Growing Season

by Seni Glaister

  She didn’t feel impoverished, she actually felt rather lucky, but she was riddled with resentments all of which were becoming increasingly debilitating. She was confident that she and Danny could feel complete if they weren’t constantly reminded that they were a disappointment to everyone else. Sam had lost count of the people she could no longer tolerate but the number of people who could not tolerate her was far greater still. The biggest hurts were within her own family, her parents particularly, who wore their own scars of deprivation far more heavily than she wore hers. Her mother tried to pretend that her sorrow was strictly vicarious, but it was patently clear that her desolation was all her own, a sadness that she had invested all her energy in this one child who had stubbornly refused to thrive and deliver the grandchildren she felt she deserved.

  Sam tried to blame her mother. She should have mitigated risk and had more children of her own if her future happiness lay in seeing her successors recreate themselves. Look at ducks – they played a numbers game, didn’t they? Nature was good at those prescient checks and balances to ensure it allowed for wastage, so why hadn’t her own mother (who after all should have been blessed with more common sense than a duck) used foresight to compensate for potential failure?

  Sam left the house through her garden and joined the footpath. Despite her time online she still felt poisonous. Not angry or out of control, but bitter and twisted and with a foul taste in her mouth that she assumed when she applied basic rationalisation to the sensation was psychosomatic but it felt very real.

  She marched down the path, but rather than following the route down to the fields, on impulse she immediately ducked left into the narrow opening that took her directly into the woods. Sam had not walked the path in this direction before, as usually she headed for the open expanse of the fields at the end of the tree line, but today she’d not come for the view or the smells or the birdsong. She’d come to chide herself for a trilogy of missteps. She’d embarrassed Hattie, she’d allowed Anne to provoke her and she had briefly hated her mother. And now she was cross with herself because she knew they weren’t to blame. They were doing what everyone did, they were making the same assumptions that had plagued Sam since her diagnosis.

  She stopped in the thick of the woods. The footpath was marked clearly ahead but a smaller, unmarked cross path intersected this one and she stopped, tempted by the density of trees. She turned right without hesitating and continued her brisk walk before stopping, for no other reason than she felt, finally, small again.

  The beech trees that formed most of this wooded area had given way to taller, darker conifers. Ivy-clad scrub, bramble and recently coppiced hazel filled the gaps. Holly trees, wearing their full length skirts like a misjudged ballgown, straddled the path. Sam liked the impenetrability here. There was no glimpse through to the fields beyond. Instead, just endless trees. She kicked at the ground beneath her foot and picked up a handful of small pine cones. She threw them, one by one, into the briar. They were light in her hand, so travelled very little distance and didn’t deliver the satisfaction of a heavier object but nonetheless she enjoyed a sense of recklessness and then, spurred on by the sheer futility of throwing small pine cones into a wood, she accompanied each throw with insults.

  ‘Interfering busybody,’ Sam said, immediately liking the sound of her voice out loud. ‘Nosy, meddlesome do-gooder,’ she said, a little louder, throwing a pine cone with an equivalent increase in force. ‘If that’s what having kids does to you, who wants them?’ she said, bending down to scrape some more pine cones into her hand. ‘Stupid, gormless country bumpkin,’ she said, a bit of spittle flying from her mouth as she threw the next.

  From the woods came a low growl followed by a barked command. ‘Stop that.’

  Sam, startled, dropped the cones to the ground and looked around wildly. She was rooted to the woodland floor, her stomach dropping as quickly as she’d dropped her ammunition.

  Some twigs snapped within the thicket barely two metres from her and as she looked into the boscage, the top of a brown floppy hat appeared shortly followed by a mop of straggly grey hair partially covering a weather-beaten face.

