The Cherry Orchard

Oh, my childhood, my innocent childhood! This is the nursery where I slept and I used to look out at the orchard from here. When I woke up every morning happiness awoke with me... 
(Chekhov, 1903)


There were no orchards in Croxted Road, but I can still  picture the garden as it looked from my bedroom window more than thirty years ago.

Most of it was just grass, not grand enough to be called a lawn, spotted with daisies and dandelions, it had a round dip halfway down that we sometimes called a fairy ring. There were borders for flowers, with roses for making squashed-petal-perfume, snap-dragons that would open their mouths as we squeezed at the side, and livingstone daisies that closed tight every night as the sun went down and opened again like magic in the morning. There was a bumpy stone path that led alongside the washing line to the bottom of the garden, where the compost heap and  the gooseberry bushes sat either side of the huge green swing.

If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still see my big sister peering round the flap of her wigwam; I can hear my little sister riding her pretend horse, making clip-clopping noises as she gallops around and around; in my mind's eye, our cat Oliver winds in and out of my Mum's legs as she pegs washing on the line and my Dad sits on the swing smoking a cigarette.

I loved that garden; a place for laughing and arguing, for fighting and playing. Never mind that it was a small back garden in south London, in my imagination it was part The Secret Garden, part Little House on the Prairie, and it came to represent for me everything that a garden should be. For a long time after I left Croxted Road, I wanted to create another garden just the same. A place for my own children to remember, somewhere they could grow up in, then return to as adults, in time bringing their own children with them.

But of course, it didn't turn out like that.

Sometimes the world changes around us and we aren't able, or simply just fail, to take control and change the course of events.  Chekhov knew that. The Cherry Orchard ends with Mrs Ranevsky losing her childhood home, with the curtain falling to the sound of an axe cutting down the orchard. A hundred years later, I understood it too as my dreams of a long-time family home and garden were replaced by the reality of a series of rented houses and other people's gardens.

I like to think though, that there's more to both our stories. Mrs Ranevsky set out for Paris, we came to Otford.

Last year we bought our house and with it, we took ownership of a long, long, garden. It has room for a swing, for flower beds and a path,  there are long stretches of grass, space for games and picnics. We're making plans for places to sit, for climbing roses and a fragrant lilac. It will take a while, but I think we'll gradually turn it into a garden to remember.

And this week we planted a cherry tree.

Kiku - a story

So here they were, three sisters, in a strange room without any sofas, looking out from their separate armchairs. They’d never been here before without their parents; they hadn’t even been here very often with them.  

Nobody spoke. 

Rachel played with her socks, rolling them down round her ankles, like fat white sausages, then pulling them back up again. Mum would tell her off if she was here, tell her she’d ruin the elastic. But Mum wasn’t here, and Susan didn’t feel like it, so Rachel carried on; rolling and stretching, rolling and stretching.

Carol was chewing on one of her plaits. She’d screamed the house down earlier that day, when Mum had brushed her hair; she always did, no matter what day it was. Now she sat, curled up in an armchair, staring out of the window. Auntie Joan and Uncle George were the only people they knew who lived in a flat. It was on the top floor of a big old house, so the windows were level with the tops of the trees outside. Today, with the branches all bare, you could see through them to the streets and tall houses that stretched away down the hill, past the park and across the outside edges of Crystal Palace.

It was bad enough that their Nanna had died, worse that they weren’t allowed to go to the funeral. Susan knew that some people hadn’t wanted them going to the big church on the hill, and she could understand that for Carol and Rachel. Neither of them was even ten yet; but she was nearly thirteen, so she couldn't see why they’d all had to be dumped together on Auntie Joan and Uncle George.

Susan looked around her. Even though it was still light outside, the room was dark. The flat was part of a tall old building, one of the scary looking witch-houses they always ran past on their way to the swings. There were three lamps on small round tables, each with a tasselled green shade, but they weren’t doing much to brighten the room. Their weird glowing light reminded Susan of that time they’d gone swimming in the lake; when she’d ducked her head under and squinted up, she’d seen the same sort of dull green brightness.

