The Joys of Gardening

Each day was the same, and every year was the same. Claire shared the house with her long-standing miserable ‘husband’ Tony. They decided to sleep in separate beds on New Year's Eve a few years ago. Well, that’s not strictly true; Tony moved into a separate bedroom from Claire. This wasn’t following a lengthy discussion highlighting his poor sleep patterns resulting, regretfully, in a decision to sleep in separate beds. No! One December afternoon, he made up the bed in the spare front bedroom, and when it came to bedtime, he went to bed in a different bedroom. She searched the house looking for him until his horrific snoring led her to his new bedroom. This change in his sleeping arrangements was designed to hurt her feelings, and as usual, he succeeded.

Claire spent many hours on the phone with her sisters, whispering about Tony’s general behaviour. The sisters took deep inward breaths and roared at Claire, ‘Get rid of him’.  Claire always promised that she would improve her life this coming New Year. The New Year she spoke of never came.

Claire always came up with a suitable excuse for ‘not getting rid of him’. Usually, it was the money excuse. Without Tony, she didn’t feel she could survive financially. Despite being on a pension and not legally married, he received a higher pension than Claire. Due to numerous bronchial illnesses, he was also entitled to a car. She knew that if she left him, he would get the car even though he couldn’t drive!

When Claire’s family came for a visit, Tony would attempt to be ‘pleasant’, but this rarely lasted for very long. Tony would find the most basic actions caused him a problem, setting him off yelling and screaming at anyone about anything for hours. However, the usual butt of his anger was Claire, who accepted all insults thrown at her and would scurry around trying to find a way to get back into his good books. 

Claire saw herself as a ‘good person’, a ‘good mother’, and an ‘excellent neighbour’ and would behave as if Tony’s lousy behaviour and manners were simply a cross to be borne without complaint. Over the years, Claire had noticed that the longer she stayed with him, the less sympathy her friends, family and neighbours felt for her.  

Tony must have been as bored as Claire. During the Winter, he sat in the sitting room glued to the massive television, but come Spring and Summer, despite receiving many financial benefits from the government based on his poor health, he could mysteriously jump up and start furiously digging the front garden. Within reason, as much as his personality would allow, he would smile and chat with anyone he could engage in conversation. He loved telling everyone how wonderful he was and would fail to notice how desperate the neighbours were to escape him. If it were Autumn, Tony was a self-proclaimed expert on all types of domestic DIY - be it leaking pipes or lights that didn’t work too well. He would go to his neighbours’ houses and talk to them at the top of his voice about how wonderful he was whilst doing various tasks in their homes.  Claire would ring her sisters and tell them how admired Tony was. Her sisters were gobsmacked at the pride in Claire’s voice.  

In the Spring, Tony bought summer bedding plants and planted flowers as far as the eye could see, resulting in their front garden becoming a blaze of colour. The garden design was another chance for everyone to admire Tony’s achievements. Tony’s average day was about 15 minutes digging, weeding and planting, and the next 6 hours were spent trying to persuade anyone passing to talk to him and compliment his gardening skills. Claire’s job was to make cups of tea, listen in raptures to the passersby complimenting Tony and only speak if she could enlarge on the compliments. If Claire made the fatal mistake of starting a conversation that wasn’t all about the fantastic Tony, he would go nuts, and a massive argument would begin in the garden in front of everyone. Slowly people would cease stopping to admire Tony’s garden and instead whisper to themselves about the horrible man living at number 17.

Over the Christmas break, there would always be at least one massive argument, and time would be spent sitting in stony silence. One year, Claire’s younger sister Linda came to stay for a few days. Linda and Claire planned to spend the morning in the shops a short distance away. Positively twitching for a row, Tony said, ‘You are not allowed to take the car’. Understanding immediately that this was a punishment of some sort, Claire hung her head in contrition and said: 

‘No problem, we can walk. OK, Linda?’

‘Yes, fine’.

‘I’m not taking my keys, Tony; you will be here when we get back?’ said Claire. (She couldn’t find them and suspected that Tony had deliberately hidden them.). No answer, although he had heard the question. She asked again, waiting for a response. Eventually, Claire turned to Linda and said, ‘Well, we don’t need them, and he knows we haven’t taken the keys with us’.

On returning home - the house was completely locked up. He’d gone out. Tony forbade Claire to own a mobile phone; therefore, Claire could not ring around to find him and persuade him to come home and open the door.

