Apart from the Begonias

I once had a music teacher who subscribed to the view (perpetrated by a certain TV presenter, too – you know who you are, Gareth!) that anyone and everyone can sing – it’s just a matter of getting rid of your inhibitions and concentrating and finding the right song and all that jazz. Well, Miss Leigh, I’m sorry, but you were wrong! Oh, I was okay – I was no Maria Callas, but I could hold a tune well enough. But there were and are some people – and I seemed to be fated to stand next to them in assembly – who could not do more than produce a squawk that makes a constipated duck with laryngitis sound harmonious if their very life depended on it.

     And it’s not just singing. It applies to riding a bike, or having a sense of direction, or baking, or any number of things.

     But I still managed to convince myself it didn’t apply to gardening. Gardening had nothing to do with having a “good ear” or a brain that’s wired the right way or even a light touch with pastry. I told myself the time had come to stop making the excuse of not having green fingers. There was no such thing as green fingers, even though my Mum gave a very good impression of having them and, preparing to perform a miracle of resurrection on the spider plant I had managed to bring to the point of expiry, sadly declared could “skip a generation”. 

     The unfortunate spider plant (or not so unfortunate, as it was soon flourishing) had not been a victim of my not having green fingers. Green fingers were a myth and an excuse. I hadn’t cared for it properly, had over-watered or under-watered it, and not paid attention, and had kept it in a space that was too sunny or too shady or – well, something. I could have sworn I had read and complied with every last instruction, but was probably deluding myself, just as Mum was, when she said, “Oh, I don’t always bother with the instructions, I just have the knack!”

     It didn’t really matter, and I effectively gave up on house plants. There are some incredibly realistic artificial ones now, and even I couldn’t kill those.

     When Auntie (Great Auntie, really) Maureen died, I was saddened, but not really shocked. She was in her 90s and, robust as a woman twenty years younger until relatively recently, had gone down hill quickly after a broken hip. Alas, not an uncommon story. When I discovered she had left me her bungalow, Caraway Lodge, I was staggered. We had been very close when I was a child, and she had spoilt me rotten when I stayed with her, even if I never did develop a taste for Caraway Seed Cake (I’ve never known anyone else call their house after a cake ingredient, though I’m sure that somewhere there’s a Currant Cottage, or even a Vanilla Villa). We’d kept in touch, and I’d been to visit her in the care home, but somehow it had never entered my mind (and she had never told me) that I would inherit Caraway Lodge. I was relieved that at least she had made it plain that if I chose to sell it rather than live in it, that would be absolutely fine and have her blessing, too.

     On the surface (though losing a loved one is always sad and I hope this doesn’t sound callous) it was a “Win-Win” situation. Either I chose to live in Caraway Lodge, and though it was about three quarters of an hour’s drive from work, it was certainly tempting, and at times I found my flat decidedly cramped, or I sold it, and even though it was a bit rundown, it would still put what folk called a “nice chunk of money” – and a much-needed chunk! – into my bank balance. Though Auntie Maureen hadn’t mentioned it directly, I didn’t for one minute suppose she’d mind a third alternative, renting it out as a holiday cottage, even though the area, though pretty enough, wasn’t really on the tourist trail and I was vaguely aware that there were certain applications that had to be made and procedures that had to be gone through. 

     I was emotionally all over the place as I drove out to the cottage for the first time since Auntie Maureen died. But even from down the road I could see that I had practical problems as well as emotional ones. There’s this idea that as you grow older, your childhood haunts seem to shrink, but I would have sworn that the garden had grown. And if it hadn’t grown outwards, at least not in terms or area, it had certainly grown upwards. I had a crash course in the ways of deserted houses, and I learnt that if there’s anything approaching a garden, it’s that, rather than the inside, that shows the first signs of neglect and a capacity to flourish with neglect! I suddenly remembered a wildlife documentary I’d see that made much of Elephant Grass. Well, an elephant couldn’t have hidden in the grass at Caraway Cottage, but it could have concealed a fair-sized dog. If it had been just grass, it might not have been quite so bad, but there were ranks of tall, aggressive thistles, their purple heads like warning beacons, and nettles, and the less potentially painful, but no less tall cow parsley and – oh, please don’t let it be Japanese knotweed, I thought, with visions of the need for incineration that wasn’t guaranteed to work. I doubted I could even make my way to the door without self-harm, and would have to come back clad in thick trousers and boots and gardening gloves, and armed with – well, what? I suspected that the kind of secateurs you got at B & Q would be pretty useless. I had a bittersweet memory pang of Auntie Maureen’s brightly coloured lupin sentinels and the begonias in pots by the door. I supposed those begonias had been buried and choked beneath the merciless and inanimate encroaching armies of nettles and thistles. 

