‘What I said on the swing …’ he begins, as if it was five minutes ago and not sixteen years, ‘It was wrong of me to do what I did. I was young, I was so confused, I scared you, I know that, and I’m sorry. I went away and tried to figure it out, tried to figure everything out really, I told myself that I must have got our friendship confused. We always had so much in common, I always felt you understood me. The whole thing with you and your dad …’ Which confuses me again, because there was nothing between me and dad, but never mind. ‘I went away and tried to forget you, but when I was gone, all the other women …’ And it gets uncomfortable for a while as I hear about his long list of conquests with whom he does not feel at peace, and then, BAM! ‘I couldn’t stop thinking of you. All the time, my mind kept coming back to you. But I knew how you felt about me. How the whole family felt about me. It’s why I couldn’t come back. But now … Jasmine, I haven’t changed my mind at all from that moment on the swing. I am utterly in love with you.’
I am usually an emotionally stable person. I feel that I cope with things well. I am not dramatic, I am rational, I reason things relatively well. But this … I can’t. Not now, in the middle of my own stuff. I apologise, then stand up and take my leave.
When I get home later, I find the landscaper packing up his van. Though the days are slowly stretching longer, the sky is again black. The new grass is still in rolls, piled up in my driveway in the streetlight.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask him.
He can hear the edge in my voice; he looks a little taken aback.
‘You said the grass would be finished today,’ I say.
‘The ground took me longer to prepare than I thought. I’ll have to come back on Monday.’
‘Monday? You told me you work weekends. Why can’t you come tomorrow?’
‘Another job, I’m afraid.’
‘Another job,’ I say in a disturbing hiss of a voice. ‘Why don’t people finish one job before starting another?’ He doesn’t respond to this so I sigh. ‘I thought the turf was supposed to be laid within a day of delivery.’
‘They’re stored in a shaded area, no frost expected this weekend. It’s perfect conditions.’ He looks at the turf in a long silence as if waiting for it to speak on its own behalf. He shrugs. ‘If you really need to, open the rolls and water them.’
‘Water them? It hasn’t stopped raining in a week.’
‘Well then.’ He shrugs again. ‘Should be fine.’
‘And if they’re not, you’re paying for them.’
I watch him drive away. I stand in my garden, hands on my hips, staring him off as if my look alone is going to make him stop the van and finish the job. It doesn’t. I survey the pile of grass beside me. The first day of February tomorrow. Almost three weeks of waiting for this garden when I could have used the money to go on a holiday, to sit on someone else’s green grass.
You leave your house, wave at me. I ignore you because I’m mad at you again, I’m mad at everyone and you are always first on my list, you will always feel my wrath. You get in your jeep and drive away. Dr Jameson is away, Mrs Malone is still in hospital, as is Mr Malone who is keeping vigil. I no longer have to feed the cat full-time but only when Mr Malone asks, which doesn’t bother me so much any more as Marjorie has turned out to be quite the conversationalist. I look around. I can’t tell whether anyone’s home in the other houses, but it feels like an empty street. There is nothing I can do about the garden, only pray that a deep frost doesn’t suddenly descend on my new grass.
That night I can’t sleep. I am tossing and turning with anger over my father: his treatment of Heather, his attempt to line me up for a job in his old company – for I’m almost convinced that’s what he’s doing. I am further distressed by Kevin’s declaration of love for me yet again and my messy garden bothers me. Everything feels unfinished – worse than unfinished: torn, as if everything’s been ripped and left ragged at the ends. It is a peculiar way to explain it, but that’s how I feel. I can’t settle with all of these thoughts, these angry thoughts that can’t be contained or filed away somewhere else while I sleep. I have nothing to distract me. Ordinarily I would have a meeting to plan for, an aim, an objective, a new idea, a presentation – something, anything to take my mind off the useless thoughts that circulate in my head. Getting up, I go downstairs and turn the security lights in the front garden on full. They are so bright they are like floodlights. What I see angers me. Inefficiency. My blood boils.
I put my coat on over my pyjamas and go outside. I look at the stacked rolls of grass and I look at the cleared patch of soil to my right. If you want something done properly, you should do it yourself: always my philosophy. It shouldn’t be too hard.
