The Head Gardener – Part 1: Under Glass

The great glasshouse was warm and wet and green, a Victorian palace of iron and glass, with palms brushing the roof, ferns dripping in the humid air and orchids hanging in baskets from the beams. The visitors had gone at five. The doors were locked at six. In the low evening light, mist rose off the pools, and a single lamp burned on the long potting bench.

Cecily stood at the bench in a canvas apron with a pair of secateurs in her hand. She was forty-nine, the head gardener of a famous botanical estate, tall and weathered, with grey eyes and a voice that carried across a hectare of glass. Alistair was forty-one, her assistant and partner of four years, a patient, unassuming man who had said, over a seed tray, that nothing calmed him quite as much as being told precisely where to put things.

"Come here," said Cecily.

He came to the bench. She slid a plant label across the wood. Terms of Cultivation. His limits and hers, in her round, careful hand: no marks, nothing painful, no real humiliation, nothing beyond the glasshouse, no one else. The word was Frost.

"Say it."

"Frost."

"If you say it, the Head Gardener puts down her shears. I am Cecily. We drink tea in the potting shed."

"I understand."

"And every half hour I ask if you wish to continue. You answer honestly."

"Yes, Head Gardener."

"Not yet." She pulled on a pair of heavy green gauntlets and stood straighter. Her voice dropped, low, slow and level. "Mr Lyle. You overwatered the orchids."

"I am sorry, Head Gardener."

"You will be." She pointed at a flagged patch between two tree ferns. "There. Stand. Hands behind your back. You will name every plant in this house."

He stood in the dripping green light, among the great glossy leaves, and began to name them. Latin names, hesitant, halting. She listened, her head tilted, and when he stumbled, she raised a gloved finger and he began again. A drop of water fell from a frond onto his cheek.

"Are you content, Mr Lyle?"

"Content, Head Gardener."

"Good. The glasshouse is quiet. We have all night."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Greenhouse Warmth.