Psalm of Flowerbed Compliments

At first, East Anglia appears flat and then one discovers there are tiny ripples in it, that away from the A- & B-roads, away from the streetlamps & post offices, the terrain can undulate with the best of them. It was an accidental standstill at Witham that drove us off the A12 into the mercy of the sat-nav’s unquestioned diversion. It was a warm Friday afternoon in October as the school rush hour inclined into a gorgeous bright gold and all the trees and all the houses stark against the sky and the smell of summer rotting and our car sped over the hills northeast towards my parents’ home. I had lowered the window to steady my hungover stomach. The cat was in her carrier on my lap, and I said that she was probably getting carsick. ‘It’s better than being trainsick!’ said my mother, defensively. ‘I wasn’t having a go at your driving… just that these roads are bumpy and all over the place.’ No sooner had I said this than the cat began to shuffle before emptying her undigested food into the carrier. If it smelled foul to me, then to her it was even worse. We stopped to clean everything. When the car was in a jam, there were rocks mere inches from my nose; the rocks had grown moss and could not be moved; the gravel driveways seemed to buzz in the fading day. The engine cut off. There was sound everywhere else. A few strands of spiderweb could be seen to blow tremulously atop a breeze and then the lights changed.

    The next day I took myself for a walk; incidentally it was at the same time in the afternoon as our diverted drive, as if it were a call to outside that really chimed with me. It was all very different, in weather and in spirit, but I was buoyed by the absence of a hangover. In the evening there was to be a party – the cause of my visit to the coast – and I felt stuffy, believing that a course along the seafront would awaken some vigour in me and my blurry-edged bones. The pavement had that perpetual sheen of autumn. I stopped at the boundary of a vacant house and put my fingers through the fence as I peered in. The neighbours came out and looked at me, so I moved along without saying anything. It was the route I took every day during lockdown and so each step was laden with the kind of memory, weight and resignation that burdens a fragile mind. A mile or so in, my mother called me—‘Do you want picking up?’ I asked her why. ‘It’s pissing down.’ I told her I was fine, that there was no such piss. I was in the backstreets by then and found the old cornershop and went in to buy a cherryflavoured soft drink. When I came out the rain was falling hard but I quite enjoyed it. As I inhaled, so the rain came into my mouth. It was deathly quiet out and I walked a mile more before the rain became overwhelming. There was no one else about. Even by offseason standards, it was quiet. The wind lashed rain at my face, into my eyes. It was just me next to the sea and over it a darkness of cloud bruised with the weight of its rain. It got so that I could not see through the water than ran down my face. Eventually I cowered beneath a pine overhanging the pavement. ‘Yeah, it’s pissing down now… Can I get a lift, please?’ Clothes stuck to me. I kept myself elevated off the seats. There was a little bit of breathlessness upon my chest as mother made talk with me and we went back around the quiet streets. She laughed at me, tremendously funny! I wiped my wet brow onto the back of my wet arms.

    The eighteenth birthday party was being held on the very edge of town in an old hall. Tight wooden floors lost their varnish and the walls were thick with paint, a musty smell throughout that sings every British soul who left school long ago. The ceiling was tiled, fluorescent tubing installed diagonally, a silvery plastic HAPPY BIRTHDAY balloon horizontal, its belly up, an immobile fan, all fixtures and furnishings flickering in the DJ’s rig, lights all colours but natural. Steadily the hall became busier with family and friends and old acquaintances and strangers until the music boomed. It was a ceremony. After dinner – which was served to a long procession from big platters above tiny candles, full of goat bones, slaw, chicken flesh, rice, spice, heavenly – then there were more frivolities. Folk gathered on the dancefloor into a huge swaying mass, synchronised and rogue, until Candy came on and they shifted in unison. I watched and they watched me back on the thirteenth bar. In amongst them was my niece and I watched her. There was smiling on my face like a fanfare. She was so perfect and she is so perfect. I adored her when she was an infant, then she aged some and I fell out, but now I see her growing alongside the coarseness of existence and I love her so much. She could not dance; that is, she danced clumsily and fully conscious, measuring herself constantly against the more fluid and rhythmic movements of her mother. At times, when I knew she was not paying me any mind, I chuckled to myself, but I wished to say—‘It is because of love, only love, and I do not want you to lose that to life.’ She was a sixteenth behind everyone and it was sweet. After that, Jerusalema came on and she was just as lagging. My eyes began to water. In the car back – and only in the car back – I said to others, in the warm vents and steamed windows, that she was so wonderful, just so wonderful.

    The next day I asked my mother whether she would take me to the garden centre and I would cook everybody dinner when we got back, and it so happened that she wanted to visit the garden centre, as some might enjoy clothes shopping, and it was a starkly beautiful day, autumnally blue and orange in the distance where October skies wilted on the muddy shades of crisp cold land. Garden centres on a Sunday are a rare pleasure. She talked me through all the different plants, as I wanted some for my balcony, and her mother was a big fan of plants, with greener fingers. I could feel the cobalt air underneath my clothes, where my body tried to warm it. My senses felt the stalks and leaves. There were many old people in the café, eating and the stench of it; there were mothers & daughters; there were lovers & in-laws; there was colour and there was still. When we got back, I emptied my old boxes into the brown bin and hosed them down. Water ran cold. ‘You sure you don’t mind cooking us dinner? Thought you might like someone else to cook for you for a change.’ I told her it would be my pleasure, but first of all I would pot my plants; there was time. On a table at the end of their garden, I potted the seven plants I had bought into two boxes and the thyme perfuming my activity like an aura. On the grass was the carcass of a bird, barely anything left, subtracted to bones. My hands grew numb with the soil and hosewater and the stiff breeze, the turning dusk. I was happy with my hands; I looked at them and beamed; they were covered in soil and they smelt with it; my fingernails turned dark; I quite liked my hands in the soil that clung to them. How could something so simple make me feel like a different person living a different life? Not far away was the sound of neighbours putting together Sunday lunch. Giggling. I swept loose soil off the patio table into my palm. First, I arranged the plants in their pot before the box and then I put them in, soil surrounding. The leaves were kept safe, elevated out the way of work, dusted off afterwards. I watered everything down. When I was done, I invited my mother to comment, and my father joined her. Few things make a Sunday as much as flowerbed compliments. Eventually all the suds rushed the soil off my fingers and my mother asked me if she could help to chop garlic or peel the carrots. Two hours later, once everyone was a bit merrier, I served dinner to the table as the boxes sheltered beneath the eaves, out of the rain.