part0007

T he back garden is massive; I knew it was going to be bigger than Flynn’s little back yard but I wasn’t expecting these estate-like proportions. I feel hopelessly inadequate now that I’ve seen the scale of the job and I’m hoping that I’m not going to let Flynn down.

We haven’t seen the owner yet; Flynn says she’ll be back later but we’re going to crack on anyway because it’s not as if she’s going to be doing the job with us. I am a bit disappointed she isn’t here because I wanted to see what she’s like, this woman who has more money than sense.

In addition to the giant-sized boiler suit I’m also wearing a pair of Flynn’s work gloves which are much too big for my hands, God knows what I must look like. The gloves are stiff and hard and when I put them on they creaked when I bent my fingers. I eyed the brown stains on them and didn’t much like the look of them so I didn’t want to put them on when Flynn gave them to me. I said I didn’t need gloves and I’d be fine without them. This produced a load of guffawing from Flynn and when he eventually stopped he thrust them at me and said I’d have no hands left if I didn’t put them on.

Flynn has laid a giant tarpaulin out on the grass and we’re digging the soil out from around the pond so we can lay a membrane down – whatever that is - and then put the stone chippings on top of it. I asked Flynn what he was going to do with a tarpaulin load of soil and he looked at me like I was stupid and said, well, obviously, we’re going to build the borders up with it for when we put all the plants in. Wasn’t obvious to me at all.

We’ve not been digging for long and I’ve already had enough. Flynn digs his spade into the ground and with one shove of his boot he pushes it in and it fills it up with a great load of soil whereas just getting the spade into the ground is a struggle for me. Once I’ve got the end of it in the ground I have to put all of my weight on it to push it into the earth before I can actually get any soil on the damn thing. Most of my first spadeful went all over the lawn as I shakily carried it over to the tarpaulin because it was so heavy. Flynn wasn’t pleased at all.

‘Not on the grass!’ he’d bellowed. ‘It’ll take us all day to get it off there!’

So now I’m carrying tiny spadesful of earth so that I don’t drop any and I’m sweating like a pig already, which isn’t surprising considering the amount of heavy-duty boiler suit I’m swamped in.

I think briefly about taking my sweatshirt off but soon dismiss the idea as just thinking about the hassle of struggling out of the boiler suit and then putting it back on again is exhausting.

Stop whining , mutters the Beccabird, who’s been chipping in with unhelpful comments like this since we got here. I could cheerfully batter her over the head with the spade and throw her in the pond.

Dig, push, lift, trudge. After a couple of hours of this I seem to have developed a sort of rhythm. I’m also absolutely knackered and I’m desperate to sit down for a rest but I’m determined not to give Flynn the satisfaction of seeing me give in. The pile of soil is growing on the tarpaulin and we’ve dug a large area around the pond so I’m hopeful we’re nearly done.

‘Let’s stop and have a bit of lunch,’ Flynn shouts on his way back from emptying his shovel. Or is it a spade? I have no idea what the difference is, or if there even is a difference.

‘If you like.’ I say nonchalantly, although in my head I’m spinning cartwheels around the garden in celebration. Sausage lifts his head at the mention of food; he’s been watching us from a cosy nest that he’s made for himself in the old-fashioned, brick porch over the back door which is sheltering him nicely from the wind.

I pull my gloves off and try not to wince as they catch on the massive blister on my right-hand palm, the result of all the digging, I just hope it doesn’t burst.

‘We’ll eat in the truck,’ Flynn announces as he digs his spade into the ground with one hand and leaves it standing up. I do the same with mine but as I hurry to catch up with Flynn I hear my spade fall over with a thud into the dirt.

Pathetic! shrieks the Beccabird.

Flynn grabs a rucksack from the back of the truck and picks up Sausage and chucks him into the cab and climbs in after him. I go around to the passenger side and clamber in and breathe a sigh of relief to be out of the battering wind. And my feet, oh God, the bliss to be off my feet for a while. I’m sure I’m going to have a bruise right across the sole of my foot from pushing that spade into the ground.

Flynn stares out of the window frowning.

‘Looks like it’s going to rain.’

