‘A Marxist?’ Sam suppressed a laugh. ‘No, I was thinking nothing of the sort. I was thinking a bit more, well, spiritually I suppose. You’re not a witch, are you?’ said Sam. It was as much a statement as a question and there was a trace of disappointment in her voice as she acknowledged this truth for the first time.
Diana laughed loudly and drained her cup. ‘I am most certainly not a witch. Forgive me, I rather thought you were asking me about my economic leanings, I am neither a Marxist nor a witch. Though frankly I’d rather be either of those things than the neo-classicist I once was.’
Diana looked down at Sam. ‘Whatever, or whoever, gave you the idea I was a witch?’
‘That’s what they say in my road. My neighbours. Apparently, they don’t let their children into the woods because a witch lives in a hovel.’
‘Goodness me. Well, would you mind doing me a favour and not mentioning I invited you here. I’d be quite happy to let them carry on thinking that for a bit longer. I’m more than happy if their children don’t play in the woods, they’ll only disturb my birds and, besides, I don’t much care for the villagers. Anyway, they will all have much more to worry about than mere witchcraft by the time I’ve finished with them,’ she said, a little mysteriously and, Sam thought, betraying a trace of threat too.
Sam remembered her recent introductions to her village through Anne and Hattie. ‘So, it’s all very well you wanting to discard society, but your job is made much harder if society refuses to ignore you, isn’t it? I just don’t think they’re going to let you be.’
‘Ha! Yes, I’m aware. I think they are quite obsessed with me, locally at any rate. I’ve been waiting for them to tire of me, but it’s only a matter of time before somebody else is more interesting than a woman in the woods.’ Diana eyed her guest with renewed interest. ‘Perhaps you? You’re a bit of an oddity, aren’t you? Perhaps you could distract them. You might well live in a house, but something tells me you’ll be fascinating to the village.’
‘Fascinating? That actually sounds quite appealing, I don’t think I’ve ever been fascinating to anybody.’
‘Be careful what you wish for. I didn’t mean fascinating in a good way. I meant in a curious, not-quite-our-type way,’ said Diana, with no trace of a smile. ‘Now, leave me be. I’ve got an extremely busy day ahead and you’ve already taken up a quite enough of it.’
Sam rose to her feet and brushed the woodland debris from her jeans. She tipped the dregs of her tea out on to the ground and handed the empty tin cup back to Diana with a grateful smile of thanks. For a very long time, Sam had wanted to disappear, but suddenly the thought of being fascinating held a surprising attraction. She didn’t feel admonished, she felt accepted and a glow of happiness accompanied her all the way home.
Sam was oblivious to the groundswell of change all around her. Even as she walked the bluebells were pushing up their green leaves, the advance guard of foliage that laid a welcome mat out for the flowers to follow. A few green shoots had already appeared, cautiously raising their tips to check that winter had left for good and now, confidently, the others were following, quickly replacing all remnants of brown woodland floor with a fresh new look for spring.
Chapter 26
The delivery had arrived mid-morning, timed to coincide with the weekend when Danny would be there to receive it. He had been pacing up and down, looking out of the window, anxious not to miss a moment of its entry into his life. Sam was entertained by his excitement but was also aware of a sombre anxiety humming in the milieu of her mind, wondering if his proprietorial stance signalled some unnamed danger she needed to guard against. As if to illustrate her fear, Sam could hear the reverse warning alarm beeping as the flatbed truck inched backwards into her drive.
The lawnmower was strapped on to the rear of an improbably large vehicle. Had Danny picked it up from the garden centre, Sam now realised, there was no way he would have been able to fit it into the car. From her view at the front door, the lawnmower seemed very large.
‘It’s very big, Danny.’
‘She’s a monster!’ he agreed proudly. He felt Sam stiffen beside him and quickly attempted to justify his decision which now, looking at it in the context of his driveway, seemed disproportionate. ‘You’d actually be surprised by the range, Sam, and by the complexity of the various attributes. There were many appropriate models I could have chosen, so I had to do some extensive research but I’m confident I got the right one for the job.
‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she!’ He looked at it with admiration as it was pulled slowly backwards down a metal ramp. ‘It doesn’t just cut, it mulches and collects and see those high rear wheels? They will help with manoeuvrability. It’s not a difficult machine to handle, thanks to the ball bearing wheels, which will make for pretty smooth rolling, and they’re much more durable too. It’s got a powerful engine, so it really won’t need much muscle and you can cut the grass at four different heights.’ He looked on proudly as the driver of the truck lifted the ramps and loaded them back on to the flatbed. Sam smiled indulgently but felt something rip at her insides as she looked at the ferocity of the machine.
Danny signed the delivery note with a flourish and folded his copy of the paperwork carefully into his pocket before proudly pushing the mower up the garden path. Sam watched in despair as Danny crouched over it. She knew the grass needed cutting. The lines marking out the turf squares like tiles in a bathroom had all but disappeared. While Danny read the instruction manual, working fastidiously through the book and familiarising himself with each feature by referring to the numbered diagram on a pull-out flap, Sam studied the lawn. New grass was weaving its way over and through the cracks, knitting it together and finding its own compulsion to grow.
Sam dropped to her knees. It was still cool, but it was early May now and she was happy enough in jeans and a T-shirt. She sat and looked at the grass, studying it carefully. It wasn’t just grass, there were tiny white flower heads trying to make their way to fruition. Clover perhaps, Sam mused. She stroked the green, loving its resilience as it bounced back to full height as soon as her hand left it. It didn’t mind being trampled on, it didn’t mind being rolled on. It took whatever you gave it. But it wouldn’t like being cut.
Sam studied the grass further. There were all sorts of different plants racing away ahead of the grass. It was punctuated with the occasional single blade that had risen a good ten centimetres above the grass height, and each of these single strands supported a tight knitted crown, the suppressed bud of something yet to flourish. Sam shuffled forwards on her knees from bud to bud, finding one that was beginning to reveal the bright yellow promise of the flower to come. She looked at the leaves beneath each strand and now recognised dandelions and realised that within a day or two her lawn would be a little solar system of bright colour. She called out to Danny.
‘We could let it grow a bit longer, Danny. We don’t have to cut it just yet.’
He frowned, but perhaps at the lawnmower rather than at her suggestion. ‘That’s not practical.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it will quickly get out of hand. And the longer you leave it, the harder it is to keep under control. Look at it already!’
‘I quite like it this length,’ Sam said with a wan smile, trying not to let desperation creep into her voice which she knew would only alarm Danny.
‘That’s definitely not the point of a lawn. A perfectly mown lawn is symbolic. Our lawns represent us – both our desires and our ability to keep our desires under control.’ Danny smiled broadly at Sam, but she wasn’t sure if he was joking. She wondered why anyone would want to keep their desires under control.
‘Oh,’ she said, neutrally.
‘People’s lawns aren’t just an extension of their homes, they’re an extension of themselves, particularly in England. We love our lawns, we must treat them with respect. Besides, if we let our lawn become unruly our neighbours will judge us, they’ll run us out of the county.’
‘But why do we love our lawns?’ She felt petulant. She directed the question at Danny but continued to stroke the grass around her, knowing her own answer to that question but keen to hear his.
‘Because we work hard to earn them. And once we’ve earned them we like to sit on them, to play on them, to kick a ball around them. But mostly, we just like to admire them. We’re proud of them. They’re a mark of our success.’
Sam nodded, trying to understand. ‘But if we let it grow just a bit longer we could let the clover grow for the bees…’
Danny laughed as he filled the mower with petrol. ‘I don’t think our tiny patch is going to save the bees, but I love you even more for trying.’
‘But if everyone…’
‘Not everyone is. You can’t singlehandedly save the planet and, quite frankly, you have even less chance of overturning hundreds of years of British culture. For years, men have been rushing home to cut the grass. It’s a rite of passage. You’ve earned your lawn, you get to keep it under control.’
