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by Gregory Norminton

  Of course, in an age of ASBOs and yobbos, it was hardly surprising that the art of lawn care should be in decline. But Mr Gillespie, as his wife faded before his eyes, never neglected their own garden. Even in the last weeks, when she was in the hospital, he occupied his time away from her with keeping down the grass and cutting back the growths on her espaliered apple trees.

  No one, peering over the garden fence, could have called the Gillespies neglectful people. No one could have pretended that they weren’t good neighbours.

  Mr Gillespie buried his wife on the first hot day of the year. They had no children but her sister came from Cornwall, as did colleagues from work. Standing above her grave, Mr Gillespie noticed what he thought was smoke but was in fact pollen from a parasol pine. He drove home and, in spite of the heat, locked all the doors and windows.

  That first spring, the lawn got out of hand. Dandelions sprouted and nobody uprooted them; docks and shepherd’s purse wriggled above the tall unmannered grass. But Mr Gillespie had not gone to ground. He would emerge as usual to go to work or to buy food, always using the front door while the door to the garden stayed locked and the curtains never parted in the rear windows.

  A blazing summer turned the nation’s lawns to straw but not the grass in Mr Gillespie’s plot. The dense blades shielded the ground from the heat of the sun, and it was only as seed heads ripened that his garden turned the tawny colour of a meadow in July. Other plants escaped their restraints and began to spread. The disciplined apple trees produced new branches while the lilac thickened and an elder, carried in the bowels of a visiting blackbird, began to work its way out of the shade.

  In the autumn, apples fell of their own ripeness and wasps became drunk on their rough cider. Then winter came and things died back, or consolidated the ground they had stolen. Mr Gillespie withdrew from sight, going about his business in the early hours of the morning. Meanwhile the plot he had tamed for his wife continued to change without him.

  A second spring came and the lilac blossomed while clematis sprawled over from a neighbour’s garden. Nettles began to creep under the fence and a firethorn erupted, unbidden. Older residents looked at the apple trees that were breaking their bonds and, later in the year, at the blowsy apples and the dense grass, and they shook their heads as though at some betrayal, a display of grief spilling over into chaos.

  Autumn returned with the moaning of leaf blowers, then winter and a third spring, and still nobody took as much as a stick to Mr Gillespie’s jungle. Some said the man had lost his wits. Others complained about the disorder and blamed him for the weeds in their own flowerbeds. Over the summer holidays, children gathered on the decking of parental gardens, among patio heaters and palm trees, and plotted to climb the rotting fence into the patch of wilderness.

  That first time, Mr Gillespie heard them whisper and laugh. The children waded in the long grass and Mr Gillespie opened a window without drawing back the curtain. He sat in the wicker chair chosen by his wife and leaned on his open palm, listening to the children playing. The children returned to the garden several times and each time he was surprised by his readiness to accept them. Indeed, it got so that he longed for the sound of their voices.

  Cooler weather came and he listened and listened, unaware that their games had taken them elsewhere. Eventually, lured by the soft music of rain on leaves and troubled by the absence of children, Mr Gillespie sought out a key and opened the patio door.

  A few pot plants had died of neglect but this was made up for by the profusion of weeds muscling through the cracks in the paving. Rosebay willowherb had colonised the terrace, as it had the bombsites of his childhood in Coventry. He looked at a clot of orange and black caterpillars wound about a flowering ragwort. He saw the rank and overgrown plot – the flock of goldfinches feeding on the seed heads of teasel, the chip-chip alarm call of a blackbird that had been feeding on the lilac’s fruit. He descended the mossy steps and launched into the tangled garden. Everywhere, things had slipped their boundaries. He made his way past hogweed and cow parsley to the once espaliered apple trees, where he sat down in the long grass and looked towards the blind and shuttered house. The garden had become a wilderness. And Mr Gillespie saw that it was good.

  Bog man

  When they started out he shouted in triumph like a boy returning from battle. People who had known him lined the route bearing garlands of flowers and tossing before his feet, and the feet of his two companions, broken eggshells. The shards stung and adhered to his flesh: save for the cap fastened under his chin and the hide belt around his waist, he was naked.

