The Garden

 

Eric was beside himself when his wife died. A neighbour reported to the police that she hadn’t seen him for a week, so the emergency services team expected the worst when they broke the door down. As luck would have it, they caught him just in time. Eric had almost starved himself to death in his rocking chair.

After a few days in hospital, having made a full recovery and somewhat inspired by the kindness and generosity of the staff, Eric set about life with renewed vigour. Gone were the morose feelings of loneliness and despair.

Ascribing his new lease of life to a spiritual awakening, he returned to church to give thanks. Gardening was his favourite pastime, though, and so he began to devote a good two hours a day bringing it back up to the standard he’d maintained so lovingly for thirty years. The garden had suffered in the time he’d waited to die but now that he knew Ethel was with him in spirit, he intended to show her the steely resolve she had always adored.

Their only son, a surly creature by the name of Malcolm, had other ideas. When his mother died, his only wish was that his father would follow her as soon as was humanly possible. Eric sought comfort from Malcolm but the only vaguely kind words he could muster were that she’d always be waiting for him, ‘you know, up in heaven’.

Malcolm’s wife, Denise, could hardly keep her joy to herself when he reported how his father was slowly slipping away through malnutrition, having peered through the window to check on progress at convenient intervals. Denise had assessed that the house was worth at least half a million, being the only detached property on his street. The other houses along the thin, little road were old bricklayers’ cottages, small and poky and mostly rented out.

Unfortunately for Eric, he had initially agreed with social services that it would be best if power of attorney was handed over to Malcolm. Now, though, with a new spring to his step, Eric had filed for this to be reversed. Although it would take a good few months, pending in-depth psychological reports to determine his mental and emotional wellbeing, he had been told that there was every chance of a good outcome and had already been granted approval for his application to go on a three-week, no expense spared Caribbean holiday. His healthy pension fund would easily see to that.

Malcolm and Dense had fumed ever since they knew of the holiday. As Malcolm’s debts spiralled and Denise’s fuse shortened, a house meeting was called.

‘Drug the old git,’ she said.

‘I can’t do that, D. He’s sharp as a pin,’ replied Malcolm.

‘That Caribbean holiday’s going to cost a small fortune. You do know that, don’t you?’

Malcolm said nothing, and then a light came on in his head.

‘I’ve still got power of attorney. Why don’t we wait till he’s gone on holiday, then we can get the builders in, do up the house and put it on the market. We can easily rent him a little flat somewhere and put him there until, you know,’ he said.

They drank to the ingenious idea and spent the rest of the evening plotting Eric’s hasty demise.

With only a week till the holiday, Eric decided that his love for Ethel should be celebrated in some way, so he set about planning a suitably floral tribute in the front garden. Digging up a large, oval-shaped patch of grass running alongside the path that led from the gate to the house, the idea was to lay all of Ethel’s favourite flowers and plants before he left for the Caribbean. It would be something to nurture, something to remind him of her every time he went out.

He worked hard, straining every sinew in his body to fulfil the task. Even with the sun beating down on his back, he only stopped for lunch and trips to the gardening centre. At night, he’d sit and flick through his books to find the names of the flowers and plants Ethel loved.

Meanwhile, Malcolm had invested a considerable sum securing the services of a reputable building company, who agreed to take on the job at short notice so long as they were paid in advance. There was a fair amount of work to be done, requiring a plumber, electrician, plasterer, carpenter and three labourers. The house hadn’t been updated since the seventies and Malcolm was wary about throwing so much money at it, but Denise insisted that it needed doing if they were to realise its full value.

‘Remember what we agreed before, numbnuts. If he don’t recognise the place, he won’t mind moving so much, will he?’ she said.

Malcolm agreed. With the power of attorney papers to hand, the last remaining equity held in their cruddy little semi on the horrific Winsome estate was loaned from the bank and passed over to the builder. Denise scrounged enough to pay for the hovel of a flat she’d found on Gumtree. The landlady insisted on a guarantor and Malcolm begrudgingly conceded.

On the morning of his departure, Eric was still far from finishing Ethel’s tribute. Seeing how the job had taken its toll, his next door neighbour, Ruby, offered to help with her daughter, Betty. They had a great time together, rearranging the patch as the glorious picture took shape in their minds. As the sun set behind the little primary school opposite, Eric was finally happy.

‘It’s lovely,’ said Ruby.

Eric’s shoulders finally dropped from his ears. ‘You’re right, it couldn’t be better,’ he said, tears welling on his eyelids.

‘What time is it?’ Ruby inhaled dramatically and glanced at her watch, gasping. ‘Eric, call a taxi now! You’ll be late for your flight!’

