The Peas and Carrots Series Boxset 1, page 18
part #1 of Peas and Carrots Series
‘A choice of six languages to study from Year One.’
‘Sounds grand,’ Norman said. ‘Can she say deadly nightshade in French?’
‘What? Why?’ Eric frowned.
‘’Cos it looks like she’s just picked a load from that bush.’
Over by the edge of the allotment, Abi was studying something in her hand.
‘Abi!’
Eric bolted towards his daughter, trampling over several allotments en route, and leaving great gaping footprints in the soil. Abi had her hand millimetres from her mouth. Dozens of beads glistened black in the sunlight, piled high in her cupped palm. With his heart in his throat, Eric lunged, diving across the air. He swung his arm towards Abi knocking the berries out of her hand a millisecond before they touched her lips.
‘Dad! What did you do that for?’
Eric collapsed on the floor, panting. He grabbed his daughter by the wrist.
‘You must never eat those berries, Abi. You hear me? Never. Not even one. Not ever.’
‘What? Why?’
‘They’re poisonous. They’ll kill you. They could have killed you.’
Abi crinkled her nose.
‘Those berries,’ Eric pointed to the glistening spheres now scattered on the ground. ‘They’re called deadly nightshade. And they’re very, very dangerous.’
‘No, they’re not.’
‘Abi, I’m not messing about.’ Eric pulled himself up to feet. Now that the immediate threat was over the surge of adrenaline transformed into anger. ‘You eat deadly nightshade berries and you’ll end up in hospital, or worse. You hear me? Do you understand?’
‘But they’re not –’
‘Abi will you please listen?’
‘You’re not listening to me.’
‘No. You’re not listening to me.’
‘No,’ Abi insisted with a stamp of her foot. ‘You are not listening to me. That,’ she pointed to a bush a little way behind Eric, ‘is deadly nightshade, although it doesn’t have any berries on yet and won’t for another four months or so. Those,’ she redirected her pointed finger to the black baubles in the dirt by her feet, ‘are jellybeans.’
‘What?’
‘Jellybeans. They’re jellybeans, see.’
She pulled out an open pack from her pocket. The crumpled bag was three-quarters full of little red and black spheres. ‘Uncle Norman gave them to me. Just before he told me about deadly nightshade. And he said there’s a badger somewhere in this hedge too. Have you seen it anywhere?’
Eric returned to his plot. Norman was resting against his pitchfork, his lips pursed in a whistle, a glint of satisfaction in his eye.
So, Eric had taken the morning off work. Jack had been fine about it. Since their heart to heart, nothing more had been said about the state of his marriage, although more than once Eric had knocked on his office door to find him giggling on his phone and using a series of endearments more commonly uttered by a sixteen-year-old girl.
As well as all the recycled articles, Abi also wanted to take in her spring onion plants, which were now proudly sprouting two inches above the soil, and Eric’s Dutch coriander, which was demonstrating equally impressive growth. Mostly though she wanted to take in her dad, and Eric had at last relented.
Eric wasn’t sure when he’d last stepped past the reception of Abi’s school. Mamma Mia had taken place in the auditorium and he’d missed the Easter parade a few weeks before due to a meeting. Despite Suzy’s insistence that this parade was an important educational milestone for their daughter, it seemed to Eric more of a trident display of parents’ arts and crafts ability as opposed to anything to do with the actual children. As such, he suffered no remorse whatsoever for missing that one. As for parents’ evenings, he’d told himself that he’d start to go when they actually mattered; GCSEs and above. Before then, there was nothing a teacher could tell him in a seven-minute meeting, cramped on a tiny child’s chair in a room that smelt of poster paint, that couldn’t be expressed more succinctly in a nice written report.
Show and Tell took place in the Key Stage One library. Only it didn’t look like a library, it looked like a living room, or a play centre, or the hybrid mix if a genius child of the future had designed a living room with only play in mind. Rainbow beanbags were scattered across the floor while sizeable TV screens glowed with animated versions of Grimm’s fairy tales and Julia Donaldson stories. Along one wall was a bank of computers, while on the other were half a dozen little cubby holes. Three-feet deep and the same wide, each of the cubby holes was padded with cushions, set with dim lights and a curtain, and also fitted with a television, iPod, and a set of headphones. There was a water fountain, a snack desk, and a little plastic box labelled Ideas. It was definitely not a library, it was Google HQ in the making. In fact, the only thing that really gave away the scholarly nature of the place was the perfectly procured aroma of pencil sharpenings and the rather voluptuous lady behind the desk who wore her thick-rimmed glasses on a chain around her neck.
