The Rose Garden – Part 1: Pruning Shears

"You're cutting at the wrong angle," said a voice.

Margaret lowered the shears. She was sixty-three, newly widowed, standing in a walled rose garden in Oxfordshire in her late husband's wellingtons, a sun hat, and an expression of mild defeat. The garden stretched round her, overgrown and glorious: old brick walls draped in climbers, beds of tangled roses in pink and cream and crimson, a sundial furred with moss. It had been her husband's great-aunt's. It had been left to her three weeks ago.

A man stood in the archway. He was sixty-seven, tall and stooped, in a green cardigan and a flat cap, with a weathered, humorous face and enormous scarred hands. "Gordon," he said. "I'm the gardener. I've looked after it for eleven years. I do beg your pardon."

"You've looked after it?"

"On Tuesdays. Without being asked."

"Why?"

"Nobody else was going to."

She stared at him. "I didn't know there was anyone."

"I tried not to be seen." He smiled, shy and sideways. "It's the pruning, though. At forty-five degrees, just above a bud, facing outward. Like this."

He took the shears, bent over a straggling bush, and cut. It looked effortless. She watched, spellbound, as the old rose bush seemed to settle and breathe.

"Show me," she said.

For weeks he came on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He taught her to deadhead, to feed, to spot blackspot, to tie in a climber. She learned the names: Iceberg, Albertine, Seagull. She learned that Gordon had been a schoolteacher, a widower for six years, with a dry wit and a habit of humming the tunes of old musicals.

"Can I ask you something?" said Margaret, one golden evening.

"Yes."

"Why do you do it for nothing?"

"Because it's the loveliest place I know," said Gordon, "and it needed someone."

"Green?" she said, a leaf, a bud.

"Green," said Gordon, with a warm smile. "Very green. Nearly June."

Continue the story: Part 2 – First Bloom.