Standing in the garden, Linda looked horror-struck as her pensioner sister began flinging herself over the 5-foot back garden gate and then balancing precariously on the top before raising a leg and sliding down the other side. Linda heard the gate bolts being drawn, and eventually, the sister came out carrying a collapsable ladder, placed it against the wall underneath the bedroom windows, and began to climb. Linda looked up and saw a small open bedroom window. She looked at her 70-year-old sister, determinedly ascending the ladder.  Reaching in through the small window, Claire managed to grab the lever of the bigger window, which she opened and, leaving the safety of the ladder, climbed into a bedroom.  

A short while later, the front door opened, and Claire said: 

‘There! He must have known he couldn’t lock me out!’  

‘Has he done this before?’ Linda asked.

‘Well, no, not really’.  

‘Not really?’ shrieked Linda.  ‘When on earth are you going to change your life and leave him?’  

‘One day, one day’, said Claire miserably.

Time monotonously moved on. Nothing changed. Claire would ring and itemise her frankly boring life to her family.  

‘Despite Tony’s hard work in everyone’s house, almost no one seems to want to speak to him.’, she moaned. It never occurred to Claire that Tony’s unacceptable behaviour towards herself kept the neighbours at a distance.

‘Well’, said the elder sister, ‘if he’s as rude to them as he is to you, no wonder no one likes him’.

Angela, a neighbour further up the road, had eventually asked Tony to fix her garden wall. Tony, who did almost nothing in his own house, rushed up the road to Angela’s and only returned home late in the evenings. His arrival time at Angela’s began to get earlier and earlier, and his departure time later and later. Claire began to wander up the road as if on her way to the shops, staring intensely at Angela’s wall for signs of progress. She rang her sisters at night and casually mentioned the wall and the amount of time he spent at Angela’s.  

‘Is it making him any more pleasant?’ asked Linda.

‘Why?’

‘Well, I’d love it if he was out of the house all day. Horrible man.’

‘I’m furious, after all that cleaning, cooking, helping him out with the computer he can’t use, driving him everywhere because he can’t drive, and yet he leaves me alone day after day. I’m desperate for him to fix the jobs around the house he never has time for. A light bulb in the hall needs replacing, and he just walks past it. Everything is Angela, Angela’, said the distressed Claire.

‘You don’t need him to do anything. You’re a competent woman. Look it up on YouTube. It covers a multitude of ‘How To’ videos. You can learn anything.’

Eventually, the wall that Tony was attempting to rebuild collapsed. Unfortunately, Angela’s big fat tabby cat, a treasured member of Angela’s family, was sunbathing next to the wall when the collapse occurred. Tabby must have been hit by the flying rocks and was found dead under the rubble.  

Claire rang her sisters to tell them that Angela and Tony had a screaming fight in Angela’s front garden, which had emanated from the death of Tabby. In the course of the row, Angela had flung numerous vicious insults at him and had told him he was never to call at her house ever again. The local neighbourhood had gathered around Angela’s garden, enjoying every delicious minute.

Tony arrived home, and Claire reported that he was near to tears. Claire told the sisters that this was the end of Tony’s and Angela’s friendship as, based on her experience of 27 years of living with him, he had never once apologised to her. Claire felt confident the name ‘Angela’ would never be used in their house again.

Within days Tony was running up and down the road banging on Angela’s door, shouting: 

‘Let me in. I’m sorry about Tabby.’  

‘Fuck off’', called Angela through the firmly closed door.  

Tony would crawl back to his home, controlling his sobbing. After a while, Tony would start bellowing at Claire for his lunch, demanding to know what the hold-up was. Claire would rush to prepare the lunch and place the steaming food on the carefully laid dining room table.

‘Get me a tray; I don’t want to eat it here’, and Claire would rush to prepare a tray. 

After a half hour or so, she would go into the sitting room, and the tray with all the uneaten food was sitting on the floor.

‘Disgusting food, couldn’t eat it’, said Tony, kicking the tray further away from him and watching Claire run to pick up the tray.

When Claire told Liz, the older sister, about the tray and poor Tony being unable to eat, Liz said, 

‘Wow, he must be missing Angela’!  

Claire rounded on the sister. ‘What do you mean?’ 

‘Well, it's obvious. When your love affair has broken up, your appetite is often affected. Poor Tony.’ she laughed.

‘They weren’t having an affair; he was being kind to her!’

Claire and Liz had a massive row, and the phone was put down. 

Everyone knew about the death of Tabby and the Tony-Angela row, and despite Claire’s total denial, all seemed to know that Tony had been running after Angela. Claire slowly noticed that the neighbours were becoming more considerate towards her and was invited to join them for a cup of tea. Claire and the neighbours would look across the road at Tony in his beloved garden, often staring towards Angela’s house. 

After a while, the neighbours started complaining about the dreadful half-finished jobs Tony had done around their houses.

‘He did an appalling job on my kitchen cabinet. It has never shut properly since.’

