„Dennis, who are all these people? Where did they come from?” Christine’s voice trembles as she grips her son’s elbow tighter. A thought flashes through her mind: *He sold it. He sold the cottage without asking, and these are the new owners come to take over.* Her mouth goes dry at the idea, and she releases his arm, frozen, staring into her own garden.
The planks smell of pine. The scent is so thick and sharp that Christine’s nose started tingling the moment she reached the gate, and now it mixes with the smell of lime and sweat. The garden is full of people. At least twenty, maybe more. Men in old T-shirts and dusty jeans, two girls carrying rolls of plastic sheeting, a lad on a step-ladder, another right up on the roof with a hammer. Someone is hauling bags of cement, someone else is stirring a white slurry in a bucket that gives off a sharp lime smell. Her quiet, dreary cottage plot from yesterday now looks like a beehive in June.
„Dennis,” she says dryly, almost without a voice. „Do you see this? If you’ve sold the cottage without asking, I’ll never forgive you. Tell me straight – are these strangers?”
„Mum, hold on, what new owners?” Dennis seems genuinely taken aback. „What are you on about? They’re mine. All mine.”
„What do you mean 'yours’? What’s going on here? I have my phone in my bag – if you don’t explain right now, I’m calling the local bobby.”
She actually reaches for the bag hanging from her elbow. Her fingers won’t obey. Everything rushes through her mind at once: the little cottage she’s hauled up over fifteen years, the veranda she never built because of Dennis’s tuition, then the car loan, then her own dental implants – *they can wait* – then the new flooring in the city flat – *that can wait too*. Everything waited, and now strangers are trampling her garden. Hers. The one she nursed like a child.
„Mum,” Dennis touches her shoulder. „Listen. They’re not the new owners. I invited them.”
Christine freezes with her bag poised. She looks at her son as if seeing him for the first time. Thirty-five years old, noticeable grey at the temples, broad shoulders – takes after her, not his father. His eyes show neither fear nor arrogance. Just quiet, calm expectation.
„You?”
„Me. Mum, they’re all mine. People from work, old friends from college, lads from the street I used to play football with. Remember Paul?”
Christine remembers Paul. Skinny, always hungry, used to stay for dinner because things at home weren’t great. She used to give him an extra portion and pretend not to notice his embarrassment.
„Paul’s here?”
„He’s here. And Alex, and Ginger Mike, and George – my best man at the wedding. Almost everyone you ever fed, Mum.”
Christine scans the garden. So that’s it. That’s why the faces seemed vaguely familiar. That lad on the step-ladder – definitely the boy she gave Dennis’s old bike to when his family moved into a council flat. And the one with the bucket – Alex, who broke their window with a football in Year Nine, and she didn’t scold him, just asked him to put in a new one. They’ve grown up. Become grown men with strong hands and serious faces. And they’re standing in her garden with planks and seedlings.
„Why?” asks Christine quietly. „Dennis, why?”
Dennis pauses. Then he takes her hand – carefully, as if it were glass – and turns her to face him.
„You’ve been saving for this cottage your whole life, Mum. Remember, you wanted a veranda? A big one with sliding glass doors, so you could sit out and drink tea and watch the sunset? You even had a picture from a magazine on the fridge. Fifteen years ago.”
Christine remembers. Yes, there was such a picture. It yellowed, the corners curled, but she didn’t throw it away until they replaced the fridge. The clipping got lost, and she almost forgot about it. Almost.
„You used to put money aside,” Dennis continues, „from every paycheque. Then came my university applications, tutors, the flat I rented when Vera and I got married… Mum, you put off redecorating your bedroom for six years. You still have those flowery wallpaper that’s probably older than me. I remember you saying, 'Never mind, the veranda can wait.’ Well, you know what? It can’t. No more waiting.”
Christine remains silent. She stays quiet so long that Paul stops hammering on the roof and freezes, watching them.
„I’m paying back my debt,” says Dennis. „The whole crew is free. We decided – we’ll have it done in a week. Here’s the plan, look.”
He pulls a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket and opens it. Christine sees a drawing – neat, with measurements, notes in the margins. Not a magazine clipping. A real plan. Designed for her small plot, taking into account the old apple tree she insisted mustn’t be touched.
„We’ll go around the apple tree,” Dennis says, catching her gaze. „We’ve thought it all through. We’ll strengthen the foundations. And we’ll install underfloor heating – I looked into it, there’s a special system that’s cheap and reliable. You can sit out here in November, wrap yourself in a blanket, and drink tea.”
