DECEMBER 7, SUNDAY. Nursing a brutal hangover, I finally get to the allotment at the second attempt, late afternoon. The dim light is already fading. A few nights of icy frost have finally culled the nasturtiums, their dead tendrils barely holding on to the bank like fingers letting go before a fall; so much dead seaweed now washed up on shore. I am feeling a need to sow stuff, although it is insanely late. Procrastination planting. Annie has chard seed under a cloche so I am not the only one. The shed mice have been at the broad beans, so they’ll have to wait until spring. They have also wrecked many of the onion sets. I am almost relieved. I feel guilty as I push garlic cloves into the freezing soil. Only a month ago, the earth would have still been almost warm. I plant Radar onions, three rills up to the neck, with another thinly covered as an experiment. My hands are bone cold. I have never got on with gardening gloves, feeling the need of soil through my fingers. I hope the alliums are tougher than me. It is almost dark when I leave but winter solstice is only two weeks away. Light will slowly lift, a new year, new growth will begin. Meanwhile, it is home to nurse my hangover. I am in anxious need of chocolate.
1957. My earliest memories are wrapped around Christmas, one with my mother, one without. In both I am aged nearly three, I think, a month before my birthday. Memories feel too young for four, maybe too old for two. In the first I am walking with my mother. I am on the outside, on the left, I cannot see her face but there is a solid comfort to the shape whose hand I hold. A large, lit Santa Claus is on the wall in front of us, a low ledge on our right. I know it is Plymouth. I know it is her. I don’t know how I know. Later, aged 16, when I trawled around Union Street, I wondered if she was still there, sitting in a seedy pub or club. She’d have beehive hair, perhaps be one of the prostitutes walking the same streets. It was strangely reassuring. My second memory is of the same Christmas but I don’t think my mother’s there. I am sick, I think with chickenpox. I cannot leave the room. I have been farmed out to a friend. It doesn’t feel like family. There are Christmas cotton wool snowflakes stuck on the windows, as though to compensate: the inconstant comfort of strangers.
1959. Our first Christmas with Lilian and Dudley, they also disappear. We never know where; they never say. We are too young to understand. We stay with kindly friends of theirs who give us cowboy clothes with shiny guns, holsters and hats. Mum and Dad don’t do festive. Giving doesn’t come easy. Christmas means a matching sweater, maybe handkerchiefs, though there is also Meccano we aren’t really trusted to use. Toys more likely come from welfare visits, though Dudley is keen on Matchbox cars. A social worker brings a plastic bag with a fort and soldiers, farm animals bent out of shape from overuse. Others are made of lead, missing limbs, war-torn. There is a peeling, painted three-legged goat. All unwanted except by Christopher. He dotes on them, plays with them all the time. I am less convinced. Then comes the year of the bike. Christopher is desperate, all the kids his age are. Come morning choir, the other boys show off shiny red racers with drop handlebars, five gears, maybe ten. Chris’s present is second-hand, a sit-up-straight lady’s bike retouched in old green. I feel humiliated for him but he rides it everywhere. I have never figured out why Mum and Dad were so mean with money. On my desk today is Dudley’s note asking to be reimbursed for his son’s £2 bike plus a small pot of paint. He had a respected job as a registrar, they rented out the caravan and the house extension he’d had built next door. There were thousands of battery chickens in the barn. New cars were bought for cash but birthdays and Christmas were an inconvenience to be reclaimed. Sometimes I can’t forgive them the cash or their disappointment.
1964. I am aware my writing has taken a melancholic turn, so perhaps it is time to share a sunnier story. I am aged about 10 (I hope it isn’t more). It is hot. I am keen to swim in the river but Lilian is reluctant to buy me trunks. I wonder why I didn’t just swim in summer shorts, except from fear of her anger at the washing (she was a bit fixated on her Bendix). Mum and Dad never swim or go to the beach in summer except once with Mum at Bantham Bay, looking at rock pools early on. Mum is always buttoned-up. I have never seen her arms. Female bodies are a mystery to me but I am obsessed with a girl who sunbathes by the river with a couple of other village kids. She is about 14, with long blonde hair, a chequered pink bikini. I yearn to lie close to her in Speedos like Sean Connery. Mum knitted my swimming trunks. They are pale blue, slightly loose, not the sophisticated look I was hoping for. It is never going to work. Bikini girl doesn’t swim but the others do. When the tide is high enough, I join in. My trunks fill with water. The thick wool swells. They bend, they buckle, they gape alarmingly. Water pours between my skinny legs. I anxiously clutch the string at the waist to stop them sliding off. She turns over, looks at me. The other kids laugh. Humiliation complete, I scuttle back to Herons Reach.
