Growing Season

by Seni Glaister

  When she was satisfied she’d done a thorough job, she assembled a number of bird feeders around the fence line.

  ‘That will keep you off my lawn, you little beauties,’ she said, hanging the last one.

  Once she had finished, she admired her work. There was nothing to see but she felt the most enormous sense of achievement, as if she had just materially altered nature itself. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, in part to allow herself to imagine the fruits of her labour but also to cast some sort of spell that she felt entirely unable to articulate. ‘Come on!’ she said, eventually, to the lawn in general, before going into the house to pay it a fraction of the attention she’d just paid her garden.

  Chapter 32

  Danny and Sam had gone to bed and were lying in the dark, chatting quietly. ‘You’re not lonely here, or bored?’ Danny asked Sam.

  ‘No, I’m happy, really. I’ve got loads to do in the garden and I’ve started to make some friends…’

  Danny sounded pleased and a little relieved. ‘Great! I’m not surprised, you’re such a social thing. Who have you befriended, our neighbours?’ he carried on, without waiting for an answer, but sounding a little less delighted as the logical conclusion of this new reality occurred to him. ‘Oh. I don’t have to make friends too, do I?’

  ‘Heavens, no. It will be a while before we find ourselves on the dinner party circuit.’

  ‘Phew,’ said Danny into the darkness above him.

  ‘Don’t worry. I know that’s not your scene, but I’m not actually convinced it is my scene either, so we can remain in our rather splendid and completely untested isolation for a while longer if you’d like.’

  ‘It is your scene, sweet pea, but you know it’s not mine and you’re an absolute angel not to make me do it. That’s love, that is, not dragging your anti-social husband out to meet your friends.’

  Sam tutted dismissively. ‘You’re totally social, Danny, you just have a huge and busy network as part of your job and that completely fulfils you. I know that socialising is the last thing you want to think about when you get home and I respect that.’

  Danny flushed guiltily in the dark. ‘I appreciate it, I really do. But I don’t want you to suffer from loneliness here, so I am glad you’re meeting people, I really am. So, who are these new friends of yours?’

  Sam remained silent for a long time before answering. ‘Well, there’s Hattie, she lives just down the lane in the small house with the lean-to garage.’

  Danny squinted trying to imagine it.

  ‘The one with the “unkempt” front garden?’ Sam prompted.

  ‘Oh, that one. Yes, I shudder every time I pass it.’

  ‘Hattie’s fine, just a bit overwhelmed, I think. She’s got three small children and I don’t think she gets any help from her husband.’

  ‘Well, nice she’s got a friend in the lane who can empathise.’

  ‘Hardly!’ said Sam, squeezing his hand. ‘You do so much for me. The obsessive-compulsive partner is the best catch,’ she said, glibly.

  Danny squeezed her hand back and asked, quietly, fearing a truthful answer, ‘Do you think I have a disorder?’

  ‘No, I was using the term lightly and probably a bit disrespectfully. But still, you like a tidy kitchen and you’re pretty handy with a hoover.’

  ‘And I’m going to keep the garden in check,’ he added, hopefully.

  ‘Hmmm,’ Sam said, worried that any other words or noise might sound like consent.

  ‘Who else? Hattie with her messy garden. Are there others?’

  ‘There’s Anne. She’s a bit of a straight-laced thing. All angles and edges. She’s trying to rope me into all sorts of volunteering.’

  ‘Might you volunteer?’

  ‘Sure. Maybe,’ Sam said, non-committally and to avoid further scrutiny from her husband or, worse, from within her own conscience, she raced on. ‘And then there’s Diana.’

  As she spoke the name, Sam flushed. Saying ‘Diana’ out loud with such casual indifference felt like a betrayal. She wanted to share Diana with Danny one day but she wasn’t quite ready yet. Besides, it had occurred to her lately she had no concrete proof that Diana was even real. If she only existed in Sam’s mind, like some alter-mother, there to fill the gaps in a conversation she needed, then talking about her out loud might make her disappear. She wasn’t ready for that, either.

