Growing Season

by Seni Glaister

  ‘Her name was far too obvious, so I changed it.’

  ‘Fair enough. Sage-Forsyth might have stuck out.

  ‘Bingo!’ said Danny only a few seconds later. ‘Here’s a Liberty Sage-Forsyth and she is…’ He scrolled down for a few seconds, ‘exactly your age.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’ Sam leapt up and came around to Danny’s end of the sofa, she nudged him to move up, squeezing in beside him.

  ‘She’s still alive?’

  ‘Liberty Mulholand, nee Liberty Sage-Forsyth. Seems she is.’

  Sam frowned at the images as Danny flicked through a Facebook account dominated by pictures of happy children glowing from a combination of good health and earnest parenting.

  ‘Yup. There’s your militant, she’s married with three kids.’

  Sam was transfixed by the photos, both by the pictures of the children and of Libby herself who looked similar but almost unrecognisably steady. ‘Three? Yikes. She’s my age! That means…’ She concentrated while she did the maths.

  ‘Her children are ten, nine and six,’ said Danny, delighted with himself and his detective work.

  ‘So…’ Sam tried to process the information but Danny once again filled in the gap.

  ‘She left university because she was pregnant?’

  ‘She left university because she was pregnant,’ nodded Sam in agreement, the repetition helping the meaning to take shape. She took control of the laptop and scrolled down even further.

  ‘Wedding pictures,’ said Sam, the disappointment palpable in her voice. ‘Happy wedding pictures that first summer.’

  ‘You didn’t see that coming!’ said Danny, triumphantly.

  ‘No. No. No. Actually, there are about a thousand scenarios I had imagined in a church but not one of them involved a happy smiling couple under a shower of confetti.’

  ‘Did you never think to look?’

  ‘I looked for news, that first term when she didn’t return, but there was nothing. No sign of her. She’d just disappeared.’

  ‘I expect she was keeping a low profile, trying not to bring a cloud of shame upon the Sage-Forsyths.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Sam sounded desolate.

  Danny turned Sam’s face from the screen to his own. ‘Gosh, you really are saddened, aren’t you?’

  ‘Saddened. No, of course not. Look at her, she’s radiant on her wedding day. Still happily married by the looks of it. Three nice-looking children, although they seem to be wearing quite scratchy jumpers,’ said Sam, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘Must have married well. Perhaps Mr Mulholand was a bit of a catch. The richer you are, the more scratchy wool you expect your children to wear.’

  ‘I can’t help feeling a bit let down, though. I mean, obviously she’s not let herself down, but I feel a bit betrayed. I had rather hoped that if she hadn’t died tragically then at the very least she’d be doing something incredibly worthwhile. She should have been running an NGO or responding to a humanitarian crisis. I mean, it’s people like Libby that do all the good works so people like me don’t have to.’

  ‘Well, perhaps when she’s not looking blissfully happy, which, let’s be honest, she appears to be most of the time according to her profile, perhaps she is mourning that earlier moment of notability. It’s entirely possible that nobody even listens to her views anymore. I feel a tiny bit sorry for her, she just sort of fizzled out, didn’t she?’ Danny continued to scroll up and down, trying to detect the qualities that had so enchanted Sam.

  ‘But, she didn’t entirely, did she? In a way she carried on,’ said Sam, with a glimpse of pride. ‘She might think her activism stopped the day she got married, but in a parallel universe she’s been causing quite a stir. Actually, some of her ideas got more ardent not less. And what she might have lost in academic argument she made up for in hot-blooded fervour. Good old Libby,’ said Sam, smiling a bit for the first time since Libby Sage-Forsyth had risen from the grave.

  ‘Good old Libby,’ echoed Danny. ‘Good old Sam,’ he said, more quietly, wriggling to get more comfortable beside her.

  Chapter 50

  Danny had washed up and Sam had been looking at a book, flicking through pictures of ancient meadow land and endangered wildflowers.

  As Danny dried his hands carefully, Sam looked up at him. ‘I wish I could see what goes on inside that brain of yours sometimes. You’re so strong, so sure of yourself.’

