Untitled 7

It would be a good day, after all.
The lads took the ladders and tools down past the river and up towards the main house. Ray liked to walk just ahead of them.
The back of the old stables can only be reached by way of the ‘Garden That Flows’, Ray’s favourite walled garden on the estate.
The back wall of the stables provided the most beautiful canvas for an abundance of ivy.
The park’s most celebrated arrangement of flowers were planted along the wall’s foot, so the team had to be very careful, otherwise Ray would kick up a fuss and put the lads on to more menial tasks later in the week.
‘We must be careful with the flowers, lads,’ he remarked sternly, eyeing the ground for the placement of ladders.
This job would require one man up the ladder and one catching cuttings, otherwise the flowers were sure to be harmed.
It was decided that Ray would let Rob go up the ladder for an hour with Terry catching, then Terry would do the same with Rob on the ground.
Ray would snip from the bottom and along, using a pair of step-ladders to get to about eight foot up.
The bulk of it was up at the top of the wall, a lengthy and puffed up mound of ivy buffeting the roof tiles.
Ivy had entwined itself into the frame of the metal-worked gutters and drainpipe, and if one could see it without its leaves and flowers, it would appear as poisonous roots strangling the life out of a manmade building.
Two hours passed and the lads had managed to kill no flowers, so they went off for some tea and sandwiches and came back half an hour later.
‘Looks a right mess hacked back, doesn’t it?’ said Rob, as they looked at the wall from a distance on their return.
‘It’s a shame, really,’ said Ray, ‘but we couldn’t wait till the end of summer with all these things going wrong in the gift shop.’
Building problems had persisted internally ever since the renovation in the nineties, which had been put down to shoddy work by the local firm of builders.
‘Looks a right state,’ said Terry.
They worked away till lunch, hacking and snipping away at the ivy’s branches.
On their way back to the shed, they all looked back at the wall before closing the gates to the garden.
The sun had gone in.
The lack of light gave the ivy, or what was left of it, namely its bare bones, an unerringly evil look.
All three were sure that it was watching them, although of course to say so would have been met with laughter.
The roots appeared to move slightly, like tentacles in the shadows of the wall. A large, pregnant cloud loomed overhead and as the three men stood there, they each received a shiver up the spine at the exact same moment.
‘Cor,’ said Terry, adjusting his body to wriggle out of the shiver. ‘What the hell was that?’
‘Bloody creepy,’ said Rob, ‘that’s what it was.’
Ray was deep in thought, as if in meditation.
From being one of the most picturesque garden walls in Britain, it had been reduced to this; a hateful grey-veined maze of disease.
The three gardeners stood in a state of strange inertia, transfixed by the ivy’s dark qualities.
‘I think we’ll spend the afternoon here, lads,’ said Ray, as they left.
‘Right you are,’ said the lads, perplexed. They thought the job had been done.
‘We’ll need two wood-cutters and plenty of sacks,’ said Ray, waiting for them to cotton on to the plan.
‘We’re not going to take the ivy out, are we?’ asked Rob with a look of naïve incredulity on his face.
‘I think we’re going to have to,’ said Ray. ‘I don’t like the look of it. I’ll tell Spokes it’s eating into the brickwork and has to be done. It’s all but destroyed the drain and God knows what it’s done to the guttering. I’ll replace it with a full-length trellis with buds in no time. He won’t mind.’
‘Nice one,’ said Rob. ‘Freddy Kreuger, eat your heart out!’
‘Vvroom! Vvroom!’ mouthed Terry with a gormless face, imitating the starting up of a chainsaw.