out the tale of her complicated love life.
“I’m worried about Em, Mags,” he said as he took a pause to sip some tea from the flask he’d brought with him “She’s really in love with this chap. But it’s a bit of a mess really. I wish you were here. I’m sure you’d have given her better advice than I have.”
Stop wittering man, and do, Maggie’s words often repeated came into his head as if she were standing there right next to him. Just listen to the girl.
Well, he had listened and hadn’t liked what he’d heard. His only daughter had been having an affair with a married man, whose wife had just died in an accident. His daughter’s heart was breaking and there was nothing he could do.
He sighed, finished his tea, and went back to planting his onions. He spent another hour pottering around the allotment, tying up plants which had fallen over in the wind, and bagging up leaves for composting.
It was gone eleven when he finished. Time for him to head to the pub, if for nothing less than to maintain his image as the village lothario.
But we both know that’s nonsense, Mags, don’t we?” he muttered to himself He sighed. “Talking to myself again. Silly old man.”
As he walked back to the car a feather blew in his path. Without knowing why, he picked it up and put it in his pocket.
“Emily’s no happier,” Kenneth said as he pottered in his greenhouse, ripping out last year’s tomato plants, clearing up the canes, and chucking the old compost on his vegetable patch. It was hard work and he was soon puffed out. Perhaps Emily was right and he should get down to the gym more.
“I don’t know, Mags, this lad of hers – she says they’re not together because of what’s happened – but she’s still got it bad. Much worse than with that waste of space, Graham. I just want her to be happy, you know? Yes. Yes of course you do.”
Kenneth stopped and stood breathing in the fresh air. The weather had improved somewhat, and though it was still cold, the unforgiving grey had lifted and the sun shone clear and sharp in a crystal blue sky. It was the sort of day he and Maggie had loved to spend together here, working side by side in companiable silence. It was all too easy, even after all this time, to imagine she was still there and would emerge from the back of the hut, covered and dirt and cursing that she’d been scratched by the brambles she’d been cutting back.
His Maggie, as lovely to him as when they’d first met, aged 20 and he’d bought her an ice cream at the local fair. They’d been so happy together, and he so wanted Emily to find that kind of happiness too. But so far it seemed to have eluded her.
A lone bee hovered by the water butt.
“You’re early, lass,” Kenneth said, “watch out or you’ll die of frostbite.”
The frost had put paid to Kenneth’s strawberries which he’d planted out in a fit of enthusiasm a couple of weeks earlier. Maggie would have shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes and told him he was too impatient. Which he was.
But there was no response, just the gentle breeze blowing in the trees, and the sound of Alfie barking in the allotments somewhere chasing rabbits.
What did he expect? Maggie was dead and buried. He had to do this alone. But as he went to put his tools back in the shed, he found another white feather on the floor. He picked it up and put it with the other one.
The allotments were springing back to life. Now when Kenneth came down here, there were several neighbours to wave at. The sound of mowing filled the air, and the crocii were blooming.
Today the sun was even out, thought there was still a nip in the air. Kenneth took a deep breath of satisfaction as he checked on his seedlings in the greenhouse; spinach, broad beans, lettuces, courgettes, peppers and tomatoes were all growing satisfactorily. His onions had clearly had a visit from a mouse or maybe a squirrel looking for nuts, as several of them had been dug up. The birds were singing and frogs croaking in the pond in the next door allotment: the sounds of spring.
Kenneth loved this time of year out here. All that potential for new growth, new life. Hope springing from the dead leaves of winter. Hope … he smiled to himself.
“Maybe this will be my year, eh, Maggie,” he said, “the year when one of the village girls finally takes your place.”
Even as he said it, he couldn’t ever picture that. No one could ever take Maggie’s place, nor did he really want them to. He could almost hear her snort of derision.
“… No me neither,” The truth was Kenneth didn’t want to get over Maggie. He was a gregarious man who liked female company, but though he was grateful to all the women he’d dated – not slept with, despite Emily’s constant teasing on the subject – since his wife had died, none of them were or could ever be Maggie.
“Destined to be a lonely widower, that’s me,” he said, and again he thought he could hear Maggie scoffing. Kenneth Harris, you are not the sort of man who can cope alone. There’s someone out there waiting for you.
She’d said it more than once in the weeks leading to her death. Even then her love and generosity overcoming the hideousness of the situation. More than once she’d also said she wished it were the other way round, that she was going to be the one left alone.
I’d cope better than you, she’d say, you can barely manage a cup of tea. I spoilt you.
Yes, she had, but he was coping, and could even cook for himself now. Though the meals that his “women” as Emily called them, would keep providing were more than welcome. He was coping. He was surviving. But he couldn’t envisage ever moving on, not really. There had only ever been one woman for him. And she was gone.
“So Em’s been,” Kenneth had come straight to the allotments after his daughter had left. The house had seemed too big and lonely without her.
Emily had been on at him again about moving somewhere smaller and easier to manage. But Kenneth didn’t want to. He liked the rose bush that Maggie had planted and grew around the front door; he felt her presence strongly still in every room. Not as much as on the allotments, but still she was there, whispering to him in the fabric of the house. If he gave up the house, he’d have to lose that closeness to Maggie. And he wasn’t prepared to do that. Not yet.
Kenneth pottered about, checking on the seedlings in the greenhouse, which would soon be ready for planting out, and seeing how his parsnips, carrots and spuds were doing. He paused from thinning the vegetables to watch a frog hopping among them, looking for slugs, probably. A good thing too, or his cabbages would be decimated otherwise.
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