Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

“Are you hungry?”

The look on their faces as they meet her eye makes her feel foolish for asking in the first place. She doesn’t wait for an answer but returns indoors and lays out two plates with bread, tinned sardines, a salad of fresh tomatoes and cucumber and a couple of apples apiece. She has emptied the fridge; there is no more to offer. Juliet wonders when she can shop for food if she is going to have someone helping in the garden. She shouldn’t leave them alone even if the house is locked.

Not sure where to lay out the food, Juliet hovers with a plate in each hand between the kitchen table, repainted and transformed from when she moved in, and the cheap folding table on the porch. After putting the food on the porch table, she covers each plate with some kitchen paper to keep any flies away. She checks the front garden and over the wall for the cat. There is no sign of him.

Juliet tries the tap on the porch. It doesn’t work. She considers getting them a bowl of water for their hands but then decides that would be ridiculous.

“Come and eat.” She beckons them to the kitchen and shows them the sink and a new bar of soap she has just unwrapped. They both wash their hands thoroughly and Juliet lays out a hand towel each on the edge of the sink. The men seem to feel awkward about the towels. The Small One gently wipes his hands before replacing the towel carefully and the Grinning One uses the same towel. Juliet indicates the front door, the table and food can be seen on the table beyond, the paper covering being caught by the slightest of afternoon breezes.

Juliet tries to be discreet whilst they eat, but her curiosity is heightened. What she keeps expecting isn’t how events unfold. They used a towel between them, as if a towel is something other people have but not them, but then they didn’t thank her for the towels, which if it was an unusual or special event she would have expected. Nor did they thank her for the cold coffees earlier, or the water. They wanted the drinks, but they accepted them like it was their right.

She imagines they will dig in to the food in an appreciative fashion. She looks forward to seeing them eat with gusto. So much of their behaviour has left her at a loss. Their responses unexpected, their manners are so different. What she will enjoy when they eat is seeing expected behaviour. She needs some normality, something familiar.

But they both stand beside the table and talk whilst looking at the food, indicating what they are clearly discussing. Juliet feels sure she hasn’t put any foods that they wouldn’t eat on their plates. No pork for Muslims, no beef for Hindus. Juliet is unsure which they might be, but as she has neither in the house, she is at a loss to explain their hesitation.

Eventually they sit and eat slowly, selecting what they choose with care and attention whilst making quiet conversation. They savour everything that is on their plates, using the bread as a scoop. There is a pause to talk a little and sit a little before they change plates and begin on the fruit. The Grinning One pushes his shoes off the back of his heel with his other foot. He picks up some gravel that has made its way onto the patio and throws it to scare the cat away. Juliet’s lips tighten.

When they have finished, they do not sit. They stand and walk around the house to begin working again.

Juliet collects the dishes. The Grinning One’s plates are empty but the Small One has left an apple. He has balanced it on the peel of the second apple to leave the bruised side upper most. It had been carefully placed so as not to roll, the imperfection on display. Juliet feels affronted. Is her food not good enough? She would eat the apple in that condition. It wouldn’t occur to her that it was anything but edible. Is it a comment? Has she offended them by offering imperfect produce? Are they in a position to choose?

Juliet stacks the dishes in the sink, but leaves the apple plate on the side to contemplate.

Having started so early and lunched so late, the working day is nearly at an end. Juliet, stationed behind the gauze curtain in the bedroom, sees the taller one again squatting on the ground, filling another rubble sack. The other has worked his way through to the back of the garden and has cleared a track, causing a division. He is pulling something from the ground. It looks like weeds, but his care is greater. He pulls not to harm. After a struggle and many pauses to release the plant in places, he pulls free a tendril, green and leafy, over ten feet long. Juliet is curious. He has left it and walked out of view, and she anticipates his return. He comes back into view with a post which he hammers into the ground with the adze that he must have taken from the wheelbarrow.

The post reverberates with each blow, the solid ‘thunk’ echoes off the back wall of the house, movement in several places in the undergrowth, tiny creatures running for safety. His muscles flex and relax. With no self-awareness, concentration distorts his mouth, creasing his eyes.

Once the pole is up, he shakes it to check its firmness and then winds the green tendril around it to keep it off the ground.

He doesn’t stop to admire his work. He moves on to more pulling and freeing; he lifts a decomposing plank and smiles. He takes out a rotting shoe, followed by another, and another. He pauses to take a rubble sack and then fills the sack with the endless haul of rotting shoes he has found. The sun masks some of his movements with glare. He leans down with a different movement, and Juliet sees the cat’s tail in The Mess. He seems to stroke the cat before returning to his cache of footwear. After the sack is full, he stops. He stretches; he looks up, his mind broken free of the work. He walks towards the window and retrieves his thin, grey, shapeless jumper. As he puts it on, Juliet sees the split under each arm and down the V at the front. With this detail just the other side of the gauze and the window, Juliet moves away, snaps into action and looks for her handbag so she can pay them.

She finds her purse on the sofa, and the Small One is at the front patio walking towards the wheelbarrow.

At the back is the other man.

“A very good day’s work, Madam. Very good indeed. Aaman is my very best friend and we work so hard together, like a team of six. So much done today, but much to do…” He grins, waiting for the following day’s invite.

Juliet is still considering what she should pay them. She has heard the rate is anything between twenty euros and thirty-five euros for hard, unskilled work.

“Thank you for today’s work. I will not need you tomorrow.” Juliet hands him twenty-five euros, which he pockets uncounted whilst searching her face. She doesn’t wait for any more of his reaction, but walks away, around the end of the house, leaving him slowly rolling down his sleeves.

The Small One is by the wheelbarrow, cleaning mud off the adze.

“Thank you for your work. What is your name again?”

Juliet notices that they are the same height.

“You are welcome. I am Aaman. At the back, a grape tree, not a weed. Tomorrow?”

“Ah, it is a grape vine. Yes, tomorrow, eight o’clock, here. OK?”

“One or two peoples?”

“One, you.”

Juliet gives him twenty-five euros. He takes it without acknowledgement and puts it in his shirt pocket uncounted.

His very best friend appears from around the corner.

The gate is thick with paint, the top layer the colour of mustard. Mustard over a darker brown, over yellow. The strata are exposed where time and weather has flaked pieces away. Aaman is at the gate at five minutes to eight. Mahmout had tried to talk him out of coming. He said the woman obviously needs their help so if they stick together they would both get paid.