by Rachel Joyce
‘Oh, I don’t,’ said Oliver’s father. ‘I just pass them sometimes. On the bus. I see them playing with their little boys.’
They drove on to plant a tree outside the GP’s surgery, because apparently the receptionist was having a hard time with her daughter, and then they dug in another tree near to the new skate ramps.
And at last Oliver asked, ‘Why tonight, Dad? Why trees? Why all these people?’
To which his father frowned, as if he had been given a particularly difficult set of sums to work out, and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why not?’ he said.
The last tree they saved, as Oliver had suspected, for a bald patch of earth outside the gates of the crematorium. Oliver cleared away the rubbish that had accumulated there, the bags and tin cans, the broken bottles, whilst his father dug a careful hole. Neither of them spoke any more. It was almost midnight and they were tired. When the tree was settled in the ground, his father poured the remaining water around its base and wiped his eyes. He put a pencil line through the final item on his list.
‘You OK?’ asked Oliver.
‘Would you mind taking me back now?’ said his father.
Faraway cheers went up, followed by a distant peal of bells. Fireworks blossomed over their heads like silver flowers.
In the van his father got confused with his seatbelt and kept trying to slot it into the catch and missing and trying again. Oliver had to reach over and do it for him. He noticed for the first time that his father smelt of something that wasn’t chicken soup after all, but something sour, medicinal almost.
‘You sure you’re all right, Dad?’
‘I get a little headache, now and then.’
‘Nothing serious?’
His father’s mouth worked open and shut, like the seatbelt, but nothing came. He placed one hand on each knee and turned to watch the street. Oliver started up the engine and flicked the indicator to pull out. His back was sore and his palms stung with new blisters, but he felt strangely exhilarated. He didn’t feel like a son any more and neither did he feel like a father. He wasn’t sure what he was, but he had a sense that he liked it.
Already the Christmas decorations and posters were starting to come down. New adverts would soon replace them, for spring clothes and summer holidays. The girl in the red coat – the girl who been displayed everywhere that winter, caught in a shower of snow, the girl whose appearance on billboards and buses and in the advert breaks on television had embodied the spirit of Christmas, despite the fact that in reality there had not been one flake of snow, only ordinary cloud – had become torn and battered in many of the places Oliver passed. He still had no idea what the advert had been for. Maybe it had just been for Christmas itself. People had drawn beards and spectacles on the girl’s pretty face and graffiti hats on the woodland animals. They had added slogans of their own. For a moment it seemed strange to Oliver that people went through Christmas like this every year, putting up trees and coloured lights that would only be taken down again, and visiting people they ignored for the rest of the year, and spending money they didn’t have, and eating food they’d otherwise avoid. And then he thought, so what? It was only as mad as planting twenty trees. And where was the madness in that, when you thought about it? Life was a thing to celebrate.
As Oliver and his father turned on to the High Street and crawled through the traffic, they passed a group of young women vomiting into the gutter, and men swaying as if the pavement had turned to liquid. A group of Father Christmases posed for selfies outside a pub and further along, a woman cried outside a phone box. ‘Poor thing,’ said Oliver’s father.
When they stopped at the traffic lights next to the Chinese restaurant, he said, ‘Look, that man’s having dinner with his sons. That’s nice.’
Oliver followed his father’s gaze to the restaurant window. Sure enough, a man was pulling a cracker with a tall, black-haired boy and they were laughing at the effort. The second boy, much smaller and with a halo of blond hair, looked straight out to the van, caught their eye and waved. Oliver’s father lifted his hand and waved back. The traffic lights turned to green.
A little later they slowed and stopped again, this time outside a ladies’ boutique, where three people stood with their backs to the street and gazed at the window display of wedding dresses and party frocks. And this time his father said, ‘That person in a green dress is a boy.’ He turned his head to keep looking as the car moved on.
‘It takes all sorts, Dad. Anyway, you can’t talk. You’re a guerrilla gardener.’
While he drove, Oliver wondered whether things would go back to being as they had always been with his father, talking about the weather and the traffic on the phone every Sunday, or whether they would plant more trees now, perhaps move on to flowers and vegetables. He could not know that within a few months his father would be gone, and that the old house where he had grown up would be sold, and his father’s and mother’s belongings, the knitted items, the broken things, even his own childhood possessions, would be thrown out or given away.
And one day, of course, it would be the same with Oliver too, and the house he would soon share again with Binny, the things they would collect over the years – the school reports, the children’s shoes and toys, the feeding bottles and muslins for the baby Sal would not want to mother, the paper mobiles Coco would make – one day all those things would be given away or sold. It was the same for everyone. The coming and going. The little things left behind.
Oliver was pulled out of his thoughts by applause. Applause? How could that be? He cast a glance at his father, but he was asleep already, one hand on each knee, neat and not moving. Nobody in the street was even looking at Oliver and the van, let alone clapping. They ran, some of them, with their arms gripped above their heads, whilst others were standing still, looking upwards and laughing. Nevertheless, there it was. The tapping of many hands, as if the world was saying to Oliver, ‘Yes, you planted trees on New Year’s Eve. You got it right this time. Well done.’
And then he noticed the pips of water on the windscreen, the smudging around the wipers, the splashing on the tarmac and pavements, and realized his mistake. It was rain. Rain on the roof of the van. They hadn’t had any for so long he’d almost forgotten the sound. Oliver wound down his window and breathed in the sweet, dusty smell of it. As he turned the van left, right and left again, rain fell on the streets, the people, the trees, the rooftops, the lights, and he watched.
A story only made complete sense when it was over, when you could look back and say, this happened and then that happened and so this is where it ended. Oliver’s story was not over, it was still happening, and the night he planted the trees was just a new twist. He could learn from it or ignore it. The choice was his.
Oliver drove, like everyone else, towards another year. Towards whoever and whatever he would meet next.
Rachel Joyce’s new novel, The Music Shop,
is published by Doubleday in 2016.
About the Author
Rachel Joyce is the author of the Sunday Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (‘Wonderful’, Guardian,), Perfect (‘Will move and enchant’, Literary Review) and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy (‘Wondrous – it will leave you wide-eyed and wanting to read it all over again’, The Times).
She has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, was winner of the Specsavers National Book Awards New Writer of the Year 2012 and shortlisted for Writer of the Year 2014.
Also by Rachel Joyce:
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Perfect
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
For more information on Rachel Joyce and her books, see her website at www.rachel-joyce.co.uk
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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ose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Rachel Joyce 2015
An early version of ‘A Faraway Smell of Lemon’ was first published as a digital short story by Transworld Publishers in 2013. ‘The Boxing Day Ball’ first appeared in the Observer in December 2014.
Rachel Joyce has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473526471
ISBN 9780857523532
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