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

its stem and the shape of the leaves? They say “palm”, don’t they? But look at this – a cone. It’s so ancient that botanists claim it hasn’t yet reached the evolutionary crossroads of deciding whether to be a palm tree or a conifer. Propagation’s slow and difficult. Already you can see it shouldn’t be here at all. It ought to be a hundred and sixty million years in the past. But here it is. Add to that its rarity, and people like you and your gardeners, to say nothing of the cold only a few feet away which would shrivel it within minutes, and you’ll understand why I think it’s beautiful. For as long as we can keep it happy andprotected this Encephalartos will remain one of Europe’s most celebrated plants.’ He caressed the thick, woody trunk.
    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