  Danny laughed. ‘Oh, you’d be surprised.’

  ‘I know. You are surprising. I always rather assumed that you didn’t have great torrents of emotion running through you but I seem to be learning all sorts of things about you. Not just your sluggish sperm, but your fear of witches. You seem to compartmentalise everything so well. Meanwhile, look at me. I’m such a mess. If you looked inside my brain, you’d divorce me immediately. The inside of my brain is what the tumble dryer filter would look like if you didn’t clean it out for me every Saturday. Layers and layers of bits of unfinished thoughts and responses. Some of it recognisable but most of it fragments of feelings, nothing substantial to grab on to, nothing as reliable as a memory.’

  ‘That sounds very different from mine. I don’t think I’d want all of my memories tangled up inside me, imagine the knots, imagine the chaos.’ Danny shuddered. ‘Look inside my brain and you’ll just see locked drawers.’

  ‘Your filing cabinets. Like the one we have upstairs? The big wooden one?’ Sam wondered.

  ‘Not really. Metal, and fireproof. And the drawers are slimmer. Perhaps like the cabinets in a pharmacist. Less chance of cross-contamination. And lots and lots of them. If there’s anything of any interest in those drawers, you’ll have great trouble getting in to look at the detail. I’ve made sure of that. They’re locked with a combination lock. A heavy duty one made of steel. Not one of those flimsy ones that comes free with a suitcase that any old fool can crack with a lucky guess or a pair of tweezers.’

  ‘Gosh, you sound certain of that.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Do you mind me asking, Danny, there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to know. What about the drawer marked “Sam’s illness”? What does that drawer look like? I’ve always wondered. I know it’s a cliché, but you were such a pillar of strength for me. I didn’t even need to find the fight to deal with any of it myself because of your indefatigable resilience. You were astonishing. You had such faith.’

  Danny looked troubled. ‘You really don’t want to know what’s in that drawer.’

  ‘But I do. I’ve never quite understood where you drew your strength from. I don’t quite understand whether it was a religious faith or some sort of inner strength. Tell me.’

  ‘As always you overestimate me. I’ll show you, if it won’t make you hate me.’ He sat down and flipped open his laptop, typing in a password and waiting for Excel to load. He dived confidently into files within files within files before pulling out a spreadsheet and keying in a second password.

  ‘Here you go.’ He hesitated and closed the lid partially. ‘Wait. I probably have to go back in time a bit. I need to open another drawer first.’ He looked pained. ‘This is exactly why I don’t like these conversations, it’s never as straightforward as I’d like it to be. Soon you’ll have me spilling out the contents of everything I’ve ever filed away.’

  ‘Sorry, Danny.’

  ‘One drawer, Sam. One drawer. If it doesn’t shed some light on what I’m about to show you, I’m not going to delve any further.’ He closed his eyes for a few seconds and then started speaking slowly, dragging the detail to the front of his brain word by word. ‘I remember when Mum died. Not the exact day, it had all been kept from me at the time. Just telephone calls to my grandmother’s house and tears and whispers. I knew, I think I knew, but Dad wanted to tell me himself, so it had to wait. I walked into his study and he shook his head and said, “Danny, your mother passed away. I’m sorry, son. The odds were just stacked against her.”

  ‘Oh, champ.’

  ‘Don’t pity
me. It wasn’t actually as harsh as it sounds. The odds were just stacked against her. It wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t the doctors’ fault. It was just a numbers thing. Those words were the ones I most needed to hear. They helped me not to feel too angry, there was no one to blame.’

  He opened up the laptop and gestured to Sam to take a look.

  She peered at the spreadsheet, rows and columns filled with numbers. ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘Your odds. The odds were with you, Sam.’

  Danny clicked on a couple of cells within the spreadsheet and a graph popped up. Sam peered at the graphs and the charts, not understanding them at all.