  It pleased him, in the breadth and dazzle of dawn, to feel the eyes of women on his body. Daylight explored him; the dye on his skin gripped and cracked under the wind’s scrutiny. On the margins of the settlement he heard keening from within a hut, though his eyes, which rolled and stared like those of a running horse, took in only the branches of rowan and whitethorn that blazed outside the gate. Dimly amid the tumult of his brain he recalled that one very like himself had dreaded this part of the journey; but that was before his fast and purification, before the bonfires that scoured the darkness and the bitter broth, offered at sunrise, whose mixture of barley and linseed, knotweed and bristlegrass had scorched the dread out of his limbs and set his mind blazing towards its consummation.

  The escorts watched him closely. His bride was waiting, they said. The naked man looked down at his erection and laughed and did not think to wipe the spittle from his lips.

  It was necessary, as they negotiated a path through ash trees, for the men to assist him. The trees thinned and dwindled, the plain levelled out, and for the first time they felt a twinge of resistance in the shivering, painted body.

  “Courage,” said one of them. “This is what you were born for.”

  Smoke clung to the surface of the bog; it had drifted down from the hillsides where, yesternight, cattle had been driven between two fires. His escorts spoke to him about the summer that was coming: it would blow these shadows from the sweet earth, they said, his brothers would lead their livestock out to pasture and he would be with them, every blade of grass his gift.

  The naked man looked at his hands. They were clean and unblemished. His body had the softness of one who has been spared toil.

  The others understood the work of the broth. Visions of loveliness, even now, would be dancing before the man’s eyes. They guided him through moss and heather, one implacable hand under each of his armpits. The naked man began to gibber; his arms and legs burned, great pains tore up his belly. He crouched into the bog to vomit.

  The strong men raised and supported him to the place where water gushed clear and cold from a fissure in the moss. Around the water’s tongue the plants grew whose seeds he had eaten that morning.

  The naked man stood, legs half bent, like a child exposed to frost, and his roiling eyes seemed to recognise the place. Unsupported, he fell again and attempted to haul himself away from the spring. The sphagnum moss seemed to suck him down, the goddess pulling him already into her. He fought off, with a strength that surprised his assailants, their first attempt to sling the rope about his neck. The men persisted: his delirium was too far gone for persuasion. Besides, they knew it was often thus. They redoubled their efforts without anger or malice. It was no sacrifice if it cost nothing. The man had to die so that others might live.

  Orpheus’s lot

  Orpheus’s lot

  Orpheus? It certainly rings a bell. I get so many, you know – impossible to keep track of every one. You’d think that was the advantage of this job, you get to meet all sorts: peasants, kings, adulterous wives, murdered husbands, warriors, philosophers – you name it, I’ve had them in the back of my boat. But to be honest, and I always am honest, most of them are a major disappointment. All that moaning, all that special pleading. You’d think they’d show a bit of dignity. Philosophers are the worst: half of them say they don’t believe in you, the other half can’t stop asking questions. And you�
�d never imagine the number of people who seem to reckon the rules shouldn’t apply to them. Actors, for instance: so they made people laugh, they dished up a bit of pity and fear – it’s no reason to expect special favours. How about yourself, sir? Lost your head, I see. Well, it’s more original than many. I’ve had a city’s worth of plague victims lately. It gets monotonous.

  Sleep? No, I don’t go in for that sort of thing. No Time, for starters. Except once, and that was unfair. Hang about – it’s coming back to me. Orpheus. He was the one who tricked me. Didn’t pay his fare, either. It’s as fresh as if it were yesterday. Which, as far as I’m concerned, it was. Curly hair, lovely singing voice. Charmed wild animals, made trees and rocks dance, even diverted the course of rivers. Could have made a lot of money with a talent like that. He just started plucking his lyre and before I knew it, bam, I’d nodded off and he’d hitched a crossing.

