On his return, he reversed the van into the garage. The sandwich board was in its usual place, leaning against the wall. He spread it open and stared at it for a while.
Having come across a series of landscape scenes shaped as letters of the alphabet on the British Museum website, Emma had suggested making him a sign he could leave on customers’ driveways while he was working. Not everyone would notice his van, she said. She, for one, never noticed vehicles, but people might look twice at an interesting sign. She found the board in the antique shop on Shakespeare Street, sanded it, painted it white and then, after some musing, drew his name. ‘C’ was a garden hook, ‘A’ a pair of rakes leaning against each other, ‘M’ two pine trees supported by angled stakes. It was the optimism of it that got to him on that inclement Saturday afternoon; the memory of Emma crouched on the patio, in the sun, as she pencilled an outline, his knee pads strapped to her jeans with gaffer tape. The board was a symbol of her faith in him and the business – how easy it is to accept kindness when you feel deserving of it.
Chris opened a tin of white paint and unearthed a brush. One stroke, and he was committed. He thought about the people in town, with their golf umbrellas and fancy coffees, their loaded shopping bags and their sea-level houses and, later, he returned to the garage with a packet of James’s Sharpies and made a list of things he imagined might trouble them. Then he made a deal with himself. If he had no work on Saturday mornings, he’d stand beside the sign in town while awaiting messages and calls. In the moment, it made sense; his pluck would be rewarded. He was daring himself. Daring the weather. The deal was a form of inoculation: a jab of discomfort to protect him from a bout of disappointment.
There’s movement in the carriers as Chris approaches the traffic lights at the end of the bypass. He directs a shushing noise at them, following it up with a couple of the tongue-clicks he makes around horses, hoping one or other of the sounds will soothe the fidgeting animals to stillness. He has not discussed livestock with Emma, though he has opined on cheap home-grown protein and the benefits of adding animal pellets and urine to the compost heap. As far as Emma is concerned it has been hypothetical. She is amenable to chickens or bees but this, he concedes, is different. Still, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. He will seek absolution for the carriers, for the hay bales and the hutch lying in the back of the van and, eventually, for the sandwich board.
When his mobile rings Chris indicates, mounts the kerb and jabs the hazard light switch. He digs under a canvas bag on the passenger seat, snatches the phone and flips open the case. The number is unfamiliar. Let it be work, he thinks.
On answering, he is greeted by an elderly voice asking for help with a flooded lawn. Having explained there’s very little he can do until the rain stops, Chris attempts to end the call, but the man says please, and since the address is nearby and he has nowhere else to be, Chris agrees to pop round.
The man is waiting at his gate, mushroomed by an enormous umbrella. He leads Chris down the side of his house to the back garden; the near part a quagmire, the far corner entirely submerged.
‘Best to stop right here, today,’ Chris says, resting a hand on the old fellow’s arm. ‘We’ll only cause further compaction. Once all this rain’s stopped and some of the water’s evaporated, give me a ring and I’ll bring boards and a fork. Get the air circulating. Then, if you like, I’ll come back, wash down the patio, and have a go at improving your soil structure.’
‘With compost?’
‘Yeah. See where it’s worst, down by the fence, in the far corner, where there’s a bit of a dip? It’s a nice shady spot. I could make you a bog garden. That might help. Plant some nice hostas. Sleeping Beauty – that’s a good one, and it’s slug resistant – marsh marigolds, Japanese iris, creeping jenny …’
‘Would you have a bog garden?’
‘No, it wouldn’t really suit my—’
‘What’ve you got, then?’
‘An acre. At the edge of the Moss.’
‘Grass?’
‘Some, but—’
‘And you’re keeping off yours, too?’
‘I am,’ he says. ‘But I’ve got two big lads. Can’t keep them indoors all winter.’
‘Look at the state of it,’ the old fellow says. ‘It was like this last winter, too.’
‘You should think about future-proofing. I could build a berm. It’d break things up nicely. Or you could try a tapestry lawn. They’re perennial and don’t need much mowing – half a dozen times a year should do it. And they attract insects and bees. Better for the environment all round. More importantly, in your case, they’re supposed to absorb up to fifty per cent more rainfall than grass. Most people aren’t keen, though. If they’ve got a lawn, they like it green and uniform.’
‘And what’s in one of these tapestry lawns?’
‘Thyme, buttercups, clover, pink daisies, sweet violet – you choose. Plant in patterns, if you like. Make a sort of mosaic. I could show you some pictures, on the internet.’
‘And it’d be all right to walk on?’
‘Absolutely – keeps everything low-growing. And, depending on what you’ve planted – let’s say you’ve gone for some Corsican mint – it’ll smell nice when you step on it.’
‘Well. That’s something to think about, isn’t it?’ He turns to Chris, brighter now. ‘Just dig a soakaway, to be going on with.’
‘It won’t work,’ Chris explains. ‘It might, if the soil was heavy; if it was clay … but it isn’t.’
‘Just a test hole?’
‘There’s no—’
‘Why don’t you give it a try?’
‘If I dig a hole, it’ll fill with water from the bottom up.’
‘Let’s see, shall we?’
Chris fetches the Cornish shovel from the back of his van.
Arm trembling, the old fellow attempts to hold the umbrella over the pair of them. The wise man and the foolish man, Chris thinks. And, sure enough, as he slides his shovel into the saturated ground, the rain comes down and the floods come up.
The world was always going to end. Chris sees that, now. As a boy, he believed it was his great misfortune to have arrived on the planet just as things were winding up, and while it gave him an excuse to disregard the bits of school he didn’t enjoy – it wasn’t as if he’d need algebra in the end times – he was burdened by the knowledge, anticipating pestilence, plague and famine. Forever on the lookout for wars and rumours of wars; for desolation and signs and wonders.
Chris checks his mirrors and pulls away, raising a hand to the old fellow who stands forlornly at his gate. He drives through the estate and back to the main road where the drains are gagging, spewing water on to the pavement. He thinks of the story of Noah, and of his father’s belief that the Flood caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. The dinosaur encounters of Chris’s boyhood – a class project on Jurassic carnivores, the prehistoric playset in the Year 2 classroom and a favourite T-shirt – were reminders of God’s penchant for genocide. He pictured diplodocuses knocked off their feet by muddy torrents, their long necks reaching for the surface like periscopes. Tyrannosauruses trying, and failing, to counter currents with their tiny arms. Pterodactyls landing on the last treetops of the last hills before taking to the skies and eventually falling out of them, exhausted: plop, plop, plop. His father did not discourage such imaginings. St Paul may have appealed for congregants to think on whatsoever things are pure and just, but his father’s personal frequency remained tuned to matters of gore and dust.