A Bit of Earth (25 page)

The girl whose name was Phoebe was sitting under the tree. He liked her, and her name. He knew she was called Phoebe because she sometimes rang people up and said, ‘Hi, it's Phoebe.' Sometimes she read, and sometimes she came with some others. She had a friend called Sophia, and a friend called Thom who Felix didn't think was her boyfriend because they never kissed. Thom was taller than Dad and talked in a show-off voice, so Felix didn't like him much. He thought Thom smoked drugs because he sometimes took a really long time to make cigarettes and then went quiet or laughed. (Felix had a leaflet about drugs from school.) Once Thom did try to kiss Phoebe, but she pushed him away. Felix thought that he might tell the police. It would be interesting to see what happened; but they might take Phoebe so he probably wouldn't. After they had gone Felix always looked for any leftover drugs,
just to see what they were like, but he could never find anything.

Phoebe was always drinking water out of a bottle. She took the cap off, had a sip, put the cap back on, took it off, had a sip, all the time. Her friend Sophia always had Diet Coke and did the same thing. She always looked sad so the ads for Diet Coke must have been lying.

Today when Felix saw Phoebe coming he quickly picked some buttercups, even though he knew that you must never pick wild flowers, and some zigzag clover and tied them up with a piece of green string from his school sweatshirt. He left them on the bench but she didn't know they were meant for her. She picked them up and smiled and put them back again. All of the girls in Felix's class believed in fairies. Sometimes they talked about fairies all day long. He thought that Phoebe might believe in fairies too. Maybe she thought the flowers were to do with some fairies. Felix sat really high up in the tree and let Marmalade swing backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, but nobody noticed.

‘I don't think I've ever seen the garden this busy,' Guy said, staring out from the greenhouse.

‘Well, you might sound a bit pleased,' said Erica. ‘It is meant to be good for the garden. You don't have to be such an Eeyore about it.' She could imagine Guy making himself a little shelter of branches and staying in there until it fell down.

‘You have no idea how much I hate A. A. Milne,' he said, and looked viciously down at his own hands.

‘Well, sorry. But that doesn't have much to do with the garden.'

‘Huh,' he said. ‘I am pleased. It's just that it's a bit full of people sometimes.'

‘Honestly. It really is our only hope.'

One of the mental health groups had adopted a slice of a terrace and rolled back the turf to make a bed. Another group had found the remains of a rockery and were busy weeding it, prior to its restoration.

‘All we need now is bloody Gryff Rhys Jones,' said Guy.

‘Might be a good idea. Think of the money. Then it
would definitely be saved, even if we didn't win. They couldn't concrete it over if we'd been on TV.'

‘I was joking.'

‘I know.'

The school group, who were now called ‘The Greenhouse Gang', marched by carrying their little sets of tools. Felix was at the back with Miss Block whose class was working with Mrs Cowplain's on the project. They waved.

‘Well, you can't disapprove of that,' said Erica.

‘It's not that I disapprove. I was just thinking of the Lost Gardens of Heligan.'

‘So what is better?' she suddenly demanded, flinging down her trowel. ‘Lost or found?'

He stared back out of the window, then down at the bench.

‘Well, um, found, I suppose.' He didn't sound that sure. Erica gave him a look. ‘Or never getting lost in the first place,' he added.

Sometimes it seemed just completely hopeless. How could she compete with somebody who was dead? By not competing, of course. Maybe too much water had passed under Guy's bridge. Maybe she should leave, find a proper job. She could finish her PhD anywhere now. What was she doing wasting her time here? He was past forty. He didn't seem to give a damn about her.

‘At Heligan,' Guy said, ‘the paths were made of a mix of minerals so salty, you know, brought up by the barrow-load from the beaches, that nothing, not even brambles, could put down roots in them. When they came to clear them they could just roll the brambles up, like giant
carpets, like stair carpets, I suppose it would be, you know, that width.'

There was a long silence. Then Erica said, ‘Guy, I really don't know what I'm doing here any more.' She left the cuttings she had been rooting and walked out. Guy stared down at the tiny plants she had been working with and then at her back as she walked away.

