How to Break Your Own Heart

by Maggie Alderson

  I told her that in the first year I was going to concentrate on the vegetable patch and that I was hoping to produce enough salad and vegetables – all organic, of course – to feed us all weekend, with some to take back to London. I was also going to create a separate area devoted entirely to herbs, in the manner of the Chelsea Physic Garden. The following year, I announced, I would tackle the rest of the garden. I was very keen to grow a lot of dahlias, I told her, in a cutting garden.

  Her eyes sparkled with merriment as I spoke and I realized how pretentious I sounded.

  ‘Have you ever grown vegetables before, Amelia?’ she asked me, gently.

  I giggled a bit. ‘I grew some mustard and cress on a flannel once…’

  We caught each other’s eye and both burst out laughing. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Because I didn’t know her very well and it was the first time I had ever been in her house, I felt a bit hysterical, like you do when you get the giggles in class at school. But I couldn’t help it. I was throwing myself around in her armchair like a lunatic and had tears of mirth coursing down my cheeks. Luckily, Hermione was laughing too, hooting like a little white-haired owl.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ I said, wiping my face on the sleeve of my T-shirt, as I tried to recover. ‘I’m such an idiot. I’m carrying on like I’m Sarah Raven and really I haven’t got the slightest clue what I’m doing out there.’

  ‘Well, there is quite a bit to it, Amelia dear,’ she said, dabbing her own eyes with a lace-edged hanky she had taken from her sleeve. ‘But I have an idea that might help, shall I tell you?’

  I nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘The thing about growing vegetables is that they need quite a lot of attention, especially in the peak growing season, so it would be very difficult for you to keep it all going just over the odd weekend.’

  I think I must have looked crestfallen.

  ‘But don’t be cast down,’ she continued. ‘Because I have a very nice young man who helps me with the heavy work in my garden, but I don’t let him have much of a go at the interesting bits like sowing seeds and planting out, and he is so keen it’s a shame really. So perhaps you could hire him to help set your garden up and then look after it for you during the week, and I could show both of you what to do along the way. I would enjoy that very much and I think he would too – and you would have your vegetable garden and enough to eat all summer. What do you think?’

  ‘I think that would be wonderful,’ I said.

  *

  That evening, I was happily making dinner, listening to Radio 4, while Ed was holed up in his room working with the curtains closed, as usual. One of the many things I loved about the cottage was the chance to do some cooking, rather than eating out every single night, as we did in London, and I was making Jamie Oliver’s roast chicken with fresh herbs, inspired by a big bunch of thyme, bay and rosemary picked for me earlier by Hermione.

  I was just pushing the herbs and butter under the skin when there was a knock on the back door. I opened it to find a young Greek god on the doorstep.

  He was backlit by the setting sun, and his scruffy blond hair was like an illuminated halo around his head, his shoulders broad and square against the foamy pink of Hermione’s cherry tree, which was blossoming behind him. I was lost for words.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, smiling shyly. ‘Are you Mrs Bradlow?’

  I nodded dumbly, wiping my greasy fingers on my apron and suddenly not really sure of anything as I squinted at the unlikely vision in denim before me.

  ‘I’m Sonny. Mrs Hart said you might be needing a gardener.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, my brain kicking in again. ‘Yes, yes, come in.’

  He stepped over the threshold, bowing his head to get under the low beam, and as I closed the door behind him, I saw that he looked even better without his Hollywood lighting.

  He had a light growth of blond stubble on his chin, his cheeks were quite pink – partly from embarrassment, I thought, but also simple rude health and that thing called youth – and although he was wearing a loose plaid shirt over a T-shirt, I could see he had a powerful physique.

  I asked him to sit down and sneaked a pervy look at his rear end, as he turned to pull out the chair. Glorious.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ I said, my voice sounding false and weird to my own ears. I felt as I used to when Dick brought Joseph and the rest of the rugby team home for tea. All hot and useless and liable to knock things over.

