Harvest Moon
There were only eight words on the page but Oscar’s attention had wandered from them. ‘Try sounding,’ I said, tapping my pencil at the beginning of the sentence.
Oscar glanced up at my big head towering above his. Then he read fluently. “The Harvest Moon was high in the sky.”
“Well done! Do you know what a harvest moon is?”
A semi shrug, as Oscar flicked forward to the next double page spread. Here there was a farmhouse below that beaming moon. A fire-bright light shone from a single window onto a gloomy cornfield.
Oscar read, Charlie’s brother was cooking dinner with Grandpa.
“I have a brother,” he said, changing the subject abruptly, as five-year-olds do. “In Year Five. He’s bigger than me.”
A four year age gap. Same as Michael and me.
“He can be mean.”
“Oh”, I said. Water is wet.
“Sometimes I don’t like bananas and he chased me with one.”
I shifted in my tiny blue plastic chair.
“Did he? That wasn’t very nice but I’m sure —”
“Do you have a brother?”
“Yes,” I said, as I always did. “But-”
The qualifying ‘but’ came from a world outside Grandpa’s farmhouse. I trailed off. Luckily Becks, the young learning assistant, marched up to rescue me, her big orange trainers swishing along the linoleum.
“Oscar, mate,” she said, her pencil poised above a clipboard. “School dinners or packed lunch?”
Oscar mulled this over at length. “Is there picnic?” he said finally.
“Nobody is having picnic today,” said Becks crisply. She peered at him through the oversized spectacles scaffolding her pale face. “Look at the rain out there. I’ll put you down for school dinners.”
The rain was still bouncing off the concourse of Kew Gardens Station when I arrived late that afternoon. Tourists swarmed around the entrance as a District Line (Eastbound) rumbled in.
Izzie emerged through the cloud of day glow kagools and outsized umbrellas.
We half-hugged, mumbling hellos — one forward step, one back.
I was clutching a bunch of Sweet William, chosen because I remembered that she liked them. Michael didn’t have preference — he was a notorious last second petrol station man.
“It’s this way, isn’t it?” I said, using my Sweet Williams to gesture idiotically in the direction of West Park Road.
She was already sweeping past me, umbrella aloft. Her stride was assertive, like she was leading a tour of the pyramids. I trailed behind, the eternal slow coach
We splashed past the deli and Ballet Skirts. As we turned into Mortlake Road, the rain eased off. A strip of sky brightened in the twilight. A few lights flickered in the handsome Edwardian villas that lined both sides.
Izzie lowered her umbrella and increased her pace. We marched along the pavement and then vanished without breaking stride, slipping through the side gate, like kids into a park after closing.
“This is where I get lost,” I said.
“It’s just over there. Straight to the tree and turn left”
She lead me to the plot I always somehow looked past. I had the same blank spot about Mum’s birthday. The third or the fifth? It pained me that I could never remember, nor the sound of her voice. Michael’s still rang in my head but would that fade, too?
The dug earth was softened by the rain
I held out the Sweet Williams, awkwardly. “Where shall I put these, Izzie? I didn’t think about a vase.”
“Just lay them across,” she said, absently pinning back her hair with a clip pulled from the pocket of her raincoat.
I could hear Michael’s voice as I crouched down, gingerly lowering the flowers as if the might shatter on impact. Always fiddling with it. Why do they do that?
“Good choice, George,” she said, not quite concealing her surprise at this. “The colours really stand out.”
“More luck than judgement,” I said, standing back to watch her get to work.
Neatly arranged on a on a Morrison’s carrier bag laid on the ground was a child’s planting kit: a tiny trowel, a handful of narcissi bulbs, a collapsible Helix ruler.
“Is that to plant them in straight lines?” I said to fill the silence.
She shot me a surprised glance. “No! That wouldn’t be Michael at all.”
Shadows were gathering around and her pale face was drawn but her eyes were lit. “I want them like a wild wall around him. Don’t you?”
I hadn’t thought about it, of course.
“I’m sure that will be lovely. I was just wondering about the ruler.”
“Because we can’t plant more than 30cm from where the headstone will go. It was in the information they sent you.”
The ‘you’ had a slight edge. I was the official next-of-kin, even if I did pass all the stuff they sent me onto her.
“When can we put it in?”
