by Kit de Waal
He comes eventually to a crossroads. Down a narrow lane behind rusty iron railings, there is a huge, flat garden with lots of huts. He goes up to the sign, “Rookery Road Allotments.” He pedals slowly past, down a little path that branches and curves, and everywhere he looks there are tidy rows of flowers and vegetables, garden sheds, greenhouses, crooked buildings made of corrugated iron and old windows, long plastic tunnels with plants inside, and, right by the gate, an old man is swinging a big curved knife, cutting down a bush. Leon watches him. That’s the best knife he’s ever seen and even though the man is old he’s cutting through the bush like a soldier in the jungle. Right, left, right, left. The bush is hacked down to a naked, gnarled trunk.
Whoosh. Suddenly, a bike skims past Leon so close that he nearly falls. It’s Wasp Man, with his bald head and yellow glasses.
“Easy, Star!” he shouts.
The man with the knife turns around and raises his arm in the air.
“Not in here!” he shouts. “Not in here!” He points the knife at a sign that says, “No dogs. No ball games. No cycling. No unaccompanied children.”
But Wasp Man is still going fast along the little paths, so Leon gets off his bike and follows him to the edge of the allotment near a wooden shed. Leon wheels his bike right up to him.
“Yo, my friend,” says Wasp Man. “You looking for somebody?”
Leon stares. The man is wearing tight black leggings and no top. His skin is brown like the wood on Sylvia’s sideboard, brown like his dad’s but shiny and muscly like the Hulk. He has three scars across his shoulder like he’s been shot or attacked, another scar on his cheek. He’s a warrior. He lifts his yellow wasp glasses. His eyes are black and when he smiles he looks like he’s got too many teeth for his mouth.
“You lost?” he asks.
“No,” says Leon. “I’ve got a bike like yours.”
“Yeah? That’s a good bike, Star. Let me see.”
Leon gets off the bike and Wasp Man bends down. He handles the bike and runs it along the ground and back a few times, turns the pedals with his hand.
“Hold it,” he says and takes a wrench out of his bag. “Good job I was just coming from work.”
He unscrews something and pulls the seat up higher. He unscrews something else by the handlebars and pushes them down. He tightens everything up and pushes it toward Leon.
“Now you’ll go faster. It’s a bit small for you, you know. But this will fix it.”
Leon sits back on and he’s right. It is better. He rides round in a little circle.
“Yeah,” says Wasp Man. “You got it.” Then suddenly he says, “Get off. Quick. Now.”
The man with the knife walks over to them and looks at Leon first.
“Who are you?”
Leon says nothing.
“Top of the morning to you, sir!” says Wasp Man. He smiles the big smile and salutes.
“Mr. Burrows,” says the man, pointing the tip of the knife at Leon. “Children aren’t allowed.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that whoever he is, he’s not allowed in here unaccompanied. Especially not riding a bicycle. Neither, for that matter, are you.”
“I need to be accompanied, too?” says Wasp Man, still with his smile.
The man with the knife closes his eyes. Where the knife has been chopping at the hedge there are streaks of green on the sharp blade like alien’s blood. The handle is made of black wood with a blue tassel on the end. It is so long that it nearly touches the ground. The man raises the knife and points the tip at Leon’s neck.
“You know what I mean. Riding a bike. Cycling within the allotment boundary.”
“Sorry?” says Mr. Burrows, turning his ear toward the man. “I didn’t catch that. I’m not too good with Irish. Doing what?”
“It’s Gaelic, not Irish, and on this occasion I was speaking English.” The man takes a deep breath and repeats his words slowly. “Cycling. Within. The. Allotment. Boundary.”
“Ah!” says Mr. Burrows. “You like your rules, don’t you, Mr. Devlin?”
“They’re not mine. I’m on the committee and, incidentally, so was your father.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not here and I am. I just come from work, and anyway, cycling is no crime. Don’t worry yourself.”