‘Don’t you worry about that, little missy. It’s all arranged,’ he replied. ‘Thanks so much, you two,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’

Ruby and Betty blushed. ‘Oh shurrup. You’re getting soppy in your old age. Now get up those stairs and wash that muck off.’

When the taxi arrived, Eric tried to push some money into Ruby’s palm for watering the flowers and plants while he was away, but she just told him off.

‘Don’t be silly. It’ll give Betty something useful to do. She spends far too much time in front of that box, ‘ she said with a tight sniff. ‘Now scram.’

So off he went.

Early next morning, as Ruby and Betty were leaving in the drizzle, she couldn’t help notice the vans parked outside Eric’s house. They made their way to school, after which she walked another mile to get to work.

When she finished at five-thirty, Ruby made her way over to the childminder’s house to collect Betty. They popped into Sainsburys for some supper. Betty couldn’t stop talking about Eric’s garden and how she’d water it every day until he got back. Ruby felt an overwhelming sense of pride for having such a beautiful daughter.

Approaching the house, Ruby could just make out the top of a skip poking out over the fence of one of the gardens. As they got closer, she realised it was Eric’s. They’d placed the skip directly over Ethel’s tribute.

Betty burst into tears and ran up to the skip to kick it. As she did so, she slipped and her leg smacked into the rusty dirt of the skip’s frame. Blood gushed from the cut as she screamed in agony.

Ruby dropped her shopping and carried her home. Once inside, she lay Betty on the sofa and ran to the kitchen for a cloth and her first-aid kit.

‘Be a brave girl,’ she said, as she applied the antiseptic to the gaping wound.

She was a brave girl. The anger still pulsing through her temples arrested the slightest pain.

Ruby was sure she’d had her tetanus jab but something in the back of her head told her to check once the surgery opened the next day. Betty was in a state of shock for the rest of the evening. Her anger turned to sobs for Eric as she remembered how hard he’d worked to get the arrangement just right. Ruby tried to make sense of it with her, but there was no reasonable explanation for what had happened. As her worry for Betty subsided, anger grew inside Ruby. Neither felt hungry, although Betty had some cheese and biscuits on her mother’s insistence before bedtime.

Ruby didn’t sleep a wink that night, but when Betty woke up in the morning she screamed in pain. The wound had become infected. Ruby raced to the phone and called for an ambulance but was told that they would have to make their own way to accident and emergency. Though taking a taxi would flip her bank account into the red and trigger another charge, she had no other option.

After being treated, they caught the bus home. The doctor diagnosed that tetanus had spread aggressively through Betty’s body. One more day and she’d have been dead. The jab she received four years ago had only just lapsed.

With Betty tucked up on the sofa, Ruby made her way over to Eric’s house to find out what was going on. As she walked down his path, she noticed the crushed flowers and plants around the skip and felt a sadness she hadn’t known for years. The skip was already half-full with broken down furniture, carpet, curtain material, bricks and general waste.

‘Can I help you?’ the man at the door said.

‘Yes, I hope so. This is my neighbour Eric’s house and he never said anything about having building work done.’

‘Sorry, love. We’re just here to do the place up.’

‘Well, why’s the skip been put in the garden? Didn’t you see the new flowerbed?’

‘The guy that owns the place said it was OK to put it there.’

The penny dropped. Ruby knew it was Eric’s son.

As she walked back up the path, she noticed Eric’s box of photographs and fished it out.

Later that evening, Betty told her mother about the nightmare she’d had about Eric the night before. In it, he was swimming happily in the sea when two huge snakes surrounded him. He swam as fast as he caught but the snakes coiled around his body as he tried to get to shore, then she woke up.

Ruby put her to bed and wondered what to do, but it was hopeless. They’d broken down and thrown Eric’s stuff away, and there was no point in spoiling his holiday now. She didn’t even know which island he was on, let alone who took him there.

The next morning, bright and early, Ruby took her stepladders over to the skip and retrieved what she could from the debris. She found a few more photographs and four gardening books.

She woke Betty and saw that the swelling on her leg had almost disappeared., so they got ready and left the house as usual.

The three weeks passed slowly for Eric. Even when he was sure that Ruby and Betty would look after it, he couldn’t help worrying about Ethel’s tribute. After the first few days, he started counting down the days till he could go back and resume its nurturing. He enjoyed swimming but something in the back of his mind kept on nagging at him.

Malcolm and Denise spent their time worrying, too. Plaster had blown in three rooms and the roof needed retiling.

With the pair wanting to put the house on the market immediately, Denise insisted on filling the place with rented soft furnishings to make it look ‘nice but lived in’.

