Growing Season

by Seni Glaister

  Sam knew she had coerced Danny into leaving London for a better life but now she wondered whether there could ever be such a thing. What if there was just this one? Wherever she went she had to take her problems with her, she couldn’t just leave them behind and even if she wanted to reinvent herself there would always be the Hatties of the world to remind her who she was and who she wasn’t. Sam felt more than sick. She felt unnecessary.

  She paced up and down like a caged animal. The garden, which had once felt glorious and burgeoning with possibility, now felt petty and pointless. Furious and confused she could not stop thinking about the rejection she had received from her neighbour. She switched from this thought to the woman in the woods whose pale eyes had appeared to see right through her. Sam revisited the encounter over and over again. She had thought the woman was dangerous, she’d responded by running away, but now, when she thought of her eyes and tried to accurately recall the words that had been spoken, rather than the subtext she’d imagined, she wondered if the woman in the woods was just offering her help.

  ‘God knows, I need help,’ said Sam to herself as she applied mascara to her lashes and blinked back at her reflection in the mirror thoughtfully. Her thoughts up until this moment had been quick firing, meandering from one unlikely scenario to the next but now she found herself in the bathroom with her hair brushed and make-up applied, she knew she had resigned herself to paying the woman a visit. She needed to talk to somebody. She’d chosen to withdraw and she’d chosen this quiet retreat over a busy life full of colleagues with their own busy lives to share but she hadn’t quite taken into consideration how very little her husband offered in terms of conversation. It was fine, she thought, to be a good listener, but it was not fine if your good listener wasn’t helping you to process your thoughts and make your worries go away. She needed a friend. She was a little startled by the realisation that her instinct was to choose the witch in the woods over the well-meaning neighbour with her cardigan and cake but she knew her mind was made up. Putting her glasses back on, she checked her reflection in the mirror before heading downstairs and out of the house.

  She walked beyond the point on the path where she’d thrown the fir cones into dense thicket, until she found a spot she could see more clearly through the trees to the blue tarp and the caravan. There was no obvious route to the door, and she wondered how the woman ever left it to join the path. Perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps she didn’t even live there, and it was just a coincidence she’d been nearby. Nerves gripped Sam’s stomach but she remained determined to see this through.

  She called out, looking around self-consciously. ‘Hello?’ She noticed the quaver in her voice and tried again, injecting a bit more certainty into the call. ‘Hello?’

  After a few moments, the door to the caravan slowly opened. The woman, once again wearing dungarees and a brightly coloured shirt, poked her head out and didn’t seem fazed to be disturbed. In fact, she greeted Sam quite neutrally. ‘Come in, I’ve been expecting you,’ she called.

  The words should have been welcoming but given the context Sam was alarmed. She knew she could still retreat but the same feeling of recklessness that had got her this far propelled her further forward. She tried to use this sense of abandonment to approach the caravan door confidently, but the coppiced hazel appeared to be impenetrable and having tried one possible entrance and then another she faltered. From the other side of the dense young trees, the woman took a step towards Sam and, using her stick in a sweeping motion, she pushed a cluster of young boughs to one side. Sam could see the path now and stepped through, embarrassed that she’d found the simple act of negotiating a path through undergrowth so difficult. Having made it into the sanctum of the clearing, she felt she needed to greet her host with a handshake or a hug but whilst deciding which, she realised that her companion had already moved ahead into the caravan.

  Sam took a deep breath and followed her up the rotting steps, and gasped.

  There were many versions of the interior of the caravan she’d run through in her head. She’d imagined abject poverty, squalor and dirt or worse – but nothing had prepared her for this.

  At one end of the caravan was a small double bed, made up with a duvet in crisp white linen, four big comfortable pillows and a camel-coloured cashmere blanket folded neatly at the bottom. At the other end of the caravan was a small kitchen, with a hob, a small fridge and a couple of good quality units on the counter. A Nespresso machine sat next to a Dualit toaster.