Bang on ten, Abi’s class arrived. Six other children were doing Show and Tell that day, and four of them had at least one parent there. They, like Eric, had clearly been dragged under duress, although unlike Eric they did not have such an active role in the performance aspect. Instead, they viewed their child’s presentation through the screen of their iPhones, while attempting to reply to messages as subtly as possible and make sure they didn’t miss the correct time to applaud. While Eric in no way considered himself unbiased, the other children’s contributions could be considered, at best, dismal.
There was one vaguely decent attempt in which a boy with a straight fringe and sticky-out ears had recycled an old shoebox to form an elastic band guitar. The neck was made from toilet rolls and he’d even cut out some little cardboard pegs to stick on the end for authentic value. It looked good in the sense that it looked like a pile of absolute crap that an eight-year-old would make as an extended task that meant their teacher avoided any actual marking for a week. Eric was quickly reminded why he hated these types of things.
With the shoebox guitar the highlight, the rest of the offerings failed to hit anywhere near the mark. There was another shoebox, this time marketed as a reusable tissue box. From the clapping and applause the child received, it appeared to Eric that the rest of the audience had failed to grasp the fundamental flaw with the design, being that tissues did, in fact, come in their own box. There was a pencil case made from a toilet roll with one end cardboarded over and no evidence of decoration, and a coke-bottle rocket, imaginatively embellished with fins and blasters, that could apparently fly, only the child’s parents wouldn’t let him bring in the pump to prove this. Then it was Abi’s turn.
Eric’s pulse ratcheted up a knot as Abi took to the front of the class. Her arms were stretched wide around the makeshift mini polytunnel as she chose her footing carefully between her classmates. Once at the front, she set the object down on the teacher’s desk before dashing back to the classroom to get the rest of the items. After three return trips, she had everything she needed.
‘Good morning 2P,’ Abi said to the class.
Her eyes darted to her father. Eric’s stomach fluttered, and his heart thumped against the wall of his rib cage. He offered her an encouraging smile, but she didn’t move. She’d frozen.
‘Go, on,’ Eric mouthed to her. ‘You can do this.’
A thin bead of sweat meandered down past Eric’s collar. Pep talks were one of those many facets that did not fall under his capacity as a parent. Pep talks at work were fine, but as a parent, he always missed the mark; a thump on the arm while telling a four-year-old child to buck up their ideas and focus on the big picture was apparently not always the required response. Neither was telling them not be such a wuss.
Abi’s eyes still hadn’t moved from her father, and several other children were now looking at him too. The one bead of sweat on Eric’s neck was quickly joined by others. Channelling his inner Suzy, he shut his eyes, tilted his chin up, and took a deep yogic breath. The air hissed as he sucked it in through his nose. You can do this, he said in his head, praying the words would somehow transfer to Abi and she’d get the idea of following his lead. He opened his eyes and smiled.
‘You’ve got this, kiddo,’ he mouthed to her.
Abi closed her eyes, took a long inhale, then flicked her eyes open with a glint. A swish of her hair and she turned her attention back to the class.
‘At the end of last year,’ she began, ‘my dad inherited an allotment. Inherited means when you get someone’s stuff because they’re dead …’
Abi’s speech went by in a flash. She explained in detail how she’d managed to join the bottles together to make the polytunnel and how to weight one side of the bird feeders so it wouldn’t just spill out as soon as a bird sat on it. She described how the irrigation system meant you could get the water right to the roots of the plants, which was where it needed to be if the plants were going to grow, and when one child asked for a demonstration, she had no difficulty instructing her teacher to go and fetch the necessary water and an empty plastic bucket.
For her finale she passed around the seedlings, allowing the students to prod and poke at them at their will.
‘Can we eat this?’ one child said when handed Eric’s Dutch coriander.
‘I don’t think so,’ the teacher said, then looked to Eric as if for confirmation.
