Green Beans and Summer Dreams

by Catherine Ferguson

  When the first few rejections arrived, I stayed optimistic. I knew that with the recession still biting hard, it might be a bit of a slog. But if I kept on trying, I’d get there in the end.

  But it wasn’t as simple as I had imagined.

  After three or four months of getting precisely nowhere, my confidence had taken a bashing and I was growing restless, stuck in a dilapidated house while Jamie worked long hours to establish himself at his new firm – although thankfully, he was earning more than enough for both of us. I was also missing Edinburgh and my friends. I desperately needed something to occupy my mind.

  That was when Jamie came up with a plan.

  I would give the job-hunting a rest for the time being, and instead, project manage the renovation of Farthing Cottage. He was more than happy to pay the bills while I worked on the house and we’d have a gorgeous home at the end of it.

  I accepted the challenge gratefully. After months of anxiety over my future in the workplace, finally I had a project to get my teeth into.

  And what a project!

  For the last few years of Midge’s life, the house had been neglected. Every part of it – the roof, the plumbing, the electrics, the gardens – needed a complete overhaul. The roof was the worst. We had leaks in the kitchen whenever it rained. And an inspection revealed that renewing the tiles would not be sufficient. The entire thing would have to be replaced.

  So we drew up big plans to go the whole hog, knocking down walls, extending the kitchen and installing en-suite bathrooms and a conservatory. We took out a small mortgage on the property to raise funds and lived in a caravan for the first few months while the roof was fixed and the interior reshaped.

  Then we moved in and spent the best part of six months battling with the mess, installing new fittings and making it into a lovely home again.

  I was focused one hundred and ten percent on the project. I even took some night classes in plastering and eventually, after a few false starts, we managed to save ourselves a shed-load of money by doing most of it ourselves. We hired plumbers and electricians to do the specialised work. But most of the donkey work I did myself, helped by Jamie at weekends. Finally, we had a beautiful blank canvas and I was able to embark on the painting and decorating.

  I shaped rooms and chose paint shades and fabrics with Midge in mind. It was like she was there, advising me with her wise words and shrugging her shoulders when I got it wrong.

  I was also determined to have the wrought iron main gates restored to their former glory. They were beautiful. A real work of art. But they had tarnished over time and Midge had seemed agitated about that when we last spoke.

  With the house project over, I started job-hunting again while setting to work on the jungle of a garden.

  I’d found a twelve-month gardening diary Midge had started in 1992, a few years after she’d first come to live at Farthing Cottage. So now I was following her lead. I threw all my energy into tackling the huge, overgrown plot at the back of the house, getting rid of the tangle of weeds, pruning the fruit trees, and even cultivating a small vegetable plot. I’d never gardened before but I borrowed loads of books from the library and started experimenting. Jamie helped out at weekends with the heavier jobs.

  And I found I loved it.

  Working in the garden brought me a satisfaction I’d never experienced before. Even project managing the house hadn’t given me the same pleasure as working outdoors in the fresh air, coaxing plants to life and leaning on my spade at the end of the day to admire the result. My muscles would ache, I’d be hot and sweaty, and in my gardening gear, I looked rather like a scarecrow. But the sense of achievement and the feeling of peace was second to none.

  I’d discovered a genuine affinity with the earth and a love of gardening that I could only assume I’d inherited from my Aunt Midge.

  And for the first time, I realised that actually, I wouldn’t be at all disappointed if I never saw the inside of an office again. I hadn’t missed my PR work at all.

  My mind seemed to be wandering in a new direction.

  Could I turn my love of gardening into a business?

  I’d spend hours mulling over the possibilities. Could I sell my own vegetables at the farmers’ market? Set myself up in business as a gardener in the local area? Or try to find work at a garden centre?

  But I always came to the same conclusion.

  However attractive the idea of growing and selling my own vegetables might be, there wasn’t any real money in it. So gardening could only ever be a lovely hobby.

  But I’d reached a place where I was happy with myself and my life. Jamie seemed to be thriving at work. We were living in a beautiful house in the country. Our future looked sunny.