  In the space between the bed and the kitchen there was a very small table with a comfortable chair on either side. The table was covered with a very good quality linen tablecloth and on the middle of the table sat a delicate porcelain jug holding a spray of wildflowers. On either side of the caravan were bookshelves which held leather notebooks of some sort, with delicately inked roman numerals on the spines.

  The woman pulled out a chair from the small table.

  Sam was spellbound and speechless. She looked around, trying to take it all in and was aware that whilst she would like to set her face in a look of polite interest, she was probably gaping. She was conscious, too, of her racing heart and dry mouth, and wondered if either were obvious to her host. She knew neither would permit her to speak for a while. She wondered if she could still flee but she felt light-headed.

  She wanted to introduce herself politely but stammered, instead, ‘Who are you?’ which she knew sounded wrong, but she felt incapable of correcting herself.

  ‘I am Diana,’ the woman replied, solemnly. ‘Goddess of the hunt, the moon and nature. I am sister of Apollo, daughter of Jupiter and Latino, wife to no man, maiden for all women.’

  Sam swallowed noisily but before she could process any of this information, Diana broke the uncomfortable silence by roaring with laughter. ‘I’m sorry. That was mean. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Let’s start again. I’m Diana. Shall we leave it at that?’

  Sam said quietly, ‘Sam.’ She attempted a smile and looked at Diana apologetically as she sat down at the table opposite her. ‘This is not what I expected,’ she said.

  Diana looked crestfallen, the previous light in her face vanishing as she leant heavily on the table between them. ‘I know,’ she said sadly. ‘I let myself down. I try so hard to rid myself of all material comfort, but it really is much harder than you think. I’m in constant conflict with my flaws.’

  Sam was listening to Diana but she continued to look all around her, absorbing as much detail as she could. However hard she tried, she couldn’t reconcile it with the deteriorating exterior shell of the caravan. The space was dry and warm. But more strikingly it was immaculate and smelt so deliciously clean, but not the acrid clean of cleaning products, more, Sam imagined, like the dressing room of a wealthy and successful actress. Sam could detect Chanel No. 5 and talcum powder but there were other opulent scents she couldn’t place.

  ‘It’s just so lovely. I think I could live here.’

  Diana looked around as if trying to see her home through her visitor’s eyes. ‘Oh, I think anyone could live here. It’s all about deciding what you absolutely can’t live without. For me, it’s my bed linen. I blame my circulation which is shocking, not my willpower which is really quite strong. I get terribly cold in the winter. But that duvet keeps me gloriously warm regardless. It’s my den. I feel like a bear hibernating when I climb under it.’

  Sam eyed the kitchen fittings. It was all very beautifully designed. Thinking of Anne’s warning, she wondered if the expensive toaster and coffee machine were stolen and then felt immediately ashamed.

  Diana saw her looking at the coffee machine. ‘I’ll make you a coffee, shall I? Decaf or fully leaded?’

  Sam, who had braced herself for something made of mushrooms or acorns, replied with a more confident ‘whatever you’re having’, and the small space in the caravan quickly smelt of rich, dark espresso.

  Sam was still looking around, narrating the experience in her own head, desperate not to miss a
single detail. Eventually she asked the one question that she felt had to be asked. ‘What are you doing here exactly?’

  ‘Just living,’ said Diana, taking a sip of coffee and smiling back at Sam quite contentedly.

  ‘But in a caravan? On your own? In the middle of the woods? That’s not usual. That’s much more than just living.’

  ‘Oh, I rather hoped it was less not more. I spent a few years – decades even – racing through life in heavy shoes. I’m trying to tiptoe for a while.’

  Sam looked around her, at the pristine bedding, at the small but deliberate comforts and the leather-bound volumes on the shelf.

  ‘And how do you spend your time?’ she wondered, out loud.

  Diana smiled warmly. ‘With research. Let me show you.’

  She pulled down the first of the leather-bound notebooks and flicked proudly through it before handing it over to Sam. The book was over an inch thick and must have had a couple of hundred pages of creamy smooth paper inside. Occasionally there were small drawings in ink, but the majority of the pages were filled entirely with even-handed writing. Sam absorbed the book as a single entity and then began to look at occasional pages, pulling out words and phrases. Each entry was dated, and each page noted sightings of animals and birds, plants and flowers, with carefully scribed names given both in their popular and Latin forms. Periodically, numbers accompanied the words.

