Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

Juliet chuckles as she holds the phone and stands and looks out of the glass in the kitchen door to the garden.

“Funny how it is easy to sort out other peoples’ lives, but not your own.”

“You’re thinking of Aaman?”

“Yes.”

Juliet opens the door and steps into the cool night. His old gardening shoes are under the shelves he made for the tools. She hasn’t noticed before. Michelle stands beside her. The sky looks vast. There are no street or town lights to dull the hood of bright stars. Stars beyond stars. The more Juliet looks the more she sees. Michelle hangs an arm around her, hand dangling. They look up to the myriad of scintillating pinpricks in the galaxy. Distance and time at its mercy, the enormity crashing everything into perspective.

“I don’t think we should leave it twenty-two years before we see each other again,” Juliet says.

“Absolutely not!”

“Want to come out again at Easter?”

“Sod that. Easter’s in March. I thought I might take a two-week holiday beginning of February. I might manage to work that long. Besides, that company owes me so much overtime, I could come out for a year and still be in the black.”

“Seriously, when do you want to come back?”

“Seriously, I don’t want to go, but seeing as I have to, I mean it, I can be back in February if I am invited.”

“Do you need to ask?”

“Well I didn’t even dare ask for—”

“Twenty-two years,” Juliet and Michelle say in unison, laughing, walking farther into the garden.

“Juliet?”

“Yes.”

“Who owns that disused barn next door?”

“Yiannis the taxi driver. Why? Oh, what are you thinking? Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

“Just playing with the idea. What do you think?”

“I think it would be brilliant, and if you have to stay in England and work, I could holiday let it for you. An extra little earner for you.”

“And you.”

“Why me?”

“Friendship is friendship, but business is business.”

“No, I think I owe you.”

“Will you look into it for me? See if he wants to sell, how much, if we can convert it and so on. Let’s see if it’s feasible first.”

“Sure. You would become my neighbour from hell, building works day and night. I would have to sue you, you know.”

“I understand your best friend is a lawyer so it wouldn’t cost you much.” Michelle laughs.

“Is that even technically possible, to represent someone who is suing you, sue yourself, as it were?”

“I understand in Greece anything is possible. It is the land of myths and dreams,” Michelle says in a terrible Greek accent.

Juliet sits outside in some rare warm sun.

January had been fine, but cloudy. At the beginning of February, Michelle had popped over for a week with promises of returning at Easter to talk to Yiannis some more about the barn. The winter was passing quickly. But by March, Juliet is becoming impatient for the summer sun.

The countryside bursts with wild flowers and colour. Banks of yellow flowers flank the road to the town. Women in black collect edible weeds in fields, under trees, on hillsides. Purple flowers crack through the cemented lane. The sky is cloudless, but a pale blue, not the deep dark blue of the height of summer. It looks warmer than it is. There is still a nip to the air and there is a steady breeze. But tucked on the front patio, Juliet can enjoy the sun and is free of drafts. The bougainvillea the neighbour gave her is popping with buds, and spikes are hidden with tender green leaves, a pink flower here and there promising a cascade for the summer.

The remaining pomegranates hang low under the leaves, cracked and gnarled, bloated and split by the rain. The orange trees are bare as Juliet has plucked and eaten all the fruit, freshly squeezing them for breakfast, snacking midmorning and using them as afternoon refreshers. The kale is still producing its curly compact leaves, but Juliet replanted most of the vegetable plot at the beginning of January, and it is currently growing deliriously along with the weeds. It thrills Juliet to see, bringing the promise of fresh food and summer around the corner.

One of the kittens, now more cat than kitten, is on the roof of the barn next door. The orange tree rustles against the barn with the breeze, and the cat turns sharply, crouching instinctively in response, before continuing its way. The gate buffets a little against its chain. Juliet makes a mental note to get the old lock mended, although she knows that she really will not get around to it. The lavender by the gate is doing well and the climbing rose, which she hopes will grow in an arch over the gate, looks sturdy now, after a thin and hesitant start.

Another layer of gravel would help, but keeping up with the weeding on the drive is a job for which Juliet can never find enough time. The wall behind the pomegranate trees could do with a fresh coat of white paint, and the lane also needs weeding. Juliet cannot quite manage it all as everything grows so furiously.

She puts her feet up on the chair opposite. A cat jumps on her knee, but Juliet’s eyes are closed, her head thrown back to face the sun. She feels and guesses which one it is. Possibly Tiger, definitely not Aaman. She has not seen Juliet, the mother cat, for some weeks now and suspects she has deserted Aaman for another. She opens her eyes to nothing but blue sky, a trail of a long gone jet frilling out at distant heights.

If she sits much longer, she will break her habit of translation in the morning. She knows herself well enough to spot the slippery slope. She looks down. It is Tiger. She lifts him as she stands and puts him back on the warmed seat. He purrs.

She wanders into the house. Two of the kittens are on the bed in the guest room play fighting, the sheets twisting beneath them. Juliet shoos them out, straightens the bed and closes the door. It has begun to squeak again.

Today Juliet decides to work at her desk in the bedroom. She sits down and opens her new laptop, presses return and waits for everything to appear. Looking out the window, she still thinks it would be nice to have a pond by the pergola, something natural looking with a few rocks behind, all overgrown with ground-covering plants.

She opens her email account and starts to delete unsolicited emails from the top, working down. She reads ones that are work related and answers them. There is one from Michelle. She puts it in the ‘Michelle’ file for later. There’s one email address she does not recognise. Her heart beats quicker. The ‘Country Code Top Level Domain’ is for Pakistan.

She opens it, and her stomach turns over, her pulse doubles, and she momentarily feels dizzy.

Dear Juliet,

It is nearly six months since I left you. I thought it best to leave some time before writing to you. It has helped me. I hope it has helped you.

I am sure much will have happened in your life since I have left. Much has happened in mine.

The aeroplane was a little bit frightening and took a long time to get to Lahore.

I attended the interviews that we had arranged. I received offers of work but I then took a courageous move. I hope you do not think this was ungrateful of me but I did not take the jobs offered. I looked for jobs in Sialkot. I found several software houses and applied to them, printing out the email that you wrote. I hope you don’t mind?

It was a great success and I was offered a job that would have been my boyhood dream.

I stayed in Sialkot for a month before I returned home. I did this because I wanted to be sure that I had the job and that I was not going to be sacked for not being good enough. I also did this because each day that I worked I could feel my confidence growing and I wanted to go home a confident man, not a man who had last been seen as an illegal immigrant. I also needed some time on my own to be back in Pakistan.