{"id":12572,"date":"2024-11-26T19:31:30","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T18:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12572"},"modified":"2024-11-26T20:43:56","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T19:43:56","slug":"the-scent-of-magnolia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12572","title":{"rendered":"The Scent of Magnolia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
Image: \u00a9 Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester<\/span><\/p>\n

Something was wrong as soon as we drove into our street. We heard the shriek of a siren as we passed through town. Now there was a police car outside our house, an ambulance with its blue light turning. Two paramedics loading a stretcher into the back. Our neighbours at their windows, watching without being seen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Oh Jesus, what\u2019s this?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Emma, driving, scanning the street for a place to park. I was craning my neck to look behind.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 It looks serious.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whoever was on the stretcher was covered over.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Bloody hell! Did someone\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Emma didn\u2019t finish. She didn\u2019t have to. The sun was high now, burnishing those little scratches on the car windscreen into balls of fire.<\/span><\/p>\n

We parked at the end of the street and walked. We were in a moment we might never get past. There was an ache in my gut as we approached the house. Sometimes you know the future, because it’s written out for you. Because you should have known it in the first place. Then it arrives. The blindingly obvious jolts into place. A trap door closing. Finality.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ours were well-built houses with bay windows and good-sized kitchens at the back. Long gardens separated by fences that give onto fields where cattle grazed and were herded into shippens at milking time. We’ve lived there for most of our married life, except for the first few years when Emma was still working part-time. Not exactly suburbia, because it still <\/span>felt<\/span><\/i> like a village. But surrounded by new housing estates. Urban sprawl, if that’s the expression. England disappearing under ring roads and housing estates and concrete flyovers. That\u2019s nostalgic, I know. And the worst nostalgia is for the things you never had in the first place. Before we knew it, the kids had left home, gone to Uni, got jobs. We\u2019re looking at retirement in the not-too-distant future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We have a neighbour on one side, Milly, who was a nursing sister before retirement. You could tell she\u2019s posh or has been (if that makes any sense). She has one of those old-school, cut-glass accents. Older than us by a few years, she lost her fianc\u00e9 in Northern Ireland in the late \u2018sixties when someone detonated an IED. He was an officer with the parachute regiment. They never found out who did it and she never married. They seem like such bleak days now, the Troubles. But Milly\u2019s lovely. No edges. Community-minded, considerate. We get hand-drawn Christmas cards with quirky little notes. Sometimes we share produce from the garden \u2013 courgettes or runner beans or rhubarb.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are\/were less fortunate with our neighbours on the other side. Martin and Leila. Late fifties, I’d guess. Leila, with greying hair piled into a bun, knee-length skirts, twin-sets and sensible shoes. We heard she was Egyptian or Palestinian, pale skinned and dark haired, though she had no trace of an accent. So, it was impossible to tell. Martin was a pompous little martinet, with a spreading bald patch in what had once been red hair. Salt and pepper now. Blazers. Oxford shirts with button-down collars. Striped ties. Forgettable people who we can’t forget.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Every day they set off for work in a Volkswagen Polo, which was regularly replaced with a new model. They wore matching North Face jackets in winter. Fawn cardigans in summer. You never saw them carrying supermarket bags or shopping being delivered. No smells of cooking. No washing on the line. As if they’d suppressed their bodily secretions. You had to look twice at either of them to absorb any actual detail. They moved in like ghosts, a few years after we had. They were ordinary in the way that some couples are extraordinary.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s some kind of finance manager and she was with a firm of solicitors. If that sounds vague, it is, because they never really spoke to us. When we had our front windows replaced, they complained about the mess, or Martin did, pushing a note through the door. <\/span>We appreciate that you need to have work done on your property, but please could you make an effort to contain the mess and the noise?<\/span><\/i> When does a home become property? But apart from that and the <\/span>No Parking<\/span><\/i> sign outside their house, we had no real contact. Until those final months. The <\/span>No Parking<\/span><\/i> notice really annoyed us on top of their note about the builders. Little Englanders trying to own their bit of pavement when we all pay the same Council Tax.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We like to think that we’re better than that.\u00a0 If we all did what they did, we’d end up murdering each other. Like former Yugoslavia. Like Rwanda. But if you did make the mistake of parking there \u2013 outside their<\/span> property<\/span><\/i> \u2013 then Martin would be out, arguing the toss. Sometimes you could hear him hectoring someone who’d made that mistake. Even delivery drivers, key workers at the height of Covid. Not that we hid behind the curtains or anything, but we knew so little about them, about what made them tick. Any scrap of information seemed precious.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After Martin and Leila moved in, we needed to cut down some of our leylandii trees that were blocking the light. They\u2019d started as a hedge and then had bolted and were getting hard to manage. I pushed a note through Martin and Leila’s door, offering to chat to them about it. No reply. Nothing. Their garden was gloomy and entangled, a mixture of trees and shrubs, most of which needed rooting out in my opinion. Thought, they definitely wouldn’t give a monkey’s about my opinion. So we went ahead and let in the light and we imagined they’d be pleased. Which was probably a big mistake. The Boo Radleys, Emma called them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just once, on a scorching day in summer, I saw Leila from my upstairs window lying out on a towel on their lawn. She was wearing shorts and a halter top. She looked like a willow sculpture, her long limbs stretched out. She had a book and a glass of something beside her on a tray. I guessed that Martin might be away for the day. Emma was out at the post office. Very gently, I unlatched the back door and went out of the house. I got to the greenhouse, which offered just a peep into their garden, but she was gone. That never happened again. She was shy, like those deer in the woods or the squirrel I sometimes saw picking over damsons on their lawn.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once, someone parked a van on outside their house. When Leila knocked on our door, I could hear their car engine ticking over.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Excuse me, is this your van?<\/span><\/p>\n

