Griefwork (25 page)

‘And the higher up the social ladder they are the worse it gets. Diplomats! Dear God! Their minds whirl around in little circles bounded and described by four cardinal points: propriety, security, ambition, terror of disgrace. Once in a while they might trap another diplomat’s wife within that circle, find her own exactly fits theirs and embark on the conventional round of nervous trysts in unfashionable restaurants, of meetings in dark concert halls on the edges of towns in which neither wants to listen to Max Reger, of exchanged glances and brushed fingertips at official functions. Diplomats are bad? Princesses are still worse. Even the people they’re allowed to talk to are defined by protocol, let alone those they’re permitted to sleep with. Namely, two, other than their own husbands:
M.
Doigt
et son
voisin
, as I’ve heard that Italian vilely express it.

‘The fact that she comes here to see you and picks your brain about plants and things is significant, of course, but not in the way you think. If you did agree to follow her to her distant steamy capital, do you really imagine her vulgar hints (“we’ll be working
very
closely”) will be made good? She learned her
double
entendre
in the cinema, probably from Mae West, along with that stagey “I may be going away …” of hers. Think, man, for pity’s sake think – and come closer while you’re about it. She’s as free now as she’ll ever be for that sort of dalliance, and that’s not free at all. Her dark companion – you remember him now? Those eyes miss not a trick. Back home in her own country she won’t be a diplomat any longer, she’ll be royalty. Is it likely that royalty would be allowed to
flirt with a foreigner who puts up greenhouses? Quite. Yes, we know she’s beautiful. Alas.

‘I’m bored with this topic, but do by all means come here. Where the gypsy’s concerned, too, you’d better get your ideas straight. I know you hadn’t planned on him, that you were taken by surprise, ambushed by circumstances, call it what you like. It was wonderfully heroic and noble of you. Mr Samaritan, 1944. But since when do Good Samaritans reward themselves by screwing the victim? Ah, he also reminds you of
her,
does he? Dear heaven, is there anyone who doesn’t? I realise you call it faithful but most would call it obsessive. Well, it only goes to show what we all think: humans are a complete mess.

‘“Cruel” again? We can offer you something less metaphorical if only you’d step a little –. That’s it. There. Now can you see it? Yes indeed, shining just where he dropped it in his delicious anguish. Your pruning knife. Well you’ll be damned … And so, my dear gardener, you will. No, you certainly don’t want to bother fetching torches and rakes and things. Just a step or two further, a foot planted firmly beneath my neighbour’s leaf should do the trick because I’ve also boldly gone there, though you mightn’t think it.
Yes!
Precisely!
Bliss-bliss-bliss! A little painful for me because even a thin old galosh isn’t as tender as firm young gypsy, but oh! Oh! Sumptuous!
Thank
you, God.’

Winter had drawn itself out as if to hold in hibernation the infections bequeathed by war. Now and then it would seem over at last, that the sun could get to work and, in thawing out the corruption, brew compost for spring’s flowers. On such days the sky above the Palm House was an intense windscrubbed blue against which the golden galleon scudded bravely along, her sails stiff. Then after a day or two fresh draughts arrived from the Steppes bringing with them first a dimming cirrus, then a pearlescent overcast and later the familiar rugs of dark cloud which miraculously frayed to earth as white feathers.

Leon had ventured out less and less, so painful was the raw air to his chest and so long the coughing fits it provoked. Once or twice he did find himself in the Gardens, viewing his domain from the outside, and could only be depressed by what he saw. Such stove houses needed repainting every four years, especially the putty which otherwise dried out and cracked. His Palm House hadn’t had a lick of paint since 1938, almost exactly eight years ago. In that time it had become shabby. Much of the glass didn’t even match. In an average year five hundred or so panes broke as a result of the structure’s flexing and corroding. This tally had multiplied considerably during the war because of blast and shrapnel, to say nothing of a hailstorm in 1943
which alone had smashed nearly four thousand panes in twenty minutes. As the war had progressed new glass had been slower and slower in coming and was finally unavailable. No commandeered factory had been allowed to fill special orders for a palm house whose panes were long and narrow and precisely curved.

