Everything and Nothing (4 page)

She dialled home now and Betty picked up, immediately pleading with her. ‘Can we do it, Mum? Please say yes.’

‘Say yes to what? I couldn’t hear you properly.’

‘Aggie is going to make our garden grow vegetables. That we can eat. But only if you say yes.’

Ruth had an image of Aggie digging up their whole garden, turning it into some sort of allotment. ‘Where in the garden, darling?’

Betty started to whine. ‘I don’t know. Please don’t say no, Mummy. You’re no fun.’

Ruth felt a strong surge of annoyance with Aggie. ‘Can you put Aggie on, sweetheart. I just want to find out where she wants to do it.’

‘I’m sorry, Ruth,’ Aggie said as soon as she got on. ‘I know I should have spoken to you first. It’s just that I opened the window this morning and everything smelt so fresh and I’ve been reading about how if you get children to grow their own food they’re more likely to eat it and so obviously that made me think of Hal and I’ve been meaning to mention it to you.’

Aggie’s enthusiasm rubbed off on Ruth and she immediately lost her annoyance. Besides, the appointment with the nutritionist that she’d had to re-schedule because of the advertisers’ lunch she’d forgotten about was only a few days away and wouldn’t that be a good thing to say. ‘It sounds like a great idea,’ Ruth said as she approached her office. ‘Get what you need and I’ll pay you back.’

Ruth thought she probably should call Christian and check that he liked the idea as well, but the day rushed at her as soon as she was by her desk. She tried to tell herself to remember to call him later.

Agatha felt pleased with herself. Her improvisation about getting children to grow their own food to make them eat wasn’t something she’d read, but it was something which should have been written down and, as such, it had been a good thing to say. Finding a garden centre in West London was hard, but not impossible. Agatha got the children to think about what they wanted to grow and then she wrote a list: tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, beet-root and celery. It seemed like a good, clean start. She got a cookery book down from a large white wooden shelf unit that looked like it should have gone on top of a dresser, but Ruth had fixed to the wall. The paint was flaking off it and Agatha had already mentally re-painted it. She showed Hal the pictures of the vegetables and explained to him that he would have to try whatever he grew because it was a miracle that you put a seed in the ground and it turned into a plant you could eat. He was interested enough to take the bottle out of his mouth.

Betty was impossibly good on the bus and in the garden centre. She behaved like a proper little lady all the way around and was so good that Agatha allowed her to choose an organic chocolate bar at the till.

‘It’s so fun, hanging out with you,’ she said, making the little girl beam with pride.

All the way home they talked about the best way to plant. Agatha had bought a cheap manual in the book section of the garden centre and she read to the children from it on the bus. It sounded like a fairytale anyway. You had to dig a patch of ground and mix in some compost. Then make rows and plant your seeds just under the surface and not too close together. You had to protect them from marauding insects and take good care of them with lots of water and even a bit of food. And then they would reward you with lots of juicy goodness that would run down your chin when you bit into them and make you glad to be alive. ‘All the best things are worth waiting for,’ Agatha repeated from somewhere when Betty asked her how long it would all take.

The spot they chose was in the bottom right-hand corner, because you could see it from the kitchen window and it wasn’t going to interfere with any precious plants. Agatha started by marking out the area and then digging a trench. It was much harder work than she’d anticipated, but now she’d started she was definitely going to finish. The children were so excited that they didn’t once ask if they could go in and watch TV. Hal brought his trucks into the garden and ran them through the disturbed soil so that Agatha could see how they were traversing mountains and building new futures. Betty took her little shovel from the shed and begun turning over the soil in the middle of their patch. It took two long hours, but by lunchtime there was a patch of virgin soil waiting to be cultivated.

Agatha made herself and Betty tuna sandwiches for lunch. She had decided to stop offering Hal anything for a while, even though this was exactly against Ruth’s instructions. She didn’t even question his requests for bottles. She had read in one of her books that making a child feel like eating was an issue was not advisable. The same went for children who wouldn’t go to bed. Apparently it was negative attention and because kids crave any sort of attention, however much they get, if you made a fuss about them not doing something they would continue not to do it just to get the attention. It made sense to Agatha and she planned to pay no attention to Hal’s not eating, but lots to anything he might put into his mouth that wasn’t a bottle. And if ever she was left alone with the children overnight she would let Betty into her bed and cuddle the girl all through the night.

