Ever since taking early retirement three years ago there’s nothing I like better in summertime than spending a lazy day in the garden. I say “lazy,” though not if my wife has anything to do with it. She’s obsessed with our lawn (“the cat likes it short”) and has me pushing the mower around on weekends, even if the grass has hardly grown.
“Never mind the blasted lawn,” I protest, “you just worry about your herbaceous borders. I’ll take care of the lawn.” It’s easier said than done this year with the hosepipe ban.
Geraldine bought some pelargoniums. I love their variety of scents, they’re delicious and good enough to eat. She makes cordials out of them. The Cola Bottles are Tizzy’s favourite. “But grandma!” squeals the little rascal, “how do they get the cola into the petals?”
I must admit I was quite cross when Geraldine brought home the latest batch. Ten new plants! They’re not cheap either. The problem is they can’t cope with frost, which means we have to bring them indoors each winter, and our conservatory is so congested, mostly with succulents, that there’s barely enough room to sit down. “I’ll end up sitting on a cactus,” I told her. “Why couldn’t you have just bought some geraniums?”
Some people have hobbies. For me it’s all about routine. If anything unpredictable happens, especially in the garden, then I tend to fly off the handle. “Don’t be such a drama queen,” Geraldine reminds me. That’s why, as much as I love flowers, I prefer trees. With trees you can generally see the problem coming before it arrives. It’s a labour of love but oh my word the stress.
It was a normal Monday afternoon. I’d just got back from running the gauntlet of the high street—another day, another demonstration—when I noticed some sooty mould on the branches of our legacy conifer. Gertrude (and yes, she is a she) was a wedding present from my mother-in-law. Gerty is thirty years old now and over thirty feet tall. She’s one helluva lady, a real beauty: immaculate fir with a shapely figure to match. God knows what I’d do if anything ever happened to her.
I know what you’re thinking: aphids. They’re every gardener’s worst nightmare. When I first spotted the little pests poking their tiny noses at me (metaphorically, of course) I should have known better, but I started to overthink it. “We’re going to lose that tree, Geraldine,” I told her, trying to suppress my anxiety.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. But I kept on, inspecting Gerty’s branches from all different angles with my magnifying glass. I walked in so many circles I eventually had to lie down. “Look,” said my wife, almost losing her temper, “if you’re so concerned then just cut the branches off.”
It was a silly and insensitive thing to say, because cutting back in summer can stress the tree, and before you know it you’ve got an infestation on your hands. Trees will always give you plenty of warning and enough time to act. So I settled on the tried and tested method of letting nature take its course. I decided to simply wash off the mould with a bit of Fairy Liquid and put off any pruning till the spring.
We needed detergent anyway so I popped round the Co-op. “Hull-oh!” said Clive, who was coming out as I was going in. Much as I respect Clive for all the work he does on the parish council, I wasn’t in the mood. On this occasion, however, since his six-foot frame was blocking the entrance, I was trapped.
“All right, Clive?” I said by way of greeting, before noticing flecks of what looked like blood on his collar. “What’s that?”
“Mmm?” he mumbled, squinting through his reading glasses. “Oh, nothing. It’ll come out in the wash.”
“You’re not… ill?” I ventured, suddenly alert to the possibility that he might be having another stroke.
“Why? Do I look like I’m about to keel over?” he joked, before realising what I was pointing at. “Oh, that!” he said. “It’s nothing. I stabbed a Zionist outside the chemist’s. A few spots of blood, that’s all.”
“Stabbed?” I said, somewhat perplexed. “What about your Enfield?”
“I know,” said Clive nonchalantly, as he inspected the rest of his shirt for stains. “Linda’s always on at me to carry spare ammo. It’s the first time in all these years I’ve been caught short. Good job I had the blade.” Clive pulled out a bunch of old keys from his trouser pocket wrapped in a blood-stained handkerchief. It took me some time to realise he was cradling a Swiss army knife.
