‘Not if you’re a blackbird.’
‘Hmm.’
Still, he supposed, humans were territorial too, and had tools and machinery to make the noises for them. He’d repointed the brickwork where the mortar had crumbled away, and put up trellises which heightened the party walls. He’d fixed rustic, woven-wood partitions between the various sections of the garden. He’d even paid someone to lay a winding flagged path and run an electric cable to the place where, at the turn of a switch, water would gush over large oval stones imported from some distant Scottish beach.
Also that spring he improved the soil as and where indicated. He dug where Martha asked him to dig. He began what promised to be a long campaign against ground elder. He wondered if he loved Martha just as much as ever, or if he was merely performing a husbandly routine from which others were invited to deduce how much he loved her. He was informed that he was third in the queue for an allotment. He did vocal imitations of the experts on Gardeners’ Question Time until Martha told him it really wasn’t funny any more.
He was disturbed by a knocking close to his ear. He opened his eyes. Martha had wheeled her yellow plastic wagon, stacked to the gunnels, down to the car park.
‘I even tried you on your mobile…’
‘Sorry, love. Didn’t bring it. Miles away. Have you paid?’
Martha merely nodded. She wasn’t exactly cross. She half-expected his head to go AWOL as soon as they drew into a garden centre. Ken got out of the car and eagerly took over loading the boot. Nothing too herniating this time, anyway, he thought.
Martha considered barbecues a bit vulgar. She didn’t use the word, but didn’t need to. Ken liked nothing more than the smell of meat cooking over whitened coals. She liked neither the event nor the equipment. He had suggested getting one of those small numbers – what were they called? – yes, hibachis, and actually, weren’t they Japanese inventions, and therefore appropriate to this little plot of God’s earth? Martha was faintly amused by yet another of his Japanese jokes, but unpersuaded. Eventually she allowed the acquisition of a sleek little terracotta item shaped like a miniature barrel standing on end; it was some kind of ethnic oven on special offer from the Guardian. Ken had to promise never to use barbecue lighter fuel with it.
Now that summer had come, they were repaying hospitality received when the house had been in chaos. The sky was still light at eight when Marion and Alex and Nick and Anne arrived, but the day’s heat, never extreme to begin with, was already beginning to disappear. The two women guests immediately wished they’d worn tights and not overdone the summery look, thinking it unhostly of Martha to have knowingly dressed against the evening’s chill. But since they’d been invited to eat outside, eat outside was what they would do. There were jokes about mulled wine and the Blitz spirit, and Alex pretended to warm his hands on the terracotta oven, nearly knocking it over in the process.
While Ken fiddled with the chicken thighs, jabbing with a skewer to see if the juices ran clear, Martha gave their guests ‘the tour’. Since they were never more than a few yards away, Ken heard all the compliments to Martha’s ingenuity. Briefly, he found himself a disaffected teenager again, trying to assess the sincerity or hypocrisy of each speaker. Then his trellises were admired – praise he took as coming entirely from the heart. The next moment, he heard Martha explaining that the far end of the garden had been ‘just a mass of hideous brambles when we got here’.
The light was beginning to fade by the time they crouched over their pear, walnut and gorgonzola starter. Alex, who clearly hadn’t been paying attention during the tour, said, ‘Have you left a tap on somewhere?’
Ken looked at Martha but declined to take advantage. ‘It’s probably next door,’ he said. ‘Rather a shambolic household.’
Martha looked grateful, so Ken thought it would be OK to tell his story about the soil-testing kit. He span it out rather, elaborating his self-portrayal as mad chemist, and holding off the punchline as long as possible.
‘And then I came in and said to Martha, “Bad news, I’m afraid. There’s no soil in your soil.”’
There was a gratifying laugh. And Martha joined in; she knew that from now on this was going to be one of his stories.
Feeling himself in credit, Ken decided to light the garden candles, yard-high towers of wax which blazed away and made him think vaguely of Roman triumphs. He also took the opportunity to turn off what he would always, in his own mind, refer to as the water feature.
It was now on the colder side of chilly. Ken poured more red wine, and Martha offered a move indoors, which everyone politely refused.
‘Where’s all this global warming when you need it?’ asked Alex cheerily.
Then they talked about patio heaters – which really gave out a blast but were so unecological that it was antisocial to buy one – and carbon footprints, and the sustainability of fish stocks, and farmers’ markets, and electric cars versus biodiesel, and wind farms and solar heating. Ken heard a mosquito fizz warningly at his ear; he ignored it, and didn’t even wince when he felt it bite. He sat there and enjoyed being proved right.
‘I’ve got an allotment,’ he announced. The marital coward’s ploy of breaking news in front of friends. But Martha didn’t indicate either surprise or disappointment, merely joined in the raising of glasses to Ken’s laudable new hobby. He was asked about its cost and location, the condition of its soil, and what he intended to grow there.
‘Blackberries,’ said Martha before he could answer. She was smiling at him tenderly.
‘How did you guess?’
‘When I was sending off the Marshalls catalogue.’ She had asked him to confirm her arithmetic; not that she wasn’t competent to add up, but there were a lot of small sums often ending in 99p, and anyway, this was the sort of thing Ken did in their marriage. Like write the cheque too, which he had done after making a couple of additions to the order. Then he’d taken it back to Martha, because she was the Keeper of the Stamps in their marriage. ‘And I noticed you’d ordered two blackberry bushes. A variety called Loch Tay, I seem to remember.’
‘You’re a terror for names,’ he said, looking across at her. ‘A terror and a wiz.’
There was a short silence, as if something intimate had been mistakenly disclosed.
‘You know what we could plant on the allotment,’ Martha began.
‘What’s this we shit, Paleface?’ he responded before she could continue. It was one of their marital jokes, always had been; but one apparently unfamiliar to these particular friends, who couldn’t tell if this was a vestigial quarrel. Nor could he, for that matter; he often couldn’t nowadays.
As the silence continued, Marion said into it, ‘I don’t like to mention this, but the bugs are biting.’ She had one hand down by her ankle.
‘Our friends don’t like our garden!’ Ken shouted, in a voice intended to assure everyone that no quarrel was likely. But there was something hysterical in his tone, a signal for their guests to make sly marital eye contact, decline a range of teas and coffees, and prepare their final compliments.
Later, from the bathroom, he called, ‘Have we got some of that Hc45 stuff?’
‘Have you been bitten?’
He pointed to the side of his neck.
‘Christ, Ken, there are five of them. Didn’t you feel it?’
‘Yes, but I wasn’t going to say. I didn’t want anyone criticising your garden.’
‘Poor thing. Martyr. They must bite you because you’ve got sweet flesh. They leave me alone.’
In bed, too tired for reading or sex, they idly summarised the evening, each encouraging the other to the conclusion that it had been a success.
‘Oh bugger,’ he said. ‘I think I left a piece of chicken in the barrel thingy. Maybe I’d better go down and bring it in.’