     Someone cleared their throat, and I turned to see that Lydia Colville had come over to join me. She wasn’t exactly Auntie Maureen’s neighbour – it was one of those villages that strung out along the road rather than clustering round some central focus, and even the church was on the outskirts. But she lived in one of the nearest houses, and I knew that though they’d never been in each other’s pockets, she and Auntie Maureen had got on. We had one of those awkward pauses when you don’t know whether to just shake hands or to hug, and she compromised by patting my shoulder and giving me a quick peck on the cheek. “Good to see you again, Vicky, even though the circumstances are sad. Charles and I – did our best to keep the garden in some kind of order, at least to stop it being a jungle, when Maureen went into the care home, but when she passed away – well, I know it sounds like making excuses, but we didn’t know what the legal situation was.”

     I was on the point of saying that I wouldn’t have minded, and they should have asked, but it occurred to me just in time that sounded horribly rude, and they didn’t have my phone number, which I probably should have given them. And she was right, of course. There are some very funny (funny peculiar!) laws about trespass. 

     “It was such a wet summer, too,” Lydia said, “That didn’t help!”

     For a fleeting second, her use of the past tense referring to summer raised my hopes. That sounds terribly gloomy, but all I mean is that, despite the unseasonably warm weather, it WAS October, and even I knew that gardens died back in winter, Nature would do at least part of the work.

     Then I returned to the real world. Even if the sub-arctic snap nicknamed the Beast from the East resurfaced after a couple of years’ absence, and it stayed that way for months, not days, it was not going to miraculously make that jungle smooth and manageable. 

     If I were going to live in Caraway Cottage myself, a certain amount was necessary, in order to make getting to my own front door cease to be a safari, and not to risk complaints of other villagers who had, hitherto, been apparently tolerant of the wasteland in their midst, but that couldn’t be guaranteed to last forever. If I were either selling it or renting it as a holiday let, it would need something more thorough. 

     I had all manner of bleak thoughts on my way back to my cramped and cluttered little flat that suddenly seemed decidedly appealing – or did it? Some of them were purely practical, but they drifted into contemplations of those post-apocalyptic movies and landscapes. Well, okay, even at the time I acknowledged that was a tad melodramatic, but perhaps, in its way, it was even more chilling to realise just how quickly neat, much-loved houses, and bright, well-tended gardens can fall into wildness and neglect, and become forbidding, and overgrown and somehow alien. I reminded myself that houses and gardens are inanimate, and don’t know whether they are loved and cared for or not, but it was hard to believe they didn’t, and that an initial sulk, a fit of pique, of aggression even, had metamorphosed into a kind of suppurating indifference. I tried to tease myself out of it. Suppurating Indifference? For pity’s sake, woman, get over yourself, we’re talking about weeds, common or garden weeds, not some mad scientist’s triffid-like creation (even if the thought of potential Japanese knotweed WAS worrying). 

     That evening Lydia (now we HAD exchanged phone numbers) phoned to say that if it was okay with me, Charles could at least “Take off some of the worst of it”. I assured her it was absolutely fine but I didn’t want to put him to any trouble, and she assured me it was no trouble at all. Of course I knew that though they were good-hearted people and it was kindly meant, it was also to get the village rid of what even I (and my standards in that area are pretty low!) could see was an eyesore. She also said she’d taken a picture of the “offending article” (which I hadn’t thought to do) and checked on the Internet, and was inclined to think it definitely was just common or garden knotweed. Which was a relief of sorts.