I pick up the first roll of grass and it is heavier than I thought it would be. I drop it, curse and hope I haven’t broken it. I stare at the space and try to figure out how to do this. Then I roll. Two hours later I am dirty and sweating. I’ve lost the coat, which restricted my movements, and instead layered up with an old fleece. I’m covered in muck, grass, sweat and at one stage there are even tears of frustration: for the grass, for the job, for Kevin and for Heather and my mum and the fingernail that I chipped when I bumped it against the skip. I am so lost in myself, in my chore, that I almost jump out of my skin when I hear a cough breaking the silence.
‘Sorry,’ I hear you say suddenly.
It is three a.m. I look across the road to your garden and I can’t see a thing. I see the shape of the garden furniture, but the rest is blackness, all lights are out on the house. My heart is pounding while my eyes furiously search the dark. Then I see the glow of a cigarette, brightening as it’s inhaled. It’s you. How long have you been there? I didn’t hear or see your jeep arrive, and I still don’t see it now, which means you have been there the entire time. I want to cry. I mean, I have been crying, quite loudly, thinking nobody could hear me.
‘Got locked out,’ you say, breaking the silence.
‘How long have you been there?’ I repeat. Now that I know that you’re there I can start to see the outline of you, sitting in the chair at the head of the table, the same chair as usual.
‘Few hours.’
‘You should have said something.’
I go inside the house to get the spare key and when I walk outside you’re standing at your door.
‘Why is it so dark over here?’
‘Streetlight is broken.’
I look up and realise that’s why I couldn’t see you. Dr Jameson will be annoyed about this when he returns. On the ground underneath is smashed glass which has fallen and one of my bricks from the skip is in the middle of the road. I wonder why I didn’t hear that happening, I was so sure I hadn’t slept. I look at you accusingly.
‘It was too bright. I couldn’t get any sleep,’ you say softly. You don’t seem that drunk, you are composed, you’ve had time to sober up – in my company, when I didn’t even know you were there – but I can smell the alcohol.
‘Where’s your jeep?’
‘Clamped in town.’
I hand you the key. You open the front door and gives it back to me.
‘You should have said something,’ I say again, finally looking you in the eye, then glancing away, feeling so vulnerable.
‘I didn’t want to disturb you. You seemed busy. Sad.’
‘I’m not sad,’ I snap.
‘Sure you’re not. Four a.m., you’re gardening, I’m smashing lights, we’re both fine.’ You do the chesty chuckle that I hate. ‘Besides, it was nice not to be alone out here for once.’
You give me a small smile before gently closing the door.
When I return to the house I realise my hands are shaking, my throat is dry and closed, my chest feels tight. I can’t stop moving. I haven’t quite realised what a frenzy I am in until I see that I have walked muck everywhere in confusing circles on the floor, the stop-start trail of a madwoman.
It’s the middle of the night, but I can’t help it: I pick up
the phone.
Larry answers groggily, he always answers. He leaves his phone on all night, constantly expecting to hear the worst news about his daughter every time she leaves the house to go to a disco or stay over in a friend’s house in a skirt that’s too short, wobbling with Bambi legs on heels that she can’t balance on. The stress of her will kill him.
‘Larry, it’s me.’
‘Jasmine,’ he says groggily. ‘Jesus. What time is it?’ I hear him fumbling around. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Not really, you fired me.’
He sighs. He has the decency to sound embarrassed in the stuttering, half-asleep, respectful response he gives me, but I interrupt him.
‘Yeah, yeah, you said that before, but listen, I need to talk about something else. This gardening leave. It’s not working for me. We need to cancel it. Stop it.’
He hesitates. ‘Jasmine, it was part of the contract. We agreed—’
‘Yeah, we agreed, four years ago when I didn’t think you were going to fire me and then force me to sit on my arse for an entire year. I need you to stop it.’ I sound wired, strung up, like I need a fix. I do. I need work. I need work like a heroin addict needs a fix. I am desperate. ‘It’s killing me, I swear, Larry. You don’t know what this shit does to your head.’
