June

June is the buzz wonderful time of the year. Look at the size of those bumblebees, buzz-buzz buzzing, they’re as noisy as mini helicopters. Ooh, that one zoomed right past my ear, it startled me but it won’t sting, I’m just in its way. It’ll go around me without causing me any bother, because it’s too occupied, working away, grafting, collecting nectar while the sun shines. Weather like this keeps everything busy, when it’s dry, not too hot, with the occasional breeze. It’s not only me who loves those big blue skies, strewn with white cotton-floss clouds.

Almost everything I’ve grown this year has become food for something. There are a couple of pigeons who keep visiting to eat what’s left of my winter greens. Pigeons seem to devour one plant at a time then move along to the next, each time eating until the plant is destroyed while leaving its neighbours un-nibbled. It must be some sort of evolutionary mechanism, as nothing does anything without good cause, my dear, you only have to watch until you can figure out what it is. I suppose once you’ve chewed a plant and survived, you know it isn’t poisonous, but who’s to say about its neighbour? Safest to stick to what you know. Good advice for scavenging pigeons, good advice for everyone else too.

That’s June for you, it may look lush and green, but nothing is peaceful, everything is working hard. And this is where we learn how well we’ve prepared for this season, where we begin to reap what we’ve sown. If we’ve done our jobs, we’ll maximise the rewards nature has to offer us, our crops will be as good as they can be. The onions are about to bud. They shouldn’t be allowed to get as far as flowering before they’re harvested, but I’ve pulled a couple, and they don’t have the wide round bottom that shows they’re ready. I’m going to de-flower them, take their tops off so they don’t put their energies into their displays. This manipulates them into concentrating their efforts into fattening those juicy bulbs instead. Same as the daffodils in April, but these will taste lovely when the time’s right.

In this way, we have some symbiosis. Nature helps us to grow some food to keep us fed, but takes some of it back. We can manipulate nature a little, but we have to live together in harmony, it’s the only way it works. Harmony does not mean kindness, my grandmother told me that. Gran taught me everything I know about growing food, and a lot more besides. Shall I tell you about the summer I lived with her? I arrived in June, in some disgrace, truth be told, and I wasn’t too happy to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with an old lady, I can tell you. But it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

*******

I had the good fortune to become one of those new things called a teenager when the idea, hand-in-hand with rock-n’-roll, came over from America. Oh, how I adored Elvis, and I jived at every opportunity I had. I don’t mean the sort of tea dances my parents enjoyed, either. I went to the cinema every day for two weeks, we danced in the aisles, and thought we were lucky not to be thrown out, but then they’d let us back in the next night. Papa did not like it though. He didn’t like how I styled my hair, he didn’t like the length of my skirt. He didn’t like that times were changing, he thought the very idea of a teenager was unnatural. I was only fifteen years old but he was already scouting around, talking about finding me a decent husband, someone with some good prospects who would be able to control these wayward tendencies of mine. I made sure he knew that I didn’t like that idea.

I cried when I heard I was being sent away to my grandmother’s, where I would be kept busy and out of trouble. Tears are a woman’s best weapon and I wielded them. I begged for some other form of punishment, even a good whipping, anything to get it over with and carry on seeing my friends. Papa refused to listen and said that if I worked hard and came to my senses, I’d only be gone three months. I wasn’t that troublesome, in truth I think he had grown tired of me and sought a quieter life. He wouldn’t yield, didn’t realise or didn’t care how high the stakes were. I hadn’t even finished school. He was taking away everything that mattered to me.

I’d not spent time alone with Gran before. After my grandfather had died in the war, she had moved to the countryside, and as it was three bus rides away, Mother and I didn’t visit her often. Her home had two rooms and only the basic amenities, but there was a patch of land with it, a cottage garden big enough to grow enough food to feed the village if you knew what you were doing. There was a similar house across the track but no children lived there, and there was no one else living within a ten minute walk in any direction. Thinking how isolated I would be that summer made me feel lonely before I’d packed my suitcase.

