.

THE ALLOTMENT

   That was all he needed, a headache. Bob had been digging for just ten minutes but already he could feel a dull ache in his right temple. He hit another large stone and that was the last straw; he straightened up and with both hands, flung the spade, the handle bouncing on the frozen soil, the wintry sun catching the metal of the blade as it twisted. Turning his back on the others he hunched his shoulders and fished in his trouser pocket for something to wipe his eyes.

He’d never liked gardening and the allotment had not been his idea, the daughters felt it would give him something to do, that it might be therapeutic and cheer him up.  He supposed that was all he was fit for now, growing vegetables and pottering backwards and forwards with a shopping bag dangling from his hand. The girls have no idea how I feel, he thought, they don’t how much I miss her; they’ve got their own lives, mine’s finished now, it’s over.

Bob blew his nose and lifted up the shovel, he’d had enough. His limbs were stiff and awkward as he walked out through the adjoining allotments and past his fellow gardeners barely acknowledging their friendly waves and cheerful greetings. He didn’t care,he didn’t care about anything these days. Perhaps he was losing his marbles. He kept forgetting things, sometimes couldn’t remember what she looked like, he couldn’t even recall her face or her voice. Bob blinked to clear his vision. He gulped. There hadn’t been an ounce of passion in his Joan but she had given him companionship; she’d been his chum, his mate. He shivered,  he hadn’t felt warm since the funeral.

The spade was heavy on his shoulder as Bob turned into the long road of semi-detached houses where they’d lived all their married life. He was almost home when he noticed a young boy, in tee shirt and shorts, hanging over a gate. The boy put his hand out as if to stop him.

“Are you the plumber?”

Bob shook his head.

“ My Mum’s crying, there’s water all over the place ”

 Bob raised his eyebrows and lowered the spade, leaning it against the fence. He wiped his hands on his handkerchief and followed the boy up the path and round the back of the house.
 
“Hullo,” he called.

Through an open door he could see a young woman holding a grizzling toddler on her hip, dabbing with a long-handled mop at the ripples of soapy water spreading across her kitchen floor. 

“It’s getting deeper.” she said as Bob took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his trouser legs. By the time the plumber arrived Bob had stopped the leak and wiped the floor dry and Alison was making tea.  

“  I can’t thank you enough.” she said, “Sorry to appear so feeble but I’m on my own and I didn’t know what to do. I just panicked. It was the spilt milk syndrome. You know how it is. You cope then you drop a pint of milk and it’s the last straw.

 Bob nodded, yes, he knew all about that. He grinned across at the boy, Jack, diving into the biscuit tin.

“  Well, if you have any more leaks, send this young man round, it’s number twenty two. I’m always about.”

As the weeks went by Alison waved at Bob as he passed and he didn’t need a lot of coaxing to drop in for a cup of tea or coffee.  Somehow they slipped easily into a routine, Bob would fix things around the house and occasionally he babysat Finn, the toddler, whilst Alison did the school run. Bob’s own daughters were childless and he became fond of the two boys; he showed them how to fill jam jars with frog spawn from the pond in the garden and he brought down an old model railway from his loft and set it up at Alison’s house, running the track across the landing and round the skirting board of the spare room. He imagined them being a proper family, going on outings together and him teaching Jack and Finn to play cricket and making model airplanes with them on the kitchen table.

Spring was coming along nicely and one morning, working on the allotment with the sun warm on his back, Bob pulled some baby carrots from the soft soil turning them over in his hands. They hardly need cooking, he thought, they’re perfect, enjoying the texture against his fingers and the promise of their taste on his tongue. He knew Alison would like them

“Lovely.” she said   “and they’re organic too. You do so much for me, let me do something for you. I used to be a hairdresser. Would you like me to cut your hair,  Bob?”

 She sat him on a kitchen chair and swung a towel around his shoulders. That was the beginning, when the affair started. The proximity of their bodies and Alison’s fingers gentle on his scalp made Bob’s heart race. He was sure his face was inflamed he hadn’t had feelings like this for years, he couldn’t help acting like a schoolboy. She finished, stroking a soft brush across the nape of his neck and, standing up, he turned to face her. Alison reached up to remove the towel, and, as they whispered in bed together afterwards, neither of them could help themselves, it just happened.

Spring ambled into summer and Bob spent most mornings at the allotment and the afternoons with Alison. Finn, sleepy after lunch, would be put into his cot, his eyelids drooping and chubby fingers clutching his favourite toy, a soft green frog.

“He’s still my little baby.” Alison said, looking down at him, as he lay curled up with his thumb in his mouth.

They would give Finn a few minutes to settle before they stole upstairs.  Bob loved to see Alison in the expensive underwear he’d bought, his mind skittering away from images of his own ageing limbs and thinning hair laying next to her unblemished and youthful body.

“We are not doing anything wrong.” Bob told himself   “We are both free agents.”
 
It was the day before Jack’s school broke up for the summer holidays and their last afternoon together for a while. The air was still and the net curtains at the window hung without moving. Bob watched from the bed as Alison dressed, pulling a white tee-shirt over her tanned skin. He wanted to ask her something important, something about their future, but he didn’t know what he would do if she turned him down or even worse, laughed at him.

Alison walked across to the window, conscious of Bob’s eyes on her as she smoothed her hair and zipped up her jeans. She pulled back the curtains and looked down into the garden. Afterwards, Bob could only remember her screams echoing back at him as he ran down the stairs after her and out into the garden through the open kitchen door.

Finn was laying face down, limbs outstretched, his curly baby hair floating like pond weed on the surface of the milky green water.  

Much later, as Bob sat shivering, hands flat on the surface of his own kitchen table, the daughters came for him. Warm as it was, they wrapped his overcoat round his shoulders, the sleeves dangling, and pulled him gently to his feet.

“You’re coming home with us, Dad.”  

As they put their arms around him, their eyes met over his bowed head. They guided him out the house, down the front path and into the back seat of the waiting car.