“I am not worried. Regulations, Mr. Burrows. They’re not made by me, as you well know. They are committee regulations. And they’re made to be adhered to.”
“Aye, sir, I understand, I do,” says Mr. Burrows and he tries to say it the same as Mr. Devlin with the funny accent.
Mr. Devlin stares and Mr. Burrows raises a finger.
“Oh, and by the way, Mr. Devlin, I think you finished your sentence with a preposition.” He wags his finger in the air. “Against the rules.”
The two men look at each other like they’re about to start fighting but Mr. Devlin has a dangerous weapon and Mr. Burrows doesn’t. Just when Leon thinks something is going to happen, Mr. Devlin walks away and Mr. Burrows makes a monkey face behind his back just the way Leon does when Sylvia tells him off.
“That man,” he says, “has nothing else to do but lord it over people. Thinks he owns this place. So busy spying, he forgets to live his life.”
Leon watches Mr. Devlin. He has a bit of a limp but, from the back, he could be young in his army boots and camouflage jacket. He’s much older than Mr. Burrows and his white skin looks dirty or browned by the sun, but he looks strong. Maybe he’s got scars as well under all his clothes.
“You want a drink, Star? Come.”
Mr. Burrows unlocks the door of his hut. It’s dusty inside, with folded-up chairs stacked at one end. A tall metal bin halffull of water has cans of soda floating on the top. On a little metal table, there is a set of dominoes in a wooden case. Leon’s dad used to have a set of dominoes and his name was engraved on the lid: “Byron Francis.” His dad used to let him play with them and line them up end to end, matching all the numbers. He picks up the case and rattles it.
“You’re too young for them,” says Mr. Burrows and lifts them out of his hand. “Big man’s game.”
On one side of the shed there are posters and pictures and on the other side there are three wide windows and, under the windows, there are rows and rows of little plants in black plastic trays. The shed smells of warm earth, sweet and fresh. Leon puts his face right up to one of the plants. The silver-green leaves are so thin and delicate that he can see threads of tiny veins like the veins on Jake’s hands. And there are brown seeds in some of the trays that have burst open and white stems are bulging out, trying to escape. With the very tip of his finger, Leon presses down on the soil.
“Easy, easy,” says Mr. Burrows and he leans down to look at what Leon has done.
“You see these?” he says. “Zucchini. I don’t even like them but they grow good and strong. Yellow flowers.”
He points to another tray.
“And these? Mangetout. Say it.”
“Mange tout.”
“Means ‘eat all.’ You can eat the whole pod, seeds and everything.”
“What’s in there?”
“Nothing yet. That tray is waiting for runner beans. Come.”
Leon follows Mr. Burrows back outside.
“Cream soda,” he says to Leon. “Kids love cream soda. Cool you down.”
Leon pulls the ring off the can and glugs it back.
“You needed that, eh?”
Leon nods. “What’s your name?” he asks.
“They call me Tufty because of my thick hair,” says Mr. Burrows and he waits until Leon starts to smile.
“Yeah, lost my hair when I was your age. Never grew back. Linwood is what my mother named me but everyone calls me Tufty except that man over there. He thinks he’s the boss. The general in a one-man army.”
While Tufty
drinks, he kicks at the stony soil.
“I got watering to do, weeding, seeds to plant, hoeing. Day like today,” he says, “ain’t really no digging day, Star, but you got to work with the seasons. Wait.”
Tufty goes into his shed and comes back with two folding chairs that he sets in the shade.
“Come.”
Leon sits next to Tufty and kicks the dry, stony soil like Tufty did. The pebbles roll under his feet and a bloom of gray dust settles on his sneakers.
Tufty’s body covers the whole seat; he looks like he’s sitting on nothing. He unlaces his special cycling sneakers and takes off his socks. He places his naked foot on top of the shoe and wiggles his toes.
“The sun,” he says, closing his eyes and turning his face to the sky, “is a healer. When the sun comes out everybody smiles. World looks different. You can manage in the sun what you can’t manage in the rain. That’s what my father says. That’s why he don’t live here no more.”
