Notwithstanding (21 page)

‘Iranian poo in a Christian kettle,’ summarises Alan, but John contradicts him. ‘’Cept I’m not a Christian. God knows what I am. I reckon that when you think about God, He scrambles up your mind a bit, see? And like that you don’t ever come to no conclusion. The thing you got to know about God is that He don’t want us to work Him out. He’s like MI5.
He’s
like those folk who do all the benefits. Social security and the like.’

Sylvie has a question, something she has to clarify, and she turns and looks at Alan’s face, her eyes betraying her anticipation of loss.

‘When are you going to university, Alan? You are going, aren’t you? Someone told me you were.’

‘Next month,’ says Alan. ‘I’m going to do English.’

Alan feels uncomfortable about this university business, and John makes matters worse. ‘Sounds to me like you speak it already.’

‘It’ll be literature mostly,’ explains Alan, unsure if it really will be and knowing that he won’t be able to justify it all to the earthy John, whose practical, organic world makes Milton an anomaly. But John’s away on his own tack again.

‘You know what I like? I like them Latin names. I read ’em in the evenings, all those words.
Erica tetralix, Gynu sarmentosa, Nepeta mussinii, Dianthus barbatus, Lilium martagon, Fritillaria meleagris, Cornus kousa, Chlorophytum capense, Peristrophe speciosa, Primula denticulata
, that’s poetry that is. I like all that foreign stuff. It’s like I sometimes tune in on one o’ them French radio stations. Don’t speak a word o’ Froggy, but it’s nice to listen. You know the strangest thing I reckon I saw? We had a Frenchman living down the village, oh, about fifteen year ago, next to that Mrs Griffiths, the old sourpuss, and he had an
Alsatian
dog, and this dog knew all how to speak French. He knew “dindins” and “come here” and “walkies” and “lie down” and “sit” and “get in your basket” all in Froggy, and I said to Herbert, that was his name (the Frog, not the dog), I said, “Blimey, Herb, your dog’s a sodding genius, speaking all that French,” and Herbert he jus’ laughs and says, “Funny you should say that, ’cause every time I see a dog understanding English, I think, ‘La la la la la, what a clever dog.’”’

Alan and Sylvie ponder the cleverness of dogs, and Alan says, pointlessly, ‘I could do a thesis on the poetics of plant names.’

‘Better than all that “O what a lovely flower” la-di-da soppy stuff,’ exclaims John, his face screwed up with the pain of so much lyric verse, and then he declaims: ‘I wandered lonely as a silly sod, Saw some daffs, and said, “Thank God I wasn’t sittin’ on the grass, Them daffs’d grow right up my arse.”’

Sylvie and Alan laugh with real surprise and delight, and Sylvie applauds. ‘That’s brilliant,’ she says. ‘Did you just make it up?’

John shrugs modestly. ‘Always could do rhymes, mostly silly stuff. My missus don’t like it, mind, so I don’t do it much. Can’t do serious ones. Anyway, lad,’ (and here he pats his thighs as if encouraging them into motion) ‘I’m goin’ to plant up the strawberry runners for the greenhouse, and then I’m goin’ to
prune
the climbers. When you’ve done the diggin’, you can net the pond to keep out the leaves, all right?’

Sylvie suddenly recalls. ‘My mum says, can we have the windfalls to make scrumpy with?’