Clive leaned in and whispered into my ear. “She thinks I’m getting dementia.”
“Oh, good,” I said, before quickly realising my faux pas. I reassured Clive that I didn’t mean the dementia, and that as far as I was concerned, he was sharp as a Stanley knife.
“I could have done with one of those!” said Clive in a burst of raucous laughter. “I could have stabbed her in the throat!” and laughed some more. I smiled politely. Clive composed himself and the conversation went dormant for what felt like a small age.
“Anyway, Clive,” I said, contriving to lighten the mood, “I must be going. My tree—”
“You know Linda gave away all my tools,” he confessed. “That’s right,” he went on, untroubled by the fact that I’d already started walking away. “Knives, saws, chisels. Even my Black and Decker.” He seized me by the arm. “You’ll never guess who to,” and raised a conspiratorial eyebrow. “Lou Miller.”
“Oh,” I said, unable to conceal my surprise, mainly because I had no idea who Lou Miller was. Clive probably knew that, which suggested we might be in for a rather long conversation.
“Lou Miller—’Millsy’ we used to call him.” Clive appeared to be eyeing up two chairs in the corner of the store with the intention of sitting on one of them, and me on the other. “You know Harry Michael’s stepbrother’s father,” he explained, as I tried diplomatically to extricate my arm from his hand, which felt remarkably strong for someone who a mere six months ago had been wired up to a life support machine. I peered into his eyes and wondered if he was on ketamine. “Well…” Clive paused for dramatic effect. “He was Lou’s brother.”
The profound stress on the word “he” denoted the revelatory capacity of a historical figure, whether of the religious or non-religious variety. I wondered whether there were any conifers mentioned in the Bible, and what sort of sermon Jesus might have come up with for treating aphids.
“That’s right,” said Clive, staring at me as if he were reading my mind, which he definitely wasn’t, since if he had been he would have directed me promptly to the Fairy Liquid section of the store, which I still wasn’t technically inside, and which by this point of the conversation was the only thing I was interested in.
A gaggle of schoolchildren pressed their way past us blowing bubblegum and smelling of hairspray. If only I could make it out of the shop with my prize before they clogged up the tills, then I could be back home in time for Pointless.
Clive raised his voice above the racket of the schoolchildren. “He’s a bloody animal!” he snarled, spraying me with spittle. “The man’s certifiable. He spent most of his school years in youth detention. You know what for? Slashing his woodwork teacher! Then he comes out of a borstal at fourteen and two months later does the same thing to his metalwork teacher. You’d think they’d have learned…”
As Clive proceeded with his story, which he might have been telling himself, I glanced inquisitively into the aisle housing the detergents. What I found odd was that the schoolchildren had bypassed the confectionary aisle altogether and were boisterously making a beeline for the rear of the store where the Fairy Liquid was located. I counted roughly fifteen of the youngsters. Even in the unlikely event that a third of them had come to buy Fairy Liquid, that meant—probably—at least one bottle would be left over, since for each branded product in the Co-op there were, on average, six items on the shelves.
“Some people just love breaking the law,” Clive asserted. “That’s Millsy for you. Lou’s not violent per se. He does it for the buzz. You give him a carpentry set and what do you think he’s going to use it for? I said to Linda, ‘Why would you give that man a bloody carpentry set?’ And she says, ‘How was I supposed to know he’d been in prison?’ So I said, ‘The Strangeways tattoos on his hands should have given you a clue. He attacked two of the screws with a hacksaw. Put a chisel in his hand and he’s hardly going to carve you a salad bowl, is he? He’s going to carve someone up.’ I tell you: the guy’s a psycho. Who do you think cut the throats of those flag waving muppets? The ones strung up with chicken wire? Hmm? I know the police don’t follow up Zionist deaths, not unless they’re political. But what does it look like to you?”
