Harvest by Georgina Harding (inspirational books for women TXT) 📕

first leaf appear, uncurl and stretch and become itself, identifiably the leaf of that plant that one had planted and not some other; one watered, tended, transplanted; one watched to see it flourish. And when leaves discoloured one learnt then that there was too much water or too little, or that certain minerals were lacking in the soil, or that there was fungus or pest, just as Charlie had on the farm, Charlie who had walked the crops and plucked leaves and budding heads of grain and regarded them in the sunlight. One learnt the names of chemicals one could use, names that were as sonorous sometimes as the names of the plants, harsh modern chemicals at times, the kinds that they used on the farm, but then as she discovered the harm in them, going back to older remedies that the farmers would have scorned. And other small things one might do. How one might run one’s fingers up a tender red rose stem and crush the green bodies of aphids. Or scrape the scale insects from the hard undersides of bay leaves. Or go out at night with a torch and pick off caterpillars. One learnt that the mice had eaten the roots of the rhubarb through the winter. Or that it was the pigeons that had eaten the shoots of the beans – wishing then that Charlie had been there, to shoot the pigeons, the thought breaking through, that they might once again cut the breasts from the pigeons and fry them for supper on a bed of freshly picked salad. (And if they were to open the crops of the birds as they prepared them they would find shoots there, green as they had been torn from the plant, not yet digested.) One learnt that some plants were temperamental. Some that flourished in the summer could not take the cold of the Norfolk winter, the cold of the air or the wet of the soil, which was worse in some parts of the garden than others. One learnt where the frost pockets were, and where was most sheltered. One saw the plants that made it through and those that didn’t, the salvias that lasted only a couple of winters and found a third winter one winter too many. Some deaths were obvious. Some one could not fathom. A clematis, for example, could wilt all of a sudden over the course of a few gentle days of summer – or perhaps the problem was not wilt at all but only snails or caterpillars eating round the base of the stems.

And then, she had said, and then one wonders why. The girl was waiting for her to say more, her eyes wide, her little rounded hands open at her sides. If she had said any of that, how could she be expected to understand? She saw that she was not making conversation easy for this girl, who her son was in love with, who seemed really a pleasant enough girl and had come such a way across the world to see him, and was probably about the age that she herself had been when she first came here to live. Hardly any older than she was herself when she married Charlie, she too coming from elsewhere, though only from London, not so far but it too another world, in a way. But this girl seemed so sure in her youth. Open. Carefree. She could see why Jonny liked her so. She did not know that she had ever been so free.

It was late in November when Charlie died. Richard was ten years old. The roses she had planted so soon before he was born were tall bushes, with red hips on them and still a sprinkling of yellow leaves. The hedge stood above her head. Yew grew so much faster than one thought. Or perhaps it was time that went so much faster. Billy had given the hedge a last trim in September so that its lines were sharp for the winter. Now he wanted to clear the borders beneath it, rake out the debris and cut back the dead herbaceous growth. Billy always wanted to make the garden tidy and straight. Let’s leave it for the moment, Billy, she said, when she saw him wheel out the barrow with the shears and the rake. She could not bear that year to see the plants disturbed. After all, the dry stalks and seed heads looked so beautiful when there was a frost. She had noticed, in previous years. She had seen the magical appearance of the garden in the first frosts and then regretted Billy’s pruning, the logic that said that it must all be cut down and covered over. She had never put voice to her thought before. Let’s leave it, at least until the year’s turned. She wanted it still, time stayed; even a day like this one, with the sky so grey and the garden so limp and brown.

Billy stood behind his barrow. But we’ll be needing to mulch, madam.

Yes, of course we will. She spoke crisply now, as if his words had woken her up. She knew that she must learn to be crisp on everything. It was up to her, everything up to her, now that Charlie was gone. Let’s wait till February, she said, that won’t be too late, will it? And she had the thought, wasn’t there perhaps a purpose to all this dead stuff anyway, that it was cover against the winter?

Billy took his time. She could see how he was considering her, her youth and her predicament, her inexperience in the face of all that was so shockingly set before her. It was Billy who had first found him, who had brought the fact and the dog home. Who had placed his coat over the body, which was why he was wearing Charlie’s coat now, since she had given him one of