by V. G. Lee
‘I swear to god carrying those sacks of cobbles nearly did for me,’ she’s saying, pressing one hand into the small of her back. Careful deconstruction of her sentence proves she isn’t exactly lying. Only I, as the nosy neighbour watching from the back bedroom, know the truth, possibly Morag and Vera as two more nosy neighbours watching from their back bedroom window, and Janice the gardener who’d carried the sacks of cobbles - but she hasn’t arrived yet.
‘You’ve done a fabulous job,’ a woman in black silk is saying.
Deirdre spots me hovering in the kitchen doorway and hurries forward with an insincere smile of pleasure. Up close and her lips and eyes narrow. ‘Where’s Martin?’ she hisses.
‘Gone.'
‘The bloody...bloody...’ and then her smile is back in place. ‘Why Dorothea,’ she purrs, ‘and little Sasha and Freya. Leave your slippers by the back door, Margaret. Good god, your hair! Janice - my support, my angel. Margaret point Janice in the direction of spare slippers, so she’s prepared.’
Janice is wearing Doc Martins with purple laces. Also jeans and a checked, fleece shirt. She looks annoyed or, as Deirdre would say, she looks sullen. Also familiar, but I put this down to the fact that she’s been just out of focus but in and around Deirdre’s garden for almost ten days.
‘Hello Janice,’ I say brightly. ‘Deirdre wants anyone going in the garden to change into slippers on their way back indoors.’ I point to the pink and white fluffy slippers lined up next to Lord Dudley’s litter tray. ‘I’ve brought my own ubiquitous bootees.’
Thinks: why must I always sound like a gung-ho games mistress?
‘No way am I wearing slippers,’ Janice says emphatically. ‘I’d rather go home now.’
‘But Deirdre’s garden is all your handiwork and your design. You might get new customers.’
‘I thought you were my new customer.’
‘I won’t be an impressive customer like Deirdre. My needs are fairly straightforward.’ Which for some reason makes me redden and stare out past Janice’s left ear.
‘Yeah. Well. One job at a time,’ she says gruffly. ‘I think I like your hair - peony coloured,’ and then she’s gone, marching out into Deirdre’s garden. The small crowd parts and Janice disappears into their midst. I hear Deirdre yelling, ‘She’s a star, an absolute star.’
Make conversation with Dorothea. Also a Phillida and her teenage son Sherman. Muse that decades earlier Dorothea may well have been just Dot and Phillida, Phylis. Cannot think what a Sherman would have been called.
‘And you are?’ Dorothea asks after ten minutes vibrant conversation.
‘Margaret. I live next door.’ Wave vaguely in the direction of my garden.
‘No, I meant what do you do?’
‘I’m an accounts typist.’
‘Really? Is that rewarding work?’
‘Extremely,’ I enthuse. ‘Never a dull moment.’
Catch Janice’s eye. She is propped against one pillar of the gazebo and I do believe she’s trying not to smile. Have recurrence of the certainty that I know Janice from somewhere else but am distracted by Vera and Morag’s washing line slowly coming into view over the top of Deirdre’s fence. As there is no breeze their twelve pairs of pants hang lifeless and faded. Deirdre who is talking animatedly to Phillida continues to talk but her eyes harden, narrow and glitter.
April 6th
My garden has a terrace and then the aforementioned steep slope. This year it is a mass of weeds as if the previous autumn I’d gone out with a large packet marked ‘invasive weeds and many others’ and scattered the seeds everywhere. There must be at least twenty different varieties of weed and yet not one looked like a wildflower suitable for my wildflower meadow. Janice arrived as I stood in contemplation. I begin briskly, ‘My plan is to turn this,’ wave of hand in direction of slope, ‘into a wildflower meadow. I can afford five hundred pounds.’
Which wasn’t true. I could afford two hundred and fifty pounds but suddenly such an amount to someone who’d transformed Deirdre’s garden into a Chelsea Flower Show contender seemed laughable.
Janice folds her arms and purses her lips.
‘You really need a rotavator which would be an extra sixty quid.’