Eric shrugged. ‘Um, I don’t know. It’s not fully grown yet. And I think you’re meant to cook it first. It’s probably better not to.’
The teacher conveyed this information to the child with a look. ‘Pass it on for now,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Abi will bring some in when it’s grown.’
At the end of the presentations, the children stood up then, clattering and chattering, went back to their classroom. Abi swung her arms around Eric as she passed.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said.
‘She was incredible. I mean, she’s such a natural speaker in front of a crowd. Did I tell you she sent the teacher out to get some water when one of the children wanted a demonstration?’
‘You did,’ said Suzy. ‘Twice.’ She pecked him on the cheek. ‘But it’s great that you’re so proud of her.’
Eric pulled three plates out from the dishwasher, then grabbed a handful of cutlery. He thought he might have overshared a bit at work too, as for the first time he could remember it was Greg who had to ask Eric to leave his office as he wanted to get some work done, as opposed to the other way around. Fortunately, he ran into Jack two minutes later, who was more than happy to listen to Eric regale him with tales of his daughter’s ascension to social science guru.
Abi skipped into the kitchen and hopped up at the table.
‘I was just telling your mum how fantastic you were again,’ Eric said, laying out the crockery.
‘Dad, you don’t have to keep going on.’
‘I’m not.’
Suzy spooned out the biryani while Eric doled out equal portions of pappadams.
‘I thought I might see if I can leave early Friday,’ Eric said as he sat down. ‘It’ll mean working late for a couple of nights, but I thought we could head down to Burlam in the evening again. I seem to get a lot more done that way.’
‘Sounds great, only I have to work. I’m behind on this book. I honestly don’t know where the time has gone. I thought if you were driving down Saturday, you could drop Abi at Lyd’s on the way? You wouldn’t mind that would you, hun?’ Suzy looked at Abi, who shrugged in response.
Eric shook his head. ‘It’s fine. I’ll take Abi down with me on Friday. That way you get the whole evening to work. Then if you want, you can come and join us Saturday. If not, Abi and I’ll just work on together. There’s a lot to get on with. We’ve got a state-of-the-art recycled irrigation system to set up, don’t you know?’
Abi beamed.
‘Yay! I’m coming too,’ she said.
‘That’s settled then,’ said Eric. ‘I’ll ring the Sailboat and book our room now.’
Chapter 25
ERIC’S FATHER-DAUGHTER bonding weekend didn’t get off to an ideal start. He had somehow mis-communicated to Suzy that he’d been planning on taking Sally down to Burlam, and while the law was on his side in regard to taking a child in the back seat of a vintage car, Suzy was not. Forty minutes of his afternoon was spent going back and forth via text, email, and finally voice call between himself, Suzy, and Ralph before he finally conceded. It was a tough loss to take, but they could have been there until midnight otherwise. As it was, it was gone three by the time they’d finally packed up the Audi with their plant paraphernalia. Twenty miles of moderately light traffic through London and then, less than half a mile onto the A12, they hit a tailback that left them in stationary traffic for over three-quarters of an hour. Eric could sense a pressure headache developing beneath his temples. He gave Abi her headphones, told her she could watch whatever she fancied, then switched on Radio 4. Rachmaninov did little for the traffic but did at least manage to abate a migraine.
They arrived in Burlam just after six. With Abi and Eric both at the stage of hunger that meant either one of them may have thrown themselves onto the ground, hammering their fists at the slightest infraction, they parked up directly outside the chippy and went straight inside. After food, the evening consisted of an old-school Disney marathon with The Little Mermaid, The Jungle Book, and one-third of The Lion King, all watched in bed on Eric’s laptop and thus absolving him of any guilt over not checking his emails.
Abi’s eyelids fluttered as he lifted her up off the double bed and transplanted her into her own. She looks so much like her mum, Eric thought, brushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘Sleep tight, princess,’ he said and tucked her up in the duvet.
Saturday was brisk, although in the sun the heat was strong enough to make you want to remove your jacket and perhaps even consider wearing just one layer, long sleeved of course. Out of it and you were quickly reminded that April in the UK was definitely spring and nowhere near summer, and that your vest and cargo shorts should remain well and truly at the bottom of the wardrobe for at least another two months.
