by Claire Peate
“Yes. Anything. Anything at all.”
This was wrong. Very wrong. Lusted up I would have agreed to anything but now, sober and chilled in the early morning, this new variation on guerrilla warfare seemed completely and utterly the wrong thing to be doing.
As soon as Guy had walked me off the main battle site, Eustace’s Lincoln Continental had drawn up. Eustace stepped onto a sheltered stone balustrade in the long narrow park and the troops had all gathered round expectantly. We were tasked, he informed us in his grandiose style, with taking the war into the front gardens of the houses that formed the outer boundary of Brockley and “…doing once more that which we did at Edda’s property.” He’d said the words with a nod to me. The gardeners looked my way. I tried to look grateful and suppress my horror at the thought of going into other people’s gardens and guerrilla gardening their private property. It had been a shock when it was done to me and I was one of them. But now Eustace had brought up the fact that I had received such a treatment all my arguments and protestations left me: what could I possibly say – “Yes give me an Elizabethan knot garden but don’t give anyone else the benefit of close-cut box hedging?” I had no option but to go along with it and be involved in it. The two cans of Farrow and Ball French Grey at home also made it fairly impossible to complain.
“Do yer want me ter get another of them sundials, then?” grunted Jake from the back of the group.
I shivered. So Jake had been in my garden the night it was knot-gardened. That threatening bag of muscle had lurked just under my bedroom window, a thin pane of glass away from where I had been sleeping.
“No Jake. No sundials this time. And no decorative box hedging either, we’re simplifying and neatening. What we have to achieve in the next two hours is a refurbishment in every single front garden: that’s five teams of three gardeners doing two gardens each. Or one an hour per team. And that’s asking a lot in terms of clearing out, turfing and rudimentary planting. I want a total clearout of all plastic furniture, gnomes, sun catchers for God’s sake, breeze blocks, rubbish and litter. I’ve drawn up teams and property assignments which Guy is distributing to you now. My vision,” Eustace swept his hands to encompass the whole of SE4 before us, “is to smarten this outwardly facing boundary of Brockley, so that those on the road to Greenwich and Blackheath stop and take note of our beautiful neighbourhood. To look at this well-maintained verge, and these neatly kept gardens, and think to themselves, Yes, I could live here. What we have here is the most public face of Brockley: it’s most visible asset. We have early Victorian houses that have had their beauty hidden behind a bush for too long. So we must take it upon ourselves to right the wrongs. Yes,” he said, looking down now from his skyline address and fixing on each of us, “it’s difficult to go into someone’s private property. And yes, some of you may feel uncomfortable. But just think of how those people will feel when they wake up tomorrow to see the splendour of their newly tended gardens below.”
“Can I just ask, Eust,” a Boden-male called Mark, piped up, “Why wasn’t this aspect of tonight’s dig on the website? The only info you had up there was about the park running on the A2: not about people’s houses.”
“A jolly good question,” Eustace said in a voice loud enough to have the desired effect but quiet enough to not be heard beyond the group assembled around him. “I knew that if it was publicised then some of you wouldn’t turn up tonight. Because, however daring you think you are, you aren’t perhaps fully ready to truly push the boundaries of what we’re doing. But I can tell you that you are. What you are about to embark on tonight is going to transform the face of Brockley – more than Hilly Fields, more than the station, more than the cemetery, the school, the roundabouts and Brockley Cross. All of it. Tonight we are performing essential surgery on the face of SE4.”
It was an impassioned speech and if Churchill had been a middle class guerrilla gardener I’m sure he would have put it in a similar way.
Straight after the rhetoric we went into our teams, picked up our bags and set to work. But while everyone else appeared to retain the WWII-style enthusiasm, it waned in me and I stood, bag in hand, in what was obviously the front garden of an elderly person – there were grab rails by the front door – and felt like a burglar. OK so all I was stealing was a bag load of weeds and a really freaky plastic gnome that, bizarrely, resembled Winston Churchill, but still … I felt very, very bad. But who was I to say this elderly person wouldn’t want someone to do his/her garden for free? To plant some cheerful flowers and green up the shabby patch of turf?