No, <\/span>Hello Gerry, how are you? I hope you don’t mind me asking, but…<\/span><\/i> In fact, she might not even have known my name. And why would she think I’d suddenly acquired a transit van? I leaned out from the doorway to inspect it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 No, that doesn’t seem to be mine.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Fine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Irony was lost on her. She turned on her heel and went across the road to where George and Annie lived. George worked for a joinery company that made pre-fabricated sheds. I reckoned the van belonged to one of his mates who’d called by for a brew. I could hear Martin getting out of the car and slamming the door. Next minute, it was raised voices.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 You simply have no right to park there…<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u00a0 You what?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u00a0 It’s just intolerable and inconsiderate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Now, don’t get comical, matey!<\/span><\/p>\n

That was George. He was getting on a bit, but he was still built like a brick wall. Martin was murmuring something in that dry little voice, like sand trickling. Then George again with the killer punch.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 I’ve worked wi\u2019 fifty men under me, so don’t get comical.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then the van was starting up and the Martin\u2019s car was sliding into place. Then they were unlocking the front door to the fortress. And that was another thing. If ever Emma or I had had to go around with a parcel that had been left with us, we noticed that the door was always locked. In the end we stopped accepting them from the postman. Which sounds petty, but that’s how you get.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After that, ‘don’t get comical’, became something of a joke between Emma and me. Whenever one of us thought the other was being ridiculous or stubborn or unnecessarily difficult. Which wasn’t that much these days, now the kids had left home. Before the grandchildren. We had a bit of peace. Respite. A few years of being together without the pressures we had when they were growing up. Anxiety does no good in the end. Of course, you always worry about your kids, so not worrying doesn\u2019t really work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Martin spent a lot of time in his garden. It was mainly lawn and shrubbery. A horrible poplar tree, a sycamore far too near the house. The only good thing was a magnolia shrub close to the boundary wall. It filled our garden with scent when it flowered. Martin never actually planted anything. He spent most of his time cutting the grass and trimming back the shrubs. Once we saw him and Leila cutting all the twigs into smaller twigs, so they’d fit into the brown bin the Council collected every other Thursday. They’d have been handy in a workhouse picking oakum. Occasionally, Leila sat out with a sun hat and book as he potted about with edging shears. We never saw her alone in the street, though sometimes they went out in their walking gear, Martin with a map case hanging from a lanyard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once a year, usually in June, we noticed they had a guest who we guessed \u2013 from some vague family resemblance \u2013 might be Leila’s sister. She was younger, more confident, someone who wasn’t afraid to laugh or raise her voice. She perched with Leila in the garden with a tray of biscuits and tea or coffee. Though they sat as far back from our view as possible, so you could only see them from our bathroom window if you craned your neck.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond our garden was a hawthorn tree standing in the farmer’s field. We’d been away for the weekend in Snowdonia, just before the virus broke out. When we got home, Emma and I went down the garden to check on things. The tree was about fifteen feet high. Its blossom had been blown away by the last storm just before we left. There was a ladder propped up against it and there was Martin hacking away at the branches with a bowsaw. I’ve never seen Emma move so quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 What the hell do you think you’re doing?<\/span><\/p>\n