They sat in a patch of sunlight on the patio, Agatha and Betty munching on their sandwiches and Hal slurping a bottle, surveying their new territory. Agatha imagined they were in America, pioneers carving out their own place in the world. Hal sidled over to her, placing his head on her lap, his signal that he was tired. Agatha stroked his head as he sucked and in minutes his eyes were closed and the bottle had fallen to the ground.

‘That’s handy,’ she said to Betty. ‘Now he’s asleep we can get on with the job.’

Betty beamed because there was nothing she liked more than being made to feel superior to Hal. Agatha picked him up, a dead weight of trust in her arms, and carried him into the house. She buried her face into his neck and smelt his peculiar scent of yoghurt and cotton. She laid him on the sofa and kissed his damp, red cheek. Something twisted in her chest.

Agatha never stopped until she had completed what she set out to do. Unfi nished tasks weighed heavily on her mind like her father’s pheasants hanging in his game store. Working for all the women who had left their children in her care over the years had proved to Agatha that when she had her own house and family she would not be able to work herself. Which presented a problem in that she would have to marry a man who earned enough to keep them all. She wasn’t sure where she would meet this man, as she didn’t have any friends and never went anywhere that wasn’t connected to the children. And even if she did, she didn’t much like men anyway.

By teatime the three of them were banging a miniature fence around their new vegetable patch, pretending to be giants standing over a country they had excavated for food. Agatha planned to cover it with a fine mesh she had bought earlier to guard against snails and birds. Betty and Hal were ecstatic that finally they were going to be allowed to plant the seeds they had bought so long ago. Agatha made the neat furrows they needed, not letting the children help, and then stood over them as they dropped their tiny offerings into the earth. Hal couldn’t be persuaded to keep to his row or to drop one seed at a time, but still Agatha felt proud with what they had accomplished. She let them watch TV while she finished off the labelling and the netting.

Christian tried to call Ruth on his way home because he’d found a message from Carol stuck to his computer when he got out of his monthly management meeting saying she’d forgotten about the MTS awards that night and wouldn’t be home till late. All he got was her voicemail. Very occasionally he wondered if she would ever pay him back by having her own affair. The thought of another man touching her made him nauseous, but he supposed he would have to be graceful about the whole thing if she did. He doubted that she would, though; even in revenge she was likely to be fair.

When he opened his front door he felt an air of calm which had settled like a fine layer of dust. There didn’t seem to be anyone in. He dropped his bag in the hall and went into the kitchen where he could see the remnants of Betty’s dinner. There didn’t seem to be a place laid for Hal, but Ruth could be trying a new technique so he hardly even registered it. He heard noises in the garden and made his way outside. Agatha, Betty and Hal were bent over a patch at the bottom of the garden and both the children were talking at once. Betty turned when she heard him and ran across the grass like a battering ram. She was filthy and he couldn’t stop himself from worrying about his suit as she hurled herself at him. Children, he had noticed, had no respect for personal boundaries. They often acted as though they would climb inside you if they could, pressing their face up against yours, fiddling with your clothes and speaking over your words. But he checked himself and tried to match her glee.

‘Come on, Daddy,’ she was screeching. ‘Come and see what we made.’

He followed the urgent pull of his daughter’s hand to a dirty patch of his lawn which he could have sworn had been grass when he’d left that morning but now was a mangy patch of earth surrounded by a cheap and ugly fence. He didn’t know what he was looking at.

‘We’re going to be eating them soon,’ Betty was saying. All Christian wanted was a beer. ‘Eating what?’

‘The vegetables, silly.’

‘Toms . . . ’ He strained to hear what his son was saying, but it got lost on the air.

Christian looked imploringly at Agatha and she laughed. ‘We made a vegetable patch. Ruth said it was okay. The kids decided what they wanted to grow and we went and bought the seeds and it’s taken us all day to make this.’ She held out her arm like a hostess on a game show. He was surprised that she didn’t say taa-daa.

