They’d talked for hours, about everything and nothing, until slowly the periods of quiet lengthened and Remy’s yawns outnumbered her words. She fell asleep curled with her back to Seth’s chest, the quilt a blanket between them.
Seth’s arm went numb in the night. He put up with the dead feeling for as long as he could, because there was something so perfect about watching Remy sleep he didn’t want to disturb her. She snored—though he’d never tell her that—but close-up, her soft sighs comforted him. He loved that she slept deep and peaceful in his arms.
Eventually, though, he’d had to move and make his own space on the bed and when he slept, he dreamed of purring kittens.
He woke to a real, live kitten with large grey eyes and the first thing he did that morning was smile and kiss the kitten’s nose.
‘Good morning,’ Remy said.
‘Morning,’ Seth murmured.
‘Has anyone ever told you you snore?’
He laughed because she delighted him. She laughed—he hoped—simply because she felt like it. He hadn’t heard that cascading, carefree sound from her in forever. Not since that day in the park years ago in the rain. He didn’t want her to stop laughing. Ever.
‘Come on, crazy lady, let’s get up before I can’t let you.’
***
It was a stunning late summer morning, blue sky and not a breath of wind. A veil of dew dusted leaves and grass, making spider webs wink with water diamonds. Morning sun spun through the window, turning the floors a creamy gold.
By the time Seth had the kettle boiled and coffee made, Remy had joined him. She wore well-worn denim jeans and a fitted turquoise shirt with an open collar, showing a silver pendant bouncing on a slim chain. Her hair was loose and he didn’t think he’d ever seen her look more beautiful.
It was fun sharing her galley kitchen and he touched her often as they passed back and forth. She popped hot toast out of the toaster and juggled it to him, and he slathered the squares in dobs of butter and homemade jam. Fig for him. Mulberry for her.
They took toast and coffee to the patio, where the dogs trotted up from the back of the garden hunting for a thrown crust.
‘She’s looking at me like I’m up to no good,’ Seth said to Remy, who had Breeze at her feet, staring at him balefully.
‘Yeah, well, Occhy’s looking at you like you’re some kind of stud, so I wouldn’t worry, hero. You can’t win ’em all.’
Eventually, she sighed and stretched. Her hair tousled down her back in wheaten ripples.
‘I don’t want to work today,’ she groaned, stretching her feet on the warm bricks, flexing her toes.
‘Then don’t. You’re your own boss. Have a day off.’
‘I really can’t. Unfortunately I have the type of customer who expects me to live up to my work commitments.’
Shit. He’d known her second job would come up but he hadn’t expected he’d have to deal with it so soon. He didn’t want to come on too strong, but he couldn’t pussyfoot around it either. He hated the idea of what she did for extra money. He’d hated it five years ago. He loathed the thought now.
‘You can help me if you like. If you don’t have other plans.’ Her eyes twinkled.
‘You need sound effects? Heavy breathing? I don’t think so.’ He reached for his coffee cup, scraped the toast plate over the table, clearing up.
Remy put her hand on his arm. ‘Seth?’
‘What?’ His gaze dropped to where her fingers curled around his forearm, so pale against the dark hairs on his skin. ‘I won’t pretend I like what you do, Rem. I’m not that kind of bloke.’
Her fingers gripped tighter. ‘Seth?’ She said again, tugging.
He put the cup on the table. He couldn’t stay angry. He was too happy to be with her.
‘I haven’t made a single sexual phone call for money since the day you heard me on my porch. I don’t do it anymore, okay? I stopped straight away. I’m talking about a different job.’
‘Oh.’ He felt like an idiot. ‘Alright then.’ And after that: ‘What do you need me to do?’
‘For starters, we better call in to your hotel so you can change into something old and comfy. You’ll be getting your hands dirty.’ She made a show of looking him up and down. ‘Leave the Armani on the hanger, okay?’
***
At the back of the Mulberry Mews aged care units in Oakbank was a communal garden: a long rectangle about the size of two cricket pitches side by side, bordered by a high slatted dark-metal fence with openings at regular intervals for white-painted metal gates. There were benches at the short sides of the rectangle with half-oak barrels on either side holding big magnolia trees. At the base of the trees, colourful flowers huddled.
Remy had parked as close as possible to the laneway, but getting all the gear into the garden still required considerable manoeuvring with a sack-truck and brute force. So far, Seth had carted four bales of pea straw, a stack of newspapers, four rubbish bins filled with compost and a variety of spades and tools from Remy’s Rodeo along an alley which had the most crooked dog-leg he’d ever seen. He’d got so much straw under his shirt he’d taken the damn itching thing off, which meant he was half-naked in jeans and boots with Remy and a bunch of old people.
The old ladies loved it. They said the Mews hadn’t had such eye-candy in the garden for years, and they giggled behind their hands: teenagers all over again.
