by R. L. Holmes
‘Well, he would say something like; “The carrots need to be fed”, but it would have a completely different meaning.’ I knew I had lost my mother, her expression one of bewilderment.
‘So, has Seth ever come over here and gone into the shed?’
Even with my child’s mind, I know this is a loaded question. So I pause and ponder a little before I answer, ‘No.’
‘Where does Seth live?’
Not really liking where this conversation is going, I decide to end it there, and feed Brambles instead. But mum is having none of it.
‘Saracen, I asked you, where does Seth live?’
I pause again, wondering whether I should tell her the truth or make something up, which would be the safest option. So again I lie.
‘He lives across the road from school in a green house.’
‘And do you visit him after school?’
‘No, sometimes I visit in my lunch break.’
‘What do you talk about?’
‘He talks about the garden mostly, and gives me fruit and lollies.’
The colour runs from my mother’s face, her mind creating all sorts of scenarios from my lie.
‘Does your teacher know you go there?’
‘No. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.’ I disappear outside into the garden where I spot Seth digging small holes by the lettuces. I can feel mum watching me, what I don’t know is whether she can see Seth.
A few moments later I hear mum asking Gran who Seth is? I can’t hear Gran’s reply as Potts sticks her head over the fence to ask if everyone’s okay over yonder. I say yes, and wander over to talk. She asks if Gran is okay, and says that Mrs Rennie had told her she’d had another visit from the police. She then asks who the new lady is. I tell her it’s my mother. She seems very surprised, and then makes a comment about her not inheriting Mary’s good looks. I wonder if I had inherited my gran’s good looks. Going by the names that I incessantly get called at school, I’m guessing that I hadn’t.
Potts coughs up some spit and aims for the patch of grass she’s standing on. Over time I have warmed to Potts. She is an uncouth, masculine woman who makes me cringe to the pit of my stomach one minute, and laugh hysterically the next; leaving a feeling of complete confusion as to who she really is. Something at that moment catches her eye down the bottom of my drive way. Her face drops as she turns back to me with a sympathetic expression.
The sound of assertive footsteps tip-tapping up the drive, then a heavy-handed knock at the front door makes me jump. Appearing around the corner of our yellow house are three policeman carrying notebooks, big plastic bags and leather satchels. Mum races out the back door over to me, while Gran argues with the door knocker inside.
Potts continues to watch on, fascinated. She lights a cigarette and settles in as if watching a late night crime show. One of the policemen turns the shed door knob to find that it’s locked. He looks over to mum and asks her to please bring the key. Mum in a panic, rushes inside and quickly finds the big rusty key.
They don’t seem to care about the amount of work Gran has put into keeping her little business alive. They don’t care about the intricacy of raising those plants from seedlings, and nurturing their growth with understanding and patience. They have no interest in the knowledge that is accumulated over time, working with nature to know when to harvest, what part of the plant is the most medicinal and how to handle it with respect and care. They have no idea how to dry, macerate and infuse herbs, and they just don’t care.
These men, these police officers stroll straight into the shed and with an annoying arrogance, grab everything they see. They take the dried herbs and bag them, shoving the delicate foliage into the suffocating plastic bags and slamming them on the concrete floor. They snatch all of her tinctures, dropping some, unleashing a strong bitter alcohol odour as they fall, smashing all over the concrete floor. They confiscate all of her ethanol, measuring out each container and whisper to one another. They seem to be particularly interested in Gran’s ethanol.
Then I hear the screeching sound of the big wooden bookshelf that holds many macerating tinctures, slide across the concrete floor. Potts stretches her neck, trying to see what is going on inside the shed. The policemen fall momentarily silent, until one suddenly calls out in an excitable way. This alerts Constable Lewis inside the house. He races out. They have found the door behind the shelves and force it open, almost blinded by a white light exuding out.
I swing around to look for Seth but he has completely disappeared. An officer steps out and tells Potts to please step down from the fence.