  The hat, the face and the woman took a step towards her, using a hooked stick to clear the undergrowth out of the way, revealing her from head to toe in dark cotton dungarees, a patterned shirt that might once have been beautiful – though paired with the denim was disturbing – and stout leather hiking boots. In one hand she held the stick, which in turn pinned back the brambles and gnarly plant life that thrived in the woodland. Over her other arm she had hooked a basket, and in this lay a small selection of sculptured leaves, green and glossy, and a couple of more spindly plants with their thin roots still attached.

  The woman stared intently at Sam and then glanced down at her basket. ‘I can help you, you know.’

  Sam looked at the contents of the basket and back to the wizened face. The face was challenging her, holding a stare with pale, translucent eyes.

  Realising that this strange woman must have heard her terrible outburst, then realising with a jerk that this must be the woman in the woods Anne warned her about, Sam turned and fled, retracing her path back through the wood, veering left and then sharply right on to the main footpath and only slowing to a walk once she was in sight of the gate that led to her garden. She was painfully out of breath and as she shut the gate behind her she bent over, a hand on each knee, breathing deeply and replaying the scene over and over in her head. Even though she was moments from the calm sanctuary of her own home and a door she could triple lock behind her, she sank down and sat with her back leaning against the gate, her head on her knees.

  Once she had enough breath to do so, she burst into tears and though the shaded ground was damp beneath her and she could feel it seeping into her skirt, she indulged herself and settled into a liberating expression of self-pity.

  The genuine impulse to sob became replaced with a dissolute choke that approximated a sob, and this in turn quietened to an occasional artless hiccup. Her face was wet and her nose was running and when she eventually stood and walked back into the house she became overwhelmed with grief and engulfed by righteous indignation. She picked up her mobile to call Danny, framing the words in her head that would spill out. She’d been insulted by a neighbour and accosted by a witch all within the space of an hour and she wanted him to come home and tell her she was perfect with or without a womb and she wanted him to come home and rid the wood of all witches and their dark arts once and for all.

  ‘What’s up?’ Danny asked in his meeting voice.

  Sam hesitated.

  ‘Sam?’

  She cancelled the call and texted him immediately. ‘Sorry! Pocket dial!’ Followed by a blushing emoji and a kissing emoji. He responded immediately, replying with a single kiss.

  The letter x morphed into unplumbed responses that piled in on her. She felt ashamed, foolish, childish, embarrassed and alone.

  Floundering, she went immediately to the study and switched on her laptop where she feverishly Googled woodland plants, looking for those that might have medicinal purposes, unsure if the witch in the woods was offering her something to cure or to kill.

  She flicked through the images of poisonous plants, some of which were very familiar to her though she had never realised they could be so toxic. She was alarmed by the violence of them. The foxglove, which she knew and loved and certainly featured prominently in the gardens of her childhood, would cause vomiting and diarrhoea. It could slow the heart down or cause a heart attack. How could anything so pretty be so destructive? Wolfesbane and hemlock were quite common too, but at least they sounded deadly. But the lily of the valley? It gave the impression of such an innocuous plant. She zoomed in on its leaves and though she couldn’t be certain, she feared they might well be the leaves the witch in the wood had been gathering. She looked back once more at the description of side effects that accompanied the image: blurry vision, diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea, disorientation, drows
iness, headaches, rashes, excessive salivation, sudden alterations in your cardiac rhythm and possible death were all listed.

  Sam was using Libby’s profile to do her research, but even so she wiped her Google history between every new search, terrified at the thought she might leave a trail of murderous intent behind her. She didn’t know what she was looking for but gradually found some sort of pain relief delivered by the warren she’d entered. She had spent a lot of time thinking about the plants she might want to grow in her garden but her impulsive delving into the more damaging impact just served to heighten her respect for nature.

  She looked out of the window at the top of the trees beyond her fence. Their branches were still winter bare and she tried to imagine them clothed and sun-drenched. It was a vision that was hard to believe, as dark and dead as the boughs appeared, but each twig seemed like a promise of better days to come and Sam was beginning to believe she could trust the trees.

