Authors: Josie Clay
Chapter 7
Quincy and I were full of cold, having to stop every few minutes to blow our noses. We had given up on 'Bless yous' yesterday.
“Quince, please don't overfill the rubble sacks”.
“I'm sorry, guv” he said. “I think I've had it
...I feel so rough”.
“OK, go home” I said. “I'll finish up”.
“Are you sure?”.
“Yes, fuck off”.
“OK, darlin” he said, “I'll see you Monday”.
He went, trumpeting his exit into a hanky. Men, big and strong, but still such babies. Squatting, I hugged a rubble sack to my body, stood and waddled at top speed down the side passage to the skip. Normally I'd turn out the bags for re-use, not this time, pushing in the dusty crap. Getting dark now, two hours since Quincy had left and mercifully down to the last five bags – the ones he'd filled. The penultimate load particularly nose-bleeding and I felt it slipping, so I stopped, squatted and re-hugged. A phlegmy rattle bothered my lungs as I tilted myself at the skip and began to run as if tossing the caber. At that point, a huge, rasping cough barked up from my ribs, pole
-
axing me and I felt something inside me pop. The job done, I sat in Fritz, rubbing the xylophone beneath my right breast uneasily.
That evening, I drove to Tove's, sisters once more
(Sophie had iced again). In bed, we cuddled, intimate but platonic. Come the morning I couldn't move, barely able to breathe, panting in shallow gasps with a pain so searing I could see and hear it – silver, white stabbing chords, as if being run through by Norman Bates.
Tove took me to the Homerton where I was diagnosed with three broken ribs. They gave me gorilla sedatives and said I should rest for six weeks. No chance of that.
Despite the caution on the bottle, I drove home in rictus, trying not to cough or sneeze because there lay a world of pain.
Trembling fingers tearing at the poo-inducing brown envelope marked 'Inland Revenue' that a thoughtful neighbour had pushed under my door. Apparently my liability was £8,000 ...I'd just about had enough and decided a trip to UK Polski Sklep was in order. A post Sabbath evening and I juddered amongst the Hasids with no fear of being bumped. Perusing the misty chest freezer, aware an unorthodox situation had arisen. An elderly Hasidic man, pressing himself against me.
“You vant to be my friend?” he mumbled, nostrils whistling laboriously or perhaps excitedly, it was hard to tell. I studied the fish fingers I'd selected for calorific information and he stared at them too as if they held an answer.
“That's not kosher, is it?” I said, turning towards the till.
Feeling more than passable on a cocktail of whisky and painkillers, I phoned my friend, Pip. She told me that unlike her, my default setting was to be with someone, hence the parade of lovely but unsuitable partners. This wasn't derogatory, merely a fact. She also maintained I was special and, although obsessive, usually approached situations from a point of sanity – my nature could be construed as thorough in some contexts. I was a rational individual, she insisted, who was simply frustrated by the limitations of others.
And so, galvanised with these garlands and altered by medication and alcohol, I decided it
would be a good time to ‘phone Nancy. My confidence deflating incrementally with each ring, just about to hang up when the answer ‘phone kicked in.
'Hi, this is Nancy, please leave a message'.
I slammed the ‘phone down, processing what I hadn't heard...
Broken ribs notwithstanding, Quincy and I were changing the space at the back of a minimalist yet cosy flat in Hackney, for which I'd designed an appropriate garden: a spaced out grid of square, concrete slabs with grass in between, an oak deck and swathes of purple and silver planting.
On our break we sat munching sausage sandwiches, while Quincy read 'Discworld' by Terry Pratchett.
“Quince” I said, “I need to tell you something”. He looked up, good natured and I noticed the deep lines that had appeared of late, scoring his handsome face, the bagginess around his eyes and his smashed up, scaly hands. He scratched his ear like a cat, something he always did when he knew he should pay attention.
“You know, Min” he said, “you're not getting any younger are you?” Notoriously undiplomatic.
“How old are you now?”
“Thirty seven”.
“You've got some fearsome work ethic”.
“So have you” I countered.
“Darlin, I'm just a Methodist” he said, splaying his hands. “You're positively Calvinistic”.
Dear old Quince, instinctively facilitating.
“Quince, I'm tired” I said and with this admission, tears spilled onto my boots. “I don't just mean today, I mean always. What I'm trying to say is that I'm tired of all this”.
“I know darlin” he said, closing his book and adjusting his glasses to better examine a splinter in his thumb. “You should take it easy for a while ...rest yourself”. His kind eyes assuring me it was cool. “Anyway” he continued imperiously, “I've been thinking of applying for a job - would you give me a reference?”
“Of course” I said, getting to my feet. “Come on Quince, let's wind this up”.
The client returned that afternoon and surveyed his new garden, picturing barbecues, no doubt, and ambient evenings.
“It's spot on, Minette”. But his eyebrows accented acute and grave. “But, can't you do one of your things?”
Heart blooming because I knew what he was getting at.
“One of my things?”
“Yes, you know, one of your twists ...your installations, something unique and correct”.