‘Erica!' he yelled. ‘Found is better. Or discovered! Or new! Erica!' But she didn't come back. Perhaps she hadn't heard him, perhaps she didn't care.

He couldn't leave the cuttings like that. He carried on from where she'd left off and soon they were almost all in their little compartments of earth. He stopped thinking about her. Just as he was doing the last one he heard a crash and looked up. Nothing. Perhaps it was an old tree, or a huge branch coming down in the wood. Perhaps a small clearing had begun. Perhaps the sun would break through, and there would be yellow brimstone butterflies. Perhaps, he thought, that was the sound of something that people imagine might make no noise if there was nobody there to hear it. He opened his mouth to ask Erica what she thought, and then he remembered that she had gone.

The children seemed to do such short little sessions in the garden. It was hard to believe that they could manage to keep their plot with its crops of lamb's lettuce, sweet peas, tomatoes and marigolds so neat with just a few hours' work each week. He could see them from the greenhouse. They had cleared some more earth and were arranging pebbles. It
looked as though they were writing a message with them. He wondered to whom.

The children were soon marching back past the greenhouse. Mrs Cowplain at the front, Miss Block with Felix at the back. Guy stared. She was just as pretty as the last time he had seen her. She was wearing flat red shoes with ribbons that tied around her ankles. Guy remembered something that his Granny Misselthwaite had said: ‘Red shoes, no knickers.' He smiled and wondered if it might be true. But why was Felix always at the back with a teacher? Why didn't Felix ever have a partner? Why hadn't he ever noticed this before?

‘Look, Dad. Some of Miss Block's class are joining up with ours for this.'

‘Ah, Miss Block. Hello,' said Guy. ‘Your garden's looking very good. I can see Felix is really pleased to have you back.' He couldn't think of anything else to say.

‘Actually it isn't Miss Block any more,' said Miss Block.

‘She got married, Dad. Now she's Mrs, er, Something Else …' Felix couldn't remember. She would always be Miss Block to him.

‘Mrs Adams,' she said, laughing.

‘And guess what?' said Felix. ‘She married a teacher. A teacher married her own teacher!'

‘Well, er, congratulations,' said Guy.

‘He is a teacher, but not at school. He's an artist and an art teacher,' said Miss Block/Mrs Adams, rather embarrassed.

‘A teacher married her own teacher!' said Felix again.

‘Come on, Felix, we'd better get back to school. The others are miles ahead,' said Mrs Adams.

It was less than an hour until school finished. Guy wished
that Felix could just stay with him, but before he could suggest it they were off.

‘Bye Dad!' Felix shouted over his shoulder, and Guy was left all alone in the garden.

Why was Felix so pleased that this teacher was with him? Was that normal? Had he been starved of so much? Oh dear, thought Guy, I need to do something. He felt a pang that Miss Block was now Adams, whoever he was. And Erica. Oh God. He might lose her too. Why had she seemed so furious and stomped off, leaving those cuttings to die?

It was raining. Jack Tresize, one of the Heligan gardeners, was sneaking a ciggie in the Crystal Grotto. The match caught sparkles of magic in the roof. One of their jobs later that summer was going to be to clean the crystals and restore the grotto to its fairy glory. He rubbed at one of them with the corner of his sweatshirt. The garden would soon be opening for the day; he had to get a move on.

As he headed back to meet up with his fellow mowers, he remembered that he was meant to check the box beside one of their most mysterious camellias. There was never anything in it, or if there was it would just be some name that had been dismissed ages ago.

Inside the box was a spider and a piece of paper, actually a receipt from the café, all faded and a bit damp. He was about to screw it up when he saw that someone had written across it in the smallest writing he had ever seen.

I think that what you have here is a
Camellia japonica
‘Eleanor Clark'.

I'd be v. interested to know what you think. My grandfather had one of these, taken from a cutting of the only one he or anybody he knew had ever seen, which was in a collection at a big house in Yorkshire where he was a gardener. I transported a cutting from this, and it is thriving in the botanical garden at the university where I work. I do not know what has become of the original, and mine is the only one I have come across until today.