‘Course she can,’ says John, and Sylvie stays in the shed while the men go out and toil. Sylvie is breaking off her split ends and talking to George. ‘My God, I’m such a skiver, I’m terrible, really I am. Maybe I should have been a gardener instead of a stable girl and then I wouldn’t have a conscience about being in here. The truth is, George, I just like being in here because it’s where Alan sometimes is. That’s the chair where his bum goes, and I can sneak a look in his dinner box, and he’s having honey sandwiches again, that he made himself. And his shoes down in the corner, all abandoned and lonely-looking. Do you think I’m stupid, George? I do. I wish I wasn’t so stupid. I mean, sometimes I look at myself in the mirror, like when I’m combing my hair, and suddenly I get a little shock. I think, “Sylvie, you’re so ignorant, you just don’t know anything, and all you think about is horses and saddle sores and bridles and martingales, and you’re nineteen years old, and life is just beginning, really.” And I just know that there’s a great mountain of life out there somewhere, but I don’t know where it is and I don’t know how to climb it.’ Sylvie goes to the window, whose glass is encrusted with lichen, and she looks at it rather than through
it
, leaning on the bench, always talking to George. ‘I get this feeling sometimes when I’m up on one of the horses, and it’s just after dawn, and the mist is lifting up from the grass, and the daddy-long-legs are like little helicopters, and I’m galloping the horse in all that chilliness, and the steam rises up from the horse’s neck, and I feel as though I’m flowing and flying, and the horse knows what I’m thinking, and I know what the horse is thinking. His mind is all full of alertness and interest, and there’s really nothing in there at all except happiness. Happiness about being a horse, and doing horsey things, like just galloping, and making the world roll underneath you, and looking forward to a bag of pony nuts. And for a few moments I know what it’s like to have perfect pleasure, and I feel so happy with the horse’s happiness that it makes me want to cry, and the horse’s hooves are thudding on the turf with a sound as if the earth is hollow, and the leather’s creaking, and there’s the musty smell of the horse’s sweat, and the horse is nodding its head up and down with the motion of galloping, and I think, “Yes, this is it, this is it, this is what it’s all about.” And then the moment’s over, and I’m just me again, and I’ve lost all that exhilaration and I don’t know when it’ll come back, and I feel stupid and silly.’ Sylvie picks up one of Alan’s shoes, noting the shape that is the ghost of his foot, and says, ‘I always wanted to count for something, and I don’t think I ever will.
I
don’t think I’ll even be happy. ’Spose I’d better go and do some mucking out.’ She puts the shoe down, and shakes her head. ‘My God, look at me. When I’m not talking to a horse, I’m talking to a bleeding spider.’ The door scrapes as she leaves, and she says to George, ‘See you anyway.’

Alan is out on the vegetable patch, digging deep rows and turning dung into the trenches. His wellington boots are clogged with manure and rich earth, and he has a blackbird, a mistle thrush and a robin in attendance. He tosses them worms in turn, but each time they pounce and squabble. Alan is weary, his back and thighs ache from his work, and he is longing for his meagre honey sandwiches. He pauses often, hoping for rain that is too heavy to work in.

John is glad of a young man to break the soil. He has been gathering golden-skinned passion fruit from the house front and the trellises, and now he is back in the shed, talking to George. ‘A whole basket,’ he gloats. ‘What about that, then? Harvest of a good long summer. Bluebottles for you, passion fruit for me, God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world. Makes you believe, though, doesn’t it? Lookin’ at a passion flower. That purple, and that bit o’ yellow, and that white. And those tendrils that won’t let go. And leaves like dark-green hands. And the funny stamens with wobbly crosspieces on top. Looks as if it’s made by Him Above in a good mood. I suppose that if
you’re
a spider, then you think that God is too. That would explain the number of bloody insects, any road. Wonder where Sylvie is. I’ll tell you something else, Georgie boy; I reckon he fancies her as much as she fancies him. And another thing. I’m jealous. Sixty-seven year old, and I’m jealous.

‘Ridiculous, that’s what I am. Don’t suppose you think about such things, eh? Build yourself a sticky little web and sit back and reckon that you got it sorted. All right for some.’

A sharp wind springs up, and those outdoors shiver and look up at the sky, which darkens suddenly. Thunder roars overhead. A torrent commences, as if a giant has overturned his bath, and Alan rushes into the shed. John is pleased with himself. ‘Said it would rain, didn’t I? Was I right? I certainly was.’

‘You’re always right,’ says Alan. ‘Bloody weathermen, though. I didn’t bring my waterproofs because of them.’

‘You’re gullible, you are,’ says John, still pleased about the accuracy of his prognostications, pleased that he knows a few things that Alan will never know, even if he goes to university. ‘Put the kettle on, boy, and make some for Sylv.’

The kettle begins to hum, and Alan ladles tea leaves into the pot, which is so ingrained with tannin that its original cream-coloured interior has become completely brown. Like all respectable gardeners’
teapots
, it has a chip out of the tip of the spout, and the lid has broken in half and been glued back together.

‘I think I could mend that door,’ says Alan. ‘The pins through the hinges are worn out. I could probably replace them with sawn-off six-inch nails.’

John is smoking his pipe and enjoying the feeling of being warm and safe inside while outside the world is drowning. ‘Bright lad,’ he says, ‘but mind you don’t go disturbing George.’

‘One of the threads goes to the back of that hinge,’ says Alan, scrutinising a long thread of gossamer that glistens with dust. ‘Christ,’ he exclaims, instinctively ducking as the thunder crashes directly overhead. He opens the door to observe the deluge, and the lightning crackles again. The thunder unrolls instantaneously, and Alan is excited. ‘What a corker. Cor, did you see that? Right overhead. It’s amazing, the rain’s actually bouncing on the ground.’