Martin paused for a second, looked down, then carried on sawing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Have you got permission to do that?<\/span><\/p>\n

He’d cut out the topmost branches, destroying the crown of the tree.\u00a0 Martin paused, leaning against the branch, the aluminium ladder bowing. I remembered the leylandii we\u2019d cut down, though they were ours, of course.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 I don’t need permission.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Oh yes you do. That’s not your tree.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 I’m entitled to cut any branches that overlap my property.<\/span><\/p>\n

My property.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u2013 A child could have done a better job, that’s pathetic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 It’s my right.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 You know Martin, you are a fucking arsehole. You are unbelievable.<\/span><\/p>\n

He gave her a cold look and shook his head.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Please don’t swear at me.<\/span><\/p>\n

I took her arm then and gestured towards the house.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 Leave it Emma, leave it now.<\/span><\/p>\n

She shook off my hand as if I hadn’t done or said enough. What was the point?\u00a0 we went back up the garden we saw Leila up at the bathroom window, looking down at us. The net curtain was drawn, but it was unmistakably her. A shadow. A presence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whenever we saw that butchered tree, we thought of Martin. It bloomed the following spring, a crippled thing. Whenever Emma looked at it, I’ll swear she could have done murder. A living thing, mutilated. Just because he could. An exercise in power. In petty authority. I checked the regulations and Martin was right, of course. He\u2019d always be right. I knew that even before I opened the guidelines from our local council.\u00a0 Being right was his way of <\/span>being<\/span><\/i>, after all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Things change, and a lot of things did during Covid, those months of restriction. But it wouldn’t be for ever. We ordered seeds from a catalogue and poured our energy into the garden and the house. Planting things. Building a new composting system. Painting the alcoves in the house in terracotta after years of white walls and grey skirting boards. The house seemed more vibrant, more expressive of something we still wanted to be. We’d learned to take pleasure from small things.<\/span><\/p>\n

We didn’t see the children for months. We Skyped at weekends from the sofa with a glass of wine. We enjoyed lockdown in some ways, though it feels smug to say so. The shopping came as a home delivery from the supermarket. Emma joined an online book club. I finally catalogued my jazz records, from Adderley to Young, playing them in the early evenings before dinner. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan. We signed up to a wine club and boxes of wine began to appear with pleasing regularity, accompanied by tasting notes.\u00a0 We shared some of it with Milly. It was fun to choose a bottle and leave it on her doorstep. She’d push a card through our door a few days later with her own tasting notes. Next door? <\/span>Zilch. Nada. Nothing.<\/span><\/i> We didn’t have a clue what they did or appreciated in life. We only knew what annoyed them.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was edging the lawn one evening when I had the feeling that someone was watching me.\u00a0 Something made me glance towards the Henderson\u2019s house. There at the window was Leila. She\u2019d been washing at the handbasin and was drying herself. The net curtain was pulled aside for some reason. She let the towel fall and she was bare breasted. I honestly didn’t know what to do. I bent down and pretended to pick out some weeds. When I looked up, she was gone. I had the feeling \u2013 <\/span>I know, I know<\/span><\/i> \u2013 that she’d shown herself deliberately. It could have been a complete accident, an unguarded moment. But then I knew she\u2019d never drop her guard.<\/span><\/p>\n

I got into the house and settled down to watch the news with Emma. She could tell that something was bothering me. I told her what had happened.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 A male fantasy if ever I heard one!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 I\u2019m serious!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 She probably didn\u2019t even notice you were there. Not everything\u2019s about you!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 I\u2019m not saying that. It was just…<\/span>weird.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Emma snorted.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 You poor old thing!<\/span><\/p>\n

