Alan is out on the vegetable patch, digging deep rows and turning dung into the trenches. His wellington boots are clogged with manure and rich earth, and he has a blackbird, a mistle thrush and a robin in attendance. He tosses them worms in turn, but each time they pounce and squabble. Alan is weary, his back and thighs ache from his work, and he is longing for his meagre honey sandwiches. He pauses often, hoping for rain that is too heavy to work in.
John is glad of a young man to break the soil. He has been gathering golden-skinned passion fruit from the house front and the trellises, and now he is back in the shed, talking to George. ‘A whole basket,’ he gloats. ‘What about that, then? Harvest of a good long summer. Bluebottles for you, passion fruit for me, God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world. Makes you believe, though, doesn’t it? Lookin’ at a passion flower. That purple, and that bit o’ yellow, and that white. And those tendrils that won’t let go. And leaves like dark-green hands. And the funny stamens with wobbly crosspieces on top. Looks as if it’s made by Him Above in a good mood. I suppose that if you’re a spider, then you think that God is too. That would explain the number of bloody insects, any road. Wonder where Sylvie is. I’ll tell you something else, Georgie boy; I reckon he fancies her as much as she fancies him. And another thing. I’m jealous. Sixty-seven year old, and I’m jealous.
‘Ridiculous, that’s what I am. Don’t suppose you think about such things, eh? Build yourself a sticky little web and sit back and reckon that you got it sorted. All right for some.’
A sharp wind springs up, and those outdoors shiver and look up at the sky, which darkens suddenly. Thunder roars overhead. A torrent commences, as if a giant has overturned his bath, and Alan rushes into the shed. John is pleased with himself. ‘Said it would rain, didn’t I? Was I right? I certainly was.’
‘You’re always right,’ says Alan. ‘Bloody weathermen, though. I didn’t bring my waterproofs because of them.’
‘You’re gullible, you are,’ says John, still pleased about the accuracy of his prognostications, pleased that he knows a few things that Alan will never know, even if he goes to university. ‘Put the kettle on, boy, and make some for Sylv.’
The kettle begins to hum, and Alan ladles tea leaves into the pot, which is so ingrained with tannin that its original cream-coloured interior has become completely brown. Like all respectable gardeners’ teapots, it has a chip out of the tip of the spout, and the lid has broken in half and been glued back together.
‘I think I could mend that door,’ says Alan. ‘The pins through the hinges are worn out. I could probably replace them with sawn-off six-inch nails.’
John is smoking his pipe and enjoying the feeling of being warm and safe inside while outside the world is drowning. ‘Bright lad,’ he says, ‘but mind you don’t go disturbing George.’
‘One of the threads goes to the back of that hinge,’ says Alan, scrutinising a long thread of gossamer that glistens with dust. ‘Christ,’ he exclaims, instinctively ducking as the thunder crashes directly overhead. He opens the door to observe the deluge, and the lightning crackles again. The thunder unrolls instantaneously, and Alan is excited. ‘What a corker. Cor, did you see that? Right overhead. It’s amazing, the rain’s actually bouncing on the ground.’
John is being knowing again, as is his right as an older man, and a countryman. ‘When it rains like this, we get a flood. I told that pop star and the Shah of Iran, and I’ve told Mr Gull ’n’ all, I said, “We need a gulley along the drive, ’cause it’s clay here, and the water sits and sits before it soaks away.” Anyway, that pop star feller only knew how to say “Far out”. No, I lie, sometimes he said, “Heavy, man, heavy.” He died in the end, did I tell you? Choked on his own vomit, so they say, somewhere in America. Anyway, the Shah just says, “We’ll do it, God willing,” and then his country got all political, ’cause things were happening over there, see? And Mr Gull just says, “I’m considering it,” and while he’s considering it, we get wet.’
‘Hi, boys,’ cries Sylvie exuberantly, as she lunges in through the doorway, her hair lank and dark with water, which is also dripping from her eyelashes and the end of her nose, which has gone pink about the edges of her nostrils. ‘God, it’s raining cats and dogs, horses and donkeys, giraffes and elephants. I’m absobloodylutely soaked. Shelter, you’ve got to give me shelter. If I try for the stable I’ll drown.’
‘Sorry, Sylvie,’ teases Alan, ‘John doesn’t hold with women in the potting shed.’ He pretends to be about to push her back out into the rain.