     I told myself, as I next headed to Caraway Cottage, that at least now I knew the worst, and at least the worst had started to get a bit better, thanks to Charles’ scythe (somehow I just knew it would be beyond the capability of even an electric mower.) Well, it had and it hadn’t. True, it had been quite literally cut down to size, and my hypothetical dog would not longer get lost in it. But, understandably enough, Charles hadn’t given much thought to the aesthetic, and the hacked and flattened garden whilst now, at least, traversable (though I was still glad I had my trousers and boots on) looked just as wild and lost and beyond any kind of restoration. Nor was I entirely looking forward to being able to open the door, though I told myself at worst there would be a pile of junk mail and a slightly musty smell. Those I could cope with, after all. But there was something ineffably sad about it. As the staff in the care home, who had been very kind when I spoke to them, said, she had “wandered” a bit at the end, and I couldn’t help think it was merciful if it had put a gentle mist over thoughts about what might be happening to Caraway Cottage. I could and should have offered to help more, earlier on. That whirred round in my mind and I realised that grief comes to us all, and we cope with it because we must, but guilt is much more corrosive. 

     “Would you like me to come in with you?” Lydia asked quietly. I shook myself back to the present, and shook my head. “No, thanks. It’s good of you to offer, but …..”

     “It’s okay. I understand. You know where I am if you need me.”

     There is something all wrong about standing breathing in deep breaths and trying to steel yourself to enter a house that held happy childhood memories. Auntie Maureen always had her door painted green – it was her favourite colour and – like me – she refused to believe it was unlucky. Caraway Cottage had an unusual door, with a little arch at the top. And though the paint was flaking a bit, that, at least, was easily remedied and probably the least of my worries. I’m no DIY freak, but there can be something therapeutic about painting a door, especially an outside one.

     Inside my boot, I felt my foot hit against something hard, and was a bit puzzled – Caraway Cottage didn’t have a doorstep and was flush to the ground. I bent down, trying to work out what it was, and still cautious as though they had been slashed down by the scythe, the nettles and thistles were still there, and I didn’t entirely trust the claims of the gardening gloves. Even through them, though, I realised that what I was touching wasn’t stone – it was ceramic. A pot that had fallen on its side. Despite the tangle of weeds still around it, it wasn’t too hard to stand upright – and then I saw that it was one of Auntie Maureen’s pots of begonias that she had loved so much. Though it was lying on its side, the pot was unbroken, and its warm, mellow terracotta colour still clearly visible. But there was more to it than that. Because the begonia was still there, late-blooming in crimson glory, despite being overgrown, despite being neglected. It did not even need Mum’s attention, though I decided to put it in her self keeping, at least for a while until I got things sorted out. I wondered if other things may have survived, and hoped they had, but even if they hadn’t, it was okay. And it meant I could see beyond the wildness and the neglect, and beyond my own tangled feelings of guilt, and see the past and the future of Caraway Cottage, whatever I decided the latter might be, and I was more inclined to think I might make it my own home, even though it would mean quite a lot of work, and even though I could certainly do with the money that would come from selling or renting it. 

     It had already entered my mind that it would be one of those meaningful symbolic gestures to change the name to Begonia Cottage, but it went as soon as it had come. If Auntie Maureen had wanted it to be called Begonia Cottage, she would have called it Begonia Cottage. 

     I’m already spending some weekends there, now, and I have found a couple of willing helpers with the garden – as Charles said, reasonably enough, and with no need at all for his apologetic tone, he was more than happy to do a bit of “crisis management” but as he worked full time …..

     But Walter, the retired gentleman across the road whose bungalow only has a tiny front plot, confessed his fingers were aching to get the feel of soil on them again, and a young lad who’s currently out of a job, Tony, told them at the Job Centre that he would love to do some volunteering that had something to do with the outside and with nature, and – villages tend to have networks and connections far more complex and obdurate than Japanese knotweed – Sandra at Borough Lodge’s sister works at the Job Centre so that worked out very nicely. At first I was a bit worried about Walter and Tony getting on, but after weighing each other up for a few seconds they proceeded to become the best of friends. And I don’t want to give the impression I’m some kind of Lady Bountiful Supervisor – oh no, I do my fair share, and for the most part Walter and Tony are patient with me though some of their exchanged glances speak volumes. Still, I fear they may soon have their first disagreement, and it goes to prove stereotypical notions can be wrong – Walter thinks we should give the garden a bit of a new look, and Tony thinks it should be how it was in Auntie Maureen’s time. Hopefully we can work that one out between us, but one thing I am putting my foot down on is that there absolutely must be lupins. They’re the most important thing of all.

