by Paul Finch
It was the rattling up of the removal van's back door that pulled Mary back from those thoughts to distract her with new ones. She had been so engrossed in the activity of the worms that she hadn't heard the vehicle arrive, but that rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat of the door rolling up was impossible to miss. U-Drive. She was glad to see the new neighbours had driven the van themselves rather than hire someone. She thought it admirable, such independence, especially these days when everybody seemed happy to pay somebody else to do something for them. She was also glad to see the new people were black. She might be of an older generation, but shame on anyone who thought that was an excuse to be racist. No, she was glad some people of ethnic origin or whatever the polite term was for them these days had decided to move in to her street. Added a little… Ha! Colour.
The man at the back of the van handed a box to his teenage daughter, a beautiful girl with long braided hair who said something to him and laughed as she took the box. A girl, that was good. Before Mary could complete her smile, though, a young boy leapt down from the van and, oh, he was beautiful too. He gave his father a bright smile and, oh my, he had such an energetic body, impatient to be somewhere else, running around enthusiastically and pretending to pull at his hair as his father laughed and kept a box high out of reach. The boy bounced on the spot and made grabbing motions for the package. "Pleease!"
Mary struggled up from her knees for a better look. It was more of a struggle than she liked to admit and she needed to use the nearby lawnmower for support. If she was honest with herself, and she always tried to be, she had brought the lawn mower out with that very purpose in mind, for the grass would probably be too wet to cut until the late afternoon.
The boy had his box and set about unpacking it straight away, there on the street. His enthusiasm for the task was delightful, and Mary enjoyed watching the way his face lit up as he retrieved a car from inside and set it on the pavement. Next came a handheld control and then the street was a little less quiet, the vehicle whining its way up and down and around as the boy followed. The child liked to play. That was good.
"Peter, go and help your mother."
Peter.
Mary hadn't seen the mother yet, but here was a car parking behind the van and, yes, there was a black woman inside. She had short cropped hair but the same figure, amazingly, as her daughter. When she saw Mary looking she waved. Brief, but polite, delivered with a quick smile. Mary returned it. Her hands were still gloved and caked in soil, palms darker than those of the woman she waved at.
Peter was standing at the roadside, the gadget in his hands pointing at the car that weaved around his mother's feet. She stepped over the toy several times with a practised ease that was almost supernatural, barely glancing at it as she headed towards her family.
"Hello, Mary."
The voice startled her but she resisted putting a hand to her chest.
"James, hello, good morning. How are you?"
James smiled and showed her some letters he'd brought out to post. He was an elderly gentleman around Mary's own age. "Just being nosy, really," he said, nodding towards the new neighbours. "Good to have some new people in that house."
Mary smiled and said, "Yes," though it hadn't been empty long.
"Especially children."
She didn't know if it was because he used to be a priest or because they couldn't physically have them but James and his wife Claire didn't have any children. They had several cats, though. Surrogate children, she supposed. Mary had needed to speak to both James and Claire on different occasions about their animals digging up her flowerbeds.
James pointed to where Mary's trowel lay in the dirt. "Weeding?"
"No, no, I was just turning the soil. Helping it drain. It's important, though really sweet peas are the easiest things in the world to grow. I'll probably do some weeding later, it's getting out of hand. Nature can be difficult to tame."
Why did she always prattle on so with men? But James was barely listening, so she supposed it didn't matter. Across the street the girl had come out of the house with cups of something for her parents. That first box must have been the kettle and tea things.
"Pretty," James said.
Mary nodded. The boy chased his car up and down the drive.
"Well, these aren't going to post themselves," James said, shaking the envelopes in his hand. "Good luck with the weeding."
Mary gave him a tight smile but allowed it to broaden into something more genuine when the boy across the road saw her and waved. He directed the car towards her front garden but turned it in a tight circle before it could reach the kerb. Then he did the same circle in reverse before driving the car back to his feet. A boy's hello.