  ‘These are just beautiful.’ Sam stood up and pulled another volume off the shelf.

  ‘Careful,’ said Diana, reaching towards Sam as if to stop her. ‘Some have flowers pressed inside.’

  Sam handled the book assiduously and Diana relaxed again. Gingerly, Sam opened the diary and read a couple of entries to herself. ‘These are so lovely, what an astonishing record.’

  Diana smiled gratefully. ‘I call it my research, but it’s not really research, as such. Just observations. Nothing more than nature notes. But I like to think that somebody with a more scientific brain might be able to analyse these and establish the patterns from year to year. Prove my assumptions if you like. I plan to continue,’ said Diana, scanning the volumes proudly with her eyes. ‘When these shelves are full I will move them to storage and then will simply carry on. I plan to document every day of my life here.’

  Sam put the notebook back and carefully took down another, opening it on the table in front of her and turning the pages over, admiring the commitment as much as the content. ‘Are you hoping to prove something specific? What are the assumptions you’ve made?’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Diana, as if she had thought about this a lot but hadn’t had cause to speak it out loud for a while. ‘I think I lived before in a world where I trusted other people to use their brains to understand and solve these great big environmental problems. I never really felt the problem was on my desk, either literally or figuratively. But when you live with your nose to the ground, as I do now, and you feel the impact of decline everywhere you look, you realise the problem is very much your own to solve. If I don’t notice and record these things, who else will?’ Diana paused and said, with a dismissive wave of her hand, ‘Of course, the problem is always money.’

  Sam had been absorbed by the small detail of the caravan, the comfort of it all, but of course, she reminded herself, Diana must be living in poverty. She asked kindly, ‘Yours? Your lack of money for your research?’

  ‘No, not mine,’ said Diana a little impatiently. ‘I have all I need for my own research – it costs nothing to notice and to note. I’m talking globally. And it’s not a lack, it’s a misdirection. There’s plenty of money for research, but the money tends to be spent on those things that improve efficiencies or are capable of making money in their own right. The things I study are more whimsical, but I fear there’s very little money in whimsy.’

  Diana thought for a while, and her gaze seemed to reach beyond Sam, beyond the confines of the caravan, beyond the woodland even. ‘Take orchids, for instance. If the lady orchid or the lizard orchid disappears for ever, does it actually matter? If the cost of improved yields, more mouths fed, cheaper food on the table is the disappearance of a couple of species that, at best produce a few flowers per hectare within a rarefied landscape each year, that – let’s face it – only a handful of people really get the benefit of looking at, then that is probably a price most people are prepared to pay. And we all want our farmers to stay in business, don’t we? We need our farmers to be efficient, to make enough money from their land to keep farming, don’t we? And if a farmer, whose meadowland has been grazed for livestock for centuries finds himself with cattle at risk of TB or the supermarkets are offering him less for milk than the cost of production, can we blame him for prioritising those immediate concerns ahead of maintaining the biodiversity of his meadow for the good of me and you? So we must support the research that gives every possible chance of that farmer thriving. And yet, and yet…’

  Her voice trailed off and she reached for yet another volume and flicked it open. ‘I care about these guys more and more.’ She showed Sam a picture of a flower, a graceful, characterful plant with flowers clustered at the top of its elegant stem.

  ‘Well, it’s certainly very pretty.’

  ‘But I can’t do justice to it. In real life each of the flowers looks like a tiny lady in a pink crinoline ballgown. Here, you see, are her slim arms, and here’s her head, composed of sepals and petals. But even if my pen could capture her luxurious hair and graceful posture, I couldn’t capture her scent.’

