The Pavement Gardener

By Nyla Naseer

Against the backdrop of the global economic downturn, the need for work brings Mara from Latvia to South East London. Working for Spencer in the Hungry Londoner Café is not easy—he’s a sleazy, woman-hating, low-life with no moral compass and a bad gambling habit and, when he goes a step too far, Mara tries to think of a way to get even.

One evening, Mara discovers mysterious drawings of wild flowers on the pavement of the Pendean Council Housing Estate and can’t stop thinking about who has created them and why...

Callum is a young Irish gardener, working in London. A handsome, enigmatic figure, his solitary efforts to bring beauty into people’s consciousness captivates Mara. Fate and unstoppable chemistry throw Mara and Callum together and start a chain of events of which they quickly lose control.

When Mara discovers Spencer is organising 'warehouse’ fights, the pair plan an elaborate sting to part Spencer from his ill-gotten profits. The scam takes them ever deeper into the murky and dangerous world of urban fight gambling and challenges Callum’s understanding of who he is and what he wants from life.

The gripping conclusion reveals the unpredictability of human nature and how revenge can become a double edged sword. A story of outsiders, human frailty and self-realization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nyla Naseer
• Release date: May 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9780957599567

Nyla Naseer

My name is Nyla Naseer. I live in Birmingham, United Kingdom. I am a writer, blogger and adventurer. I write contemporary fiction and non-fiction. My fiction writing includes stories of adventure, humour and overcoming adversity in unusual ways; naturally, this includes reference to the darker side of life. My non-fiction work concerns observations on social psychology: the impact of digital technology, or how workplace cultures operate. Raised in a one parent household, I spent my early years living firstly in hostels and then council housing in Birmingham. I became a young carer at the age of eight. I’ve turned my hand to quite a few different things, from amassing academic credentials (for credibility purposes) to performance. My unusual life, in which I have associated with many creative sub-cultures, has enriched my experiences. Given the opportunity to gain a different perspective, I have always grabbed it; as a consequence, my life has never been short on real-life drama—be this on the streets of the inner city or in corridors of power, both environments in which I have felt equally comfortable—or uncomfortable. My experiences and observations motivate my writing. Drawing upon my experience as an editor and keen to promote the work of other creative people and thinkers, I have established a number of active projects for writers and thinkers, which join the local with the global. My personal identity strongly resists any stereotype. An advocate of the outdoors, I enjoy long-distance running and hill-walking in my spare time. I run an active blog; please take a look! http://nylanaseer.co.uk Follow me on twitter (I always follow back) @nylanaseer

Book preview

The Pavement Gardener

By Nyla Naseer

Published by Temblem Publishing

United Kingdom

Copyright © 2013 Nyla Naseer

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9575995-6-7

Smashwords edition

No part of this publication may be

reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or

otherwise, without the prior

permission of the publisher.

This book is dedicated to Stig.

Contents

Acknowledgements.

Chapter 1. The Hungry Londoner Café, Liverpool Street.

Chapter 2. Goodbye Latvia; hello London Town.

Chapter 3. The pavement gardener.

Chapter 4. Finding forums and flowers.

Chapter 5. Difficult encounters make an impact.

Chapter 6. Night jogging not recommended.

Chapter 7. The Pendean Training Group.

Chapter 8. Stephanie Tenge reminisces.

Chapter 9. Watching Callum at work.

Chapter 10. The local game.

Chapter 11. A tight spot brings a touch of good fortune.

Chapter 12. The old printing works.

Chapter 13. An idea unfolds.

Chapter 14. Preparing for a sting takes work.

Chapter 15. Baiting the hook.

Chapter 16. Some things change people.

Chapter 17. No time to panic.

Chapter 18. When the moment arrives, nothing is guaranteed.

Chapter 19. The professionals.

Chapter 20. Tying up loose ends.

Chapter 21. What goes around; comes around.

About the Author

Acknowledgements

The Pavement Gardener is my first contemporary fiction book. The challenge was to shape a story that drew upon the cold, hard realities of the post economic crisis world and, in particular, the impact upon individual young people, caught up in the fallout of restricted employment opportunities and restricted hope. What emerged was the story of Mara and Callum: two young people from different parts of the world, united by their 'outsider' identities.