  I could never have anticipated what was to come next.

  Afterwards, I’d look back and wonder why on earth I hadn’t realised what was happening. Had I been too wrapped up in the garden to spot the signs?

  When Jamie came home from work one day and broke the news that he was leaving, it was so unexpected that at first, I was struck dumb. I remember watching the sentences floating out of his mouth but being quite unable to take them in.

  Then he mentioned Emma and instantly I was hearing every word in magnified Dolby surround sound.

  I sat down on the nearest kitchen chair, in case my trembling legs gave way.

  Emma was Jamie’s work colleague. He’d mentioned her from time to time. Apparently they had tried so hard to resist the attraction between them but in the end it was impossible. Jamie gazed at me with infinite sadness, shrugged his careworn shoulders and said, ‘It was beyond our control. We were always meant to be. Emma and me.’

  Hurt and anger boiled up inside me.

  What an utter load of horseshit he was spouting!

  Since when had Jamie been a believer in flaky concepts like Fate and Destiny?

  The only thing that was ‘meant to be’ was me hurling the salmon en croute with asparagus at his stupid head.

  But since I’m not a violent person, I did the next best thing and escaped to the bathroom.

  I sat on the mercifully cool floor tiles, leaning against the lovely free-standing bath Jamie and I had chosen together.

  I caught my reflection in the angled shaving mirror by the basin. Pale face. Sweep of reddish-brown blow-dried hair. Dark eyes bleak with despair.

  The fabric of my brand new, poppy-red mini dress felt stiff against my bare thighs, tanned from the garden. I gazed at the cream, strappy sandals with the ruby jewel embellishments.

  I was dressed for a special day.

  And special days demanded sacrifices – whether it was heels that tortured your feet and gave you the calf muscles of a weightlifter or corset-type tops that made you wish breathing could be optional. In an ideal world, I would have changed out of my new outfit when the lightning bolt struck because now it just made me feel like a fool. But when someone who’s supposed to love you stands there, white-faced and barely able to look you in the eye, and says he’s sorry, but he’s decided to move in with someone a decade younger, it would hardly be normal behaviour to say, ‘Hang fire a sec, will you, while I slip into something more comfortable?’

  I smoothed my hand over the knobbly surface of the floor tiles. A bathroom wasn’t the best place to hole up, from a comfort perspective, but it had one distinct advantage. A door that locked. So I didn’t have to look at his face and see his pathetic I’m so sorry but we just couldn’t help ourselves expression.

  I loved those tiles. Tiny Mediterranean blue squares like the bottom of a swimming pool. They’d taken an age to lay. The rooms in this old farmhouse weren’t exactly small. But we’d both agreed it was worth the painstaking effort.

  Tears stung my eyes.

  He’d be picking out tiles with Emma from now on.

  I thought of all the months of deception as Jamie pursued his tacky, clandestine passion and suddenly, I was furious again. I wanted to stick my head round the door and yell at him that bloody Emm
a was welcome to him. And could he please leave his key on the way out? I might even hurl his stupid top-of-the-range tablet at him as he went. The one I’d spent ages choosing then wrapping up in a big cellophane bow with little red hearts on it.

  Take that, cheating gadget man!

  But of course I wouldn’t. I’d keep it all in because in my top ten of Things I Loathe, confrontation was a clear winner (though currently jostling for the top spot with Jamie Evans, monster deceiver).

  I thought of my friend, Anna. She wouldn’t hold back for fear of unpleasantness and shouting. I shuddered to imagine what she would say to Jamie when she knew he’d been cheating on me for the past ten months; with a woman who, at twenty-two, had a full decade on me and whose biological clock could tick for another twenty years before the warranty ran out.

  Jess, my other best friend, would be deeply shocked but instead of railing at Jamie, she would gather me close and let me sob.

  Suddenly I longed for Jess.

  ‘Izzy? Are you OK in there?’

  I froze, like an animal sensing the next few seconds could mean life or death.