Leon looks up and closes his eyes as well. He remembers a day when his mom was pushing the stroller in the rain and Leon was holding on to the handle. She forgot the plastic cover and Jake was getting wet and she was rushing, bouncing the wheels in the puddles and splashing everywhere. By the time they got home they were all upset. His mom made a bottle for Jake and then when he was asleep she kissed Leon over and over and said she was sorry. She let him stay up late and watch TV with her under a blanket on the sofa. Then when he was in bed, she kissed him again.
“You’re such a good boy, Leon. I’m sorry if I’m not the best mom. I love you, you know.”
That’s what the sunshine feels like.
Leon opens his eyes and looks around. There are no fences between the gardens, just straight edges in the soil or grassy paths. There are other people gardening apart from Mr. Devlin. There’s a woman in a pink sari in the next garden with her husband in a black turban. They’re bending over, pulling weeds, talking to each other all the time in their own language. The woman keeps standing up and holding her back, so her husband points to a chair. She laughs and shakes her head, waves at a white woman wearing a vest who’s digging her garden with a heavy iron fork that she stabs in and kicks, then turns over. She’s the same age as Maureen and the vest is very tight on her chest. She’s wearing a long, flowery skirt and a yellow bandana around her hair. She sees Leon looking and she waves.
“All help welcome!” she shouts.
The more Leon looks, the more people he sees and he realizes how huge the allotments are; they go on and on as far as he can see.
Tufty suddenly picks up a big iron fork and marches off to one end of his plot.
“Work to do,” he says. “You take care, Star.”
Leon watches him for a while and cycles away. He trundles between the little gardens, taking his time to see what people are doing. Some people have only flowers and a little lawn like Sylvia with deck chairs and parasols. Other people have long, straight rows of plants, bushy and neat. There are lots of plots like Tufty’s, made into sections with a different plant in each section and some sections with nothing but dusty brown soil. There are no swings or slides but it’s better than a park because everybody has their own bit of land to look after and they can do what they like with it. If Leon had his own patch he would make it into a soccer field or he would make a secret den with an underground tunnel.
Eventually Leon cycles back past Tufty toward the entrance and sees the man with the knife, Mr. Devlin. He is piling the branches and leaves into a wheelbarrow with the knife lying at his feet. Leon gets off his bike and goes a bit closer.
“Stay off that bike,” says Mr. Devlin.
“What’s that?” asks Leon, pointing at the knife.
The man turns his head slowly.
“Kanetsune,” he says.
“Can I touch it?” asks Leon.
“No,” says the man. “And if you remain here much longer you’ll be trespassing.”
“Are you from the army?” Leon says, making his bike balance on its two wheels.
The man picks up the wheelbarrow and marches away. Leon follows him down a little gravel path and sees him park the wheelbarrow and go inside a hut, except this hut is made of bricks with a proper roof and a chimney. It has two windows with iron bars across and a wooden door with three steel locks. All around the hut is a strip of grass with flowers and wooden barrels. There’s stuff everywhere: a rusty wheel, a pile of pots stacked inside each other, the twisted branch of a dead tree, an old armchair with the seat missing, and a clothesline with a blue shirt hanging on it. Leon wonders if Mr. Devlin lives in a halfway house. He waits and waits but the man doesn’t come back, so Leon pedals away, back to the corner, through the busy street with the vegetables on the pavements, over the traffic lights and down the hill to Sylvia’s house.
18
Sometimes, on Saturday mornings, Leon can have the television all to himself to watch Tiswas and Swap Shop. If the cartoons are on, Sylvia will watch them with him but she talks all the time or paints her toenails, making a horrible smell. Everything Sylvia likes is purple because she wants it to match her hair. Afterward they have to go to the shop where Sylvia works part-time, to collect her money.