Of course, I should have known better. Papa should have known a lot better, he should have known what boys of my age were like. No sooner had I arrived at Gran’s than everyone within a ten-mile radius knew who I was. Every week there was a tea dance for the teenagers at the village hall, and Gran grudgingly let me go. The boys queued to dance with me. I’d never attracted that much attention back home, not when I was one of so many teenagers who had known each other since kindergarten. Here, I was the new girl. I was the stranger, unknown, who had come from a town. I had soft skin, my hair had natural waves and it was shorter than the other girls in the village. I was fashionable. The boys were enticed like bees to the flowers, buzzing around me, and I was primed to release my nectar for them. Never before nor since have I had such opportunity for so much fun. But it was all tame and safe, out there they were still courting and marrying at sixteen years old. And as it turns out, my perspective changed within a few weeks of arriving at Gran’s house, one which would stay with me for the rest of my life.

*******

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me, my dear, I need to make clear, these were the 1950s, they weren’t like these modern times. I wasn’t out drinking alcohol, I wasn’t one of those ladyettes, is that what you call yourselves? No, ladettes, I remember now, don’t laugh too hard, my dear, its unbecoming. No, we were dancing in the village hall, chaperoned, and we drank tea. It would have been scandalous to have enjoyed a kiss with a boy unless we were going steady. But my experiences did teach me a few things. It appeared I was more attractive to those who didn’t know me than to those who did, and there were other options out there in the world, I didn’t have to settle for choosing from the boys closest to home. I thought that was a good thing, and as it contributed to my courtship with Frank a few years later, I suppose it proved to be so.

When I look back now, the saddest thing was how long it took me to realise how valuable this time was, how fortunate I was to be residing with Gran rather than visiting. I wasted those first weeks worrying about my friends back home and flirting with all the boys at the dance. I didn’t notice that the most important relationship I was developing was with her. Only by living with her did I come to understand her life and her views, and to learn as much as I did from her. I saw my grandmother after that summer, of course, but never again could I spend this type of time with her, where the days stretched into weeks and into months. Where we had a joint sense of purpose, being together as family rather than as host and houseguest, hovering on the edge of each other’s lives. So, although this is a story about love, it isn’t a story about boys. The frantic gardening of this time of year reminds me of how I fell in love with my grandmother, working her land together under those broad blue June skies.

She changed my life. Not immediately. So many aspects of it were already fixed, I would marry a boy in the next few years and start a family soon afterwards, there was no question of not doing so, more a matter of how good a husband I could find and how many children we would have. Nonetheless, that summer widened my horizons, and showed me my true relationship with nature. The lessons I learned led me to wish to tend my own land, and to benefit from the bounty of my labour. Without this, I shouldn’t have thought I’d have ended up burying my husband in an allotment, and where else would I have put him? Joking aside, without the harsh experiences of that summer, I could not have survived the trials of my later years. I would not have known how to adapt to my changing environment, nor practiced how to flourish where I was planted. The rest of my life was moulded by Gran. Thankfully, I hadn’t lived with her long before I began to realise how precious our time together would prove.

*******

Three weeks into my stay and the change in me was remarkable. My skin had coppered from hours spent in the sun, and I was twice as strong. My hands were roughening, and the callouses on my right palm were about to start growing their own. My lungs felt broader, swollen with fresh air. My hair was tied back in an old rag and forgotten about. I’d ceased to concern myself with the state of my nails, embracing the apparent permanency of the earthy half-moons beneath them. By the fourth week, I chose not to attend the village dance so that I could finish tying up the raspberry canes, and then get some rest. Idyllic it was not, nor had it been a pleasant transformation.

Gran had woken me at dawn every day, and other than meal times, we were outside, working. She had segmented her land, so that all her flowers were at the front, making a lovely display to admire from the single-lane track that ran past. The cobbled path wound through the garden beds, and there wasn’t a rhyme to the plants that were growing there, all the flowers were different colours, they looked higgedly-piggedly to me, but the bees loved the variety. To the side of the house, by the only entrance, there were neat rows of crops. Potatoes and onions, of course, beans curling their way up poles, courgettes sprouting everywhere, and a substantial section fenced off for the raspberry canes. Trees dotted the plot, apples mainly, and the occasional pear. At the back, in pride of place, Gran’s raised herb bed, as wide as the house and positioned so as to best benefit from the shelter and the sunlight. Finally, there was a dirt yard where some chickens were able to scratch around. The hen house was next to an open sided lean-to, more of a shack than a shed, as basic as the rest of the property, but it housed the tools and other paraphernalia needed for Gran to maintain her little part of the world. In time, I came to understand that her planting structure made perfect sense and, as you can see, my dear, I’ve mimicked her arrangements ever since.

