For a moment she watched his hands, then said ‘I think you’re a strong man.’
‘What?’ he glanced up absently.
‘A strong man. Someone who doesn’t care what people think of him. Who’s free inside himself. Who dares tell diplomats and aristocrats to stop smoking.’ She wiped mist away from a pane with a fur cuff. ‘I like that kind of power. The other kind is – what was that expression? – two-a-penny.’
Leon only murmured ‘power’, musingly, an aside which might have been no more than a conventional politeness while his attention wandered.
‘We’ve all had a surfeit of tyranny,’ she continued. ‘You here in Europe, we in Asia. Swaggering generals, swaggering armies, police chiefs, politicians, mayors, landowners, petty officials, criminal bosses. In only the last five years my country has been liberated by the Japanese – according to them – and now by the Allies – according to them. Nobody bothered to ask us, but we were perfectly content six years ago without all these liberations and massacres.’ She moved to another pane and drew a neat line of curlicues in the condensation. From each letter, if indeed it was writing, a drop of water gathered and ploughed its way downward, increasing in size and momentum. ‘A river of dead children, this I have seen. From one side to the other. Like little logs floating. Now they tell us things are back to normal again, it was a hiccup of history. So what are we to think of all that power? Those swaggering generals?’
She turned from the window and Leon, who was still caressing the cycad, gave a start and said, ‘Me? I’m just a gardener.’
‘One who would tell a swaggering general to stop smoking in your Palm House, I’ve no doubt.’
‘Maybe I have hidden motives. I’ll show you something.’ She followed him obediently as he walked back and took from its shelf the half-full jar of fermenting cigarette juice. He shook it and she watched the brown liquid tumble and froth, the fragments of paper and shreds of tobacco whirling. ‘Not power,’ he said. ‘Self interest. As always.’
‘I don’t understand. Oh, maybe you don’t like the smell of cigarettes. But that’s a private dislike, not self interest.’
‘No. This juice is valuable to me. I need it. So I collect cigarettes from people who smoke here. Before the war I didn’t bother because I had a tobacco supply. Now there’s a market even for the stubs. So if I can take nearly whole cigarettes away from people like that Italian diplomat who comes here, I’m in luck and it makes me vigilant. As soon as they light up, there I am with my jar and what you call my power. It’s no more than a need for nicotine.’
‘A need?’ she asked uncertainly. ‘You mean, you …?’
‘Drink it? Inject it? No, just spray it on the plants. Nicotine’s a wonderful pesticide.’
‘I’ll pay you a compliment,’ she said, ‘but it’s the truth. You’re a better gardener than any in my country. You understand our own plants better than we do ourselves. How can this be, since you told me once you’ve never been further than this city and that place by the sea where you were born?’
‘I’ve studied,’ he said with a certain haughty modesty. ‘I don’t think it matters where a plant comes from. They’re all the same, really. Of course, some prefer heat and others cold, some need more water or a different soil, a lot of light or plenty of shade. It’s just a matter of knowing these things and then paying attention to each plant to get the balance. Start with the idea that things want to grow, that they have to be actively dissuaded from growing. You’ve seen that patch of concrete by the main entrance? You can’t at the moment, of course, but when the snow clears have a look as you come in and out. They put that down only three years ago for the commandant’s car’ (an immense Mercedes with little silver flagpoles on each wing sporting swastika pennants) ‘and already there’s grass coming up through the cracks. The other sort of power. There’s no mystery, you know. A gardener like me doesn’t really have to do anything much except watch and listen. The plants do the rest.’
‘Then why do the plants in our gardens at home not look as good as the same varieties you have here, thousands of miles away in the wrong climate?’
‘I couldn’t say.’ Leon put the nicotine jar back on the shelf. ‘Perhaps your own gardeners aren’t really gardeners but just men you employ to keep order. Also, I suppose your plants are in their natural surroundings, at the mercy of storms and pests and wild animals. And children throwing sticks and catapulting stones to get the tamarinds and mangoes down.’
‘How do you know that?’ she asked in astonishment.
