Burgeoning and pruning

Burgeoning and pruning

I can see the dog roses from my study window. The older blooms are
starting to shed the odd petal, but there are plenty of buds still to
open, to taste the sunshine and showers of this gusty May. The trellis
has long since been leached of creosote, and where it shows through the
burgeoning greenery you can see how decayed and misshapen it is. A few
months ago I detached a corner of it, or rather it came loose when I
touched it. I held it in my hands, a piece of history that had
witnessed so many years, so many cycles of growth and senescence, that
had supported so many springs' urgent verdure, and withstood, naked, so
many winter nights of sleet and snow. I couldn't bring myself to burn
it or throw it away. It lay on the kitchen table until a use attached
itself to it. It's on the study wall now, to the right of the window.
I've pinned two old photographs there, and a yellowing list of things
to do. From where I sit at my computer I can see both the trellis in
the garden, swathed in flowers, a magnet for butterflies and bees, and
the trellis indoors, with the fading images.

I remember her on the tyre swing, raven hair billowing. Ripley Monkton,
Cambridgeshire, 197_. We were the only kids in the hamlet, supposedly
at that age when boys and girls don't play together. We did. Wet
afternoons of charades and writing stories and reading aloud to each
other and Scrabble and cards and drawing, and playing Chopsticks on her
mum's piano. Sunny afternoons of cowboys-and-Indians
(cowgirl-and-Indian!), hide-and-seek, building treehouses... We would
sit high in the old oak in my front garden and talk of where we would
go and what we would do when we grew up. More often, though, it was
about a trip to The Forest. We were forbidden to enter Monk's Wood, but
from the main treehouse it was temptingly visible on the horizon, a
gloomy remnant of the ancient woodland that once cloaked Britannia; an
alluring but frightening kingdom, where she would be Maid Marion and I
Robin Hood. We laid in supplies and hid them in the treehouse. I
fashioned arrows for my little bow, to protect her from the wolves. She
got hold of a compass, a map and a water bottle. I found a big sheet of
plastic with which to build a bivouac, as instructed by my treasured
"Survival Guide for Boys". We both brought biscuits and squirrelled
them away in a big tin. We were never quite ready - there was always
some reason for a bit more preparation. We didn't know it at the time,
but life was perfect. I remember her smile, her bubbling laughter and
her glossy mane, her pride in it the one chink in her tomboy armour.
Julia.

Then there was Mr. Hargreaves. He moved in next door. We watched him
from the treehouse as he methodically converted what had for years been
a wasteland of nettles, sycamore saplings and blackberry bushes into a
model English country garden. He was as smart as his garden, no matter
the sweatiness of the labour: forking, shovelling, or cutting the grass
with his old manual mower. Dapper, with creased trousers and ironed
drill shirt and cravat. To us, he was an old man. Possibly he was 60.
One day the greenhouse arrived, Mr. Hargreaves businesslike as he
directed the van driver where to park and the delivery men where to
erect it. When they had gone, he admired it from every angle, hands
behind his back as he circled the shiny glass. He must have heard us
giggling. 'You two up there! Do you want to come and see?'

He taught us a lot. About the right time for planting. How to prick out
seedlings. How to make the best compost. The importance of earthworms.
Why apples were grafted. How to overwinter bulbs. How and why to prune.
'Nature is prodigal,' he would say, in that quaint way that had us
smaning when his back was turned. 'Nature is prodigal. In the spring
all is growth. New life burgeons - do you know what "burgeons" means? -
buds and shoots everywhere. Too many to survive. Too many flowers and
too many fruit for them to reach any size. So why does Nature do this?
Is she foolish? Is she wasteful? No. In the wild there are animals and
insects that damage and eat the new growth. Of all the saplings that
germinate around the base of a tree, only one or two will survive. Now
in my garden the plants are protected. There are no animals to eat them
here, and I use derris dust for the worst of the insects. If I don't
prune my rosebushes, what will become of them? They will produce shoots
in every direction. They will grow weak and rangy. The flowers will be
miserable. So I have to cut them back. Like this...' His secateurs left
a macabre trail of mutilated stumps, but, sure enough, in the spring
they were sprouting, and in the summer he presented our mothers with
sumptuous bouquets.

'Mr. Hargreaves, how do you decide which branches to cut off and which
to leave?'

'That's a good question, Daniel-my-boy. Sometimes it's obvious - a
branch is growing in an odd direction, unbalancing the plant. Sometimes
it's a question of taking off a percentage, perhaps half of them, so
you just snip them off evenly here and there. Usually it doesn't matter
too much which branches you remove. You see, the sap that would have
gone to the branches you cut off goes to the remaining ones and makes
the flowers and fruit there bigger and stronger. Some must die that
others might live...' At times a strange expression would come into Mr.
Hargreaves' eyes. He would stare into space for a few seconds,
blinking, a tremor at the corner of his mouth.

