The Allotment at Dusk

The allotments were at the end of a lane that went nowhere else, which was one of the things June liked about them. You did not pass them on the way to anything. You had to mean to go.

She went most evenings in September, after tea, when the light was going gold and then grey, and Dev came with her, because he had learnt that there was nothing at home that could not wait an hour.

They had plot nineteen. It was not a tidy plot. The man on twenty had rows you could have measured with a ruler, and he was kind about it, and said nothing. Plot nineteen had a bench made of two pallets, a water butt with a lid that did not fit, and more courgettes than any two people could reasonably eat.

“We’ll have to give some away,” said Dev, looking at them.

“We gave some away yesterday.”

“We’ll have to give some more away.”

June cut three of the biggest and laid them on the path like something that had been caught rather than grown. The leaves were still warm from the day. Underneath them the soil was cool and dark and smelt of itself.

They did the small jobs first, because the small jobs were what there was. Dev filled the can from the butt and went along the beans, slowly, letting the water go in at the roots where it was wanted. June tied in a tomato that had leaned over sideways and picked the ones that had gone red, and one that had not quite, because it would go red on the windowsill and she liked to watch that happen.

Somebody two plots along had a bonfire going, a small one, and the smoke went straight up and then leaned and drifted, and the smell of it came across the paths, and everybody still there lifted their heads a little and breathed it in, the way you do.

The light went from gold to something quieter.

“Sit down a minute,” said June, and they did, on the pallet bench, which creaked, and which had always creaked, and would creak until it fell apart, and then they would make another one.

From the bench you could see most of the allotments, and the rooftops beyond them, and the one tall tree by the gate that the rooks came back to. The rooks were coming back now, a few at a time, in no hurry, talking among themselves in that low, unbothered way that sounds like an argument nobody minds losing.

Dev had a flask, because Dev always had a flask. The tea was too strong and June drank it anyway. They passed the cup between them. The steam went up and joined the smoke and the dusk and became part of the general softening.

A robin came and sat on the fork that was stuck in the ground by the courgettes. It looked at them. It looked at the soil they had turned. It got down and looked at the soil more closely, and found something, and was pleased.

“He thinks it’s his plot,” said Dev.

“It is his plot,” said June. “We just do the digging.”

The bonfire went down to a glow, and the man who had lit it put his tools in his barrow and came past along the path and said good night, and they said good night, and the gate clicked behind him.

Then it was just them, and the robin, and the rooks settling.

The rooftops went from grey to dark. A light came on in a kitchen somewhere, and then another. The smoke had gone thin. The courgettes lay on the path, waiting to be carried home and given away.

June leaned her shoulder against his shoulder. He leaned back, not much, just enough to say that he had noticed.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “the beans.”

“Tomorrow the beans,” said Dev.

They sat a little longer, because the evening had not quite finished with them.

The robin went to bed. The rooks went quiet.

And the allotment lay still under the first of the stars, growing, the way it did, all night, without anybody watching.