A Bit of Earth (24 page)

But Felix was just being lazy.

‘If You Can Correctly Identify This Plant,' Felix read, ‘We Will Give You A Job.' An arrow pointed towards a camellia, next to the tree. There was another plastic wallet with a bleached-out photo of the camellia in flower inside it. The slight blue tinge to the edges of the petals was just visible. Guy examined the leaves, and recognised at once the way in which the veins were just slightly more pronounced than in other white japonica varieties.

‘That's a
Camellia japonica
” Eleanor Clark”,' said Guy. ‘It's the one your great-grandfather looked after, the one we have now in the garden. I have never seen another one like it until today.'

‘Go on, Dad, tell them! You might win something!' The thought of Guy winning anything at all was exciting. ‘Quick, Dad. Let's go and tell someone. Find the boss. There might be a prize. Even some money!'

‘Look, I expect they're all busy. I'll just write a note and put it in there. I think that's what you're meant to do.' Guy felt for his little waterproof plant-spotting notebook. It
seemed that he had left it back at the hotel. How odd that he hadn't noticed the lack of it before. He had a receipt from the café. That would do. It took him a little while to get all the information down, then he lifted Felix up to post it in the box.

‘Come on. Let's go and see something else.'

They crossed a little wooden bridge. The boardwalks were fresh-looking, the chicken wire that rendered them non-slip scrunched pleasantly under their feet. Tree ferns towered above them.

‘We have that gunnera, don't we?' said Felix.

‘Mmm. But not quite so much of it.' Guy found that he was looking at the shoes of their fellow visitors, as well as at the plants – sensible old people's trainers, beaded flip-flops, Birkenstocks, kids' sandals and flashing trainers, up ahead of them a sad over-cautious family must be sweating in those wellies – perhaps humanity wasn't always that bad. If you took these gardens, for instance …

‘Dad, are these stink cabbages?'

‘Yup.'

‘Is this the stink?'

‘I think it could be stronger than this, earlier in the year.'

‘We've got some, haven't we?'

‘Yes, but only a couple, not nearly this healthy. I think they like it better here.'

‘Most things like it better here. Do you think there are any cats like Snowy?'

‘I expect so, hiding somewhere.'

Felix looked down at his map. ‘It says that there are badgers' setts, but I can't see exactly where. Anyway, we've got one of those in our garden.' He was temporarily
indignant that this garden was an ‘attraction' and theirs was not. ‘So what's the big deal about this one?'

‘Perhaps we should be selling tickets too,' said Guy.

‘Do you think that would be cool, Dad? But we'd have to have loos and a guide book and an ice-cream place and postcards …'

They climbed a steep path, leaving the Jungle.

‘This isn't anywhere, is it?' Felix asked. He wasn't quite sure where they were on his map now, so he gave it to his dad.

‘It's Cornish woodlands, under a Cornish sky.' If Guy lived here, he'd be all for Cornish independence. ‘If we carry on up here,' he said, ‘we should find somebody.'

At the top of the hill she was asleep in the woods, the Mud Maid. Felix gasped. They stood in a circle of people smiling at the sleeping form, a goddess of the woods, so green and brown and serene.

‘Is she real?' Felix asked.

‘Well, of course she's real. She's made of earth.'

‘I wish I could touch her!'

They gazed and gazed. Guy's eyes traced again and again the triangles of her neck and clavicle. Felix started to laugh as the wind made ripples in her hair, which was montbretia, about to flower. At any moment her eyes might have opened.

‘Do you think she stretches and moves about at night?' he asked.

‘What do you think?' said Guy.

‘She does,' said Felix. ‘Do you think that's what it's like being dead?'

‘Yes. Exactly like that. And sleeping with no dreams, or dreams only of the people you loved.'

Shall I say it, thought Guy, shall I? Your mother is in the woods, Susannah is in the woods.

‘Love goes on for ever, Felix,' he said. ‘It doesn't die. It never stops. Your mummy's love for you is still here, surrounding you for ever.'

Felix said nothing, but he put his little hand – still sticky from ice cream, and grainy from earth and the stems and leaves he had been touching – into Guy's. The wind rippled the Mud Maid's hair again.

‘I think she looks happy. I don't want to leave her behind.'