Sylvie takes her long hair in her hands and wrings out the water. ‘He’s an old sweetie, really, except that he deceives his wife.’
John’s eyebrows jerk upwards. ‘You little scamp. I never did.’
‘You did too. You told me yourself you’ve had that motorcycle and sidecar for thirty years, and your wife doesn’t know. Seriously, Alan, he keeps it in someone else’s shed, and his wife thinks he comes to work on the bus. He’s got no principles at all.’
John rolls up his newspaper and takes a playful swipe at Sylvie’s head. ‘I won’t be trusting you with any more secrets. Rapscallion. Anyway, a man needs secrets from his wife. Keeps him normal, keeps him sane. It’s privacy.’
Spontaneously, Sylvie plants a kiss on the top of John’s head, and he beams with embarrassment, pride and pleasure. She says, ‘I used to come in here when I was a kid, and he’d sit me on his knee and tell me stories.’
‘You used to pull my moustache and say, “Is it real? Is it real?” There’s water in the kettle, new boiled, by the way. D’you still take four sugars?’
Sylvie reproves him. ‘Oh John, I gave that up five years ago.’
A small white paw hooks around the bottom of the door, attempting to open it, and Alan says, ‘It’s Rover.’
‘Oh poor pussycat,’ says Sylvie, ‘I’ll let her in. She’s soaked, poor little thing, she’s pathetic.’
The cat is bedraggled, and frightened of the thunder. She is shivering and miaowing silently, her jaws opening and closing with poignant eloquence. John leans down and heaves her on to his knee, where he dries her with sacking. The cat purrs, and John explains, ‘She likes that, she does.’ The cat settles, drawing warmth from John’s thighs, and all of them sit in agreeable stillness, lulled by the purring, by the sounds of the rain, and the sipping of tea.
‘This is nice,’ says Sylvie, at last, ‘all together in the shed, safe and warm.’ A stray thought occurs to her, as stray thoughts do. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask, what do you boys do when you need a wee? I mean, you never use the stable loo, do you?’
John looks at her a little mischievously. ‘Compost heap. No point in wasting it. Nitrogen, see?’ and Alan adds, ‘It was one of John’s conditions of employment when I came up looking for a job.’
‘There’s water coming under the door,’ observes Sylvie, nodding her head towards a puddle by the threshold.
‘Might have to sit on the table. Can’t stand wet feet,’ grumbles John. ‘My old man, he got trench foot in the war, the first one, and he always told me, “Don’t never let your feet get wet. They’ll go white and spongy, and then the meat falls off.” It’s like when you leave a piece of chicken in a bowl of water. Bloody horrible.’
A whimsical idea occurs to Sylvie. ‘Does this shed float? I mean, we could be like Noah’s Ark. With the cat and everything.’
‘And George,’ adds John, in the spirit of fairness.
‘It’s really bucketing,’ says Alan, shivering with that delicious threat of wild weather in such a domesticated land.
‘It’s setting in all day,’ asserts John.
‘What’ll we do?’ demands Sylvie. ‘I swear we’re all going to drown.’
‘We’ll do what we always do,’ decides John. ‘We’ll drink tea, and then we’ll wash the green rims from off the top of the flowerpots.’
Alan groans. He suffers from the sudden and extreme weariness of the young man who is about to have to do something t
hat bores him to death. This is worse than having to clean his room or put on a tie for the arrival of guests. ‘Let’s do “I wish”,’ proposes Alan. ‘Let’s say exactly what we’d rather be doing. Who’s going to start? Sylvie?’
She scowls at him sweetly. ‘I’m not starting. I’d feel stupid. Anyway, it was your idea.’
Alan pauses, and sighs. ‘I wish it was snowing instead of raining, and I was tobogganing down the seventeenth hole on the golf course, the one that’s almost vertical, with the snow hissing under the runners, and I’m steering by sticking my welly into the snow, and my cheeks are so cold that they ache above the bone, and there’s all the excitement of wondering if I can avoid the oak tree, and then I crash into the ditch on purpose, and just lie there spread-eagled, and one of my sisters comes up and drops a great big armful of snow on top of my head. You feel so happy.’ He sips at his tea, affected by his own vision. ‘But what really happens is that suddenly you’re just terribly cold and wet, and your mittens are so soaked that your fingers freeze, and you wish you’d never come out. Have you noticed how snow smells when it’s clogged up into ice on your mittens?’
