A Bit of Earth

by Rebecca Smith

  ‘Guy Misselthwaite,’ he said.

  ‘This is Mrs Cowplain, Felix’s teacher.’

  Guy’s heart slipped to his boots.

  ‘What’s happened? Is he all right?’ Inside his head a voice was yelling, ‘No! No! No!’

  ‘I’m afraid Felix has just been sick in the classroom and he’s very upset. We really think you should come and get him. He’s having a lie down in the Inclusion Room.’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ said Guy.

  The microscope was left on, the specimens were abandoned by the scalpel, the chemicals were left unlocked; he ran. The lift wasn’t there, he took the stairs three at a time. He could have been at the school in five minutes, but instead he ran for home. Felix might not be able to walk.

  Nine minutes later he was parking outside on a double yellow and sprinting towards the place he imagined the office to be.

  ‘I’m Felix’s dad,’ he gasped at the woman behind the glass.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, making no move towards getting up. ‘He’s a bit poorly.’

  ‘Has he been sick again?’

  ‘I really couldn’t tell you. Sign here please, Mr Misselthwaite. That’s a nice name. Yorkshire, is it? I suppose it’s to do with “thrush”, and “thwaite” is lake, I think.’

  She pushed an A4 black hardbacked book towards him. ‘Visitors’ Book,’ it said. Guy found the page with the columns for Date, Name, Organisation (where he thought for a microsecond and then wrote ‘not too bad considering’) and Purpose of Visit (where he put ‘retrieving son’).

  ‘So, can I see him now, please?’ He slid the book back towards her.

  ‘This way.’

  Guy was reassured to see that the school was what people described as ‘like Fort Knox’. She pressed an electronic buzzer and the door swung open. Then she led him off down a carpeted corridor. Jolly pieces of artwork and framed certificates and sets of rules and exhortations to good behaviour decorated the walls. If Guy had paused beside the photographic Who’s Who he would have been able to deduce that he was in the company of Mrs Cartwright, Office and Special Needs Coordinator. The silence suddenly turned to a many-decibelled babble.

  How did Felix stand this every day?

  ‘Morning Play,’ she said. Now he had to wade against a tidal bore of small people. At last they were outside the Inclusion Room.

  Inside Felix was sitting up very straight in what had been chosen as a comfy chair. They had given him a nice wooden solitaire set to play with, and placed a bucket beside him. But shouldn’t someone have stayed with him?

  ‘Felix!’ Guy said, close to tears himself. He knelt down and hugged him.

  ‘Hi, Dad. I’m not ill or anything.’ Well, he certainly looked ill. ‘I won’t be sick again. It was just what Mrs Cowplain said.’

  What on earth had that dreadful woman said to make his son throw up? Dear God, was she reading them horror stories, showing them anatomy books? Reproduction? He assumed that Felix knew all that, although he had never told him. There were encyclopaedias in the house after all. Then he thought, oh God. Maybe she was talking about car crashes. Maybe it was Princess Diana or something. Guy had never, never mentioned Princess Diana.

  ‘Little one, we’ll talk about this at home.’

  He scooped Felix up in his arms and carried him out of the school.

  Mrs Cartwright scurried behind them.

  ‘But you haven’t signed him out!’ she yelled as Guy strode away.

  The children watching from the playground were very impressed.

  ‘Felix Misselthwaite threw up all over the classroom.’

  ‘It was really disgusting, like Weetabix.’

  ‘Now he can’t walk and his dad has to carry him to the hospital.’

  It is hard to explain anything when you are crying as much as Felix, but in the end Guy got the story.

  ‘Felix, this is completely ridiculous. Your teacher has no business to be saying these things. I really don’t think that they would concrete over the botanical garden without consulting widely, including the Botany department, well, with us in particular.’

  But with every word he spoke the realisation that all this could so easily be true grew within him.

  ‘There’s only one way to settle it,’ he said. ‘We will ring up the people in charge and find out.’

  ‘But Dad, you’re in charge of the garden. I tell everyone that you’re in charge, and it is sort of our garden.’