Although we never ventured into Monk's Wood, we did get to see another
domain that was almost as intriguing - the inside of Mr. Hargreaves'
house. It was an evening in late autumn and Mr. Hargreaves had
announced a bonfire. His regular gifts of fruit, vegetables and flowers
had endeared him to our mothers, and they had given us permission to
attend. He wasn't in the garden or the greenhouse when we arrived,
wrapped against the cold and clutching our bags of marshmallows.

I knocked. No response. Julia saw that there was a doorbell, and pushed
the button. We heard it buzz. Still no response from Mr. Hargreaves. I
turned the handle and the door opened. 'Mr. Hargreaves? Are you
there?'

'Daniel?' A bleary face appeared from a doorway at the end of the
passage. He yawned. 'Daniel, I'm sorry, I must have overslept. Getting
all the wood together was harder work than I thought. Is Julia with
you? Yes? Listen, why don't you two have a seat in the sitting room
while I get myself ready? It's that room to the right. I won't be
long.' The face disappeared and the door closed after him.

The sitting room was as orderly as the garden. A leather lounge suite,
a teak occasional table, a grandfather clock, a writing desk, a TV
table bearing a small colour set, and three massive bookcases formed
the bulk of the furniture. There was a neat pile of gardening magazines
on the occasional table. We sat on the settee speechless, discomfited
by the unfamiliar spectacle of Mr. Hargreaves caught off-guard and
dishevelled, awed by the bookcases and the stately tocking of the
clock. After sitting there jiggling my leg for a minute, I found the
courage to inspect things more closely. There was a black-and-white
photograph in a simple frame on the mantelpiece. It was a group of
soldiers sitting on the back of a truck, grinning at the camera,
cigarettes in the corners of their mouths and thumbs raised. One of
them was Mr. Hargreaves, his face unlined, his hair dark. I picked it
up and pointed him out to Julia. She smiled nervously and signalled
that I should put it back on the mantelpiece. I moved to the bookcases.
Although I was probably as edgy as Julia, bravado made me pick a book
out. It was a paperback called "The Knights of Bushido". I opened it.
There were illustrations. There was a man wrapped in barbed wire with a
hosepipe in his mouth. It was a history of Japanese war crimes. I could
feel my jugulars throbbing as I paged through it. Parts of the text had
been underlined and there were terse notes in the margin. I remember
one: 'Yes, but Ed lasted five days!!!' The five was underlined. I
recognised the writing from the labelled seedlings in Mr. Hargreaves'
greenhouse. Dry-mouthed, I shoved the book back. I glanced at the other
titles in that bookcase: they were all about war and military history.
I moved to the second bookcase: same thing. The third was devoted to
gardening and botany. I pulled out a wild flower guide and flipped
through it, but I wasn't really seeing anything. By now Julia had also
left the safety of the settee. She was inspecting the writing desk.
Tentatively she pulled at the drawer. It slid open. She gasped, and the
sound brought me back to the present. The drawer was full of gold and
silver medals, and colourful striped ribbons. Footsteps approached.
Julia attempted to slam the drawer, but she pushed at an angle and it
jammed, slightly ajar.

When Mr. Hargreaves entered she had her back to the evidence, but it
must have been obvious to him, even indirectly from her blush and body
language. For a moment his eyes had that vacant look and his mouth
twitched, then he cleared his throat, swallowed and addressed me: 'So
Daniel, I see you've found my wild flower guide! We must go for a walk
next spring and see what we can find...' We knew we could never ask him
about the war.

I never went on that spring walk either. My father's firm relocated to
London. My village life was over. Julia and I wrote to each other for a
few months. She started secondary school in Cambridge and no doubt
discovered boys and pop music. I struggled to adjust to the big city,
eventually acquiring a local accent. Within a year I had a small circle
of buddies. My parents exchanged Christmas cards with Julia's, but the
two of us lost touch.

I took a degree in English and French at Warwick University. As part of
it I had to spend some time in France. I worked as an English teaching
assistant in a large comprehensive in a municipality on the northern
outskirts of Paris: Noisy-le-Sec, or "Nutty-the-Dry" as I jokingly
called it. Certainly, some of the pupils were hard cases, but I enjoyed
it. In my parents' Christmas card to Julia's they had mentioned that I
would be spending the summer in Paris. Her mother phoned to say that
Julia was going to work there too, could they have my address?