Sylvie is struck unaccountably with gloom. ‘Do you ever get that feeling that you wish you were someone else?’
Alan looks at her sitting with her chin in her hands, and answers, ‘All the time.’
‘Me too,’ she says. ‘What about you, John?’ and John tells them, ‘I don’t want to be no one else. I just want something to happen. I don’t want to be a tree no more.’ He catches their puzzled expressions, and explains. ‘You take a sapling. It’s the first autumn, and the tree goes, “Blimey, that’s interesting, all me leaves’ve dropped off.” And then it’s spring, and the tree goes, “Well, stone me, all me leaves is comin’ back.” And then he gets his first bird’s nest, and he goes, “Well, in’t that a pleasure, to be so useful?” But then it’s fifty years later, and it’s all the same. He loses his leaves, and he thinks, “Oh, that again,” and then the leaves come back, and he goes, “Surprise, surprise, I don’t think,” and then he’s got a dozen bloody birds’ nests, and he goes, “The little sods.” Well … I’ve got like that. Over and over and over and over and over and over, same thing each day as I did last year on the same day. Every Thursday, I get home and the missus has done a cheese pie, and she says, “Cheese pie all right, love?” and I say, “Lovely,” and every Tuesday it’s macaroni, and every Sunday the daughter rings up and says, “’Ello, Dad, how are you?” and I say, “Not so bad. How’s yourself?” and I just feel like I want to jump off a high place into a lake, and feel that cold water cleaning out the dust. I got dust where my brain is. I got dust in my eyes. I got dust in my mouth. Just dust everywhere, an’ I’m getting old, I know I am, and I look back and think, “What? What? What?” And I think, “What happened, and why wasn’t you looking? You’re going to your grave, John, and you might as well not ever have lived.” You know what? I reckon I chewed on life, and never tasted it at all.’
Alan is speechless; he has never heard John, or anyone older than himself, come to that, acknowledging their own despair. Sylvie is stirred, she has tears in her eyes, and she protests, ‘Oh John. Why don’t you look at these gardens? How many other people have kept one place so beautiful for so long?’ She comes over and hugs him, kissing him on the cheek. He is touched but embarrassed, and he pats her on the upper arm. ‘You’re a sweet girl, Sylvie,’ he says. ‘You brighten things up. Do me a favour. Stay sweet. When I’m dead I want to lie in my grave and think about you being sweet, and wishing I’d been young at the same time as you.’
Sylvie pulls a disavowing face. ‘I don’t want to be sweet. I want to be fierce.’ She raises her two hands like forepaws, and growls.
John laughs. ‘You couldn’t help it if you tried. You’re sweet, and that’s that. Always were.’ John tips the dregs of his tea into a pot of cyclamen, and says suddenly, with impatience in his tone, ‘I’ll tell you what I really wish. I wish you two would get a move on and go out and do something.’ He looks up, pleased by their confounded expressions. He says to Sylvie, ‘He’s been meaning to ask you out.’
Alan exclaims, ‘I haven’t. I mean –’ and John interrupts, still addressing the girl. ‘He watches for you when you ride past, and he says, “Shall I go to the stable and barrow the manure?” and he hangs about doing it slowly, in case you turn up. I’ve seen.’
‘You’re an old sod,’ moans Alan, hiding his face in his hands.
‘Is it true then?’ demands Sylvie, thrilled by this turn of events, but also alarmed.
‘Course it is,’ confirms John, with an upward motion of his arm.
‘The rain’s stopping,’ says Alan, his face still hidden in his hands.
‘Don’t go changing the subject,’ says John. ‘It’s true, what I said, it’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it’s true,’ admits Alan, his ears reddening even more. ‘It is true. I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ repeats Sylvie, thinking that this is a peculiar choice of word, but John turns his eye on her. ‘As for you, little miss, you’re just as bad. You could’ve run for the stable, ’stead of runnin’ in here. In fact I saw you running over here from the stable, and you got wet when you needn’t. In my opinion, and if you want my advice, you two should get something sorted out.’ He turns and puts his hand to the doorknob. ‘I’m going out. Got to see what the rain’s done. Come on, puss, idle cat never caught quick mouse,’ and John heaves the door open, sploshing out into the wet world, followed hesitantly by the cat. ‘See you, George,’ he calls.