From time to time, I felt a garden wasn't quite finished, it needed crowning. And so, I would interrogate the client, carefully probing their predilections and limitations before presenting them with a proposal, adding dimension to both the garden and themselves. It might be an edifice of breeze blocks, carved into a monolith and rendered in white mortar, or two upright sleepers with a cross member, resembling a Shinto shrine. Or rusty steel 'H' lintels, set at angles and planted with grasses. Never quite knowing what I was going to do, my creations had so far gone down well.
“OK, did you have anything in mind?”
“My dear” he said, “I'll leave it entirely up to you”.
On this occasion, I had a clear concept. The client had confided he had a seven year old son he seldom saw since his ex-wife had moved to France and he missed him greatly. I sent Quincy to the skip to retrieve the plastic toddler pedal car we'd found crouched in the undergrowth. We'd chucked dozens of them over the years.
“It's a bit bashed up” he said.
“All the better” I smiled enigmatically.
“What's the plan, guv?” Quincy asked as we shouldered colossal lumps of wood through the house.
“I'm taking a chance”.
.
Placing the pedal car on the lawn, pacing around it, spraying stars of line-marker at intervals. “Dig here”.
We set ten chunky oak beams upright in the ground in a square around the toy and drilled holes along their length at regular intervals, through which we threaded thick, zinc studding bars until we had formed a huge, glittering, beautiful cage. The pedal car unreachable, so there it waited, poignant, indifferent, the grass around it unmowable – I would scatter annual meadow seeds there.
“I must say” Quincy said, “you've surpassed yourself, Min”.
The client was spellbound, waxing effusively about how it evoked the same feelings he had when he looked at photos of his son, memories locked in squares. How his son was changing, becoming evermore distant, but when he visited, he would see the little pedal car and remember his father's place in his life. He was quite overcome
...bless.
He was also Simon Sweet, the curator of 'White Frame', an important conceptual art gallery in Shoreditch.
I'd worked out I could pay half of my debt to the taxman next year, but even so, I didn't have a penny to my name and still owed a thousand pounds. As I opened the next threatening letter, I knew I was in deep shit. Perhaps it hadn't been such a good idea to throw in the towel at this point
...I still had the teaching job though.
School was very different in my day, the only physical contact from our teachers a ruler across the knuckles or a board rubber cuffed to the head.
The children swarmed around me, taking my hands and hugging my waist as if I were Princess Anne on a royal visit to Tuvalu.
“Minette” Noor said, “can we harvest our radishes yet?”
“Well, let's see if they're ready”. Squatting with a trowel
, incredulous gasps as I prised up the pink jewels. Noor hastily gathered them up and washed them under the tap.
“Sweet”, she said, tentatively grazing the flesh over her new incisors and then, taking a proper bite. “Hot!”
All hesitantly offered the radishes up to their mouths with mixed results.
“Yuck!” said Christopher, spitting a morsel into the dirt. There followed peas (eaten instantly), mini carrots held aloft in small fists and little gem lettuce, quickly bundled into carrier bags. Vegetables became currency, as a complex bartering system evolved until each child had a full complement of produce, except Christopher, whose 'plumpkins' weren't yet ready. He ended up with a bag of baffling beetroot.
Setting out their harvest as if they each had a stall, they held lollo rosso above their heads, wig-like, pulling camp faces as I took photos for myself.
I'd forgotten quite how gratifying children could be ...plus, how easy it was to blow their minds.
The trend, once again, for children to have long hair, just like in the 70s, when my curly fancy must have hatched. As a child, I'd listen fascinated to my mother's accounts about how she'd tried to kill me. My conception an accident, my parents preferred their own company, like their drink, undiluted. But the Catholic hotchpotch of ignorance, superstition and cruelty to which my terrifying grandmother subscribed, forbade abortion in the civilised way, forcing my mother to hurl herself from tables, punch her own stomach and guzzle plenty of gin, a habit that stuck.
Despite her best efforts, I arrived punctually. My development and transit, according to Mum, ruining her body forever. Flawless, except for a heart-shaped birthmark on my thigh. “The Queen of Hearts, the nurses called you” my mum snorted scornfully.
So there I was, pink, large and almost perfect, with an embarrassment of golden hair, which she promptly cut off in case people thought me older than I was and therefore, in her words, retarded.
Throughout my childhood, Grandma implied long hair encouraged sluttish tendencies, and so I was always close cropped, as if I had nits. Gamine, kind people said. Sometimes, it would be allowed to grow out into an unflattering Norman conquest-style pudding basin. Other children’s, flowing manes streamed across the playground when we played 'Black Beauty'. Even scabby kneed British Bulldog boys rippled with luxuriant curls, tails, flicks, fringes, afros. Just as well really, otherwise I might have thought I was one. When Grandma died, my mother danced.
Chapter 8
For some reason compelled to open the thick, vellum envelope with a knife
...unfolding the creamy paper respectfully. It exuded peppery bergamot, like Earl Grey tea.
'Dear Minette,
I do hope this finds you well. I cannot convey to you how much pleasure the garden continues to give me. I knew at the start when you first presented your designs that I was in safe hands and also, in the presence of an artist. Therefore, I would be honoured if you were to accept my humble request to join me for supper (nothing fancy), so that we may enjoy the garden before the summer dwindles altogether. Does Thursday, 15
th
suit?