Read Online Griefwork by James Hamilton-Paterson - Free Book Online Page A

roasting pans of military origin which now were laid out in a double row where the winter sun fell through the glass. The pans were filled with water up to the rims of the flowerpots they held, each with its sacred lotus. The pots themselves were no longer visible, being hidden beneath the plants’ circular pads and many-petalled flowers which placidly basked in the faintly blue snowlight. He had acquired the seeds from Burma just before the war but had only recently turned them out and grown them and discovered to his relief that they were a nearly pure white variety instead of the usual effeminate pink. The profound silence of these two complementary whitenesses separated only by a membrane of glass now brought a moisture of satisfaction tohis eyes. He relished the intense juxtaposition of two worlds whose huge disparity in miles had simply been compressed into a temperature differential of thirty degrees centigrade. Suddenly taken with the idea of stuffing the entire Palm House with lotuses he found a box containing a last couple of dozen seeds, filled a jam jar with water and took six of the hard, greyish-purple nuts which looked like small olives, pierced the rounded end of each with the point of a nail and dropped them in. Within a few days they ought to have germinated and could then be potted out to join the others in the roasting pans.
    In early afternoon the sun was a reddening ball balanced on the roof of the Temperate House when Leon heard the squeal of the entrance doors. He was far away, adjusting the padded zinc halter which, by means of a long cable strung from a bracket, supported the venerable head of a cycad, Encephalartos altensteinii. Grown from a seedling by a founder member of the Society, this ancient palm fern now had a stem nearly a foot thick whose rind, marked by the print of every stalk it had ever produced, was reminiscent in its spiral dotted pattern of something briefly glimpsed as a lump of coal cleaves in a grate. He paid no attention to whoever had entered until aware of a motionless presence at the edge of vision.
    ‘Good afternoon,’ said the princess.
    Evidently her own skin contained a substance impervious to the corrosive reagent in snowlight, for she looked neither younger nor older but only slightly paler, wrapped in furs with ice melting from the welts of her boots. A cylindrical muff hung from her neck.
    ‘Why is nobody here?’ she asked, glancing about in surprise. ‘Outside it’s – the whole world is – derelict. Only here is life and warmth. You’re like a heart, I think, beating and beating in this frozen body of Europe.’
    How small she is by day, he thought. He found this saddenedhim. Outside the mysterious persona created for her by the night people she appeared defenceless. The snow only exposed her further. He mounted a step-ladder to tauten the stay.
    ‘Why are you putting wire around its neck?’
    ‘It’s been wired for years. Probably since last century. Too heavy to support itself.’
    ‘Surely it can’t be? In the wild there are no kind gardeners.’
    ‘No. It would have collapsed and decayed long since. Except in freak circumstances it wouldn’t have lived as long as this. Guess how old it is?’
    ‘You said they put the wire on last century, so I’ll say a hundred years. But a hundred years for a plant in a pot must be impossible.’
    ‘I believe the Japanese grow miniature trees in pots to a far greater age. This cycad’s a hundred and seventy-three years old. We’re almost certain it’s the Western world’s oldest potted plant. Beautiful, isn’t it?’
    ‘Not very,’ said the princess. ‘It’s all bent and quite undistinguished. If I saw it like that in my garden at home I should tell my gardeners to pull it up.’
    ‘Exactly. That’s why it’s beautiful. It’s a survivor, and all survivors have beauty. It has everything against it. By present standards the cycads are primitive, some say the most primitive plants still alive. See