Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

Juliet cuts him short. “Do you have a job now?”

“I have even heard he can get really heavy, Mum. Someone said he chased a student out through the ground floor window with a stick once.”

“Terrance. Do you have a job now?”

“At least it was a ground floor. Yes, in a student sandwich shop. I talked the manager into opening more hours and giving me a job, but he won’t pay me till the end of the month.”

“You have the gift of the Blarney stone, Terrance. I’m not sure you deserve it!”

“The end of the month, Mum. Are you even taking me seriously? What’ll I do about the rent?”

“OK, listen. Is the sandwich shop enough to pay the rent?”

“No. I’m on my way to a job cleaning the floors of the local co-op before the shop opens.”

“Ahh, so that is why you are out of bed so early.”

“Come on. This is not funny. What am I going to do? They’re not going to pay me till the end of the week and all I have is a bag of rice and half a bottle of ketchup.”

“And a car and a mug for a mum.”

“The best mum in the world, you mean. You couldn’t see your way to lending me a bit in advance of my jobs, could you?”

“It had to be something like this to get you out of bed so early.”

“Mum, can you? Please?”

“Last time, Terrance?” The cat has jumped on Juliet’s knee; she strokes it and kisses its head.

“Absolutely!”

“I’ll transfer it online, and it’ll be cleared in three days. Is that OK?”

“Fantastic. Thanks, Mum, you are the best.”

“Apart from that, how’s your life?”

“It’s great. I’ve hooked up with a girl called Emma. She’s doing a Ph.D. in Waste Management. She took a look at my dissertation and said it was really good. She’s going to Peru on some work experience exchange or something. I do miss you though, Mum.”

“Yes, but you are fine really?”

“Yup. Brilliant! No worries. Got to go. Time to scrub floors for a living. Thanks for the money, Mum. You are a saint. Love you.”

“Love you too.” But the line is already dead. Immediate desolation freezes the room. It is a familiar feeling for Juliet.

It was exciting when the boys first went to university. She was backwards and forwards to them, covering the country. The joke was they had chosen universities on the opposite ends of the UK just to be awkward.

That was the time when Juliet decided to take her love of the Greek language, which she had begun to learn all that time ago with Michelle when they went on holiday, to a new level.

She applied, and was accepted, to do it as a degree at the local technical college, full time but based on home studies. She and the boys were all students together and qualified together. That was a great three years.

Juliet realised, retrospectively, that the fervour that fired her studies had been a wall to conceal the divorce that she and Mick started as soon as the boys were studying. Mick even said that her chasing around the country after them was trying to compensate for the separation. ‘Guilty conscience,’ he called it. Desperate to get far away, Juliet would retaliate.

Juliet was determined that they wouldn’t feel rejected or squeezed out by her and Mick’s alienation. The most important thing for Juliet was for her boys to know that her love continued even if her marriage didn’t. So she chased around and studied hard until they all stood in cap and gown receiving their rolled parchments, each in a different little bit of England.

Thomas got a job in the town where he had studied for his degree and he said he had no plans to move back near her. Then Terrance continued his studies for another two years with his M.A., and it was Juliet who began to feel abandoned.

When the divorce came through, the house went on the market, all was amicably split (even if Mick was grumpy and sarcastic), and Juliet moved into a poky flat round the corner from the family home and finished her degree. She had no idea where she was meant to go after that.

She was saved by an offer from her tutor to do some translation work. It began with one piece he just didn’t have the energy for and grew from there. Juliet channelled her energies into making it her career. She fell lucky and found she had a niche market.

Her work grew, her confidence to be alone grew, and when Terrance announced that he would probably stay on after his next year to do a Ph.D., Juliet gathered the courage to be selfish and consider the move to the warmer climate where her soul had lodged and remained unmoved for ten years.

The sound of a horn brings Juliet to the present. Juliet glances at the clock. Aaman is over an hour late. The horn belongs to a truck promised the day before. “But, never mind, it is here today,” the driver smiles. It takes them half an hour to load the rubbish and Juliet gloats at the space left behind as it drives away.

Aaman is an hour and a half late.

Juliet sits with a coffee, the cat, and a good book until she realises she is kidding herself and she is killing time waiting for Aaman.

He is two and three quarter hours late.

Juliet, feeling empty, looks in the fridge. It too is empty. Thoughts search for why Aaman is late, re-running events of the previous day. Things said. Things unsaid. Intuition knows he is not coming. That snaps her into a decision and she arms herself with shopping bags and purse and heads to the car.

A farmer’s market is held in the next village twice a week. In amongst the stalls, the perfume of fresh vegetables is delicate, hovering like the smell of rain. Juliet pushes thoughts of Aaman and Terrance aside as she strolls along. She tries to recapture the impression the market had on her on her first visit, the envelopment of a foreign culture, the excitement of the unusual. The expectancy of everything and anything. The limitless possibilities.

Passing the first array of fruit, she is beckoned with barked ‘hellos!’ and bellowed promises of the best ware. There is noise everywhere as the sellers compete for customers. Juliet cheers as the callers’ sounds merge with people near her chatting in the relative cool of the shade under the stalls’ canvas covers. Clusters of people, clothed in the colours of summer, catching up with each other, passing pleasantries, rehearsed clichés, and niceties block the path of her progress. No one hurries. The fruit stalls heave with the abundance of the season. Red, yellow, and orange compete with the vegetables in purple, white, sand, and green. This is a time for vegetables and neighbours, sustenance of body and spirit. Juliet’s soul lifts itself from its resting place and soars with wings amidst the songs of exchange.

She stops to look at apples when another stall holder calls, “Hey, pretty lady. You come buy from me, for you very cheap price. Where you from? America? I have a brother in Boston. England? I have a cousin in Birmingham.”

Juliet is hooked .He is smiling at her, a cheeky smile inviting her to collude, to suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride.

She accepts.

“I’m from England. I was born in a town called Bradford.”

“Ah Bradford, I have uncle in Bradford.”

“Sure, does he have a vegetable stall there?”

“No, he works in a vegetable shop. It is posh in Bradford.”

Juliet laughs.

“Bradford posh, I don’t think so.”

He looks the length of her, self-satisfied that he has her attention.

“Tell me,” he murmurs in a lecherous way, “tell me about your Bradford.” He is only in his twenties, playing the role.

Juliet is flattered by the attention and enjoying the banter. Besides, she hasn’t spoken to anyone face to face except Aaman for she isn’t sure how many days.

“It is full of Victorian stone buildings that need a good wash, mills that have been revived for families to visit as ‘an experience’ at the weekend, and rows and rows of back-to-back houses.”