She curls her top lip and recommends that he, ‘Fuck off.’
Angered by her response, he leaps up, grabs her by the collar and pushes her back down onto her side. At this point, Mrs Rennie appears at the back door and tells Potts to stop being so crude. The policeman then turns to mum and asks whose vehicle is in our driveway, and can they remove it immediately as they need to bring their vans up. Mum says it’s hers and quickly does what she is told. I race inside to see if Gran is okay, only to find her in a crumbled heap in the armchair; her hand covers her face in shame. I ask her what’s going on and all she says is that she has been, ‘stupid, very stupid.’
‘What is behind that door in the shed?’ I ask. This is a mystery that has always eluded me, this hidden room, with curtains drawn.
‘Things you don’t need to know about,’ she answers without looking up. ‘Where’s your mother?’
‘Taking the station-wagon away, so they can bring their vans up.’
Mum appears through the back door and asks Gran the exact same question as I did. Still with her hand over her face, she shrugs. A van backs up the drive and the officers one by one, fill the van with large plastic bags of herbs.
‘Why are they taking the Nettles when they can just as easily get them from the Richardson’s farm?’
Gran chuckles slightly at my ignorance, while Mum marches over to the kitchen window to discover to her disappointment that they were in fact confiscating cannabis plants. ‘Oh no mum, really!’
‘Well, how else am I supposed to raise your bloody daughter? You abandoned her and lumped her on me.’
As I’ve said before, the after-stabbing Gran has no problems saying things like this, firing daggers out of her mouth at will; whereas the before-stabbing Gran wouldn’t have dreamed of being so insensitive.
This comment hurts me deeply. All those awful names the kids at school call me don’t compare to this. Now the truth is out. Nobody really wants me. My mother abandoned me, Gran finds me a financial burden and even Seth gets incredibly impatient with me.
‘She didn’t mean that,’ mum says, racing over to protect me from another flying insult from Gran’s mouth. ‘What the hell is the matter with you these days?’ my mother’s voice rising to an angry growl, which surprises me. ‘Who were you growing these dope plants for?’
‘Keep your bloody voice down!’ Gran yells back, holding her arm and wincing. ‘They’ll bloody hear you!’
Mum looks out the kitchen window to see if their raised voices had caused any suspicion. She wanders over to my gran. Her eyes gaze again at the painting my grandfather did, The Hypocrite.
‘Was that about you, that painting?’ she asks, lowering her tone.
Gran’s eyes lift to see what mum is looking at.
‘A hypocrite. Is that you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tansy.’
‘Say one thing and do another. Isn’t that what hypocrite means?’
Constable Lewis enters the house, after destroying the shed and all of Gran’s hard work. He definitely seems less attractive than he was when he first entered our lives, with his irritatingly, arrogant manner.
‘Can I have a word?’
‘Do what you like, you already have,’ Gran answers, her tone bitter.
‘I don’t really want to say anything in front of your Granddaughter.’
Mum grabs me by th
e wrist and walks me outside to wander around in our overgrown garden. Since the stabbing, Gran hasn’t been able to tend to the plants like before. She is always in pain and spends her days sitting in the armchair hugging her sore arm. Her eyes often look vacant and from time to time I catch her staring up at The Hypocrite, as if it triggers pleasant memories to escape in to.
Seth appears out from under one of the camellia shrubs. He startles me slightly, bursting out of the foliage in such a fury. He’s not happy, not happy at all. I know instantly that mum cannot see him and I begin to question what exactly Seth is. I’ve had imaginary friends from a very young age. In fact, I can still remember their names and what they look like. They appeared at certain ages and at certain events, usually when I was unhappy or confused.
My most memorable was Jo, a female of about fourteen, who dressed like a male. She wore clothes from another era, knickerbockers and braces. She had short, dark, cropped hair and big blue eyes with long feminine eye lashes.