I say a silent prayer for torrential rain so we can go home. I’ll pretend I’ve got something planned for tomorrow that I can’t possibly get out of so that I don’t have to come back here.

‘So,’ Flynn says, rooting around in his rucksack, ‘I’ve got BLT, prawn mayonnaise, cheese and tomato or cheese and pickle.’

‘Cheese and pickle please.’ I’m glad he’s bought some food because I never even thought about lunch. Not that ten minutes was long enough to get dressed and do a packed lunch.

He tosses a supermarket bought plastic pack of sandwiches at me which I catch just before it hits the floor. By the time I’ve managed to open the packet Flynn is ramming the second half of a prawn mayonnaise sandwich into his mouth while he opens the packet of cheese and tomato.

‘Is that enough?’ he asks. ‘There’s a packet of BLT here.’

‘No this is plenty.’ I study my hands and wonder if there’s anywhere I can wash them. I’m about to ask Flynn but think better of it in case it just confirms to him that I’m a wimp. I hold the sandwich using the plastic packet and take a bite. Delicious.

‘Sure? ‘Cos I’m going to eat it if you don’t want it.’ He’s already ripping the packet open.

‘I’m sure.’ Christ, I haven’t even finished my first sandwich and he’s on his third pack. I suppose all this hard graft keeps him from putting on weight.

‘What about Sausage? Doesn’t he get anything?’ He’s gazing up at me from the footwell with big, sad eyes.

‘No, he’ll get his tonight.’

‘I could give him a bit of mine,’ I say, breaking off a corner of bread. Greedy sod, you’d think he’d spare a bit of his food for his dog.

‘No. Don’t give him anything, human food isn’t good for him. He’s just a scavenger, he’s had breakfast. Can’t be having a fat sausage dog with his belly scraping along the ground.’

I put the corner of bread in my mouth while Sausage looks at me reproachfully.

Flynn produces a huge tartan flask from his rucksack and unscrews the cup.

‘I’ve only got one cup so you go first.’ He fills the cup to the brim with steaming, dark brown tea and hands it to me.

I swallow the rest of my sandwich and take it from him and sip possibly the best cup of tea I’ve ever had in my life. Amazing how a bit of hard work can make you appreciate something so simple.

It takes me ages to drink because it’s so hot and I can feel Flynn getting impatient so I quickly drain the last of the tea in one gulp and scald my mouth. I hand the cup back to him and he refills it and swallows it in great gulps; his stomach must be made from copper because that tea was hot .

‘Right, back to it.’ Flynn opens the door and jumps out.

I get out of the truck and pick Sausage up and put in down and he trots off into the back garden, no doubt going back to his cosy spot by the back door. My feet hurt even more than they did before. Please, please, rain.

We trudge around to the back garden and Flynn stands, hands on hips, surveying our handiwork before marching back to the truck and reappearing with a roll of black material.

‘We’ll lay this out and then start shovelling.’

‘Righto,’ I say. It’s catching.

We lay the black material carefully over the ground we’ve just dug out and hold the edges down with heavy stones.

Flynn stands back and looks at it. ‘That’ll do. You stay here and do the spreading and I’ll barrow it round.’

I stand and wait while he stomps around to the front of the house where the stone chippings have been delivered. Spreading stone should be a lot easier than digging and was that a drop of rain on my face? I think it was; there’s definitely rain in the air. Come on, I urge the clouds, chuck it down.

Flynn reappears from around the side of the house pushing a wheelbarrow filled with stone chippings. I watch as he pushes it across the patio and upends it onto the black cloth we’ve just laid out. I can’t believe how quickly he’s filled the wheelbarrow.

‘Okay, spread it out and I’ll get the next load.’

I grab the rake and attempt to push the stone evenly across the cloth. Useless, the rake doesn’t move any of the stone but skims over the top. I fling it to one side and retrieve my spade from the mud and start using it to spread the stone which is a lot harder work than I thought it would be.

‘Christ, haven’t you done that yet? You’ll have to go quicker than that.’ Unbelievably Flynn is back with another wheelbarrow full. He upends it onto a new patch of cloth and I start and try to speed up a bit. Another drop of rain lands on my nose swiftly followed by another and I look up and it’s definitely raining. Hard.