The living room and dining room were knocked into one, the kitchen and bathroom were completely overhauled and the downstairs loo had been turned into a wet room. With new carpet throughout, the house was unrecognisable. The bedrooms were given the full treatment with fake flowers and rented curtains everywhere.

The flat they’d rented for Eric was part-furnished and three miles from the closest town, an awful enclave they knew he hated. It had a pungent odour of stale nicotine and gave very little light. They’d rescued his clothes, to save on replenishing them, along with his trusty old rocking chair, which they thought might remind him of how he must starve himself to death without further delay.

On the day before Eric’s return, Malcolm and Denise were carrying out an early morning inspection of the house when he noticed that an errant screw had been left in the reveal of the master bedroom’s fireplace. Cursing the builder for leaving it there, he fetched a hammer to knock it into the reveal and started smacking hell out of it, but it was a sturdy old screw and refused to budge.

With all his might, Malcolm drew back the hammer and uttered the words, ‘one last nail in the bloody coffin’.

The force of the blow dislodged a heaving mass of residual soot, which plummeted down the chimney and into the bedroom, filling the room with a thunderous cloud of blinding blackness.

He managed to find the doorway but, unsteady with spluttering, he tripped as he felt for the stairway’s handrail and fell down to the living room, where Denise was trying to scream. The banging from upstairs had also loosened thirty years’ worth of soot from the living room fireplace’s chimney, causing it to bellow its contents into the room just as it had directly above.

They tried to find the front door but they were so disorientated that they just fumbled around the room, trying to see for the black carbon that filled their lungs. In less than a minute, they were dead.

As they lay there, huddled together with the dust gently settling, a beeping noise could be heard outside. A lorry driver had clasped the lorry’s claws onto the skip, which was casually lifted up and away from Ethel’s tribute.

Ruby and Betty heard the commotion and watched from their little front garden as the skip was taken away. Once the lorry had gone, they hurried over, hoping against hope that the flowers and plants had magically survived. Of course, they hadn’t.

They looked at each other, dismayed.

‘Can we make it look nice for Eric to come back to?’ said Betty.

‘Course we can, my little angel,’ said Ruby. ‘Let’s get some trowels.’

They worked all morning and didn’t once look at the house. If they had, they’d have seen the sootiness of the curtains through the windows.

Laying each of the flowers and plants around the edges of the sunken patch, they had some lunch and then went to the gardening centre to get a few flowers and plants as a gesture for Eric to add to when he got back.

The next day, they waited and listened out for Eric’s taxi. Ruby was adamant that she should be there to explain what had happened.

As the day turned to dusk, Betty shouted. ‘He’s back, Mummy! Quick!’

Betty opened the front door as Eric was getting out of the taxi.

‘Mummy’s just coming,’ she said.

‘Oh, no need to worry her now,’ he said.

Ruby walked quickly up the path and stopped in front of Eric, who was busy paying the taxi-driver.

‘Eric,’ she said, ‘would you come and have a cup of tea with us? There’s something I need to tell you.’

‘Oh, don’t trouble yourself, deary, I’m bushed. Besides, I want to see how Ethel’s patch is co…’

Looking over the fence, he dropped his bag and stood there, motionless.

‘What’s happened to Ethel’s tribute?’ he asked.

Ruby put her arm through his. ‘Come and have a cuppa. You need to sit down.’

The blood had flushed away from his face and he looked unsteady as he walked down Ruby’s path and into the house. Betty carried his bag as best she could behind them.

She told him everything she knew but Eric just wouldn’t listen, so she went to the cupboard and handed him the photos and books. ‘I managed to fish these out of the skip,’ she said.

Eric looked at the sad little things in his lap as if they were all he had in the world. He brushed away some dirt to reveal a picture of himself and Ethel on their wedding day.

Then, as if he had finally understood how awful his son was, how he’d tried to make a man of him, he wept. He sat there and he wept for some time while Ruby and Betty knelt in front of him.

After a while, he looked up and smiled.

‘We best go and have a butcher’s at what they’ve done,’ he said. There was more than a little resolution to his voice. In that short time, he had grieved for his son, and disowned him.

As they walked down Eric’s path, he looked at the laid down flowers and plants that surrounded Ethel’s tribute and took a deep breath, which he exhaled at the door as he placed the key into its lock.

Opening it up a little, he peered inside and turned to the girls with a look of befuddled confusion. ‘It looks like there’s been a fire,’ he said.

Ruby and Betty looked down and said nothing as he walked inside.

The room was black from top to bottom. Over in the far corner, at the foot of an armchair he didn’t recognise, lay two very dirty bodies.

‘Don’t let Betty in, whatever you do!’ he shouted, but it was too late. They were standing beside him, holding his shaking hands.