She first appeared when I was about four years old, which was also when my kidney pangs started. I spent many cold nights sitting on the toilet with the urge to urinate, but could only manage dribbles under unbearable pain. So I learnt to hold on for as long as I possibly could, then release my pee in one go, screaming from the severe sting.
Jo used talk to me when I was sitting on the toilet. She would tell me tales about places she’s been in her wooden boat with her mongrel dog called Peaches. In great detail, she’d tell me about the unusual people she’d met, the places she’d been, the food she’d stolen and the school and police staff she ran from. Jo was a loner, like me. But she seemed to enjoy the freedom of not having to endure lessons at school, and not having someone to tell her what to do. She became a good friend of mine, always cracking jokes about my pee being bent, making it difficult to pour out.
Gran said she used to listen to me chatting and giggling away to Jo and sometimes she wrote some of it down. She said once she even heard us singing an old classic jig, and assumed I must have heard it on television at some time.
Eventually I grew out of these awful kidney infections by about eight years old, which was when Jo disappeared. Sometimes though, she reappears in my dreams with her mongrel dog, Peaches, steering her boat along the calm, brown river looking wild and content - without a mother, without a care and without direction. Merely letting the boat go where the river flows. I was envious of her. Even now, I imagine myself beside her stealing bread from the market, throwing dirt bombs at the school principle and sleeping under the stars.
I had an array of imaginary friends including animals and birds, and they all served a specific purpose, to entertain me when I was ill, sad or lost. Now and again I’d be struck down by a migraine which caused me terrible grief, and faded my eyesight. Charlie was a teddy bear that came alive, puffed up my pillow and rubbed my temples with menthol-smelling oils. Looking back, it could have been Gran who came to my aid, but in my disillusioned state I saw a teddy bear. I did ask her once about the menthol smelling oils and she looked a little perplexed. So I said no more.
Seth though, is different from the others. He isn’t particularly friendly and seems to be of no great benefit at all. I am merely an inconvenience he sometimes talks to, if he feels like it. The information that I extract from him is pretty relevant at times, but mostly his mutterings are about the garden.
But today the police are here making a mess, disturbing the peace and Seth is fuming. I watch this strange little fellow, pace back and forth, like a caged lion, his fists are clenched tight and he’s muttering uncontrollably and spitting and stomping. I have never seen him so angry, so in a rage.
Then to my surprise, he strolls boldly up to the shed door and kicks one of the officers on the shin. I cover my mouth to hide my amusement. The police officer startles and bends down to rub the place Seth kicked. As he does so, the little old man, my friend Seth, wallops the officer on the cheek. I burst into laughter. My mother grabs me by the wrist to shush me, frightened that I might irritate them. The officer rubs his cheek and directs a suspicious glare towards me. After doing some damage, Seth storms off, picking up scraps of dried herbs on the way that fell out of the confiscation bags.
‘What did you just throw at him?’ my mother asks.
‘Nothing.’
‘Something hit that officer on the face. I saw his head flick back, and then he flinched in pain.’
I shrug, my eyes still fixated on Seth pacing back and forth, muttering angry words that only he can understand.
‘What are you looking at?’ mum asks.
At this point I’m not sure if I know my mother well enough to predict her reaction, if I’m going to tell her about Seth. But I thought it is probably worth a try.
‘Seth.’
‘Where?’ Her head bobs back and forth, trying to detect this eighty year old man amongst the trees and bushes. For some reason she has it in for Seth. She despises the thought of me hanging out with a strange old man and is frustrated Gran isn’t concerned about it.
I sigh, deciding whether I want to say any more. Reluctantly I decide to. ‘He just went behind the green house.’
The Seth-slapped officer hears me and strolls over wearing a look of contempt. ‘Who has just gone behind the green house?’
I say nothing, and just stand in one spot frozen in time.
Mum nudges me forward. ‘Tell him about Seth.’