‘In that case I can’t afford it,’ I say firmly.
She kicks one of my few remaining perfectly good plants, ‘Plant stock’s tired.’
‘It’s the best I can do. I’m growing quite a few seedlings.’ I then wave vaguely towards the kitchen window. Janice doesn’t bother to look.
‘Better get started then,’ she says.
‘So five hundred’s ok?’
‘If that’s all you’ve got, it will have to be.’
Janice refuses to look me in the eye, just keeps swinging her foot at my innocent plant. (There’s something so familiar about her.) Go indoors and try to think who I know who looks sullen. Nobody apart from Martin.
At ten-thirty I take her out a mug of tea and two chocolate digestives. She says, ‘God my back’s killing me,’ and takes her refreshments over to the bench. From time to time during the four hours she’s working I take out tea and biscuits. Not much seems to have been done. She tells me, I have a fine view, that she can’t stand couch grass, that there are blue tits nesting in the back wall and if they don’t look out a cat will get their babies. I tell her that this was what happened last year. How Samson and Delilah sat on that very bench and watched and waited. Went into some detail. Thought I made the story exciting yet poignant while avoiding sentimentality. When I’d finished she asked, ‘Who are Samson and Delilah?’
‘Georgie’s cats,’ I said. ‘They’re not here at the moment.’ I change the subject by apologizing profusely for the couch grass.
She shrugs, ‘Not your fault.’ Which is true. ‘It’s just a bastard to get out. Strong root system.’ Casts a faraway look over my hillside, ‘Mind you, it’s probably underpinning the whole slope. Once it’s shifted, the first heavy rain and you’ll probably have the whole back garden whooshing into your kitchen.’
‘Surely not?’
‘Could happen.’
I’m relieved when Janice goes home, saying she’ll be back in a fortnight. Also relieved that it doesn’t look like rain.
April 8th
Deirdre complaining that next door neighbours Vera and Morag have turned their hose on seagull couple nesting on her (Deirdre’s) extension. She is in half a mind to report them to the RSPCA. Point out to Deirdre that hose spray very small beer where seagulls are concerned. Deirdre unconvinced.
April 9th
Good Friday: Am invited to Deirdre and Martin’s for dinner. Deirdre has ‘dressed’ the table as opposed to laying it. This Easter she’s gone for a sumptuous royal blue and gold theme. Wonder why it is that Deirdre’s use of the paper doily looks eccentrically stylish? Another nice touch is Lord Dudley in his box lid on the end of the table. As its Easter they’ve bought him a plastic egg to play with. Every now and then Lord Dudley gets absolutely livid with this new toy and tosses it out of the box lid. When it lands in my plate, Deirdre and Martin are enchanted as if they’ve been training Lord Dudley to enact this very deed for some time.
Not entirely Atkins today. There are potatoes; golden roasted and mash. Deirdre is an excellent cook. Roast pork with all the trimmings for dinner. A nice touch is the small dish of delicious pork crackling set between Martin and myself. Deirdre admits to overdosing on pork crackling while in the kitchen.
However Martin not as enthusiastic as expected, recounting harrowing details of how the roots of his teeth have had to be filled due to receding gums. Have never heard of roots being filled. Martin bares his teeth at us. I don’t bother to find my glasses as would rather not see his filled roots. I say, ‘Dear me,’ and begin chomping my way through the lion’s share of crackling.
Deirdre says to Martin, ‘Ok darling, gnashers away now.’
We all retire to lounge area, a sofa each for them; Martin pulls up an armchair for me and puts it betwe
en the two sofas. I feel like a compère on a panel game, say jovially, ‘Now Couple Number One, what is the capital of British Honduras?’
Decide I’ve had too much to drink. Make my excuses and leave them eating Dairy Box and watching Nightmare on Elm Street.
April 10th
Arrive at Laura’s late Saturday afternoon. She is cutting up a carrot and four celery sticks into very small segments to poke into the cream cheese and chive dip.
‘There are crisps as well. And stuffed pasta. Don’t know what it’s stuffed with - I’ve thrown the packaging away.’