     Well, apart from the begonias!I once had a music teacher who subscribed to the view (perpetrated by a certain TV presenter, too – you know who you are, Gareth!) that anyone and everyone can sing – it’s just a matter of getting rid of your inhibitions and concentrating and finding the right song and all that jazz. Well, Miss Leigh, I’m sorry, but you were wrong! Oh, I was okay – I was no Maria Callas, but I could hold a tune well enough. But there were and are some people – and I seemed to be fated to stand next to them in assembly – who could not do more than produce a squawk that makes a constipated duck with laryngitis sound harmonious if their very life depended on it.

     And it’s not just singing. It applies to riding a bike, or having a sense of direction, or baking, or any number of things.

     But I still managed to convince myself it didn’t apply to gardening. Gardening had nothing to do with having a “good ear” or a brain that’s wired the right way or even a light touch with pastry. I told myself the time had come to stop making the excuse of not having green fingers. There was no such thing as green fingers, even though my Mum gave a very good impression of having them and, preparing to perform a miracle of resurrection on the spider plant I had managed to bring to the point of expiry, sadly declared could “skip a generation”. 

     The unfortunate spider plant (or not so unfortunate, as it was soon flourishing) had not been a victim of my not having green fingers. Green fingers were a myth and an excuse. I hadn’t cared for it properly, had over-watered or under-watered it, and not paid attention, and had kept it in a space that was too sunny or too shady or – well, something. I could have sworn I had read and complied with every last instruction, but was probably deluding myself, just as Mum was, when she said, “Oh, I don’t always bother with the instructions, I just have the knack!”

     It didn’t really matter, and I effectively gave up on house plants. There are some incredibly realistic artificial ones now, and even I couldn’t kill those.

     When Auntie (Great Auntie, really) Maureen died, I was saddened, but not really shocked. She was in her 90s and, robust as a woman twenty years younger until relatively recently, had gone down hill quickly after a broken hip. Alas, not an uncommon story. When I discovered she had left me her bungalow, Caraway Lodge, I was staggered. We had been very close when I was a child, and she had spoilt me rotten when I stayed with her, even if I never did develop a taste for Caraway Seed Cake (I’ve never known anyone else call their house after a cake ingredient, though I’m sure that somewhere there’s a Currant Cottage, or even a Vanilla Villa). We’d kept in touch, and I’d been to visit her in the care home, but somehow it had never entered my mind (and she had never told me) that I would inherit Caraway Lodge. I was relieved that at least she had made it plain that if I chose to sell it rather than live in it, that would be absolutely fine and have her blessing, too.

     On the surface (though losing a loved one is always sad and I hope this doesn’t sound callous) it was a “Win-Win” situation. Either I chose to live in Caraway Lodge, and though it was about three quarters of an hour’s drive from work, it was certainly tempting, and at times I found my flat decidedly cramped, or I sold it, and even though it was a bit rundown, it would still put what folk called a “nice chunk of money” – and a much-needed chunk! – into my bank balance. Though Auntie Maureen hadn’t mentioned it directly, I didn’t for one minute suppose she’d mind a third alternative, renting it out as a holiday cottage, even though the area, though pretty enough, wasn’t really on the tourist trail and I was vaguely aware that there were certain applications that had to be made and procedures that had to be gone through. 

     I was emotionally all over the place as I drove out to the cottage for the first time since Auntie Maureen died. But even from down the road I could see that I had practical problems as well as emotional ones. There’s this idea that as you grow older, your childhood haunts seem to shrink, but I would have sworn that the garden had grown. And if it hadn’t grown outwards, at least not in terms or area, it had certainly grown upwards. I had a crash course in the ways of deserted houses, and I learnt that if there’s anything approaching a garden, it’s that, rather than the inside, that shows the first signs of neglect and a capacity to flourish with neglect! I suddenly remembered a wildlife documentary I’d see that made much of Elephant Grass. Well, an elephant couldn’t have hidden in the grass at Caraway Cottage, but it could have concealed a fair-sized dog. If it had been just grass, it might not have been quite so bad, but there were ranks of tall, aggressive thistles, their purple heads like warning beacons, and nettles, and the less potentially painful, but no less tall cow parsley and – oh, please don’t let it be Japanese knotweed, I thought, with visions of the need for incineration that wasn’t guaranteed to work. I doubted I could even make my way to the door without self-harm, and would have to come back clad in thick trousers and boots and gardening gloves, and armed with – well, what? I suspected that the kind of secateurs you got at B & Q would be pretty useless. I had a bittersweet memory pang of Auntie Maureen’s brightly coloured lupin sentinels and the begonias in pots by the door. I supposed those begonias had been buried and choked beneath the merciless and inanimate encroaching armies of nettles and thistles. 