"Little Lewis Hamilton," James said. Mary had no idea what he meant but he was already heading towards the post box at the end of the street so she was able to avoid any embarrassment by asking.
She eased herself back down to the ground, kneeling on a padded mat. She bowed her head towards the soil and tried to focus on the task at hand but found another worm, twisting upon itself in some strange rapture. With a quick thrust of her trowel she cut it in half. It would be all right, she thought. Half of it, anyway. As a child she used to think that both bits grew into new worms but really only one part survived. And it didn't grow back anything. It just survived, that was all.
****
Mary didn't believe in god with a capital G. She used to. She used to believe in the very same God James preached about once upon a time, though she never went to his church. For Mary, the only god, or goddess, was Mother Nature. A goddess so old that She resided at the Earth's core, having gathered the world around Her when the planet was mere pieces in space and time, pushing and pulling the tectonic plates into new shapes the same way Mary fidgeted sheets around herself in bed. Mary's goddess was protected by the world's crust and warmed by the world's magma. Mary's goddess was the soil's heart, beating in a series of seismic shifts, and worms carried Her pulse through a network of arteries they made themselves. No turn of Mary's shovel could hurt Her. Nature's heart was a hot molten rock that beat in earthquakes and rushes of ocean. The bones of Mary's goddess were the bones of people who thought they were returning to the clay from which they were made but really only fed it. The bones of Mary's goddess were those pressed into chalk over millennia. Her skeleton was stone. Mountains were Her vertebrae. Volcanoes spewed such exhalations that She could, if She desired, block the sun, and the world would know a darkness it had only seen when young.
Mary had known darkness but she buried it. Sometimes what she buried turned into something that gave her strength because even the foulest of things could flower. Mother Nature produced plenty of poisons but She also provided the remedies. Sometimes they even grew side by side. Sometimes the only difference between one and the other depended on dosage. Plants were like people that way, Mary thought, standing straight and wiping sweat from her brow.
She was up to her waist in a hole she'd been digging for three days. Since the Turners had moved in: Elijah and his improbably named wife, Pixie, plus their daughter Jasmine. And Peter. She'd had a wonderful chat with Peter. About digging.
Occasionally a well intentioned neighbour would tell Mary she was getting too old for some of her gardening work but she could never stop doing something she enjoyed so much. She felt particularly at peace when digging. The rasp of the spade in gravelly ground or the heavy scoop of sod levered by her foot or turn of wrist. It was hot work though, especially cooped up like she was in the garden shed. She had removed the floorboards some time ago, gaining access to the soil beneath, and now, shovelling load after load of the dirt into an ever-growing heap, she really felt the dusty heat, close and stifling. Almost the entirety of the shed's floor space had been dug away with just a small area left for the mounting dirt. She would dig until she felt better, however long that took, and then she would refill the hole and tread the soil down flat once more. She'd long since given up replacing the floorboards-had burned
them, in fact, on one November fifth or another-because eventually she would dig again. Sometimes the soil would still be freshly turned when she needed to and the going was easy (too easy, actually) but usually she managed months before the need returned.
She took a sip of iced tea. It wasn't some awful shop-bought concoction. No, this was lemon iced tea she made herself (the secret lay in letting it steep with lemon peel rather than using the juice, and adding a great deal of sugar). The glass had lost a lot of its coolness but the drink was still refreshing and the sugar perked her up for the work she still had to do.
She took a final sip of her tea, set the glass back down on a shelf of empty plant pots, and wiped her forehead with a sleeve grimed with dirt and sweat. It was already going to need a good wash but, safe in the privacy of her modified garden shed, she began unfastening the buttons.
When she'd seen Peter digging, he'd been grubby with mud all up his front. In his lap, clods of dirt had gathered like tiny earth-babies nuzzling for comfort.
