Autumn Show

I have left a tray of kale on the water butt between plots fourteen and fifteen, and for the best part of an hour Tam Moffat has walked past it without picking it up. I am pretending to lift overwintering leeks. When he finally speaks, it is to tell me my onions are a disgrace.

He says it without looking at me, leaning on his fork so the whole barrel of him goes into the handle. He trims his grey beard with the clippers he used on bus wiring for thirty years, and he insults a vegetable in a way that sounds like affection if you have been listening long enough. I have been listening for two seasons. My days off from portering at the Royal go on this plot, and on leaving things on that water butt for the man next door and pretending it is about room in my greenhouse.

In April it was tomato plugs. In June I fixed his water butt tap with a washer from the hospital maintenance stash I am not supposed to have, and he paid me in a bag of early potatoes and a grunt. All summer we argued about compost ratios over the fence panel, and all summer I watched him strip to a stained vest when the sun came out and told myself I was counting aphids.

“They’re fine onions,” I say.

“They’re show onions if the judge is blind,” Tam says. “Autumn show’s Saturday. You putting in?”

“Maybe.”

“Put in. Or stop leaving me your spare kale like I’m a charity.” He jabs a finger at my cold frame. “And that glass wants a wash. You cannae grow a thing through that stour.”

I laugh. He doesn’t. He jams the fork into his compost and the steam comes up round his wrists. The allotment is half asleep for October, tarps pegged over the empty beds and the motorway humming beyond the railings. Plot twelve has put a hi-vis jacket on its scarecrow. Plot nine’s shed radio is playing country loud enough to be a crime. Our sheds share a fence panel that has leaned since the storm in March, and I notice it the way I notice his flannel shirt pull across his belly when he bends.

Two weeks ago at the committee meeting he sat three chairs away and argued for longer hose hours, and when he won he looked over at me like I was part of the victory. I went home to my flat in Dennistoun and lay on the bed thinking about his hands on a steering wheel and round a mug. I did not let myself think about them on me, because that would have made it a plan, and plans get you hurt on an allotment where everybody reads your business off the state of your compost.

“Come for a tea,” he says, still not looking. “Shed. Before the light goes. You’ve been hovering like a wasp all month.”

“I have not.”

“You have. Door’s open. Kettle’s on.”

I go. I wipe my boots on the scrap of carpet he keeps for that and tell myself it is only tea.

---

His shed smells of two-stroke and tomato feed. The kettle sits on a camping stove beside two mugs that do not match, and an upturned potato crate stands empty on the floor. His tools hang on nails in height order, and a calendar from a parts supplier is still on March. Tam pours the tea stewed dark, sits on the bench fixed to the wall, and points me at the crate with his chin.

“You’ve been leaving me things,” he says.

“Seedlings.”

“Seedlings. And that washer, which I know fine came out the Royal.” He wraps both hands round his mug. The knuckles are scarred from thirty years of engines. “I’m no thick, Jarek. Drivers used to leave rolls on my bench when they wanted their bus seen first. I know what a softener looks like.”

“I don’t need a bus seen to.”

“Then what are they?”

I drink. The tea is terrible. A magpie lands on his cold frame and tilts its head at us, and someone on plot nine finally turns the radio down. I came to Glasgow at nine and I still hear my father’s consonants under my own, so I pick plain words, because fancy ones would get me laughed out of this shed.

“I like leaving them, and I like that you take them,” I say. “And I’ve wanted your hands in the soil next to mine all summer. That’s all it is.”

Tam’s mouth opens and shuts. He bangs the mug onto the bench hard enough to click. “I’m sixty.”

“I know.”

“You’re forty-seven and you push beds past consultants who never learn your name.”

“I know that too.”

“Half this site thinks I had a wife in Paisley. I’ve let them think it for twenty year.” He looks at the calendar as if March might help. “Plot nine’ll have it round the whole allotment by Monday. And I creak, Jarek. If I say aye and then I’m rubbish at it…”

“Then we’re rubbish at it together and we try again on Tuesday. I’m off Tuesday. Plot nine can say what it likes.” I put my mug down on the floor so my hands are empty and he can see they are empty. “I’m looking at you, Tam. If you want me to stop, say so. I’ll still leave the kale, and we’ll argue about onions till one of us dies, and that’ll be fine if it’s what you need. I’m not here to mark you. You do enough marking for the whole allotment.”

That gets a sound out of him that might be a laugh. He looks at the crate under me, then at my mouth. His throat works. Very quietly he says, “Lock the door.”

I lock the door. The padlock clicks and the shed goes smaller.

“Come here,” Tam says.