This book has drawn upon my own experiences, but also the experiences that other people have shared with me about their hopes and fears for the future. I acknowledge their help.

My friend Jon Garrett, a bohemian gardening type, helped me with the plant references. Another friend, who has requested anonymity, assisted with the organised fight elements. Thank you both. Finally, Abi saved me from disaster more than once and I'd like to sincerely thank her for her patience.

Nyla Naseer

Chapter 1. The Hungry Londoner Café, Liverpool Street.

Mara told her hands to catch the falling tray, but they were not listening. Her throat seized up and then let free a stifled gasp as she helplessly watched the plate slide across the tray on its journey to the floor. The inevitability was obvious: there was nothing she could do to prevent the mini-drama from playing out. The order of full English breakfast, lapped its way along the white edges of the crockery and tumbled, clinging desperately to the plate as it lurched and flipped on its slow descent. There was a sound, a cacophony of broken ceramic, slopped food and the murmur of mildly shocked customers—and then silence.

You stupid, clumsy...! Spencer's shattering chastisement trailed off, as he remembered the shop full of customers; thinking about the scenario and weighing up the repercussions, he softened his voice just a little, Clean up that mess right now and hurry up about it.

Spencer was no fool. London born and bred, he knew that you couldn't be seen to be rough with your staff, especially a slight young thing like Mara, no—that would just lead to customers talking behind his back and he didn't want that; not because he gave a shit about what they thought but because he wanted to keep a low profile: to keep his business to himself. No, the ideal way to act was to be seen to be reasonable to the world; what you did when the world wasn't watching was your business.

Mara mumbled an apology to the customer: a tired-looking office worker in his cheap, ill-fitting suit. He just looked at her and grunted something barely audible about not expecting to have to pay now and threatening to take his business elsewhere in future. Mara knew that she would have to make up double the price anyway, virtually wiping out half her pay for the shift. She took a deep breath, swept a lock of mousy hair off her face and rubbed her hands down her waitress apron to try and collect herself, feeling a roomful of eyes watching her as she stood, surrounded by the detritus of the accident—a fragile little figure with beans and egg yolk splattered over her jeans and worn-out black flat shoes. The rest of the food was streaked across the floor in a sticky, abstract puddle.

She scurried across the café floor, briefly looking up at Petra, the other waitress in 'The Hungry Londoner Café, Liverpool Street' before darting through the door at the back of the shop to the kitchens to grab some cleaning gear.

Have you done it again? Zekial asked, in his rich, African accent, as she nudged past him, You gotta be careful, girl: the boss, he's one mean mother!

He knew what he was talking about. Zekial had worked for Spencer for the longest time of all of them, and he'd managed to stay working for him precisely because he knew a lot but would never say too much—just enough to spread the word not to mess with Spencer's business, if you knew what was good for you. Since most of Spencer's employees were pretty desperate to hang onto their meagre jobs anyway, it wasn't a hard ask to be discreet.

Mara nodded, went back out to clean up the mess and then settled back into the hectic round of taking orders, giving them to Zekial and Stacey in the kitchen, serving and generally trying to keep out of Spencer's way. It was a bad job, but it was a job. She'd had a number of them since arriving in London and this one was not unbearable, if you took Spencer out of the equation. Petra, the other waitress, was great; she was about the same age as Mara and also from Eastern Europe (although in her case from Poland rather than Latvia). It was good to have someone to talk to who empathised with being so far from home—not that it was difficult to find other Eastern Europeans working in the food trade in London, of course.

