Growing Season

by Seni Glaister

  Danny turned and looked at her carefully. ‘You know I love you whatever you do with it, don’t you?’

  She grinned, relieved. ‘Really? I thought you might put up an argument!’

  ‘Me? Pick a fight over how you wear your hair? Does that sound like me?’

  ‘Oh. You misunderstood.’ She turned her book upside down on the table, immediately deflated not to have won her battle after the false promise of an easy victory. ‘Not my hair. Though, actually, I might,’ she said, patting it and wondering if she should. ‘No, I meant the lawn. I’m thinking of letting it grow a bit longer.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Danny in an attempt to sound non-committal. He paused before adding, ‘That sounds a little risky to me.’ He was immediately concerned but was trying valiantly to retain a degree of calm so as not to alarm his wife. He came and stood behind her, stroking her hair, remembering it when it was longer, when they’d first met.

  ‘Risky how?’ Sam asked, tipping her head back to look up at him.

  ‘The weeds might get a foothold.’ He leant down and kissed Sam’s forehead before looking towards the window and imagining the horrors awaiting him. ‘We need to keep on top of things. We can’t take our eye off the ball for one moment. What about the bindweed for instance? Have you even considered the bindweed?’

  ‘We haven’t got any.’

  Danny squeezed Sam’s shoulders and went back to the window, running his hand through his own hair anxiously. ‘You don’t know that for sure. Bindweed can penetrate to a depth of five metres. It could be burrowing underground at this very moment and you wouldn’t know it. And once a shoot appears it can spread a couple of metres in just one growing season. We might not have any now, but if we drop our guard for a day we could soon be smothered.’

  Sam sighed patiently. ‘Well. We haven’t got any. I’m certain of it. But I’ll keep my eyes peeled.’

  ‘And ground elder…’ suggested Danny.

  ‘What about ground elder? What on earth do you even know about ground elder?’

  ‘I know enough about ground elder to know we don’t want it anywhere near us. It’s irrelevant if we have it here at Broome Cottage. You really need to do a thorough check of all the gardens locally to see if we are at risk. Have you inspected the gardens in the rest of the lane? Take your friend’s house further down towards the road with the very unkept front lawn. If that’s the bit they let their neighbours see, I hate to think what horrors they might be hiding in the back. Ground elder can easily spread from neighbouring land. I can show you an image online so you can recognise it when you see it, but I’m just concerned you’ll miss its arrival altogether if the grass gets long. It’s pretty pernicious.’

  Sam smiled, a little puzzled by his knowledge of ground elder but not entirely surprised that he’d researched it; it was the sort of thing he would like to understand. ‘I’ll look it up. Put it on my pinboard of most wanted.’

  ‘It’s not a joke. You promised you wouldn’t allow our garden to become unruly. What about giant hogweed? Have you considered that? I bet you haven’t given it a moment’s thought. If you are going to keep your side of the bargain you will need to familiarise yourself with all potential enemies and mitigate all possible risk.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? Do you honestly think I’d fail to notice giant hogweed in our garden? I’m pretty familiar with every single blade of grass. I think I’d notice an outbreak of a two-metre high cow parsley, don’t you?’

  Danny laughed briefly. ‘I’m sorry. I’m being silly. But promise me you’ll be vigilant, won’t you? I’m not comfortable with the idea of letting the grass grow longer. It actually…’ he paused, and took a deep breath. ‘Just the thought of it makes me extremely anxious.’

  ‘I shall be vigilant. I promise.’ Sam turned back to her book, wondering when Danny had taken such an interest in weeds. She had always known her husband to be cautious and he certainly liked to prepare for any eventuality, but she had never considered him anxious and certainly not extremely anxious.

  ‘Long grass, huh?’ she said, casually, picking up her book. ‘Well, I suppose you need to worry about something.’