When they arrived, Hank was the only person there. Abi wanted to get there even earlier, having laid out all her labels and water bottles before the Disney-athon the night before, but Eric insisted they have breakfast first. While Abi ate a fairly substantial Chubby Little Bugger, Eric had his first Fat Bastard. All ordering was done by pointing at the menu, as even Eric wasn’t naïve enough to believe Abi wouldn’t pass on every detail of the weekend to Suzy, including a detailed and itemised list of each and every profanity he used.
At the allotment, Eric tipped bag after bag of garden-store compost into his planters, packing it down lightly onto the bin bags and newspaper as he prepared to transfer the bulk of his seedlings from the greenhouse.
In recent weeks, he’d come across the idea of companion planting. It was an appealing concept that involved planting different combinations of fruit and vegetables together in order to deter pests from one another and help maintain an organic crop without the use of pesticides. Suzy was all for it, and while Eric wasn’t against it, the only issue was the amount of time he’d spent figuring out the logistics of the arrangements within his six by four raised beds.
Potatoes, for example, were compatible with several vegetables including lettuce, beans, and cabbage, but combative if planted with tomatoes. Whereas onions were ideal planting partners for carrots, beetroot, and strawberries, the effects were far less desirable when placed next to peas and beans. Radishes apparently deterred cucumber beetles while tomato leaves could repel the insects that munched their way through cabbages. But did he really want to plant his radishes next to his cucumbers or would they be better next to spinach, which they insulated against bugs, or lettuce, which would apparently make the radishes a delicious entity in their own right as opposed to an unelected buffer against the harsh insect world that awaits all home-grown, chemical-free vegetables?
Eric had studiously worked out places for most of his items although a few he intended on leaving in the greenhouse until they’d gained a little more growth. For no other reason than sentimentality, he also felt it only fair to give the spring onions and Dutch coriander seedlings a little time to acclimatise in the greenhouse before thrusting them out into the British climate after spending several weeks in a cosy London kitchen. With the plants spread out in their proposed positions, all that was needed was for Eric to pick up his trowel and dig the first little trench.
‘Aunty Cynthia! Uncle Norman!’
Abi bounded across the allotment, brandishing her irrigation system as she went. The couple walked hand in hand through the rows. Eric did a double take. He had always thought of Cynthia as a rather youthful pensioner, but from this distance, she looked decidedly old. Her shoulders slumped, and her gait dragged as a heavy bag weighed her down on one side. Still, she shook off the years and smiled enthusiastically when she saw Abi bounding towards her.
‘You’re down here early,’ Cynthia said.
She dropped the bag by her own shed before ambling over towards his. The scent of Dettol and blackberries shrouded the air around her.
‘Abi and I came down last night. An important day today. Lots to do.’
‘My, my, yes. And this must be your watering invention,’ Cynthia said to Abi. ‘Goodness me, it looks very technical.’
While Cynthia crouched down to listen to Abi’s tales of her school presentation and a detailed scientific explanation of how to use a compass to pierce holes in a coke bottle, Norman cast his eyes over the allotment.
‘So, you’ve started planting at last?’ Norman said.
‘Just about to,’ Eric said. As he spoke the muscles in his neck turned taut, and a strange yet familiar sensation whorled its way through his abdomen. He held his breath and waited.
While the majority of Eric’s functioning sense cells wanted nothing more than to tell Norman that he could keep whatever opinions he had about Eric’s current horticultural layout to himself, the other part of Eric was in conflict. Seeing his seedlings sprout up through the soil over the last three weeks had been something akin to when Eric discovered he was going to be a father. He hadn’t felt a great need to celebrate each shoot with a bottle of Moët and had been much more candid about the exact processes involved than when Abi had asked him how babies were made only four weeks back, but still, he’d done a simple act and created life. He was a miracle maker. The fruits of his labours were burgeoning around, and all he could do was watch and wait in wonder. And yet, until that life was fully grown and slapped up on a plate in front of him – the sentiment had been slightly different in regard to Abi, obviously – a nervous trepidation simmered constantly away in his belly. He’d found himself with a less than hospitable gut these last two nights and was well aware as to the root of the cause. The last thing he needed was the male-midwife of the vegetable patch coming over to tell him that he’d failed as a plant parent before his seedlings were even out of their pots.