I tried to focus on the positives as a way of coping with doing something that I felt was wrong. Because it was wrong – of sorts – but it wasn’t completely and totally wrong like stealing from children or tripping up pensioners for laughs. It was like the plaque on the bench, the ‘recommendations’ to Mr Iqbal and the ominous ‘can we get to him’ comments about Da Notorious Baron: none of it was wrong per se it just didn’t feel right. Or was it wrong and I was just in so deep I couldn’t tell any more? Perhaps, I wondered as I silently dug up the dead turf of the first house on the road, perhaps I ought to talk to Robert about it. He knew about the Spades now, he knew me – sort of.
My hand hovered over a dead rose bush.
How odd.
How very odd that I hadn’t thought of turning to Beth first.
Neil, Anja and I cleared the garden within half an hour. Scraggy sweet peas, roses, geraniums – all of it went in the bin, because it didn’t match Eustace’s vision for a grander Brockley. Once it was all bagged Jake emptied an enormous sack full of topsoil over the cleared ground and then brought a wheelbarrow full of rolled turf, perennials and shrubs that had been assigned to this property: delphiniums, lavenders, blue and white alliums.
Completed, we stepped back and examined the finished garden.
“It’s good.” Neil whispered.
“It’s wrong.” Anja muttered.
But there was no opportunity to discuss it any further. For once Eustace was staying to watch this dig and we couldn’t be seen talking and wasting time. Already he had despatched Jake to get bins for our next garden– careless talk costs lives.
We moved next door.
As we set to work again I saw with relief that Eustace had moved off to watch another team who now looked decidedly more stressed than they had done two minutes earlier when they weren’t being watched.
I was consumed by the need to ask Anja what she’d been talking about with Guy. Were Neil and Anja trying to leave the Spades but Eustace wouldn’t let them?
I couldn’t bring the subject up: neither of them spoke much beyond ‘pass the spade, would you’ or ‘is it delphiniums here or alliums?’
It took us longer with the second garden: it was a student house so the rubbish clearance alone took nearly half an hour. Besides, we were all tired and wanting to be anywhere else but in someone else’s property cleaning up in the early hours of a Saturday morning.
Eustace was hovering, far enough away to not disturb us but near enough to be clearly visible.
“Bastard,” Anja said into her alliums. “He’s trying to intimidate us into speeding up.”
A few minutes later two more gardeners had come to help us out. If we were to meet the deadlines we had ten minutes left to lay the turf and plant the remaining shrubs: we were struggling.
And yet we had done it. At just before five in the morning Neil, Anja and I downed tools and joined the others on the road opposite, the sky lightening in the east over Greenwich – a state of affairs that probably irritated Eustace – and the traffic was starting up again on the A2. It was time for the guerrilla gardeners to go home.
Eustace’s vision had been realised. Stripped of their clutter and weeds the row of houses were perfectly trimmed and co-ordinating with front gardens of green and white and blue. The public face of Brockley had undergone a face-lift.
“Good work chaps!” Eustace said and went round the dishevelled gardeners and pa
tted backs.
I was so tired I didn’t even realise that Guy was standing beside me and looking over at the completed vista.
“I understand how you feel,” he said, reading my expression and putting an arm round me, “but you’re wrong.”
“So it would seem.” I kissed him back. “So what are your plans for tonight … this morning…”
“Well,” he slung his arms around me and pulled me to him, “I have an exhibition opening at 9am in the cinema in Hoxton Square and I have to be there all morning, so I shall be getting some sleep.” He checked his watch by angling it to the nearest street light. “Three hours should be enough. Roger wrangled the exhibition for me – you know Roger, from the Guardian? And the Guardian will be covering it, too, so it’s big business potentially. Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
“Great.”
