Ivy Lane: Spring: (7 page)

She clapped her hands with delight and reached for the nail file.

Emmeline Pankhurst would be turning in her grave.

The late-March sunshine flooded my new pied-à-terre with shards of sparkling light, which made tacking the curtains up more like a game of Russian roulette with a hammer than DIY.

Finished.

I stood back with an audible ‘Ta dah!’ and admired my handiwork. The flowery fabric I had found in a charity shop gave the perfect finishing touch to the shed and together with the old shelf unit and the plastic patio chair the place looked quite homely. I stepped outside to admire the exterior view.

It had been painted an uplifting shade of Wedgewood blue – a gift from Gemma (via Roy who she’d coerced into doing the actual painting) for stealing the shed that Mr Garton had left.

The overall effect was magical; I may have been biased, but mine was surely the most beautiful shed at Ivy Lane allotments.

Doing up the shed was the first step to making my plot look loved and doing it had given me, unexpectedly, an enormous sense of well-being.

I missed home-making, I realized. My rented accommodation was quite adequate, but a little soulless. After selling our old house, I didn’t have the heart to make another home, so I got rid of most of the knick-knacks, the cushions and the pictures that I’d enjoyed collecting over the years. And although the place had seemed bare at first, it had been less painful not to be constantly surrounded by reminders of happier times. Maybe now was the time to do something to make the house mine, paint a room perhaps.

Today, though, I was content to work on my allotment. It was a beautiful spring morning, I had a list of jobs to do here and then I was off to see Mum for the weekend. It was only a week until the Easter holidays and I had survived school for nearly a term. I smiled contentedly to myself; there was quite a lot to be happy about.

Sitting in a tin on the shelf was a batch of homemade peanut flapjacks. I wasn’t the best baker in the world, but one thing I’d learned about allotment life was that most things could be traded. I had a box of teeny shallot sets to plant and I was hoping for some top tips and maybe even an offer of help.

Flapjacks in hand, I went in search of willing volunteers.

Neither of the neighbouring plots were manned today and the first person I spotted was Nigel in his greenhouse at a table constructed out of an old kitchen worktop. He was wrist-deep in velvety black soil, wiggling his bottom and singing ‘Copacabana’ by Barry Manilow. It seemed I wasn’t the only one with spring fever this morning. I cleared my throat and waited for him to notice me.

Nigel’s plot was somewhat aspirational to a novice like me; a study in military precision – hardly surprising given that he was a retired army captain: raised beds, straight paths, a series of pristine compost bins and weeds strictly forbidden.

‘Tilly!’ He looked completely unabashed at being caught out singing the ‘Who shot who’ line in an American accent at full volume and I liked him all the more for it. ‘Good morning, just potting up my runner beans.’

I’d opted for broad beans myself and they were already sown; a double row of wrinkly old beans that I’d plopped into a narrow trench and covered back over with soil. I had great hopes for them; they were the beans for beginners, I had been told. Foolproof, apparently. It had taken me hours, all that raking and whatnot, but it had been so easy that I was convinced I’d done something wrong. In fact, the hardest bit had been marking out the rows with canes and string. I was from the Nigel school of gardening; wobbly lines were strictly prohibited.

‘Flapjack?’

Nigel whipped off his gardening gloves and selected the largest piece.

‘My wife was an excellent cook,’ he sighed. ‘I do miss home-baking.’

Poor Nigel. I knew from Christine, the font of all knowledge, that he’d lost his wife a couple of years ago. The allotment had been their joint passion. How lovely to have shared an interest like that. I racked my brains to think whether James and I had shared a hobby, but all I could come up with was tequila slammers. That would hardly have been a suitable pastime to take with us into old age, would it? I didn’t even drink these days.

‘Take another piece for later,’ I said. He helped himself and set it aside on a clean bit of his workbench.

‘I’m planting shallots today, any tips?’ I said, mesmerized by an oaty lump stuck to his jumper.

Nigel paused from his chewing and frowned.
Come on, Nigel
, I urged silently, there was no such thing as a free flapjack. He swallowed his mouthful.

‘Ah. Yes,’ he said, finally. ‘Leave the tips showing.’

He shovelled the rest of the flapjack into his mouth and raised a hand. ‘Thanks for that.’