  He smiled shyly at me again, showing a row of white teeth, with just a little chip off one of the front ones, an imperfection that just made the total package more delicious. I had butterflies in my stomach just looking at him.

  ‘That would be very nice – ’ he was saying, but I had already started speaking again.

  ‘Or perhaps you’d rather have a beer,’ I was stuttering. ‘ The sun is over the yard arm…’

  Jesus, I thought, I sounded like my father. ‘It is Saturday night, time to chill out…’ I added, trying to make up for it, to sound young and cool. That was worse. What was happening? One minute I was happily cooking a wittily seasonal dinner for my beloved husband, the next I had been rendered a gibbering teenager by the arrival of a stranger at least ten years younger than me. Probably more.

  ‘A beer would be great, thank you,’ said Sonny, and I was glad of the distraction of getting it out of the fridge and finding the opener, while simultaneously being shamefully pleased that I was wearing my new tight jeans when I dropped it on the floor and had to bend down to pick it up again.

  I grabbed the Campari and soda I had been drinking when he knocked on the door and sat down opposite him.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, raising the beer bottle to me.

  ‘Cheers,’ I said, clinking my glass against it, in bold contravention of Ed’s no-clinking rule. Ed thought clinking glasses was the absolute end – and not just because his were all Riedel crystal and cost at least £15 each.

  Then I just sat there looking at him. I honestly didn’t know what to say.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘About the garden…’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, my mouth kicking in, double time. ‘ That would be really great because, you see, we live in London during the week and we don’t even get down here every weekend, which is really annoying, and I would really love to grow some veggies – organic, of course – and I haven’t actually got the first clue how to do it and Hermione – Mrs Hart – suggested that you might be able to help and she said that she could show you what to do and me as well, when I’m down here, which might be more often now because I’ve left my job…’

  I was babbling like a madwoman, and there was a little smile at the corners of his mouth that I couldn’t take my eyes off.

  ‘That sounds great,’ he said, putting me out of my misery. ‘I work at Great Dixter two days a week, then on Thursdays I come to Mrs Hart. So I could come here on Fridays, if you like. Or on Saturdays. Whatever suits you.’ I nodded frantically. ‘Mrs Hart pays me £8 an hour, is that OK?’ I nodded again. ‘So, when do you want me to start?’

  ‘Next Friday?’ I said, finally gathering my wits. ‘I’ll come down early so we can all do it together. Would you like to see the plot I have in mind?’

  We walked outside and I showed him round the garden. He made enthusiastic noises about my plans and then we walked up to the gate together.

  ‘Well, it was great meeting you, Mrs Bradlow,’ he said, putting out his hand to shake mine.

  ‘Oh, please, call me Amelia,’ I said, as I placed my hand in his, where it disappeared into a warm, dry, slightly rough cavern. I got butterflies again. This was very terrible. ‘Hang on a minute, Sonny,’ I said quickly. ‘I’d like you to meet my husband before you go.’

  I went back across the lawn towards the house and called up to the open window of Ed’s room. His head popped out.

  ‘Do you want me, honeybun?’ he said, blinking in the evening sunlight. He reminded me of Mole from Wind in the Willows.

  �
�Yes. I want you to meet Sonny,’ I said, gesturing towards him. ‘He’s going to be our gardener.’

  ‘Hello, Sonny,’ said Ed, waving. ‘I’m Ed Bradlow. That’s great news. Amelia has grand aspirations for us to be self-sufficient down here, so I look forward to eating it all. Yum yum. See you later.’

  He disappeared back inside and I walked Sonny back over to the gate. He smiled at me again. I’d thought introducing Ed into the picture would calm me down, but it hadn’t. Sonny’s shy, gentle smile on top of his brute of a body just about did me in. And while I felt guilty for thinking it, I wished Ed hadn’t said ‘yum yum’ to him.

  ‘Well, thanks for the beer, er, Amelia,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you on Friday. Is 10 a.m. OK?’

  ‘That will be great, Sonny,’ I said, in tones that sounded far more casual than I felt. ‘See you then.’