At the war’s outbreak Leon had circumspectly over-ordered glass and the extensive store had at one time contained twenty-three thousand panes. Over the last year, though, he had been reduced to drawing on crated stocks discovered at the back of the gravel bins. This was antique, dating (according to an enclosed invoice hand-written in rusty ink) from 1907. He thought it was probably the last batch of tinted glass ever ordered. Up until then the Palm House, in common with that at Kew and elsewhere, had been painted green and glazed in green. The glass was coloured with copper oxide because it was thought necessary to protect the plants by shade of a natural tone. By the turn of the century the air pollution in many cities was fogging the glass enough to cut down light severely and tinting was abandoned. When they had unpacked the ancient stocks Leon and his assistants found that over the years much of it had changed colour to a variety of hues ranging from a nearly opaque bottle to malignant pink. Several dozen panes were quite colourless while almost as many were as black as thin sheets of jet, except at the edges where they were the dark grey of X-rays. The wartime maintenance crews had used the least discoloured glass but the place had still emerged looking patched and piebald. He could hardly decide which were worse: brilliant cold days which picked out his building cruelly against the snow’s whiteness, showing every rust streak, every peeling gutter, every bizarre tint mottling its surface; or the leaden days whose sombre light made of it a sad mineral lump, its skin dull as slate, blinded from within by steam and from without by soot. After such confrontations
with appearances he would return bitter and morose. It all confirmed his glummest suspicions. The moving finger had written, on glass and in condensation. His vision, that jewelled airship which had hovered in its bright new livery among the trees in 1938 as if tugging at its moorings, impatient to be gone, was long grounded. He could scarcely believe it was ever intended to soar again. On the contrary, it lay as if partially embedded after a disaster. One expected at any moment to see its envelope sag and collapse, its iron ribs poke through.

Increasingly in these pessimistic moods he wanted to be rid of it, hankered after the killing air outside, nearly yearned for the pitiless expanses of Flinn and its estuarine consolations. Long ago (it seemed) in his intense, driven, ’prentice years when by the glow of lamp and candle he had read himself an education in a potting shed, he had come across a story about Mendelssohn, for in those days his omnivorous reading included much that had no connection with Linnaeus and the
Genera
Plantarum
or Wendland and the
Index
Palmarum.
The story described how the composer, on a visit to Denmark Hill in London with his wife in the spring of 1842, had eagerly planned a picnic outing to Windsor Great Park. One balmy morning the hampers were packed, the carriage arrived, the ladies were handed up. Then at the last moment Mendelssohn had hung back, returned to the house, and eventually his wife emerged alone. ‘We shall drive on without him,’ she told the disappointed party. ‘He has something in his mind and begs to be excused.’ When in the early evening after a glorious day the picnickers arrived back in Denmark Hill they were greeted by a musician eager to play them his latest composition, ‘Spring Song’, which he did to cries of admiration. ‘That’s what I’ve been doing while you’ve been at Windsor,’ he said.

What was it about this story which had impressed the young Leon enough for him to recall it in 1946 while brooding on his
Palm House’s ruin? Not, at any rate, the urgency of genius, that cliché of cinematic proportions. Rather, it had to do with versions of truthfulness. Ordinary people went and sat out in nature and steeped themselves in views, marvelled at the painterly effects of sunlight on leaf and grass blade, were enchanted by Her Majesty’s deer, filled themselves with cold hock and jellied fowl. Extraordinary people knew all that by heart, stayed at home in South London in dark rooms crammed with pictures and ferns and furniture and created something faithful to all sunlight that ever was, all blue skies and shifting grasses, and which would outlast every tree they saw. Artifice again. The deft dream always would supplant the conventional vista … And in
this
film, at any rate, the earnest young autodidact with the yellow hair would have got up from his peat bale and gone outside to gaze at the Palm House shivering in moonlight like a tinfoil mirage. One day … Ah, one day.

And the day had come, and the day had gone, and all was leprous and obscured.