‘Nor do I. But we have to, sometime.'

Madeleine had never really known the pleasures of comfortable clothes. She had always gone for girly things, tight things, cropped things. She had been a teenager when man-made fibres had been making their comeback, and was of a generation that had no idea about the true horrors of crimplene, a generation that willingly showed its thong tops. Anything she owned that was baggy was so low slung that it was in constant danger of falling off completely, and so not in the least bit comfortable, only anxiety-inducing, and requiring constant vigilance. When she chucked all her things away she was left with these grungy low-slung trousers, several pairs of jeans, and the stuff she wore to the gym. It seemed that she had also thrown out all her summer clothes. Despite her new pared-down life, she needed to do a little shopping. The trouble was she couldn't really think of anything she wanted. I know, she thought, I'll get off the bus and go into the seventh shop I see, and buy some new things there.

She didn't tell anyone what she was doing. Her friends
would think that she had now completely lost it. Some of them had been quite cold since she'd started getting rid of stuff and stopped going out so much. Sara Louise had said she had a sort of consumer anorexia. Good, said Madeleine. Aimee had said that she had just turned boring and was too anxious about Finals. Madeleine was more than a bit anxious about Finals, but wasn't everybody? Also, she had started to feel that she had frittered all the time away, that she should have been doing something else, or gone somewhere else. The city and the university just didn't seem real any more. Maybe there was somewhere in the world that was real, somewhere where she would have more of a sense of being on the planet, or more of a sense of being somewhere.

She got off the bus at the usual stop and counted seven shops. The Gadget Shop or Scholl. Next door was Oswald Bailey, the UK's Best-Loved Outdoor Gear Shop. She smiled and went in. Maybe this was the true seventh shop. Maybe this was a message from her spirit guide. Go camping! Buy walking boots! Get some waterproof trousers! She had a good look round. She really couldn't bring herself to buy anything much, the T-shirts were all so shapeless, and she'd look like an igloo in one of those jackets. She went closer, maybe there was something to be said for having something completely waterproof. Those tartan shirts were really soft. She decided on a pair of sailing shoes, only £6.99, and a canvassy hat with a little pocket in it. She took them up to the counter. Then she saw what she really needed, a Swiss Army knife and a hand-warmer; you lit tablets of charcoal, put them in this neat little tin, and carried it in your pocket all day. OK, it was summer now,
but that was what she needed, and it had been quite rainy lately.

She would once have been embarrassed to have been spotted anywhere near Oswald Bailey, but now she didn't even mind meeting someone at the counter. The someone she met there was Max. He might have been embarrassed that anyone had spotted him buying an XXL waterproof jacket, but he just smiled when he saw Madeleine.

‘Off travelling?' he asked her.

She paid for her things.

‘Maybe. I don't really know what I'm doing.'

‘After Finals, I meant.'

‘I know.'

‘I'm going to Seattle,' Max told her. He loved to say it out loud. Seattle, Seattle, Seattle.

‘Cool,' said Madeleine. ‘Maybe I should go somewhere like that.' She didn't actually know where Seattle was. If it was in Washington, that meant it was on the east coast, right? But she had a feeling it wasn't. ‘Why Seattle?'

‘Fancy a coffee?' Max asked her, as though he was always saying that to people. They went into Starbucks, which was the first place they came to.

‘So,' said Max, ‘what brought you to Oswald Bailey?'

‘Well. Just looking. Actually I need some summer clothes. I had this thing where I threw everything I had out, gave it to charity shops …'

‘You don't look very Oswald Bailey to me.'

‘Um, no. I don't really want to go shopping. I shouldn't have come.' She felt really stupid now. ‘I wish we all just had uniforms like in Communist China. Or standard-issue overalls. Something like in 1984.'

‘But Julia looked pretty fantastic in those. That bit where she takes off her sash and hangs it on the hedge …'

Madeleine felt embarrassed now. She hoped that she would look sexy in those overalls too.

‘Or I wish you were just given your allotted things, they just appeared. Then we wouldn't have to be bothered with shopping.'

‘Sometimes things do just appear,' he told her, as they reached the front of the queue.

‘What are you having?' Madeleine asked him. Was this going to be some sort of meal? It was around lunchtime.

