The Great Allotment Proposal. Jenny Oliver
‘No way was that Jack Neil!’
The last time Emily had seen Jack was at what was meant to be the inaugural Cherry Pie Island Festival. Jack and her brother, Wilf, had set it up the year they’d finished school. They’d had the best day of their lives until night fell and the island was swamped with over-eager partygoers with counterfeit tickets that their limited security couldn’t cope with.
In retrospect, the festival had been the peak of Emily’s childhood. They were living at Mont Manor with her mother’s fourth husband – Bernard – a camp, eccentric old make-up artist who had clearly only married for the companionship. Bernard had absolutely no interest in anything remotely parent like, threw wild, lavish parties and was often found lounging by the pool with a neat gin and a cigarette as the sun rose.
It was a well-known fact that Emily’s mother had married men in the same way other people got promoted in their careers. She took them up a notch every marriage in order to give her kids the best start in the life. The problem being that she didn’t often see past the money to the character beneath. But Bernard was nothing like the previous stepfathers – he didn’t shout at Emily or try and be her friend or make her sit at the table in silence until she’d eaten everything on her plate, or sit next to her on the sofa a touch too close, or make them all take their shoes off before they came in, or make the dog sleep in a kennel outside, or get rid of the TV, or take her mum out for dinners and events every night so they never saw her. He didn’t have children of his own who would make comments under their breath about her mother the gold-digger, nor did he stand up at her mother’s birthday party and add something in his speech about how difficult she was to live with, but how most of the men in that room would understand what he was talking about. Instead, Bernard would take whimsical turns around the estate, dressed in a satin smoking jacket while her mother wore white linen and smiled a lot, and Emily would watch from the upstairs bathroom, delighted with her life. These were the years when she’d been expelled from every boarding school in the south and finally been allowed to go to the local comp and live at home in her own bed and wash in her own bath. The bare plaster on the wall and the peeling wallpaper, the Georgian glass windows with the howling draught and the Sellotaped-over cracks were all part of the fairy tale.
And to top that off, there was Jack. Possibly the coolest, most laid-back character on the island. She remembered him lying on a hay bale at the festival, cigarette in one hand, cider in the other, the hazy light of the summer sun burning down as he stretched his arm out for her to come and lie next to him. Both of them squeezed onto the warm, sweet-smelling hay, him holding her tight to his side so she didn’t fall off, laughing because her hair was tickling his face, the smoke on his breath as he kissed her, the sun blinding them into shutting their eyes.
It was perfect. It was as life was meant to be. For Emily it was like the world had paused and said, it’ll be OK.
But then the crowds had come. And then the police had come. And then the rain had come. And the festival was over.
As she stood now, alongside Annie, watching as the guy in the hat dropped the paparazzo with a splash into the river and then turned and started walking back, his hands in the pockets of his black combat trousers, his white T-shirt dirty with mud, she said, ‘That’s not Jack. It can’t be Jack. Jack’s in Peru or somewhere.’
‘Jack was in Peru or somewhere,’ said Annie, turning to her and wiping some of the stray algae off Emily’s cheek with a tissue. ‘Here, use this, you’ve got loads more still on your face,’ she said before looking back towards Jack. ‘He’s come back. Hasn’t been around that long. And, to be honest, I only knew because other people told me. He’s living on a fishing boat apparently.’
‘What do you mean he’s living on a fishing boat? Is he a fisherman? I thought he was an engineer?’
Annie shook her head, ‘I have no idea, honestly. I just heard he was living on a fishing boat.’
‘Where?’ Emily asked.
Annie shrugged.
‘You ladies OK?’ Jack shouted as he got near.
Emily took a couple of steps closer and peered at him. Then, seeming to finally believe Annie when he took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair, said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was you?’
‘You’re welcome, Emily,’ he said, one side of his mouth tipped up in a half-smile.
‘Did you recognise me?’ she asked, taking another few steps forward as Jack went back to his allotment and picked up his spade.
‘Of course.’
Emily frowned. ‘Well you should have said hello rather than acting all mysterious and bearded. It’s unfair.’
He laughed. ‘You have algae on your face.’
Emily picked up the hem of her T-shirt and wiped her face with it. ‘Is it gone?’
Jack glanced up from where he’d started digging, ‘No.’
She wiped her face again. ‘Gone?’
He looked up and shook his head.
Emily narrowed her eyes and then turned to Annie, who was untangling the hose to finish watering the plot. ‘Do I have algae on my face, Annie?’ Emily shouted.
Annie peered at her. ‘No.’
Emily looked back at Jack who had his head down and was supposedly concentrating on digging, but she could see the smirk on his lips. She opened her mouth to say something but didn’t know what.
No one. No one made her feel like Jack did. No one ever had. Like she was off balance. Not in control. Even his hair and his beard threw her off. Everything he did, everything he said, seemed to catch her on the wrong foot. It was all too calm, too slow, too all-seeing. He stood up and wiped the sheen of sweat off his forehead, saw her still watching him and leant against his spade to watch her back. ‘Does that happen to you often?’ he asked, tilting his head towards the river were the paparazzo had been unceremoniously dumped.
‘Fairly often,’ Emily nodded.
‘I don’t know how you can live like that,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘We don’t all want to live on fishing boats.’
He snorted a laugh. ‘I need to talk to you about that actually.’
‘Why? If it’s to ask me to sail away with you,’ she said with a half-smile. ‘Then the answer’s no.’
As soon as she’d said it, she wished she hadn’t. Even in jest she knew it was an awkward, stupid thing to say.
He narrowed his eyes then sort of laughed, shook his head and went back to digging his hole.
‘Go on then, why did you want to talk to me about your boat?’ Emily said.
The soil cracked under the edge of the spade. ‘Because,’ he said with a pant as he dug deeper into the earth, ‘I’m kind of living on your property. On your mooring.’
‘Are you now?’
He stopped digging and looked directly at her, sky-blue eyes on a face dirty with sweat and mud. ‘Yeah. I didn’t realise the house had been sold.’
‘What, so I’m kind of like your landlady?’ Emily bit her nail. If she still knew Jack at all she knew that he hated being beholden to anyone. Almost as much as he hated rules and regulations.
‘Suppose so.’
‘Well I’ll have to work out some kind of rent, won’t I?’ she said.
‘Or you could just let me be?’ he said with a shrug of his shoulder.
A sly grin stretched over Emily’s face. ‘And where would the fun be in that?’