Inside, the House appeared remarkably normal – at least to the casual visitor. The occluded light of dud glass went scarcely noticed, was merely a reminder that times were hard, that this was a period of make-do-and-mend. Whose shirt cuffs were not turned? Whose sheets not resewn sides-to-middle? Why should a building be any different? It had even acquired a heroic, rakish look in certain lights, like one of those ex-soldiers glaring on the pavement outside cinemas and restaurants through one clear lens and one smoked. What couldn’t be denied was that botanically it had never looked better. New plants burgeoned, the mature grew in stature. It was this the visitors came for and for this they praised the gardener. Hitherto, praise had evidently cheered the man but just lately seemed to have no effect on him, might even have deepened the creases which had appeared on either side of his stubborn mouth.

Tonight, suspicions of his growing strangeness were at last confirmed by unequivocal symptoms. The cropped skull was amazing, though none dared give it such a knowing look as the Italian chargé. They also noticed he was walking with a slight limp and at once began to imagine a set of circumstances in which he might have had a brutal haircut and gone lame, trying to connect them with that same compulsion which makes people look for a narrative thread between a stranger’s tattoo and his heavy cold. It was an intriguing game since it prompted them to invent a hidden life for him, one not spent beneath glass and open to public scrutiny.

‘
Est-ce
qu’elle est arrivée,
peut-être?
’ The usual enquiry could be heard as the sound of the double doors tweaked pairs of eyes out around fronds and stems.

‘My dears …’ The cold, which was extreme, maybe provoked the chargé to more than his usual waspish languor. ‘My dears,
elle
ne
va
pas
arriver,
tout
court.
I’m not at all sure I care for this –’ he had sunk his beak gingerly towards the sparse greenish flowers buried unassumingly at the heart of some fleshy blades. ‘Now you must tell me, do you have these in Brazil?’ This was addressed to a tall, handsome young man whose sideboards still trailed into silky wicks like a boy’s rather than being shaved square. ‘Never mind what they look like, you couldn’t possibly forget the smell. Like a tom-cat sitting in a jasmine bush. Fairly hateful, I’d say, but authentically exotic.’

‘We have flowers which smell of decaying cheese,’ offered the young man. ‘They attract flies and insects which pollinate them.’

‘And are they beautiful?’

‘Exquisite.’

‘One might have guessed.’ The chargé lit a cigarette. ‘I only did that to attract you,’ he said as Leon surged darkly forward, ‘though not, I confess, with pollination in mind. What
are these spear things called?’ He stubbed out the cigarette and courteously handed it to the gardener.

‘Down there to the left there’s a label.’

‘Good gracious, so there is.’ The diplomat bent forward from the waist like melting toffee. ‘It flowers day and night but is only scented after dark,’ he announced at large. ‘Very frugal, I’d say. Now then, sir, I have a message for you.’ He took from an inside pocket a small creamy envelope embossed with a crest and sealed with green wax. ‘It’s from the lady whose absence you’ll have noticed tonight. She begs to be forgiven but is unable to see you in person. As a matter of fact,’ he consulted his slim watch, ‘I imagine she’s at present somewhere over the Middle East. You’re surprised? My dear sir, I’m sorry to be the bearer of sad news. Evidently you’ve not read tonight’s papers? There’s been a coup in her country.’

From the way his listeners moved a little closer to him the chargé was not after all relaying common knowledge but imparting genuine diplomatic intelligence. He basked as Leon turned the envelope over and over between stained paws. ‘It’s confused, to say the least. It seems to be a coup led by the princess’s own uncle, a military man. He claims to have placed the entire royal family under arrest. Yes indeed, you’re asking the same question as all of us. Since the uncle must himself be of royal blood, how has he managed this trick?
C
hissà
?
What we do know is that he has loudly denounced her father for the usual evil misrule, despotism and tra-la-la but also for having collaborated in a most unpatriotic and abject manner with the recent Japanese occupation. It’s even rumoured that the princess herself is implicated, but I’m sure everyone here who remembers a young, sophisticated and dazzlingly beautiful lady – a true diplomat – will find the charge wholly incredible. Our embassy was told that her uncle’s agents, among them the sinister fellow who used to accompany her here, escorted her to the aeroplane. The
poor girl had no choice but to go. It’s conceivable that when it stops to refuel in one of those dreadful hot places like Karachi she might find a moment to slip away if the British feel it’s in their interest to be sympathetic. I couldn’t bear to think of anything happening to that exquisite creature.’