     Someone cleared their throat, and I turned to see that Lydia Colville had come over to join me. She wasn’t exactly Auntie Maureen’s neighbour – it was one of those villages that strung out along the road rather than clustering round some central focus, and even the church was on the outskirts. But she lived in one of the nearest houses, and I knew that though they’d never been in each other’s pockets, she and Auntie Maureen had got on. We had one of those awkward pauses when you don’t know whether to just shake hands or to hug, and she compromised by patting my shoulder and giving me a quick peck on the cheek. “Good to see you again, Vicky, even though the circumstances are sad. Charles and I – did our best to keep the garden in some kind of order, at least to stop it being a jungle, when Maureen went into the care home, but when she passed away – well, I know it sounds like making excuses, but we didn’t know what the legal situation was.”

     I was on the point of saying that I wouldn’t have minded, and they should have asked, but it occurred to me just in time that sounded horribly rude, and they didn’t have my phone number, which I probably should have given them. And she was right, of course. There are some very funny (funny peculiar!) laws about trespass. 

     “It was such a wet summer, too,” Lydia said, “That didn’t help!”

     For a fleeting second, her use of the past tense referring to summer raised my hopes. That sounds terribly gloomy, but all I mean is that, despite the unseasonably warm weather, it WAS October, and even I knew that gardens died back in winter, Nature would do at least part of the work.

     Then I returned to the real world. Even if the sub-arctic snap nicknamed the Beast from the East resurfaced after a couple of years’ absence, and it stayed that way for months, not days, it was not going to miraculously make that jungle smooth and manageable. 

     If I were going to live in Caraway Cottage myself, a certain amount was necessary, in order to make getting to my own front door cease to be a safari, and not to risk complaints of other villagers who had, hitherto, been apparently tolerant of the wasteland in their midst, but that couldn’t be guaranteed to last forever. If I were either selling it or renting it as a holiday let, it would need something more thorough. 

     I had all manner of bleak thoughts on my way back to my cramped and cluttered little flat that suddenly seemed decidedly appealing – or did it? Some of them were purely practical, but they drifted into contemplations of those post-apocalyptic movies and landscapes. Well, okay, even at the time I acknowledged that was a tad melodramatic, but perhaps, in its way, it was even more chilling to realise just how quickly neat, much-loved houses, and bright, well-tended gardens can fall into wildness and neglect, and become forbidding, and overgrown and somehow alien. I reminded myself that houses and gardens are inanimate, and don’t know whether they are loved and cared for or not, but it was hard to believe they didn’t, and that an initial sulk, a fit of pique, of aggression even, had metamorphosed into a kind of suppurating indifference. I tried to tease myself out of it. Suppurating Indifference? For pity’s sake, woman, get over yourself, we’re talking about weeds, common or garden weeds, not some mad scientist’s triffid-like creation (even if the thought of potential Japanese knotweed WAS worrying). 

     That evening Lydia (now we HAD exchanged phone numbers) phoned to say that if it was okay with me, Charles could at least “Take off some of the worst of it”. I assured her it was absolutely fine but I didn’t want to put him to any trouble, and she assured me it was no trouble at all. Of course I knew that though they were good-hearted people and it was kindly meant, it was also to get the village rid of what even I (and my standards in that area are pretty low!) could see was an eyesore. She also said she’d taken a picture of the “offending article” (which I hadn’t thought to do) and checked on the Internet, and was inclined to think it definitely was just common or garden knotweed. Which was a relief of sorts.