  Chapter 15

  ‘There’s a witch living in the woods apparently,’ said Sam, lightly, pushing her plate away from her, having scraped it clean.

  ‘Not funny,’ said Danny, pulling the plate towards him and stacking it upon his own. He adjusted the knives and forks so they lined up neatly.

  ‘Really. I had a visitor, a couple actually. But the first one, Anne, who quite frankly looked a bit witchy herself, told me there was someone practising dark arts in the woods.’

  Danny performed an exaggerated shudder.

  ‘Which woods?’

  ‘Our woods. My woods. The woods right by the house.’

  ‘I hate witches,’ said Danny, without humour.

  Sam looked at him and laughed. ‘No you don’t, you’ve never considered witches. Why on earth would you hate them?’

  Danny looked at Sam carefully. She was carrying on blithely and had missed the suggestion of confession in his eyes completely. ‘If you can’t put them in a column, they don’t exist. Right?’ she said, laughing.

  Danny chewed his lip thoughtfully as he considered this. He was scared of witches, he had suffered from nightmares about them throughout his childhood. He’d love to talk to Sam about this, it was just the sort of thing he should talk to his wife about. He nodded decisively.

  ‘You’re right, sweet pea. I have never considered witches.’

  ‘And dark arts?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  Sam sighed, a little disappointed. ‘Oh. Don’t judge me but I was actually quite excited by the thought.’

  ‘Don’t go courting trouble, Sam. If you’re excited by the dark arts then that probably means you’re bored. You’ve got too much time on your hands, you should get a job.’

  Sam looked sharply at him. ‘But I’m busy here, I’ve got so much to do with the cottage and everything. And besides, we agreed I didn’t have to.’

  ‘We agreed you didn’t have to until you’re ready. But you might not recognise when that is, and you might not know until you try. I think you should think about it. You’ll go crazy here on your own, and perhaps being excited by dark arts is probably a sign that you’re well on your way to being crazy already.’

  ‘I don’t know, champ,’ said Sam sadly.

  ‘Do you remember how well you were doing at work before you quit? You were a star. You were going places.’

  ‘Until I didn’t conform,’ said Sam, the bitterness still evident.

  ‘They didn’t want you to leave, Sam, I seem to remember them trying quite hard to keep you.’

  ‘Of course they wanted to keep me. I was ideal, wasn’t I? A hard-working woman with no prospect of maternity leave? But it wasn’t my bosses anyway, it was my colleagues. They were the ones that made me feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘Being different is uncomfortable,’ said Danny, from experience.

  ‘Too uncomfortable for me,’ Sam said with a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll get another job, but only when I find something where I never have to talk to another human being about my reproductive organs. Maybe I can find something where I never have to talk to another human being about anything at all. Perhaps I’ll join a convent. That’s ideal.’

  Danny shuddered again. ‘Nuns,’ he said, darkly.

  ‘Oh, now you hate nuns too?’ Sam laughed at her husband who smiled weakly. He picked up the plates and took them to the sink.

  From the kitchen window he could see a sliver of yellow moon through the trees. It was rising and would soon be illuminating the garden brightly. He imagined the moonlight making its strange bright dance on the woodland beyond the house. He frowned as he washed up. It was vital to him that Sam continued to believe that he was a rational, sensible man as that is who she believed she had married. But the truth was, he hated witches and yes, he hated nuns too.

  Chapter 16

  At home in her caravan, Diana felt sorry she’d scared away the young woman from the cottage in the lane. She didn’t need friendship, in her gradual separation from Rebecca she’d proved she didn’t need anyone anymore, but she had recognised something in that primordial shout into the woods. She couldn’t remember the words the young woman had used but thought they had been directed at womankind and she felt (or hoped) that everything she’d learnt in her five decades might distil to be of use to this woman. After all, the knowledge she’d amassed in her life was of no use or consequence to her life in the woods.