Professor Guy Misselthwaite.

[There was a university address and a phone number.]

PS Would be v. interested in a job.

Jack Tresize thought that he'd better give the note to the boss to check out. Lucky there was no date on it. He hadn't checked the box in ages. Funny how you could forget things in a garden.

It would be Midsummer's Day before the letter was posted to Guy.

Madeleine wondered if anyone in the history of the world had ever had a good time, a really good time, not just made a convincing performance of having a good time, at the graduation ball. She had, of course, nothing to wear. People just wore anything. It wasn't as though they wore ballgowns, but she knew that they did wear something that was something. After all, Madeleine thought, if you were never going to see most of these people again, apart from at the graduation ceremony, when you have to wear some hideous polyester-mix witch's cloak, you really ought to look good. But she had absolutely nothing to wear. She suspected that nobody cared whether or not she even went. She was sitting on her bed, staring at her almost empty wardrobe, when Jo came in.

‘Aren't you ready?'

‘I haven't got anything to wear. Maybe I shouldn't even go.'

‘Well, if you hadn't chucked all your stuff away …'

‘I still wouldn't have anything.'

‘Come and see what I've got. There must be something
someone can lend you. Honestly, Madeleine, it's not as though you didn't know this was coming up.'

But really she was being kind. Jo helped her find something (Rachel's blue silk palazzo pants, Emily's camisole and cardigan) and Madeleine put on her own turquoise jazz dance shoes. Jo didn't even get annoyed with her when she wouldn't wear jewellery or much make-up; all she said was, ‘Well, you look like somebody's sister, but at least you're coming.'

The graduation ball was meant to be all summery and tropical. The nearest it was to tropical was raining. It was in the guildhall in town, a big old dusty building. The auditorium had been decorated with sad pink cardboard flamingos and green crepe-paper palm leaves.

There were promotions on any drink that was even the slightest bit exotic, so everybody was drinking Vodka Reefs, the colours of tropical fish, and Bacardi Breezers. Madeleine knew immediately that she shouldn't have come. Outside were bumper cars and a ghost train so that people could pretend (as had been the custom for the last twenty-something years) that they were in the final scene of
Grease.
What was the point of having a youth if it had to be so identikit? She really shouldn't have come.

Madeleine wandered away from the others and decided to see how high up in the building she could get. She went up a few layers, past where they were showing films that everybody had already seen, and that lots of them would have written essays about. A vengeful fisherman in yellow oilskins loomed on a screen. She had to step over people crying (Already! The party had only just begun!) and snogging on the staircases.

At the very top of the stairs, looking forlornly at the so-called programme, was Max. Beside him was a can of Bud and a giant unopened bar of coconut ice.

‘Shouldn't that be a Bounty bar? I hadn't thought that coconut ice was tropical,' said Madeleine, sitting down next to him.

‘No, more fairground, or even seaside. I won it. Coconut shy.'

‘Aren't you meant to win the coconut?'

‘I think they were fake ones. Or maybe they didn't want to give them away this early. Would you like a bit?'

‘No thanks.'

The staircase had an elegant, gliding metal handrail that spiralled down and down. If you looked over the edge you could see right to the very bottom, and could imagine exactly what it would be like if you jumped. The stairs at the bottom were polished marble with some unnecessary plush red carpet. Up here the carpet had ended, but it was nice to sit down on something so cold. The throng downstairs was so sweaty and alcopop-scented that Madeleine feared she was smelly too.

‘I like your trousers, Madeleine.'

‘Thanks. Actually they aren't mine.'

‘I guess that's what they call “midnight blue”.'

‘Have you been in a bumper car?'

‘They looked quite small. I thought I might not fit.'

‘Of course you'd fit. You're not that fat.'

‘My dad got stuck in a bumper car when I was about eight. It made me decide never to go in one, you know, once I was adult-sized.'

‘How did they get him out?'