DECEMBER 14, SUNDAY MORNING. The allotment. Likely my last visit before Christmas. The nasturtiums are a dull, icy sludge. The hungry pigeons are stripping the chicory they have left till now. The soil is crusted with frost. It is mid morning, mid winter, it is gloomy, the only warmth the colour on the curious robin’s chest as it sits watching me from the elder. I can almost feel the onions’ chill but there are clumps of bright green chervil and new fennel fronds. Flashes of calendula flower look like headlights seen from far away. I leave a Danish Christmas beer on a few friends’ plots and give a present and card to Howard.
1961. Tessa is our Old English Sheepdog. I love her and her big fluffy feet. Christopher isn’t so sure, and as she gets older she knows. She arrives as a black and white ball. We are both small. I play with her all the time. My happiest times are when we walk with her, down lanes, across cliffs, along the beach, Dad striding ahead, swinging his stick, Mum with me. Christopher always lingers at the back. He doesn’t ‘get’ walking, preferring to be on his bike, anywhere but where we are. We avoid beaches in summer, too many tourists clogging the lanes, so cram into the little Fiat, two boys with a massive dog in the back, and crawl up the Devon hills to Dartmoor. There is something magnificent about the carpets of heathers, amber bracken, moody tors and granite streams. We might stop at Widecombe or Dartmeet. There might be an ice cream cone or wafer, an occasional cream tea. I love to see Tessa run, but winter is best for that, down by the Thurlestone, racing along the sands. There is another sheepdog at the farm. I have to step over him in the passage at the side of the house as I drop off the milk churn in the morning and pick it back up after school. The dog bares its teeth as I step over it in my shorts. Tessa growls at Christopher, I am not sure how it starts. It amuses Dad, it confuses me. I love to lie with her, snuggle into her woolly coat, but she guards against Christopher.
1970, CHRISTMAS DAY. Aged 16, a little scared of London after sleeping in derelict buildings and parks, I am now living in a grubby bed and breakfast in Plymouth. I share a room with a chef in his twenties who noisily wanks most nights. Barred from the house after 9am, I hang around the bus station Wimpy Bar, talking to girls and to other drifters (derelicts the term at the time). Breakfast, as always at the B&B, is a fried egg sitting in a pool of fat, sliced white on the side. It is Christmas morning so today there is a bottle of beer. I don’t like beer; it is bitter, it takes too much to get drunk. My mid-teen booze of choice is to be found in the city’s scrumpy pubs, drinking ‘rough’ cider with older hands at the homeless thing. The Wimpy Bar is closed on Christmas Day, so I wander around Plymouth Hoe. It is raining. My schooling is over. My future is uncertain. I am feeling sorry for myself. I look in on families, tinselled trees and fairy lights: Christmas card scenes. Exiled from nuclear normality, the Christmases I thought would be mine, I mourn my life, post care, post Peter Drabble. I return to the pub, to the other unloved. Later, someone takes me home for chicken dinner with his mother. A small kindness I can cling to.
DECEMBER 27. Denmark. The whooper swans arrive with the snow. Their calls haunt the bay, out of the cold, out of the mist, the swansong end of the day. Geese fly by in ragged ribbons and regimented Vs, li
ke a wildfowl flight path. Ducks in their thousands cluster in the icy water. Winter is here. Cold as charity. Snow sticks to trees, our jackets and hats. We walk with the neighbours, sledging slopes with small kids, throw snowballs soft as marshmallow. We watch the suicidal kite surfers slice across the waves. Hailstorms tear at our windows. Ice gathers in neat piles like fish eggs or pearls. The day starts with a fire, the burble of burning logs and a Christmas candle. Up early as always, waiting for light and warmth, both in short supply. I scatter the bushes with bird-balls and wallow in the frenzied feeding. Here are canary-coloured yellowhammers, siskins, hawfinches. I have taken to watching them with binoculars, shouting at marauding crows when they try to steal the small birds’ food. A hawk swoops, the hedge falls silent. A scarlet-chested bullfinch puffs in the cold. We are here for Christmas and New Year to walk the wild beaches and clear the garden. Two-metre brambles are choking the bank. Fallen oak leaves are filling the ditch. There are old trees to cut down, new trees that need more light, young birch to straighten after being bent by winter gales. We buy new gardening gloves and get to work with rip saws and an axe: the tools of winter. We cut and clear. I tear out bramble by the roots until my arms cramp. We stop for a few days to enjoy the snow, squeaking as we walk. I read the runes of the tracks on the plot. Is it a cat, a pine marten, a fox or all three? The deer are easy. I read by firelight. I sleep easy and long. I cut tree trunks and stack them for next winter’s wood. I rake smothering leaves to unearth the woodland plants. They may flower soon. Celandine is showing, a few confused daisies are out, even the lavender has bud. The small trees and I stand straighter when we leave.