‘I assume. All children everywhere must be the same. Here it’s plums and pears. Why should your village children be any different from ours? You’re leaving out something else.’ He indicated the great indoor jungle. ‘Beautiful, yes. But also largely sterile. Some of the plants reproduce themselves but many don’t. No birds come to drop seeds. No bees or bats exchange pollen. There are a lot of singletons, shrubs which are the only representatives of their species here. In order to keep the strain going I need to import more seeds or seedlings, grow them up and pollinate them by hand. It’s the main part of our project here, to make all our species more secure. That’s the drawback to an artificial environment. Back home you don’t need to worry. Nature takes care of everything. A more reliable hand but rougher and readier than mine, and that’s the only reason why these plants may seem to be in better condition, just as I may seem to be a better gardener than yours.’
When two strangers hold each other in slight awe, even if their awes are of a quite different variety, it can produce its own stilted intimacy. Of course he was flattered by this rarefied creature descending from her charmed circle of diplomats and emissaries, magic people who lived in a world above that of common hardship and rationing, trotting through the snow to watch and question him at work. And flattery of manner, combined with veiled homilies about power, could scarcely avoid bordering on the erotic’s secret territory. The furs with their beads of moisture like sweat or secretion; the slender brown finger writing on the window a message recording atrocity or desire – he would never know which. A point was reached (as he shut off a stopcock and began unscrewing a leaking tap) when a proposition was in the air, though utterly shapeless and undefined. Something about the waning afternoon light bouncing off the snow outside cut the Palm House adrift on its own island, starting an intangible process whereby two strangers become survivors, who in turn become inhabitants, who perforce change from allies into intimates skipping only, maybe, a stage of friendship. The process was set in motion, rendered the more titillating since neither knew which stage had been reached. It was the moment of unbearable delicacy which can lead to unbearable delight, or else to an abrupt and unaccountable loss of interest.
‘I’ve no right to ask this,’ she said without the least impertinence, ‘but are you happy here?’
‘Happy?’ It was the sort of job which could be done without a vice, merely needing a small adjustable spanner which he took from the shelf next to the nicotine jar. Nobody had ever asked him a direct personal question in his life. He unscrewed the handle from the body of the tap and examined its rust-orange washer. ‘I’m content enough, of course. To have survived the war. Those things.’
‘Everybody must have some longing, some dissatisfaction. This is a major Western belief, I thought.’
‘Ah.’ He found a pair of pliers, gripped the plunger and unscrewed the little brass plate which held the washer.
She retreated fractionally. ‘Many people, for example, may be quite content in the ordinary way but still have a hankering to travel, for example. The trip of a lifetime to see – oh, I don’t know – the Pyramids or the Taj Mahal, the Amazon or Tahiti. In your case it would be hardly surprising if you wanted to see the places where all these plants grow naturally as part of the landscape.’
‘Your own country, for instance.’
‘For instance.’ A small shoulder rose and fell beneath the fur, releasing a fragrant breath of ‘Cuir’.
I
t occurred to him that even allowing for her tropical origins she must be feeling the heat but he lacked the courage to suggest she remove her coat. ‘Of course I’ve thought about it. Naturally I’d be curious. But I know I never shall. It’s not the point. My job here as curator carries full-time responsibilities and besides, travel that far must be very expensive. I never could have that sort of money. So I never consider it.’
‘Oh,’ said the princess, ‘all things are possible, you know.’ This was said without archness and he took it at prosaic face value.
‘Football pools? A lottery? I never waste money on things like that so I’m never likely to make any, either.’
‘But you surely take holidays now and then? This Botanical Association, whatever it’s called: presumably they’re normal employers and not slave drivers. An expert like yourself is unique. Every so often he needs a sabbatical for research. You’re not some ordinary gardener.’
‘The Royal Botanic Society gives its employees holidays, of course,’ he said a little stiffly. ‘Excuse me a moment.’ He left the princess standing there and went away down the nave. The No Admittance door banged softly behind him through the muggy atmosphere. Almost at once he reappeared. She sighed and poked a finger at the pieces of dismantled tap. He returned with a new washer which he began to fit. ‘I’m sorry. What were you saying?’
She was more than equal to this small rudeness. ‘If it has slipped your memory in two minutes one would certainly think your brain could do with a holiday even if your body doesn’t need one.’ Quite unexpectedly this made him smile. ‘Say you didn’t go abroad, say you couldn’t bring yourself to leave this damned freezing dilapidated derelict city, you could at least stay at home and let someone else look after your greenhouse for a fortnight. They surely couldn’t ruin it. You must have assistants.’