  ‘Here’s the baseline for your cancer. And then these,’ here Danny used the mouse to point at a row of numbers, ‘these are the variables.’ He cleared his throat and wriggled in his seat, getting comfortable with the explanation. ‘Your age, the doctor, your diet, your father’s earnings, your mother’s earnings, your maternal and paternal grandparents’ age at death. Each of these factors improved your chances.’ Sam followed the hovering arrow as it jumped from cell to cell. ‘Here, this is you and this is your treatment plotted against your own personal timeline. Everything that happened, your early diagnosis, your swift treatment, your comprehensive surgery by a competent medical team. It all counted in your favour.’

  Danny coughed nervously. ‘I didn’t have faith, I just liked your odds. Your odds were stacked in your favour.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Sam. Her eyes filled up with tears and she allowed one or two to fall before blinking the others away.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s not more romantic than that.’

  ‘I’m rather glad I didn’t know at the time. It’s not exactly what I thought was keeping us going. I’m pretty sure it was your conviction in me that kept me strong. If I’d known that it was just work for you…’ The thought trailed off.

  ‘Sweet pea! It wasn’t just any work. It was the most important work I’d ever undertaken. I just didn’t really know how else to cope with your news. I spend my whole life talking about outcomes, that’s what I do. I predict outcomes for corporations that take the risk on insuring people like you. If I couldn’t predict your outcome fairly confidently then I wouldn’t be very good at my job.’

  ‘When I was sick, you never told me my odds were good. You could have done. The doctors didn’t tell me that either.’

  ‘Nobody wants to be the statistic,’ answered Danny. He continued, ‘Understanding the maths helped me cope with my loss as a child. I could have been angry with Mum for not fighting hard enough or angry with Dad for not protecting her. And then when Dad died young, well, look.’ Danny used his mouse to navigate swiftly through files, pulling up another spreadsheet, typing in another password.

  He pointed at a graph. ‘Look, the odds weren’t with him.’

  Sam sighed heavily. ‘That is one way of coping but Jesus, Danny, that’s your dad.’

  She looked at the spreadsheet of numbers. ‘And now, don’t you know too much? What about you? Both your parents died young. You’ve got a stressful work life. Your home life isn’t a bed of roses. What’s your own outcome looking like?’

  Danny closed the spreadsheet and shut down the laptop. He looked at Sam earnestly. ‘I haven’t run the numbers. I don’t need to live for ever. I just need to live as long as you.’

  Chapter 51

  ‘Have you heard of Fibonacci?’ asked Sam, innocently. They were sitting on chairs they’d dragged outside on to the paving to better admire the tall grasses that swayed melodically in front of them.

  Danny snorted. ‘What on earth do you mean, have I heard of Fibonacci? Have you heard of Fibonacci?’ he retorted, a little arrogantly.

  ‘I just wondered what you know of him or his sequence…’ She allowed her voice to trail off as she closed the book on her lap.

  ‘The Fibonacci sequence is an incredibly powerful numerical ratio, named for the Italian who discovered it, though in truth it had been played with one thousand years earlier, in 200 BC. Fibonacci was the greatest European mathematician of the Middle Ages, but it was an Indian mathematician who first made the connection by looking at the numerical patterns in poetry. You love poetry, Sam, you should look into the Indian poets, you’d like them. Imagine distilling all that mathematical knowledge into verse? The numbers are significant because they bind our very being. The structure of our own DNA correlates very closely to the Fibonacci sequence.’

  ‘Close your eyes, Danny,’ Sam said softly.

  He frowned, but followed her instructions obediently.

  She stood up and fished something from within her pocket. She put it into his hand and closed his fingers around it.

  He opened his eyes and unfurled his fingers to reveal a pine cone. He studied it, confused. Sam turned it over so that he could see the pattern made by its woody scales at its base.

  ‘Fibonacci at work,’ she said.

  Danny smiled as he studied the arrangement of the pine cone’s bracts. He’d never had reason to consider their perfection before.

  ‘Clever little guys, aren’t they?’ Danny said, admiringly, holding the cone up and looking at the pattern in the light.

  ‘Clever little gal, actually. She’s a she. But yes, clever indeed. In mythology throughout the ages they’ve represented human enlightenment. They’ve certainly been around for long enough to merit the badge, in fact, three times longer than all flowering plants.’