DECEMBER 30. Christopher’s birthday. I am worried my memory of him is fading. His voice thins and calls more quietly. I am caught between relief and mourning its missing. He has been insistent in my unconscious in the past year as the idea takes hold that he is gone. He is no longer to be searched for and found. We are beyond repair. Today, though, his voice is subdued. Has therapy shut him up or shut him out? December 30 was never a good birthday. Too close to Christmas, Dad said. Mine, too, only two weeks away. Chris’s gift, maybe a pair of Tuff school shoes with a guarantee to stand wear and tear or your money back. Christopher wore and tore, not one to sit still. He had the best smile. It came less easily later. Unless he had a ball at his feet or in his hand. Here he was fluent.
Care records. Plymouth. 23.1.59. Christopher left with father by Mrs Jenkins. Christopher does not attend school.
Care records. Plymouth. 5.2.59. Alan was being cared for by Mr Jenkins’s housekeeper while his father was working. This arrangement was satisfactory until Mrs Jenkins, who is divorced, brought Christopher to be cared for by his father. The boys have become out of hand and Mrs F is no longer able to look after them. How long is the child likely to be in care? Indefinitely.
It seems we all needed Ray to be the rescuer, the Samaritan saving his adopted son. But Christopher was a weapon in a war of attrition. A six-year-old being returned to his dad whatever the official papers might say. Why, I wonder. His new sanctuary was short-lived. The care home called.
DECEMBER 31. Danish New Year’s Eve. I have bought a big box of fireworks for maybe the first time ever. We gather with neighbours on the beach at midnight. The moon is almost full. It shimmers on the sea. Other groups are here with rockets, air bombs and booze. The celebrations are optimistic, defiant of the future and the freezing wind. It is happy, hopeful, noisy, not the introspection I am used to. Clusters of flashing colours and bonfires punctuate the bay. Wrapped warm, we laugh, we light fireworks, we drink champagne and whisky. We look forward to the year.
January
JANUARY 6. Epiphany at the plot. An envelope has arrived from Jane Scotter, biodynamic grower by the Black Hills, Hereford. Small, fierce, slightly scary, she is my inspiration and gardening reality check. Every time I think I have grown something beautiful – and yes it happens – I visit her farm stall, see her land and realise how much I have to learn. The envelope contains the Three Kings preparation consisting of Aurum metallicum (gold), frankincense and myrrh. This is my favourite biodynamic mix at perhaps my least favourite time. Dusk on January 6 is rarely the right weather for sitting outside for an hour, dressed in office clothes, stirring cold water in a bucket.
January 6 is also Howard’s birthday, so there are other gifts for him: cake and a bottle of whisky. We take it in turns to stir with our hands. The water is a little warmed at first, the fragrance of church, of hope and sadness, lifting as it swirls. Howard cuts slices of Epiphany galette des rois and we take it in turns wearing the gold paper crown. It is a good way to start the gardening year. After an hour, the water is too chilled, and so are we, but there has been a connection with time, place and each other. We spray the mix around the edges of the plot, taking care to include Mary’s. I leave for the cinema smelling like a choirboy.