  When Ed came down for dinner an hour or so later, I still felt horribly guilty about my reaction to Sonny, as though I had been deliberately disloyal to him in some way, but I really hadn’t felt as if it were in my control.

  It had been a purely visceral reaction, which I had never experienced before, clearly entirely hormonally driven and nothing to do with my rational mind or how much I loved my husband. It was as though several millennia of civilization and proper behaviour had been swept away with one sniff of young male pheromone.

  This must be how dirty old men feel, I thought, when they see a young woman walking along in a short skirt – the same uncontrollable instinct that makes male dogs run miles to find the bitch emitting the delicious scent of fertility. Maybe it was being in the country in spring with all the animals and birds frisking around and plants springing out of the fecund ground. Nature in the raw was quite terrifyingly sexy, I realized, and it was certainly having a terrifying effect on me.

  To make things even worse, Ed was incredibly sweet and loving over dinner too, so appreciative of the effort I had made with the food and excited about the wine we were drinking with it, a lovely Chambertin from a tiny vineyard Ed had recently discovered in Burgundy, which was perfect with the chicken.

  He also asked me lots of interested questions about the garden and was fascinated to hear about my visit to Hermione’s place and how I had found Sonny, all of which just made me feel worse. My heart hadn’t betrayed him, but my body most certainly had.

  Dinner over, Ed disappeared upstairs to work as usual, and after I had cleared up, I kicked around the house, not knowing what to do with myself. I turned the telly on but, typically, there was nothing to watch on a Saturday night, the one time any civilized person was likely to be in.

  And that was how I found myself gazing out of the sitting-room window at where the vegetable patch was going to be and picturing Sonny there. Possibly taking his shirt off in the sun. Wiping his arm across his forehead. Standing with one hand on a spade, the other behind his head, the muscles popping on his biceps, a line of dark-blond hair running down his stomach. Me taking out a long, cool drink for him, wearing a very skimpy summer dress… I could see it all as clearly as if I were watching a corny pop video.

  I even went into the kitchen and took down his card, which I had tucked into the noticeboard next to the fridge, and punched the number into my new iPhone – Ed had kept his promise about that – kidding myself it was what a super-organized professional clutter-clearer would do.

  I looked through some of my new gardening books, but that just kept Sonny at the front of my mind. Eventually, I went to bed and tried to read myself to sleep, but that was hopeless too. I was halfway through a novel and just a few pages on from where I picked it up was a seriously steamy sex scene. As I read, I felt myself get immediately aroused. I put my hand between my legs and found I was slick and wet. Desire pulsed in me in a way I had never experienced before, so strong it was like a presence in the room. There was no escaping it: I wanted sex and I wanted it now.

  I got up to find Ed. He was fast asleep, an empty brandy glass on the bedside table next to Mr Bun.

  I slipped in beside him and rubbed my breasts against his back, lifting my nightie and his pyjama jacket so my nipples grazed his skin, getting harder with every teasing stroke. I pressed myself against him lower down, hooking my leg over his hip, then I put my hand down to find his cock. It was completely soft.

  I played with it gently, continuing to rub my nipples against him, which was making me mad with lust, then I started kissing his ear and cheek. He half woke up and turned his head towards me. He kissed me on the cheek, then brought up his arm and patted me on the shoulder. Three pats, like you would give an old dog. After that he turned away and gently pushed my leg off. He couldn’t have made it plainer he wanted me to go away and leave him alone if he’d told me to piss off.

  I jumped out of the bed feeling furious. Weren’t men supposed to be the ones who wanted sex all the time? Yet here I was, still relatively young, not bad looking, or so I’d been told, with extremely erect nipples and as slick and wet as an oyster below, and he wasn’t in the slightest bit interested. He’d rather sleep with his god-damned cuddly toy than make love to me.

  I stomped back to my own bed and lay there for a moment, fuming. A vision of the woman I had seen in the mirror when I was wearing the Lanvin dress and the silver shoes flashed into my mind. What would she have done, I wondered? It was hard to imagine any man pushing her away.