  Danny ran his thumb over the pine cone thoughtfully, turning it over in his hand. Sam remembered his joy as he counted the trees in the birch wood.

  ‘From within the chaos of the countryside, you’ll find the order you’re looking for, Danny. It’s everywhere. Fibonacci has seen to that.’

  ‘In rabbits, sure,’ he acknowledged. ‘You can apply the sequence to the rate at which they breed. Not accounting for a hunter’s trap and myxomatosis, that is,’ he said, wryly.

  ‘Trust you to think of death, Danny. But you can also apply Fibonacci to the growth of a snail shell and the pattern of a hurricane and the distribution of flower seeds on a sunflower head. And there’s mathematics in snowflakes. And spider webs. Look at the symmetry and order in those two things. Every snowflake is different, which makes you think they should be endlessly, chaotically random, but each one is perfectly symmetrical. Why? How is that even possible? And as for the structure of a bee’s honeycomb? Don’t get me started.’

  Danny laughed but Sam was serious. She drew her eyes from the cone and looked at him earnestly. ‘I dismissed your joy in the woods. I was happy to see you happy but, truthfully, I thought your response was less valid than my own. I thought it was an unnatural reaction. But perhaps you were responding to something primordial.’

  She continued. ‘We’re all a bit like those pine cones. Everything is buried deeply within us, travelling from generation to generation in a complex pattern that can only accurately be represented by mathematics to try to make sense of it. We try, as we grow, to unfurl in an orderly fashion. Some of us find it harder to express our inner beauty than others and for those people it’s probably also a bit harder to recognise it when you see it. That’s all.’

  She sat down again and reached for his hand. ‘That’s you, Danny. So orderly on the surface. I always thought you were a simple man. But I was wrong. We’re all wildly complex and you’re no exception.’

  ‘Are you going to carry on writing your blog, Sam?’ Danny asked after a silence that felt useful to both of them.

  ‘No. I don’t think I need to. I’m going to try to talk a bit more, I think. I’m going to talk to you about the things that make me sad and, I’m afraid I’m going to run the risk of making you sad in the process.’

  ‘OK,’ said Danny, thinking this sounded fine.

  ‘And I’m not going to go back to work yet.’

  ‘OK,’ said Danny, thinking this sounded fine, too.

  ‘I want to write but I want to do something a bit more
positive. I’m going to work on another project altogether. I’ve got an idea, a really good idea.’

  ‘OK?’ said Danny, wondering if his input would be required.

  ‘I want to help Diana find an audience for her writing. I haven’t talked to her about it, but I believe she’ll let me help. She writes a journal every day, she calls them her nature notes. They are really lovely observations about the countryside and she draws these incredible sketches. I think they deserve to be shared. But they might be of scientific interest, too. While she’s been observing the countryside around her, she’s also been systematically collecting data which might be important. I thought you might be able to have a look at the records and see if you can find some patterns.’

  Danny smiled. ‘I love data. I love patterns, Sam. That’s what I’m good at.’

  ‘Diana’s my friend. I’d like to help her.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve found a friend here, Sam.’

  ‘We’re an unlikely pair but we’re learning to be honest with each other. I think that is all that our friendship requires.’

  In front of them as they sat, the grasses pushed ever upwards, scattering their seed heads as they jostled for light while bees buzzed industriously from one flower to the next, spilling pollen along each twisted journey. Every tiny seed gathered with care by one hand and sown with care by another was now replicating itself with ignorant abandon.

  Chapter 52

  Danny awoke. The weight of the sleep had anchored him to the mattress in a way he’d never experienced. He tried to climb his way back from the depths but the ascent felt treacherous and even as he struggled to surface he was tempted to let himself fall again.

  He remained groggily awake for a few moments, wondering if this is how everyone felt after a good night’s sleep before realising that Sam wasn’t beside him. His heart lurched.

  Downstairs, Sam was at the window, admiring the garden. She turned and smiled broadly. ‘You slept the sleep of the wicked… feeling better?’