Coming out for a fag-break? asked Petra near the end of the shift, Spencer's gone over to the betting shop for a while...with any luck he might go straight to the pub after that and not bother coming back. That would make it your lucky day, Mara. Stacey's covering the counter

Mara didn't smoke, but she always stood outside with Petra. It felt exciting just to be there, a little way off from the café entrance, so as not to look cheap, watching all of London moving past in one long succession of human forms. Because the café was near to the station everyone was in a rush, either on their way to Liverpool Street or back from it. There was little to call it 'relaxing': it was all adrenaline and tension, despair and resignation. In the morning, the people moved like the tributaries of a giant river from Liverpool Street Station to their various destinations; the flow of the river reversing later in the day. The café was there to service some of the basic needs of the office workers on their short journey from station to workplace or vice versa, the need for sustenance and somewhere to escape to for a while, that was all, nothing more. Originally, some decades ago, it must have been quite stylish but now it was dated and grim. Slightly tucked away, just off the main road, it served a combination of old regulars and people who didn't care too much about their surroundings, just as long as the food was cheap.

If she overlooked the reality of where she worked, Mara quite liked the feeling that she, a twenty-one year old girl from the outskirts of Riga, was a player in London's grey and neon world of wonder and life. She'd researched it before she came, of course, the innocent preparations and expectations of a young person starting out on life's big adventure. The reality was louder, more brutal and more lonely than anything she could have imagined. She quite liked the grinding harshness and she didn't mind the feeling of personal insignificance—in some ways she preferred it like that. She didn't need the acknowledgement of the world to feel relatively content, even though she was still searching for her 'purpose' in life. Mara was sure that whatever life had to offer in terms of purpose, it would be revealed to her here, on the grey pavements of London.

You should eat more, suggested Petra as she sparked up her eastern European bootlegged cigarette, That's why you're having these accidents; you're just too weak to carry the trays properly.

I eat enough, said Mara, defensively, knowing that Petra was right.

She was thin, partly because that was her natural body type and partly through over-work; but it might also have been because she was resistant to the idea of becoming fat. That is why she was constantly hungry; constantly fighting the feeling and trying to distract herself from it. It was rather ironic that she had ended up working at a café of all places, but she tolerated it because she would rather be working at the 'Hungry Londoner' than in some call centre or office: chained to a chair and going through the same script over and over every single day. Working the late shift meant that she had the mornings to herself, for thinking time or anything else, and she also missed the worst of the commuter crush. By the time she got home at night it was too late to do anything but go for a quick run around the streets (or the park in high summer) and then go to bed. The lack of time to socialise was not a drawback for her: she liked to be on her own.

Her running, semi-obsessive at times, also added to her scrawny appearance; but it was something she had to do. When she ran she felt like nimble young deer, or a sharpened knife cutting its way through the thick air. She didn't care about the weather, rain or shine she pounded the pavements, sometimes lost in rambling thoughts and sometimes searching around for new routes and curiosities. When she passed other runners it was the one time that she felt that she belonged to a community of some sort, albeit a community of strangers flitting past each other, seldom meeting again. Sometimes, she felt that she lived for her running, there was a mutual dependency: she owned it and it owned her.

Petra looked at Mara sympathetically, she understood the pressure in Mara's head to be thin; she felt it herself but in her case it was all about what Polish men expected in terms of the way that their women looked. With Mara it was different; she just seemed to need to be that way for herself, as if it was something that she needed to keep under her own control as much as she could: part of her determination to be the person she had chosen to be.

You know Spencer's a complete fuck-wit said Petra, He's a walking joke but he's scary with it. I've hear some bad stuff about him from Zekial

Zekial was from Senegal. He had come to London as a refugee and now had permission to remain and work. Like all of them, he would have liked to have got a job paying a bit more than the minimum wage, but he was held back by his insecure use of English and the air of doubt towards Africans that most employers seemed to adopt—the fear that they were all involved in some sort of giant Nigerian banking scam being quite normal, as far as he could see. He had learnt how to cook to feed himself and was only too grateful when Spencer had taken him on as a kitchen-hand several years ago. He was now head cook and he put up with the long hours and unpleasant conditions in order to send money to his extended family back home, just like hundreds of thousands of other workers across London. Since the recession, it was best to keep a job if you had one, so he stayed put where he was.