  After the woman had scarpered, Diana had withdrawn her stick, allowing the undergrowth to fold back in front of her, screening her from the path once again and returning her to her woody neighbourhood. The ground that had been bare was now full of the first shows of garlic and the scent was heavy in the air. In ten days’ time, the whole ground would be carpeted but for now she just picked the tips of the tender new growth, leaving behind enough of each plant to replace itself.

  Diana looked at her laden basket with pride. She had taught herself so much in her four years in the wood. This was her favourite time of year because not only had she got a whole month of wild garlic to enjoy with every meal, it heralded the start of the most bountiful seasons that would see her well-nourished right the way through until she’d plucked the last blackberry from the hedgerow in October.

  The preceding winter had been a particularly harsh one. It hadn’t been terribly cold, but it had been interminably long and relentlessly wet and the wind had rattled through the trees without mercy night after night. There were many times when Diana had been tempted by Rebecca’s life, by the draw of a roaring fire in a well-ventilated room; by food cooked by somebody else – ideally a professional – and by a decent bottle of red wine served at the right temperature. All of those things taunted Diana but the vision of them were all accompanied by an image of Rebecca. Rebecca sitting in front of the fire, eating the food, drinking the wine. Diana couldn’t imagine any of those things without the other woman and that was simultaneously why she was tempted and why she resisted.

  But winter was well behind her, and she had a good six months of bounty ahead of her, and she could now look forward to her busiest and most rewarding months of study. If, she argued, she could pass this summer without reaching for Rebecca’s company at all, then perhaps she would have truly moved on without her and perhaps she could resist her pull permanently. And if she could move out of Rebecca’s orbit permanently, then perhaps she would find the enlightenment she believed was there for her. It was hard, though, as thoughts of Rebecca constantly teased her and nagged at her, pulling at her like a child’s fingers on a mother’s skirt.

  Diana thought again about the young woman she’d frightened off. Had she recognised something of Rebecca in that anguished call? Diana shuddered. She didn’t need to invite that sort of trouble into her life, and was glad now that the woman had not accepted her offer of help. Somewhere near was the grating screech of a jay, sounding an alarm call. Diana put her basket down on the ground and waited for just a few moments before she was rewarded with the distinctive flash of white on the rump of the bird as it whistled by.

 
Yes, Diana thought, bending down to pick up her basket. There was quite enough drama in the woods without the vitriol of an angry young woman adding to it. She looked at her gatherings and, satisfied she’d done enough, headed back to her caravan for lunch.

  Chapter 17

  While Sam had been writing, it had begun to rain, the sort of rain that hemmed you in. The reality of the rest of the day indoors, all alone, was less appealing than Sam had once imagined. Every now and then she glanced at the curtainless window and watched the rain drops collide haphazardly with the glass. Sam sat at her desk with her chin in both hands, staring blankly at the screen, transfixed by it, despite its toxicity. She sighed heavily, disgusted with herself.

  Like many harmful addictions, Sam’s writing had been quietly innocuous to begin with. It had been cathartic, essential even, and it had been very easy to justify any hateful debate she’d provoked as the unfortunate by-product of her own healing. She never targeted individuals, but she knew that the people who read her blog would and she was also aware that they took her arguments and used them as weapons against other women who were quite innocently finding their own way to cope. And God knows, being a modern woman seemed much harder than her own mother had made it look. Writing, launching and finding an audience for her blog really had marked Sam’s first signs of emotional recovery but, with her mounting influence, her blog had then morphed into something more addictive than she had intended and it was now potentially out of control.

  Engaging with real people, as opposed to shouting into a void, had thrilled her, filling her with a sense of self-worth. She had drawn strength from discovering so many people who agreed with her but she had also found relief in the open combat she waded into with people who didn’t agree with her. But to continue to attain an equal level of participation, she found herself stretching her views further to shock and having enjoyed that initial feeling of impact, striving for continued effect had proved irresistible.