The old men, on the other hand, kept asking what they could do to help. He could hardly set them to carting bales of straw or hammering pallet timbers, or upending bins of compost because it might have caused an early heart attack, so he settled for letting them rake up any vagrant straw outside the area Remy had designated for the residents’ new vegetable patch.
It was ingenious really, these no-dig gardens. Remy had been telling him about them all morning as they’d loaded her ute with the things she’d need, then as they’d driven into Oakbank.
The new patch was about eight metres long and three metres wide. It was fenced by a border made from the pallet boards Remy kept in her stable. Now he knew what she used them for.
Seth’s first job had been to cobble the border together while Remy laid wads of newspaper on the grass. ‘To stop weeds,’ she said.
Next came thick chunks of pea straw, laid as they broke from the bale. ‘That’s the base for the roots to grow into,’ she said.
Then it was layers of compost. Homemade.
‘I think you’re prouder of your compost than you are of your jam,’ he’d grizzled, as he’d lugged bin after bin along the alley. Those bins were the most cumbersome. He almost lost one off the sack-truck and a few of the old blokes had looked at him like they suspected he’d rolled up for work drunk.
Next came more pea straw. Then Remy clambered over the bed, scattering handfuls of blood and bone.
After that, one of the old blokes was allowed to water it in while they had lunch. A lady named Madge brought ham and salad sandwiches on a silver tray. They were cut in delicate white-bread quarters that made him feel like he was crashing a kid’s birthday party. Another brought chocolate and cherry teacake, and someone offered him lemonade.
By then it was about two o’clock and the old codger with the hose had watered things into a landslide.
‘Okay,’ Remy said, licking chocolate crumbs from her fingers. ‘Great job, Ernie. Turn the water off now.’ Then to Seth she said: ‘Now we get to the good part.’
‘Great,’ Seth said, envying her enthusiasm until she hit him with a hundred-watt smile that got his inner batteries all fired up.
Winter in the Hills got pretty cold, which was why autumn was so important to get vegie seedlings established while the soil retained its warmth.
Carefully Remy pricked out the broccoli seedlings and made holes through the layers of compost and straw. She packed the holes with more compost and planted straight in. Next to her, Seth did the same with the baby spinach.
He’d put his itchy shirt on while they ate lunch, probably to stop Madge and Lucy ogling his chest, but it had come off again now. The small of his back gleamed with sweat and Remy could smell him whenever they came close. She’d never minded the honest smell of a day’s sweat on a blue-collar man, and she sure didn’t mind it now.
Sunlight gleamed on his body, and outlined the hairs on his chest, and Remy had a hard time keeping her hands to herself.
‘What are you smiling about?’ he asked, poking her in the ribs, poking again when all she did was giggle, leaving fingerprint smudges on her shirt. ‘It’s a secret, is it?’ Poking again as she tried to push his hands away.
‘I say, Remy?’ Old Ernie began.
Remy stood up in the straw, straightened her back. ‘What’s up, Ern?’
‘Are you sure you’ve got that bean trellis in the right spot there? Won’t it shade everything else?’
‘Ern, this isn’t England, remember? You’re in the southern hemisphere now,’ said Lucy, between characteristic quick blinks. Lucy had been a spectator from start to finish.
‘Luce is right, Ernie. They’ll be fine, love,’ said Madge.
Ernie scratched his head. ‘Bugger me, I’m an old duffer. I forgot about the different hemispheres.’
Bless him. Remy had seen photos of Ernie with his wife, Peg, at Peg’s funeral a year or so back. He’d been a dashing young man in his day. An egg farmer. A good footballer.
‘Shows what I know, mate,’ Seth said, standing up from the bed of straw. ‘I didn’t even know what hemisphere we were in made a difference.’
‘You always got to check which way the sun moves. No point putting all the tall stuff where it gets all the sun and shades everything else out. My dad told me that about tomatoes. I never forgot it,’ Ernie said.
Seth stepped out of the straw and kept chatting. Ernie forgot about being an old duffer and started telling Seth all about the gardens where he grew up in Somerset, and Remy was grateful to Seth for his sensitivity.
Sensitivity. Now there was a new thought.
Remy dug in the poles for the bean trellis—making a teepee and lashing the overlapping tops with twine—then planted the bean seedlings at the base where they would climb.
‘Job done,’ she announced, stepping back. ‘Can you water them in, Ernie? Just a light spray.’
‘Think I’ll manage that alright.’
‘It’ll be so exciting to have our own vegies. They taste so much better than what you get at the shops,’ Madge said, giving Remy a hard squeeze.
‘Not so expensive, either,’ Lucy added.
Madge kissed Seth on the cheek and Lucy giggled behind her hand, then Remy and Seth packed up the tools.
‘I’ll be back next weekend to check on everything,’ Remy said, poised at the metal gate leading to the front of the Mews. ‘Water them every second day, Ern. Just lightly, if it doesn’t rain.’
‘Got more chance of winning Lotto than getting rain, I reckon,’ Ernie said.