  ‘Open up, Izz. We need to talk.’

  I stared mutinously at the door handle. If he thought I was going to—

  ‘Come on, Izz, stop being so melodramatic. Oh, for God’s sake, we can’t do this through a locked door.’

  My mouth twisted with scorn. He’d been shagging Emma for the best part of a year. Now they were planning a new life together. Exactly how was talking going to help?

  ‘Izzy, I’m so, so sorry. What else can I say? If you want me to go, I will. Do you want me to go?’

  I pulled a ‘duh!’ face at the door.

  ‘Isobel! Talk to me!’ He blew out his breath, frustrated. ‘Look, we’ve had a good innings, you and me. Five years. But in the long run you’ll see this was for the best. Christ, you’ll probably thank me.’

  A good innings? Trust him to default to his deathly dull cricket in a crisis.

  I remembered the champagne chilling in the fridge. I’d smiled at the check-out girl as she removed the security collar on the bottle, all the while complaining that her boyfriend could never be relied on to remember special occasions. My smile was a little smug, because my boyfriend always did.

  ‘Right, I’m going,’ he announced, and the ice in his tone felt like a slap in the face. ‘You do realise you’ll have to sell the house.’

  I swallowed hard. ‘No way,’ I called out, my voice catching a little.

  This was my house! We weren’t married. Or even engaged. Aunt Midge would turn in her grave if she knew he and Emma were planning to lay some kind of claim to Farthing Cottage.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to pay the mortgage on your own then, won’t you?’

  ‘Fine!’ I yelled.

  ‘Come on, Izzy. You won’t need a house this big once I’m gone.’

  I reached for some toilet tissue and blew my nose very softly. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll – sell things.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You heard me. I’ll sell things.’

  ‘What things?’

  I hesitated, curling my hands into fists.

  ‘Vegetables.’

  There was a short silence, broken only by the occasional drip of a bath tap.

  ‘Vegetables?’

  I could picture his disbelief.

  ‘Yes, vegetables. From my garden,’ I shouted, pride in my achievement poking through the desolation.

  ‘Izzy, don’t be so fucking ridiculous.’

  My heart sank at his scorn. But of course he was right. Selling vegetables wasn’t going to pay the mortgage. I needed to get a proper job.

  ‘So how does Emma earn a living?’ I called out, panic making my voice sound shrill.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I expect she’s something incredibly important in the City.’

  ‘She’s a receptionist, if you must know. But what’s that got to do with anything? Look, for Christ’s sake open up.’ He pumped the bathroom handle to let me know he meant business.

  I stared at the door. It was clear he’d made up his mind and now only wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to do anything silly. Like drowning myself. Or making a suicidal appointment with my hairdresser.

  Sighing, I kicked off the sandals and got to my feet. ‘OK, I’ll come out.’

  Maybe it was time to do the grown-up thing …

  ‘Well, thank Christ for that,’ came the response. ‘Talk about melodramatic. You’d try the bloody patience of a saint sometimes.’

  But then again, maybe I’ll just stay here …

  ‘I’m having a soak first,’ I called out defiantly. ‘I might be a while.’

  I turned on the taps and undressed slowly while the bath filled and the hammering on the door intensified. Lowering myself into the water, I felt fragile and bruised, as if I’d been in a punch-up.

  A resounding thud reverberated through the bath as Jamie kicked the door in frustration.

  ‘Suit yourself, then,’ he yelled. ‘Have a nice life.’

  I heard his feet hammer down the stairs and seconds later, the front door slammed.

  I lay there until the bath water grew cool.

  Then I got out and wrapped myself in a towel.

  It was 12th August. The date we’d met, five years earlier. A day we’d always taken care to celebrate, whatever else was happening, and which this year I’d flagged on the calendar in the kitchen – a big red heart with an arrow through it and our initials. Even knee-deep in misery, the irony of his timing didn’t escape me.

  Today was our anniversary.

  Jamie had left me.

  And I was alone.