Gran lost no time in giving me all the heavy and smelly chores. Cleaning up chicken poop was my first task of the day, and my least favourite of the many things I had to do but, as she said, repeatedly, if I wanted to eat fresh eggs, the hens needed to be kept happy. I swear, they were better cared for than I was. There was always some job for me to do to keep me outside. I was allowed to dash under cover when the rain came down, but only into the outbuilding, never into the house. If there was daylight, there was some work that needed doing. And in fairness to Gran, she wasn’t shirking herself.

She hadn’t talked to me much in those first couple of weeks. Every time she opened her mouth it was to tell me I was doing something wrong, or badgering me to hurry up. But as I got swifter, more practised and less reluctant, her tone changed. She would point out birds that were chirping away nearby, and encourage me to examine their behaviour. She’d show me the tell-tale tracks left by the hares, the piles of soft earth the moles fashioned. She explained the traditional use of every herb she grew, along with its care requirements. It was Gran who taught me how to see nature, as well as how to teach others. To not only look, but to take time to observe what nature was doing, to find some interest in what was happening around me. This way, she said, I would never tire of my surroundings, there would always be something new and exciting going on, if I only took the time to appreciate it. How useful these lessons have proved to be.

*******

Most surprisingly, I came to love the chickens, I even took some pride in clearing up after them all the time, though I could never enjoy it. There were six hens and a cockerel, his head with its scarlet comb atop was half-way up my thigh, and he was twice the size of the hens. His upper body was golden brown, each feather a slightly different hue, which made him appear to glisten in the sunshine. His lower body was pure white. He was immense, and stunning, and intimidating. He stalked around while I cleaned up, putting himself between me and the other chickens, crowing, cock-a-do-da-doo-ing, making sure I didn’t forget he was there. I’m not ashamed to admit, his displays of aggression worked. I was as quick as I could be every day.

In time, though, the situation eased. I don’t know if I relaxed first or he did, or whether we began breathing more slowly, together. I became skilled at brushing up the dirty straw without disrupting the hens, leaving the clean, untouched bedding alone, refreshing the water and the corn feed without knocking my head on the low beam. The cockerel pecked around the yard, keeping one eye on me still, I’ve no doubt, but he seemed less concerned for his hens, and they could continue to mull around the edges of the yard as if I wasn’t there. I had yet to stroke the cockerel, he only let Gran touch him, but I sensed I was being accepted into his hareem, that I was settling into this life with them all.

The six hens were more banal in their appearance. Each had their own markings, of course, but it was harder to discern their individual personalities. They were a motley mix, poor relations alongside the magnificence of their male protector. He drew the eye towards him, but the hens laid our eggs. He ate most of the food, and when he mounted the hens he was brutal. I thought he was Gran’s indulgence, more of a pet than livestock. She didn’t agree.

“Now child, you wouldn’t like to see these hens without that cockerel to keep ‘em in check. Chickens are broods, they have a peckin’ order, that’s where the term comes from. Without ‘im here to keep ‘em peaceful, well, it lead ‘em to fightin’, that would.”

I would always say it about my Gran – once she started teachin’, there was no interjectin’.

“He preens, he protects, and he provides if you watch ‘em closely enough. He scratches around the scattered corn and calls to his hens when he finds ‘em somethin’. You don’t wanna see what hens do without a cock amongst ‘em.”

She didn’t seem to mind my laughter, later I thought it might have been a test to check I was paying attention. She could be crafty like that sometimes.

“They will sort ‘emselves out if they have to, with one of the hens startin’ to protect the flock if there’s no cockerel about. And they do a mighty fine job, don’t get me wrong. But watchin’ the hens work it out for ‘emselves isn’t pleasant.”

I remember her words so clearly because of all that followed, of course, but I knew, even in that moment, that she was trying to teach me an important lesson about people, not only about chickens.

*******

I sat bolt upright in my bed, heart thudding, limbs tingling as adrenaline exploded through me. The light from the moon, two days from its fullest, streamed through the window into the attic room I slept in, the makeshift curtain failing to dull its brightness. Moments passed and I began to steady myself, blaming a dream for my excited state, but then I heard a scream, it prickled painfully through me, and I knew it was the same piercing noise that had awoken me so abruptly.

