fellow commuters, all of whom appeared to be at different ages and stages, but had all similarly committed to adding several hours to their day’s work in order to achieve more and live a better version of their lives. They probably all wanted many of the same things as each other (houses, wives, husbands or partners, holidays, children or pets, a car, a bigger car, two cars… each milestone coming with its own special power to validate one’s existence) but surely they couldn’t all succeed? Some would have to succeed at the expense of others because both economics and evolution had determined that the pot of success must be finite, and as such they couldn’t possibly all have their desired share. Danny wasn’t going to fail, it wasn’t an option, but it might mean that somewhere in this carriage, somebody with similar conviction would have to lose. Danny shook his head almost imperceptibly, banishing the thought. There was nobody on this train with similar conviction. And this was why it was acceptable to add this journey to his working day and this was why he would succeed.

  He looked out of the window again, beyond his fellow commuters who were still just about visible as silhouetted reflections in the glass. The view now was less vast and less alarming.

  Danny had always understood that England’s green and pleasant land would be just that: green and pleasant. And in order to qualify as pleasant, he had imagined a single wash of colour, coating the countryside and masking its caprice. Instead, each tree added its own hue and the hedgerows, whilst providing occasional promise of order, tended to immediately break their own rules with their sudden requirement to follow the contours of the rolling fields. The countryside was an eyeful of greens, a mindful of greens, a bewilderment of greens. Endless versions of green when just one would have sufficed.

  Fortunately, however, as Danny hurtled through the landscape the greens were gradually replaced by the soothing tones of man’s welcome intervention and he grasped these and watched them fold into each other until all memories of green had been vanquished.

  The train thundered on.

  Danny hadn’t liked green as a child. It was his house colour at school, which happened to be that of the lowest achieving house. The ‘greens’ were neither sporty (red) nor academic (blue) nor theatrical and artistic (yellow). His house was the one that seemed to soak up the unallocated remnants, once the other houses had made their selection. In Danny’s eight years, the house cup had never been held aloft with a proud green ribbon tied to it.

  Since he’d first pinned the green badge to his lapel, Danny had never felt he belonged there, and he found himself quite incapable of finding solace or camaraderie in the shared disappointment that was meted out at the end of each academic year. It was almost as if his fellow house-members felt they deserved their low ranking.

  This was all very unsatisfactory to Danny. From his earliest years, he’d been considered an all-rounder, comfortably competent at anything he tried, so would have felt equally at home amongst the sporty reds, the arty yellows or the clever blues. Green had felt like a clerical error and his long years cast out from the winners had made him feel powerless and friendless. He realised, after much tortured analysis, the misallocation could only be because of his lack of early specialism, and his interminable exile in the green wilderness taught him to mitigate outcomes by being in control from the outset and from that moment on he committed to communicating his intent with as much clarity as possible.

  Perhaps that’s why he didn’t like green, he wondered, as the train began to rattle and jar as it slowed to a crawl for his station approach. He must find a way to love it, though, for Sam’s sake and because living in the countryside was now part of the plan and it signified a milestone in the journey he’d mapped out in the steadfast direction of success.

  Danny wasn’t always honest with Sam, but he knew he couldn’t be honest and hold on to her and there was almost nothing he wouldn’t do to earn her approval. Sometimes that meant disguising his worst traits or hiding his worst truths from her. But sometimes small incremental approvals could be won at comparatively little cost to himself. This felt like one of those occasions: if he needed to embrace green in order for her to love him just that little bit more, then he would do it in a heartbeat.

  The carriage darkened, shadowed by the station roof as they entered the platform. Danny folded his laptop neatly back into his bag and, once again checking his ticket was still in his inside pocket, he prepared to leave the train to begin the next section of his journey.

  Chapter 5

  Leaving the church-like quie
t of the study behind her, Sam was now preparing for a walk. She had already familiarised herself with the route from her front door to the village shop (she’d made the journey several times). Today, though, she was determined to explore the land beyond the cottage in the other direction by following the footpath that led from her garden gate. She had taken delivery of a pair of wellington boots and was just snipping them free of the polythene they’d been wrapped in when the doorbell rang. She was not expecting any more deliveries and her heart sank, she didn’t feel quite strong enough to interact with her neighbours yet, although she knew from a steady increase in the number of recognisable faces locally that these encounters were both inevitable and imminent.

