She sits surrounded by her houseplants. They were once a verdant mini jungle and are now brown and crisp. The few green fronds are more by accident than design. She has not watered any for longer than she can recall - if she felt inclined to recall, and she doesn’t.
She once tended the plants with delight and enthusiasm. She enjoyed the light glinting off the shiny, healthy Ficus leaves, polished not by mass-produced applications - not even by applying clear nail varnish as she heard one woman had done - but by wiping the leaves on a weekly basis, in strict rote, with the skin of a banana.
Infestations of Red Spider Mite were kept at bay by the daily spraying of filtered water, and they were refreshed by the purest rainwater - also filtered.
She had a wormery out in her back garden where the slippery creatures made the very best compost for her re-potting. She didn’t much care for the worms but they were a means to an end.
She had given away her cat when she found it using the large pot of a Parlour Palm as a preferential cat litter tray.
She trained a Devil’s Ivy up and around the arch between the kitchen and dining room. The leaves were almost ten inches long and variegated in colour. The darkest green as a background to the marbled lighter greens swirling along each leaf. She could take a full day to thoroughly clean those leaves and she didn’t begrudge a moment. The plant was always a talking point when she had visitors - although she didn’t encourage visitors as much as she used to.
The scars that were left on a few of the leaves of her treasured plants were enough to put her off entertaining - as were the cigarette ends in the pots themselves. People didn’t understand that the plants were real, living and breathing things. The scars were from fingernails proving the plant was real and not a fabulous fake.
The passion for her plants had begun when she left her job to make ready for giving birth to her daughter. The girls in the office had noticed how she had taken a shine to their neglected Yucca and it had thrived under her care. When she left, the office manager had decided that as well as the presents bought with the money collected for her, she would also present her with the Yucca.
It was carried down to her car and had to wait until her husband arrived home before it could be carried inside - with him complaining all the way.
She loved her plants.
Correction: She had loved her plants.
One day as she was polishing and wiping leaves, spraying the undersides with water to discourage the destructive mites that enjoy dry conditions of the modern central heated home, she saw something.
It was fine gossamer and she thought that the red spiders had at last broken through her defences.
She touched the web-like substance and was amazed at the feel of it. It was silky and soft and was not a web but a tiny cloak.
She lifted it up to see it better and the light sparkled through it like a splendid chandelier twinkling in a breeze would send shards of colour cascading around a room when caught in a beam of sunlight. She was mesmerized and then startled by a tiny tinkle of a voice demanding the cloak’s return.
She dropped to her knees and handed the cloak back under the leaf where she had found it. It was snatched away and she didn’t quite see by whom.
For the rest of the day she went about her usual chores of wiping leaves and tending plants. It was only when the hungry yells of her toddler shook her from her tasks that she realised that she had been in a daze for a good few hours.
The following day she took Gabrielle to her granny’s house for a visit and for the first time, allowed herself to be persuaded to let Gabby stay with granny for a few hours.
She broke speed restrictions on her way home.
She looked under the leaves for items of clothing and was disappointed not to find any but she knew she had not been dreaming.
After lunch, she phoned granny to see if Gabby was ready to come home yet and was disgusted with herself when she was relieved that granny wanted to keep her for the afternoon.
Then she decided to change her tactics. Instead of looking for the cloak, she was deliberate in her efforts to not look.
It paid off sooner than she would have imagined. Within minutes she saw a miniature gossamer cloak hanging over a frond on her Parlour Palm.
This time she didn’t touch it even though, more than anything, she wanted to.
She watched from the floor where she was kneeling and soon a little hand appeared to take the cloak.
“Hello,” she whispered as the hand grasped the cloak.
The hand remained where it was, stock-still.
“Hello, are you a Fairy?” she tried again.
This time there was a response. A little creature, smaller than one of the illustrations in Gabby’s storybooks swung out into view, holding tight to the main stalk of the plant.
There was an expression on its face of purest malevolence and it spoke in the same tinkley voice as it had the day before.
“
No. I am not a Fairy. I am a Faerie!”
“Oh, I beg your pardon. I am sorry for my mistake, please accept my apology,” she said even though she couldn’t distinguish between the two pronunciations.
At that, the Faerie seemed to become more amenable. The malevolence dissolved from the face and that transformed the whole being into a beautiful and magical creature which quite astonished her.
“Are these plants all tended by you?” the Faerie asked.
“Yes they are.”
“They are lovely; they make good homes.”
She blushed with pleasure. “Are there many of you?”
“Hundreds of us. Thousands, millions. As many as there are needles in a pine forest.”
“Oh. Are there many here in amongst my plants?”
“Your plants?” The Faerie had a sarcastic tone.
“These plants then. Are there many of you in amongst these plants?”
“A few hundred perhaps.” The Faerie gave a minute shrug of nonchalance.
“Oh that’s wonderful!”
“It is? I mean… I’m glad you’re pleased.”
After that meeting, she saw many more of the Faeries flitting about the plants. Most lived in the Devil’s Ivy; that was not surprising because they seemed to be a very close community.
She found that they preferred to come to her rather than have her watching for them and she took to sitting quietly, waiting for one to notice her and approach.
Sometimes a group would fly over to her from whichever plant they had been playing in. They would sit on the arm of her chair and watch her as she watched them.
They always flew away at the sound of Gabby waking from her nap and she began to resent the child’s need for food when she was getting to know the magical creatures that had adopted her houseplants.
One beautiful summer morning she was sitting in her usual place, hoping for a Faerie to appear when she saw a multitude of them rise from the ivy around the arch. She sat in stunned silence as they lifted up into the shape of the arch, framing themselves in its curve, mimicking the form and allowing the sunlight to pierce their wings, to refract and shower the living room in myriad colours which in turn flitted and darted as though they were separate entities.
As the Faeries rose up, they parted to make an inner frame for the most breath-taking sight she could have ever imagined.
She couldn’t catch her breath as the Faerie Queen approached. Her wings were by far larger than any of her subjects’ and her cloak would have reached the floor if she had not had hundreds of tiny cherub-like baby-Faeries holding it up.
The Faerie Queen waited, hovering in the air whilst her throne was flown in behind her. Then the Faerie Queen sat and smiled down at the woman’s amazement.
“What is the name of the child?” A voice which reminded her of the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz tinkled down.
“Her name is Gabby.”
“What is her full name, her real given name?”
In a daze and not heeding the warning voices sounding in her head, she whispered, “Gabrielle Melody Hart”
“That is a good name.”
In less than an instant, the Faerie Queen and her entourage had vanished, flown hither and thither and she was bemused as to how she was sitting in the dark. The front door opened and her husband walked in from work.
“What are you doing home so early?” she asked as he looked at her sitting in the dark living room.
“Early? I’m late. I tried to phone you but got no answer. What’s for dinner and where’s Gabby?”
“Gabby? Gabrielle Melody Hart? I gave the Faerie Queen my baby’s name! Oh my god NO!”
She pushed past her husband and rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
The baby sitting in the cot was not Gabby she insisted. She looked like Gabby but she wasn’t her, not really. The Faeries had left a Changeling in Gabrielle Melody Hart‘s place. A mother knows her own baby, but no-one listened.
Months later, divorced and without even visiting rights to Gabby, she was sitting in her house, waiting for the removal men to come and take her possessions away. She had not looked for accommodation; she didn’t know where she would live now the house was sold. The mortgage being repaid took up almost all of the money from the sale of the house and all she had left were her plants - or the remains of them.
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