‘Sounds grand,’ Norman said. ‘Can she say deadly nightshade in French?’
‘What? Why?’ Eric frowned.
‘’Cos it looks like she’s just picked a load from that bush.’
Over by the edge of the allotment, Abi was studying something in her hand.
‘Abi!’
Eric bolted towards his daughter, trampling over several allotments en route, and leaving great gaping footprints in the soil. Abi had her hand millimetres from her mouth. Dozens of beads glistened black in the sunlight, piled high in her cupped palm. With his heart in his throat, Eric lunged, diving across the air. He swung his arm towards Abi knocking the berries out of her hand a millisecond before they touched her lips.
‘Dad! What did you do that for?’
Eric collapsed on the floor, panting. He grabbed his daughter by the wrist.
‘You must never eat those berries, Abi. You hear me? Never. Not even one. Not ever.’
‘What? Why?’
‘They’re poisonous. They’ll kill you. They could have killed you.’
Abi crinkled her nose.
‘Those berries,’ Eric pointed to the glistening spheres now scattered on the ground. ‘They’re called deadly nightshade. And they’re very, very dangerous.’
‘No, they’re not.’
‘Abi, I’m not messing about.’ Eric pulled himself up to feet. Now that the immediate threat was over the surge of adrenaline transformed into anger. ‘You eat deadly nightshade berries and you’ll end up in hospital, or worse. You hear me? Do you understand?’
‘But they’re not –’
‘Abi will you please listen?’
‘You’re not listening to me.’
‘No. You’re not listening to me.’
‘No,’ Abi insisted with a stamp of her foot. ‘You are not listening to me. That,’ she pointed to a bush a little way behind Eric, ‘is deadly nightshade, although it doesn’t have any berries on yet and won’t for another four months or so. Those,’ she redirected her pointed finger to the black baubles in the dirt by her feet, ‘are jellybeans.’
‘What?’
‘Jellybeans. They’re jellybeans, see.’
She pulled out an open pack from her pocket. The crumpled bag was three-quarters full of little red and black spheres. ‘Uncle Norman gave them to me. Just before he told me about deadly nightshade. And he said there’s a badger somewhere in this hedge too. Have you seen it anywhere?’
Eric returned to his plot. Norman was resting against his pitchfork, his lips pursed in a whistle, a glint of satisfaction in his eye.
So, Eric had taken the morning off work. Jack had been fine about it. Since their heart to heart, nothing more had been said about the state of his marriage, although more than once Eric had knocked on his office door to find him giggling on his phone and using a series of endearments more commonly uttered by a sixteen-year-old girl.
As well as all the recycled articles, Abi also wanted to take in her spring onion plants, which were now proudly sprouting two inches above the soil, and Eric’s Dutch coriander, which was demonstrating equally impressive growth. Mostly though she wanted to take in her dad, and Eric had at last relented.
Eric wasn’t sure when he’d last stepped past the reception of Abi’s school. Mamma Mia had taken place in the auditorium and he’d missed the Easter parade a few weeks before due to a meeting. Despite Suzy’s insistence that this parade was an important educational milestone for their daughter, it seemed to Eric more of a trident display of parents’ arts and crafts ability as opposed to anything to do with the actual children. As such, he suffered no remorse whatsoever for missing that one. As for parents’ evenings, he’d told himself that he’d start to go when they actually mattered; GCSEs and above. Before then, there was nothing a teacher could tell him in a seven-minute meeting, cramped on a tiny child’s chair in a room that smelt of poster paint, that couldn’t be expressed more succinctly in a nice written report.
Show and Tell took place in the Key Stage One library. Only it didn’t look like a library, it looked like a living room, or a play centre, or the hybrid mix if a genius child of the future had designed a living room with only play in mind. Rainbow beanbags were scattered across the floor while sizeable TV screens glowed with animated versions of Grimm’s fairy tales and Julia Donaldson stories. Along one wall was a bank of computers, while on the other were half a dozen little cubby holes. Three-feet deep and the same wide, each of the cubby holes was padded with cushions, set with dim lights and a curtain, and also fitted with a television, iPod, and a set of headphones. There was a water fountain, a snack desk, and a little plastic box labelled Ideas. It was definitely not a library, it was Google HQ in the making. In fact, the only thing that really gave away the scholarly nature of the place was the perfectly procured aroma of pencil sharpenings and the rather voluptuous lady behind the desk who wore her thick-rimmed glasses on a chain around her neck.