‘Not proper assistants,’ Leon told her. ‘There isn’t the money. Just some labourers. And yes, they could ruin it quite easily. Only I and … and only I know how the boilers work. When you say stay at home, this is my home. I live here.’
She repeated this in amazement, adding, ‘On these premises?’, and looked about her as if expecting to glimpse a camp-bed half concealed by shrubbery.
‘Yes,’ he said, now almost shyly. ‘Have for years.’
‘Oh, but –’. She had been on the point of saying, ‘Then perhaps you, too, are a singleton’ but was stopped by the squeak of the entrance doors. The light was going steadily now but the neat figure was easily recognisable as he approached. The dark overcoat and suit, even the muffler at the throat marked a visitor from an exterior world. The man’s eyes sliced Leon’s face in passing, then he spoke to her in a mellifluous babble.
‘He’s worried I should return unescorted in the dark,’ she told Leon. ‘He points out quite correctly that this is still a dangerous city full of poor and desperate people who might take advantage of an obvious foreigner like myself, especially a woman. Well, I’ll go now, but with more than customary thanks for a fascinating and enlightening afternoon. Your magic place is a partial cure for homesickness, Mr Gardener.’
‘Leon.’
‘Mr Leon. I have a feeling your life is going to change soon.’
The effect of these words was immediate. ‘Oh, don’t say that,’ he cried.
‘I didn’t mean for the worse,’ she said reassuringly. ‘Quite the contrary.’
‘But I don’t want change. No, no change. I’m content, as I said. Thoroughly content.’ As if in placation he added, ‘I have something for you, princess,’ in a formal tone. The equerry’s face had dimmed to a dark blur but still housed the glitter of eyes. Leon went over to the roasting pans and picked out a perfect lotus in its pot, dripping, while supporting its leaves with the other hand. ‘We’ll wrap this in sacking and you shall take it home. Keep it in the warm, in water up to the edge here. Near a window so it can see the sun. Only please don’t tell anyone because the Society wouldn’t be at all happy that its curator is giving plants away. Though in fact these are mine, acquired at my own expense.’
‘Oh,’ she said in delight. ‘Look,’ she showed her companion, ‘basimbun.’ She laid a moth-light hand on Leon’s arm. Not for the first time he noticed the erotic pleasure involved in giving, as if the gift and its acceptance were earnests of greater intimacy. When they left the equerry carried a shapeless ball of hessian in front of him like a tyro-anarchist a bomb. The outer door closed behind her, severing a tentacle of ‘Cuir’ which curled upon itself on the threshold.
‘A delicious person, don’t you think?’ he asked himself as he lit a candle or two in the empty Palm House. Today was a Thursday; the gardens closed at four and there were no night visitors. As he locked the entrance he noticed it was starting to snow again. He hoped the water wouldn’t freeze as it had in 1942, nearly leading to disaster. A raid had uncovered, but miraculously left undamaged, the mains supply in the boulevard half a mile away. After a day or two’s exposure to the intense cold the pipe froze and no water came through to feed the heating system. By sheer good fortune he happened to glance at the thermometer on the boiler and had damped the furnaces down in time. Such reflections scurried through his head as he moved restlessly about. ‘What does she mean?’ he asked a carob whose curious bean had been a vague substitute for confectionery in the war. Not that sweets were once again available, but now the emergency was over one seemed to miss certain things less, others more. Likewise a thick stand of sugar cane nearly dominated one of the areas off the rotunda beneath the dome. It had gone unrecognised by all the occupying forces throughout the war and Leon had used a washing mangle to squeeze out the juice, boiling the smashed fibres to extract what remained. By careful rendering down he had produced a clear syrup which had been a great luxury during the sugarless years.