  She opened the door to find a tall woman on her doorstep. This visitor was not one she had seen anywhere before, she would have recognised the memorable combination of above average height and unusually sharp features. Her cheekbones were angular, her nose and chin both long and pointed and she clutched a pile of yellow envelopes in alarmingly claw-like fingers.

  ‘Anne,’ the visitor said with absolute certainty. ‘I’m collecting for St Catherine’s,’ she continued, by way of an introduction. ‘You’re new to these parts,’ she added, after a brief pause, as if the clarification were for Sam’s own benefit.

  ‘I am new here, yes, this is my third week.’ Sam smiled warmly, conscious that her withdrawal to the countryside was symptomatic of a wider re-set required and she could put her good intentions into practice right now, with this neighbour.

  Anne assessed the new arrival critically, observing and assimilating Sam’s T-shirt, jeans and Converse shoes. She nodded, having seen enough to draw her own immutable conclusions. ‘About time you immersed yourself in the community. We’re reasonably close knit.’

  Within a moment, Sam felt herself beginning to bristle, conscious that she had been judged and found to be falling short at the very same moment she had determined to be open and likeable. Fighting an internal battle to flee, her resolution to start afresh won and she stood her ground, smiling with as much submission as she could muster. ‘Of course, I fully intend to. I’ve been busy settling in. It’s taken a while to get myself straight, but I’m getting there.’ Sam knew she must sound defensive and with her confidence waning under the gaze of her visitor, she wasn’t quite sure what should happen next. Sam’s mother had instilled in her the manners required to coexist with different groups of people, including the older generation, and she’d told her on many occasions to allow her elders to dictate the rules, as they were probably more wedded to their ways than she was to hers. This was good advice, Sam was certain, but Anne wasn’t giving any signals as to the correct protocol. Sam assessed the woman’s neat skirt and round-necked jumper, her pristine white collar, her tan tights and sensible shoes. Rather than inviting her in, she stuck her arm out and shook Anne’s hand.

  ‘I’m Sam.’

  ‘Samantha,’ said Anne, correcting Sam with absolute certainty.

  Sam nodded, squirming inside at her own pitiful acquiescence. Nonetheless, she clutched Anne’s hand tightly, hoping to transmit both dependability and authenticity through her firm grip whilst demonstrating that she was neither prejudiced nor fearful of talon-like fingers.

  Perhaps Anne perceived those very qualities because she nodded briskly. ‘Very well. You can get involved in one of our projects, that will get your face out and about. St Catherine’s Hospice is one. Super one. Dignified. Lucky to have it on our doorstep.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Sam, with a trace of a question mark, alarmed that she might already have formally engaged into some sort of contract, as she appeared still to be shaking Anne’s hand. And Anne must have concurred because she’d already moved on to other subjects.

  ‘Things to watch out for: Cathy in the corner shop will short change you every time. She’s not a bad person, per se, but she’ll rob you blind habitually. She can’t appear to help herself. Just count your change in front of her and if you spot an error, she’ll correct it immediately with no hard feelings. And steer clear of the woods,’ said Anne, nodding her head in the general direction of the copse that Sam had felt sure she would soon appropriate as her own.

  Sam was much more alarmed by the delivery of the second warning than the first. She’d already popped into Cathy’s shop a number of times and had always used a contactless debit card, so counting out change really wasn’t an issue. ‘Really? The woods?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m surprised you haven’t already been warned. There’s a mad woman there who took up residence a number of years ago. Either batty as a fruitcake or downright evil. Never quite sure which. We’ve tried to raise the issue with the council on a number of occasions, but we seem to be dealt short shrift. I’m not sure if the woman in the woods has somehow enchanted the entire local authority, though it seems unlikely, they’re Tories and I doubt very much that Tories are susceptible to enchantment. They certainly weren’t in my day.’