  ‘Does she live in the lane too?’ asked Danny, trying to place their neighbours to help give them form.

  ‘No. The other side, beyond the wood,’ said Sam vaguely.

  ‘Is she your type?’

  ‘Gosh, what’s my type? If I have a type, then perhaps yes, she’s the most like me of all of them I think. She’s sort of earthy.’

  ‘I don’t think of you as earthy, I think of you as the high-achieving career girl type.’

  Sam was shocked. ‘Do you, still? Even now? I mean, I’m here, moping around in the countryside, not having a job, let alone a career. I don’t even know if I’ve got it in me anymore.’

  This time Danny squeezed Sam’s hand. ‘Of course you’ve got it in you. You’re the cleverest person I know, you’re hard working, you’re lovely and you’re resilient.’

  Sam flinched a little, unable to recognise herself in his description, and terrified at the idea of going back to work.

  ‘Well, I’m… I am working on something…’

  ‘What sort of something?’

  ‘I’m writing.’

  Danny sat up and put the light on and looked at his wife with a broad smile on his face. ‘Oh Sam, I’m so pleased! That’s just the best news, really. You’re so, so talented. What are you writing? Poetry, I hope, you always had such a gift.’

  Sam shrunk with guilt at her husband’s support. She thought with shame of the awful tripe she’d written at university, back in the days when she still believed she had something original to say. She cringed internally now at the audacity she must have had to share her pathetic little scribblings with anyone – let alone her boyfriend who she’d so wanted to impress. She felt the colour rising in her face as she remembered some of the most pretentious and excruciatingly flamboyant phrases as she tried to wrestle something meaningful from her oh-so-inexperienced world view.

  ‘Something a bit more long-form actually,’ she stammered, wishing she’d said nothing.

  ‘A novel? You’re writing a novel, aren’t you! Fantastic! You have my full support.’ Danny’s eyes shone with pride. ‘And what are you writing on?’

  ‘It’s early days.’

  ‘No, I mean what are you using to write? Your laptop?’ Danny shook his head, answering his own question. ‘That won’t be good enough. It’s too slow, it will crash. You need something better and you’ll need something with a much more up-to-date operating system so that you can live edit, and keep a version on The Cloud. I’m going to sort that out immediately. There’s not much I can do to help you, but that’s something I am entirely capable of.’

  ‘Oh champ, no, it’s too soon, let’s see how I get on.’

  ‘No, my wife, the author, will have the very best. No compromises for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Danny.’ Sam lay quietly while Danny turned off the light and settled down again. She flinched with embarrassment at her lie and wondered what he would feel if she knew how her writing betrayed him, the man who had been so indefatigable in his loyalty towards her. Sometimes she hated herself.

  ‘Night, sweet pea,’ he said softly beside her.

  ‘Night, champ,’ she replied, quietly.

  Chapter 33

  Sam and Diana were sitting in the caravan, either side of the small table. They had a number of Diana’s notebooks open in between them and had been leafing through the pages, chatting occasionally about the wildflowers depicted there while they waited for a shower to stop. The two women were growing comfortable with each other, as happy to sit in companionable silence as they were to talk.

  Sam turned the pages slowly before asking, carefully, �
�What about children? You mentioned having children in the accumulative phase of living? Isn’t that a bit odd? Wouldn’t most people argue that having children falls into the creative phase?’ Sam studied Diana as she answered.

  ‘Well, I don’t think so. Anyone can have a child. Most manage it rather easily – it certainly doesn’t require much creativity. And people don’t seem to get better at it necessarily, you’re not better at producing children by child three or four or by number seventeen, are you? And it doesn’t make you special. It’s just the job of the body, assuming your body is geared up for it. It’s just birth, isn’t it? And we’ve already agreed that Birth isn’t a phase, it’s just a step.’ Diana closed her eyes to think more deeply and then opened them again, fixing them on Sam. ‘The nurturing phase? Yes, that can be creative, but all you’re really tasked with is to ensure your children are conscious about living their own lives fully and independently of you. You want them to feel like they matter until they are old enough to know why they matter, with or without you. And then you’ll want them to navigate their own phases of life. You would want your child to expand, to accumulate the right things, to be creative but also to be sensible to their own Reflection, Reconciliation, Dissipation and Death. It would be a crying shame not to inspire them to do these things consciously. Those who live without conscience really are the scourge of the planet.’

