Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes (33 page)

'It wasn't working out,' says David. He is drinking coffee out of a mug with a fat brown and white cow painted on the side
and is wearing a grey T-shirt bearing the words 'Dowlish and Donyatt FC'. 'He just wasn't that interested in what happens
here and when I told him that we couldn't go on employing him, he didn't say anything, didn't say that he liked working with
the animals or growing stuff or anything. He just shrugged and said that he'd been thinking about retraining as an HGV driver.'

Charlie and I know that the question of Bob's employment at the nursery has been under question for the last couple of months.
'We don't have to work with him, David does,' Charlie had said to me recently. 'You and I can't interfere and we're not running
a charity.' True, but I've been touched by Bob's willingness to give up his Saturdays to stand behind a market stall, dressing
up in his best garb to flog herbs to the middle classes, clearly awkward that he isn't gifted with a snappy repartee which
can turn the purchase of one herb into the purchase of three or four, but giving it a go, nonetheless. I feel bad that I don't
know more about him, that he is going to pass through our lives, disappearing without leaving a trace. Once, when we were
out together to fetch some chicken feed, he told me that his jobs never lasted long. As he said it, he shrugged, as though
accepting that this would probably be his fate this time around as well.

'We can't afford him,' David says, knowing full well that this will be the clinching argument. He opens a drawer and rummages
around for a pencil. 'Look,' he says, writing down numbers on a piece of paper. 'This week we've made £362 from the honesty
table and from people wandering down here from Dillington House to buy plants. Plus we're owed money by Rowley for the eggs
and we're owed money for the veg that we've sold to the House. We're going to break even this week, but we'd be in the red
if we still had to pay his salary. And honestly, Rosie, he just didn't get it. He never got enthusiastic about anything. Me
and Adrian, in just one morning this week, we got through more than Bob and I could get through in two days.'

'How are we going to cope at the village open day?' I ask. It is now just two weeks till 24 June, the day when we are opening
our garden, selling cream teas, helping to organise a bookstall, a bric-a-brac stall, and a plant and produce stall. Ellen
Doble's daughter, Sandra, has organised an art exhibition which is going to be held in the village hall. In the evening, we've
offered to hold a village pig roast, with one of our pigs as the star attraction. So far, almost eighty of the hundred tickets
have been sold. On top of that, the second Montacute market is taking place the same day and our plan has been that Bob and
I will go to Montacute leaving Charlie and the Bellew family to deal with events back home.

'Dennis is going with you.' I shrug. I like Dennis and I know we'll have a good time, but it doesn't stop me feeling sad that
Bob has gone.

The weekend before the open day I take the dogs swimming in the pond at the end of the park. There's a rickety pontoon attached
to the shore by a couple of wobbly planks which stretch out into the still, green water. The dogs, especially Fat­Boy, love
swimming and they swim alongside me, every so often swerving off to investigate the thick plant life on the banks. Wild mint
grows near the shore, and yellow flag irises and cow parsley crowd towards the water's edge, their reflections leaving streaky
yellow and white patterns on the softly ruffled surface. Swimming is the only physical activity that has been completely unaffected
by my accident and I stay in the water for over an hour, watching the swallows swoop down to feed, the dark brilliant blue
of their heads and backs standing out against the sky, the red feathers round their beaks flashing in the sunlight. They fly
with an effortless grace, soaring out of the sky, breaking the surface of the lake and scattering droplets of water that break
into rainbow colours beneath their wings, then gliding upwards to turn and tumble in the air, as though the entire space above
the pond is a playground for their acrobatics.

Every year since we've been at the Dairy House, the swallows have nested in the garage, but this year the roof has been repaired
and the old nests have been destroyed. I was worried that they wouldn't return, but they have, to the shed which adjoins the
garage, into a newly built nest in the eaves. They are wonderfully cosmopolitan, creatures that connect two continents and
two entirely different ways of life, weaving the world together, crossing warring nations and increasingly unstable climate
zones. What will happen to them, I wonder. According to James Lovelock, their winter world in North Africa will soon become
so hot that they'll have to change their millennia-old migratory patterns, wintering here and spending their summers high
on the slipstreams above the Norwegian fjords, hunting for flies in the endlessly long light nights of the Arctic circle.

Fat-Boy and Bingo crash through the reeds on the banks, the tall cow parsley waving above them, as they follow the smells
of the water voles and the occasional moorhen. Fat-Boy glances up constantly; it is as though he is checking that he can see
me and every few minutes he's back in the water, swimming out to touch me with his nose. When he swims, only the top of his
head above his nostrils is visible above the water and his silky ears float out beside him. Using his tail as a rudder, he
creates barely a ripple as he crosses the pond; he reminds me of a crocodile. He's so perfectly adapted to swimming, unlike
Bingo, who swims in a frantic, jerky style, her head, back and tail well above the water, a nervous look in her eyes. Before
we had Fattie, Bingo never went in the water, preferring to stay on the bank and bark at passing ducks. But she's a plucky
dog and, even though she looks terrified, she hurls herself into the water alongside Fat­Boy and expends huge energy trying
to keep up. On the bank, Bingo has found a two-foot-Iong thick stick in the rushes and I watch Fat-Boy try to take it from
her, holding on to one end with his teeth, locking his front paws into the mud to increase his tugging power. Bingo growls
back through her clenched jaws: at any moment, Fat-Boy could whip the stick away from the smaller dog, but it's a game they
like to play and he's a generous-hearted animal. I let my feet sink down into the pond, feeling the water grow colder with
every inch. Even though the pond is large and very deep in the middle and my bad foot has a tendency to buckle up with cramp,
I feel safe in the knowledge that Fat-Boy would tow me ashore within minutes of my asking.

