A heartwarming short story

Iblamed the weather.The previous week we’d been on holiday in the Algarve – well, I say “holiday”, but it’s never really a holiday when you have four children under the age of six, is it?

In my absence there had been storms. Severe ones, according to the news I’d read online. Rivers had broken their banks; whole villages had flooded. People had had to evacuate their homes.

My part of the country had got off lightly in comparison.The downpours had been torrential but the damage was thankfully minimal, although you wouldn’t have thought that, looking at my greenhouse.

I stood at the door, gloomily surveying the destruction of my sanctuary, the place I retreat to when the chaos of the house – the endless washing, the constant meals, the sheer noise of the children – gets too much.

Two of the top windows had been smashed, so the place was awash even now, two days after the storms had dispersed.

Seed trays lay upturned on the floor, earth scattered across the stone in watery patterns and three terracotta pots had tumbled and shattered. My cuttings were beyond saving.

Disheartening as all that was, with time and hard work I knew it would be fixable.

The thing that sent my heart tumbling into my wellies was the sorry sight of my 12 tomato plants.

Before we left for Portugal the stalks were tall, straight and strong. The leaves had been green and fragrant, the fruit on the point of ripening, and I’d been optimistic about my chance of winning the annual tomato growing competition I had with my neighbour, Keith.

The idea for the contest had sprouted a few years ago, one early spring afternoon when I popped round to check up on him.

We’d been living next door to each other for a year and only knew one another to say hello to, but his wife had died two months earlier and since then I hadn’t seen him out and about much. I thought I’d drop round to make sure he was all right.

Armed with a cake I’d baked as a pretext, I rang the bell and waited.

A minute or so later I rang again, and then again, but there was no answer. I set the cake down on the step and hammered on the door, but to no avail.

Trying to keep a lid on my growing alarm, I hurried back down the path and clambered over the fence that separates our gardens.To my relief, I found him in his greenhouse, bending over the bench, muttering.

He was surprised to see me, but once we’d cleared up the misunderstanding and had started on the cake, we got chatting about plants. He admitted he talked to his, as I’d suspected when I’d found him murmuring sweet nothings to his “darling little seedlings”.

When I realised how green his fingers were, and how lacking in sparkle he was, I suggested a little light competition.

Every year, I suggested, we should have a contest to see who could produce the best crop of tomatoes. No prizes, just the satisfaction of having grown something truly and deliciously wonderful.

Keith said he thought that this was a marvellous idea and he wholeheartedly threw himself into

it, as did I.

So far I was four seasons up, and I must admit I’d been feeling quite smug about it.

But pride comes before a fall and, oh, had

I fallen, because this time there was no way Keith’s tomatoes could be in a worse state than mine.

Over the years I’d battled blight, greenfly and some weird worm that ate tomatoes from the inside out, but the damage here was terrible.

Battered by the rain, most of the stalks on my plants were stripped and broken. Leaves had been ripped off and lay sodden and crumpled on the floor.

Great splodges of red splattered the stone.

Only one brave little fruit remained resolutely attached.

Surely, I thought resignedly as I observed the carnage, this year I had to have lost.

The following day, the day that marked our annual afternoon of comparison, Keith opened his front door with the wide grin

I’d expected.

“Samantha,” he said brightly. “Come in. I’ve been expecting you.”

Undoubtedly. Nevertheless, his smile was infectious, and despite my heartbreak over the state of my refuge, I found myself returning it as I stepped over the threshold and handed over the cake that I was now in the habit of baking for him. “How are you?” “Couldn’t be better.”

Well, there was nothing like the rush of endorphins that came with the likelihood of a win.

“You look very perky.”

“I feel very perky. How was the holiday?”

“Lovely.”

“And the kids?” Gorgeous. Exhausting. My greatest

achievements.“Little bundles of energy,” I said wryly.

“Thank you for their postcard. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“I’d love one,” I said, following him into the kitchen.

“So, how are your tomatoes?” Keith asked as he filled the kettle with water and switched it on.

I watched him reach for the mugs and resisted the impulse to ask if he needed any help.

“Not so good,” I said instead. “Sorry to hear that.”

He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded gleeful.

He was practically doing a little dance right there in the kitchen while the tea brewed.

“Decimated by the storms,” I said with a sigh, any hopes that his crop might have suffered some dastardly infestation dashed.

“The greenhouse is a wreck. I’m guessing yours are fabulous.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to boast,” he said,“but I seem to have had a remarkably good year.Want to come and see?”

