Free Pulse by Julian Barnes Page B

once expressed it, had learnt on the job. He’d replied that he hoped he wasn’t meant to take that literally. Not that there was anything wrong with their sex life – in his opinion, anyway. Perhaps they had what was needed in any partnership: one bookworm and one instinctivist.
    As he thought about this, he found himself with what felt to him like a monster erection, which seemed to have crept up unawares. He turned on his side towards Martha, and put his left hand on her hip in a way that could be interpreted as a signal or not, depending on mood.
    Aware that he was awake, Martha murmured, ‘I was wondering about a trachelospermum jasminoides, but suspect the soil’s too acid.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ he murmured back.
    It snowed in mid-December, first a misleading light softness that turned to water as it hit the pavement, then a solid couple of inches. When Ken got home from work a thick layer of white was holding on the flat leaves of the bay tree, an incongruous sight. The next morning, he took his camera to the front door.
    ‘The bastards !’ he shouted back into the house. Martha came down the hall in her dressing gown. ‘Look, the bastards,’ he repeated.
    Outside there was only an oak tub half full of earth.
    ‘I’ve heard about the rustling of Christmas trees …’
    ‘The neighbours did warn us,’ she replied.
    ‘Did they?’
    ‘Yes, number 47 told us we should chain it to the wall. You said you didn’t like the idea of chained trees any more than chained bears or chained slaves.’
    ‘Did I say that?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Sounds a bit pompous to me.’
    She put a towelling forearm through his, and they went inside again.
    ‘Shall we call the police?’
    ‘I expect it’s already heeled in somewhere in darkest Essex,’ he replied.
    ‘It’s not bad luck, is it?’
    ‘No, it’s not bad luck,’ he said firmly. ‘We don’t believe in bad luck. It was just some wide boy who saw it with snow on the leaves and was struck by a rare moment of aesthetic bliss.’
    ‘You’re in a very indulgent mood.’
    ‘Must be Christmas or something. By the way, you know that water feature you’re planning between the rose grove and the leaf display?’
    ‘Yes.’ She did not respond to his caricatural terminology.
    ‘What about mosquitoes?’
    ‘We keep the water circulating. That way you don’t get them.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘Electric pump. We can run a cable from the kitchen.’
    ‘In that case, I have only one more objection. Can we please, please, not call it a water feature ? Waterfall, cascade, lily pond, miniature stream, anything but feature .’
    ‘Ruskin said he always worked better to the sound of running water.’
    ‘Didn’t it make him want to pee all the time?’
    ‘Why should it?’
    ‘Because it does with blokes. You might have to install a toilet feature next to it.’
    ‘You are in a sunny mood.’
    Probably it was the snow, which always cheered him. But it was also that he had secretly applied for an allotment, down between the water-purifying plant and the railway line. Someone had told him the waiting list wasn’t too long.
    Two days later, setting off for work, he shut the front door and stepped straight into a pile of earth.
    ‘The bastards !’ This time he said it to the entire street.
    They had come back and taken the oak tub, leaving him the soil.
    Spring was marked by a series of Saturday-morning visits to the local garden centre. Ken would drop Martha at the main entrance, then drive to the car park and spend longer than necessary lowering the back seat to make room for whatever compost, loam, peat, woodchips or gravel had been indicated by his wife’s latest reading. Then he might sit in the car a while longer, arguing that he wasn’t much help in choosing anyway. He was quite happy to pay for the loaded contents of the yellow plastic wagon that usually accompanied Martha to the cash desk. In fact, that seemed to him the perfect deal: he drove her there, sat in the car,