I let it go, sensing deep water. We\u2019d always told each other everything. Though how would I know? I suppose I didn’t want to give the impression that my attitude to the Henderson’s was anything more than the sense that they deserved to be ignored. We were nothing to them and they were nothing to us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, that was the start of it. All that spring, when I was in the garden alone in the early evenings. I guessed Martin was doing something he always did at that time, being creature of habit. Leila would appear at the window. Sometimes bare breasted. Sometimes showing her naked back and holding up her arms. The window seemed to have her body trapped in it. It reminded me of that district in Amsterdam, where Emma and I had wandered once by mistake. Except, there was nothing sexual in her display. Those shadows on her arms weren’t tattoos like those of the night-women. The encounters were momentary and ritualised. Her face was completely blank, as if she was absent from her own body.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I became aware that Leila must be watching me, too. Maybe she heard me unlocking the garden shed or unlatching the greenhouse. I imagined her closing the bathroom door, pulling the net curtains aside. Then picking her moment, choosing her pose, offering herself, a kind of mannequin. My father once said to me that no one could really know what went on behind four walls. That was partly true, at least. You could guess. But knowing is another matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whenever we went into the garden and Leila was sitting there with Martin, she’d give a little dry cough. As if to warn us that they were there. We never looked at them and they never acknowledged our presence, even though we were only a few feet away. <\/span>Bloody muppets<\/span><\/i>! Emma again. If we met them in the street, they’d try to ignore us or only say hello only if it was inevitable. We didn’t exist. Except we did. Or I did. Leila and I existed, together in the evenings as dusk fell. I was magnetised, glancing up, trying not to. Expecting to see her there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I should have told Emma. But I didn’t. I felt a bit humiliated by the male fantasy remark. And for some reason, the longer it went on the more impossible it seemed to talk about it. Like any secret. It never happened when Emma was with me in the garden. Only when Leila was able to look down and bide her time and make sure I was alone. Then there she was, a still life, a piece of frozen portraiture, a statue. I lay awake thinking about her pale body up there behind the glass. Her spine visible under her skin, her arms thin and devotional as she held them up for me to see, to bear witness. <\/span>No one can ever know what goes on behind four walls.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

It’s weird how you can ignore things that are staring you in the face. It’s uncanny how you wander into situations that suddenly seem impossible to resolve. Of course, I should have told Emma about Leila. But she seemed to be appealing to me alone. Establishing that maze of complicity. I don’t think that Leila wanted me to actually <\/span>do<\/span><\/i> anything, I think she wanted me to understand something about her life. Her performance at the window was a kind of freedom. Maybe the only form of expression left to her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You have to set all that against the facts. Martin had gone out and left her alone in the house. That blazing hot day when we came back and found an ambulance in our street. Alone, for once. So, she’d taken her chance. At the inquest it emerged that she wasn’t Egyptian or Palestinian, as we thought. She was born in London. She had no mobile phone. She\u2019d never learned to drive. There was talk of her frail mental health, of self-harm. That Martin had tried his best to help her. But, in the end, she made a determination. The ultimate display. It was all too late by the time our neighbours saw her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Martin never moved away. Not even after the inquest, after the rumours and whispers. We should have written to him. But, as Emma said, that was a bridge too far. The garden became overgrown and neglected. He rarely appeared. And when he did, he seemed stooped. A little shrunken as if his skin has grown inwards, as if he was haunting his own property. <\/span>Boo Radley.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Emma and I have always been able to talk. Now we lie in bed and I see Leila gazing down from the window, raising her arms. A slow dancer from the underworld. I remember Martin putting his ladder against the hawthorn tree to hack away at the branches, my mother telling me the blossom brought bad luck if you brought it into the house. I wondered why Leila chose me and not Emma? Maybe because she knew I’d find a reason to do nothing. Now, every summer brings that scent of magnolia<\/span>. <\/span><\/i>The shadow of the sycamore tree, its strange fruit spiralling down.<\/span> The hawthorn blooming again, malformed, malignant, magnificent in the dusk. Its flowers creamy as bridal lace.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

Graham Mort is an award-winning poet,\u00a0short-fiction writer, editor\u00a0and workshop facilitator, living in rural North Yorkshire. Known for writing about the ‘natural’ world, he has always linked those themes to human activity, politics,\u00a0history and culture. <\/span>Graham has published ten collections of poetry and three books of short fiction as well as writing for BBC Radio. He is a Higher Education Association national teaching fellow, emeritus professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University, and visiting professor at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image: \u00a9 Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester Something was wrong as soon as we drove into our street. We heard the shriek of a siren as we passed through town. Now there was a police car outside our house, an ambulance with its blue light turning. Two paramedics loading a stretcher into the back. 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