Dismissed.

I turned ninety degrees, marched off and resisted the urge to salute.

The plot opposite Nigel was occupied by an elderly woman; I’d never seen her close up, but had noticed her pottering about on several occasions wearing a furry hat with earflaps and a shapeless chunky cardigan. Her shed had lace curtains at the window and was flanked by an array of terracotta pots, currently brimming with tulips and pansies. The plot was neatly dug and dominated by a large polytunnel in the centre, but I couldn’t see any evidence of vegetables or the woman herself today, come to that.

Up ahead there were four children running round on the plot next to Nigel’s, all pre-schoolers – just as well seeing as it was a school day. A woman emerged from the shed: long red hair, red lipstick and a black polo-neck jumper. ‘Hiya!’ she yelled at me. Amazing that I hadn’t met this in-yer-face woman before now; she was completely unmissable.

No point asking her for help; she already had her hands full, but I was in happy mode and could do sociable if the situation required. I walked up the path and the children immediately crowded round her for protection. Or perhaps a look in my cake tin. You could never be sure with small children, pre-programmed as they were for survival.

I introduced myself and quickly learned that Brenda normally came to the allotment early in the morning before work – she had her own catering business – but her van was in for repair, so she had taken the day off; she only wore black, not because she was in mourning but because it made life easier, and she had three children. I say ‘quickly learned’ because she spoke like a machine gun and barely stopped to draw breath.

‘This lot,’ she said, taking two pieces of flapjack, breaking them in half and placing them into eager little hands, ‘are my grandchildren. I’ve got eight altogether.’

I scanned round the allotment nervously. I had only cut the flapjack into nine squares.

She grinned at me and ruffled the hair of the smallest two. ‘So what are you growing, then?’

I filled her in on my endeavours to date, which as well as the broad beans consisted of twelve pots of sweetcorn sitting on my spare bedroom window sill (the sunniest spot in the house) and a thick row of carrot seeds next to the beans.

Secretly, carrots (even if they were a miniature variety, like mine) fell into the ‘pointless because of price’ category, but so many people had told me to give them a whirl that in the end, I’d capitulated. I’d chosen to ignore Charlie’s advice, though.

‘Make sure you get rid of all the stones. If a baby carrot hits a stone, it’ll split in two and grow legs,’ he had warned.

I didn’t mind that; novelty carrots would be infinitely more interesting. Besides which, stone-removal seemed like ridiculously hard work for a bunch of carrots. Digging the ground over with my new fork had taken enough effort. In fact, the reason I was looking for help with the shallots was that my bum still ached from all the squatting I’d been doing recently.

‘I grow potatoes,’ said Brenda, pointing to a few straggly plants, which was all she seemed to be cultivating.

Just potatoes? I was so glad I hadn’t shared my ‘cheap as chips’ philosophy.

‘Planting season starts on Good Friday, so I’ll have my hands full then,’ she said. Her nails were long and painted a dark red; Gemma would have been impressed.

‘Although I’m not so bothered about earlies; I concentrate on main crops. Took me a while to sort that out, though. The first season I was here, I grew these tiny little spuds. You could have put ’em up your nostrils,’ she mimed the action for me with her forefingers, just in case I couldn’t imagine it for myself, ‘and still have drawn breath.’ She mimed that too.

I said goodbye and approached the plot opposite Brenda where a silky-haired girl in denim dungarees was hoeing between rows of an oriental-looking cabbagey thing. She had a papoose strapped to her front. I had seen that baby before, but this time it was awake and its two dark brown eyes gazed at me between the straps. My step faltered and my breath caught in my throat; what a beautiful face. It was such a perfect little thing, completely content in its snug surroundings. I ached to touch that velvety skin. The woman – mid twenties, I’d say – looked up, smiled and then resumed hoeing. If pressed, I would hazard a guess that she was Chinese.

‘Gorgeous baby,’ I said. ‘Boy or girl?’

‘Girl.’

Clearly not one for small talk. Which was fine.

‘Would you like a flapjack?’ I held out the tin in her direction.

She looked at me through her dark fringe and shook her head. ‘We don’t eat sugar.’ And after a second’s pause, added, ‘Thank you.’

‘OK, bye then.’ I shrugged and turned to walk away.