It felt like they were waiting, but she wasn’t sure what for. She wondered if she ought to cry. Other people had cried when they’d heard that Nanna was dead. She’d tried, really she had; screwing her eyes up tight and thinking bad thoughts. But even though she’d remembered the worst thing, she couldn’t squeeze out a tear.

The last time they’d seen Uncle George had been at their own house. He’d done that trick where he’d put a tuppenny coin on the base of his thumb, then closed his fingers over the end in a fist and somehow clicked the joint, so the coin disappeared. They’d all checked his sleeves to see where it had gone, they’d looked under the cushions and down the sides of the settee, but none of them could spot it, until he’d jumped up suddenly and pulled it out from behind Rachel’s ear.

Susan wished he’d do a trick now, but maybe you couldn’t do magic when someone had just died.

Auntie Joan came in with a tray. It wasn’t like the painted metal one they had at home with the scratched old roses on it; this was a long wooden tray, with high raised sides, and holes cut in each end for handles. On it were three tall glasses of milk. Carol didn’t like milk, she’d never drink it, not even when Mum heated it up in the milk pan and put sugar in it. Susan wondered if she should say something, explain how Mum had written a letter to school, excusing Carol from the morning milk. She watched Carol wriggling in her seat, she noticed how even Rachel had stopped rolling her socks, waiting to see what would happen.

She saw how Auntie Joan placed the tray very carefully on the sideboard, then picked up the first glass and handed it to Rachel, who took it and said a quiet thank you. Susan knew she’d be last because she was the oldest; she knew Carol would be next. So she watched as her aunt picked up the second glass, and with it, a small plate of those biscuits with the nobbly edges, she waited for Carol to shout, or cry, or run out of the room. She could hardly believe it when her sister reached out to take the glass, copied Rachel’s quiet thank you and started to sip.

As she gulped down her own glass of milk, Susan wondered what time it was. There was a big wooden clock on the mantelpiece, she liked its loud ticking, but the numbers were written in Roman, and even though she knew she should still be able to tell the time, just from the position of them, the harder she stared, the more complicated it seemed.

Though she’d never actually been to one, and didn’t have any idea how long it might take, she thought the funeral was probably over by now. But she’d watched Mum earlier on, packing three pairs of pyjamas into the big blue holdall, wrapping their toothbrushes in one of the spare plastic bags from under the sink, so Susan knew their parents wouldn’t be coming back that day; she knew they’d be staying with Auntie Joan and Uncle George for the night.

None of them had ever stayed away before, well, not unless you counted being on holiday; and she couldn’t figure out where they were all going to sleep. If you’d asked her, she'd have said that she didn’t want to share a bed with her sisters, but she did want to go to bed soon; she thought it might be just like at Christmas, the sooner they all went to sleep, the sooner the next day would come. And then they could all go home again.

She heard a door bang shut. It was so loud; it must have been someone in the flat, though she couldn’t imagine Auntie Joan or Uncle George ever actually slamming a door. Then suddenly, there was cousin Vivienne, laughing and saying hello. All in one movement, she seemed to drop the embroidered strap of her bag from one shoulder, unwrap the long striped scarf from round her neck, shake her long hair loose, and scoop up Carol for an eskimo kiss.

Susan watched as they rubbed noses, she saw how Carol giggled and squirmed, how she begged for more as Viv put her back onto the armchair and turned her attention to Rachel, who was sitting across the room, watching silently, chewing on the skin at the side of her thumb.

“Hey Rach, have you ever seen a necklace like this before? It’s made of apple pips. All of it. Would you like to borrow it for a bit?”

Only after Viv had carefully placed the necklace over Rachel’s head and twisted it twice did she turn her attention to Susan. The eldest, always the last, and no lifting up for eskimo noses, just a tight, two-arms hug.

As she buried her face in her cousin’s shoulder, Susan could smell the strange, almost rotten, scent of Vivienne’s coat, with its leathery skin and furry edges. Then coming through over the top of that was another smell, it seemed to be oranges and lemons, sweetness and sunshine.