The chargé fitted another Egyptian cigarette into his oval holder and lit it. For once Leon seemed not to notice. His mind was seeing an aircraft standing, engines ticking over, its propellers flicking off their silver rays as a small figure jumped from the open door into Asia’s immensity.

‘She adored this place, of course, but you know that already. She adored you, too, mister gardener, Don Juan, Lothario. Whence this strange charm, I wonder? It’s proof even against your hairdresser, though in future I beg you to consider Giorgio’s in Palace Square. He understands hair just as you understand plants. I once had some slight –’

‘What will happen to her?’ interrupted Leon fiercely.

The chargé waved a hand and left the gesture’s signature on the air in fragrant smoke.

‘Who can tell? Asian politics are a closed book to me, as they are to everyone else. She may escape, she may not. She may be in jail, shot or on the throne by the end of the week. Her family is immensely powerful and immensely rich. One waits breathlessly for the outcome. There’s even been talk of their all being tried by military tribunal on charges of war crimes; there’s quite a vogue for such things just at present.’

‘She? A war criminal?’ This time Leon heard his own belligerence and remembered himself. Never before had he been part of his visitors’ conversation. He had always answered their questions more or less politely, more or less brusquely according to mood, but he had never taken the liberty of hanging on the edge of a circle of talk until sucked into its centre to offer opinions of his own. Oddly, the chargé seemed almost to be addressing
his remarks directly to him as part of a private conversation the others might overhear if they chose.

‘You must endeavour to be a little worldly,’ he said kindly. ‘In these circumstances to be accused of war crimes may mean no more than that one has been eclipsed, whether temporarily or not. It doesn’t mean that the princess herself committed atrocities with those beautiful hands. Did you ever notice the half-moons of her nails? The most delicate pearly mauve. You must remember that her family were on the throne during both the Japanese occupation and the American liberation. They need to have done nothing. Merely to have survived both régimes confirms guilt in their opponents’ eyes.’

‘But she was interested in city planning.’

The lame absurdity of his protest apparently didn’t strike the chargé whose tone, on the contrary, suggested complete sympathy. ‘
And
she liked Lancôme. I never could respect a woman who hasn’t learned how to wear Guerlain and Lancôme. Both houses produce scents of the utmost sophistication and complexity. The princess had perfect taste in scent, which is very unusual in one so young. She was –’ a razory note here ‘– naturally interested in city planning, too. The recent efforts of the Americans to dislodge the Japanese from her country have left the capital in some disrepair. “Partially destroyed” would be a better description, according to diplomatic friends of mine. She and her family own large tracts of land in the capital including, one gathers, a royal game park. Doesn’t that sound exotic? A private game park in the middle of a city with a gilded hunting pavilion at its centre. That’s the East for you, that’s power. Now along comes the West with another kind of power: oil. The Americans have discovered large deposits along the coast somewhere. Well, my dear, it would hardly amaze one to hear that deals of a Byzantine intricacy were being hatched, would it? Let me see: the uncle takes over with American backing in
return for the promise of exclusive drilling rights. The ex-royal family are allowed by the skin of their teeth to take a suitcase and a servant apiece and fly into exile in somewhere ruinously déclassé like Vientiane or even, God help us, Hawaii. It will emerge that they were secretly planning to sell off the nation’s patrimony, the royal game park and hunting lodge, to the highest bidder in order to build offices for the expected postwar boom. The greedy fiends! Was nothing sacred to them? And so on and so forth. Then after a discreet interval the royal game park is ploughed up and put down to office buildings as part of the government’s democratic and enlightened plan to abolish the last traces of feudalism and restore the nation’s assets to the people. Tra-la-la. My dear, American
diplomacy.
It’s like watching somebody trying to do joinery with a chainsaw. Whatever that is.’