There was a ‘H-hum,’ behind me followed by a quiet, ‘I do.’

I turned to see the lady I’d thought was elderly smiling shyly at me from the edge of her plot. Today she was hatless and obviously no more than fifty at most. She was slight, had shoulder-length grey-ish-blonde hair and the body language of a mouse.

‘Eat sugar, that is,’ she said.

Hurrah, an ally in unhealthy food! I held the tin out but she had her hands full with pots and gestured for me to follow her into the polytunnel.

Inside was very warm and heaving with greenery.

‘Flowers,’ she said, waving a proud arm across the polytunnel. ‘My plot is entirely devoted to flowers. No point growing veg, I don’t eat much. Except cake. And my flowers bring me great joy.’

‘What are these?’ I pointed to a cardboard box marked ‘swaps’ filled with small pots of plants, all different as far as I could tell.

‘They’re for Seedling Swap Sunday.’

I’d seen the poster outside the pavilion. From what I could gather, plot holders with a surplus of seedlings could swap them with each other. I hadn’t paid it much attention; it seemed a little advanced for me. Nice idea, though, if you were into community events.

I swapped names with Liz, handed her a flapjack and pressed onwards to the far corner of the allotment. I’d never really been up here and I could see Alf sitting on a chair scraping mud off a trowel.

‘Roasted.’ Alf’s answer when I asked for shallot tips. ‘Like garlic, in whole with the meat. Delicious.’

Not exactly what I had in mind, but he did offer me some produce in exchange for a flapjack. The sun was warm for March, so I slipped off my gilet and counted my blessings. Where else could you get lungfuls of fresh air, friendly banter and a free armful of curly kale on a Friday morning?

I skipped merrily back to plot 16B with my complimentary greens, resigned to planting my own shallots. It was like the story of the little red hen. Except that the analogy didn’t really work because I couldn’t, in all honesty, see a hoard of people queuing up to get their hands on my shallots in summer.

There were a few weeds beginning to creep up on my path and I decided to deal with them first before getting stuck into planting. Very carefully, I sprayed each one with weedkiller, taking my time to ensure I didn’t spray anything important. There was no breeze, so the spray shouldn’t have drifted down to anyone else’s plot, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

The shallot was an odd crop to grow; it hardly seemed worth it, I thought, running my hands through the small brown bulbs in my shed a few minutes later. Why not simply eat them now? I was pretty sure that when I came to harvest them they would look exactly the same as they did now. I did a bit of raking to show willing and started pushing them part way into the ground. I hadn’t been planting long when I sensed Gemma’s presence behind me.

‘You could offer to help, you know,’ I said, without turning round.

‘I would, obvs, but I’ve got to give a full body massage this afternoon and I need to conserve my energy. Ask Colin.’

‘No thanks. Not if it means handling his privates.’

Gemma giggled and I turned round to waggle my eyebrows at her.

‘Offer him something else.’

‘Like help him make an Easter card for his mum?’ I tutted. A teacher’s services might not be quite as useful as a beautician’s to a glamour model. It wasn’t as if I even had a cane he could borrow. I shook my head to banish the image of a young, smooth-skinned Colin draped over a desk and wielding a whip.

‘You never know,’ she said and then squealed. ‘Look, Tills!’ She was pointing at my carrot bed.

I would have to have a word with her about that. Trust Gemma to make a nickname from my nickname. Rolling my eyes, I stood up to see what she had found.

I clapped an oniony hand over my mouth and gasped.

Gemma put an arm round my waist and gave me a squeeze. ‘Well done, babe.’

‘How’s that for beginner’s luck!’ I don’t think my smile could have been any wider.

I’d done it! My carrot seeds had actually started to sprout. I had planted seeds and they were coming up to greet me. It was only a few seeds, a few spiky shoots appearing above ground, it wasn’t as if I’d invented a time machine or won the lottery or found a cure for bad breath (my pet hate). But at that moment my happiness knew no bounds; I felt so proud of my achievement.

If I compared myself to this time last year, well, there simply was no comparison. I stared down at the bright green carrot tops and felt my eyes blur with tears.

It was really happening, plot 16B was coming back to life. And as I returned Gemma’s hug, it occurred to me that perhaps I was too.