  It was a love thing. Eurydice was the name. Snakebites, if I remember. Blighter had balls, I’ll give him that – not since Hercules came down and bashed the mutt about did anyone living try and pull that trick. And his methods were subtler. He softened my boss’s heart, which I have to admit was impressive. Or I should say: the music worked wonders on his wife. She’s always been the softie of the two. Human, you see: you never shake it off. And the boss is devoted to her, believe it or not, so when Orpheus got her on side, it was almost inevitable. Mind you, the boss is cunning. That not looking back clause: Orpheus was bound to fall for it. The boss doesn’t grant favours. Not in his nature – or his remit. And besides, it wouldn’t be fair, would it? Eurydice got put back among the shades where she belonged. Everything came right in the end. You seem very interested.

  It’s yourself, isn’t it? I recognise you now. I’m useless with names but I never forget a face. Here, you haven’t got that lyre, have you? I don’t want to be caught napping again. Still, no hard feelings. Sit back and enjoy the ride. You’ll be staying with us a little longer, I take it, this time…

  Gorgon

  As far as we in the hills are concerned, the reign of the gorgon began with rumours, and I half believed them, for though the stories grew more horrible with every telling, they had the partial authority of witness. Someone had found the discarded limbs, the spilt viscera: a goatherd perhaps, stumbling across a petrified mother and the remains of her child.

  This was at a time of high prices, when every merchant’s thoughts were with his shipments of grain. Talk of monsters was bad for business: it made buyers cautious and kept out foreign trade. When a messenger ran, bloodied, into the city with tales of fresh horror, some called for a levy of troops to meet the enemy, but these excitable individuals were put in their place. We could not afford to waste time and treasure on hypothetical threats from unproven sources.

  “If there is a gorgon,” an elder said, “and I am sceptical on that point, then country folk have our sympathy. But they mustn’t come to us that have ridden out plagues and sieges complaining of a local difficulty. We have enough on our plates not to worry ourselves with mythical creatures.”

  At first it was easy to ignore the gorgon: her victims, though ever more numerous, were unknown to us and of little significance. None can gaze on that hideous face and survive, yet it takes a strong constitution to look, not in the gorgon’s eyes, but at the simple fact of her existence. Those who did, and shouted warnings in the streets, were regarded as troublemakers; it was the sort of thing our enemies would have us do. This did not prevent dreamers from thinking up impractical solutions: tinted-glass helmets, or a complex and hopeless device using blades and mirrors. Sceptics viewed such efforts with contempt; the gorgon was a natural phenomenon, they argued, and it was presumptuous to oppose a daughter of Gaia. Others conceded that her depredations might make life more uncomfortable for us and that the only solution was to build higher walls around our villas and to hire mercenaries to guard the hillsides. These things were done, and eventually the tide of refugees abated, knowing that nothing awaited them on the heights save the sharp points of cold iron.

  The countryside emptied and famine stalked the city. A second hunger followed. We felt sorry for the victims, of course, but a quick death is preferable to slow starvation and besides, none of us had family in the slums. We hoped the gorgon’s fury might exhaust itself there. Yet the creature returned, again and again, to ever more empty streets, and soon the serpents on her head were flicking their tongues towards our homes.

  For the first time, we in the hills feel directly threatened. Some are indignant about this; others are given to weeping and prayer. Every day we must pay the mercenaries more to keep them from deserting. Naturally, those with the means are looking for ways out, but we chose our hills for the security they offered – the sea on one side, the city on the other. We are trapped in a prison of our own making. Very soon, one bright morning, we will awake to find the soldiers gone.

  I look at my children and wonder which will be the more merciful: teeth or stone. That I can write these words does not make them any easier to bear.

  Narcissus & the pool of mirrors

  Trapped in the closed and perfect circle of his infatuation, Narcissus was not unhappy. His punishment for spurning the boy who adored him, to be enamoured beyond distraction of his own reflection in a pool, was intended to make him take his life – a million florists depended on it – yet this violent resolution had not come to pass. Nemesis watched as, day after day, the young man crouched above his image. That other, trapped in its mirror of shimmering fins, had no being, a fact that ought to have driven Narcissus mad. Yet he seemed content within the confines of his predicament, for no infidelity could threaten him, and he had only to reach down to his own flesh to move his image to ecstasy.