I met her by the fountain on the Place St. Michel. I was early but she
was waiting. I would have known her from the splendour of her hair
alone. It reached halfway down her back and shone in the sunshine of
that hot day. I don't know who was more self-conscious. I took her to
the gloomy interior of nearby Polly Magoo for a refreshing bi?re
blanche, complete with slice of lemon. We sat towards the back. 'Vous
d?sirez, messieurs-dames?' We placed our order. As we waited for the
drinks to arrive we stole glances at each other and giggled. Julia
extracted a packet of Gauloises Blondes from the little red handbag
that went so well with her scarlet sundress. She offered me a
cigarette. I laughed and said, 'No thanks. I see you've acquired a vice
or two!' She smiled, lit up and placed the lighter on the packet,
blowing smoke as she got her revenge: 'Judging by this...' - she poked
me in the stomach with a burgundy-varnished fingernail - 'so have you!'
We laughed. When the nervousness had subsided - doubtless helped by the
alcohol - we filled in the gaps and rediscovered our friendship. After
taking a degree in marketing in Manchester, Julia was working as a PR
for a Paris-based British fashion designer and going out with a French
journalist. I must admit to disappointment at this last news, but as
the day wore on I realised that my feelings for her were probably more
brotherly anyway. That summer we saw a lot of each other, and of Polly
Magoo. They had a couple of backgammon sets, and she taught me to play.
Her laughter illuminated those Paris days.

We were in intermittent email contact while I studied for my
postgraduate certificate in education. I was about to sit my final
exams when I received a disturbing message. She had gone for a two-week
holiday in Italy with her recently widowed mother. Towards the end of
the trip she had developed a strange rash on her face and, far from
feeling refreshed by her holiday, began to feel lethargic. At first she
had put this down to overexposure to the sun, but when this didn't
resolve, despite rest and high-factor sunblock, she had gone to her
doctor. Within two weeks she was in a London hospital being treated for
acute leukaemia. I looked away from my computer, at the rain outside
the college window. I walked to the window, breathed deeply, steeling
myself to read to the end: 'The good news is they've found a matching
donor. They've destroyed my own marrow with radiation and drugs and I'm
about to be given the donated cells in a drip. If you want to
visit...'

My exams forgotten, I caught a train. I found myself getting off the
tube at East Acton and walking past the sinister hulk of Wormwood
Scrubs prison. Julia was no less a prisoner. She had told me that as
her immune system had been destroyed I wouldn't be allowed to enter her
room, but could talk to her through the open doorway. How would she
look? Gaunt, yellow, skeletal? I had to control my emotions, my body
language.

They seemed short-staffed. The sole receptionist was busy on the phone
so I just followed the signs to Oncology, and then the Leukaemia Unit.
The hospital smell exacerbated the butterflies in my stomach. A nurse
walked briskly past. 'Julia Johnson?' I ventured. She looked me up and
down, raised her eyebrows, sighed, shrugged, and pointed to a door. I
knocked, full of trepidation. A voice called out: 'Daniel? Just push
the door open. Don't come in!'

I had a smile ready but something must have happened to it when I saw
her. She was bald - lying there on the bed on a drip, as expected - but
bald! The hair she had religiously brushed a hundred times a day from
the age of twelve was gone. She must have seen my expression: 'My hair?
Huh, they said it might fall out with the chemo, so I thought f_ck
that, I'll just shave it off and be done with it. It's only superficial
anyway!' She laughed. The same Julia shone from her eyes and her
laughter seemed unchanged, but I wondered how much was an act for my
sake.

'Listen, Daniel, I've done a lot of thinking. I may die, but then you
could be run over as you leave the hospital, perish the thought! They
say the donor's as good a match as you could hope for, and the early
signs are good. What's the point of being negative?' She started
singing: 'Always look on the bright side of life...' and laughed again.
I couldn't bear it. I couldn't join in. I tried to believe that she
would survive, but we were on opposite sides of a canyon. After a few
minutes of vacuous chitchat about her computer - her window on the
world - a nurse shooed me away, apparently horrified by my unsanctioned
presence. We waved goodbye. I wanted to hug her. I smiled weakly, and
left.

Julia May Johnson died eleven days later. She was twenty-two. I
couldn't bring myself to re-sit my exams.

I am the same distance from Monk's Wood as we were in those treehouse
days, only on the other side. The cottage was falling apart and very
cheap. I am a writer. Of an evening I stroll in Monk's Wood, imagining
how Julia and I would have reacted to it had we ever had the courage.
Of course it wouldn't have been the same - the muntjac have since
ravaged the flora. Dog's mercury, bluebells, snowdrops, arum and oxlip
are all threatened, and the re-growth of trees has all but ceased
outside the deer-fenced enclosures. Mr. Hargreaves would not be
over-worried about pruning these days. Indeed, I see little point in
planting my garden. It's a wilderness of nettles and blackberries. The
butterflies and bees are happy at least, and my dog roses have never
felt secateurs' blades. The only things I cut back are words. It's an
interesting process, writing. There are two phases. At first one lets
the words and ideas burgeon, pour forth unchecked. Then one trims,
paring until only the essential remains. Julia's branch was lopped off.
My branch must produce a good flower or two. I light a Gauloise Blonde,
glance at the photographs, and return to the keyboard.