Great… What a completely rubbish evening this had turned out to be. Pushing guerrilla gardening to its legal (illegal?) limits, and then being given the brush-off: not seeing Guy all evening and not even getting an invite to his exhibition tomorrow. Did he think that I wasn’t interested in what he did? Did he even think about me at all?
“So, a friend of mine is opening a bistro in Brockley on Saturday night…”
Guy had been talking non-stop during the walk home but it was only at this point that I tuned in, his intonation implying that a response was going to be required.
“…that’s tonight. Shit, gardening at night really messes with your head doesn’t it?” he said. “Anyway, do you fancy coming along? Should be fun: free drinks and a sample menu.”
“Sure,” I said, half placated at not being invited to the exhibition.
“Great. Come to mine around four?”
“I thought you said it was at night.”
“I did,” he said, squeezing my bottom.
“Oh.” I blushed.
“That’s if you want to?” he pulled away slightly.
“Oh, yes. Yes I want to.” I pulled him back. “Very much.”
We kissed at the garden gate and before I’d even thought about it, I said, “Why don’t you stay over here tonight,” my mouth was still on his. “And I’ll let you sleep. I promise.”
“I can’t, Edda.” He pulled away properly now. “I need to sleep. I need to be on my own. Tomorrow’s really important – I can’t afford to mess it up.”
“OK. That’s fine. It was worth a try.”
“So I’ll see you at four?”
“It’s a date.”
“A date?” Guy was backing away. “That sounds serious, Edda.”
“OK it’s not a date. It’s a liaison.”
“Better! Until the afternoon then.”
Once inside the house I marched through the hallway, resolutely not seeing the tiny red high heels neatly placed beside Robert’s brogues.
Twenty
“Good gardening session last night?”
“Great. Really great. Fantastic, actually.”
It was Saturday lunchtime and Greta was nowhere to be seen: the tiny red shoes had gone by the time I came down at eleven and Rob was downstairs doing something inept with paper and glue. I’d thought it was too rude to ask him what the construction was supposed to be, but after five minutes’ observation I cracked and had to know.
“I’m teaching my Year Seven class about the English Civil War. So these will help.”
These what? “Oh … right.” I picked up one of his pieces. “And was it the Roundheads or the Cavaliers that went round wearing glued litter about their person?”
“They’re Roundhead helmets, Edda!”
“They are?” I put the piece on my head and examined it in the mirror, saying something polite about it looking quite helmety.
And then he picked up a cushion and hit me over the head with it, helmet and all.
“You are so rude!” he said, taking aim again. “These took me ages to make and they’re historically accurate.”
I quickly recovered and grabbed my own cushion. “Well, they’re technically rubbish!” I took a step back, just in case. “It didn’t even stay on my head! No wonder the Cavaliers won!”
“They lost, you idiot! And for your information the helmet didn’t stay on your head because your head is misshapen!” He took a swing at me.
“It is not!” I dodged the hit and got him in the chest with a tasselled pink cushion.
The fight took us up and over the sofa, round the coffee table and then out into the hall, panting and laughing, whacking each other whenever we could, holding our sides and gasping for breath when we got the chance.
“Peace!” I managed, half way up the stairs. “No more!”
“So, you give up then?” Robert sank onto the bottom step, red faced.
“Only for your sake. You look like you’re going to collapse.”
“You should look in a mirror,” he panted, “you’re not exactly box-fresh yourself.”
We sprawled on the staircase.
“So, where’s Greta?” I asked.
“Shopping with girlfriends,” he said. “I think she does that a lot.”
“Well I enjoyed our little ‘re-enactment’,” I said. “Which battle did we just re-enact exactly?”
“I think it was Naseby.” Robert laughed. “Why don’t you come into school and pillow fight me a couple of key battles? What do you think?”
“I think you’re one of those mad young teachers they make films about.”
“Oh come on you’d love it… Come out for dinner with me tonight, then.”