“Now,” she said, with the slightest of shrugs. “The six months is up and the stone is ready. I sent you the photo.”
I nodded rapidly. His name under Mum and Dad’s. Words: Loved by all.
We stared down at the earth. “Some people say you should leave it longer.” She looked up. “What do you think?”
Before I could answer, she said, “I think I’d like to wait for a bit.”
The rain had stopped so we stayed with Plan A: eating on the bench under the big tree. Isabel fussed about drying it with kitchen roll, the sleeves of her gaberdine raincoat rustling in the breeze. “You’ve gone full Hungry Caterpillar,” she said, finally sitting down.“One piece of chocolate cake, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami.”
I pointed accusingly at her slice of melon. “Is that all you’re having?”
“I’m fine” she said, dipping into her bag. “Look, I have seconds.”
Out came a flash of yellow. “What’s the matter?” she asked, instantly registering my momentary change of expression
I explained about Oscar.
“He’s sometimes scared of bananas? Are you allowed to have part-time phobias”
I nodded. “There the worst kind. But nothing ten years of counselling won’t sort out. Talking of which — ”
It was her turn to grimace and shudder. “Don’t mention the C word!”
“But you are going?”
“Yes,” she said, with another eye roll. “Every Tuesday morning.”
“And it’s not helping?”
Hand to hair again. Sharp sunlight further stripped the colour from her pale drawn face. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean I just go in there bang on for fifty minutes. Gives the cat a break, I suppose.”
“Izzie, I’m worried that -”
”Are you eating properly? You’ve lost weight”
“Now, don’t you start!” she said sharply, raising her finger to her lips. They shone with cherry gloss. “Like the caterpillar I eat when I’m hungry..”
The closing bell ringing from the direction of the chapel. “We’d better go,” I said and then, before I could stop myself. “We don’t want to be locked in.”
“Speak for yourself,” she said.
I couldn’t read her face or mood in in the gathering dark. But she leaned into me, her hand curling around my arm.
Suddenly her grip tightened. “Have you been avoiding me?”
A fractional hesitation. Enough to puncture my squeal of protest. “No, of course not! Why would I do that?”
“You tell me.”
There was no hiding place, just line upon line of stones. “Doesn’t seeing me remind you of -”
My voice faded into two bars of silence, filled only with our steps through the first leaves.
“You think I’d forget him otherwise?”
“No, of course not but -”
“You’re under no obligation, of course. Fiancee-in-law isn’t really a thing, is it? Not after -”
“It is for me,” I said.
We plodded back to her bus stop in the fading light. Izzie was humming to herself. Because I’m still in love with you/I want to see you dance again
“I didn’t know you liked Neil Young?” I said.
“Is the hairy one with the whiny voice?”
“That’s not on his Wikipedia page.”
“It should be! God, Michael used to play those albums all the time. What were they called? The Goldigger or something.”
“After the Goldrush. And that one is from Harvest. It’s called — ”
She gave my arm a playful squeeze. “I’m the music teacher,” she said.
A twig-thin man dressed in black was at the bus stop as we approached. He was staring intently at the night sky. His wild brillo-pad hair glistened. Behind him the bus wait-times glowed in amber: 65 Due 3 Minutes.
Stepping backwards, he straightened his frayed jacket with a delicate gesture. Then he pointed up into night sky. “That poor fella fell,” he said, shaking his head bitterly. “Clinging onto the bottom of a plane.”
I followed his gaze. “It’s a harvest moon,” I said.
“What?” He stretched the syllable to three beats. A Cork accent, like Dad’s.
Cars swished by. “They call it the harvest moon because-”
He glared at me. “Harvest? What are you talking about? It’s pitch fecking black.” With a snort of derision, he flounced away, muttering to himself.
We stood, arm-in-arm, facing the oncoming traffic.
“I wanted to say something,” she said.
A lorry swooshed by. Its roar amplified by the still damp road, swamped whatever followed next. Then the number 65 was suddenly bearing down on us, lights blazing
“My bus,” said Izzie, scrambling for her mask and Oyster Card. A moment later she was on the top deck.
Taking her seat, she gave me the mini wave through the steamed up window. There was something in her hand, a phone I assumed.
Only when the bus pulled away did I register the yellow flash of her uneaten banana.