  While Sam went back to her reading, apparently oblivious of the perils all around her, Danny thought about their obvious differences. Danny could present her with a range of menacing dangers and she could listen, absorb, process and dismiss these threats with barely a frown. Danny was cut from very different cloth. He studied his wife carefully as she leafed through her book, her unfurrowed brow confirming her ease. He was worried about the prospect of untamed long grass, yes, but then he worried about so many things.

  He worried about the big things and the little things with equal dedication. He worried about the things he could control and he worried even more about the things he couldn’t. He looked at Sam as she read and wondered if there was any possible way that he could have successfully hidden his relentless anxieties from her for all these years. And he wondered too, whether now was the time to broach the subject and talk to her about the many, many fears that plagued him every day and most nights. But she had considered him with such kindness and right now there was an air of serene calm about her as she turned the pages of a dense-looking book with a battered old cloth cover and he didn’t want to get between her and her carefree reading. He wondered what she would think of him if she ever knew. She glanced up, smiled, and turned another page. Now was not the time to talk to her, he had dismissed the idea as soon as it had formed. Instead he headed outside to apply the pressure hose to the drive.

  Chapter 35

  ‘Can I come in?’ Sam had knocked but the caravan door had remained firmly shut so she leant close in towards the door, rapping with her knuckles while calling out, instead.

  ‘Must you?’ shouted Diana from inside. Her voice sounded hoarse and was tempered by impatience. Sam felt a flush of embarrassment; she was clearly intruding but Diana had always welcomed her in so willingly up until now.

  ‘Shall I come back another time?’ she shouted, unsure if she should just turn and leave.

  The door opened.

  ‘Come on in, though just because I invited you in once doesn’t mean I want you dropping in all of the time.’ Diana turned to take a seat at the table in the middle of the caravan.

  Sam hesitated at the threshold. ‘I can come back another day if that would be better but how will I know when it’s convenient?’

  ‘That’s just a risk you will have to take,’ answered Diana, sternly. She beckoned her impatiently. ‘Come on, you’re here now, come in, sit down.’

  Sam sat down and matched Diana’s tone in seriousness.

  ‘I planted the seeds, thank you.’

  Diana acknowledged this with a quick nod of her head.

  ‘It’s a waiting game now, I suppose?’

  Once again, Diana nodded.

  ‘And I’ve been thinking about what you said to me.’

  Diana interrupted Sam with a dismissive flick of her hand. ‘Oh, ignore me. I talk a lot of nonsense.’

  ‘Specifically, I’ve been thinking about what you said about truth,’ Sam continued, undeterred.

  Diana scoffed noisily. ‘Particularly about truth. Ignore anything I ever say about truth, I’m not qualified to talk about it. I’m the biggest liar you’ll ever meet. We’re all liars, either to ourselves or to strangers or to the people we love. It doesn’t matter which, we’re still liars.’

  Sam knew that Diana was preparing to dig her heels in, and she knew her well enough now to understand which topics might be safe, so she changed tactic. ‘Are you satisfied with your life?’

  ‘Now? How I live now?’

  ‘Generally. You talked to me about living consciously, to make sure you ticked off those phases you’d defined. But if you died tomorrow, would you be satisfied with the way you’ve lived your life?’

  ‘If I died tomorrow, I’d be fine with that, I’m prepared. And besides… We have to assume that we will know or care nothing of our prepare
dness beyond the moment of death. Those we leave behind, though, for them our departure is a very different matter. Our own death is not something experienced by us, it’s something experienced by all those who knew us. You have the power to leave those you love satiated or incomplete, rejected or accepted, settled or floundering. Leave no regrets.’ Diana waited as though she was processing the impact of her own words before answering herself. ‘And I have none of those. But still, I’d like just a bit more time. I think I have more work to do. I want to rid myself of some of my very worst habits. I think, I hope, by replacing those bad habits with some better ones I might leave a reasonable account of myself. And I hope that I might one day be able to say I’m satisfied with the way I’ve lived my life, yes.’ Diana looked far away.

  ‘I’m living a very shallow life. Meaningless, utterly meaningless,’ said Sam, more certain of this than ever before.

