Old Gardener

Old Gardener has died. In the end it was all over within a few short weeks, the cancers took him quickly, I am glad to say. So there will be no more gardener’s tales over a cup of tea in the sun, no more crafty fags, no more tuneless whistle of a short sequence of notes, which never were nor ever could become a tune. Gardener, who was extremely hard-working, not always reliable, who often took umbrage when his feelings were hurt. Who fell out with his missus and son and made up again. Occasionally he fell out with me but I learned to grovel and he’d appear again as if nothing had happened.

At the beginning, many years ago, he came all day and worked all day. At lunchtime he ate his sandwiches sitting in the car, listening to the radio for half an hour; we had a mid morning cup of tea and another one in the afternoon, when Beloved joined us. After work he’d stop and sit on the terrace and talk. And talk. And talk. Usually I was ready to call it a day by then, ready to have a wash and collapse and often wished him gone. But old gardener could not be hurried when he didn’t feel like it. It was always just another cigarette. A dreadful Woodbine, one of the worst for nicotine content.

Later on, after he had a heart attack, he came for a morning once a week, maybe four hours. But even in those four hours he did the work of two men.  During the last year, until last winter, when he stopped coming altogether, he did less, sat down on a bench and rested now and then for a few minutes. His work got less careful, some jobs he simply didn’t undertake. I always forgave him, I had plenty of other problems to worry me what with Beloved falling ill and later on being poorly myself. We did what we could between us although he most certainly did the lion’s share.

Throughout his decline he continued to smoke. He said he had taken advice and now smoked filter-tipped cigarettes. He was quite pleased with  himself. When I pointed out to him that he smoked his cigarettes right down to the filter, getting the full blast of nicotine, he waved my comment away. When I told him to only half load the wheelbarrow, to lift smaller weights of bags, to turn the compost heaps over two work sessions rather than the one, he waved those concerns away too. Instead he deliberately lifted an even heavier weight with a face that said :’that’ll show her with her interfering ways’.

Gardener was 73 when he died. In this valley the ‘leaving’ age is mid eighties, there are plenty of 90 year olds. Gardener had a hard life, leaving school at 14 and going straight into farm labour where he stayed until the landowner sold his herd and gardener, who was  the cattle man, became unemployed. In late middle age he took up gardening for people. He knew nothing about it but was willing to learn, which he did, and although I had to watch him when he got too near ripping up one of my prize specimen in his eagerness for a scorched earth policy, he also learned to ask, most of the time, at least. Occasionally he dug up first and asked later but those occasions got fewer and farther between.

I am sure it was hard work and smoking which did for him. Last autumn we sat side by side on a bench in Beloved's memorial garden and talked. He told me that he had savings, of wich he was very proud, and he was looking forward to doing less and less and maybe treating himself. To what, I don’t know. Gardener knew little beyond work, his interests were few and Jane, his wife, had made him get rid of his beloved homing pigeons. “Filthy vermin” she said. Instead they adopted a little dog, a small terrier like creature, an awful yapper. He loved that little dog and could talk about her antics for hours. Jane too loved the dog, he said, but neither of them ever thought to give it a name.

While we were sitting talking and he was telling me about his savings he said “if I don’t make it at least Jane will have something to keep her going.” I was surprised that this wiry, stringy, tough old, 'horny handed son of the soil’ had a soft side and that he was willing to share it with me.

I miss you, old friend, and not only because I miss your work. There’ll never be another Austin.