  ‘Well, not really. It’s some committee or other.’ Come to think of it he didn’t even know which committee it was. Did Felix know what a committee was? ‘It’s like this, Felix. The Botany department, that’s me and Erica and Jeanette, have what they call historical use of the greenhouses, that’s all. Now you wait here while I find out what’s going on. Do you want a drink? Something to eat? Feel sick?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Felix, in answer to everything. ‘But can I watch TV?’

  Felix found that there was real comfort to be had in watching Programmes for Schools when you are meant to be at school but aren’t. Guy brought him some water in his old Bunnikins mug and some custard creams on a plate with an apple.

  Guy thought about who to ring. He had never bothered to keep up with the machinations and changing structures of the university. He thought of how the place had grown over the last fifteen years. Huge buildings were being fitted into tiny plots of spare land between other huge buildings. Any house or shop or scrap of space anywhere near the campus was bought up. The teacher’s story was all too plausible. They had been left in peace for too long.

  He phoned Erica. She gasped and said she’d get on to it straight away. She said she knew someone in the V-C’s office.

  Erica didn’t phone to tell them what she’d found out, she came round.

  ‘Don’t worry, Fe,’ she said, ‘we’ll fight them off.’ She made her strong tan hand into a firm fist in the air to show how tough she was. ‘Have you ever seen those road protesters on the news? I was one of those once.’

  ‘Cor,’ said Guy.

  ‘We can dig tunnels and live in them if we have to, climb trees and stay there for ever, lie down in the digger buckets.’

  ‘All three of us,’ said Guy grimly.

  ‘And your friend Judy,’ said Erica.

  ‘And Snowy,’ said Felix.

  Judy, calm, self-contained, kind, clever Judy said that they must have a plan straight away. They were meeting in her front room. She had made some scones.

  ‘This is completely ridiculous,’ she said. ‘Butter, Guy? Jam?’ There were several kinds to choose from.

  ‘Can I have lemon cloud on mine again, please Judy?’ Felix asked.

  ‘They really don’t have a leg to stand on. They will need planning permission.’

  ‘Probably already got it,’ said Guy grimly. ‘Blanket for the whole city. Can do just what they want.’

  ‘Now don’t be such an Eeyore, Guy,’ said Judy, pouring tea. She poured a tiny amount for Felix and passed him the sugar bowl. She still had the rainbow crystals that she’d bought for his last visit. ‘This is what we’ll do.’ She had her little notebook ready on the table. ‘I might hold some of my tutorials in the garden. I have some aspiring journalists among my students. I’m sure that they will know a good cause, a good story, and a good stick to beat the authorities with when they see one. We may have to form our own committee.’

  ‘I hate committees,’ said Felix. ‘They make me want to be sick.’

  ‘Well, yes, but not while we’re having tea,’ said Judy briskly.

  ‘When Mrs Cowplain told me I was sick all over the classroom,’ said Felix. He was now quite proud of the episode, which had lent him some notoriety.

  ‘That’s enough of that, Fi,’ said Erica. Guy had been studying the mug Judy had given him, with its design of cornfield flowers.

  ‘I don’t think these are quite to scale, do you?’ he said to Erica.

  ‘But very pretty,’ Erica added quickly. Honestly, she thou
ght, the pair of them!

  ‘We must encourage the school to take up as much space and create as many gardens as they can. I heard an article on the radio recently about community gardens. We may have to go down that path.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Guy. ‘I’m going to have to move my grandfather’s camellia.’ He hadn’t told anyone about it before.

  ‘What, the almost blue-white one? Is that yours?’ Erica asked him. He nodded.

  ‘I’ll tell you about it sometime.’

  ‘There are so many precious plants, we couldn’t move them all. But a community garden might be all right,’ said Erica. ‘Like shared allotments. Everybody coming in and doing a bit. Growing organic vegetables for school dinners, learning how to propagate, a community composting scheme …’

  Guy had his head in his hands. They ignored him.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Judy, ‘but we’ll have to be sneaky. It might be best to be so sneaky that we don’t actually have a committee at first. Make a series of clever manoeuvres so that they simply cannot make that decision. We have to establish things so that they just can’t do anything to harm the garden. Make it so that they don’t want to, or feel that it would be impolitic. But it’ll take more than a community garden. Anyway, there are lots of other things to try. Maybe it could be a performance space, an outdoor theatre, people could get married there. They have to realise what a gem it is …’

  ‘I thought we were going to dig tunnels and tie ourselves up in trees and lie down in digger buckets,’ said Felix.

