She sits on her haunches, thighs straining, cupping the hard dry soil in both hands. She lets it slide through her fingers, sieving it into a small mound on the glossy lawn. Richard’s lawn. Richard’s pride. Richard’s fake lawn. A fake lawn for a forsaken love. The worm sits in her hands, unmasked, disrobed, one tip curling down, twisting away from the light, the other tip wiggling and pointing up towards her face. Rhona opens her palms wider. Gives the worm space to sprawl. She smiles down at it. On the other side of the fence, a neighbour’s window rattles. She starts, and covers the worm with her hand.
They’d said we shouldn’t plant anything anymore. Not within a two hundred mile radius. Nothing edible. No vegetables or herbs or anything that might attract an insect. An insect! No one had reported seeing an insect in months. Keep it barren they write in headline banners and capital letters. Usually with an exclamation mark. KEEP IT BARREN! Planting flowers is akin to drinking and driving. Cross pollination is illegal. PLANTING COULD KILL US ALL! Black letters on a red background. Pink skulls and crossbones on yellow cotton flags. Yellow as the sun.
And now this. This lone worm. Still alive. Still slithering. Such a small thing. Blind and deaf to the State’s blistering instructions. Rhona gets up and walks across the astroturf, the worm a jewel on the cushion of her hands. Hope, she whispers to the worm, I’m going to call you Hope.
In the kitchen, she lays Hope down on a cracked white saucer. She watches him bulge this way and that until he stops, supine, resigned. A worm on a saucer. Not in the soil. How do you keep a lone worm alive, in secret? Away from the Authorities?
All vegetables are imported now. From Africa. North Africa to be more precise although the country of origin is never labelled. Beans and peas and courgettes from the west. Lettuce and chard and spinach from the east. That’s what people say. Although no one knows for certain. Rhona hasn’t seen a cauliflower for at least two years. Mr Wilson down the road had grown an illicit stash of broccoli in his greenhouse and got ten years of hard labour for his efforts. Salt mines in the north of Scotland they said. Everyone knows what salt mine means. And it has nothing to do with salt. Rhona shreds some African lettuce for the worm. Piles it up around the edge of the saucer in a pretty green ring. She grates a small slice of carrot and lines the ring of lettuce with it. Lucky worm. A carrot costs the same as a pineapple these days. But is much harder to find.
She glances at the clock. Nearly four. Richard will be home soon. Richard with his red and white armband. Richard with his evening strolls around the neighbourhood. Richard with his sharp eyes and remote sensors. She takes the saucer out into the shed. Examines each cupboard and shelf. All those garden implements in neat orderly lines. Oiled and sharpened but never soiled. She takes an empty cake tin down from the top shelf. There’s a royal baby on the lid. With a Prince and Princess long since gone to healthier climes. The baby didn’t survive. Rhona punches discrete holes through the three crowns with a fine nail and a claw hammer. She fills one half of the tin with scrunched up brown paper, adds the lettuce and carrot to the other half, and pours the worm in off the saucer. She wonders whether Hope might need water. She can’t take the risk of checking on-line. Anyway, she’s sure there’s plenty of water in lettuce. It should do him fine. At least for tonight. She strokes the worm with a finger, whispers ‘goodnight’ then pushes the lid down hard on the tin. She lifts the tin back up onto the top shelf, careful to ensure it’s in exactly the same place as before. She leaves the shed, locks the door, and squats down on the fake lawn by her pile of dry soil. She’ll squat there, sieving and sieving the dead brown matter, until Richard comes home.
SANDERLINGS 