  Diana snapped back to attention, interested in her visitor for the first time since Sam had sat down. ‘Are you really? You’re a bit too young to have come to that conclusion, aren’t you? Most people are busy growing, expanding, accumulating, creating, at your age; they haven’t yet considered any sort of Reconciliation. You could live a bit before completely writing yourself off, perhaps?’

  ‘Not at all. I’m quite certain that I’m ninety per cent superficial. The thing is, when I was little, I was very confident that I was the centre of the universe. My parents completely adored me, I was popular at school, I was considered to have good prospects. And even when they were fully occupied worshipping me, I used to look at my mum and dad and think how boring they were. How I’d never grow up to be like them, that I’d do something rather wonderful with my life, where their lives had seemed so dull.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘I planted some seeds yesterday…’ Sam paused and shook her head assuredly. ‘Absolutely nothing. I went to college, got some A levels, went to university, got a husband. The thing is, I had a moment at university when I might have really made something of myself. I could have. I met a lot of amazing people there, but the truth is, I knew as soon as I met them, they were simply better than me. They were smarter, I mean a lot smarter, brilliant and with a zeal for learning and a sort of mental reach that I not only didn’t have but had no desire to have. I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. Meeting them didn’t inspire me to be better, I just thought I wouldn’t bother competing in a competition I couldn’t win.’

  ‘Were you jealous of these people? These smart people?’

  ‘No! I admired them far too much to envy them. And they were not just smarter, they were prettier, funnier, more ambitious, more passionate, far more daring. All of them were daring. There was one girl in particular. Her name was Libby. I had a bit of a crush on her if I’m honest. She was so dazzling. I would have liked to be like her, abstractly, but I was never prepared to make the effort to actually be like her. I’d have had to work so much harder, I’d have needed to be in so many different places. I didn’t have the bandwidth.’

  Sam thought some more. She had never really articulated any of these thoughts out loud, so the words excited her as they landed.

  ‘Up until I met Libby, I thought I was the main character and that everyone else was an extra. I honestly believed I was the centre point from which everything else radiated. I’d think of people like that, particularly when I was at college. I’d look at these ordinary people and think, “You’re going nowhere, you’re a nobody, you’re nothing.” And then I went to university and quickly realised I would be lucky just to be a bit part in their lives.’

  ‘Well, you’re young. You can still have a stab at life, surely?’ asked Diana, although there was a hint of hesitancy in her voice, as though she, too, doubted it.

  ‘I don’t know. My life has so far been a series of endings. I thought I might be able to make something of myself at work, but the truth is I always felt like a sham, that I was just acting the role of a successful career girl. And then, as if in answer to my doubts, my colleagues told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t a whole enough person to join their club. I think I was a bit of an embarrassment to them, I could make people feel awkward just by being in the same room, breathing their air. In order to cope with me, collectively, they cut off my oxygen. And I hoped to find more oxygen here in the countryside but I’ve only just begun to notice that Danny and I don’t really talk, not about the important stuff. It’s entirely my fault, I’ve held back from telling him what an utter mess I feel inside as I don’t want to burden him but in the meantime, I don’t really know what’s going on inside him either.’

  Diana looked pensive before asking, quite sharply, ‘Do your parents still adore you?’

  ‘Not really. I’m a terrible disappointment to them. I haven’t got a womb. My mother despises this about me and my father just finds the whole thing rather tasteless.’

  Diana shrugged, unimpressed. ‘I can’t imagine it makes much of a difference to them, does it? Wombs are terribly overrated in my opinion. Mine has caused me nothing but trouble.’

  ‘Mine too.’

  ‘And men seem to have got on terribly well without them, don’t they?’

  Sam smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ But she quickly became serious again. ‘But I don’t want to live an ordinary life.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  ‘But how can I live an extraordinary life? I don’t seem to be skilled at anything. And I don’t see the point of any of it. I already know what’s going to happen. It’s like I’ve read the last page.’

  ‘What? What’s going to happen?’

