Rhubarb Gate.
There's a generic habit that goes unchallenged in the yoga group. It’s like an open secret. Everybody knows that everyone talks about everyone else but not to them. And there's the eye rolling; if anyone mentions 'the WhatsApp group' or So and So who does this, that and the other, 32 sets of eyebrows do a Mexican wave. I'm not good with inference and nodding. I'm much more comfortable with, 'I felt upset when you pissed all over my parade' than I am with, 'well, you didn't hear it from me, but I think So and So said that Whatd'you Call Her was a bit put out when you, well, you know. When you, err. You know.' Do I know? How though? I do so. I can feel it. I hear what they're saying loud and clear. Especially this week with the rhubarb being prematurely in season and all that means. There were texts, 'glut; come and collect it; as much as you want!' and more texts, 'Lovely but where are you? And when?' I felt myself age with each one; and grieve for the network of signs that pre-empt a rave, map co-ordinates and these days 'What 3 Words?' I hadn't noticed the line when I'd crossed it but I could see it now, looking back, drawn in sharp relief against the past.
We made it, somehow, to the rhubarb patch; uptake was unprecedented. Someone said something about a bottle, tilting a patronising head, 'but you don't do you? What would you like? Some of this?' No glass, just the can while the rest marvelled over Pinot and the rustic seating. One of them makes Ronnie Corbett of me; I stretch to her breasts that are, admittedly, enviable. I tell her I like the cat motif between them. 'We never wear shirts, my sister and I. Our mother wore nothing but blouses, you know? Little lapels and cuffs?' I'm thinking I'd rather die than live through another minute of this, 'so we don't; we can't' she went on. 'You don't want to be like your mother, do you? Nobody does.' I thought of my mother's summer wardrobe; the waist; the carefully tailored white shirt and that photograph from Positano, taken in 1962 labelled, 'Hilary, with a friend' the 'friend' being swarthy, Italian and not the sort of bloke you’d kick out of bed. She wouldn't have been found dead fawning over rhubarb on the first decent Saturday of the season. 'It's early this year, all the rain' said the bust. She'd tidied twelve sleek sticks into the pile she was going to take home. I fiddled, reaching across the table, shuffling what she’d claimed and she screeched, 'What are you doing? Get off my rhubarb. That’s mine.' She huddled her whole torso over the low garden table, wobbling the bench we shared.
'Quite a lot,' I observed.
'It'll freeze. Why don't you take some more?'
'I've enough, really. These three will do me. I think that's the spirit of the thing isn't it? I'd say, will you share if I dared?' I laughed at her sprawled across the table, 'But. Would you mix it up a bit? Would you swap me two of your young thin sticks for one of my chunkies?' She looked at me as if I had asked if I could have a go on her husband.
'No! This is mine. I don't want all that woody old stuff. Why would I want to swap?' I could see this was no rave. It was missing the MDMA. I'm not sure even MDMA could have bolstered the empathy I felt for her.
'Ok, fine. Let's move on,' I suggested, and we did. We talked about the vastness of rhubarb leaves and their toxicity, 'oxalic acid' I said, day-dreaming about rhubarb-leaf-tea unbreathing chests. We talked about the extent of the passionflower's reach, of south-facing walls and the faff of tomatoes now the supermarkets' are so good. And just when I felt we had moved on, leaving rhubarb gate in the past, one who claimed just to have come for a stroll, 'not a fan of rhubarb; you can have mine,' one who doesn't like to let things go, agitated,
'Just then. Were you angling for the younger sticks because you think those others might be too woody?' I glared at her.
'No, no, no. These are fine. Plenty, just fine. Let's not,' but the bust, who had stale grievances with me which she'd shared weeks before with the agitator who had, of course, passed them straight on to me, seized the conflict claiming that I was,
'going on about the rhubarb still. Oh alright then, clearly you'll never shut up. We'll mix them up. We'll share' she spat, oozing hostility over the platform with its cat motif beneath her chin, sneering. I snapped,
'No. Far too late for that I’m afraid. That's all done and dusted. No. I'm happy with these thank you. It's over. Done deal.' I inhaled my Shloer, grazing my lip on the can and turning my teeth bright red. She twanged a bra strap in response as she curled her right shoulder towards her left and away from me, but looking back over it, wobbling an abandoned stick of rhubarb, she sneered,
'What about this bit?' Who want's this limp bit?' and I remembered when she'd texted me to say she thought her firework days were all over when she'd found out, from someone other, that mine weren't.
'She was worried you were drinking too much,' someone other explained.
'Mushrooms.'
'What about them?'
'Not drink. Magic mushrooms. From that meadow, up by Stowe.' I tell lies for the shock factor; adrenaline rushes are few and far between when you live in a rural tomb.
'You should be careful at your age,' so then we were talking about the rhubarb leaves again, flushing as the Pinot made a club of them, agreeing that when the chips were down the witch doctor might well do more harm than good and that people like that weren't people like us and weren't we all so right now?
I woke up at 3am dreaming myself invisible, powerless and voiceless, but shouting nonetheless.
This is such a joy, Cherry. Made me laugh. Wonderful incidental portrait of your carefully-tailored mum, too: "She wouldn't have been found dead fawning over rhubarb on the first decent Saturday of the season." (Mine would have happily bagged up all the rhubarb and been totally oblivious to the village gossip!)
This is so funny. How funny people are when they are captured like this.