Something told me Clive’s rant was about to veer into politics, a subject guaranteed to lower my spirits and raise my blood pressure, so I yawned in the hope that he might take the hint. In the meantime, the schoolchildren exited with nothing more than a couple of cans of cola in their hands. At least now there was no chance of the Co-op running out of detergent.
“Look,” said Clive, “we all know Zionists are fair game. Everyone takes a pop at them. Even Linda has; shot one through the neck with an air rifle. Great shot. Didn’t kill him, mind. Fair enough. My point is: it’s not game for a laugh. It’s a democratic right. More than that. It’s every Englishman’s duty. What would you have done if the Nazis had invaded these islands? Whose side would you have been on? Eh? That’s what you’ve got to ask yourself. Take Glad Verity. You know Glad?”
“Yes,” I said, finally latching onto a word I recognised, before realising I’d mistaken Verity for “Fairy,” as in Fairy Liquid. I didn’t know a Glad Verity.
Clive persisted. “You know Gla-aad. Walks with a zimmer frame. Lives in Oakhurst Crescent. Her husband Joe was in fridges. Used to knit giraffes for the WI. Meals on Wheels Glad.”
“Oh, that Glad,” I said, still none the wiser, merely clinging to the hope that my affirmation might move Clive’s story to a close in the shortest possible time frame.
Clive nodded approvingly. “Correct. She’s had arthritis for years. You can’t expect her to scrub pavements on her hands and knees. So what does she do? Gets the Girl Guides to clean up the mess. She’s got an AK-47 pointing out of her bathroom window. It’s wall-mounted. That way she can use it when she’s sitting on the toilet.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, suddenly roused to consciousness. “Doesn’t that take a lot of maintenance? I mean Pat next door had an AK-47. Or was it an AK-something else? It had a slanted thingymajig… Anyway, she had to get rid of it. She’d only fired about a thousand rounds when it seized up; all the springs went.”
Clive waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, I know that,” he said. “Doesn’t bother Glad in the slightest. Her grandson knows all the AKs back to front. He went on some… college course. He can strip one down and reassemble it in less than a minute.”
“Oh,” I said meekly, making a mental note to stick with aphids in future and leave the AK-47s to the experts.
“Those AK-47s make one colossal mess. You end up with blood and guts everywhere,” said Clive, gesticulating like a veteran of drive-by shootings. “Never mind my shirt, one of them’ll turn all your daisies red. Whereas the Girl Guides, see? They’ve got all sorts of badges for it. Zionist Disposal Badge? Something like that. That’s what they should teach these young-uns. How many Girl Guides have you seen out and about lately? Or Scouts? That’s what I’m saying. It’s not all game for a laugh. It’s about… instilling civic pride in the youth. The wartime spirit. Get them off their gadgets and out in the community, tidying up, helping the older generation.”
“Yes,” was all I could muster in reply, although faintly I could detect an analogy between disposing of dead Zionists, riddled with bullets from Glad’s wall-mounted AK-47, and eliminating aphids from my conifer—although in truth the analogy felt awfully strained.
Clive shook his head sympathetically as if I’d just soiled my underpants. “No.”
“No!” I protested, remembering that the Co-op closed early on Monday. There were two branches on the high street, one of which was open late, so I could always nip along to the other one should Clive’s lecture extend after dark.
Clive motioned toward the two chairs in the corner; stubbornly I stood my ground. “That’s the problem,” he said. “As soon as you start making a big thing out of it, then it’s political.” Clive surveyed the empty aisles for eavesdroppers, then mouthed “Millsy.”
“Millsy?”
“Exactly,” said Clive, mistaking my bemusement for a revelation of the religious variety. “He strung up the Zionists. It must have been him.”
“Is that good?” I said, now thoroughly lost in my analogy, but tending toward the view that one couldn’t scrub pavements clean with Fairy Liquid.