‘Wow. That’s great.’ He knew his response was inadequate, but he could never be as enthusiastic as women seemed to need him to be.

‘I’ve been reading about kids who don’t eat,’ Agatha was saying now, ‘and there’s this one doctor who suggested that you should get them to grow their own food as it makes it more appealing. I thought it might be good for Hal.’

‘That’s a great idea. Makes loads of sense.’ Christian was genuinely impressed. ‘Well done.’

She blushed and he noticed how with the sun on her hair it was much more auburn than brown. She ruffled Betty’s hair. ‘And she was so helpful I literally couldn’t have done it without her.’

‘I was so good Aggie bought me chocolate.’

‘Anyway, you two, bath time,’ said Agatha, taking them both by the hands.

Christian knew he should want to give his kids a bath after not having seen them all day, or at least offer, but they both looked so happy trailing after Aggie that it was too easy to let them get on with it. If you could get rid of the guilt, he felt as he opened a beer and took it into the evening sunlight in his garden, this would be perfect parenting.

The vegetable patch was undeniably ugly and it rankled him in a way he knew to be stupid. He dialled Ruth’s number again, but it was still on voicemail.

‘I just got home,’ he said into the phone, ‘to find that the kids have destroyed the garden. You could have told me before you agreed to let them dig up our lawn.’ He pressed the red phone and immediately felt like his father.

Agatha appeared at the kitchen door. ‘They both want you to say goodnight to them. I’ve made chicken for dinner, by the way.’

Christian stood up. ‘Great. Oh, I forgot to say, Ruth’s out at some awards do. So I’ll probably eat in front of the telly. There’s a match on I want to watch anyway.’

‘Fine.’ Agatha had to keep her voice cheery. She felt a surge of resentment. Didn’t he realise how long it had taken to stuff that lemon-and-garlic mixture under the chicken’s skin without breaking it?

Ruth hadn’t been able to place the air of excitement in the office all morning. But then Sally had asked her if she thought the red or black heels were better and she had immediately remembered the awards ceremony that night. She had to rush out at lunch to buy a dress, which was infuriating because they couldn’t afford it this month and she’d already decided on what she was going to wear. Recently everything was slipping out of her mind; she felt as though life was getting faster and leaving her behind. Maybe she should see a doctor. Maybe she should get a bigger diary or just write in the one she had. Which reminded her that she hadn’t called the plumber about the fact that they kept on having to reset the boiler to get hot water.

The younger section of the magazine started raiding the fashion and beauty cupboards at four. By five they were drinking. Sally seemed to effortlessly be able to combine joining in with staying aloof, while Ruth remained glued to her computer, pretending she had some copy she had to finish. By the time she got into the loos to change it smelt like she presumed a brothel would. She didn’t look good in the dress, she had chosen it too quickly and the blue didn’t sit right on her olive skin. She tried tying her hair up, but felt she looked jowly. The expensive concealer did nothing to hide her bags.

They were getting a coach to Alexandra Palace where the awards were being held. The noise as she got on hit her like the sound generated by her children’s parties, so loud it almost took you out of your body. She wondered if Betty and Hal were in bed yet. Nobody had answered the phone at home all afternoon, which had created a little knob of panic deep in her stomach. She hadn’t been able to get hold of Christian either and now she had no reception on her phone, but Carol had assured her that she’d give him the message and, of course, Aggie was infi nitely capable. She’d find a payphone when she got there if her signal hadn’t come back.

Ruth sat next to Sally by the window near the front of the coach. Sally kept turning her back on her to listen and laugh at her team, as she called them all, which was fine with Ruth as a headache had settled round the top of her head, squeezing pain into her body. She rubbed her shoulders and could feel the tension nestling there like snarling dogs. It was going to be a long night.

Her signal had returned by the time they got there, so she hung back. She noticed Kate, the only other woman in the office with children, doing the same, a concerned frown on her face. She could hear her telling whoever was on the other end that the Calpol was on the top shelf of the third cupboard to the right of the cooker in the kitchen.