Under the overhanging branches of an alder tree, there's a cloud of brilliant-blue damsel flies whirring like small helicopters.
This last week, from 12 to 19 June, the nursery has, more or less, broken even for the first time. Earlier today David went
through the invoice book: even though he's exhausted, he's clearly thrilled. This is what we sold:

Monday 12th: Dillington House bought 23 eggs, 12 lettuces, 5 kilos of rhubarb, 7 kilos of broad beans, 4.5 kilos of peas,
12 bunches of spring onions, 6 cucumbers and 5.5 kilos of flat beans. Total: £107.30' We also sold them 8 lavender plants
for their garden: £16.

Wednesday 14th: 300 eggs at £37.50'

Thursday 15th: 246 eggs at £30.75.

Thursday 16th: 12 lettuces, 8 spring onions, 6 cucumbers, 7.5 kilos flat beans, 6 kilos of Swiss chard, 3 kilos of turnips
and 6 bunches of parsley. Total: £83'05. David's mother, Anne, bought £19.50 worth of plants for her garden. Mike Fry-Foley
bought a tray of eggs, I kilo of courgettes, I kilo of baby carrots and 3 lettuces. Total: £7.35. Two village residents bought
eggs, plants and herbs totalling £44.70. Dillington House ordered another 200 eggs late in the day: £24.99. Rowley Leigh at
Kensington Place took 250 eggs: £30. The honesty box earned £108.

We add it up on the calculator: £509.14.

We have spent: David £250, Dennis and Anne £60 each, plus £140 for a new electric fence for the pigs as the little ones have
been escaping under the existing fences and wandering off to the car park, acting like schoolboys playing truant. Total: £490.

The cost of animal feed takes us over our break-even figure by about £50, but nevertheless it's the best week we've ever had
and there's comfort in knowing that, for the next two months at least, we'll have even more vegetables to sell. This week,
plants are being delivered to the flower shop in the nearby village of South Petherton and David is optimistic that we'll
earn a steady £50-£60 a week.

I watch two damsel flies mating, the male curving his body into an arc above the female, binding them together so they seem
as one, a triangle of flashing blue above the water. They move like creatures from an animated cartoon, in one place, then
another, without ever apparently travelling in between. They don't make a sound, but they ought to, a sort of snapping sound
as their bodies twist, turn and jolt. Up above, the swallows are rolling and diving through the sky, their fast, chattering
speech sounding strangely human, like stutterers on speed. The Chinese believed that if you administered a broth made of swallows
it would cure a person's stutter, but then there was also a cure for epilepsy that involved one hundred swallows, white wine
and an ounce of castor oil.

The coming of the first swallows is universally regarded as a sign that the spring has detonated, as they begin their journey
north only when the currents that carry them towards our shores heat up to 48°F. There are always the first birds, the outriders,
who forge ahead a couple of weeks earlier than the rest and who often suffer because they get caught by a late frost. It proves
the old saying, 'One swallow doesn't make a summer': one week of more or less breaking even doesn't mean that we're out of
the woods but, like the single swallows of early spring, it is a very good sign.

Ten days before the pig roast, David phones Snells to book in one of the pigs. Too late. Snells are overloaded with work and
they can't fit in a single extra pig, however much of an emergency. Fliers have already gone out advertising the weekend:
open garden, plant stall, bric-a-brac, cream teas, guess the weight of the pig, produce, the art show and in the evening the
pig roast, where for £5 you get a hunk of pork, apple sauce, stuffing, salad, strawberries and cream. We were planning to
eat Lobelia, and though I am relieved that she's had a stay of execution, this is a potentially embarrassing turn of events.
By the time David tells me, he's already ordered a whole pig to be picked up from a farmer in Barrington, which will arrive
boned, roasted and ready to eat. It will cost us £190.

Outside our gate, David has mowed a rectangular space where a marquee will be erected. Our own village marquee has been put
up outside the village hall. The plan is that the pig roast will take place by the hall where the art exhibition is on display
and that the rest of the events - cream teas and stalls will happen in the field beyond our garden fence. Mary Rendell gave
me the name of the keeper of the Barrington village tent and at two o'clock on the Friday afternoon six men, like characters
from
Last of the Summer Wine,
disgorge themselves from two tiny cars and bang in poles and ropes and bright red strapping and the tent is up. Cars and vans
bustle to and fro from the village, carrying trestle tables and grey plastic chairs, benches and tea urns, cups and saucers,
plates, cutlery, extension leads, paper napkins and two large teapots. I haul boxes of old books out of their storage place
in the garage and lay them out on tables. Old clothes are hung up on a portable clothes rail. David and Adrian drive to and
from the nursery, delivering plants which we arrange on another table inside the marquee, sheltered from the hot sun. I position
a small, sturdy, square wooden table by our gate and write out price-of­admission labels and arrange the raffle prizes - two
bottles of Vladivar vodka, three bottles of wine, a plastic flagon of local cider, a box of Fonte Verde spa treatments which
I was given after a visit to an Italian spa two years ago, a wooden picture frame, a large box of After Eights, a mechanical
apple­slicer and corer, and a huge bowl of fruit wrapped in clear plastic and topped with a huge green and red ribbon which
John Rendell has donated. I pin up a sign saying 'Garden Open - £1'. Manning this desk is to be Charlie's job for the day.
Inside our house myoId friend Sophie is at work in the kitchen, making the stuffing and the apple sauce and preparing food
for the lunch party we've decided to hold on the Sunday.