And then there was no need to screw up her eyes, or think of bad things. Susan breathed in the smell of being grown up, of being away from home; the scents and sense of things she knew and didn’t yet know. And, in the hug of her cousin, she cried for her Nanna.

Staying over

It's sometimes blindingly obvious - that link between childhood fascinations and grown-up obsessions. It takes no effort at all for me to trace the journey from standing with my Dad, on the terraces at Crystal Palace football club, to standing with Philip behind the goal at Bromley FC.  It's almost as easy to see how my my love for Formula 1 racing started when we walked beside the wide tracks of the one-time racing circuit in Crystal Palace Park, or listened to the roar of the engines from the back door step at home.

It isn't always quite as simple to understand the impact of the things we never did, those things that went unnoticed and unremarked at the time.

Looking back I think we must have been fairly self-contained as a family; the characters in my memory bank are always my parents, grandparents and sisters. Apart from an occasional aunt and uncle, I don't remember any other visitors. Perhaps there were friends of my parents who made quiet calls after I'd gone to bed, but if they did, there were never any traces of their presence the next day. And, apart from the time when my Nan was really sick, I never, ever, remember anyone coming to stay.

No childish sleepover ending in a top-to-toe bed-share; no late night dinner party leading to a blanket- draped figure on the sofa. No strange coats thrown over the banisters at the bottom of the stairs, no odd toothbrushes in the bathroom, no politely embarrassed conversations over breakfast.

Our house wasn't big; five of us and only three bedrooms, but it never felt too small to me, certainly not like Maria from school, who lived with her six brothers and sisters in one of those tiny houses overlooking the cemetery. We didn’t have central heating, but hardly anyone I knew did then –we were used to the winter frost on the inside of the bedroom windows, to cowering under the wall heater in the bathroom, to sitting in the kitchen with all the gas rings blazing to keep us warm while we ate. But the house was always clean; properly clean. not just a tidy-away-the-newspapers-and  flick-the-hoover-round clean. 

I never asked then, and I wouldn’t dream of asking now, so I'll never really know why nobody came to stay.  But in the midst of all that didn't happen, I somehow missed out on a whole heap of life lessons, on the etiquette of staying over.

I never quite grasped how much cleaning in advance is a good thing or when to stop; I could never see the boundaries between thoughtful hospitality and force-feeding. I never learnt when it was ok to admit to tiredness, to suggest it was time for bed; and I never understood the proper arrangements for getting up in the morning or agreeing the order for the bathroom. I couldn't work out if it was better to take in a cup of tea and risk waking people too early, or to wait until they decided to surface and risk leaving them feeling ignored. I never reached that state of relaxed happiness where you know your guests are having a grand time and you can stop trying to fend off their boredom and disappointment.

For years I shied away from inviting people to stay; in my head I invented all sorts of reasons why it was a bad idea or simply inconvenient. 

This weekend I learned something I never found out as a child; if you invite good people because you enjoy their company, you end up enjoying their company. Your new house begins to feel a bit more like home and you start to see the place where you live with different eyes. You might even begin to feel a strange sense of pride that your village has the only listed duck pond in the country and the largest scale model of the solar system in the world. It might not even matter if you don’t quite get the etiquette right, you could still have a simply lovely time.

And this weekend we did.

Like Robin Hood and Maid Marian

There's a sunken pathway. Without any paving stones the ground has compacted over the years, trodden down by the footsteps of all the others who've followed the same route to the end of the garden. I stop to admire the pale pink roses, wondering if I should collect the secateurs from the shed to cut some flowers for the house on the way back; already half-knowing I'll forget. I bury my nose in the soft petals, hoping just once to inhale their scent. My sense of smell faded long ago, but the fragrance of childhood rises in my memory at the thought of the crushed rose petals in a jam-jar of water that was my first perfume.

