‘And how do we plant these?’ asked Livvie, lifting a tuber and inspecting it.
‘Umm.’ Alice hadn’t a clue. How she wished Finlay Morlich was recovered. He was the one who knew all about this stuff, not her.
Car doors banged out on the drive and Alice tried not to look too hopefully in their direction as three new garden project recruits made their way towards her. All of them had been invited to join the project following recent appointments at the surgery, and all were looking around, unsure what exactly was going to happen.
A motorbike engine roared then cut out on the drive and, to her surprise, Clyde Forte, not without some difficulty, clambered off, swinging his leg over the machine, straightening himself up on the gravel.
He’d biked himself here today, and even if it was only a short distance from his home, this clearly signified that he’d smashed his goal of getting back on his motorcycle. So in spite of all his grumbling, recovery was coming withing reach. She thought how she would buy an extra big pack of custard creams for this month’s stroke clinic in celebration. He removed his helmet and Alice caught the gleam of pride in his eyes. He was also, she noticed, excessively bundled up in layer upon layer of woollens.
‘No chance of getting cold today, then?’ she said as he made a beeline for the tea urn, remembering how he’d told her not to go rushing in, gushing, over Kellie’s achievement of getting to the project on that first day. She held back now just as she had then. He would already know that she was delighted for him, and that was enough for now. Besides, her heart wasn’t too busy swelling with happiness for Clyde to forget it was still hoping for the arrival of someone else.
In the two weeks since he’d gone she’d thought of Cary every time she safely stowed away her stethoscope in its box on her consulting room desk, and more than once she’d sighed and caressed its smooth polished planes and wished for him to be back in the repair shed the very next time she called in. She’d become an even more frequent visitor these last few days, sampling almost everything in Senga’s admittedly delicious baking repertoire, but he was never there.
At least McIntyre was here to help, and now he was calling the little gathering together out by the raised beds.
Senga was of course here too, striding around offering everyone a slice of chocolate orange brownie, one of Alice’s absolute favourites in recent weeks.
Jolyon Sears made his way through the forest of adults’ legs to get to the front and claim a chocolatey slice, sitting on the edge of a raised bed to eat it, leaving his mum at the very back of the group. He’d made it very clear where he wanted to be this Sunday morning, and his mum’s offers, meant as a distraction, of visits to the wildlife park or the reindeer visitor centre, or tubing on the baby slopes, had all been refused. He wanted his wellies on and his garden trowel. So, resignedly, and braced for trouble, she’d brought him to the garden project.
Sure enough, trouble was still brewing. No sooner had Livvie pulled up in her car, she and Shell had hopped out and streaked across the driveway grabbing a flustered Roz on the way, and all three of them had dived into the shed, conspiring together, just as they had the other day.
‘No Livvie and Roz? What about Shell?’ McIntyre was asking now over the heads. Mhairi didn’t say anything about how they were busy plotting against her and her son, although Jolly pointed through the wall of the repair shed, indicating he’d noticed them going inside.
‘You take over now, Doctor,’ McIntyre said, and he took a respectful step away.
‘Oh, right.’ Alice awkwardly held her half-eaten brownie slice as she addressed the group. ‘As you know, today is our very first day of sowing our potatoes and planting out our woody herbs, and there’s tomatoes to sow too, apparently. Now that the weather’s taken a turn for the drier.’
‘Thank goodness!’ Mr Forte chimed in. He was drinking his tea and had a cigarette tucked behind his ear.
‘It couldnae have got any wetter, that’s for sure!’ Senga chipped in.
Alice wondered at how calm she felt in front of the big group, even with the threat of an occasional heckle. Maybe her experience addressing the haggis so successfully had helped her get over some of her nerves in situations like this, or maybe it was something to do with Bonnie and all the hours they’d spent in her cosy consulting room? Or was it the way Dr Millen had helped her manage her anxieties at work by charting and identifying the pressure points throughout her day and how she responded to them, making plans to lessen the pressure next time around with practical adaptations to their working routines and systems, helping each other with the harder tasks, always talking through what went well and what needed tweaking for next time.
‘Quite,’ agreed Alice. ‘It’s been a tough winter, but now there’s some warmth in the February sunshine, sort of, and we’ve lots of things to put in the earth, and since our experts aren’t all here, I suggest we just try to work it out for ourselves. Herbs go in that one.’ She pointed to the bed behind her to her left. ‘Potato seeds in one end of that bed, and there’s seeds to sow, if you can make out the small print on the packets, and they’ll go in trays in front of the big glass windows at the back of the repair shed café, now the building materials have almost all gone from inside. Oh, and people working outside, be careful not to tread on any of the wildflowers that we planted around the aspen trees last month. How does all of that sound?’
Surprisingly, no one seemed fazed, and one of the new recruits, Miss Sylvia Wilson, a keen knitter in her early seventies with a blood pressure problem, was rolling up her sleeves and asking Mr Forte if he wanted to team up, since she hadn’t her glasses with her to read the instructions on the seed packets.
He’d waggled his readers at her in a jolly sort of way, and the pair had headed inside to where Alice has set up a sowing station by the fire, with tomato seeds and compost and little coir pots at the ready. From the sprightly way Mr Forte accompanied the smiling Miss Wilson into the shed, Alice had a feeling she might have inadvertently struck upon another way of increasing the appeal of the garden project for him.
‘Shall we?’ McIntyre said, appearing by Alice’s side, handing her a trowel.
‘Right you are,’ she replied and she made for the herb bed, ready to muck in.
* * *
Alice had been up to her wrists in crumbly compost when she realised the low winter sunshine she’d been enjoying had gone.
Looking up, expecting to find a cloud blocking out the sun, she instead saw a pair of dapper, belted trousers, a tidy waistcoat and a shirt, complete with a tweedy tie and, above that, a really very endearing, if a little anxious, smile.
‘Cary!’ She was on her feet in an instant, wondering if ever, in the history of anything, a person had been so glad to see another.
* * *
Finlay couldn’t get his coat on properly, but that hadn’t stopped him trying and, with it draped over his shoulders he limped out to the stormwall with his rations tin.
The binoculars felt too heavy in his hand, so he’d left them in the cruive.
It was a beautiful day with a smell of the first shoots of wild garlic in the air, so early this year. The spotty fronds of tough little ferns were unfurling from gaps in the stone wall. Spring was showing itself, even up here amongst the rocks. Finlay inhaled it deeply.
