On a day as dull as anybody here can remember, a man sauntered down a street that to him often felt forbidden. This, among many other reasons, was why he liked to walk here. There were always many things to observe on roads like these, neighbourhoods where the people had turned in on themselves under the guise of community. But he was here for one person’s front garden, and the flowers that grew there. 

‘Pussy!’ 

It was unclear which of the two boys had said it. They were already running towards—and then nearly through—the sauntering man before their vulgarity had been verbalised. It hit him softly, journeying on the wind of their getaway, but it went unregistered; there was already a pre-existing breeze. It was hard to walk unnoticed here. As the road began to curve, the people made themselves known. Men in polo shirts with hanging cheeks stood in doorways with stances that said they were the type to bully. Prim women bared their skullish faces through strips where curtains had been pulled to with minor conviction. Nobody called after him, yet there were the sounds of wet tuts, sharp intakes of breath. He did not hurry, never did, to the front garden he so admired. 

The flowers— a family of chrysanthemums, a labyrinth of butterfly weeds, and some fat, red daisies—remained there in spite of neglect. The sauntering man had never seen the one who lived behind them do any maintenance. Never did he consider that the flowers may be tended to in his absence, during moments of the day when he might be on his way, or after he’d already come. The sauntering man knew better. He respected the disobedience of the flowers, had arrived there today to see if they’d endured the night, what remained of the cold, the ignorance of foxes, the malice of a neighbourhood, and the indifference of one individual. The sauntering man was finally ready to bother this person, their flowers as well. It was not because he was angry over the forsaken garden, nor the knowledge that it would thrive, be all the more beautiful if the person only cared. It was because, after years of building muscle onto his intuition, he knew that the one who lived behind wanted to be bothered. 

He was in front of the house now, the sauntering man, taking in the thick, hair-prickled weeds that grew alongside the flowers without stifling them. He was smiling knowingly at them, as if the flowers had acknowledged him for being acknowledged themselves. His large presence, now that he was still, beckoned anyone who might be curious. 

‘Are you his dad?’ asked a young woman with a belly like a bulb, balancing on the thin ledge of a doorway that sat off to the side.

‘No,’ said the man, ‘I’m just walking down this road.’

‘Come to think of it, I think the dad may be dead,’ said the woman with a little embarrassment. ‘The other neighbours would know, but I only really know Sean, not them. I don’t really know his mother either.’

Then a man came out from behind the pregnant woman and put his arm around her waist. His appearance was nondescript, the general sentiment of the street. He said nothing, aside from the look of being mildly disturbed, slightly anguished by a foreign presence. 

The woman pointed to the door behind the front garden, ‘he is in, if you did want him.’

The man at her side was summoning the energy so that he might add something. His voice croaked like that of a person who did not often say things. He stole himself. 

‘I wouldn’t bother him actually,’ he said, ‘we’ve just observed a ruckus involving him and some other guy.’

‘Derek,’ the woman hissed.

A hint of guilt knotted Derek’s brow. 

‘Sean may be a bit upset, is what he means,’ the woman tried to correct but only reiterated, ‘we were a little involved in it.’ 

The sauntering man smiled on, disinterested in all of that.

‘I saw you from the blinds, was just being a bit nosy,’ the woman went on, ‘I was just feeling a bit bad with all that’s happened.’ 

They were all silent for a minute. Then the sauntering man said, ‘If I picked a flower or two, do you think he would mind?’ 

‘I don’t really know,’ said the woman.

‘I’d leave him alone,’ said Derek. 

The sauntering man bent down and picked two flowers, one with each hand: one big, and one very delicate, little stem. He brought them up to his face so that their colours glowed on the pepper of his chin. Derek tried to beckon his wife inside, but she ignored him. She was curious. 

After a moment, the sauntering man pushed open the gate, and sauntered down the path. He held open the letter box in front of him with one hand, took the flowers up in the other, and pushed them through. He let the letterbox go with a searching crash. Derek made an ugly noise. 

