The Lock Keeper's Wife

The lock keeper's wife kept the garden. That was the arrangement, such as it was: he kept the lock, she kept the garden, and neither of them talked about the other's work. The garden was a strip of ground between the lock cottage and the towpath, no more than twelve feet deep, and it was the most fought-over ground on the canal. The frost fought it. The rabbits fought it. The drought fought it. The lock keeper's wife fought back with a trowel, a watering can, and the patience of someone who has lost the same argument every year and intends to lose it again.

The tomatoes were the point. Not the flowers. The flowers were for the visitors, the narrowboats that tied up for the night and let their children run on the grass. The tomatoes were for the table. Every year she planted six plants against the south wall of the cottage, where the brick held the day's heat and gave it back after dark. Every year the frost took the first planting. Every year she planted again. The neighbours on the other side of the canal, the ones with the greenhouse, told her she was wasting her time. She said the wall had been there longer than the greenhouse, and the wall would be there after it.

The boy came in July. He was eleven, maybe twelve, and he stood on the towpath with his hands in his pockets and watched her tie the tomato plants to their canes. He watched for a long time. She let him. She had learned that children who watched gardens were either going to steal the tomatoes or going to need something, and both of those could wait.

"That one's dying," he said.

She looked where he was pointing. The third plant from the end had gone yellow at the base, the leaves curling in on themselves like hands that had given up. She had seen it that morning. She had been pretending not to.

"It's not dying," she said. "It's deciding."

The boy considered this. "What's it deciding?"

"Whether to bother." She knelt and pinched off the yellow leaves, one by one, and dropped them into the bucket. "The wall's warm. The water's there. The sun comes over the hill at half past nine and stays till four. It's a good spot. It just needs to decide it's a good spot."

The boy sat down on the edge of the towpath, cross-legged, and watched her work. She worked slowly, the way you work when you know someone is watching and you want them to see that the work is the point. She tied the good plants to their canes with strips of an old sheet, cut into ribbons. Her mother had done it that way. Her mother had done everything that way, with what was to hand.

"My dad says the lock's going to be automated," the boy said. "He says they're putting in the electrics next spring. He says your husband's job won't be there."

She tied another ribbon. "Your dad's not wrong."

"So what'll you do?"

She sat back on her heels and looked at the garden. The tomatoes were green and small and stubborn. The frost would come in October and take them, or the blight would come in August, or the rabbits would come tonight. The wall would still be there. The wall had been there before the lock, before the canal, before the men who dug it with their bare hands and their horses. The wall would be there after the electrics.

"The garden," she said. "I'll do the garden."

The boy nodded, as if this made sense, and for a while they both watched the tomatoes deciding.

The frost came early that year, in the third week of September. It took the tomatoes on a Tuesday night. The lock keeper's wife found them in the morning, black and ruined, the canes leaning like small crosses. She stood over them for a long time. Then she cut the dead plants down, coiled the ribbons, and put the trowel in the shed.

The boy came back on the Saturday. He stood on the towpath and looked at the empty bed.

"It got them," he said.

"It got them," she agreed.

"What will you do now?"

She looked at the wall. The wall was warm. The sun came over the hill at half past nine and stayed till four. The wall had been there before the lock, before the canal, before the men who dug it. The wall would be there after the electrics, after the automation, after the boy was a man with his own garden or no garden at all.

"Plant again," she said. "In the spring."

The boy nodded. He stood there a while longer, hands in his pockets, watching the empty bed as if it were deciding something. Then he walked off along the towpath, and the lock keeper's wife went inside to make the tea, and the frost stayed in the ground, and the wall stayed warm, and the garden waited.