The word hung in the air between them. That was it, wasn’t it? Sam thought. It’s just a control thing.
Danny put the cap back on the petrol tank and yanked the starter rope. The lawnmower roared to life and quickly spluttered back to inertia again. Twice more he tugged at the rope until the motor caught convincingly and the engine began to idle happily. Danny released the throttle and the machine jumped forward, powered by its engine, not his muscles. He set off in a slow deliberate line.
Sam watched him. This would make him happy, she mused, and she knew it was important to give him a role to play in the garden. She should give him this. The lawn could be his project, it would suit his temperament, and she, in the meantime, would get going with the planting and the long-term vision, which would suit hers. But as she watched him make a careful turn and come back towards her, she felt a sense of regret. That had been her grass. He didn’t need the grass, she did. She felt sullen and spoilt and his frown of concentration irritated her. What right does he have, she thought, to saunter off to London all week and then come home to cut my grass?
She paced, absent-mindedly pulling up small weeds from the flowerbeds between her thumb and finger but she still felt aggrieved. He waved happily to her at the next turn, encouraging her to admire his work (so far, three unwavering lines, the prized stripes of contrast showing his steady hand to full effect) but she found it hard to swallow her disappointment in him. This wasn’t gardening, this felt like the opposite.
After another couple of minutes, Danny waved again, with five stripes now under his belt. She waved back and smiled. She pulled at the weeds, accelerating her progress by alternating between her left and right hand, her technique improving as she moved along the bed.
The lawnmower continued to roar.
The noise of it drowned out any hope of tranquillity. When Danny next made a turn away from her, she left the garden and walked with purpose towards the woods and then immediately towards the caravan.
Chapter 27
After the roar of the lawnmower, the shady woods seemed hallowed and Diana, who was removing her own weeds steadily with a hoe, seemed to be in the midst of worship.
She stopped and looked at Sam without a greeting.
‘Can I help?’ asked Sam quietly.
‘If you like. I’m weeding.’
Sam dropped down to her knees beside the plants, trying to identify the patterns that distinguished the growth that Diana was cultivating and the plants she was busy removing.
‘It’s so hard to tell everything apart at this stage. How do you know which ones are good and which are bad?’
‘I’ve planted these brassicas in a couple of long rows,’ Diana answered, indicating the seedlings with the edge of her hoe. ‘They’re both paler and more glossy than the weeds around them. Take everything else out, roots and all if you can.’ Diana bent down and plucked a weed out of the loose soil to demonstrate.
‘So this really is gardening?’ It was no different to the gardening she’d been doing at home and she now felt foolish.
‘Yes. This is pretty much all there is to it.’
‘I feel let down. Gardening is simply the constant eradication of small plants, all that burgeoning growth, just trying to find its own way in life. It’s the opposite of what I expected, it’s all so much more destructive.’
Diana carried on hoeing, without agreeing or disagreeing.
‘And it must be subjective, too. What’s good and what’s bad. Why should we get to decide which ones should live or die?’
Diana leant on her hoe, looking down at the younger woman.
‘When you’re gardener, you’re lord and master. You plant what you want and in order to give everything a chance of thriving, you get rid of everything else. It’s all a battle for light, for food, for space to put out your roots. There’s not much more mystery to it than that.’
‘Does it make you feel powerful?’ asked Sam. The tiny plants showing growth seemed very frail in the context of the giant trees all around her.
‘Well, I had never considered it in those terms, but I find the act of growing things very helpful.’
‘But what about these guys?’ said Sam, gesturing to the growing pyre of wilting weeds beside her. Their limpness made Sam sad.
‘Those are simply not your concern.’
Sam sighed. ‘I want to garden but I don’t think I’m quite ready for it. For all the ruthless killing required. It all feels a bit discriminatory to me.’