The sauntering man stood back a little. But then he went close to the letter box again, opened it wide, and let it go, so that the clattering of metal would ring through the house. 

No more than a few seconds passed before the door ripped open with a ping that suggested something had happened to the hinges. A short man who seemed both bullish and prey-like all at once appeared, first wrinkling his nose, then allowing for his eyes to run the length of the man that towered over him. There was a brown heat that was now overwhelming the surrounding air, like the sort to emerge from deep underground. Derek and his wife, though they were some feet away, could not help but shrink back. 

‘Is this some joke?’ asked the shorter man, his voice strained for being helplessly quiet, “am I being harassed now?” he pushed his head out to direct this at his neighbours.

‘Of course not, Sean,’ the pregnant woman said with some apologetic warmth. 

The sauntering man looked down at the flowers in the doorway, their juices darkening the naked wood under the other man’s feet. He considered their sacrifice for a moment—not too long or short a time. 

‘Are you alone in this house?’ asked the sauntering man.

‘What?’ Sean asked, his eyes still burrowing into his neighbours’. 

‘Where’s your mother?’ asked the sauntering man.

‘What?’ asked Sean, looking at the man immediately in front of him, trying to measure the audacity of him. 

‘Don’t be so suspicious of me,’ the sauntering man found shelter from the reprimand by managing an inquisitive smile. ‘I’d like to talk,’ he added, ‘about your flowers, and whatever you like.’

‘I want to be left alone; I’ve had enough for one day,’ said Sean. 

‘Don’t you find it interesting that they grow in spite of you?’ asked the sauntering man, looking down at the trampled flowers so that Sean’s eyes would follow. The pregnant woman and her husband stood stock still, it could be felt that this was the most significant thing to happen on this street since the day the tarmac was laid.

‘Not really,’ said Sean, unconvinced. 

The sauntering man smiled, accepting that he would have to play his other card. 

‘It all reminds me of the local football,’ he said, ‘how the games are won or lost whether we stand rooted on the touchline, or not.’ He let this sit in the air for a moment, before nodding at the grubby scarf on Sean’s neck. 

Sean did not have a response to this. He was looking at something off to the side, his face rippled with something adjacent to bewilderment. His tongue worked itself on the inside of his mouth, as he considered whether any of it meant something to him. 

‘I do wonder what it’s all about when I go there myself,’ the sauntering man continued to work him, ‘but anyway, we can’t help but go, can we?’ 

Sean stared right at him then. A pleading expression came over him. He looked afraid. 

‘I come down this street often enough,’ the sauntering man went on, ‘people see me, they wonder why, though nobody asks,’ he said, ‘and if they were to ask, I’d say I come down for the gardens and the flowers. But if you were to ask me, I think I’d like to admit that I come so often for you.’ 

Sean turned away. He brought a palm to the part of his face that remained exposed, and began to weep. If he were asked, he wouldn’t be able to say why, or, he would spend the remainder of that day reeling off the reasons. 

The sauntering man was satisfied. He could go in, knowing that Sean would stand aside and let him. But he did not want to force himself in, he wanted to be invited. 

‘I make some good tea,’ said the sauntering man, hopeful, but not without first putting a hand on Sean’s shoulder.

‘I don’t have any sugar,’ said Sean from somewhere inside of himself. 

The pregnant woman, who, along with her husband, had been looking on, unable to infiltrate, mouths agape, turned on her heels and ran inside suddenly. Derek was left wanting to be more involved than he currently was, though worrying that whatever he could muster would shallow the moment. When his wife returned, she knocked him as she escaped her own front garden with a mug of white crystals. 

‘Here!’ she exclaimed in a fever pitch, reaching her neighbour’s gate, waddling through it, arriving at the two men. 

The sauntering man smiled, took the sugar, and handed it to Sean.

_{This story first appeared in ‘From Wold by Fen: A Lincolnshire Anthology’, it’s a collection of amazing short stories that you can purchase here. If you do, then you’ll understand this story better upon reading ‘The View from the Touchline’, my story is a response to it.}

_{Art work by Henri Le Sidaner}