legends · 4 min read ·
Allotment, Plot 31
A new allotment holder is told not to plant carrots and not to mind the soil, which is very good.
**Greenacre Allotments Association — Committee Minutes, 3 April.**
*Present: R. Pugh (Chair), M. Adeyemi, J. Corder, S. Lowe. Apologies: none.*
*Item 4. Plot 31: vacant since February. Waiting list: 14 names. Plot to be offered to Mr. D. Skelton.*
· · ·
I'd always wanted an allotment. I'd waited eleven years on the list, and when the letter came I read it standing in the kitchen with my coat on. Plot 31, at the end of Row C, by the water butts. Rent twenty-eight pounds a year. A key to the gate.
I took it on a Saturday in April. It was a good plot, a long strip, dug to the edge. The soil was black and crumbly. There was a shed with a padlock, a compost bin, a row of canes. Someone had cared for it. The beds were edged with stones, and in the corner there was an apple tree, small and vigorous, just coming into leaf.
My neighbour on Plot 30, a stooped man named Corder, leaned on his fork and looked at me for a time.
"You'll be wanting to know about the last tenant," he said.
"Do I?"
"She kept it very well." He rubbed his chin. "You'll find the soil's good. It always has been. Mind you don't plant carrots."
"Why not carrots?"
"They don't do well," he said, and went back to his digging.
I planted beans, courgettes, potatoes. I put in lettuce and spinach. I dug the bed by the apple tree, which was warmer, and put in a row of onions. They came up faster than any onions I have ever grown.
In May I noticed the soil in the corner was always damp. Never dry, even in the dry spell. Under the apple tree the earth was dark and sweet, and spongy underfoot, and the grass there had a different green. I dug a little. Just to see. Black soil, deep. Nothing in it but worms, a great many, thick as pencils, glistening.
I told Mr. Corder the worms were extraordinary. He said, "She fed them."
"What with?"
He said, not looking at me, "Whatever she had."
In June the beans were enormous. The courgettes came on like pumpkins. The apple tree set a heavy crop, far too much for its size. Strange, deep red apples, with white flesh, and a streak of red in the core.
I got into the habit of staying late. The allotments at dusk are the best part of the day. Swifts overhead. The smell of cut grass, a bonfire somewhere. People went home, one by one, and the lane went quiet. I sat on an upturned bucket outside the shed with a flask and listened to the green.
That is when I heard it. From under the apple tree, in the damp corner. A faint sound. A rustle and a sigh, like soil settling. A kind of slow contented swallowing.
I took a spade and went over. I dug. A foot down I found a flat white stone, laid on its edge. Under the stone, a second. Under the second, the soil was warmer than the air. I kept digging. About three feet down I found a small hollow lined with something fibrous, white and fine, a network like the roots of a fungus. It was full of water. And in the water, quite clear, as in a pond, I could see a face.
Not a drowned face. A very quiet one. A woman's, asleep, a good-humoured face, middle-aged, with her hair streaming out among the roots. Her mouth was a little open. The white fibres went into it, and out of it, and the whole mass pulsed, slowly, like a heart.
I sat back in the dirt. After a time I got up and shovelled the earth back in, and trod it down, and put the stones on top.
On the way out Mr. Corder was at the gate, locking up.
"You found her," he said.
"Who is she?"
"The last tenant. Mrs. Pennick. Died in February. Heart. They found her in the shed." He shook out his keys. "That's not the kind of thing the committee puts in the minutes. She asked, you see. She asked to be put in the ground at the plot. The council wouldn't have it. So we did it ourselves, one night. Under the apple. It's what she'd have wanted."
"But she's—"
"Oh, I know," said Mr. Corder. "She's still at it. Gardeners never stop. She's feeding the lot. It's the best soil in the county."
He looked at the apple tree, heavy and red in the dusk, and then at me.
"Do take an apple," he said. "They're lovely. And don't worry if you find you're not hungry for anything else afterwards. That's only her way of keeping you company."