‘What are you hoping to grow?’
‘It doesn’t really matter. I just want to grow something, give it a chance to get going. That would feel like a bit of an accomplishment at the moment. I spend too much time engaged in negative activity and I need a bit of displacement. I know it probably sounds silly, but I was really getting a bit attached to the grass, and now my husband is cutting it, it makes me feel so sad. I liked it.’
To Sam’s surprise, Diana didn’t blanch at the mention of a husband. Nor did she ask any of the questions Sam had come to expect when people discovered she was married – there was no ‘what does he do?’, no ‘how long have you been married?’, and certainly no ‘Oh – and do you have children?’
Instead, Diana just continued to look calmly into her face, and asked, ‘How big is your patch?’
Sam looked around her, squinting, trying to imagine how big her garden was. ‘I think maybe from that that beech to the other big beech in length? And maybe half as much in width?’
‘Oh, small,’ said Diana, sounding rather underwhelmed.
‘Big enough for me. I had a couple of windowboxes below the level of the pavement in my old flat, so it’s like Richmond Park as far as I’m concerned.’
‘And is it a nice sunny spot?’ Diana asked, watching the dappled light play with the ground at her feet.
‘Pretty much, it gets sun for much of the afternoon certainly.’
‘Well, you can probably grow anything you want.’ Diana eyed Sam critically. ‘You don’t sound very ambitious though.’ Diana carried on with her task as if Sam’s lack of ambition might be incurable.
Sam stopped weeding to protest. ‘I am, I am. It’s just, it’s mostly lawn and that will now need cutting all the time. That’s all I seem capable of. I watch the weeds grow and then pull them out. I watch the grass grow then we cut it. It all feels futile.’
‘Then why not just let the grass grow?’ said Diana, with a disinterest that Sam felt quite unable to ignore. She had begun to pull at the weeds half-heartedly again but on hearing Diana’s question, she suddenly became excited. ‘Could I do that?’
‘Of course. Long grass is glorious and it’s much better than short grass for your insect life. You’ll attract all sorts of visitors. Butterflies and bees, even crickets in these parts. And they in turn will bring in the birds.’
‘I thought the bees would like the clover but, yes of course, longer grass could be a haven for all sorts of things.’ Sam smiled, imagi
ning the possibilities.
‘People tend to cut their grass far too short these days anyway. If everyone allowed their grass to grow by just a couple of inches we could make a big difference to some of the damage we’ve done on this planet of ours. And when there’s a drought, short grass will scorch and die, so it’s prudent to let it get a bit longer if you can. But we’re obsessed with control. We love our lawns.’
‘That’s what my husband said,’ agreed Sam, thinking of Danny. ‘What would it look like, if I let it grow?’
‘I’m afraid you’ll learn that growing grass isn’t entirely passive. You won’t be able to leave it be, it’s not quite as simple as that. Nature fights fiercely and plants will use every trick they can to establish themselves at the expense of others and it can be pretty resourceful. Some things are better at naturalising themselves, so you can’t just ignore it, or you’d quickly end up with a mess of nettles, thistles and dandelions. They all have their place but that’s probably not what you’re after. But if you manage it carefully and put in a bit of thought and effort, you could grow a meadow in miniature. It would be pretty and would provide not just colour but plenty of movement. A bit of long grass is gorgeous to look at when the wind picks up. It would take a while to get a good mix of wildflowers dispersed though they’d come eventually. You could hurry it along by adding some wildflower seed. That would be nice. You’ll attract a few more varieties of insect life that way. Perhaps that’s the answer while you get to know your garden.’
Sam tried to imagine it. She looked back at the careful rows Diana had planted. ‘What are you growing here?’
‘All sorts. Cabbage and broccoli for the winter. You’d be surprised what you can get away with with a bit of care and attention. I’ve had success with kale and kohlrabi, spinach and celery.’
She looked around her at the shielded clearing in the copse, admiring the small healthy beds Diana had coaxed from the earth.
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