  Nemesis, discomfited, endured the scorn of the young man who had invoked her aid. “Fat lot of use you turned out to be,” Ameinias said. Bitterness had corrupted the unrequited lover: his skin was a morass of pustules and craters and the golden hair fell in strands from his head, as though an invisible bird were perched on his shoulder, plucking out the lining for its nest.

  Nemesis considered punishing Ameinias for his effrontery; yet she too hated to see Narcissus’s contentment. For three days she hid in her cave to think up a solution. When it came to her, every nymph and satyr in Boeotia shivered at the sound of her laughter.

  Narcissus, waking one morning beside the pool where he knew his beloved awaited him, opened his eyes on a thousand reflectivee surfaces. Beaten gold and silver mirrors hung like fruit from every tree; there were bowls of water as abundant as daisies set out on the grass, and in each and every one of them Narcissus found his image perplexed, aroused and fearful. From opposing banks of the pool, Nemesis and Ameinias watched as the perfect boy ran from one reflection to another. Each was as lovely as the last; yet he could not hope to contemplate them all. He crawled from mirror to dish and back again, maddened by the thought of all that he turned his back on.

  As the days and weeks passed and Narcissus found his reflection proliferating in all directions, his body began to coarsen. His bronzed flesh lost its lustre, his eyes sank into their orbits, his dark curls began to fall. Gratified beyond expectations, the lover he had spurned told everyone about the torment of Narcissus. Crowds gathered to watch as the famous youth attempted, in vain, and with ever more frantic and apish gestures, to contain in one glance every reflection of his decay. A thousand onlookers jeered while his image danced on the lenses of their eyes. Insatiable in their curiosity, they watched as Narcissus grew thin and unlovely. He could not eat or drink or sleep; when, in desperation, he attempted to spill or smash the likenesses that horrified him, the surfaces wherein his features wept redoubled in number. People remarked on his wrinkles and pouches; they passed comment on every instant of Narcissus’s plight. So great was the general appetite that Ameinias, who was responsible for the spectacle, began to wish that it would cease, one way or another.

  He was not disappointed. The pullulation of images had worn
Narcissus to the bone; and it was in a spirit of great sorrow and satisfaction that people arrived one morning to deplore the condition of the celebrated corpse.

  Preliminary report on the economics of unicorns

  It has been exceedingly instructive, for our investigation into the potential of a domestically unproven industry, to learn about the economics of unicorns in Great Britain. I am indebted to Mr Giles Randolph of Unicorn Technological (UniT) for showing me around the farms, slaughterhouses and processing plants of his native Northamptonshire.

  Briefly, here are my observations:

  • Britain’s national herd has continued to decline as imports of meat and horn from Brazil accelerate.

  • There are currently 7.4 million head of unicorn in the UK, down by 4.3 per cent on the previous year.

  • Attempts by environmentalists to link Brazilian imports with rainforest destruction have had little measurable effect. This bodes well for an industry of our own.

  • The number of foals born decreased from a year ago as foaling rates struggle to recover from the Unicorn Spongiform Encephalopathy crisis. Starting a herd from scratch using Canadian stock would make us competitive in European markets from an early stage.

  • Age and diet have a demonstrable impact on product yield, quality and utility. Only stallions and mares aged 6 and over and raised in woodland enclosures mimicking natural habitats produce horn of interest to the pharmaceutical industry. Increasing numbers of British farmers, made uncompetitive by the burden of EU welfare legislation, are turning to mature horn production. A national industry of our own need not attempt to compete in this area.

  • The horn of colts and fillies, notably inferior, is yet, with coarse grain feeding, commercially valuable much sooner and at lower input costs. Applications include industrial lubricants, petroleum substitutes in hygiene products (a growth area given environmental concerns) and glue.