A Marrow Called Brian

For eleven consecutive years, the prize for Largest Marrow at the Little Hadley Summer Show had gone to Geoffrey Pike, and for eleven consecutive years Doreen Wainwright had come second.

Nobody in the village could quite remember how the rivalry had started. Some said it went back to a disputed parking space in 1998; others insisted it was about a borrowed lawnmower. Whatever the cause, it had long since hardened into a full-blown feud, conducted entirely through vegetables.

This year, however, Geoffrey had a complication. Her name was Priya, she was nine years old, and she was his granddaughter, sent up from London for the summer while her parents worked. She was bored within an hour of arriving and had attached herself to him with the grim determination of a child who has just been told there is no decent Wi-Fi.

Geoffrey, who had never spent much time with children, did the only thing he could think of. He took her to the greenhouse and introduced her to Brian.

Brian was the marrow. He was, even by Geoffrey's standards, a monster: pale green, glossy and already longer than Priya's arm, lying on a bed of straw like a sleeping seal. Geoffrey talked to him every morning. On hot days, he shaded him with an old golf umbrella.

Priya regarded Brian with deep suspicion. “Why is it called Brian?”

“Because,” said Geoffrey, as if it were obvious, “he looks like a Brian.”

To his surprise, she came around. Within a week she was measuring Brian every morning and recording the results in a notebook she'd labeled TOP SECRET. She learned, too, about Doreen Wainwright, whose greenhouse was visible over the hedge and whose own marrow – rumored to be enormous – was kept under a sheet like a piece of evidence.

Three days before the show, disaster struck. Geoffrey came down to the greenhouse at dawn to find the door open and Brian gone. In his place was a hollow in the straw and, just outside, a single small, muddy footprint, which Geoffrey, in the heat of the moment, decided could only belong to one person.

He went the color of a radish. “Doreen,” he breathed.

He was halfway across the lawn, still in his slippers, when Priya caught up with him and grabbed his sleeve.

“Grandpa, wait.” She looked, for the first time since she'd arrived, genuinely nervous. “It wasn't her. It was me.”

It came out in a rush. She'd wanted to help. She'd read online that marrows grew faster with more water, so she'd crept out in the night with the watering can and, wanting to give Brian a proper drink, had tried to move him closer to the outdoor faucet. He'd been heavier than she expected. There had been a slope, and a wheelbarrow, and a certain amount of rolling.

“He's in the ditch,” she whispered. “Behind Mrs. Wainwright's fence. I'm really, really sorry.”

They found Brian exactly where she'd said, wedged in the long grass, mercifully intact apart from a small scratch. They also found Doreen Wainwright, standing over him in her bathrobe and rubber boots, looking down at the marrow with an expression Geoffrey couldn't read.

For a long moment, nobody said anything.

“I came out because I heard a noise,” Doreen said at last. “I thought it was foxes.” She paused. “He's a very fine marrow, Geoffrey.”

“Thank you,” said Geoffrey stiffly. Then, because Priya was watching him: “I don't suppose – that is, would you mind helping us lift him? He's heavier than he looks.”

It took all three of them and the wheelbarrow. By the time Brian was back on his straw, Doreen had been invited in for tea, and the two of them were arguing comfortably about fertilizer in a way that sounded almost like friendship.

At the show that Saturday, Brian came second. First prize went to Doreen's marrow, which turned out to be truly gigantic and was called, she admitted with some embarrassment, Clive.

Geoffrey shook her hand. It was, the village agreed, the most shocking event in the show's history.

Walking home, Priya looked up from her notebook. “Are you upset?”

Geoffrey considered this. “Do you know,” he said, “I don't think I am.” He glanced at her. “Same time next year?”

Priya grinned and turned to a clean page. At the top, in capital letters, she wrote: BRIAN II.