A Bit of Earth (21 page)

‘And whereabouts are you?'

Erica explained. This Neighbourhood Visions Officer didn't seem to have much of an idea about the geography of the neighbourhood; but what she did have, it transpired, was an empty space on the agenda of a public meeting. It seemed that the community was a little short on issues for discussion.

A leaflet advertising the meeting arrived in the post for Erica the following week. She was to share the agenda with a spokesperson for the Primary Healthcare Team, and an item on pigeons. She realised that what she was doing was actually very dodgy. If the people in Public Relations found out about it, or the Powers That Be … luckily she had been billed as a local botanist, rather than as an official university speaker. She could also, she figured, pass herself off as a local resident, because she was one.

Judy Lovage – Moth Rescuer, was how she thought of herself in summer. Much as she liked moths and ladybirds and so on, she couldn't help but wish that there weren't so many of them in her little domain. She could quite believe in the theory of spontaneous generation. Even if she left the bathroom window shut at night, there would still be dozens of little creatures in need of rescuing by morning. Today she leant over the bath and spotted a yellow and black beetle. It looked confused and possibly trapped. There would be no having a bath until it had been saved. And here was a whole community of tiny flies. It would be impossible to pick them
up and put them out of the window without killing them. But she felt compelled to try anyway. She didn't want to be someone who was making judgements on who might live and who must die, especially judgements based on something as arbitrary as size. She attempted to dust the creatures onto a tissue and then dropped the whole thing out of the window. She could retrieve it from the garden later. Annoyingly, the tissue landed on the outside windowsill and stuck there. She hoped that nobody would look up and see it. How embarrassing! Professor Lovage threw tissues (and they might even imagine that they were dirty) out of her windows! There were four moths to rescue as well as a couple of those wooden-looking T-shaped creatures. Finally she was done and could run the bath.

She lay back in the fragrant water. But when she opened her eyes, oh no! A lacewing seemed to be caught in a spider's web. Oh dear. She knew that these only lived for a day. What a way to spend it! She had to climb onto the loo seat to rescue it.

How foolish I must look, she thought, my body dripping bubbles everywhere. I am hardly Venus emerging from the foam now, more like some old moth flapping about.

Finally she relaxed in the bubbles with the week's theatre and entertainment guide in her hands. It grew wetter and more fragile as she searched in vain for the right thing to send Guy and Erica to.

Thom eventually found his way into the garden. He had picked a good moment. There was Phoebe from his Gothic Architecture tutorial lounging on the grass with a big floppy
daisyish thing in her hair. She was in the middle of a semicircle of fit-looking girls holding copies of the same book. Ah, what a gorgeous spectacle! A rehearsal. He stopped to watch.

Thom couldn't believe that anyone had the patience for amateur dramatics, or any kind of dramatics at all really. There was so much faffing about, so many debates about the most minor of points, so much waiting. He didn't have much patience with a lot of fiction either, which was a bit of a drawback for somebody doing English and History of Art. Why waste all that time saying something in tens of thousands of words that could be said so much more succinctly in a few lines? Make it punchy. Give him facts. He sat under a tree and took out a notebook and his iPod. He pretended to be working on something, whilst he watched Phoebe and her attendants. In between takes he dashed off an article about conditions in one of the halls of residence, and then started one about the garden. He was trying to get his byline on every front cover until the end of term. He needed to thicken up his portfolio. He had been coming up with so many stories (there was a place for fiction sometimes) that this garden one might have to wait a while. After the actors had left he picked a stalk or two of some of the bigger, more successful-looking plants, and then went to ask the middle-aged guy in the greenhouse what they were. All he got was the names and a terse ‘You shouldn't be moving those. Not even fragments. Very bad idea.'

Thom wrote the names down in his book, a real pro.

Felix and Guy were going to the residents' meeting with Erica. It hadn't occurred to Erica to dress up, and she was wearing her self-imposed early summer uniform of soft shirt, khaki shorts and espadrilles. Felix was still in his school clothes, and Guy was in his backwater professor's uniform. Guy had never mentioned Erica's attire before, but tonight seemed different.

‘I thought you might wear that nice red dress,' he said, ‘the one you wore at the school Christmas thing.'

Erica was astounded that he had ever noticed what she was wearing.

‘Oh,' she said, ‘I didn't think of dressing up. Anyway, that's a winter dress. I only wear it for Christmas things.'

He remembered how his mother used to get so cross at people who appeared on TV without smartening themselves up. You really would think, she used to say, that if you were going to be on
University Challenge
or
Ask the Family,
you might go out and get a haircut, and put on a tie. Or even just wash your hair. He suspected that it was a great sadness to her that they had never appeared on
Ask the Family.
His sister Jenny was once a relatively successful contestant on
Blockbusters,
though. She made two glorious Gold Runs and brought home a portable TV and a week's stay for two at an outward bound centre. She invited a girl called Jacqui from her Rangers pack to go with her. He was quite put out that he didn't get to go. Not that he'd have invited Jenny if he'd been the one to win it. Jenny and Jacqui had sat around in their uniforms after Rangers, looking at the centre's leaflet and planning which activities they would do.

He had stalked through the room on his way to get a biscuit.

‘Isn't being old enough for Rangers an indicator of being too old for it?' he had asked.

They ignored him. Stupid annoying Guy. He didn't know that Jacqui looked rather wistfully at the space he left in the room.