  Sam nodded, chewing the inside of her cheek. She was curious about Diana, but she knew it would be hypocritical to ask Diana if she had her own children and if so where they were in her life, so whilst the question nagged at her, desperate to be asked, she pulled herself back from its brink. This was the first time since she’d had her womb removed that she’d been able to have a conversation with another adult, other than Danny, without being drawn into the childlessness question herself, and whilst she was aware how liberating this could be, she was also beginning to see how compelling the question was and with that, she was beginning to develop a small amount of empathy for the many women who hadn’t been able to stop themselves asking.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Sam, cautiously.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Who influences you?’

  Diana looked puzzled. She threw her arms around her as if the broad encompassment of the caravan and the trees could answer her. ‘Have you listened to nothing I’ve told you?’

  ‘I believe I’ve listened to every word.’

  Diana sighed heavily. ‘Bringing you into my world might have been the most terrible decision I’ve ever made.’

  ‘No, no it wasn’t. Bringing me into your world was the best decision you’ve ever made,’ beseeched Sam earnestly, willing that to be true.

  Diana smiled at Sam warmly. ‘I have come to the woods to practise positive self-love. To disassociate myself from any idea that self-value must be defined by being viewed through the eyes of others.’

  ‘Rousseau again,’ said Sam, glad to be able to recognise the philosophy.

  ‘But here I am, vexing myself over my ability to mould and shape you, worrying that you view me in the way I want to be viewed. This goes against everything I’m trying to achieve.’

  ‘Not at all. You care nothing of what I think of you. You have never once given me an insight into who you are, why you matter, what you have achieved in your life before the woods. If you wanted to impress me, I bet you could, but you have never bothered.’

  ‘I wish I had that much power over my reason, Sam. The truth is, I fear, that there was nothing very impressive about my life before being here in the woods, that’s the real reason I won’t talk about it. And the truth, too, is that I am desperate to make an impression on you. I don’t think I would have invested the time in you otherwise. It’s very hard to move away from the pride that drives us. Perhaps as a species we’ve evolved beyond a point of no return. There is nothing I can do or achieve that doesn’t secretly beg for some sort of recognition or praise. Take my diaries, for example. I couldn’t wait to share them with you, to finally get some sort of external validation.’ Diana shook her head sadly.

  ‘Your diaries might have a bigger purpose, Diana. If they were to disappear with no trace, you’d be doing a great disservice to nature.’

  ‘Don’t flatter me, it’s unbecoming,’ said Diana sternly.

  ‘I understand what you’re trying to achieve here, Diana, and I understand that you don’t want to see yourself through the eyes of others. But, equally, I think, it is important to matter. That is why you talk to me. Because you want to save me. I want to matter too.’

  Diana recoiled a little, looking displeased. ‘I might be old enough to be your mother, but I don’t want to be a mother to you.’

  ‘That’s the last thing I want,’ said Sam, indignantly. ‘I don’t know what I want from you, except perhaps I’ve come to believe you can help me change direction. I want to follow a different path and I’m happy to have come to that realisation now, at my age, rather than in twenty or thirty years’ time. That’s a real gift you’ve given me. But sometimes…’ Sam hesitated.

  ‘Sometimes what?’ prompted Diana.

  ‘Sometimes I think you might exist only in my imagination. I have no real proof that you exist in any other realm and it all seems a bit convenient that you’re here in the woods, offering me guidance and help and not judging me but letting me work it all out for myself. I don’t know if you are real, or dreamt or some sort of shamanic spiritual guide, but whoever or whatever you are, you have made me feel like I matter. Me. Not the deranged woman trying to find an outlet for her internal rage, or not nice Sam, the wife of Danny, but me.’