  Judy smiled. ‘That’s the last resort.’

  ‘I think it should be the first resort. Erica was a tree-saver.’

  ‘A road protester,’ said Erica. ‘Actually only for a few months in my gap year.’

  ‘We need some important people on our side.’

  ‘Oh God, do we have to fill it with people? People are the problem, always the problem. We should be thinking about the plants,’ said Guy. ‘They’re the most important. And there must be many that they wouldn’t be allowed to touch. Rare and protected orchids and butterflies. Plus the badgers.’

  ‘How do I know we’ve got badgers if nobody will take me to see them?’ asked Felix.

  Chapter 25

  ‘Thank you, Max,’ Professor Lovage said. ‘That was a very interesting interpretation of the sources. It can really bring something to the subject when you come at it from a different discipline. Now before you all go, I just wanted to ask if any of you have ever been in the university’s botanical garden.’

  ‘Yeah, I have,’ said Max. Professor Lovage knew this of course. She had seen him there in the distance.

  ‘Me too,’ said Phoebe, ‘but not for a while. But I’ve been meaning to go and see if it would be all right for DramaSoc to use. We’re doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Speed Shakespeare after the exams. I’ve been wandering about, looking for the right place.’

  ‘It would be ideal,’ said Professor Lovage. ‘It is quite the loveliest place. Very quiet, very beautiful, quite overgrown, a good natural slope to make a theatre space …’

  ‘I’ve never been there,’ said Madeleine. ‘I didn’t even know there was one.’

  ‘Take a look. It’s tucked away behind the Geography building and down the back of the Students’ Union. It’s been there since the university got its charter, but now it’s quite neglected – but that’s part of the charm. Unfortunately there are plans afoot to expand across it, destroy it really, by building the new sports science and leisure complex there. I thought that some of you might be interested. Thom, you write for the Union paper, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m a co-editor. I’ll take a look if you like, Professor Lovage.’

  What swagger, she thought, a co-editor of the students’ weekly rag. Well, if he can make it there, he’ll make it, boom boom, anywhere. She smiled at him in what she hoped was a grateful manner.

  ‘Thank you. It might be an interesting article, or even a campaign. You might like to talk to the botanists who work there …’

  Somehow Guy and Erica found that they had both promised to take Felix to see the badgers on the next Friday evening, weather permitting. Felix wanted to take a sleeping bag and make a night of it, but Guy put his foot down.

  ‘We will take chocolate, peanuts in their shells for the badgers, tea, jumpers, and that’s it,’ he said. ‘We cannot spend the night there.’

  ‘I think we should ask Judy, seeing as she’s in the committee,’ said Felix. And she’ll bring a huge picnic, he added to himself.

  They all perched, as silently as it is possible to be perched, on tartan blankets on one of the wide benches in the furthest greenhouse. A few days earlier the door of this greenhouse had been taped up, and a notice had appeared saying, ‘Danger Do Not Enter’. It seemed that Health and Safety were finally on their case, but it had been easy enough to slip inside. This greenhouse gave the best view of the sett. Judy had brought a very big bar of chocolate broken into squares so that there wouldn’t be any unnecessary rustling. Felix could see that her bag, which was made of some sort of soft carpet stuff, was looking even bulgier than normal.

  ‘Judy,’ he hissed, ‘what’s in there?’

  ‘Only some emergency supplies,’ she whispered back.

  ‘I’ve got my emergency knife. Have you got a see-in-the dark video camera?’

  ‘Shh,’ said Guy. ‘They won’t come if they hear you, Felix.’

  ‘Or you, Dad,’ said Felix. But he said no more.