A tear rolls down Christine’s cheek and stops near the corner of her mouth. She doesn’t wipe it away – she doesn’t even notice. She just stands there, looking at these grown men who once kicked a football in her yard, scraped their knees, stole hot meatballs from her pan, copied each other’s homework at her kitchen table, and argued hoarsely about some computer game. Now they’ve come here. By themselves. For free. To build the veranda of her dreams.
But the idyll doesn’t last long. A cough sounds from beyond the fence, and a head in a floral headscarf appears above the pickets. Patricia, the neighbour on the left. A woman with a permanent „I told you so” expression. She plants her hands on her hips and surveys the scene as if the national border were being dismantled before her eyes.
„Christine, is that you?” she trills in a sweet voice laced with steel. „I saw the noise and commotion, vans from this morning. What’s this, a job fair?”
„Patricia, good morning,” Christine wipes her cheek automatically. „My son and his friends are helping. We’re building a veranda.”
„A veranda?” Patricia throws up her hands. „Do you have planning permission? Do you know the fines for unauthorised building these days? You’d have to sell the cottage and still not cover it. Besides, your plot is tiny, Christine – it’s only three metres to my fence. Are you observing the setbacks? I won’t keep quiet if you don’t. My nephew works in building control – I can give him a heads-up.”
Dennis overhears, turns, and calmly walks over to the fence.
„Good morning, Patricia. We have permission. The plans are approved. Fire safety regulations are met. My friend is an architect – he checked everything before drawing. Would you like to see the documents?”
Patricia turns purple. She clearly didn’t expect that.
„Well, well,” she mutters, stepping back. „We’ll see how it turns out. People build things, then have to tear them down at their own expense. And the noise, Christine. My grandchildren won’t be able to nap.”
„Never mind,” says Christine quietly, and her voice suddenly stops trembling. „Your grandchildren ate my pancakes last August when you forgot to feed them. They can nap later.”
Patricia purses her lips and disappears behind the fence. Paul, who’s been watching from the roof, chuckles softly and picks up his hammer again. And Christine suddenly feels – for the first time in years – something like fighting spirit spreading inside her. No. She’ll defend her dream now.
For the next two hours, Christine exists in a strange, dreamlike state. It feels as if she’s asleep. Dennis settles her on a folding chair in the shade of the apple tree, brings out her old mug with the chipped handle – the same one she used when she walked him to nursery – and pours hot tea from a flask.
„Sit,” he says firmly. „Your only job today is to watch. No 'I’ll just sweep here,’ no 'I’ll water the cucumbers.’ Got it?”
Christine wants to argue – out of habit, because she’s been arguing non-stop for forty years – but then she changes her mind. She leans back in the chair and watches.
She watches Paul and his mate sawing planks, the saw screeching so loud the neighbour’s dog starts barking. She watches Ginger Mike – now bald and solid, no longer ginger – mixing mortar and explaining something to one of the girls with seedlings. She watches Dennis moving from one person to another, checking, helping hold something, nodding to someone, his face grown-up and focused and in charge. Her son. The master of this garden. No – the master of the life he’s now giving back to her, his mother.
By about three in the afternoon, Christine finally gets up. That’s enough. Watching is fine, but not to this extent.
„I’ll make lunch,” she tells Dennis.
„Mum…”
„Don’t 'Mum’ me. There are twenty people who’ve been on their feet since eight. What have they eaten? Sandwiches?”
„Well, we have bread and cold meat…”
„Exactly. I’ll be quick.”
She goes inside. It’s cool inside and smells of summer dust. She opens the fridge, which always looks forlorn at the start of the season – eggs, butter, a carton of kefir, mustard from three years ago – and sighs. Never mind. She’ll have to improvise.
But when she steps onto the porch to call Dennis and send him to the shop, she finds she’s already been anticipated. One of the girls – the one with the phlox – hands her two huge bags.
„There are vegetables, chicken, eggs, flour, oil,” the girl says. „Dennis bought everything yesterday. He said, 'Mum will want to cook – don’t argue, just give her the ingredients.'”
Christine takes the bags. She looks at the girl. Then at Dennis, who stands a little way off, pretending to study the rafters.
„You,” she says to his back. „When did you manage all this?”
„Mum, I’ve been preparing for three months,” he answers without turning. „Just tell me when the pancakes are ready.”
That’s too much. Christine goes inside, closes the door firmly, and stands for a moment with her hands pressed over her face. Then she exhales, rolls up her sleeves, and starts on the batter.
