The House of the Gardener Who Never Stops Working, Watercolour on Paper, 14 x 9cm, 2022

The Gardener.

A little voice called ‘Mammy’ each morning.

She made her way into our room, from her little mess of teddies.

‘Programme’ or ‘What Now?’ were on the menu for the next question option.

The same nagging pain shot down my leg from it’s source, the right side of my hip.

‘Fuck. It’s still there. Dear God, I am grateful for my healing and I am strong, I can stand’ said myself to myself and my god if I could decide on one.

He graduated from the bed like a dancer in a Spike Jonze video. He plugged wax in his ears and shut out the morning finishing the rest of his rest in the dark cool child’s room.

We carried on. Treat-Breakfast Time.  The luxuries consisted of a smart television, a remote control with a big NETFLIX button below the centre and on the left, and Nutella. Things that don’t exist in our daily life. She was lit up when these graces still presented themselves, again and again, each day.

When he had had adequate sleep, it was time to open the French doors, crank open the heavy green shutters, let the morning light in and sit on the balcony with coffee, chocolate milk, tea and of course, sparkling water. It was time to paint and read and listen to Super Great Kids Stories.

On the second morning, I noticed the gardener. He was bent over beneath a cherry tree. He was scraping out dead leaves from under it and shoveling them into a wheelbarrow with his hands.

He wore a faded black teeshirt around his head like a towel to block out the intense sun. He looked like a man in his sixties. The little that was left of his hair was white and cut tightly to his burnt sienna-tinted, shiny head. His head cracked about the green and disappeared behind a bush and out of view like a snooker ball.

Every morning I watched him and he became a part of my ritual of no-thingness and no-whereness. The thrall of industry helped me to relax.

He was deliberate and quick as a whippet. His fingers were so fast they looked like highlighter pen marks.

The house attached to the garden seemed empty. It was painted in pastel pink with dark green windows and doors. Viridian green. Faded with age and peeling, but still held its old luxury.

I dreamt he lived there.

I imagined him in the evenings; sitting back on a beaten pink cushion on his dark green chair (that had a leg held up with a wedge of wood he whittled from a branch of one of his peach trees). He has a glass of beer while strumming out soft Corfiot tunes on his grandfather’s old bouzouki.

In my head, he looks like Ed Harris.

It was only in the morning the gardener existed. Only with coffee, chocolate milk, and tea.