I stand up. He stays on the bench. When I am close enough he takes my wrist and presses my palm to his chest, over the flannel and the warmth of him. His heart is going hard, and so is mine.

“Aye,” he says, before I can ask. “Yes. Whatever you were going to ask, yes. But if I say stop, you stop.”

“I stop,” I say. “Word is stop.”

“Good.” He huffs out a breath. “Christ. Get your coat off. You look like you’re about to discharge somebody.”

I take my coat off. He unbuttons his flannel with fingers that shake a little, from the cold and from the other thing. Under it he is soft and thick, his belly heavy over his belt and grey hair running down the centre of him. I kneel on the boards because that is where I want to be, and I press my mouth to that belly, and he makes a sound like a starter motor catching.

“Jarek…”

“Tell me you want this.”

“I want this. Get up here. I’m no having you ruin your knees on my damp boards while I sit like a king.”

I get up. He pulls me in by the belt loops and kisses me. It is clumsy and tastes of stewed tea, and his beard scrapes my chin. I get a hand on the bulge in his trousers and he groans into my mouth, low and rough. He shoves my shirt open and spreads his warm, calloused palms over my stomach, and we kiss until the kettle is forgotten and my knee is up on the bench beside his thigh.

“I’ve a rubber in my wallet,” I say.

“Aye. Good.”

I fish it out of my coat with the sachet of water-based lube tucked behind it and lay them on the bench. We get his trousers open and he lifts his hips to help. He is thick and half hard already, foreskin loose, the head wet when I thumb it. I stroke him slowly and he drops his head back against the shed wall and swears at the roof.

I fold my coat on the boards and kneel on that instead. “Can I put my mouth on you?”

“Aye,” he says, hoarse. “Christ, aye. Go on.”

I take him in. He tastes like a day’s digging. I go slow, lips tight, my tongue under the head where the skin is loose, and the noise he makes rattles the tool rack. His thighs shake either side of my shoulders. “Jarek. Oh, that mouth. Deeper. Aye, like that. You’ve been wanting to do that since June, have you no?”

I pull off long enough to say, “Since May,” and go back down, and he laughs and moans at once. His fingers grip the edge of the bench so hard the wood creaks. I take him deep and hold him there, then ease off and suck only the head with my fist wrapped round the wet shaft, and he starts talking as if he cannot hear himself. “That’s it. Fuck. You’re greedy for it. You’ve got me leaking like a split hose. Don’t stop. Don’t…” He taps my shoulder twice.

“Up,” he says. “Up, or I’m done before the crate, and I’ve got plans for the crate.”

I stand and push my own trousers down. He looks at my cock and swears softly, in the voice I have only heard him use on seized bolts. “Right. Right. You’re putting that in me.”

“If you want.”

“I want. On the crate. I’ll ride you on it, face to face. I’ve thought about that bloody crate for a month, which is a thing I’ll regret saying out loud.”

I laugh and sit on the crate. The wood creaks under my weight. I roll the rubber on and slick it, then slick two fingers and hold them up so he can see. “You first.”

Tam toes off his boots and kicks free of his trousers, flannel hanging open, and stands between my knees with one hand gripping my shoulder. I reach round him and work one slick finger in slowly, then a second, and his fingers dig in until it hurts. “Your hands are freezing, you,” he says through his teeth. Then I curl them, and his knees dip, and he says, “Oh. Oh, there. Aye. Do that again.” I do it again, slower, and feel him open round my fingers while he swears into my hair and pushes back for more. “Enough,” he says at last. “I’m ready. I’m sixty, I’ve no time to waste.”

I kick my folded coat round under his knees. He climbs astride me, face to face, knees down on the coat either side of the crate, his belly against mine, soft and trembling.

“Slow,” he says.

“Slow. You set it.”

I hold myself steady. He reaches back, finds me, and sinks. He opens round the head and curses into my cheek, his breath going harsh. He takes me bit by bit. Halfway he stops and pants, and I kiss his mouth at the edge and wait, and then he takes the rest. The crate complains. My hands are on his hips under the soft spill of his belly, and I can feel muscle that still remembers lifting engines and a tremor that is only for me.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck. That’s in. Christ, you fill me. Don’t move. Let me feel it.”

I do not move. I feel him get used to me, tight and then loosening, his breathing going from ragged to deep. I kiss his beard and his cheekbone. “Still yes?”

“Still yes. Ask me again and I’ll hit you with a trowel.” He rolls his hips once, testing, and we both swear.

“You all right?”

“I’m full of a hospital porter on a potato crate. Define all right.” He laughs, shaky, and starts to move, slow lifts and slower drops, and the shed fills with the slick noise of it and the creak of the wood under us. “Thick bastard. Move. Meet me. Don’t make me do all the work, I’m retired.”