I go past the gooseberry bush, where only a few undersized fruits remain; most of them have been taken by the birds, or fallen unnoticed to the ground. There were always gooseberries when we were young, down at the end of the garden, next to the rhubarb plants, just past the metal pole at the end of the washing line. The pole was always slightly loose in its fittings, and on a windy day, you'd hear it clang as it moved backwards and forwards, swung around by the movement of the heavy wet washing. A few steps further there was an old green swing, with a deep channel under the wooden seat, where years and years of scuffing shoes had worn away the grass then the dirt. I remember how we used to dare each other to see if we could make the swing go so high it would spin right over the top. We never managed that, but we all learnt to leap from the seat at its highest point, stretching out to touch the top of the washing pole as we tried to fly. I remember the time my sister tore her red tartan dress when it caught on the swing as she leapt, I think I remember my mum's exasperated despair that she hadn't known better.

Perhaps we should get a swing for this garden, I like the idea of a future generation shouting at me to push 'higher, higher'. More than that though, I like the idea of sitting on it, gently moving backwards and forwards as the sun goes down, taking the time to reflect quietly on my day. I like to think that's what my Dad used to do as he sat on the old swing slowly inhaling one of the long Senior Service cigarettes he was discouraged from smoking indoors.

As I pass by the pond I try not to be distracted by the dusty windows of the shed, try not to notice the varnish that's cracked and peeling and the wooden slats that are drying out and warping in the sun. I don't even notice the empty raised beds; one day they'll be stocked with vegetables, just waiting for us to pick and eat, but not just yet.

When I reach the end, I go through the wooden gate. It hangs slightly askew and I need to lift it a bit to help the bolt slide out, but it's not too stiff or rusty and I remember to shut it behind me, in case the cat is following. I cross the access road; we're right at the end and there's no through route, so the cars don't come down this far. I like that it's there though, I like the way it marks the space between our proper garden and the secret garden that sits there in front of me.

At first glance all I can see are nettles and brambles, a mass of small flowers promising me an autumn blackberry harvest, but I know there's more to be found, that the thorns and stings are really there just to keep me out, like the forest that grew up around the sleeping beauty. There's a thin path along the side, where the grass has been cut, so I walk on, past the pile of grass trimmings and hedge cuttings, to the tangled branches of two old apple trees. One has small green apples, the clear sharp green of cooking apples; the colour of Robin Hood. The other tree has fruit of a softer green, with a pale red blush, a bit like Maid Marian.

Pushing through the apple trees are the new branches of an elder tree. I'm not sure if there's only one, the undergrowth is too tangled to see. I stand for a while, wishing I was a child again, imagining the fun I could have clearing a space and building my own secret den here, somewhere I could stay for hours with just a book and a glass of lemon barley water. I'd cut the thin branches and weave them into a shelter, peer through, without being seen. I could sit hidden from parents and sisters, staying safe from the evil Sheriff of Nottingham until my Robin cantered home.

Between the leaves I catch a glimpse of something red lying on its side, with brambles weaving up and through it. It's an old climbing frame. I recognise it immediately as the same one I bought for my sons many years ago. In an instant I'm taken back to the garden of the house we lived in when they were young. The house I thought would be ours for ever; the place they'd grow up in, leave and come back to with children of their own. I swallow hard, wondering where the years have gone, pushing back the voice that tauntingly reminds me how things didn't turn out quite the way I'd planned.

But then, just as the secret garden starts to fade away, turning back into just an overgrown wasteland, I hear another voice. It's Philip telling me about his plans for our orchard; the peaches, almonds, apricots, and greengages we'll grow, the walnut tree he's already ordered. Then I know, even if this doesn't turn out to be the place we live forever, we can still be like Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

The shed

A few nights ago I dreamed of our garden shed. It wasn't the timber-slatted, flower-pot-and-cobweb filled refuge of an aged pipe-smoker. Neither was it an eau-de-nil painted summerhouse, with gingham curtains and a wide verandah. This shed was brick-built and square with a flat roof; a utilitarian council-house issue of the early 1960s. It stood in the garden of our house in Croxted Road, just a few yards away from the kitchen, and for nearly twenty years it was the first thing I saw whenever I opened the back door.