Mara had heard that Spencer could get a bit too friendly with some of his waitresses when he had had a drink. There was a rumour that the police had been involved in the past and that Spencer was part of a set-up to bring girls in to work some of the brothels up north, packing them off to Manchester or Birmingham; choosing areas away from London in an attempt to keep any trouble far enough away from his front door. No-one talked about it openly, but she could well imagine it to be true: the guy was a miserable lump of sin. As far as her own position went, fortunately for her, Mara was not his type; he preferred buxom big women by all accounts, so he left Mara alone as far as that side of things went. He had never tried it on with Petra either, possibly because he knew that the Polish guys she knew would cut his balls off if he did, but that did not mean that he wasn't capable of something nasty at any time, and both girls remained wary. Anyway, Spencer was definitely mixed up with some dodgy dealings financially and that meant that he knew some bad people. It was best to ask as few questions as possible and keep your head down.

I can look after myself, said Mara, Life's too short to watch your back all the time.

You still going to the gym? asked Petra, I don't know how you do it.

Mara had let her gym visits slide as the autumn had drawn in: she just felt too tired after the day's work. She didn't like letting her routine slip like that and wanted to pick things back up though, so she underplayed her slackness.

Yeah, I'm training for the London Marathon; I'm going to do some road training and some gym work every week. You want to come?

You are joking—right? Petra responded

Mara looked seriously at Petra, then relaxed and gave her a warm smile.

Yeah, I'm joking, for a start you'd have to give up the fags and your party lifestyle.

Right...Like I am a party girl on the wages they pay here.

The two girls laughed, and each gave the other a sisterly look.

Oh no, he's coming back from the bookies, warned Mara, spotting Spencer out of the corner of her eye. Put your fag out Petra, and let's get back into the shop.

Petra took one last drag of her fag and used her foot to grind the cigarette butt into the pavement, and then she turned to follow Mara back into the shop. In a well-rehearsed scene they nodded to Stacey, who had been covering the front of the shop for them. Stacey nodded back and turned back through the kitchen doors, leaving Petra and Mara to assume their positions, one behind the counter and the other wiping down tables with a damp cloth. It was the end of the shift and there was only one customer left; bent over his mug of coffee, reading a copy of the Daily Mail propped up against a sauce bottle.

The door swung open with a jangle and Spencer walked in. He was a man in his fifties, the sort of person you might see sitting in a British bar on the Costa Brava: thin streaks of black hair now framing a large bald patch, overweight and crudely built. Spencer was not what you would call an intelligent man, but he had a certain 'nouse' about him. He had been brought up in the shadow of the traditional London East End and had made contacts that he'd done a few favours for. They now owed him. He'd got to know some of the new boys as they came into London from abroad too, from Turkey, Russia and Nigeria. They weren't the serious players...he wanted to stay well away from that end of things, but they were hustling enough to provide another income stream when he needed it. Spencer ran a few side businesses that came and went; there was always a bit of money to be made somewhere. Spencer had never had a 'real' girlfriend and he liked it that way; that way he could do what he liked and keep his money to himself. He saw women as a resource to line his pockets or, occasionally, to service his more basic needs.

As he virtually fell into the café it was clear that his finances had not been added to by his visit to the betting shop.

Fucking waste of bloody time! he said, addressing the one punter, who didn't bother to look up from his paper, Dead cert' he said, ...can't lose, he said. My arse!"

Just keep your head down, Petra whispered to Mara. Mara didn't need to be told.

You, Spencer gestured to Petra, What are you looking at. What are you saying to that little runt.

I was just telling her to clean the tables in a good way. No being lazy Petra explained casually, breaking her English to emphasise the innocent nature of their communication.

Spencer grunted. He had bigger things on his mind than some skinny Latvian girl; he'd deal with her later. Mara glanced up at Spencer but kept wiping the tables. Spencer did not even bother looking over. A wave of relief flowed over Mara and she moved on to the next table, discreetly placing herself out of Spencer's eye line. She needn't have worried, he seemed to have forgotten the accident and muttered to himself as he went to the till, opening it and removing a large wad of cash before retreating through the swing door into the kitchen and then down into the basement. In the basement was a well-hidden