Bang on ten, Abi’s class arrived. Six other children were doing Show and Tell that day, and four of them had at least one parent there. They, like Eric, had clearly been dragged under duress, although unlike Eric they did not have such an active role in the performance aspect. Instead, they viewed their child’s presentation through the screen of their iPhones, while attempting to reply to messages as subtly as possible and make sure they didn’t miss the correct time to applaud. While Eric in no way considered himself unbiased, the other children’s contributions could be considered, at best, dismal.
There was one vaguely decent attempt in which a boy with a straight fringe and sticky-out ears had recycled an old shoebox to form an elastic band guitar. The neck was made from toilet rolls and he’d even cut out some little cardboard pegs to stick on the end for authentic value. It looked good in the sense that it looked like a pile of absolute crap that an eight-year-old would make as an extended task that meant their teacher avoided any actual marking for a week. Eric was quickly reminded why he hated these types of things.
With the shoebox guitar the highlight, the rest of the offerings failed to hit anywhere near the mark. There was another shoebox, this time marketed as a reusable tissue box. From the clapping and applause the child received, it appeared to Eric that the rest of the audience had failed to grasp the fundamental flaw with the design, being that tissues did, in fact, come in their own box. There was a pencil case made from a toilet roll with one end cardboarded over and no evidence of decoration, and a coke-bottle rocket, imaginatively embellished with fins and blasters, that could apparently fly, only the child’s parents wouldn’t let him bring in the pump to prove this. Then it was Abi’s turn.
Eric’s pulse ratcheted up a knot as Abi took to the front of the class. Her arms were stretched wide around the makeshift mini polytunnel as she chose her footing carefully between her classmates. Once at the front, she set the object down on the teacher’s desk before dashing back to the classroom to get the rest of the items. After three return trips, she had everything she needed.
‘Good morning 2P,’ Abi said to the class.
Her eyes darted to her father. Eric’s stomach fluttered, and his heart thumped against the wall of his rib cage. He offered her an encouraging smile, but she didn’t move. She’d frozen.
‘Go, on,’ Eric mouthed to her. ‘You can do this.’
A thin bead of sweat meandered down past Eric’s collar. Pep talks were one of those many facets that did not fall under his capacity as a parent. Pep talks at work were fine, but as a parent, he always missed the mark; a thump on the arm while telling a four-year-old child to buck up their ideas and focus on the big picture was apparently not always the required response. Neither was telling them not be such a wuss.
Abi’s eyes still hadn’t moved from her father, and several other children were now looking at him too. The one bead of sweat on Eric’s neck was quickly joined by others. Channelling his inner Suzy, he shut his eyes, tilted his chin up, and took a deep yogic breath. The air hissed as he sucked it in through his nose. You can do this, he said in his head, praying the words would somehow transfer to Abi and she’d get the idea of following his lead. He opened his eyes and smiled.
‘You’ve got this, kiddo,’ he mouthed to her.
Abi closed her eyes, took a long inhale, then flicked her eyes open with a glint. A swish of her hair and she turned her attention back to the class.
‘At the end of last year,’ she began, ‘my dad inherited an allotment. Inherited means when you get someone’s stuff because they’re dead …’
Abi’s speech went by in a flash. She explained in detail how she’d managed to join the bottles together to make the polytunnel and how to weight one side of the bird feeders so it wouldn’t just spill out as soon as a bird sat on it. She described how the irrigation system meant you could get the water right to the roots of the plants, which was where it needed to be if the plants were going to grow, and when one child asked for a demonstration, she had no difficulty instructing her teacher to go and fetch the necessary water and an empty plastic bucket.
For her finale she passed around the seedlings, allowing the students to prod and poke at them at their will.
‘Can we eat this?’ one child said when handed Eric’s Dutch coriander.
‘I don’t think so,’ the teacher said, then looked to Eric as if for confirmation.