I flew down the wooden ladder from my room, and ran past my grandmother’s bedroom into the large kitchen which constituted the majority of the cottage. I could hear Gran calling after me, opening her bedroom door behind me. I knew it was not her screaming. I pulled the door open and hurried round to the yard. Once outside, the sound was blood-curdling, a continuous screech, which altered only in its loudness, never in its pitch. Set alongside the silvery light, it created an eerie terror within me. The chickens should have been asleep for the night in their shed, the hatch dropped at dusk when they started to roost. But the hatch was still open, and the hens were hovering around it. The black and white tones gave the scene the semblance of a film, a tangible distance from reality which helped delay me, if only momentarily, from understanding the substance of the matter.

The cockerel had his back to the hen shed, and was battling to protect his flock. He screeched, leaped and lifted his legs in defence, the light glinting on white feathers as they flew from him and floated towards the ground. His comb was torn. The tang of blood hung heavy. He was fighting for his life against a fox. It was a dirty orange colour, the cream end of its tail dulled from the dusty summer earth. It was snarling, its teeth bared. It pulled back, hissing before pouncing, and the cockerel soared to meet it, claws outstretched, driving it back. He was holding it off, but the fox came again. The hens hawed together near the shed, as if speculating on the outcome of this fight. It was the most horrid thing I had seen in my fifteen years, and I saw this image in my nightmares for months afterwards.

Gran came flying from the house like an angel on a mission of vengeance, pale gown flowing behind her as she hurled the kitchen tablecloth over the beast, catching it by surprise before it could launch a further attack on the cockerel. She then beat it with her poker, hard and fast, creating a whipping noise as she struck the fox, her strong right arm thrashing the poker down upon it, provoking howls and yelps from within the cloth. She didn’t slow, not when the bundle huddled down, not after the now-static form ceased whimpering. She pounded that fox from every angle, until all I could hear was the slash of the poker through the air, and the grinding of broken bones, as they scraped against each other under the administrations of my grandmother’s wrath.

I could not move. I stood there, covered in goosebumps, though I wasn’t feeling the chill in the air. My tears streamed, but I made no move to wipe them away. I watched this woman, who I had always thought of as a nature lover, as a kind and gentle woman, I watched her beat this poor animal to death. I was sickened. When she stopped, the silence was overwhelming. She was so damp with perspiration I could see through the rear of her nightgown. I noticed that she was still in her bare feet, only then realising my own were too, deep in the dust and the blood and the feathers of the back yard.

Gran dropped the poker onto the tenderised wad of cloth, and went back inside the house without saying a word to me. The hens filled the void, clucking away, some inside, some outside the shed. Gran came back with a towel and chased the last of the hens inside, before she wrapped the cockerel, lifting and cradling him against her. Turning to me, she told me to make sure the hatch was closed properly before I came inside. To her immense credit, it was the only time she mentioned the open hatch, the boundary that would have protected the hens from the fox, and which had been my responsibility to close before dusk fell, before the fox scented its chance.

*******

Gran placed the cockerel on the table, where he perched with his head bowed, making faint mewling noises. He had been badly bitten. He had lost a chunk of flesh from the back of his neck, from which blood was dripping onto the towel beneath him, and there were feathers missing, torn from his wing leaving their shards of quill behind. Gran was pouring water into a bowl, her pestle and mortar lying empty and unused next to it.

“There, there, my darlin’, you can rest now, all be well, all be well,” she crooned to the cockerel as she wiped his wounds, tenderly assessing the damage. “You did yourself proud, my darlin’, you can rest now, all be well.”

Turning to me, “Maureen, put the kettle on, do us some nettle tea with a little honey, that’ll help us recover from the shock.”

I nodded and did what was necessary, thinking that my gran did not look in the slightest bit shocked. But she didn’t move to make any remedy to help the cockerel, and that told me what I needed to know.

As I placed her cup next to her on the kitchen table, she said, “if you want to stroke ‘im, now’s your chance. He isn’t going to live to see the dawn, I don’t think.”

