Untitled 11

That Tuesday morning, when Terry entered the shed, Rob turned around sharply, hoping that it was Ray.
He’d wanted to talk to him alone, but it wasn’t to be.
They exchanged ‘hellos’ and Terry sat down at the table to make a roll-up.
Rob brought over the old tray (a cast-off from one of the tea shops) with the teapot, mugs, milk and sugar, and sat down in the chair that had come from the estate’s now closed chapel, complete with prayer-book holder at the rear, which he used for odds and sods.
Neither said a word until Ray came in.
‘Hello, lads,’ he said.
‘Alright, chef,’ said the lads back to him.
After changing his coat for a smock, Ray took his paper out from his coat pocket and sat down.
There was an envelope addressed to him on the table (Rob had picked it up and placed it there on arriving) and so he opened it and started reading.
After a minute or so, in which each of the three gardeners filled their mugs, Ray looked up from the memo and leant forward.
‘So,’ he began, ‘anyone had any thoughts about that ivy?’
Terry nodded sideways as if to say he hadn’t given it much thought, while Rob’s top lip crept down and over his mouth, his eyes quizzical and fraught with confusion.
Ray looked over at Rob. ‘What is it, lad?’
‘Nothing, chef,’ mumbled Rob.
‘Well, if you’re worried about Spokes blowing a fuse, you needn’t because he’s not here,’ said Ray.
He passed the note to Rob, who read it and passed it on to Terry with a little smile.
David Spokes had apparently been taken ill (Ray presumed that it must be the botched hernia operation that had hounded him ever since) and would not be at work for the rest of the week.
It was ‘nothing serious’, according to Jane Smedley, David’s PA, who knew that Ray was close to David and had written the note especially.
Nonetheless, he felt it only right to show the note to the lads, considering the task at hand, to put their minds at rest.
Rob appeared strangely confused. Still quizzical as to the meaning of his unresolved dream, he thought that Ray might be trying to subdue his worries of being implicated in the killing of the ivy, and felt compelled to speak.
‘It doesn’t alter the fact that we’re killing the most well-liked wall on the estate without permission, though,’ he said, regretting it immediately and looking down to the floor.
‘You’re right, Rob,’ admitted Ray. ‘We’re killing the pick of the lot and nobody knows, but it needs to be done. It’s killing the wall, you know that, don’t you?’
Rob looked up and over towards Ray. ‘Yeah, I know.’
‘We’ll have it looking just as good as before in a year or two. You’ll see,’ comforted Ray.
He wanted the lad to know that it was all part of the nature of things. ‘You can’t very well have a wall crumble to the ground for the sake of a crawling mass of poisonous hands, can you lad? It’s the nature of civilisation. You let your weeds grow until they’re a threat to your flowers and then you snip ‘em off. Otherwise, we’d be out of a job and all the houses’d be covered in bushes. What would we do with it then? Burn it?’
Rob looked over to Ray, desperate to reveal his dream to him, but said nothing.
Terry, having forgotten the dream already, cast his mind to his own hideous garden, covered in weeds and household debris, weeds slowly making their way up the wall at the back of the house with Emerald playing on the cut-out carpet with her car-boot toys in the living-room.
Rob thought about the dream and how Ray’s words almost encapsulated what he’d dreamt.
Perhaps the ivy did need to go.
It wasn’t right allowing it to strangle an innocent old stable-house. If the ivy had its way, it would eventually render it to a heap of bricks on the ground.
After careful thought, Rob opted to leave the dream alone.
It didn’t really matter if Ray had had a dream about the world being covered in ivy and blowing up. It didn’t matter at all. It was just another dream.
‘Once the ivy’s down, you’ll see it was for the best,’ said Ray after a while, instantly realising how patronising he must have sounded.