‘Very acceptable,’ I say.
Laura lives in a one-bedroom, garden flat in North London with two inscrutable cats, Bill and Ben. Bill is the original watching paint dry cat. He spends hours staring at the wall or the table leg. He is tabby and lozenge shaped and the best way to hold him is as if he were a bagpipe.
Pasta and dip simple but delicious. After dinner Laura attempts to re-create her and Iris’s dancing triumph of the previous weekend.
‘Use your imagination,’ she says. ‘Iris is my height only more womanly shaped - she’s wearing a green satin dress and headband. And one, two, three, one two three... We dance together like birds of a feather.’
Refrain from pedantry as to whether birds dance or not. Laura dips an imaginary Iris so that her hair, if it is more than four inches long, skims the beech effect laminated floor. Laura looks up triumphantly at an invisible audience and smiles.
‘Hooray!’ I shout.
She clicks her heels and executes a neat bow. If Iris was with her, Laura would have let her crumple into a heap at her feet while she enjoyed the many imagined accolades.
Can see Laura would like to re-create this scene several more times so indicate that my wine glass is empty. While she opens another bottle I try to teach Bill and Ben, initially to sit; however, as they do little else but sit, change my tack and try to teach them to stand. Both cats look blank.
Over fresh drink ask Laura what she thinks of my hair?
‘It’s different.’
Ask Laura if she thinks Georgie misses me?
‘Who knows?’
Give up on me and ask Laura what Iris is up to?
‘Working.’
‘At Easter?’
‘She never stops. She’s brilliant at whatever she does.’
‘What does she do?’
‘No idea.’
April 12th
Got home around mid-day. Whenever I’ve been away recently, even if it’s only out shopping down to the town I can’t help a feeling of anticipation creeping in as I run up the six steps leading to my front door. I expect letters even when there’s no post, or a note, or a message on my answerphone. Something, anything from Georgie. And now Easter has come and gone, and it’s our first Easter apart and of course - there’s no something, no anything, just nothing.
As I’m carrying my case upstairs the phone rings. Rush downstairs knowing it will only be Deirdre.
‘Goody-goody, you’re back. Fancy a run out somewhere?’ Deirdre asks.
No, no, no. I don’t want to run anywhere.
‘Perhaps tea at the cafe?’ I suggest.
‘I could murder a cake,’ Deirdre says. ‘Only we’re not eating cakes.’ This is more of a question than a mission statement issued on behalf
of herself and Martin.
‘Well I’m definitely not eating cake,’ I say firmly.
‘We could still meet up.’
‘Yes lets.’
‘What about a visit to Sissinghurst? Vita Sackville West did the garden; she’s one of yours isn’t she?’ Deirdre asks.
‘Deirdre, it won’t be brilliant there at this time of the year.’
‘How about Charleston? Vanessa Bell. I hear her fellah was a gay boy. I wouldn’t stand for Martin playing around like that; I’d...chop off his balls’. Even over the telephone Deirdre reminds me of a skittish Shetland pony.
I say, ‘I’d love to go to Charleston but not today. Let’s meet for tea and compare diaries.’
Didn’t know if Deirdre had a diary. She’d told me that her memory’s phenomenal and she doesn’t need to write things down. Can’t stand reading either. Says, I have a go at a book but after a page or three I think, ‘what’s he droning on about? Get to the point, mate.’
‘But it’s Bank Holiday, what about a picnic in the car. We could park in the car park and look out at the sea?’
‘No.’
She moots the possibility of a barbecue later if the sun comes out, tea and cake in Debenham’s which is no ‘longer her sort of store apart from their John Rocha towels and bedding’.
I respond by being vague, hoping that Deirdre will get the message that all I want is to be left alone. She doesn’t. Finally cite Kipling’s ‘the cat that walked by itself’.
After a pause for reflection she replied, ‘Lord Dudley can be a solitary cat but generally he can’t get enough of me and Martin’s company.’
‘What I mean is I’m a solitary cat.’