Oh.
The words seemed to have tumbled out of his mouth and we both sat in silence, he looking stunned at where they might have come from and me not knowing what to say: dinner would be good, great, but did he really mean to invite me? So should I say no? Or yes. And then I remembered…
“I can’t!”
“OK.”
“I’m meeting Guy later this afternoon. We’re going to his friend’s bistro opening.”
“Sounds posh,” Robert said, flatly.
“It won’t be. Not at all. Look I can call and … well, actually, I can’t call because I don’t have his number. But—”
“You don’t have your boyfriend’s number?” Robert looked up now.
“No. Well. He’s not my boyfriend…”
“Really? I thought–”
“It’s very casual.”
“Oh. Right. There you go then.”
The words hung in the air. There you go then. I didn’t like what he seemed to be insinuating.
“And what does that mean?” I asked. Just because he was cosying up with the kooky French teacher didn’t mean everyone should be doing the full-on boyfriend/ girlfriend commitment thing. “Don’t judge me.”
“I’m not judging you.” He snapped back. “You want a casual relationship then good luck to you. I just thought you were the type of person who wouldn’t have gone for something like that. The way you talk about him…”
“Just because you’re cosily girlfriended up with the Happy Shopper doesn’t mean—”
“And she’s not my girlfriend,” he cut in. “So now who’s making judgements?”
“Whatever,” I said. Because the word had worked when I was fourteen years old and why shouldn’t it work now? I dumped my cushion on the floor and stormed up the stairs to get ready to go out and I heard Robert slam the front door.
When I went downstairs I was greeted by Finley who told me through narrowed green eyes, Well, that was a complete fucking mess wasn’t it.
“Whatever.”
I had better things to do than pander after a moody lodger and a judgemental cat. I had lovers to meet and bistros to party at. I deliberately walked past his empty bowl and out of the door. Let his beloved new master fill it up.
I pulled the duvet up to my shoulders and lay back on the pillows, arms behind my head, watching Guy. He was lounging at the foot of the iron bed, naked, strumming on an old guitar. Afterwards, I was coming to realise,
he would sit there, strumming and muttering random clichéd lines of song: so so blue … where the mountains close up to the sky … and the old man he looked me in the eye, yeah…
And I would lie there and watch him. Because it felt as though that was what was wanted of me.
But not this evening. The bust up with Robert had put me on edge: I was in no mood to loll around and humour Guy’s crappy chord-strumming. I wanted to get up, get dressed and go out – as promised. The last thing I’d eaten was a bowl of Cheerios, and that had been before the pillow fight. Like Roger Wendell with the chocolate muffins, all I could think of was my absolute right to free food. We were an hour late for the start of the opening of the bistro and I was beginning to panic that the sample menu would run out before we arrived. Then what? We could always pop home for a round of toast…
Home.
My heart sank at the thought of it. Going home would mean facing Robert and I didn’t want to face Robert: not until I’d got my head around what I was going to say to him. Something along the lines of I’m really sorry Robert was probably going to be the gist of it. But the actual wording I hadn’t worked out yet.
“Guy… I’m really hungry.”
He fluffed a chord but kept the intent, artistic, earnest look. “Mmm … so you don’t want another tussle under the sheets then, my auburn-haired beauty?” He shot me his devilish smile.
“No.”
He missed another chord.
“I thought we were going to your friend’s bistro party.” I said.
“The night is young, Edda,” he picked up the tune he’d been playing with and started it up again, Oh you river, winding your wet, wet secrets, yeah…
I threw off the duvet and picked up my clothes from the floor. “Can I use your shower?”
“Sure,” he said, strumming.
The pounding of the hot water felt good and I managed to wash away some of the mood I was in. Upstairs when I returned, cleaned, Guy was still where I’d left him.
“Oo-oh my Scottish beauty … flammable passion, yeah … oh, Edda … red headed crofter, yeah, Che Guevara dreamer, oh….”