‘He came to unblock the toilet, and after he had left, when we flushed it, the toilet kept filling up and flooded everywhere. We had to get an emergency plumber to fix it. Cost the earth.'

'Our electric heater wouldn’t work, so he changed the fuse and nearly blew up my grandma. It was the wrong fuse.’

Instead of moaning, they soon howled with laughter at Tony’s failures and antics. They all had different, funnier tales to share about his displays of temper when things went wrong in the garden.

During the afternoon, the neighbours said:

‘We’re all going away to Greece next year. The hotels and villages are so pretty; why don’t you come?’

‘Oh, Tony doesn’t like to travel.’

‘That’s fine; it’s just us girls. Tony wouldn’t be welcome.’

One of the neighbours leaned in towards Claire and, taking her hand, spoke in quiet, even tones:

‘Tony is unpleasant and bad-tempered, and whether you can accept it or not, Angela told us he wanted to leave you and move in with her. You need to change your life and get shot of him.’  

They discussed how she might change her life, and Claire finally told the neighbours that she was interested in going on holiday with them. How on earth was she going to manage this? How was she going to change her life?

She spoke to her sisters on a three-way screen share and told them about the afternoon in the neighbours. The sisters said:

“It’s New Year soon. Make your Resolution so that: you will find a way to go to Greece; you will split up from Tony, if not immediately, but sometime during the following year.’  

Claire agreed to these New Year’s Resolutions with her sisters and then appeared to forget about them promptly and never mentioned them again.

During the following year, things moved as usual.  Tony was as vile as ever, and Claire still ran anxiously after him and continued to do his bidding. The neighbours still planned their holiday and had ceased asking Claire. No changes to Claire's life had been made.

The garden appeared to be Tony’s main interest in life now there was no Angela.  One late spring afternoon, he told Claire that he would be mowing the lawn that afternoon and was going for a snooze before cutting the grass.

During his snooze, Claire got busy. She quickly checked her favourite YouTube video on maintaining a lawnmower. She told herself that Tony would yell and scream at her as usual if the mower wasn’t cleaned and maintained correctly.  She looked at the mower handles and carefully removed the rubber casing, musing that it needed washing and cleaning; she looked at the electric cable, picked it up, pulled it, and yanked hard to ensure its condition. She checked around, ensured she had completed all the necessary tasks, and sat quietly and waited.

Within an hour, Tony thumped his furious way into the kitchen. He grabbed her, and Claire cowered, feeling sure he would hit her. 

‘The noise you’re making, no wonder I can’t sleep. No wonder I had to move out from sleeping with you. The noise.’ 

Since the ‘break up’ with Angela, there had been many irrational eruptions from Tony, and she was almost getting used to them. This time Claire seemed ready for him. 

‘Sorry, I was chatting with Angela. She’s popping to the shop and will be returning shortly. Perhaps you want to hold off mowing the lawn to let her pass without seeing you; she won’t be long.’

He stared at her with loathing. How had he missed Angela chatting with Claire? Picking up the electric mower, he stormed into the front garden. Leaving the mower on the lawn, he went to the garden gate to see if Angela was returning. Claire quietly came out with a wet cloth, drenched the bare metal handles, and stepped back from the mower.

Angela, unaware that she was supposed to be at the shops, was clearly not returning. A disappointed Tony turned to Claire,

‘Plug it in, plug it in’, he screamed with agitation. 

Still wearing her outdoor rubber shoes, Claire smiled an unusual smile and ran and did as she had been bid.

The mower burst into life as he grabbed the wet bare metal handles with both hands and, acting as a man possessed, pushed the mower, made a series of useless, angry attempts to kick the cord out of the way, missed - and all went very quiet, including Tony. The last thing Claire heard before all the house electricity failed was a neighbour screaming, followed a short while later by the ambulance arriving to scoop up Tony’s lifeless body.

Sitting on a glorious beach in southern Greece, Linda and Liz noticed how truly vivacious their sister had become. She bore only a slight resemblance to the cowed old woman, too frightened to open her mouth. Instead, Claire kept them all royally entertained. Her neighbours sat spellbound next to their beloved funny friend.  

Eventually, one of the neighbours said, ‘If you say ‘mower’ and ‘electrocuted’ one more time, I swear I will wet myself. What a dumbo; he couldn’t even do DIY on his own mower. What fool would remove all the casings from the handles, wash them, leave them wet, and then go out and mow the lawn? Sorry, but he deserved everything he got.’

One of the ladies in the laughing group could be heard saying: 

‘Thank you so much for that wonderful cake you baked for my birthday. Where do you get your recipes from, Claire?’

‘Usually from YouTube - I get most of my good ideas from there’, said Claire smiling broadly.