  Diana pursed her lips and rocked her head from side to side, as though considering this theory seriously. ‘Mattering to somebody does matter. It’s true. And if you’ve found some comfort here in the woods, with me, I’m glad. But that somebody can be yourself, you know. Feeling like you matter is good enough.’ Sam waited patiently while Diana paused to frame her next thought.

  ‘Besides,’ Diana continued. ‘Rousseau was far too literal. He was right on many counts. Being able to value yourself only in terms of how you compare to others is destructive. Far more so today than in the 1700s. Wealth is amassed so quickly and so disproportionately these days, and so arbitrarily, that it can only leave the rest of humanity feeling inadequate. I made the right move, coming here, and valuing myself simply through my own ability to survive. But of course,’ she said, quickly, ‘Rousseau was wrong on many levels too.’

  Sam feared she was out of her depth but didn’t want to be discovered. She’d studied some philosophy at university and since Diana had first mentioned Rousseau she’d tried her hardest to explore the topic properly, but one of the books still remained unread on her bedside table and the other she’d read too quickly to assimilate. While she mentally filed through the words she’d read to find an appropriate response, she raised an eyebrow in a non-committal invitation for Diana to continue.

  ‘His insistence on the preservation of the patriarchy and the subordination of women,’ said Diana, patiently.

  ‘Of course,’ said Sam, quietly renewing her vow to continue with her studies and to stop leafing through illustrated books featuring wild meadows.

  ‘Rousseau considered that women must be constrained by modesty and shame. The idea that men are somehow unable to control their urges, and that women must be held accountable for distracting them seems barbaric. It was a laughable idea then but it’s a dangerous idea now, as men continue to rely on it to defend their own behaviour. But, if anything, his views on self-worth are almost more relevant today than in his own time.’

  Sam nodded in agreement before cautiously adding her own conclusion. ‘Sometimes I wonder if we’re regressing. My generation has taken external validation to a whole new level. I hate to imagine what Rousseau would have made of social media.’ Sam thought of her own dependence on the engagement she had with her readers.

  Diana looked at Sam sagely and dismissed her train of thought with a sympathetic
shrug. ‘That’s just not my battle, Sam, and I’m so glad it’s not because I just don’t think I’d have the energy for it. You’re testing Rousseau’s theories to beyond their very furthest imagined boundaries. The idea that even the simplest of everyday actions have no value if they are not shared broadly and endorsed widely exceeds the scope of his philosophy.’ Diana blinked slowly at the realisation and Sam now felt guilty of narcissism not at an individual level, but at a societal level. She was an integral part of the ruination of a generation. Diana, however, was not blaming her, but instead distancing herself from the inevitable conclusion. ‘I’ve picked my fights, I’ve fought a principled fight, I’ve sacrificed myself to a cause. But this solitary battle, the one I’m waging here, is the only fight I have left in me. You might believe I am a coward and you might interpret my withdrawal as retreat. But it’s not. I’ve just picked a battle I believe I might win.’

  Sam thought about this. She’d faced a battle or two herself and she’d definitely retreated. Rather than assemble an army, she’d simply turned and run for the hills. And like Diana, she’d decided to maintain her distance from her detractors. But Diana had found a crusade and Sam hadn’t.

  ‘The rain’s stopping,’ said Diana, cocking her head to tilt an ear towards the roof of the caravan. ‘Haven’t you got a garden to grow?’

  Sam looked at Diana intently as if the older woman had all the answers for her, even to questions she hadn’t yet asked.

  ‘I have,’ she said, slowly. ‘I’ve got a battle to fight too.’ She closed the book in front of her, wriggled her way into her anorak and headed back to Broome Cottage.

  Chapter 34

  Danny and Sam were in the kitchen. Sam was sitting at the table with her book and Danny was standing at the sink, washing up. Sam was aware of Danny glancing out of the window towards the garden, so she grasped the opportunity to raise the issue of the lawn before he did.

  ‘I’m thinking of growing it,’ she said boldly, congratulating herself for taking a bucket of unspoken words and tipping them out on to the table between them.