I thrust up as he drops. We find a rhythm that makes the cold-frame glass next door rattle every time his heel knocks the bench. He is loud and I want him loud. His cock is trapped between our bellies, hot and leaking, dragging through the hair on my stomach on every drop, and on every drop his hole grips me in a long tight pull that narrows my eyes.

“Aye,” he pants. “Like that. Up into me, Jarek. Don’t stop now. Fuck me, go on.”

“Not stopping. Ride me. Take what you want and tell me.”

“I want you driving up into me till I’m coming all over you.” He grinds down and holds. “And I want your fingers bruised into my hips so I feel them every time I dig. Go on. Please.”

I do as I’m told. The crate edges half an inch across the floor. Sweat runs into his beard and down the grey fur on his chest. I bite his shoulder through the open flannel and he shouts, raw, his Glasgow vowels breaking wide open over the tomato-feed smell. Between thrusts I tell him into his ear how long I have watched him bend over his beds, and that the washer was an excuse. He tells me to shut up and fuck him. I do both, mostly the second.

“You’re holding on to my cock like it’s the last bus home,” I tell him. “I’ll fuck you on this crate till the whole allotment hears you over that country music.”

“Let them,” he gasps, and drops onto me hard. “Make me loud.”

Then he slows on purpose, grinding down and holding there with all of me inside him, and looks at me from two inches away. “Your turn,” he says. “Say what you want. Out loud. I’ve said enough daft things for one shed.”

“I want you to sit on me till your legs go,” I say. “And sore at the show on Saturday, standing at the table pretending your onions won fair, with me the only one who knows why you’re walking like that.”

“My onions will win fair, you cheeky…” He drops hard and the rest of it turns into a groan. “Again. Say that again.”

“I want you, Tam. Every Saturday you’ll have me.”

“Aye,” he says, riding faster. “Aye, I’ll have you. Fuck. Keep talking. Keep filling me.”

We tip the rhythm up. His heels scrape the boards. I get both hands under his arse and lift him into every drop, and the slap of it fills the shed louder than plot nine’s radio ever managed. “That,” he gasps. “That, keep doing that, you absolute…” His cock jerks between us, slick against my stomach, leaking each time he drops. “I’m no going to last.”

“Then don’t. Come when you want. I’m on a potato crate in October for you, I’m going nowhere.”

His rhythm stutters. “Jarek…”

“Come on me. Let me feel you squeeze.”

He comes with no hand on him, his face pressed into my shoulder, his cock jerking against my stomach and spilling hot over the open front of my shirt, and he grips me so hard the edges of the shed go dark. I thrust up through it, chasing the squeeze, and follow him three strokes later, deep inside him and shaking apart into the rubber while he holds my face in both scarred hands and says my name like a bolt finally turning.

We stay like that, breathing, until the crate gives one last creak. My shirt is wrecked. His flannel hangs open. Somebody walks past on the path outside and does not stop.

The kettle has gone cold on the stove. Tam breathes into my hair. His palm stays flat on my chest a moment longer than it needs to, then drops, as if he has remembered he does not do that sort of thing in sheds.

“Onions,” he says eventually.

“What?”

“Your onions. Enter them. I’ll still take the prize. Judges like a clean neck and an even size, and yours are close. Wash the glass first so you can see what you’re doing.”

I laugh till I’m wheezing. He eases off me, wincing in a way he tries to hide, and reaches for the kitchen roll he keeps for oily hands. We clean up in the half-dark. I tie off the rubber and bin it. He steps back into his trousers and boots. I unlock the door and the allotment air comes in, cold and compost-sweet.

“Tea tomorrow,” he says, not quite looking at me, and that’s how I know he means it. “Bring better tea bags. That stewed stuff’s a crime.”

“I’ll bring them.”

“Aye.” He buttons his flannel over the mark my mouth left. His fingers miss a button and redo it. “And Jarek. Next time you leave seedlings, leave a note with your shifts. I’m no standing at that butt like a lemon waiting to see if you’re on nights.”

I walk back to plot fourteen with mud on my knees and his come drying on my shirt under my coat. The magpie has gone. Plot nine’s radio has moved on to the football scores. I wash my cold-frame glass until I can see the sky through it properly, the way Tam told me to.

On Saturday I will enter the onions in the allium class with a card that says J. Nowak, plot 14, in my best block capitals. I will lose to his and clap when they call his name. The tray of kale is still sitting on the water butt where I left it this morning. Tonight I tuck a note under the edge: for fifteen. off Tue, Thu, Fri. bring the crate in out the rain.

The fence panel between our sheds still leans. Neither of us has touched it.