She always spends ages talking to the man who gives her the brown packet. He holds on to it until she tugs it away with a fake smile and when they get outside she calls him a bastard. On the way back she always gets her magazine and some cakes and Leon gets a comic. Sylvia sits at the kitchen table and licks her fingers and turns the pages and eats the cakes and licks her fingers again. She always buys Leon a doughnut but he can’t have it until after lunch. Once Sylvia bought herself a bunch of flowers wrapped in a crinkly pink paper with a ribbon round it. She looked angry when she was putting them in the vase but when she saw Leon looking she smiled and said, “If I don’t, who will?”
“My mom and dad have a massive garden,” he tells Sylvia when she puts him to bed. “With lots of trees and grass and flowers and a shed. I used to grow everything with seeds that I planted myself. Zucchini and mangetout. I used to chop down trees if they got too big and dig the weeds out. My dad gave me a sharp knife and I used to help him. It’s hard work but I don’t mind. There’s no one to look after it now if I’m not there.”
Sylvia turns out the light.
“Well, why don’t you go straight to sleep and have nice dreams about your garden? Night, night.”
Leon hates it when the curtains move in the breeze but he’s too scared to get out of bed and close the window. He turns over and tries to think of nice things like when Carol had a special bouquet for her birthday. It was wrapped in plastic with a bow made of white satin but because she didn’t have a vase she had to prop the flowers up in the sink and then in the bath. Every time she looked at the bouquet she would say, “Must have cost a fortune.” Later on that night, when his dad came, Leon heard her saying, “Byron, stop it!” but she was laughing, so he didn’t have to worry.
All Sylvia’s housework jobs last until lunchtime, when she makes him a sandwich and he can have his doughnut. But since he got his bike, Leon doesn’t want to watch his shows.
“Can I go out on my bike, please?”
He stands near the back door with his hand on the knob. He always takes his backpack because he shows Tufty the soccer cards he’s collecting or a picture of a bike because Tufty knows everything about them. He knows the way by heart now and he knows how to get off his bike at the gate if Mr. Devlin is around.
“Where?” she says, squinting because of the smoke from her cigarette.
“Just on the roads, on the sidewalks.”
“All right then. But only around the block. You go up to the lights and right and then right again and you come to the bottom of the hill. Show me which is right and which is left.”
He holds up the hand he writes with.
“Right,” he says.
; “Okay then. Now you watch that traffic. And if you get lost you ask a policeman. Second thoughts, if you get lost, ask a lady, any lady. You give them this address and you tell them to show you the way.”
“Okay,” says Leon and he opens the door.
“Hold on. What is this address, Leon?” She tilts her head to one side, looking like a teacher.
“Ten College Road.”
Sylvia raises her eyebrows. “Off you go then. Back for your tea.”
He puts his pack on and wheels his bike through the entry between the houses and out onto the road. He goes up to the traffic lights, crosses over, along the busy road, and all the way to the allotments. He gets off his bike at the railings in case Mr. Devlin is there and wheels it along the path by Mr. Devlin’s brick shed and then, when he’s absolutely sure Mr. Devlin isn’t around, he gets back on so he can ride fast for thirty-seven seconds right up to Tufty’s wooden hut.
It’s a bright, bright day and because it’s been raining all the green looks greener and all the blue looks bluer. The bloodred flowers in Mr. and Mrs. Atwal’s garden have fallen over in the wind and beads of water drip from the cherry blossom onto Leon’s back as he speeds past. Tufty waves when he sees Leon and calls him over. He hands him a packet of seeds.
“I can’t read them little words, Star. Read this for me.”
He hands Leon the packet and folds his arms.
Leon reads slowly but nice and loud.
“ ‘Red-Flowered Runner Bean Scarlet Emperor is excellent for freezing and for showing. Runner beans are a good source of vitamin C and iron, and have a high fiber content. Height: ten feet. Spread: twelve inches.’ ”
“Hmm,” says Tufty. “What does it say about when you plant it?”
“It says, ‘Ideal for the kitchen garden. Flowering time July, August. Sowing months April, May indoors. Transplant outdoors when the risk of frost has passed, in full sun.’”