‘Jasmine,’ he is alert now, his voice steady. ‘Are you okay? Are you with—’
‘I’m fucking fine, Larry, okay? Listen to me …’ I tear off the chipped nail with my teeth and realise I’ve pulled away too much; the air hits the exposed nail bed and it stings and causes me to suck in air loudly. ‘I’m not asking for my job back, I’m asking you to reconsider. Actually, not reconsider, just stop this gardening leave thing. It’s unnecessary. It’s—’
‘It’s not unnecessary.’
‘It is. Or else it’s too long. Shorten it. Please? It’s been over two months already. That’s okay. Two months is fine. Lots of companies leave it at two months. I need to be busy – you know me. I don’t want to turn into him across the road, some nocturnal crazy owl man that—’
‘Who’s across the road?’
‘It doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is, I need to work, Larry. I need—’
‘No one’s expecting you not to do anything, Jasmine. You can take on projects.’
‘Fucking projects. Like what? Build a volcano of baked beans? This isn’t school, Larry, I’m thirty-fucking-three. I can’t NOT work for a year. Do you know how hard it will be for me to get back to it next year? After a whole year? Who wants someone who hasn’t worked for a year?’
‘Fine. So where will you work?’ He is getting feistier, fully awake now. ‘Exactly what line of business do you have in mind? Tomorrow, if you were able to go back out there and get a job – tell me where you’d go. Or would you like me to help you out with that answer?’
‘I …’ I falter, because he’s intimating something, which is confusing me. ‘I don’t know what you’re—’
‘In that case I’ll tell you. You’d go to Simon—’
I freeze. ‘I wouldn’t go to Simon—’
‘Yes, you would, Jasmine – you would. Because I know that you met with him. I know that you two had coffee. Straight after you walked out of here, you walked into a restaurant with him. Grafton Tea Rooms, wasn’t it?’ He’s angry now and I can hear the sense of betrayal in his voice. ‘The same place where you both used to meet when you were trying to sell the company that you weren’t supposed to be selling – isn’t that right?’
I’m not expecting him to stop talking so suddenly and my silence is like an admission. By the time I’m ready to speak for myself again, he has resumed:
‘See, Jasmine, you have to be careful, don’t you? Never know who’s watching you. Did you think I wasn’t going to hear about that one? Because I did, and I was really fucking pissed, to be honest with you. I also know that he offered you a job and that you said yes, but he wouldn’t work with you under the gardening leave terms. I know that because his legal people got in touch with our legal person to enquire about the exact details. Seems a year is too long for him. You’re not worth waiting that long for. So don’t call me up now, begging me to go easy on you, not when you were going to betray me—’
‘Excuse me, who are you to talk about betrayal? We started that company together, Larry, together …’
We continue talking over one another, the same conversation we had eleven weeks ago when I was fired. In fact, the same conversation we had before I was fired, when he’d heard that I was making preparations with Simon to put us in a good position to sell.
It is pointless, and neither of us is prepared to back down until I hear his wife in the background, a sleepy, angry interruption, and Larry apologises softly then comes back on the phone, loud and angry and clear.
‘I’m not going to waste my time with this conversation. But hear me loud and clear, Jasmine: I. Will. Not. Drop. The. Gardening. Leave. Clause. Right now, if I could make it two years long I would. I don’t care what you do for the year – take a holiday, go on a fucking retreat, try finishing something you’ve started for once in your life – I don’t care, just don’t fucking call my number again, and especially not at this hour. It’s one year. One fucking year and then you can get back to starting and selling and never finishing, same as you always do, okay?’
He hangs up, leaving me shaking, reeling with anger.
I pace the kitchen, mumbling about finishing things that I’ve started, angrily compiling a list of as many things as I can think of. He has hit a nerve. It was sudden and surprising and it has hurt me more than anything else he has said, more than the act of firing me. It is in fact, the most hurtful thing anyone has ever said to me and I am shaking. I continue to debate the point with him in my mind, but it is useless as I am me and I am him, and me as me will always win. I look at the mess of a garden, which sends me into a spiral of anger. I go outside and kick a roll of grass, my foot punctures the roll, and then I stamp on it, sending it tumbling off the pile and down on to the ground, opening and unravelling. The grass splits at the hole where I’ve kicked it. Embarrassed by my actions, and surprised, I look up and see your curtains flutter. I go back inside and slam the door.