JANUARY 11. After days of stormy wind and rain, the sun is shining. It is almost warm. Time to get shallots in. I clear ground and lift a few of last year’s chard plants, stripped to the stem by pigeons. Some of the onions need replanting. The roots are pushing them out of the earth like rockets trying to launch. I make dibbing holes with my thumb and bed them in. I settle on a space and lay a long hazel stick as a rule. I hoe a rill and space the shallots evenly. I mooch around and tidy, clearing weeds and chicory leaves. The mustard, too hot for pigeons perhaps, is budding and almost ready to flower. I pick a little, it tastes of heat and exotic travel. The few radishes left by the snails are woody but welcome. I take a small chicory for tea. I am joined by my neighbours. Ruth is scoping out beds for potatoes, keen, like me, to sow. John has brought loppers to prune the elder at the bottom of his plot. Ruth and I make plans to attack the trees shading her corner. Howard and I have to sort the path planks that need replacing. There is tidying work to do now the days are just (I think) a little lighter.
JANUARY 13. The paradox of presents. I have started tearing up again in therapy. It is a habit I want to break. I normally see it coming, swerve before impact like avoiding being hit by a car. But sometimes, some things and names, some feelings, cannot be contained. My reservoir is too full to hold them. The dam bursts. Tears spill. This time I am trying to understand why birthday (or other) presents disturb me. Why I delay opening them as long as possible. Longer than is polite. How can unwrapping a gift make me anxious? Why do I want to hide? It has nothing to do with disappointment (well, there was a green alpaca sweater with a llama pattern once). It’s something to do with privacy, sudden discomfort in the company of people who care. Three single syllables you strain to hear but can’t. A phrase made banal from overuse. Yet sometimes, of a quiet morning, before or after, say, a birthday breakfast, ‘I love you’ burns deep until it is unbearable, and the thought conjures foolish tears to my eyes.
JANUARY 16. Birthday’s over. I only had to hide once when opening a present. A quick trip to the plot: the sun shines, the blackbird sings on the wing, the pigeons skulk sullenly in trees. Food is thin on the ground so they’ve stripped the kale. Skeletons litter the plot, stranded empty brassica spines like a windblown burial ground. My heart quiets as I connect. The next day I return with Howard. We set up a sanctuary, moving the strongest of the small plants into a stockade. We are circling the wagons against winter and birds. We loop hazel poles to huddle mustard, chicories, stunted chard and beets together like stranded ewes in snow. It is the dead of winter but the onions and shallots have set, the deep-planted garlic is pushing through. Snowdrops are budding, daffodils showing, there is hope for the cold snap coming.
Family lore – for which read Uncle Mike when he was still eager to be seen as the archivist – is that I went into Dr Barnardo’s the day I was born. My birthday seems a good time to see if there is any truth in it. I have mixed feelings about Barnardo’s, the before-and-after-care cards, the ‘philanthropic abductions’ that parents called kidnapping. I mourn the way they separated traumatised siblings by sex. It has closed its orphanages – a
number are under investigation for abuse – and rebranded its past. I fill in the form, add the asked-for ID and drop it in the post. I started this search when I was 60, older than my mother and brother when they died, time near my end to unravel my beginning.
JANUARY 17. I carry three dried black beans in my gardening jacket pocket, Cherokee Trail of Tears left over from a summer sowing a couple of years ago. The fact there are three is important, though I am unsure why. My hand strays to them, my fingers seek them out, almost unconsciously searching until I feel all three and relax.
JANUARY 18. I have been gardening with Howard for nine years now. He stuck the course at allotment one and two. He knows the names of plants. I don’t make male friends easily, women always less of an issue. I had a theory as a kid that boys are like trees with taproots – just a few deep friends – while girls’ roots branch out – but maybe that was about me and moving around, my too many names and schools and homes. My friendship with Howard grew organically, if you will. We agree on most things, though his quiet disapproval aces my overenthusiasm. What Howard brings to the plot is discipline, a depth of knowledge and his daughters, Nancy and Rose. They were toddlers when we started, forever digging holes, dwarfed by three-metre corn and sunflowers, getting almost lost, like in a Rousseau jungle. Building a special place, semi-wild and grown from seed, where children can play is at the heart of what we do. If Nancy and Rose approve, we know we’re not far wrong. Nancy is older, maybe more sensitive, an inspired arranger of flowers; Rose is fiercer, more instinctive. They both took immediately to biodynamics, eager to stir, whatever the mix, excited to spray and share. For the hour before their patience wears thin and they want their dad to leave, they are the perfect companions on Plot 29, with a keen-eyed appreciation for flavours and colours. The allotment wouldn’t be what it is without them.
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