Sylvie and Alan are shamefaced; they are both nervous. There is a sense in which their situation was more comfortable when each was just a reverie for the other. Now they are going to have to begin the awkward process of becoming flesh and spirit. Alan looks up at her briefly, and she smiles a little encouragement. She feels her mouth become somewhat dry, and her heart is like a moth. ‘What do you normally do on a first date?’ he asks.
Sylvie shrugs. ‘Flicks, I suppose.’
‘Saturday?’
Sylvie remembers her mother’s advice about not making it too easy, and replies, ‘Friday.’
‘What shall we see?’ asks Alan, caught between a man’s duty to be decisive, and a man’s duty to defer to a woman’s desires.
‘Let’s look in the paper,’ says Sylvie, who has more common sense than he does. She stands up and places her mug on the potting bench. ‘Listen,’ she says, ‘I’ll be back in a mo. I want to go and give John a big hug.’
‘Why?’ asks Alan, genuinely mystified, and also, much to his own surprise, a fraction jealous.
‘Because,’ calls Sylvie over her shoulder as she strides away.
Alan blows air through his lips to make them flap together, and then distorts them into a shape that reflects his trepidation. ‘Well, George,’ he says, collecting the mugs together, and addressing the impassive and discreet spider, ‘I suppose I ought to be thrilled, but, between you and me, I’m bloody terrified. I’m going to make a mess, I know I am.’ He pauses for reflection, and continues. ‘It’ll be the usual disaster. Mum won’t lend me the car, I’ll be late even though I started early, because I’ll get stuck behind a tractor on Vann Lane, and I’ll be all in a sweat, and I’ll have spilt the aftershave so I pong like a hyacinth, and I’ll have forgotten to get any money out of the bank. No, the cash machine’ll pack up and swallow my card, so I’ll have to borrow the money from Sylvie and promise to pay it back, and the film’ll be bloody awful, and then afterwards I’ll spill red wine all over the tablecloth and Sylvie’s white jeans, and then I’ll drink too much, and when I drop her off I’ll try to kiss her and she’ll get angry, or else I won’t try to kiss her when she’d hoped that I would, and I’ll go home all miserable, and then I won’t be able to face her when I come into work, and she’ll tell John and all the stable girls what happened.’
Outside the rain resumes, and Alan is comforted by its tattoo upon the tarred felt of the roof. He hears
John returning, and quickly confides to George, ‘No, I’m not. I’m not going to mess it up, I’m really not.’ A thought occurs to him. ‘I don’t suppose that John and Sylvie would let me.’
The door scrapes as John comes in. He removes his crumpled hat and shakes the drops of water to the floor. ‘Still here?’ he asks rhetorically.
Alan is moved to say something, he is not even sure what it is until it emerges from his mouth. ‘John, before Sylvie gets back, I just want to say … even though it’s a while before I go … I want to say it’s been a pleasure … the gardens … working here with you … all that. I’ll be sorry to go to university. Thanks for everything.’
John looks at him for a long moment, and sighs. ‘I’ve worked here all my life,’ he says at last, ‘this is all it’s ever been.’ John feels resentful, he wants to say that for Alan this has been merely a picturesque adventure among the peasants, but he does not know exactly how to say it, and in any case he knows that it is only half the truth. The truth is that they have come to be fond of each other, and have learned mutual respect. John says, ‘I suppose you’ll be needing a job in the holidays. Come back any time.’
Alan smiles and offers John his hand, as if sealing a deal. ‘Just try and keep me away,’ he says, and John feels a moment of vindication that moves him, but which he cannot entirely explain. ‘Let’s bring in the tomato plants,’ he says, ‘I’ve got a trick to show you that Harold showed me afore his marbles rolled away. What you do is, you bring ’em in, the whole plants, and strip the leaves, and you tie ’em together and hang ’em with the roots upwards, right? And then the ones that are green just carry on ripening, and now and then you chuck out the ones that’ve gone off. And that way you get your red tomatoes ’til November, and you don’t have your missus making bloody green-tomato chutney and putting it in your sarnies every morning.’
Notwithstanding: Stories From an English Village Page 16