Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

“Please?”

Louder this time. Juliet turns sharply, chin in the air.

“What now?” She meets the Small One’s gaze .

“Water.”

Juliet drops her chin and looks at her glass. After the briefest of pauses she finds she is embarrassed by her own thoughtlessness. She hesitates as the number of glasses of water she has drunk during the course of the morning comes to mind, unbidden. Frowning briefly, she raises her head and looks the Small One in the eye.

“Of course.”

Juliet wonders whether they will want glasses or if they will drink from the bottle. She finds two glasses she doesn’t use (she feels the glass is too thick), pinches them together between finger and thumb and takes them and a water bottle to the waiting men. She doesn’t give them to the men but puts them down on the windowsill and walks past the men around the end of the house to see how much of The Mess is piled by the gate. There is an unexpectedly high pile. The cat is there digging a hole in the gravel to relieve itself by one of the rubble sacks.

Juliet flaps her hand at the cat and decides she needs to find someone who will take The Mess away. Turning from the gate, she notices that one of the men has jumped over the garden wall into the next door plot.

Orange groves surround Juliet’s house on two sides at the back, the fence between, high, but pleasantly unnoticeable, a wire mesh rusted into camouflage, a lace work of holes giving footholds to creepers and vines, a canvas for grasses to weave. The patio and the drive are edged by a whitewashed wall that overlooks the tended field and neighbour beyond, but the fourth side is flanked by a piece of disused land with an old stone barn, it’s roof slowly falling in. It is over the old stone wall to this land that the man has gone.

She sees only the man’s leg and foot, the last of him to disappear from view. She has no idea which of the men it is. Nor does it matter, it is a liberty, and for what? Juliet feels her chest swell in indignation and is on the point of calling out loudly to ask what he thinks he is doing when realisation saves her the embarrassment.

Juliet has surprised herself during the morning and feels uncomfortable. Twice it has been completely out of her frame of reference to consider the basic human needs of another. It is not the way she sees herself. She had been—is—a mother. The needs of the twins were her priority for so long. But now she overlooks the obvious needs of another for water and basic facilities. She was a good mother and wonders why she would be missing the skills that were her pride for all those years.

The young twins seem a lifetime away. They’ll be twenty-four this year. The same age she was when she had them. Thomas now content and nearly married, Terrance just finishing a Master of Science degree and ready to rule the world. At twenty-four, Juliet had already been married a year.

Michelle, such a good friend for all those years, had phoned her about Mick on several occasions. She was her usual tentative and sensitive self with each call. But the bottom line to these conversations, and Juliet could hear it loud and clear no matter how Michelle dressed it, was that she thought the match was a bad idea. Juliet was determined that Mick was to be her happy ever after. Michelle’s stance drove a wedge into their friendship, at least in the early days of her marriage.

Now Juliet can no longer see Mick with her eyes from back then. All the traits that seemed so spontaneous and rebellious now seem shirking of responsibility and lacking in intelligence. He had seemed so free and without a care, seizing each day and squeezing out the fun. But when the boys came, the spontaneous pint in the pub became predictable. The carefree taking the day off work irresponsible as his pay was docked or, as in more than one case, he was sacked and their budget tightened even more until he was taken on again.

However, she could still picture the way his dark hair curled behind his ears, the pout of his upper lip when he looked at her. The way his eyelashes made his blue eyes look permanently eye-lined. His accent was a tentacle from the old country, her childhood home, early memories of simplicity and safety. In those early days, he made her feel as if the world couldn’t breathe without her.

The boys were a product of their spontaneous delight. But within months of nappies, food preparation, burping, and bedtimes, it was Juliet who felt she couldn’t breathe under Mick’s gaze. He became at first demanding, then critical, then dismissive. The boys took her focus, her own needs lost in mounds of washing and meals to make. Homemaker and mother for two years, with never a moment off. Until Mick’s mother came over from Ireland, and Juliet took the holiday to Greece that ignited her passion for this country and this language. The holiday she took, not with Mick, but with Michelle, the first time she had seen her since school. In fact, it had been the last time too.

The holiday was fantastic. Juliet laughed until she ached. They were kids again without a care in the world. But towards the end, Michelle began to suggest that Juliet should leave Mick. Somehow it grew to an argument that encompassed the events of their childhood and forced Juliet to look at things she had buried. The argument became the sole topic of conversation and it continued from the hotel to the airport, finishing with Juliet storming off once they reached home ground.

Twenty-two years Michelle had been calling her, keeping that relationship alive, but not once apologising.

Lost in these thoughts, Juliet is startled by the Grinning One coming round the corner.

“Is madam pleased so far? You must excuse my bad English. Here, in this country, it is difficult to learn English.” He is grinning between his words and his head is never still.

Juliet is well aware that he is trying to ingratiate himself because he needs the work, but she is also aware that his ingratiation technique is stopping him from doing this work.

“Yes, I understand, you do not need to speak English to do this work.” She points in the direction she wants him to return to his labour.

He grins. She turns away towards the house.

“It will be beautiful when we are finished, madam, have no fear, no fear at all,” he calls after her.

Juliet leaves them alone for half an hour before asking them if they would like an iced coffee. They are both very pleased. She takes the thick glasses she gave them for water by their bases and carries them into the kitchen where puts them in the sink and washes them with hot water and soap. The iced coffee fills them to the brim and she presents them on a tray. She wonders if she is overcompensating.

After the coffee, Juliet returns to her translation work. Low volume music comes from the back garden. Bollywood music. She smiles and stands up and puts her arms out to her sides and wiggles her hips, images of colourful saris and nose rings and hennaed hands completing the transformation in her mind. As she wiggles, she gathers her notes and takes them all into the bedroom and lays them on the desk before the window. The music will be a little closer and therefore louder working here.

The music seems so happy to Juliet, and after a short while she stares out of the window, watching the men work. The Grinning One has a serious face now. He works slowly and is talking quietly to the other one. He looks cross. The Small One stops his hauling of the larger pieces and stretches and then rubs his stomach and pulls a face. Juliet wonders if he has a stomachache.

Returning to her work, she feels fidgety until homing in on the sensation of hunger. At the same moment she recalls the Small One’s face whilst rubbing his stomach and realises he must be hungry too. She feels happy to have thought of this and goes outside to ask them.