The afternoon had left him in a state of undefined excitement with a dark current running beneath. ‘What does she mean?’ he asked again. ‘Ssiiih.’ He lit a candle and then blew it out. ‘Change? No, no. We remain true to what we know, don’t we? For ever. What else? Travel. Unravel. Strange winds. And for what? What sought? What found? After all these years? Drop it all? Abandon …? But how beautiful she is. Fit to plant.’ For this was the image which came to him, an instinct that precious things should be rooted in good soil and tended so as to preserve them, to coax them into further blossoming, to keep them in place. It was only the image of a horticulturist, not that of a madman or a murderer, and was accompanied by feelings of wistful tenderness.
How hungry he was, he thought as he walked back towards No Admittance. The door was slightly open and the electric light outlined a figure in the gap. Backlit in this manner it was featureless, but there was in its attitude (one hidden hand evidently on the handle inside) something which suggested a creature poised for sudden flight.
‘Arabia felix,’ said Leon gently with a smile. ‘We’re here.’
For a long time Leon was sure he could hear the lotus’s receding voice:
‘One moment we were floating in such beautiful pale light, our leaves gently interlapping, and the next I was wrenched up and bundled away into total darkness. Before I could see no more I was held up for inspection by a lady of startling beauty. Oh, that I shall one day see her again! I should like to gaze and gaze at her. She reminds me of the past, as if we had met before in some other place. Yet it’s impossible. There was only ever the House. Yet I seemed to have – not a memory, exactly, but an instinct of rightness when I saw her features from close up. Most of the faces bent into mine have been pale and pudgy with gigantic noses. But hers … Delicate nose, delicate eyes. I’m sure I know them from somewhere far, far away. Or long, long ago? Something about the skin colour. It has to do with love, perhaps, or just a dream, one of those dreams that infect a whole life.
‘A strange sensation now; I believe they’re unwrapping me. Yes, they are. It’s getting lighter and oh! Light! There’s a world outside, after all, and I must take stock of it. Very well: I find myself back on my feet, as o
ne might say, floating in a pot next to a window. The view is extraordinary, I’m so high up. Or it will be tomorrow, for now it’s quite dark outside though I can still see a canal with boats frozen into it and a little bridge with people going over, some of them on bicycles. Lights are coming on. There’ll be all sorts of activity to watch. And clearer, since this window isn’t misty like the ones in the House. Here it’s just like looking through air instead of glass so it seems almost a miracle being perfectly warm while out there it’s obviously very cold indeed. The people are all wrapped up as I was for my journey here, and leave footprints in the snow. Being higher, the light is different. It’s not so blanched but bluer, a bit the colour of the smoke from cigarettes when they’re first lit and before there’s any ash on the tip. (A sudden homesick pang there, remembering how our gardener would suddenly appear and the cigarette disappear.) The air’s much drier in here which I suppose explains the lack of mist on the glass. That doesn’t matter since I’m floating again and so can’t dry out for the moment at least, but it’s a curious sensation. It gives everything a harder edge.
‘The room itself is full of soft things: carpets, cushions, rugs, sofas, curtains, in gold and stripes. Mirrors, too, and pictures. A great fireplace with logs burning in it. (I wonder where she got those!) All very grand, and I can imagine parties in here with noblemen and people like that. Hardly my sort of society. If I feel at all awkward or out of place it isn’t that which makes me feel humble, though, but the princess herself. A girl who looks quite like her – the same dark skin and hair and eyes though a lot younger, almost a child – has come in wearing a sort of red robe and carrying a tray with silver things on it.
‘And all the time I can’t clear my mind at all. Thoughts rush at me, the strangest new feelings and impressions. Yet underneath them is a single theme, I think, something bruise-coloured and heavy. It has to do with her, now drinking her tea alone by the fire. She, too, is thinking. Why do I imagine she’s thinking about the House? Even about Leon, our gardener? It’s as if she’s looking back at him and wondering if he’s looking back at her. Distance, that’s it. It’s about separation and distance. Sadly, I can’t judge because not only do lotuses have almost no sense of time but I was blind throughout my journey here. For a moment then I thought I glimpsed a huge expanse of sea – an entire ocean, perhaps – but surely we couldn’t have travelled that far? More like the other side of town than the other side of the world. Where do these stray images come from? I believe it’s still connected with the gardener. Maybe I’m not just his simple gift to her but more his emissary: a doleful homesick creature half proxy and half spy cunningly planted so as to be nearer her than he himself can be?
Griefwork Page 6