For hour after hour when I was a girl, I'd play two-balls against the closed shed door, the pounding of the tennis balls on the wood, marking out time to one of the rhythmic songs I'd learned at school; each line accompanied by the appropriate actions as I practised throwing and catching, throwing and catching.

"PK penny a packet, 
first you lick it, then you smack it,
then you stick it to your jacket
PK, penny a packet"

In my dream the door was open and I was peering into the gloom of the shed's interior. It was a bit like looking at any memory, clear at the centre, but dark and fuzzy the further you go into it.

In my mind, there was a coal bunker just inside. Though the house was newly built when we moved in and I don't remember there ever being a coal fire, I could swear there were a few shiny black nuggets in its corners. Did I imagine the square of old faded carpet laid out on the hard concrete floor under our feet, where we played 'shop' on rainy days when it was too wet to stay in the garden; where we'd pile up toys for sale and take it in turns to press down the keys of the brown and cream plastic till to ring up the prices.

I pictured a folded up wigwam leaning against the wall and the old Silver Cross pram, which we used mostly for pushing our dolls, but sometimes for carrying the docile ginger cat from two doors down, who didn't mind being dressed up. Behind it was a heavy black tricycle and somewhere in a corner there must have been the abandoned pogo stick that I tried so hard to master yet never managed to cling on to for more than two springs.

In the shed of my dream there was no sign of my sister's chopper bike and no images of us huddled on the doorstep each night after school, polishing our shoes before we could go indoors. Nothing had yet been cleared to make way for the stacked cages of the guinea pig stud farm, those small substitutes for the ponies my sister really wanted. And my selective memory edits out the times I took friends home to ridicule her as she spent hour after hour training guinea pigs to jump over tiny makeshift fences in her garden gymkhanas. My older sister tells me she locked me in the shed once until I wet my knickers, but that event is firmly erased from my consciousness.

Memory is a tricky thing; even more so when it's shaped by a dream, so it's hard to be sure how much of what I recalled is true. The shed always seemed dark, I don't think there was a light or any electricity and there was only one small window high up, but in my mind's eye hanging on the far wall, was a framed print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, shining out like a gold tooth in a gaping mouth.

The Black Crow

It was the rain that woke me up. The incessant drumbeat on the flat kitchen roof, the higher singing tone of water cascading over the blocked gutter. And now that I'm awake, it's the rain that keeps me up, watching its drops break against the window pane like a series of morse code dots and dashes.

There'll be sandbags across the doorways of the cottages by the river tonight. Bags to sop up the encroaching water, stop it coming across the doorstep; a lumpen wordless bodyguard for each house. I wonder how high the water is now. In the few years we've been here, I've seen it swell over into the fields across the river, reminding me of the Chinese rice fields we learnt about in school, but it's never been high enough to cross over to our side, or inch its way up our street. I imagine the water filling up all the cracks and holes left in the tarmac by the recent frosts and snow, forming puddles for wellie-clad children to jump in tomorrow.

We've been here long enough for me to know which of the roads gets tricky to pass after a heavy downpour, the big dip further along the valley, the road by the lake, where there's nowhere for the water to drain away. I'm never sure how to drive through standing water. I'm scared that if I drive slowly the water will seep into the engine, creep in around the door sills, suck me and the car into its clinging wetness. My urge is to accelerate, push through it as quickly as possible, no matter what great bow-wave I create. Then through the other side, where, if my car was a dog it would shake from side to side and nose to tail, creating a halo of raindrops. Instead I pull away fast, hoping the wheelspin will drive away the water.

When I was a child, my younger sister Caroline was scared of the rain, she always thought it would flood. And as kids so often do, we picked up on her terror. We could reduce her to tears, a flood of her own, by telling her that the house would float away each time it poured. I always liked the imagined idea of de-camping upstairs in a storm, piling up the furniture, eating picnics on our beds, but that probably didn't help for Caroline. Upstairs wasn't a place of refuge for her - not since the time our big sister Ros had so vividly imagined and described 'The Black Crow' that hovered at the top of the staircase waiting to pounce.