‘Who’s Seth?’ he asks, folding his arms and glaring at me icily. I can tell he finds me annoying and has very little time for my childish ways. He hates that I laugh at him and even worse, he seems to think that I was the one that threw something at his face. Rubbing his cheek, he looks over at the green house.
‘Tell him!’ my mother says again, nudging me forward with a bit more might.
I clear my throat and about to speak when my mother says, ‘I think Seth might be a pervert.’
My heart drops into the pit of my stomach and my chest burns like fire. ‘What?’ I say, hardly believing what I’m hearing.
The officer raises his right eyebrow, paying very close attention to me. I back away and glance over at the green house. The officer notices my panic and immediately heads for the small glass building. I know that they cannot see Seth, so he is safe, but I still feel anxious and scared for him.
Upon arrival, the officer with his usual careless force, flings the sliding door open and stoops under the doorway. With him out of sight I swing round to address my mother. I’m so overwhelmed with anger at her stupid comment I find it difficult to say anything. Nothing enters my head. Nothing that makes any sense falls out of my mouth.
Speechless.
Gran appears on the back porch looking greatly concerned. ‘What’s going on?’ she calls over.
Constable Lewis steps out behind her, looking equally alarmed.
‘There’s more in here,’ the officer calls out from inside the green house. ‘These look like cannabis seedlings.’
Constable Lewis, and an older officer whom they all answer to, race over to examine the tiny plants. They have a quiet discussion inside for a few moments before the older officer pokes his head out to stare at me. They have another little chat and the Seth-slapped officer walks back over to me, arms folded, wearing the same look of contempt. He crouches down close to my face. I can smell his sickly sweet aftershave and feel a little queasy from it. It’s like that awful jasmine that grows over the dairy of Daniel Parker’s ex-girlfriend that makes my noise itch and my stomach churn.
‘Now,’ he says, with an impatient forceful tone. ‘Let’s talk about this Seth person.’
I step away from his stinking, overpowering scent and cough. ‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘Where does he live, this old man?’ he asks.
I look over to the green house and wonder whether I should tell him the truth or keep it as a lie. But before I speak my mother steps forward and says, ‘He lives by the school.’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ I
hiss, fuming over her sticking her nose in.
‘You told me he does, and that you visit him in your lunch hour.’
The officer interrupts. ‘Which school is this?’
‘Lowry Intermediate, in the City.’ She acts as if she’s doing us all a favour by telling the truth.
‘No, he doesn’t.’
The officer nods and writes it down in his little notebook. ‘What does he look like?’ His voice is warming.
‘Well he’s pretty old by the sounds of it and an active gardener,’ my mother answering for me again.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘So where is he hiding now?
I shrug.
‘Behind the green house,’ my mother volunteers incorrect information again.
He straightens up and starts his search within the garden, looking for any sign of this old man called Seth, under bushes and behind trees. I glance over to the green house, hoping Seth will emerge unharmed. His little home is under there and the entrance into it is behind the vicious Garden Witch rose, the nasty thorny plant that I have caught myself on numerous times.
‘Does he come into the shed often?’ the officer calls over.
Gran arrives hugging her aching arm. ‘What’s going on here?’ she asks; her face red and her eyes sorry.
‘The officer is looking for Sara’s friend Seth, the old man,’ my mother answers, rather pleased with herself.
Gran screws her up face and sighs. ‘Umm, I don’t think they will find him,’ she says slowly.
‘Why’s that?’
Gran steps in closer to my mum and whispers, ‘Seth is just an imaginary friend of Sara’s.’
Mum shakes her head. ’I don’t think so. She was watching him by the green house, I could tell.’
‘Did you see him?’ Gran asks.
‘No, but he’s crouching down. He’s a pervert, you know.’
Gran sighs again, and places her hand on her cheek. ‘Tanny, what have you done? The police believe he exists?’
‘Yes, he does exist. He lives by her school and she goes over there in her lunch hour to talk to him.’
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