Flynn stomps past me and upends another load of stone.

‘It’s raining,’ I say, stating the obvious.

‘It’s just a scud. Won’t last long.’ He stomps off with the empty wheelbarrow.

‘It’s raining really hard,’ I say when he brings the next load around.

‘It’ll pass,’ he says over his shoulder as he upends the wheelbarrow.

‘I don’t think it will.’ I look up at the black clouds through the driving rain.

Flynn stops and puts the wheelbarrow down for a moment and gazes skyward, frowning.

‘The thing is, I’ll just have to carry on because otherwise I’m going to run out of time.’ He picks the wheelbarrow up and heads to the front garden. ‘But feel free to sit in the truck if you want.’ He shouts over his shoulder.

I’ve had enough and desperately want to go and sit in the truck but I’ll feel bad if I do. I can hardly sit in a nice warm cab and watch him shovel stone in the driving rain, can I? And actually, I’m soaked now so I might as well carry on. I pull the hood of my sweatshirt out of my overalls and pull it over my head and then put it down again because my hair’s all wet anyway.

I shove and push the stone and when the next barrowful arrives I don’t stop and we continue in this fashion until all of the stone is in front of the pond. Once he’s finished bringing the stone round Flynn joins in with the shovelling and as the rain starts to ease off the spreading is complete.

Flynn strides up to the patio by the house and I follow him and stand next to him as he surveys our handiwork.

‘Looks pretty good,’ he says.

It does look good; the blue chipped stone makes the pond stand out from the rest of the garden and makes the pond look newer and somehow prettier.

‘It does,’ I agree.

‘Yeah, I’m pretty pleased with that and I think she will be too.’ He looks at his watch. ‘I think that’ll do for today, it’s nearly five o’clock. We’ll clear up and get off, shall we?’

‘Great!’ Sounds like a fantastic idea to me but first I have an urgent need for the toilet. That huge mug of boiling tea has worked its way through and I realise that I haven’t been to the toilet all day.

‘Have you got a key for the house, Flynn?’

He shakes his head. ‘She did offer but I don’t need to get in there for anything so I said no. Didn’t want the responsibility.’

‘So what do you do if you need the bathroom?’ I sound like someone off an American soap.

‘Me? I just go behind a tree or hedge. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, no one will see you.’

An image of me struggling out of wet overalls and squatting behind a tree flashes in front of me. No. Definitely not. I’ll have to wait until we get home.

‘Oh, I’ll wait until we get back,’ I say casually. ‘No rush.’

The Beccabird crosses her legs and beak.

‘Okay.’ He walks over to the pond and chucks the spades and rake into the wheelbarrow. ‘I’ll start loading up.’

I just hope I can hang on until I get home.

I trudge round to the front of the house and try not to think about how much I need a wee. Flynn stands at the back of the truck scraping the spades clean and is it my imagination or is he deliberately getting every single speck of mud off the spades? I’m sure when we started using them they were pretty filthy already.

‘You get in,’ Flynn says, looking up. ‘I won’t be long.’

I climb up into the truck, wincing. I’ve got stomach ache I want to go so badly. I drum my fingers on the seat and will him to hurry up; what is taking him so long? I look in the mirror and can’t see him. I swing and look out of the window to see him outside the front door talking to a woman. Blonde and smartly dressed in a tweed skirt and jacket, she has her hands full of shopping bags – designer-type boxy ones, not Tesco plastic – and the front door is open so she must have just got home.

Hurray! I can use the toilet. I open the truck door and jump out and trot over to them in an ungainly manner fighting against all of the bunched-up material around my legs, I am so looking forward to taking these overalls off. I fight the urge to walk with the tops of my legs clamped together.

‘Hi!’ I give my friendliest smile. The one that people seem to find annoying.

‘Oh, hello.’ I see her eyes flicker over me and I don’t blame her, I must look a strange sight.

‘I’m Becca, I’ve been helping Flynn.’