I can almost hear her wrinkling her nose as if I’d announced, ‘I’m a groovy chick.’
‘In what way?’
‘Sometimes I rather like my own company.’
‘Oh, me too.’ Her voice becomes dreamy. ‘I love staring up at the night sky imagining all those planets...’ She tails off as her imagination fails to provide an answer as to what all those planets might be doing.
April 19th
Janice the gardener arrives at 10am. Comes in round the back and taps on my kitchen window. I open the door and say, ‘Tea, coffee?’
‘Tea,’ she says.
When I turn round from plugging in the kettle I find Janice sitting at the kitchen table studying my television guide.
‘Just seeing what’s on,’ she says, turning the pages.
I notice her fingers are stained green. Is this a gardening marketing ploy? Yes, I truly have got green fingers. No really. Make tea and bring it and biscuits to Janice. Sit down opposite. Some green and blue in the crease of her chin and the fine lines each side of her nose.
Janice looks up and catches my curious stare.
‘Face painting.’ She reaches for a biscuit.
‘Oh. Do you have children?’
‘No. Why should I?’ she asks truculently.
Suddenly feel as if a huge chasm has opened up between me and Janice. There must be about ten years difference in our ages yet she is making me feel like her grandmother.
I try an impatient, worldly sigh, ‘Isn’t face painting generally associated with children?’
‘No.’
‘Well it is to me.’
She shrugs, ‘We had a druid party at the weekend.’
Note the ‘we’. ‘Was it fun?’ which seemed an inadequate question.
‘Yeah, it was. So, what’s on the agenda for this morning or should I go my own sweet way?’
In businesslike fashion I pick up my cup and march out into garden. Cannot imagine that Janice was as (offensively) laid back with Deirdre as she seems to be with me. For some reason my face, including my ears, feels hot. I’m certain they’re scarlet. Climb steps to the gravelled terrace and look up at the sloping area. A fair bit of heavy digging still to do. After several minutes Janice follows me up, no doubt having first made notes for her following week’s television viewing. I say firmly, ‘You’ve still got quite a bit of digging to do.’
‘That’s a killer on my back.’
‘I’m sorry about that, but it was a killer on my back.’
‘You can understand my point of view then.’
‘Janice if you don’t want to do the job...’
‘I just don’t want to do that bit of the job...’
‘But I can manage most of the other bits. I didn’t need any help with them.’
‘What if you helped me?’
‘But I’m paying you to do the job.’
She shrugged, ‘I better get on with it then. I can’t afford to lose the money.’
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Which was awful. I couldn’t afford to pay the money. But could I afford it, more or less, than Janice could afford to lose it? In the past Georgie paid for food and many of the bills because she earned vastly more than me but I’d had no money from her during the whole time she’d been away. Janice walked dispiritedly down the steps, left her mug on the window sill and went round to the shed. I looked at my watch. I looked at the slope. It was steep. And yes, if I had a bad back, then why shouldn’t she have one as well, particularly after lifting all Deirdre’s sacks of cobble stones?
‘Get out both the forks,’ I shouted down to her.
She looked over her shoulder, ‘Why?’
‘Because...because it’s my garden and I want to be a part of turning that bloody slope into something fabulous.’
April 21st:
Miriam very low. Has recently given up smoking. The day before yesterday in fact. This lunchtime stood on back step of TM Accountancy for ten minutes without saying anything.
I tried. Described plans for my hillside meadow in unnecessary detail. Finally Miriam cut loudly across my description saying, ‘It’s no good. I’m not interested. Your hillside meadow could be swept out to sea for all I care. The only words in my head are, I WANT A CIGARETTE NOW! If I can’t smoke, my life is not worth living.’
‘Then smoke.’
‘I can’t,’ she wailed. ‘Mrs Ferguson and my mother have rightly pointed out that I’m ruining my complexion and my voice is at least three octaves lower than it should be.’
Am amazed that Miriam worries about loss of complexion and personally rather envy her low voice. Wonder how many cigarettes I would have to smoke to lower my voice three octaves.