An hour later, a long table stands in the garden – the lads knocked it together from the same planks in fifteen minutes. On the table, steaming potatoes that Christine fried in three pans one after another because there’s no big pot at the cottage. There are cucumbers and tomatoes, roughly chopped, just like in her youth when salads weren’t fussy. In the centre, a mountain of pancakes – thin, lacy, with crispy edges. The same ones. Her signature. The ones that used to disappear by the handful from hungry teenagers in three minutes.
„Auntie Christine,” says someone with a full mouth – probably Alex, the one who broke the window. „I haven’t had pancakes like these in fifteen years. Honest. My mum never baked – it was always frozen stuff.”
„I know,” says Christine, and suddenly she smiles. „That’s why you used to stay till evening.”
Everyone laughs. Loud, free, youthful. Twenty adults laugh in her garden, and that sound is probably the best noise she’s heard in the last ten years.
Christine suddenly stands up. She scans them all. Paul freezes with his spoon in mid-air; Dennis tenses. She picks up a ladle, fills a mug from the saucepan of fruit compote, and raises it.
„Folks,” she says, and her voice sounds unusually loud. „Forgive me – I’ve cried three times today. First from fright. Second from joy. Third because I didn’t know how to thank you. Now I do. I want to drink to you. To each one. To the fact that you remember. I never forgot your faces, but I thought you’d forgotten mine. You didn’t. So I didn’t feed you for nothing. To you.”
She downs the compote in one gulp as if it were something stronger. A second of silence hangs over the table, then such a roar of „Hear, hear!” goes up that a crow flies off the next apple tree.
She moves among them, piling pancakes, refilling tea, listening to conversations, and realises she no longer feels anxious. The familiar anxiety she’s gone to sleep with and woken up with for years – worry about Dennis, about his marriage, about his mortgage, about him not earning enough, working too much, calling too rarely – has all retreated. Because here he is, her son, sitting on an upturned crate with a plank on his knees serving as a plate, spreading jam on a pancake, saying to someone, „No, the frames can wait – today we finish the gable end, or the rain will come and soak everything.” And she understands: he’s grown up. He can organise twenty people and build a veranda. And he did it – for her.
In the evening, as people start drifting off to the tents they’ve pitched just beyond the plot, by the woods, Christine sits on the old porch. Dennis sits down beside her.
„So, how do you like it?” he asks.
„I don’t know how to thank you.”
„Mum, what are you saying? No thanks needed. I’m thanking you. For everything.”
They sit in silence. Then Christine says, „You know, I always thought parents give to their children, and then the children go off into their own lives – that’s it. That’s how it goes. I didn’t expect anything. Honestly, Dennis. I just wanted you to have a better life than mine.”
„And I do,” he says. „I have a better life because you wanted it. And now I want you to have a better life too. At least a veranda.”
Christine chuckles and nudges him with her shoulder – just like when he was a kid and brought home a C in English and said, „Mum, I’m no Shakespeare.”
„Alright, builder. Tomorrow you’ve got those gable ends again.”
„The gable ends aren’t going anywhere,” says Dennis, and he offers her a hand to help her up.
The week flies by like a single day. On Friday evening, Christine stands on her new veranda and watches the setting sun flood the garden with orange. The veranda is exactly like the picture: bright, spacious, with sliding glass doors and the fresh smell of wood. The planks aren’t painted yet, but that’s fine. There’s time. An old blanket already lies on the floor, and a mug of tea sits on the windowsill. The lavender the girls planted by the entrance smells delicate and hopeful, like a promise of things to come.
Everyone will leave tomorrow. But tonight they’re sitting at the table again, laughing, drinking tea, eating pancakes. And Christine catches herself thinking: more than anything, she wants each of these twenty people – Paul going through a divorce, Ginger Mike going bald, the girls whose names she still hasn’t learned – to have a moment like this someday. A moment when they realise that kindness comes back. Not necessarily in pancakes. Maybe in planks. Maybe in a veranda. Or maybe just in the fact that twenty people stand behind you without a contract and say, „We remember how you fed us.”
In October, when the first frosts arrive, Christine sits on her new veranda with a blanket over her knees. Beyond the sliding glass doors, the wind bends bare branches; inside, it’s warm – the underfloor heating works perfectly, and the tea in her mug doesn’t cool down. She picks up her phone, photographs the sunset over the apple tree, and texts Dennis: „Son, the bullfinches have arrived. Come over. Pancakes will be ready.” The message sends, and she leans back in her chair and smiles – slowly, peacefully, like someone who has finally stopped waiting.