Mary arched her shoulders back to remove her clothing and mopped her brow a final time with the bunched up blouse before hanging it on the handle of the shed door. She contemplated taking off her bra as well, not liking the way the straps rubbed or how the sweat built under the cups, but the way she'd sag and swing without it depressed her more and more these days. She was no Charlie Dimmock, not anymore. There was something to be said, though, for the freedom of being without it. If she was honest with herself, and she always tried to be, there was a wonderful frisson to be had in being so exposed amongst the earth. It gave her pleasure, being so intimately close to Nature. Even thinking about it gave her a shivered thrill that was more than the coolness of the soil seeping into her skin.
Mary retrieved the spade and stabbed it at the ground, treading the blade into the soil to lever up a fresh heap of dirt and stone. Her grip was firm. She felt no pain in her back or knees. She took strength from the ground she stood in, letting the labour keep her mind from other things.
****
"Good morning, Peter," Mary had said. "That's your name, isn't it?"
She'd smiled. She had crossed the road to pass the Turner place, taking inspiration from her neighbour James in that she carried a handful of letters to post (she liked to enter competitions, and there were letters she sent to gardening magazines-one of those had once been 'letter of the week', winning her a £50 voucher to spend at the garden centre). She had planned to post them at the weekend on her way to the shops but when she'd seen Peter in the front garden, turning soil with the sort of spade best used at the beach, she'd changed her mind.
"My name's Peter Lewis Turner," he'd said. "We just moved here." He'd been bringing the plastic spade towards himself in a series of pulls, dirt flicking up his t-shirt as he scraped a shallow trench. A matching bucket sat nearby as if he was going to make mud castles.
"I see you enjoy getting dirty," Mary had said with a soft chuckle. She'd pointed at his t-shirt and the small mound of earth building in his lap.
"I'm looking for treasure."
"Well, there's lots of that in the ground."
Peter had looked up, clearly delighted. "Is there?" And Mary had smiled.
"Of course. All the nutrients plants need to grow, for starters. And all sorts of precious metals and pretty gem stones. People dig them up all the time, though personally I think they're supposed to stay there. I think they're in the ground for a special reason."
"What for?"
"I don't know, dear. I just don't think Mother Nature would put anything in the ground that wasn't meant to be there."
"I like stones. I've got seven with holes in them but I found those at the beach. Dad says they're lucky."
"If you like stones, you should see my fossil collection. I have them in my garden, bordering the lawn and standing in some of the flower beds. Sort of like garden gnomes, but much prettier."
"Fossils are like stone dinosaurs, aren't they?"
"Sort of. They're special rocks that show you something that died, years and years and years ago."
"Coal's a special rock that burns," Peter had said. He'd said it like it was something he'd learned recently, new knowledge, shiny and fresh, that he wanted to show off.
"You're absolutely right," Mary had said. "Did you know, there's a place where anthracite, which is a type of coal, is burning right now? Lots and lots of it, all underground, burning and burning. It's been burning for over fifty years, nobody can put it out. Imagine that."
Peter had looked around as if it might be right underneath him. His expression had been part excitement, part fear.
"It's in America somewhere," Mary had assured him.
"What about the people who live there?"
"Nobody lives there, it's too dangerous. The land is really hot and the fumes are really poisonous. It seeps up out of the ground."
"There's poison in the ground?"
"Sometimes."
"What else is in the ground?"
The boy had stopped digging. Cross-legged, spade held across his lap, he'd sat looking up at Mary.
"Well," she'd said, "buried treasure, as you know."
Peter had grinned.
"But also things that lay forgotten, waiting to be rediscovered."
"Like a bone? Our dog used to bury bones but then forget where she'd put them."
"Yes, like bones, I suppose. I didn't know you had a dog."
"She died."
"Oh."
"She was killed. She ate something bad." He'd frowned, bringing his hand up to his eyes. Mary had thought he was about to cry and she'd panicked but it was only that the clouds had moved and Peter was saluting to shield his eyes, squinting a little into the sun.