  I looked down at my nipples, still standing so perkily to attention, and pulled the thin lawn of my nightgown tight over them, so they were straining against it. I put my hand between my legs and explored, rubbing my finger over the bump of my clitoris. It was as hard as a pearl, but I could feel the desire ebbing away.

  Then, finally feeling too rejected to be sexy, I rolled over and went to sleep. But my body wasn’t prepared to leave it there – or my subconscious, or whatever it was – either way, something made me have an absolutely filthy dream. About Sonny.

  We were having wild, abandoned sex in the garden, not on the lawn but down in the bare earth. We were rolling around in it like animals, grunting and growling and covered in mud, but when he came he threw his head back, and suddenly it wasn’t Sonny any more. It was Joseph.

  The dream was so intense I woke up with my heart pounding, a steady throbbing between my legs. It had seemed so real it took me a moment to be sure it had definitely been a dream, but once I was certain I closed my eyes and forced myself to go straight back to sleep.

  Some things are too weird and confusing to dwell on and I was a grand master at not thinking about them.

  15

  The next morning it was clear that Ed had no recollection of what had happened between us the night before, and I certainly wasn’t about to remind him. That way, the mortification could be mine alone.

  But it did make me a little uneasy when he got into bed with me, according to his Sunday-morning routine, putting his wretched bloody condom down on the bedside table. Just a few hours before, I had been desperate for sex in a way I had never experienced before, but now it was being presented to me so plainly, I didn’t feel so keen.

  I was still a bit confused about that disturbing dream – and the contrast between that wild rogering and the Sunday-morning routine that was now unfolding with Ed was stark. He’d taken off his pyjamas and was now removing my nightgown, prior to playing with my hair and arranging it the way he liked it down my body. Then he’d play with my breasts a bit and off we would go. It was practically choreographed.

  But, as his hand slipped between my legs, a flicker of the lust from the night before returned, and I reminded myself that even this predictable married sex was better than no sex.

  After our regular conjugal rites, we got up, I walked to the village shop for the papers, and we read them as we ate our bacon sandwiches, as was also our Sunday morning habit. Then Ed took the rest of them up to his study, while I hopped into the old Volvo estate we kept down there as a suitable country vehicle and took myself off to a car-boot fair just along the road towards Rye.

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bsp; I loved boot fairs and was thrilled to find a beaten-up old watering can, nearly as quaint as Hermione’s, for the princely sum of £1, plus a couple of old galvanized tubs that I thought would look lovely with plants in them. I stopped at a nursery on the way back and bought some bright-pink geraniums, a trowel, some fertilizer and a big bag of potting compost. I was capable of doing that much gardening on my own, I reckoned.

  Of course, watering cans and garden centres did have the effect of bringing Sonny firmly back to the front of my mind, but I was relieved to find that the thought of him didn’t seem to send me into quite such an uncontrollable erotic spin any more.

  It had all been some kind of spring madness, I decided, as I drove home with the windows down, breathing in the sweet country air. Or maybe the first drink of the evening had kicked in just when he knocked on the door and I hadn’t been thinking straight.

  He was a very attractive young specimen, there was no doubt about that, and the horny-handed man-of-the-soil thing did have its own unique appeal, but I felt sure I was over my micro-infatuation. That was a relief.

  Joseph Renwick’s appearance in that bizarre dream was harder to explain, but must have been some kind of random throwback to my earliest sexual experiences, I decided, combined with seeing him in such weird circumstances around Dick’s hospital bed the night I had discovered how to get my way through calculated cock-teasing. It was all way too Freudian for me.

  Ed was upstairs when I got back, still glued to his laptop, so I spent a very happy afternoon making mud pies with my potting compost, sploshing water into the tub of earth, mixing it all up with a bit of powdered blood and bone and then patting it down again around the plants. I felt like I was tucking the geraniums up in bed, like the children I didn’t have.

  ‘Night night,’ I said to them.

  ‘That looks lovely,’ Hermione called over the hedge to me, when I was standing back to admire my handiwork.