“Well,” said Clive with a look of bemusement that mirrored my own, “it’s not exactly good, is it?” although now even he appeared to be genuinely unsure. “No, no. Look,” he said, quickly retrieving the narrative thread. “If you just shoot a Zionist, or stab, or run over them—whatever—and they die, then it’s fine. The police don’t want to know. But. If you make a meal out of it, do it in a—what’s the word?—symbolic way… Then it becomes political. All these pro-Palestinian lunatics, ‘From the River to the Sea’ and all that palaver. They’re just spoiling it for the rest of us. You follow what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” I said, finally convinced I’d grasped something by the law of averages. “You’re saying Millsy is one of the pro-Palestinian lunatics.”
“No!” said Clive in a fit of exasperation. Slowly he began rolling up his sleeves, and for a split second I could have sworn he was going to hit me. “What I am telling you is this. Millsy’s done these killings, which the police think are politically motivated because of the way they’ve been done. Which means PC Plod might start sniffing around here asking questions. Then, before you know it, we’ll all be lumped in with these Palestinian sympathisers. I mean Glad Verity? Are you sure? She’s ninety years of age! She wouldn’t know a Palestinian from Adam. You start accusing elderly people like Glad of politically motivated crimes… I mean what in God’s name is the world coming to when an old lady like Glad can’t let off a few rounds of an afternoon? I mean I can see the point from a health and safety perspective. Anyone over the age of seventy needs an eye test every five years to hold a firearms license. Fair enough. But this isn’t about health and safety. It’s about terrorism. They’re insinuating that anyone who shoots a Zionist is a terrorist. When have we ever behaved like terrorists? We are totally respectful at all times—I know I am. I’m sure you are, too.”
Clive began counting on his fingers. “One: always move the deceased to a kerbside location no less than one hundred yards from the nearest drain. Check. Two: if they’re carrying a flag then wrap them in it, making sure to cover the face. Check. Three: never make a spectacle of it or do anything that disrespects religion. Check. Finally, never confuse anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Check. Where’s the terrorism in that?”
By the time I got home I was a nervous wreck. “Geraldine!” I yelled with my key still in the front door. “Call the police!”
“I’m in the kitchen!” she yelled back.
I stumbled inside clutching my one item of shopping. “Quick!” I said. “The Zionists are coming—have we got any ammo?”
“What on earth are you on about?” said Geraldine, herding me into the living room. “Calm down. I’ll make some tea. Pointless’ll be on in a minute.”
“Has it started yet?” I asked, fearing a repeat episode. “I can’t stand that Richard Osman. He makes out he’s such a smarty pants, but he’s reading all the answers off his laptop. The man’s a complete and utter phoney. Like Clive.”
In the garden Gertrude was exactly where I’d left her. There she stood—proud, tall, serene—her great figure wrapped in a lime green fir coat.
Over. My. Dead. Body.
“Clive?” said Geraldine. “Clive who?”
I heaved a sigh. “Barrett.”
“Oh, not him,” she groaned.
“He was coming out of the Co-op. Couldn’t get away from the man. Talking in riddles, he was. Some nutcase called Millsy; all conspiracy theory political-mumbo-jumbo. I could not understand a single word he was saying.”
“I bet you forgot the cling film,” said Geraldine, handing me a cup of herbal tea.
“Cling film?” I said. “Why didn’t you ask? I got the Fairy Liquid, though.”
Geraldine shot me one of her looks. “Yes. I noticed. We’ve already got a bottle under the sink.” She positioned herself in front of the television, folded her arms. “And for your information I did ask. I reminded you three times.”
She probably had, I thought. On reflection it was unwise to question the wisdom of someone who knows where the Fairy Liquid is kept. I gulped down some tea and switched off the television.
“I thought you wanted to watch Pointless,” said Geraldine, who unlike me didn’t have an issue with Richard Osman.
I put down the remote control and took up my trusty bottle of detergent. “It’s a repeat,” I said. “Aphids at three o’clock.”
Jason Barker is working on it.
Featured image: Richard Osman in 2022 on the set of Pointless, the year he left the hit BBC One quiz show. Photo courtesy of BBC.
