All flesh is grass

That it was called a contract, Gavin mused, was no coincidence. As he thought of it, beyond the piece of paper lying inert in his filing upstairs to the thing in itself, he saw the agreement as something tightening around him, first a starched collar, then manacles, then stocks, then a noose. On the phone to Eleanor, friend since school, he made the mistake of confiding a fraction of this, and she replied:

"Gavin, come on. That's pathetic."

"Ellie!" he whined. "This is serious. I'm sure she can't demand this. There must be something in law about it. I should ring the CAB. You can't just put that sort of thing into print and assume the other party has no choice but to follow it to the letter."

"Well, if you get use of it, then maybe it's your responsibility."

"It's hers. She uses it more than I do."

"Look," she said, trying another tack. "She's a seventy-five-year-old woman. Have some pity."

"Pity?"

Then another: "All she wants you to do is cut the grass, you dickhead."

"Di-?"

"Like you agreed when you moved in, you dickhead."

That worked. Gavin was about to repeat the first half-syllable of "dickhead", when he paused, and was lost. He had to agree, with his inner voice as much as with Eleanor, that he'd been happy to take on Mrs Fielden's "jobs around the house" in return for a rent comparable with council tax: the old woman had offered to pay his share of that too, but he hadn't had the heart.

Eleanor was talking again. "You got a hell of a low rent out of the deal, so the least you can do is keep her garden tidy like you promised. Mow a bit of lawn. Yes?"

"This isn't a bit of a lawn," he protested, a bit half-heartedly. "It's a field. A prairie. It stretches all the way to Cheltenham."

"Well, you always said you wanted to see the world."

"Yeah, and I end up living in the middle of bloody nowhere to save a bit of cash. And being slave-driven by the mad old woman in the attic."

"Gavin! Mrs Fielden is lovely and you know it. She's redecorated your room and redone your bathroom since youv'e been there, and she always makes sure there's some parking for you and your mates. And you get a lovely view over the downs."

"Lovely view of my arse," Gavin mumbled back.

"Sorry, Gav. Crackle on the line just then. What was that?"

"I said it'd be lovely to cut the grass; it'd be the least I could do. And I'd be able to see those rolling hills in the distance."

"Good boy."

He sighed. "... So. How did it go with Jerome on Tuesday?"

"... Shut up, you dickhead," Eleanor said, and they were off again.

Mrs Fielden was overjoyed. She hadn't wanted to say anything, but; and she knew how hard Gavin was working at work, it was just; and with spring around the corner, wouldn't it be lovely if; of course, the garden was his to enjoy as much as hers, and it'd be terribly nice of him if he could, and only if it would be no trouble, might he: tidy it up a little? If Gavin hadn't already been convinced by Eleanor that he was performing a charitable act by trundling a mower over Mrs Fielden's plot of land, the way that the old woman reacted would have been enough in itself: a charming willingness on her part to be charmed by the smallest favour.

At least she had a nice new(ish) electrical machine. He'd heard tales of horror from her about the old petrol-driven beast pushed around years ago by Mr Holden. He had once been Farmer Holden, you know, and Mrs Fielden's sweetheart, but he'd fallen on hard times and helped with raising her flowerbeds if not her children, until out of the blue he'd inherited a tidy sum and move elsewhere, and after all was said and done it had still broken—but the end of Mrs Fielden's stories, like the end of her lawn, seemed always in sight but never to be attained. Anyway, after hearing about how it had once exploded sump oil in Mr Holden's face, or the starter rope had snapped and lashed across the old man's forehead, Gavin could only heap praises on the name of Mr Flymo and the wonders he had invented. If God had intended for humankind to spend hours every few weeks coaxing and cajoling instrument after recalcitrant instrument into the task of making his lawn bowling-green flat, he reckoned, He wouldn't have permitted the quick fix of a hover-mower. And He wouldn't have bothered to create anyone except the English, who thrived on such behaviour.