Eric shrugged. ‘Um, I don’t know. It’s not fully grown yet. And I think you’re meant to cook it first. It’s probably better not to.’
The teacher conveyed this information to the child with a look. ‘Pass it on for now,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Abi will bring some in when it’s grown.’
At the end of the presentations, the children stood up then, clattering and chattering, went back to their classroom. Abi swung her arms around Eric as she passed.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said.
‘She was incredible. I mean, she’s such a natural speaker in front of a crowd. Did I tell you she sent the teacher out to get some water when one of the children wanted a demonstration?’
‘You did,’ said Suzy. ‘Twice.’ She pecked him on the cheek. ‘But it’s great that you’re so proud of her.’
Eric pulled three plates out from the dishwasher, then grabbed a handful of cutlery. He thought he might have overshared a bit at work too, as for the first time he could remember it was Greg who had to ask Eric to leave his office as he wanted to get some work done, as opposed to the other way around. Fortunately, he ran into Jack two minutes later, who was more than happy to listen to Eric regale him with tales of his daughter’s ascension to social science guru.
Abi skipped into the kitchen and hopped up at the table.
‘I was just telling your mum how fantastic you were again,’ Eric said, laying out the crockery.
‘Dad, you don’t have to keep going on.’
‘I’m not.’
Suzy spooned out the biryani while Eric doled out equal portions of pappadams.
‘I thought I might see if I can leave early Friday,’ Eric said as he sat down. ‘It’ll mean working late for a couple of nights, but I thought we could head down to Burlam in the evening again. I seem to get a lot more done that way.’
‘Sounds great, only I have to work. I’m behind on this book. I honestly don’t know where the time has gone. I thought if you were driving down Saturday, you could drop Abi at Lyd’s on the way? You wouldn’t mind that would you, hun?’ Suzy looked at Abi, who shrugged in response.
Eric shook his head. ‘It’s fine. I’ll take Abi down with me on Friday. That way you get the whole evening to work. Then if you want, you can come and join us Saturday. If not, Abi and I’ll just work on together. There’s a lot to get on with. We’ve got a state-of-the-art recycled irrigation system to set up, don’t you know?’
Abi beamed.
‘Yay! I’m coming too,’ she said.
‘That’s settled then,’ said Eric. ‘I’ll ring the Sailboat and book our room now.’
Chapter 25
ERIC’S FATHER-DAUGHTER bonding weekend didn’t get off to an ideal start. He had somehow mis-communicated to Suzy that he’d been planning on taking Sally down to Burlam, and while the law was on his side in regard to taking a child in the back seat of a vintage car, Suzy was not. Forty minutes of his afternoon was spent going back and forth via text, email, and finally voice call between himself, Suzy, and Ralph before he finally conceded. It was a tough loss to take, but they could have been there until midnight otherwise. As it was, it was gone three by the time they’d finally packed up the Audi with their plant paraphernalia. Twenty miles of moderately light traffic through London and then, less than half a mile onto the A12, they hit a tailback that left them in stationary traffic for over three-quarters of an hour. Eric could sense a pressure headache developing beneath his temples. He gave Abi her headphones, told her she could watch whatever she fancied, then switched on Radio 4. Rachmaninov did little for the traffic but did at least manage to abate a migraine.
They arrived in Burlam just after six. With Abi and Eric both at the stage of hunger that meant either one of them may have thrown themselves onto the ground, hammering their fists at the slightest infraction, they parked up directly outside the chippy and went straight inside. After food, the evening consisted of an old-school Disney marathon with The Little Mermaid, The Jungle Book, and one-third of The Lion King, all watched in bed on Eric’s laptop and thus absolving him of any guilt over not checking his emails.
Abi’s eyelids fluttered as he lifted her up off the double bed and transplanted her into her own. She looks so much like her mum, Eric thought, brushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘Sleep tight, princess,’ he said and tucked her up in the duvet.
Saturday was brisk, although in the sun the heat was strong enough to make you want to remove your jacket and perhaps even consider wearing just one layer, long sleeved of course. Out of it and you were quickly reminded that April in the UK was definitely spring and nowhere near summer, and that your vest and cargo shorts should remain well and truly at the bottom of the wardrobe for at least another two months.