The meeting was held in a church hall. There were rows and rows of grey plastic stackable chairs, the sort designed to make you feel as though you have sweaty legs. The building looked 1950s, and the long black, grey and yellow curtains, patterned in an abstract, geometric design, were probably the original ones. When Felix hid behind one of them and tried to twist himself round and round in it, he heard terrible rips, and pieces of the sepia-stained lining fell to the parquet floor. He quickly stuffed them behind a radiator, hoping that nobody had noticed. Then he twisted himself up again, making a gigantic pulled cracker or a half-unwrapped boiled sweet.

It was lucky that when the 25-foot-long brass curtain pole came crashing down a few days later, just missing the leader of the Armchair Exercise Class, but taking out her CD player, nobody thought to blame the little boy at the residents' meeting. The vicar threw the curtains into a skip, not realising that somewhere the fabric would be considered vintage, and that they might be born again, or perhaps reincarnated.

The Neighbourhood Visions Officer emerged from the kitchen. The urn was now on. She gave Erica and Guy a sticky label each for their names.

‘Could you give Felix one?' asked Erica.

‘Sorry, no. Child protection issues prevent me from doing that.'

‘Oh.'

‘Council officers were once encouraged to dress down for low-level public meetings too,' she said, looking them up and down. ‘Where would you like to put your display boards?'

‘Er, display boards … I haven't got any display boards,' said Erica.

‘What, nothing? Are you going to do Powerpoint then?'

‘Actually, I was just going to talk. And I have got this …'

Erica opened a cardboard box that had once contained the kick-step stool that Jeanette had ordered for the department, rather unnecessarily, Guy thought. He couldn't quite remember authorising it either, and they didn't even have much stuff up high. He could see that it would make a nice footrest though, more comfortable than an upturned bin or an open desk drawer.

When Erica opened the box a ladybird flew out and landed on the floor just in front of the Neighbourhood Visions Officer.

‘Quick, Felix! Come and rescue this!' Erica said. He untwisted the curtains and freed himself, with an almost calamitous final tug. The ladybird, which was black and orangey-red with three spots on each wing, seemed happy to be caught.

‘Do you have a garden here?' Guy asked.

Good grief, thought their host, who were these people? First they didn't have any display boards and then they had to rescue a ladybird.

‘No,' she snapped. ‘Isn't that rather why you wanted to come and talk to us?'

‘Can I have this?' Felix asked, and before she could say anything he tipped her roll of sticky labels out of their cute blue box.

‘Break off some leaves and put them in,' said Guy. ‘We can take it back tomorrow.'

‘Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home, your house is on fire. But I expect your children will be gone before you get home if it isn't till tomorrow,' said the NVO, and she stalked off to take up her position by the door.

‘What a complete bit—' said Erica, then quickly she remembered Felix. ‘What a horrible thing to say.'

‘I hope nobody comes to her stupid meeting,' said Felix.

But the first of the residents were arriving. Soon there were at least fourteen of them, all drinking cups of tea from unbreakable smoked-glass mugs. Guy had always thought that those mugs were somewhat obscene. Because of those mugs he'd been unable to attend more than one meeting of the church youth group where Jenny hung out, and had made so many friends. If it hadn't been for those mugs he might have had more of a faith, and a very different life.

The woman from the Primary Healthcare Team arrived with her mind-numbingly dull display boards and her Powerpoint stuff. She had a huge jar of children's teeth to show the residents too. These teeth had been extracted under general anaesthetic during the last year. It was all very bad. Any questions?

Somebody asked where she had got the jar, was it from a sweet shop? Actually it was. Somebody else wondered if anybody else remembered those sweet milky teeth, pink and
white and soft and chewy, or those sweet milk bottles. They were nice. And were there any NHS dentists taking people on …

By the time it was Erica's turn to talk at least three more people had arrived.

‘Now,' said the NVO, ‘we have Erica, sorry I can't remember your surname.…'

‘It's Grey,' interjected Erica.

‘… who has come along with her partner and little boy to talk to us about the botanical garden at the university. Over to you, Erica …'

Felix nudged Guy. ‘Aren't you going to say something, Dad?'

‘It doesn't matter,' said Guy. ‘Ssssh.'

‘These,' Erica said, gently lifting some foliage out of the kick-step box, ‘are plants that many people might consider tropical, or exotic, or unusual, that all grow in a garden only a few minutes' walk from here. Does anybody know which plant these leaves come from?'

‘Banana!' shouted Felix.

‘Yes, I know that you know, Fe.' This raised a general laugh from the audience.

‘What about these?' She lifted out a garland hung with ivory flowers.

‘Is it a kind of vetch?' said someone in the back row.

‘Anyone else?' Erica asked.

‘A type of clematis?'

‘Head in the sun, feet in the shade. We all know that one.'

‘Actually,' said Erica, fearing that she would sound like a know-all, ‘it's kiwi fruit. It's been established in the
botanical garden for decades. Long before they were so commonplace at the greengrocer's.'

‘Not much commonplace about the greengrocers for some people. Some people have to live in a food desert,' muttered the NVO.

‘What about these leaves? I'll give you a clue, another fruit.'

‘Mulberry,' said a man in the front row. ‘Ask us another.'

She had wild hops, carob, strawberry tree, vines, figs …

‘Anyway,' said Erica, ‘this garden, the botanical garden at the university is just a few minutes' walk from here, and it's open to everybody. You don't have to be a student …'

‘Don't talk to us about students!' yelled somebody.

‘… or work at the university to go there. There are ponds, quiet places to sit, all sorts of birds …' (Don't tell them about the badgers! Felix and Guy willed her. She didn't.)

‘I'm going to have to stop you there,' said the NVO. ‘We have to move on to our main agenda item – pigeon control.' (Yeah, a bit interesting and a bit too pleasant, thought Guy.) ‘But if you'd like to stay, people can ask you questions individually at the end of the meeting.'