‘Cappuccino and a doughnut,' he told the boy (who was probably a student in their year) behind the counter.

‘Just an Americano for me,' said Madeleine.

They found a table.

‘I've worked in cafés,' Madeleine said. ‘At Gatwick, when I was a teenager. It kind of puts you off eating in them sometimes.'

The doughnut sat between them now and Max felt too ashamed to eat it.

‘Sorry. I shouldn't have said that,' said Madeleine. ‘I expect that one's nice and fresh and clean.'

‘It's not as though you can keep doughnuts very long, is it? I mean, they go damp after a few hours, don't they?' Max had no intention of not eating it.

‘It's not that I don't like cakes. I sometimes think I should have skipped university and just been a baker. I'd quite like my own tea rooms, or maybe a cake-decorating shop.' There was a part of her that was missing ribbons and fripperies. ‘I don't really know what to do next.'

‘A baker called Madeleine. That would be cute. You could call it Madeleine's,' said Max, licking sugar off his lips.

‘Everybody would wonder if I'd put the apostrophe in by mistake.'

At the next tutorial Phoebe was selling tickets.

‘A Midsummer Night's Dream.
You have to come,' she told Professor Lovage. ‘It's thanks to you we had the idea of where to stage it. It's Speed Shakespeare. DramaSoc is doing almost all of the proper rehearsals in a week after the exams are over. Here's a leaflet. Third week in June. In the botanical garden.'

‘How wonderful. How much are they?' Judy reached inside her desk drawer for her purse. ‘I'll take four,' she counted in her head – Judy, Felix, Guy, Erica. ‘No, five. Maybe my niece will come. And are there concessions for children?'

‘Um, no, sorry.'

Judy hoped that Felix would enjoy it. Knowing Felix, he could always just daydream if it was a bit over his head.

‘And have you done the casting yet?'

‘Not finally. People who want to be in it have signed up, and we've had a few read-throughs. I know I don't want to be Helena. I'd love Titania, but who wouldn't?'

‘Who indeed? Well, I hope you get it.' She would look lovely with a crown of flowers.

‘Want some?' Phoebe said, turning to Thom.

‘Can't I have a press one, or a press pair?' How whiny his voice sounded.

‘Oh, well, OK.'

‘Madeleine? Max?'

‘Um, maybe, I haven't got much money on me,' said Madeleine.

‘I'll have two,' said Max. ‘I love that garden.'

After the tutorial Madeleine and Max found themselves walking down the corridor together. Max took his bottle of Pepsi out of his rucksack. He'd been keeping it hidden from Professor Lovage.

‘Max, you really shouldn't drink that stuff,' said Madeleine. She brandished the student girl's compulsory bottle of water. ‘Think of all the delicious things you could put in your mouth instead.'

He looked at her. Her lips were as pink as a raspberry smoothie.

‘Mmm,' he said.

Back in Professor Lovage's office Phoebe had some questions about her last essay. She had only got 68 per cent for it. Her First was in jeopardy. Thom, lurking outside the open door rolling a cigarette, heard it all.

Once Phoebe was satisfied that she could pull up the extra marks on the next one, Professor Lovage smiled.

‘What are you going to do next year?'

‘I've got a place at Central School of Speech and Drama.'

‘How wonderful. That's what you want to do, is it?'

‘I think so. Or live in Italy and go to the opera every week.'

‘Well, that sounds sensible too.'

‘I've been working all along, to try to keep the debts down, and there's nobody to keep me here.'

(We'll see about that, thought Thom, with a smile that made him feel like a silent movie villain. On silent feet he made his invisible exit.)

‘Nobody at all?' asked Professor Lovage.

‘No, I'm holding out for Valery Gergiev, you know, the Russian conductor. Or similar,' said Phoebe.

‘Well, good luck.' What impeccable taste, Judy thought. But wasn't Valery Gergiev rather too old for Phoebe? She wondered what Jemima would say.

Felix had taken Marmalade to visit the garden, hoping to deepen their friendship with Snowy. He had given Marmalade a lead of string which made climbing trees with him easier. Also, he could hang Marmalade up so that from a distance he looked magically suspended. He could make him appear and disappear like the Cheshire cat, but nobody ever noticed.