20. Jul, 2020

'Garden Party'

The street’s gardens had undergone some cultural changes.  Where the Borough Engineer and his wife, childless Methodists who were quietly  respectable in the conventional way, had weeded their borders so vigorously that barely a michaelmas daisy could get up the courage to grow in them, herringbone brick now overlaid the once disciplined lawn and showcased only parked cars.  Weekend valeting of these, though, was just as conscientiously maintained for appearance’s sake as the Borough Engineer’s care of his maroon saloon had formerly been.  Ironically, the garden now flaunted far more vibrant colours, albeit in metal, than it had ever done before.

Woody, so nicknamed as from childhood onwards until more recent times he had never had a woodbine far from his mouth, even scorning filters, stared out at his own garden space on the row, where a raised patio, created by their son for his parents to sit out on, had sunk in the middle.

“I told him!” he called back over his shoulder to his wife, who was making cups of tea for them in the kitchen.  “I told him that ground’s no good!  I’ve had it grass, I’ve had it tarmac, I’ve had it concrete, I’ve had decking…”

“We have,” corrected Joan.

“Yes, but I did it all, didn’t I?” said Woody testily, who disliked being interrupted mid diatribe. 

“There must have been an Anderson shelter back in the day,” suggested Joan.

“No, there wasn’t!  Don’t you remember when he filled in underneath, it was just solid clay?   No, just heave and some underground stream, I reckon.”

“Yes.  I know you do,” Joan patiently agreed, both their suggestions clearly not made for the first time.

“Outdoor room!” Woody scoffed scathingly.  “Not much use when it’s pissing down like this, is it?  You can’t get that roof mended!” and he cackled to himself at his own witticism.

“It’s only a shower,” said Joan, accustomed to being conciliatory about  perceived adversities. “We can go out in a little bit.  The forecast said it’d clear up by eleven.”

“Oh, yes!  Good job we watched young Ollie on the local news last night, then,” agreed Woody.

They had a joke between them that this perky young weatherman, with his Tintin quiff and array of perfectly accessorised suits of many colours adorning his dainty frame, always gave them the best weather and that if they had missed his and saw another forecast, it was bound to rain.

“You’d better not put your washing out later,” Woody continued, picking up his tea and going back to his post by the sliding patio doors, which were open to the scent of cypress trees in tubs on either side sending in a damp, foresty fragrance.

“My washing!” muttered Joan to herself, with a dry little twitch of her eyebrows.  “Why not?” she asked more audibly.

“Because they’re off again down there!”

Woody gestured to the right with his head, from which direction an acrid smell was beginning to rise above the scent of the ornamental dwarf cypress trees, plumes of smoke billowing up as the sun came back out again as promised.

“Another barbecue?” enquired Joan.  “They do love them, don’t they?”

“It’s like living by the bloody crem.!” Woody exclaimed.

“Oh, they’re just enjoying being able to get together in the garden again,” said Joan indulgently.  “It’s nice for them.”

“Nice!  They’re not following the rules, though, are they?” criticized Woody as they took their tea out to sit at the garden table.  “That won’t be so nice for them, will it, Joan, when they’re all dead in two weeks’ time?  It’s never the same people visiting!”

“Well, if you weren’t always noseying out, you wouldn’t be worrying about it, would you?” countered Joan.

“Noseying!  I’m Neighborhood Watch!” Woody objected.

“We are,” said Joan quietly.  “As it happens.”

“And what about that family where Crabtree lived?” he went on indignantly, ignoring this.  “Them with the garage for a garden!  Never-ending stream of visitors there!”

“They’ve always been close, though, haven’t they, the brothers’ and sisters’ families?”

“That’s not the point, is it?” said Woody heavily.

“No.  Well, at least you can be happy that you’ve made sure we’ve stuck to the lockdown rules, can’t you?” There was a slight edge to Joan’s voice now.  “We haven’t seen Mark and Lyndsey, nor our grandchildren, nor our baby great grandchildren since the 23rd of March, have we?”

“Oh, my god, woman!  Why don’t we celebrate that instead of Christmas?  You’ve still got the calendar on that page with a big ring round the 23rd and you mention it every day!”  Woody hitched his chair about angrily, making the metal feet wobble and scrape on the uneven surface, which reminded him of his first gripe.  “It’s all over the show, this flagging.  Puts me in mind of crazy paving.”  He laughed now.  “Remember when that was all the rage and me and your dad smashed up their front garden path to lay it?  Burst the water main with the road drill he’d borrowed from work?  What a mess!”

“There’s no reason to change the calendar page, is there?  That’s when our life stopped,” said Joan flatly.

Woody’s reminiscent smile faded.

“Is that how you really feel, love?” he asked.

“Yes.  Yes, it is!  All right, we’ve done that face time thing but it’s not the same, is it?  What about the babies?  Lyndsey told me Scarlett’s walking now!”

“I don’t know what it is with names, nowadays,” commented Woody.   “What do they do, pick ‘em from a paint sample list?  Scarlett, Ebony.  What’s the other one called?  Blue?  You can’t call a boy that!  Crackers!”

Joan remained silent, looking down the garden.  Woody glanced at her face, which was now sadly set.

“I’m not being hard on you, Joan.  We’re in the shielding group.  You know that.”

“Oh, yes.   I know that.  And we have been, haven’t we?  For nearly four whole months!  We can have one of those bubbles now, can’t we?”

“No, Joan.  That’s for people who live on their own.”

“Woody.  You can have people in the garden.  Just like our neighbours do.  It won’t be breaking your precious rules!”

“My rules!” 

Woody got up, ready to stamp aggrievedly off back inside.

“I want to see our family!” cried Joan.  “Otherwise, what’s the point?  What’s the point of us going on and on, on our own, stuck in here like this?” and there was such anguish in her tone that Woody sat down again and stared at her.

“What’s the point?” he said wonderingly.  “We’re the point.  You and me.  We always were the point.  All I ever wanted was to be with you.  Family’s part of that, yes.  But you’ve always come first with me, Joan, you know that.  And I’ve always come first with you.  Haven’t I?”

Beneath his bluster, Woody still sought Joan’s reassurance that she loved him, for this was how he saw the question.  Joan, though, understood that it also encompassed the complexities of control and this time, she stood firm.

“It can’t just be you and me, Woody.  It isn’t just you and me.  I want to see our family!”

He took it, of course, as a form of rejection and she saw the appeal to her on his face fall into a kind of disappointment but she resisted the pressure to comply with his view that as people were grown and gone, all her attention needed to be upon Woody,  just  as he saw his own as being devoted to her. 

“It’s time we saw the family, Woody,” she repeated with calm firmness.  “We can be up to six of us in the garden and keep our two metre distance but, let’s just start by asking Mark and Lyndsey to come.  Son and daughter first, our grandchildren and great grandchildren later on.”

Woody put down his mug.

“Right,” he said, capitulating to the emotional strength of her demand.  “I’d best go in and give them a ring, then, hadn’t I?  Seeing as it’s turned into a nice day for sitting in the garden.”  He rose again to go in but this time without the temperamental flounce and gave her a gentle smile, despite his earlier chagrin.  “I told you Ollie’s forecast’d come good, didn’t I?”

“You did,” agreed Joan, smiling back.  “Thanks, love.”

“You only had to say!” Woody told her, glossing over things for dignity’s sake and Joan, because of course, she did love him, left it at that.