I spend a long time in the shower, crying with frustration, the hot water stinging my skin and leaving it red and raw. I finish with one clear vow in my mind. I will not lower myself to becoming your company, particularly at night. I believe this has been my lowest point and I will not fall to this level again. I will rise above this, I will rise above you. It is not just the Larry conversation that has upset me. What got me to that point in the first place was you. It was you who caused me to charge home and pick up the phone and call him. Because it was your words that made me look at myself, at my situation, and made me want to get out of it.
I hear your voice over and over: it was nice not to be alone out here for once. You have brought me into your world, without my permission, without my say-so, you have included me in your crisis, in your state of mind, you have likened me to you. And by doing that you have made me feel ashamed, because I have always believed your words are poison, that they are the worst thing about you, that they are dangerous.
But when I let my guard down, your words gave me warmth. It was nice not to be alone out here for once. When you said those words, they comforted me. I did not feel alone then either.
I will not let you do that to me again.
11
For the first time in a very long time when I wake up my room is flooded with yellow light and a sense of calm. It is unusual, different to the blue-grey light that barely lit the room over the past few months. It is the first of February and though spring has not yet sprung, it gives cause to believe it just might win the battle. There is a sense of it in the air, or perhaps it is because for the first time in a very long time I have woken up late. I don’t like lie-ins, they make me feel lazy; even after a late night I find a long walk by the bay is the only cure for me, but after the physical exertion
of my late-night gardening I am exhausted. As soon as I move, I feel the stiffness in my limbs.
My radio tells me that I have slept for eight hours and once again the country has been battered by storms, ‘storm factory’ being the new term we’re growing used to hearing, along with ‘polar vortex’ – no doubt new names for babies in 2015. They warn that there’s another fortnight of mayhem on the way, thanks to unsettled weather from the Atlantic. The calmness outside is deceiving. Three cities are underwater, five-metre swells are forecast, and the talk on most stations turns to global warming and the melting polar ice that is fuelling the storms. January rainfall was 70 per cent above the norm and the outlook for February is more of the same. But not today. I look out the window and feel revived by the clear blue sky, the wispy occasional clouds. Even though I am still sore from my late-night workout in the garden, and embarrassed about you seeing it, I bury all that at the back of my mind.
I survey my hard work and am disappointed – no, devastated by what I see. At first I think somebody has come by and deliberately ransacked my newly laid turf, but on closer inspection I realise that I am in fact the culprit. Only with the benefit of my bedroom bird’s-eye view I can see that it encapsulates perfectly my state of mind last night as I was doing it. It resembles a badly sewn, unfinished patchwork quilt, and I am horrified by what I see. It’s as though my diary has been left open for everybody to read my deepest, darkest thoughts, and now I need to slam it closed before I am revealed to the world. I can’t wait until Monday for the landscaper to return and fix my mess. There’s no way I can endure two days with my fragile mental state displayed in the front garden for all to see.
Online research – something I should have made time for last night instead of letting adrenaline and anger rule me – is the answer. It educates me in how exactly to go about fixing the problem. One hour later I have returned from the garden centre and I’m ready and armed. Never do something that can’t be undone, that’s what I always tell myself, and I repeat it now as I assess the task ahead of me. Messy, time-consuming, challenging and frustrating, but possible. The landscaper had already prepared the soil for me perfectly; it had taken him longer than he’d said, but he had done it. Even though I had foolishly trodden all over the grass last night, as I realise today that I shouldn’t have, I carefully roll each piece of turf up again before lifting it to its correct place. I lay the first row along the straight edge where the soil meets the stones, slowly unrolling it to minimise damage. The one I had kicked my heel through still lies on the driveway like a corpse at a crime scene. I place the next roll as close to the last as I can and ensure good contact with the soil by tapping down firmly with the back of the rake. All this I now know I should have done last night, but I also know that I would not have had the patience for it. Last night was about moving, being busy, doing something – not about doing it right.