  The sky seemed to be turning green and violet. They could hear distant pounding music and laughter from the Students’ Union building. A flight of house martins went over, invisible from the greenhouse, but identifiable by their harsh little voices. One sees so few swallows now, thought Judy, no wonder the summers are so unpredictable. A pair of bats flew low across the stream. Judy felt Felix’s little hand reach out for hers. He had never done that before. She held it tight. His head looked very heavy. She hoped he would be able to stay awake long enough to see the badgers, or to conclusively not see them. But then the first one appeared. It was quite huge, a big fat stripy animated doormat. She really hadn’t expected them to be so huge. And then another appeared, and another, until there were five or maybe six of them, it was hard to tell, the way they kept popping back indoors for something. How useful to have a snout like that, she thought. The badgers soon polished off the peanuts. Felix’s mouth hung open in wonder. Behind her, she sensed that Guy and Erica were as close to each other as it is possible for adults to be without touching.

  ‘Kiss her!’ she willed Guy, but she feared that he never would, and that Erica would never dare to be the one to make the first move. I think that these two may need a little push, she thought. Then, as she watched the badgers rooting and snuffling, and saw one of the cubs heading for a patch of lady’s-smock under an oak tree, it occurred to her that maybe some magic was called for.

  Outside a fine drizzle began to precipitate from the violet clouds. The badgers didn’t seem to mind. It intensified the smells. Here in the greenhouse ancient scents of tomato leaves, old sacks, dahlias and strawberries began to rise, heady and soporific. Were there ghosts of smells? Of moths? Of birds? Was Susannah watching? Surely no mother could bear to part from her child? Perhaps, thought Judy, these were the thoughts that were holding Guy back.

  She felt Felix lolling against her.

  ‘I’m not tired,’ he whispered. She stroked his hair, it felt like marram grass growing on a dune, and then his head lolled again. She wondered if Felix had a regular bedtime. That was it! She could offer to babysit so that Guy could take Erica to the pub (she could imagine them doing a quiz together), or out to dinner. That was harder to picture. They would probably both go in their work clothes and boots, leaving little patterns of dried mud in a trail across the restaurant floor.

  Presumably Guy had once wooed Susannah; he couldn’t always have been so completely hopeless and inept.

  It grew darker, and the badgers became less visi
ble. Soon all that could be seen were the white stripes, and even these were hard to distinguish from the shadows and plants surrounding them. Time to go. She would have been quite happy for them all to come home with her, but Felix must need his bed. Guy wrapped one of the blankets around him, and she offered them all more chocolate. Felix said out loud, ‘But I’m not tired!’

  ‘I expect they will be gone now, off into the trees somewhere, Felix,’ said Erica. ‘I’m sure we could come and see them again. Weren’t they just beautiful?’

  ‘What do they say at school for “cool” now?’ Judy wondered.

  ‘Cool, mostly,’ said Felix. It used to be “wicked”. And then if something happened that you wanted, you said “ker-ching!” That was from a show on TV.’

  Their feet made a faint scrunch on the damp cinder path, doubtless enough to send any badgers trundling for cover, and quite possibly loud enough to bring one of the security guards with a dog to sniff them all out. Luckily there was a minor disturbance in the Union bar, and an improperly extinguished cigarette had caused a small fire in a bin outside the theatre. All available security personnel were occupied elsewhere.

  When Judy got home there were still two hours left of the day. She heated some soup and ate it watching the news; but Friday night after-the-news TV shows were something that she could not abide. She turned the TV off and sat enjoying the silence. She decided to make a plan. She would have them all to supper, including Felix, and keep suggesting nice things to do, places to eat and go, until at last the bait was taken, or she would come up with some lovely evening out for them, something romantic. Then she would offer to babysit for Felix. She would be delighted to do it. She could imagine him in some very soft pyjamas, definitely green, probably with the legs and arms too short. Perhaps she would get him some new pyjamas, ones that fitted of course; but Christmas and his birthday were ages away. Perhaps she might just happen to see some in a sale … there must be so many nice things that one could buy a little boy of Felix’s age, so many things she could get for his room. She couldn’t imagine that Guy was that big on interior design or soft furnishings. A nice new quilt cover, perhaps with a design of boats, or maybe parrots – she was sure she’d seen one with parrots somewhere; a soft, brightly coloured cotton rug; a lamp – she’d seen a lovely shade, very jolly, a bright yellow sun in John Lewis …