When they arrived, Hank was the only person there. Abi wanted to get there even earlier, having laid out all her labels and water bottles before the Disney-athon the night before, but Eric insisted they have breakfast first. While Abi ate a fairly substantial Chubby Little Bugger, Eric had his first Fat Bastard. All ordering was done by pointing at the menu, as even Eric wasn’t naïve enough to believe Abi wouldn’t pass on every detail of the weekend to Suzy, including a detailed and itemised list of each and every profanity he used.
At the allotment, Eric tipped bag after bag of garden-store compost into his planters, packing it down lightly onto the bin bags and newspaper as he prepared to transfer the bulk of his seedlings from the greenhouse.
In recent weeks, he’d come across the idea of companion planting. It was an appealing concept that involved planting different combinations of fruit and vegetables together in order to deter pests from one another and help maintain an organic crop without the use of pesticides. Suzy was all for it, and while Eric wasn’t against it, the only issue was the amount of time he’d spent figuring out the logistics of the arrangements within his six by four raised beds.
Potatoes, for example, were compatible with several vegetables including lettuce, beans, and cabbage, but combative if planted with tomatoes. Whereas onions were ideal planting partners for carrots, beetroot, and strawberries, the effects were far less desirable when placed next to peas and beans. Radishes apparently deterred cucumber beetles while tomato leaves could repel the insects that munched their way through cabbages. But did he really want to plant his radishes next to his cucumbers or would they be better next to spinach, which they insulated against bugs, or lettuce, which would apparently make the radishes a delicious entity in their own right as opposed to an unelected buffer against the harsh insect world that awaits all home-grown, chemical-free vegetables?
Eric had studiously worked out places for most of his items although a few he intended on leaving in the greenhouse until they’d gained a little more growth. For no other reason than sentimentality, he also felt it only fair to give the spring onions and Dutch coriander seedlings a little time to acclimatise in the greenhouse before thrusting them out into the British climate after spending several weeks in a cosy London kitchen. With the plants spread out in their proposed positions, all that was needed was for Eric to pick up his trowel and dig the first little trench.
‘Aunty Cynthia! Uncle Norman!’
Abi bounded across the allotment, brandishing her irrigation system as she went. The couple walked hand in hand through the rows. Eric did a double take. He had always thought of Cynthia as a rather youthful pensioner, but from this distance, she looked decidedly old. Her shoulders slumped, and her gait dragged as a heavy bag weighed her down on one side. Still, she shook off the years and smiled enthusiastically when she saw Abi bounding towards her.
‘You’re down here early,’ Cynthia said.
She dropped the bag by her own shed before ambling over towards his. The scent of Dettol and blackberries shrouded the air around her.
‘Abi and I came down last night. An important day today. Lots to do.’
‘My, my, yes. And this must be your watering invention,’ Cynthia said to Abi. ‘Goodness me, it looks very technical.’
While Cynthia crouched down to listen to Abi’s tales of her school presentation and a detailed scientific explanation of how to use a compass to pierce holes in a coke bottle, Norman cast his eyes over the allotment.
‘So, you’ve started planting at last?’ Norman said.
‘Just about to,’ Eric said. As he spoke the muscles in his neck turned taut, and a strange yet familiar sensation whorled its way through his abdomen. He held his breath and waited.
While the majority of Eric’s functioning sense cells wanted nothing more than to tell Norman that he could keep whatever opinions he had about Eric’s current horticultural layout to himself, the other part of Eric was in conflict. Seeing his seedlings sprout up through the soil over the last three weeks had been something akin to when Eric discovered he was going to be a father. He hadn’t felt a great need to celebrate each shoot with a bottle of Moët and had been much more candid about the exact processes involved than when Abi had asked him how babies were made only four weeks back, but still, he’d done a simple act and created life. He was a miracle maker. The fruits of his labours were burgeoning around, and all he could do was watch and wait in wonder. And yet, until that life was fully grown and slapped up on a plate in front of him – the sentiment had been slightly different in regard to Abi, obviously – a nervous trepidation simmered constantly away in his belly. He’d found himself with a less than hospitable gut these last two nights and was well aware as to the root of the cause. The last thing he needed was the male-midwife of the vegetable patch coming over to tell him that he’d failed as a plant parent before his seedlings were even out of their pots.