  Anne dropped her voice, leaning in close enough for the bergamot of a recent cup of tea to be distinct on her breath. ‘But some do say she’s involved in the dark arts, so it’s entirely possible. Strange, inexplicable things have happened – a couple of scrapes and falls immediately after visiting the vicinity. And Bea Burdess, God rest her soul…’ Anne quickly crossed herself at the mention of the name, ‘… Bea dropped dead of a heart attack having filed a complaint against the woman in the woods. They say Bea was cursed by some type of spell and although I find that very hard to believe, it’s rather suspicious as Bea was a vigorous and somewhat dynamic member of the community and I can’t think of any other reason for her to expire quite so emphatically.’ Anne’s eyes darted all around her, eventually straying behind Sam into the house beyond her, as if not quite sure whether Sam were aligned with the good or the bad. ‘And things do go missing.’

  Sam looked around her anxiously, fearful stolen goods might be littering her driveway, awaiting discovery.

  ‘Yes, sorry to be the bearer of bad news but lock up at night, and don’t leave things out and about. Garden equipment, that sort of thing. Particularly given your extreme proximity, to the you-know-what.’ Again, Anne gestured towards the wood, this time with an exaggerated thrust of her pointed chin.

  Sam, who had never seen anyone indicate with their chin before, nodded, wide-eyed.

  Anne, meanwhile, was pressing an envelope into Sam’s hand. ‘I’m collecting for St Catherine’s,’ she declared as if she had only just arrived and Sam might well have imagined their entire preceding conversation.

  ‘The hospice,’ said Sam, nodding encouragingly.

  ‘You’ve heard of it. Excellent. That’s a start.’ Anne looked pleased for a moment but was clearly impatient to move on.

  Sam patted her pockets vaguely, but Anne did not look sympathetic.

  ‘One moment.’

  Sam disappeared inside, and keen to show she’d heeded the advice about being vigilant carefully closed the front door behind her, leaving her visitor on the step. In the kitchen she rooted around in her shopping bag before retrieving a ten-pound note from her purse. She put this in the envelope, sealed it and took it back out to Anne, who felt the envelope approvingly and tucked it away at the bottom of her pile. ‘Cheerio then,’ she said, already turning to leave.

  Unsettled by talk of the dark arts, Sam hovered on her doorstep, waiting for her visitor to disappear completely before she closed the door. Anne had only walked a few paces away, however, before she stopped and turned back. She appraised Sam carefully in her doorway and her gaze took a sharp inventory of the windows, as though calculating the house’s capacity. ‘You’re married?’ she barked, with barely a question mark.

  ‘I am?’ said Sam, offering one in return, in an act of unintentional uncertainty.

  ‘Excellent.’ Anne looked her up and down, affronted anew by Sam’s casual clothes. ‘Family house.’ She observed before asking with a disconcerting brusqueness, ‘Children?’

  Sam faltered and swallowed
. ‘No,’ she said, willing herself to leave it there. She dug her fingernails into the palms of her hand. ‘Not yet,’ she added, unable to resist a qualification to fill the screaming silence that flooded the space between them. She felt a gushing deluge of self-loathing release in a rush with the words.

  ‘You’re young. Plenty of time,’ Anne said with a small nod of permission. She turned and walked off, this time without stopping or looking back.

  Sam retreated to the cool welcome of her house and locked herself in. She leant against the door and closed her eyes, breathing slowly, allowing the adrenalin to subside.

  Chapter 6

  It was possible that the throng of a busy station might feel shocking to Danny as he became used to the still of the countryside. But right now, he felt confident as he left the comfort of the train carriage, bracing himself as he took his place amongst the cascade of commuters all destined to spill down the same narrow holloway that descended to the underground platforms beneath them. Danny liked to feel in control, so this vast confusion of feet, hurtling at pace as though a starter gun had been fired, could have been prohibitively difficult for him to face. But years of practice had led Danny to understand that he could feel in control of most things providing he’d devised a rigid system to follow. When he achieved this, he felt accomplished, and when he felt accomplished, he felt in control.