Only then did I hear the catch in her voice. This cockerel was loved, even if he didn’t have a name. ‘We don’t name the livestock, child, names are for children and pets,’ she’d always said. But here we were, caressing this beautiful creature who had battled to protect his hens, thanking him while we sipped our tea.

“We’ll place ‘im back in the coop, he’ll pass more easily when he can see ‘is girls are no longer in danger. He’ll want to know ‘is job is done.”

I followed her outside, feeling the cold now I was not so terrified, and I opened the side door to the hen hutch so she could lay the cockerel on the bench amongst the roosting hens. She kissed his shredded comb before clambering back out and pushing the door closed.

“You can go back to bed now, child, see if you can get some sleep before the day starts again.”

I stayed put and nursed my tea, unwilling to leave and lie down alone while the cockerel took his final breaths. Gran returned, dressed and brandishing a spade, thrusting it into the ground beneath the furthest apple tree. Without looking up, she dug in swift, practised movements.

“We’ll bury the fox as near to the boundary as possible, maybe it’ll act as a warnin’ to any member of its family that may also be hungry. We’ll need another hole, nearer the house, if you’re determined you aren’t goin’ back to bed.”

I was less skilled at digging than she, having to hack away at the roots I could barely see despite the lightening sky as dawn edged closer. The sweat dripped down my back and the breeze chilled me. I couldn’t dry my eyes. But I kept at it, I recognised the activity as my penance and I welcomed it. I found some solace in doing so, in the physical ache and the therapeutic daze that was created as I dug my first grave.

*******

I have never forgiven myself, of course not, my dear, nor can I think of him without getting teary. I killed him. The fox was only doing what came naturally, it was me who gave it the opportunity to strike. I have also come to understand why Gran behaved as she did. Now that it had scented a meal it would have kept coming back, coming back in daylight if it were hungry enough, and the hens would be without the protection of their cockerel. Once foxes draw blood, they must be killed off as the pests they are. I know they’re considered cute and fluffy these days, and in need of protection from the horrid hounds of the hunt, what an almighty row that’s been, my dear, now, I don’t agree with it, they don’t deserve to be chased for sport. But they are nature’s killers and they are vermin, and if you’re going to live a rural life, then sometimes you will need to do what’s necessary.

That June, my experiences changed me forever. Not only that dreadful night, but those wonderous three months I spent with Gran. The natural world was no longer this boring thing my grandmother insisted on nattering about, whether I wanted to hear it or not. Country life wasn’t an easy one, there was much that could go wrong. Years of hard work could be undone by a storm, livestock could be lost because of one forgetful moment. But I learnt that perseverance will win out, and that if you focus on what has to be done, and on getting it done, you don’t have to hope for a saviour to rescue you from yourself. That was the main lesson I took away from that long night in the summer I spent with my grandmother. The value of responsibility.

My other take-away has been how to lay everything out, I’ve been copying Gran’s arrangements ever since I got my first plot. No chickens for me, unfortunately, I never could relax around them after all that. But I love raspberries and, like Gran, I’ve been generous in the space I’ve given over to them, on the left here, almost a third of the plot, don’t you think, my dear? The middle of the plot is always foodstuffs, onions, potatoes and garlic, and over to the right, near that rickety old bench that only one of us can sit on at a time, there I like to plant some flowers. My plot doesn’t have the same haphazard look of my gran’s place, it takes a lot of cultivation to look that unplanned, I can tell you, but I’m working on it. My prize specimens are my herbs, which I’ve hidden away from the pigeons, stretching them across the length of the plot through the middle of everything else. Not to everyone’s taste, that, but I’ve been experimenting with locations ever since I left Gran’s that summer with my first pots of plants to propagate, and I’ve become rather good at hybridising and helping them to flourish. The trick is finding the perfect position for each one, and scattering them about like this allows each to prosper.

You wouldn’t believe it had rained overnight, would you? The sun rises so early and the damp rises so swiftly that we wouldn’t know if we weren’t out here promptly. Mornings are my favourite time of the day, and I’m glad we were both able to come out here today, the longest day of the year. I like to mark the solstice if I can. Tomorrow starts the long descent towards winter’s cold darkness, and although it will take many months, and although there are many warm and bright days to come, it’ll creep upon us and before we realise what’s happening, we’ll be fighting the depressions of November. I’m glad though, I know this time will be different, we’ll be coping with it together this year, together, my dear.