Free Griefwork by James Hamilton-Paterson

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. Theyput 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 inbetter 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