Perhaps it was just water that Caroline hated, you'd have certainly thought so if you ever heard her having her hair washed. When we were kids, there was no shower at home and it wasn't til I was a teenager that we got one of those rubber shower hoses that you can fit over the bath-taps. So for years, our mother washed our hair while we stood at the sink, using saucepans full of water. Pour, shampoo, rinse, then repeat. When it was Caroline's turn the sound of each saucepan-full was accompanied by the sound of screaming as she wriggled to escape, trying to duck the water, failing to keep the shampoo out of her eyes. Pour, scream, rinse, shriek, shampoo, sob, rinse, screech, then repeat... scream, scream, scream.

I can almost hear it now.

As I sit and listen in my head to those sounds from long ago, I realise that it's quieter here now. The deluge from the drain has stopped; the ticking of the mantelpiece clock has replaced the rain-beats on the roof. Time to go back up to bed.

I wonder where The Black Crow sleeps tonight.

Saying the wrong thing

There's a certain irony to this post, given that writing a blog is all about choosing the right words, but I guess in real life we've all done it - said the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time.

Sometimes it's just plain funny. Like the time when my Mother, sitting under the hazelnut tree in the garden, turned to my beloved and exclaimed loudly, "Oh Philip, what lovely nuts you've got"

But at other times it’s more complicated. 

It was probably my twelfth birthday when my parents' gift to me was a hairdryer and some money. I've never really been a hairdryer person; I'm vain but lazy, so the effort of standing there for hours with aching arms to achieve a perfect hair-do was never my thing, but they meant well. And the money was brilliant - ten pounds was a lot in those days, I remember my friends at school being really envious and I was genuinely grateful for it at the time. Until... until my youngest sister's birthday six months, later when they bought her a Chopper bike.

Choppers were all the rage at the time. I'd never had my own bike, and never learned to ride one, I was horribly jealous. 

I didn't stop to think about the reasons behind the gift, or the tight finances that might have stopped them buying me one when I was her age. To me it was proof that they didn't care enough to think about what I wanted and that they loved her more. Complete nonsense, but it rankled. It rankled so much that next time I lost my temper I shouted "Ten pounds and a hairdryer! That's how much you care about me!"

Cruel, horrible words. Since then I've tried to erase the embarrassment that came to me too late, by attempting to make a joke of it, encouraging people to laugh at my mean-spiritedness and over time, my generous family have let it become just that - a family joke.

As an adult I've haven't eliminated my ability to be insensitive or stupid, but I've learned to recognise the tell-tale signs - the raised eyebrow, the polite smile and embarrassed laugh, or the fleeting expression of pain that comes in response to a thoughtless remark. And that's a kindness because it gives me a chance to redeem the situation.

But it only works when you're face-to-face with people. The advent of e-mail brought with it a whole range of opportunities for misunderstandings from hastily sent missives. And since starting this blog, I've uncovered another potential bear-pit - the comments form.

I love to receive comments; at their best, they make me feel proud of what I've written, at their most useful they help me to see how I could write better. So it seems only fair, when I read other people's work, that I should say something in return. And that's where the trouble arises - because it does feel like 'saying' rather than writing. For me, that sometimes means I'll fall into the trap of trying to make myself sound clever, without really thinking through or understanding how it will be interpreted at the other end and I'll press the publish button just a little too soon.

A few days ago I left a comment on a blog I admire very much. When I went back to look at later comments I re-read what I'd said. I winced at the horrible combination of patronising and glib, at words which say more about my character faults than anything about the person they were written to. There's been no response, so I've no notion of how it was received. The simplest thing would be to go back and delete it, but that might also seem odd and spark another load of misunderstanding. So I'm writing this with that slightly sick feeling of knowing I said the wrong thing at the wrong time and not quite knowing what to do about it. 

If you're reading this as the recipient of the comment, then I'm genuinely sorry. Given the chance, I will try and make a joke or a tradition of it. In the meantime, I shall just sit here and feel like my twelve-year-old self.