  The two weeks that followed were a bit of a blur.

  Sick with misery, I turned inwards, wanting to be alone, unable to bear the thought of other people’s sympathy. As day turned to night and back to day again, I gradually became aware that Anna and Jess would wonder about my lack of contact. So I sent them texts saying I was visiting my mother and would be in touch when I got back.

  Every morning I woke in a panic at the thought of a future without Jamie in it. And I constantly raked over the details of our last year together, wondering if there was something I could have done differently that would have stopped him falling in love with Emma.

  I spent a lot of time in bed with my nice friends on daytime TV. And I mooched around the house, leaving a trail of scrunched-up tissues, making feverish plans that alternated between winning Jamie back and making him suffer horribly.

  I was plagued with guilt about the garden and all the weeding I wasn’t doing.

  The vegetable plot was usually my haven, especially in times of stress. I nurtured my plants lovingly; fed them rich compost; even talked to them because I’d heard that helped. But they were being sorely neglected.

  I’d started to avert my eyes every time I passed a window, because I couldn’t bear to see their hurt stares. Rows of neglected peas, tendrils twining round sticks, crying out to be picked. And droopy green beans, used to being cosseted, huffily indignant to find themselves thirsty.

  I was finally forced to text Anna with news of our split – only because Jamie and I were due round at hers for dinner that night so I had no other option.

  And half an hour after that text – as I lay on my bed eating a chocolate orange I’d found in my gift drawer and watching Deal or No Deal – she was banging on the door.

  I tried to ignore it.

  But she rattled the letterbox and started yelling through it. ‘I know you’re in there, Izz. I can hear the telly for Christ’s sake!’

  I frowned at the open bedroom window.

  ‘Let me in! Please!’ A pause. ‘I’m not budging till you open up.’

  My heart sank.

  I’d learned from experience that when Anna made up her mind about something, arguing with her was completely futile. You might as well tell Sweeney Todd to turn vegetaria
n.

  Anna was loud and extrovert and said exactly what she thought. It might have been something to do with her red hair. Or the fact that she never had a dad to oversee discipline in the house when she was a child, just a lovely, slightly unconventional mum who had her packing her own school lunches by the time she was five.

  If I didn’t go downstairs, Anna would bring a tent and a flask and camp out in my field until she gained entry.

  So I dragged myself up, pulled on my dressing gown and did a horrified double take in the mirror.

  I had turned into the mad woman in the attic.

  Scary white face peering through a tangle of undergrowth. My dark auburn hair kinked wildly when left to go its own way. It hadn’t been within spitting distance of a hairdryer for days.

  It was a wrench having to leave my sanctuary.

  But as I headed down the stairs, I suddenly thought how lovely it would be to see a friendly face again after two weeks of self-imposed solitary confinement.

  Tears pricked my eyes.

  How could I have forgotten what an amazing comfort friends could be in times of crisis?

  A warm feeling spread through me and I almost ran the last few steps.

  ‘At long bloody last!’ Anna shouted. ‘I’m freezing my bloody bollocks off here.’

  She blew in on a gusty wind, along with a delivery of crisp autumn leaves from the beech trees outside my door, and marched straight through to the kitchen, winding off her scarf and yelling back, ‘I couldn’t believe your text saying Jamie buggered off at the weekend. That bastard has been gone three days and you never thought to mention it till this morning?’

  I pulled my gaping dressing gown together and trailed after her. Having made it to the front door, I was now completely knackered.

  I slumped down at the kitchen table. ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Wednesday. Why?’

  ‘Actually, it’s two weeks and four days.’ I eye her apologetically. ‘Since he left.’

  Anna, who was pacing round the kitchen, boot heels clacking on the flagstone floor, stopped and spun round.

  ‘But your texts said you’d gone away. You’ve been here all this time?’ She fell into a chair opposite, her face softening. ‘Look at you! So calm and so brave.’ Leaning across the table, she imprisoned my hand in her freezing fingers. ‘Well, don’t worry. You’re not on your own any more.’