I picked up my mug.

“Lead on,Alan Titchmarsh. Lead on.”

A moment later I walked into Keith’s greenhouse at the end of his garden and my fears were duly confirmed.

I’d never seen anything like it. He had dozens of fruit, a bumper crop. Large, beautiful, bright and smelling like a warm summer’s day.

His tomatoes were better than anything I’d managed to produce – ever. It was astounding.

“These are incredible,” I said once I’d picked my jaw up off the floor. “How on earth did you do it?” Keith tapped his nose.

“A good gardener never gives away his secrets.”

“Seriously,” I said, full of curiosity. “I’d be fascinated to know.”

“OK,” he said solemnly.“I started with biodynamics.”

“With what?” “Biodynamics,” he repeated. “Planting according to the lunar calendar. I followed a few astrological and spiritual principles and, well, they seem to have worked.

“I’m sure the compost and manure helped.”

He looked down the line of plants with pride.

“There’s definitely something to be said for cosmic forces and a mystical perspective, don’t you think?”

I didn’t know what to think. I was too busy trying not to choke on my tea.“But you’re an engineer,” I managed.

Planting according to the lunar calendar? Cosmic forces? It was all so out of character.

“And I’m always up for something new,” he said sagely.“Mind you, I did keep on talking to them, and you should never underestimate the power of words.”

“Are you sure there wasn’t anything else?” I asked, still unable to believe his strategy.

“What else would there be?” he said innocently.

Good question.And who was I to be sceptical? I was hardly the expert this year. Maybe he’d just had some terrific luck. Or he really was on to something with the whole biodynamics thing and conversation, after all.

I might even try it next year, since the results were undeniable.

Whatever he’d done this year, I had no choice but to admit defeat, and to do it graciously.

“Congratulations,” I said, raising my cup of tea to his and smiling.“You win, Keith.And all I can say is you definitely deserve it. Biodynamics or no biodynamics, this year your tomatoes are truly spectacular.”

“You know Keith and I have this tomato-growing competition going on?” I said to my husband later that evening, once the children had gone to bed and we’d cracked open a bottle of wine.

“The one you pretend you don’t mind too much about?” he replied, spooning the prawn linguine I’d made into two bowls.

“That’s the one.”

“What about it?”

“This year I lost.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” he said, shooting me a quick grin as he put the bowls on the table and we sat. “Apparently so.”

“There’s always next year.” “Assuming we’re not hit by storms again,” I said, twirling my fork in the pasta.“Keith’s greenhouse is protected by those trees, so it didn’t suffer as mine did.You wouldn’t believe the crop of tomatoes he’s managed to grow.” “Good?” “Astonishingly so. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

My husband was lifting his fork to his mouth when he stopped and frowned. “That’s odd,” he said.

“What is?”

“I saw him in the supermarket this morning piling boxes of tomatoes into his trolley.”

I stared at him in bewilderment. “What?”

“This morning, at the supermarket, Keith was buying tomatoes. He had more than any one person could eat in a week.Why would he be buying them if he already had a bumper supply at home?”

As my husband’s words sank in, I sat stock-still, supper suddenly forgotten.

Why indeed? Home-grown tomatoes taste like nothing else on earth. Shop-bought ones don’t even come close.

And Keith had dozens of the former, so what was going on?

Mind racing, I mentally revisited this afternoon. I remembered Keith’s confidence in his crop.

His certainty that this year he’d won. I pictured his greenhouse.The plants. Looking a little past it, now I thought about it.A little yellow...

And now I recalled catching the faint glint in the sun of – what? What had that been? Wire?

Then there were his tomatoes. His lovely, bright tomatoes. Uniform; unblemished; perfect. Possibly a little bit too perfect? He couldn’t have! Yet what other explanation could there be?

It dawned on me what Keith must have done. How he must have painstakingly tied each shop-bought tomato to a plant, then he had sprayed the whole lot with tomato-scented spray.

I felt a surge of shock and outrage, followed by amusement and then reluctant admiration.

TLC and biodynamics, my foot. Cosmic forces and mystical perspectives, hah!

Keith had cheated, the sneaky rotter. He’d out and out cheated. His crop had clearly been no better than mine.And yet, how could I be cross? He cared. He really cared. Enough to go to those lengths to win.

What he’d done was ingenious, and I had to admit I loved it.

“Oh, I think I have some idea,” I said to my husband, remembering the look of faint pride on Keith’s face when he’d been gazing at his plants. “But, as you say, there’s always next year.”