     I told myself, as I next headed to Caraway Cottage, that at least now I knew the worst, and at least the worst had started to get a bit better, thanks to Charles’ scythe (somehow I just knew it would be beyond the capability of even an electric mower.) Well, it had and it hadn’t. True, it had been quite literally cut down to size, and my hypothetical dog would not longer get lost in it. But, understandably enough, Charles hadn’t given much thought to the aesthetic, and the hacked and flattened garden whilst now, at least, traversable (though I was still glad I had my trousers and boots on) looked just as wild and lost and beyond any kind of restoration. Nor was I entirely looking forward to being able to open the door, though I told myself at worst there would be a pile of junk mail and a slightly musty smell. Those I could cope with, after all. But there was something ineffably sad about it. As the staff in the care home, who had been very kind when I spoke to them, said, she had “wandered” a bit at the end, and I couldn’t help think it was merciful if it had put a gentle mist over thoughts about what might be happening to Caraway Cottage. I could and should have offered to help more, earlier on. That whirred round in my mind and I realised that grief comes to us all, and we cope with it because we must, but guilt is much more corrosive. 

     “Would you like me to come in with you?” Lydia asked quietly. I shook myself back to the present, and shook my head. “No, thanks. It’s good of you to offer, but …..”

     “It’s okay. I understand. You know where I am if you need me.”

     There is something all wrong about standing breathing in deep breaths and trying to steel yourself to enter a house that held happy childhood memories. Auntie Maureen always had her door painted green – it was her favourite colour and – like me – she refused to believe it was unlucky. Caraway Cottage had an unusual door, with a little arch at the top. And though the paint was flaking a bit, that, at least, was easily remedied and probably the least of my worries. I’m no DIY freak, but there can be something therapeutic about painting a door, especially an outside one.

     Inside my boot, I felt my foot hit against something hard, and was a bit puzzled – Caraway Cottage didn’t have a doorstep and was flush to the ground. I bent down, trying to work out what it was, and still cautious as though they had been slashed down by the scythe, the nettles and thistles were still there, and I didn’t entirely trust the claims of the gardening gloves. Even through them, though, I realised that what I was touching wasn’t stone – it was ceramic. A pot that had fallen on its side. Despite the tangle of weeds still around it, it wasn’t too hard to stand upright – and then I saw that it was one of Auntie Maureen’s pots of begonias that she had loved so much. Though it was lying on its side, the pot was unbroken, and its warm, mellow terracotta colour still clearly visible. But there was more to it than that. Because the begonia was still there, late-blooming in crimson glory, despite being overgrown, despite being neglected. It did not even need Mum’s attention, though I decided to put it in her self keeping, at least for a while until I got things sorted out. I wondered if other things may have survived, and hoped they had, but even if they hadn’t, it was okay. And it meant I could see beyond the wildness and the neglect, and beyond my own tangled feelings of guilt, and see the past and the future of Caraway Cottage, whatever I decided the latter might be, and I was more inclined to think I might make it my own home, even though it would mean quite a lot of work, and even though I could certainly do with the money that would come from selling or renting it. 

     It had already entered my mind that it would be one of those meaningful symbolic gestures to change the name to Begonia Cottage, but it went as soon as it had come. If Auntie Maureen had wanted it to be called Begonia Cottage, she would have called it Begonia Cottage. 

     I’m already spending some weekends there, now, and I have found a couple of willing helpers with the garden – as Charles said, reasonably enough, and with no need at all for his apologetic tone, he was more than happy to do a bit of “crisis management” but as he worked full time …..

     But Walter, the retired gentleman across the road whose bungalow only has a tiny front plot, confessed his fingers were aching to get the feel of soil on them again, and a young lad who’s currently out of a job, Tony, told them at the Job Centre that he would love to do some volunteering that had something to do with the outside and with nature, and – villages tend to have networks and connections far more complex and obdurate than Japanese knotweed – Sandra at Borough Lodge’s sister works at the Job Centre so that worked out very nicely. At first I was a bit worried about Walter and Tony getting on, but after weighing each other up for a few seconds they proceeded to become the best of friends. And I don’t want to give the impression I’m some kind of Lady Bountiful Supervisor – oh no, I do my fair share, and for the most part Walter and Tony are patient with me though some of their exchanged glances speak volumes. Still, I fear they may soon have their first disagreement, and it goes to prove stereotypical notions can be wrong – Walter thinks we should give the garden a bit of a new look, and Tony thinks it should be how it was in Auntie Maureen’s time. Hopefully we can work that one out between us, but one thing I am putting my foot down on is that there absolutely must be lupins. They’re the most important thing of all.

     Well, apart from the begonias!