Leaves

Sue leaned her forehead against the glass, a wiry, middle-aged woman gazing through the lacy streams of rain, out into her garden. 

The huge Oak in the middle of the lawn lifted its branches and held out its spindly hands: 'Me? It wasn't me. Who did this?' But it was the Oak. It tossed its acorns onto the lawn every year and shortly after began to litter the grass with dead leaves. 

It started with one. One dead leaf, brown and shrivelled around the edges: an explorer into another world no-one noticed. In the subsequent days and weeks, this first leaf would be followed by more, and more. Until a mass of dry, crinkly paper colonised a broad swathe of ground beneath the tree. 

Sue leaned, motionless against the window pane, lost in thought for a long time. She remembered when the children were young. The sounds and joy of sun-ridden days when Sue'd been weeding or pruning and she'd watch them with their father, kicking the rustling leaves into crunchy banks into which they'd flop and roll, hooting and yelping. Or they'd chase each other around the Oak, throwing loose balls that burst into thin, biscuit-like confetti. Only once did Sue join in. She'd hid in the darkness beneath a pile of leaves, with its rich earthy smell that wasn't quite right. 

He'd always done the heavy jobs in the garden: digging the flowers beds, mowing the lawn; hauling the huge carpet of leaves onto the compost. Now, in the rain, the leaves were a sodden mat, suffocating the grass beneath the tree.

She'd loved that lawn, with its crown of bushes around the edge, the pond over to one side; the Oak proud and strong in the middle. So had the children. In the Summer, long before the leaves fell, their father had made picnics for them and their friends. Bright, happy days that sparkled in her memory. She watched them from where she worked among the flowers and sometimes joined them. When she had less to do. And before they left home.

The glass was cold against Sue's forehead. Sometimes she turned her eyes from the dark scab of leaves under the tree and studied the thin rain collecting and streaming in front of her nose. Then she'd bring her eyes down to the loose strand of hair that she'd been unconsciously twisting. She hadn't the strength to pull her brow from the glass. After all those years he'd found someone else and left, one heart-numbing afternoon. He'd taken clothes and books, and many things he said he 'might need', and left her with a big empty house and a big empty garden. 

The rain had stopped but Sue remained motionless. That glistening carpet of dead leaves. Every one a memory.

Sue pulled her cardigan closer around her thin shoulders. He'd hated that cardigan, which was why she'd put it on. The rain was stopping and the last streams of raindrops were congealing down the glass, pooling in her stomach like bile. She tugged at more stray strands of hair. Those grey flecks. Where had they come from? 

It was early Winter. And he was gone.

'Stop it!' Sue shouted into the empty room. She clenched her teeth and yanked her head from the window. 'I can't spend all day moping.' Her forehead was numb but, in herself, Sue felt immediately better. It would be good to be doing something. He wasn't the only one who could rake leaves. 

She strode through the kitchen to the boot room and grabbed her gardening jacket from the peg. It was old, and she'd hardly worn it for months. Then she stuffed her feet into her wellingtons. They'd lost their comfort; she could almost feel stiff resentment. Sue took another look through the back window at the leaves lying morose, and heavy, and wet beneath the tree. 

Sue scooped up the key to the garden shed and marched out. The Oak watched the small woman cross the lawn; watched her stamp angrily onto the layer of leaves below, and begin to kick them them around.

The rain might have stopped but the blanket of leaves had been thoroughly soaking for many days. Sue's first few kicks sent matted clumps into the air, releasing the pungent smell of decaying earth. She'd had her hands in the soil for many years but there was something about this smell, or was it this time, or this moment, that offended her. Perhaps she'd always been offended by the smell of soil, even as she'd dug her trowel into the flower beds. Or was it that despite all that love and effort she'd spent around the edges of the garden, she'd never dug deeply into it. That had been his job. Digging deeply. She was flowers. He'd been earth.

She looked up. Was the Oak watching her? She started to laugh, pointing and shouting aloud: 'I can do this!' In fact she was going to enjoy it. She'd get going again. Get her energy back. Rake them up. Damn him. 

Sue kicked her way back to the side of the house and the garden sheds, where the compost lived and where he kept the ladders and wheelbarrow. And found them locked to the wall. She never knew he did that, locked these things. But then she rarely came around here. She fumbled in her pocket. Next to the key for the garden shed was another small one. That was easy. She lifted the wheelbarrow away and trundled towards the garden shed.

The shed itself was a big wooden thing, dark brown from its yearly coat of preservative and sitting in it's own patch of fallen leaves. Besides garden tools, all sorts of things lived in there: deckchairs; the garden games he'd played with the children; their bikes and the paddling pool - not that they'd needed these things for a long while. His domain. She'd just ask. He'd fetch it out.

Sue dumped the wheelbarrow next to the shed, unlocked the door and pulled it open. 

For a long time she stared into the hollow interior. 

Empty. A dark cave. 

He'd taken the rake. He'd taken everything.

Closing the door quietly, she turned her back on the shed and slowly sank to the ground, sobbing at last among more dead leaves.