  Diana traced her finger over the pen lines and smiled indulgently, the smile of the proud mother of a wayward but brilliant teenager. ‘She’s elegant but she’s mighty obstreperous too. You can’t force her to make an appearance, you can simply suggest she might want to drop in. And even then, the invitation has to be absolutely right: subtle, never overt. She’ll visit fresh ground that has recently been cleared of scrub. But she won’t appear if you watch and wait, she likes you to turn your back and then she might just deign to visit. She’s both belle and bellicose. I’m learning her ways, though I’d never take a visitation for granted. If you’re very lucky, I might be able to introduce you. But,’ said Diana, changing her tone abruptly from dulcet to forceful, ‘you’ll have to behave yourself.’

  ‘Behave myself?’ asked Sam, alarmed. She had been so transfixed by the drawing and by Diana’s description of this prima ballerina she hadn’t quite remembered the reason she’d come to visit in the first place.

  ‘Well, you need to be a little less angry perhaps? I’m not sure she’d take kindly to being introduced to someone who habitually vents her fury on nature.’

  ‘Angry? Me?’ said Sam, quite indignant.

  ‘Yes, you! The first time I met you, you were throwing pine cones at me and calling me all sorts of names.’

  ‘But that wasn’t directed at you, I didn’t even know you were there!’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t directed at me. How on earth could it be directed at me when you had never met me? Though you’d be surprised by the leaps people make. But you were angry nevertheless and angry people don’t tend to be people who care about wild orchids. Besides, if you’re going to hurl insults into the woods, I recommend you wait for a really windy night. That feels marvellous, the trees suck up your words, spin them into a blustering vortex and fling them to the heavens. That’s the right way to dispel anger.’

  ‘Actually, that sounds great. Perhaps I’ll try it,’ said Sam, liking the image.

  ‘You should. It’s much more effective. If you shout at a tree on a calm day, the insults will just bounce right back at you.’ Diana sounded pensive and very much as if she were talking from experience but she quickly shook her head and continued.

  ‘Our relationship with nature is precarious. It’s a very delicate thing. People far more brilliant than me have been looking at these issues since time immemorial. The task has been to expand the earth’s production to feed seven billion people and it’s pretty astonishing that this has been achieved.
OK, granted, there are people going hungry all over the world, but that’s not a food production issue, we throw away a third of everything we produce. I imagine the same clever people who have managed so capably to increase our planet’s capacity will now turn their attention to infrastructure and spend a few generations getting food grown where it’s actually needed. That way, we don’t have to plunder the earth’s core in pursuit of oil, just so we can move the food around, which just exacerbates the problem. You and I can both do the maths, if the population is yet to expand to nine billion, we are already producing enough food to feed those extra mouths. But, my fear is that we are barking up the wrong tree. So much money is being ploughed into futuristic solutions, but I don’t believe technology is the answer, I think attitude is the answer. I believe we need to think smaller, not bigger. We need to protect our pollinators, look after our immediate environment, whatever small bit we’ve been allocated, and we all need to learn to tiptoe through life.’

  Diana stood up again and reached for another notebook, flicking through the pages until she found another entry. She pressed the book open and put it on the table between them. The ink drawing showed a bird on top of a post. She carried on talking, ‘The gradual decline and eventual extinction of animals tells a very relatable story. We can look at their eyes and see their souls and we can mourn for them as we mourn for ourselves. A picture of a female goshawk tearing some flesh into smaller pieces to feed her chicks, or the male coming back from hunting to drop off a kill for the female and chicks to share, well, those are scenes that can move us. You’d have to be a philistine not to understand with alarm that we must protect these things as we must protect ourselves. We see families fighting for survival and we feel their struggle, regardless of the species.’

  She sighed heavily. ‘But wildflowers disappearing? They don’t really pull on our heartstrings in quite the same way. Once this whole landscape would have been full of hay meadows, but they are few and far between now. They are no longer part of the fabric of our countryside and within my lifetime, flowers that were once considered weeds are now extinct to all intents and purposes. Our industrial grassland is not much better than concrete. But who mourns the cornflowers? Not the farmers, it’s not their job. For a farmer these weeds reduce the palatability of his grassland for cattle or reduce his cereal yield. But for the pollinators and the birds, those wildflowers are a life source.’