  ‘I’m going to carry on doing just what I’m doing. Getting out of bed, seeing my husband off to work, twiddling my thumbs, pretending I have a purpose, cooking some supper for him, going to sleep and starting all over again the next day.’

  ‘That’s enough for lots of people.’

  ‘Of course, I know that. I don’t want to be greedy. And I have a lovely life, so I mustn’t complain. But I just sometimes feel like I didn’t get the memo.’

  ‘The memo?’

  ‘Yes, maybe everyone else got a memo telling them what to do with their lives and off they went, in pursuit of their purpose, and perhaps I just didn’t get one.’

  ‘Or you got the memo, but you chose to ignore it?’

  ‘But I’d remember what it said, surely?’

  ‘Would you? Not if it told you something you didn’t want to hear.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Diana shrugged. ‘What if your memo simply told you that all you needed to do to fulfil your obligation was to live an ordinary life.’

  Sam felt a physical stab of pain, truly understanding for the first time what it meant to be hurt by words. She’d been incensed and enraged and disappointed and dismayed in her time, but it was a visceral smarting she now felt from this wound delivered by somebody she really wanted to please. ‘Wow. That’s tough.’

  Diana had set her face determinedly into the look of somebody unprepared to compromise her stance just because her companion had a wobbling bottom lip. ‘Sam,’ she said, ‘you want to talk about truth, but have you really tried being honest with yourself?’

  Sam put her hand to her heart, as if to demonstrate that she would swear an oath to the very notion of truthfulness. ‘That again! How can you talk to me about truth when you yourself have told me you’re a liar?’

  ‘It’s because I’m a liar that you should listen to me about the truth. Do you want to end up like me? I’m living in a caravan in the woods. I have no friends.’

  ‘But I also know that you have no regrets.’ Sam looked around the caravan, breathing in the warm, clean air, making a mental sweep of the bookcases. ‘Your lifestyle actually seems quite appealing.’

  ‘Exactly. Which is why you should listen to me. It really isn’t necessary to live an extraordinary life. You’re better off living an ordinary life truthfully, than living an extraordinary life dishonestly. If you’r
e untruthful, not even you will be able to like yourself. Perhaps set your sights lower, make your goals a little more realistic and then see if you like it. Try to make just a little bit of difference. Take control of something you can control.’

  Sam thought about this quietly for a while before asking of Diana, ‘What makes you so certain I’m a liar?’

  ‘It takes one to know one. You and I are exactly the same, Sam. We’re both so well disguised, we’ve hidden the real self from ourselves. I bet you don’t know which version is the authentic one anymore.’

  Sam blinked steadily as she looked at Diana. She thought of Libby Masters and wondered if there was any possibility that this woman in the woods could possibly know of her parallel existence. Diana was seeing all the way through her. Perhaps she was a figment of her imagination after all.

  Chapter 36

  Sam wandered around the perimeter of the lawn, holding her mug in both hands for warmth. It was early and there was still a chill in the air and she was only wearing a light shirt over pyjama bottoms. She felt listless and despondent. She hadn’t been to the woods for a few days, she’d felt exposed and wracked with self-doubt. It mattered to her that Diana liked her but instead she’d seen right through her and called out her duplicity.

  Sam knew she was a fraud. She wrote but didn’t have the courage to use her real name. And she couldn’t use her real name because Sam didn’t have the courage to write. These were Libby’s opinions, scribed by Libby’s fluent hand. These issues mattered to Libby, not Sam. Libby was prepared to die for them, Sam wasn’t.

  She chewed her lip and then stopped, suddenly alert. Quietly she crouched down and put her cup on the lawn beside her. She peered in closely. A single shoot of grass, perhaps a centimetre tall already, had caught her eye. And another, just beside it. And then more, wherever she looked. Tiny protestations, thrusting up towards the light, each one almost impossibly vulnerable but together, the makings of a forest. Sam grinned. She tried to reach out to stroke one, but it was not yet substantial enough to resist her touch, it was still just a sliver off life to be.