Morgan Ratcliffe locked the car door, opened the allotment gate wearily, and crept like a snail on Mogadon up the rise. Long Covid wasn’t going to beat him.
Alice Rees had lent him a small part of her allotment plot to assist his recovery. She’d also lent her neighbour – he lived several doors down from her – a few long-handled tools. Ratcliffe came daily in all weathers, scratched at weeds with a rake, turned a few inches of earth with a hoe, and half an hour later limped back to his car. Occasionally Alice discreetly removed clumps of weeds and sowed a few seeds on the strip. Otherwise Ratcliffe’s labours would’ve been wholly in vain.
Three months after starting, Ratcliffe’s health was unchanged. His walk was still laboured, his actions and thought as if made in slow motion. ‘I do what I can,’ he muttered. He was a tall, elderly man, his rugged features putting Alice in mind of a rocky steep. His cheekbones were hollowed out, his shoulders sunken, his expression as bleak as hard snow in the Brecon Beacons.
That was when Alice dug up a handful of carrots from her large plot, replanted them in the strip and, when Ratcliffe arrived, pointed them out to him. ‘First fruits of your labours. Want me to dig them up for you?’ ‘I’ll do it,’ came the gruff reply. Fifteen minutes later she saw Ratcliffe trudging back to his car, expression grim as always, thick silver hair on his head like frost on a grave. The carrots were in his hand.
He continued to show up late mornings, exhausted, stripped of life, and Alice still tilled and planted for him when he’d gone. ‘Wife’s told me what I bring home won’t feed a sparrow,’ he said. ‘Next year,’ Alice said, ‘when, you’ve your strength back, you’ll be more productive.’
Allotment winters were quiet so Alice didn’t notice of Ratcliffe’s absence until she met Mrs Ratcliffe in the local shop. Morgan had declined. ‘He can’t shake it off. I think he’s giving up.’ Alice went to her plot, dug up some sprouts, and gave them to Mrs Ratcliffe. ‘From Morgan’s patch. This morning. Fertile that strip. He’s worked very hard on it.’ The next day she brought cavolo nero, and was told Morgan had roused slightly. Thereafter cabbage, chard, and winter cauliflowers were presented, and she learnt he was no longer at death’s door.
In spring Ratcliffe returned, still tired but willing, saying, ‘I think I’ll be able to manage the strip now.’ His frosty demeanour briefly vanished, causing Alice to think of yellow sun in February, flickering atop the snowy Beacons.
That was all that was said on the subject. His toiling was still painfully slow, but she no longer gave circumspect assistance. Perhaps he’d been telling her that her concern had helped him revive; perhaps he hadn’t. It wasn’t important. You do what you can. She began hoeing a trench in the soil for broad beans.