John is being knowing again, as is his right as an older man, and a countryman. ‘When it rains like this, we get a flood. I told that pop star and the Shah of Iran, and I’ve told Mr Gull ’n’ all, I said, “We need a gulley along the drive, ’cause it’s clay here, and the water sits and sits before it soaks away.” Anyway, that pop star feller only knew how to say “Far out”. No, I lie, sometimes he said, “Heavy, man, heavy.” He died in the end, did I tell you? Choked on his own vomit, so they say, somewhere in America. Anyway, the
Shah
just says, “We’ll do it, God willing,” and then his country got all political, ’cause things were happening over there, see? And Mr Gull just says, “I’m considering it,” and while he’s considering it, we get wet.’

‘Hi, boys,’ cries Sylvie exuberantly, as she lunges in through the doorway, her hair lank and dark with water, which is also dripping from her eyelashes and the end of her nose, which has gone pink about the edges of her nostrils. ‘God, it’s raining cats and dogs, horses and donkeys, giraffes and elephants. I’m absobloodylutely soaked. Shelter, you’ve got to give me shelter. If I try for the stable I’ll drown.’

‘Sorry, Sylvie,’ teases Alan, ‘John doesn’t hold with women in the potting shed.’ He pretends to be about to push her back out into the rain.

Sylvie takes her long hair in her hands and wrings out the water. ‘He’s an old sweetie, really, except that he deceives his wife.’

John’s eyebrows jerk upwards. ‘You little scamp. I never did.’

‘You did too. You told me yourself you’ve had that motorcycle and sidecar for thirty years, and your wife doesn’t know. Seriously, Alan, he keeps it in someone else’s shed, and his wife thinks he comes to work on the bus. He’s got no principles at all.’

John rolls up his newspaper and takes a playful swipe at Sylvie’s head. ‘I won’t be trusting you with
any
more secrets. Rapscallion. Anyway, a man needs secrets from his wife. Keeps him normal, keeps him sane. It’s privacy.’

Spontaneously, Sylvie plants a kiss on the top of John’s head, and he beams with embarrassment, pride and pleasure. She says, ‘I used to come in here when I was a kid, and he’d sit me on his knee and tell me stories.’

‘You used to pull my moustache and say, “Is it real? Is it real?” There’s water in the kettle, new boiled, by the way. D’you still take four sugars?’

Sylvie reproves him. ‘Oh John, I gave that up five years ago.’

A small white paw hooks around the bottom of the door, attempting to open it, and Alan says, ‘It’s Rover.’

‘Oh poor pussycat,’ says Sylvie, ‘I’ll let her in. She’s soaked, poor little thing, she’s pathetic.’

The cat is bedraggled, and frightened of the thunder. She is shivering and miaowing silently, her jaws opening and closing with poignant eloquence. John leans down and heaves her on to his knee, where he dries her with sacking. The cat purrs, and John explains, ‘She likes that, she does.’ The cat settles, drawing warmth from John’s thighs, and all of them sit in agreeable stillness, lulled by the purring, by the sounds of the rain, and the sipping of tea.

‘This is nice,’ says Sylvie, at last, ‘all together in
the
shed, safe and warm.’ A stray thought occurs to her, as stray thoughts do. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask, what do you boys do when you need a wee? I mean, you never use the stable loo, do you?’

John looks at her a little mischievously. ‘Compost heap. No point in wasting it. Nitrogen, see?’ and Alan adds, ‘It was one of John’s conditions of employment when I came up looking for a job.’

‘There’s water coming under the door,’ observes Sylvie, nodding her head towards a puddle by the threshold.

‘Might have to sit on the table. Can’t stand wet feet,’ grumbles John. ‘My old man, he got trench foot in the war, the first one, and he always told me, “Don’t never let your feet get wet. They’ll go white and spongy, and then the meat falls off.” It’s like when you leave a piece of chicken in a bowl of water. Bloody horrible.’

A whimsical idea occurs to Sylvie. ‘Does this shed float? I mean, we could be like Noah’s Ark. With the cat and everything.’

‘And George,’ adds John, in the spirit of fairness.

‘It’s really bucketing,’ says Alan, shivering with that delicious threat of wild weather in such a domesticated land.

‘It’s setting in all day,’ asserts John.

‘What’ll we do?’ demands Sylvie. ‘I swear we’re all going to drown.’

‘We’ll do what we always do,’ decides John.
‘We’ll
drink tea, and then we’ll wash the green rims from off the top of the flowerpots.’

Alan groans. He suffers from the sudden and extreme weariness of the young man who is about to have to do something that bores him to death. This is worse than having to clean his room or put on a tie for the arrival of guests. ‘Let’s do “I wish”,’ proposes Alan. ‘Let’s say exactly what we’d rather be doing. Who’s going to start? Sylvie?’