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August 15 - August 17, 2019
Whoever spotted the plant first gave the loser, presumably as some sort of consolation prize, a spectacularly high tea.
‘Anyway our generation didn’t get depressed. We soldiered on. Not like today. People want tranquillizers now if the milk goes off.’
It was his belief, forged by thirty years of looking and listening, that no one ever acted out of character. What most people thought of as character (the accumulation, or lack of, certain social, educational and material assets) was shallow stuff. Real character was revealed when these accretions were stripped away. It was the chief inspector’s belief that anyone was capable of anything.
The garden settled round him as gardens will. Indifferent and harmonious; consolingly beautiful.
‘You have to tell the bees when someone dies. Especially if it’s their owner. Otherwise they just clear off.’
As if a new you could be found by starving the old you half to death and then tearing the eyebrows out of what was left.
No one, thought Barnaby, should be sent out on to that long journey a day, an hour or even a second before their natural time.
He thought how impossible it was for a gardener to attempt to conceal his personality. Telling one’s dreams could hardly be more revelatory. Unsophisticated harmony for Miss Simpson; tangled exuberance for Miss Bellringer; whilst here…He looked at the showy shrubs, the billiard-table-baize lawn, the pond with a concrete cherub peeing mechanically on a plastic lily. Here was ostentatious vulgarity, literally in full bloom.
satisfaction that knowing all a neighbour’s business gave to some people. A passionate interest in everyone else’s affairs seemed to him a very human characteristic hardly reprehensible enough to be called a failing, let alone a sin. If he himself wasn’t endlessly concerned with other people’s behaviour, he wouldn’t be doing the job he was.
bones. It seemed perfectly natural that these walls should witness bitter words, tears and sorrow. Barnaby felt that any happiness accidentally immured in such surroundings would have no chance to develop and thrive but, like the honeysuckle by the porch, be slowly choked and strangled by the forces of despair.
‘Well, whatever he’s doing he’s not successful. I’ve seen families on the Social living better. Didn’t even have a telly.’ ‘And you can’t sink much lower than that.’
‘So so.’ Barnaby took the mug. ‘I’m afraid it’s not home-made.’ Barnaby took the soup gratefully and drank deep. It was wonderful. Monosodium glutamate. Permitted stabilizers. HC and FCF. All the angst-producing E’s. Bliss.