Mary had wondered what on earth to say next but then there'd been a creak and screech from the side gate and Peter's mother had appeared. She'd been surprised by Mary but only for a moment. She'd smiled. "Hello."
"Hello." Mary had introduced herself, pointing across the road. "Number 42, if ever you need anything."
The woman greeted her again. "Hi, Mary, I'm Pixie." She'd brought her hands up as if to ward off a blow. "I know, I know. Awful, isn't it? I sound like someone from Harry Potter or something."
Mary had smiled. "I think it's a wonderful name. Magical."
Pixie had smiled in return. "My husband, Elijah, says the same thing."
"You have a daughter, too, don't you?"
The woman had nodded. "Jasmine. And this little one-" Here she'd crossed her arms and scowled at her son. "Peter Lewis Turner, look at the mess you've made!" It had been pretend anger, though, the woman suddenly sweeping in low, arms outstretched, to scoop the boy up for tickles. He must have been rather heavy at his age but maybe mothers didn't notice that kind of thing.
"We were talking about buried treasure and fires and bones," Peter had said between laughing and trying to breathe. A beautiful sound.
"That sounds lovely, but you've got to come in now and get ready for lunch." Then, to Mary, "It was nice meeting you."
Mary had watched as the woman ushered her child inside. When she swatted playfully at his behind to hurry him along Mary had looked away.
In the ground at her feet, a small hole, a narrow trench, had gaped vacant, a plastic spade protruding from one end like the headstone of a grave, or an invitation to keep digging.
****
In the shed, in the hole, Mary scooped heaps of ground from around her feet and tossed them aside at a near frantic pace without caring that most of the dirt fell back into the opening she had made. She was sweating profusely now (or rather she was perspiring-she was a lady) and she could feel it running down her sides from her armpits. She could feel it at the nape of her neck where curls of grey hair were sticking to her skin. She was wearing comfortable trousers but even so they were damp around the elasticated waist and crotch. She couldn't tell if it was the physical activity or the exertions of her mind that made her feel this way. Still, she levered up more earth, raised it
, and tossed it away.
Abruptly, her spade bit into something softer than soil. She stopped and angled the blade carefully to see…
Yes.
"Hello Adam."
When she dug this deep, Mary always found Adam. The first time it happened it had panicked her and she'd wondered if somehow she'd forgotten where she'd put him. She soon discovered, though, that it didn't matter where she put the blade of her spade or shovel, Adam would always be unearthed. Sometimes the other children followed-not always, only sometimes-but Adam was always there for her. His eyes were clogged with soil but he saw everything.
"What are you going to do?" he asked, his throat choked with dirt. His teeth were black with soil and clumps fell from his mouth as he spoke. His was a voice that bubbled beetles and things that burrowed moved his tongue, itself a writhing twist and turn of worms that dropped in tangles with each of his words.
"Go away," Mary said. She plunged the spade into the boy's face and he crumbled into sodden clods, all muddy blood and stones for bones. He fell apart into a fleshy compost that Mary tossed aside with an enthusiastic swing of her arms.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know what I'm going to do."
She spoke it to the ground beneath her feet, and to all the dark that had gathered there as the light outside faded.
"Yes you do," it said.
****
A chill had descended as day faded into early evening. Mary didn't feel it until she left the shed and it made her wish she'd brought a cardigan out with her. Often, especially when digging, she lost track of time. In the shed, that was. In the hole. Sitting at the flower beds, trowel in hand, transferring potted plants to the great outdoors or picking at weeds, she was fine.
The light had diminished a great deal with the onset of evening, more so than was usual for the hour, because low-lying cloud, dense with rain, had settled over the neighbourhood. Mary took the opportunity while it was still dry to transfer her rubbish from the bin to the kerb. She only had to do it once a fortnight because with all the recycling, and the amount of household waste she used for compost, she had very little to dispose of these days.