October 2012
'Jane, how lovely to see you again, how long are you staying this year?'
'Oh, only two weeks and I've already been here for three days.'
Mr Brown stopped wheeling his barrow full of sweet smelling grass. 'I bet your nana and granddad are pleased to see you.'
'Yes they are,' said Jane with a smile. 'Is there anything I can help you with?'
'Well now, I was just going to unload this grass in its usual place behind the shrubbery and then it will be time for a nice cup of tea.'
Jane, aged ten, hopped alongside Mr Brown then followed him to his shed at the side of the immaculately mowed bowling green knowing there would be a biscuit and some lemonade for her.
Every year since she could remember her parents had dropped her off at her grandparents house and went off to holiday on their own. She didn't mind, she loved being with them and as they lived across the road to the small park opposite she had known Mr Brown forever. He was in charge of the park, not only the bowls green, but also the other side of the path which separated the green from the putting green and the shrubbery, trees and flower beds. Many an afternoon she had sat with her grandparents watching a game of bowls, the men dressed in their whites, the bowls clinking together on their way to the Jack, the polite applause when a team won the match and sometimes when no-one was watching she was allowed to stand on the mat and bowl a ball or two just like the bowlers did.
Today, though, Mr Brown was in a quandary. The council had put his little park in a competition to find the best flower beds in the town and the competition was tough with the Queens Gardens on the other side of town where the bands played every Sunday afternoon in the summer, the bandstand surrounded with rose beds, white in some, red in another and yellow and cream in another. Not a patch on her granddad's front garden which was full of bush roses, and standards standing majestically straight. Everyone who passed stood and breathed in the beautiful scent and admired the display.
'What shall I do, Jane?' said Mr Brown more to himself than to her. What did she know; she was only ten after all. Whenever she could she crossed to the park to see how he was getting on and to her eyes the beds looked magnificent, the dark rich soil a perfect backdrop to the colourful plants.
She had been home for two weeks and was getting ready for the Autumn term to begin at school when a letter arrived from her nana with a picture from her local paper. Mr Brown had won the competition with the headline 'Capability Brown's beds beat the best of the rest.'
Jane would never forget Mr Brown or the summers she spent with her grandparents, even now she cannot pass a rose bush without smelling it, but these days the scent is nothing like the smell she remembered from years ago.