BIRD, WOMAN, FLOWER

Iclose my eyes so I can see her. Even though she’s not thirty feet away looking like one of her own flowers in her faded blue hat. I would see her perfectly well with my eyes open, but I’m not always a brave man. She’d arrived in October, as the town turned its face toward winter. A strange time to take on an allotment, I’d thought, yet we all have our reasons. I’d had mine, two summers previous. Get back to nature, grow flowers, listen to birds, they’d said. It’ll take time, nobody expects you to get over it quickly, they’d said. I’d planted freesias and hydrangeas that died in prize-winning proportions and everyone stayed away, including the birds.

In November, she’d painted her shed yellow and planted tulips and hesperanthas. A robin dropped by and sat on the roof. I kept my head down and planted broad beans and daffodils and jealously bought birdseed. At the bus stop, I closed my eyes and saw the curve of her back as she bent to the earth, and her strong arms as she pulled her hat down against a dusting of rain.

In December, a duck, distracted away from the river, wandered in and murdered my daffodil bulbs. I planted onions and garlic and, like a fool, sweet peas. I threw birdseed into the wind on Christmas Day and wondered where she was. I closed my eyes and drank wine with her by an open fire and remembered when I’d been a braver man.

In January, I’d pulled out what the slugs had left of the sweet pea seedlings, while she planted petunias and geraniums and spoke quietly to a visiting goldfinch. I put in dahlias and placed a saucer of beer to repel the slugs, and as I passed her allotment we looked at each other for longer than I’d expected. On the bus, I closed my eyes and memorised the upward tilt of her head and her hands, brown and stained with the earth, like mine. The duck enjoyed the beer immensely.

In February, I chose pots of posh olives and French cheeses and told the old man at the deli it was lunch for two. I ate it all, alone in my shed, while she leaned on her spade with a Bounty bar. When I came out, she looked over and smiled at me for longer than I’d expected. I planted parsnips and spinach and swallowed half a packet of antacids. In the supermarket queue, I closed my eyes and saw our earthy hands clasped on a tropical beach.

In March, two wrens visited. I offered them some musty seed and they lifted their beaks to the sky and laughed their heads off. I planted cauliflower and carrots and filled a crumpled Tesco bag with spinach. Way too much for one person, I practised for an hour. See you tomorrow, she said, as I walked past. I ate spinach pie for a week and when I closed my eyes I heard a voice like birdsong.

In April, her plot was a circus of colour. I bought two canvas chairs and turned my face to the sun. I planted beetroot and Swiss chard and served birdseed sandwiches to the duck and its family. She brought me olives and French cheese and flowers and I felt like a brave man again. She looked at me for much longer than

I’d expected when I took her brown, earthy hands in mine.

She calls to me now from across the plots and I open my eyes. They’re here, she lilts, and points to the sky. Twenty seasons of sparrows and I still hear birdsong.

Julietta Henderson grew up in Queensland; she divides her time between Australia and the UK. Her debut novel, The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman (Bantam Press), sees 12-year-old Norman, his mum, and a pensioner on a pilgrimage to the Edinburgh Fringe.