‘Yes, Flynn’s going to show me what you’ve done once I’ve put my bags inside.’

‘Would you mind if I use your toilet?’ I burst out, dispensing with any pretence at small talk or niceties, I really can’t wait any longer.

‘Of course,’ she says and I see her eyes flicker again over my wet, filthy boiler suit and mud caked trainers.

‘I’ll take my shoes off.’ I say, almost hopping from one foot to the other.

‘No need, I’ll let you in the back door and you can use the one in the boot room.’

‘Great.’ Hurry up .

‘I’ll see you at the back door.’ She goes inside the house and I dash around into the back garden, the sound of Flynn’s clomping footsteps behind me.

I stand in the back porch hopping from foot to foot with my thighs clamped firmly together .

After what seems like an hour she finally unlocks and opens the back door.

‘The boot room’s to the left,’ she says as she stands aside to let me in. I rush past her without a word, veer left and find myself in a room with a washing machine and tumble dryer. There are two pairs of green wellington boots neatly arranged underneath a row of pegs holding a jumble of coats.

I look around the room to see a door set into the opposite wall and I charge towards it and yank it open to be confronted by a vacuum cleaner and assorted mops and brushes.

I slam it shut and look around in panic, which is when I notice the other door that was right next to it all the time. I pull the door open so hard that it bounces of the adjoining wall leaving an imprint of the handle on it. Too desperate to care I step inside and pull the door shut and lock it.

My legs are well and truly clamped together now and with fingers that feel the size of sausages I fumble to undo the buttons on my boiler suit, which is soaking wet and making the buttons almost impossible to undo. I hear someone whimpering and realise that it’s me and I’m about to give up when the material gives and I finally mange to undo them. The boiler suit is still sopping wet from the rain and it’s sticking to me like clingfilm but with an almighty effort I manage to yank the trousers down to my knees.

Just got to get my jeans undone now; the button hole is bigger and gives easily and I grab hold of the zip and yank it down in triumph. At last, nearly there! But my body has decided that enough is enough and it can wait no longer and I watch in horror at the slowly spreading stain on my jeans.

There’s no chance of stopping now and I sit down on the toilet seat and give in to the inevitable, feeling huge relief mixed with shame.

After what feels like twenty-five gallons of urine leaving my body I stand up and wonder what the hell I’m going to do.

You are disgusting , the Beccabird says with distaste. Fancy wetting yourself at your age.

I undo my trainers and take them off and pull the boiler suit over them; thankfully they’re wet with rain and nothing else as the pee didn’t reach them. I then take my sodden jeans and knickers off. The knickers are so wet they’re practically dripping so I hold them under the tap and rinse them several times and place them on the side of the sink. The jeans aren’t so bad so I roll them into a ball with the wettest bits inside and put them on the floor before putting the overalls back on. I’ll just have to hide my clothes until we get home and no one will know. I pull some toilet paper from the roll and wet it under the tap and wipe the toilet seat over and then dry it with more paper. I do feel awful about it but it was a complete accident and there was absolutely nothing I could do.

I flush the toilet and hold the wadded jeans behind my back as I step out into the boot room. I go through to the back porch but I can’t see Flynn or the house owner.

‘You found it okay?’ says a voice from the behind me and I whirl around to see the house owner coming towards me.

‘Yes, fine, I say, hurriedly hiding my jeans behind my back.

‘Flynn’s waiting in the truck for you. The pond looks great by the way, I’m very impressed with it so far.’

‘Great,’ I say. Did her nose just wrinkle? Oh God, she can probably smell the pee.

‘So you’ll be back tomorrow?’

‘Try and stop me!’ Why did I say that? I back slowly out of the back door. ‘See you tomorrow!’

‘Yes.’ She’s looking at me very strangely and I realise that she’s going to know that I rammed the toilet door into the wall and made a hole in it. I keep backing out with a stupid grin on my face until I get out of her sight and then I break into a run. I race around the side of the house until I get to the front where I slow down. Flynn is sitting in the truck with the engine running so I make my way to the passenger side via the back of the truck and casually poke my wet jeans into a gap next to the spades. I can fish them out when I get home before he finds them.