It was still mowing the lawn. Mowing the bloody lawn, Gavin thought. Mowing the bloody, buggering... Gavin, to make it sufficiently clear that we might move on, hated gardening. It was what he'd been made to do to earn his pocket money, or allowance, as his dad, his father had called it. Gavin's father had the Latinate to hand at all times, and forbade his son from watching Grange Hill, Byker Grove and Press Gang. Quite early on Father had decided that these were corrupting influences, and as the television was banished to the back room anyway it had been easy to keep Gavin from such perniciousness. Besides, that gave him more time for chores, and Father was sure that Gavin would be happy to help his mother out round the house as any decent son should. Father's emphasis.

(Gavin's father, and his grandfather before him, had earned their allowances by doing odd jobs around the house, especially in the garden. Therefore, if he didn't mow the lawn, Gavin would inevitably, in some small way, never fully become his father. Now, though, it was too late.)

He tightened his grip on the lever under his hand. The machine whirred into life and he pushed it away from the house.

The first stripe was the worst. When the mower wasn't bogged down in the undergrowth of an unseasonably mild winter, it floated too airily and threatened to leave Gavin's control altogether. The earth underneath was fairly flat, but over-ambitious clumps of grass had toughened themselves into what had the feeling and weight of foam-wrapped housebricks. Every now and then Gavin was sure he heard the mower cough as if it were gagging on a bone.

Three more stripes, and he began to build up momentum. For the first time he was able to look round at the rest of Mrs Fielden's garden—not nearly as far gone to seed—and see his own place in it. The shrubs hiding the two long fences, dotted with rhododendrons and other bizarre plants Gavin couldn't identify; the hedges sprouting out of the sides of the house, delineating the boundary between front and back; the fence at the far end of the garden, separating it from the fields beyond.... He saw in his mind's eye the boundaries like the rack of a canvas, and even if he weren't the painter, he was preparing it for the broad strokes of the summer's heat to spatter it with daisies and buttercups. That sounded good.

He tried to move with a little more dignity, as such a responsibility might demand. By now the early spring sunshine had strengthened a little, or maybe his blood had began to move; warmed and perspiring, he unbuttoned his shirt sleeves and rolled them up. Even better than a mock artist's assistant, now he felt like a proper gardener. This patch of grass was his realm and his responsibility, a patch of fuzzed-up baize that he was slowly, methodically, restoring to neatness and tidy prettiness.

Into every summer's garden a little rain must fall, however, and it fell into Gavin's patch in the form of the far-from-dulcet tones of Mrs Frances Edmundson.

"Hello!" called her voice over the roar of the machine. Gavin turned towards it, towards the fence and the next garden along, before he recognised the tone; had he done vice-versa, he might have pretended not to hear Mrs Edmundson, at least until he reached the end of the stripe and would have to turn towards her. By then she might have given up and gone wreaking elsewhere.

When she first met Gavin, she'd been told by a slightly confused Mrs Fielden that the new lodger did something "terribly important in the city". So, with a well-oiled gear-change that only the best finishing schools provide, Mrs Edmundson had insisted that Gavin should call her Frances. But once she'd found out that he'd gone to a comprehensive school—and had been born north of Bedfordshire, for heaven's sake—she'd made it quite clear through intermediaries such as Mrs Fielden (not via anything so coarse as direct communication) that he had to call her Mrs Edmundson after all. Deep down knew he wasn't missing much, but it still stung.

He released the lever, and the mower's shout became a purr then a sudden choke. Forcing a polite smile, he said: "Mrs Edmundson! Enjoying your garden?" He noticed she was wearing some sort of out-of-doors hat, that looked ridiculously workmanlike on her horsey head but probably cost more than Mrs Fielden's mower. Head and hat both hovered over a rhododendron, and Gavin thought: no, not horsey. Waspish. Looking for a bit of sustenance and hoping that someone might get entertainingly stung.

She laughed what she probably thought was a tinkling laugh. It sounded to Gavin like pint glasses being thrown into a sink. "One has it to do, of course. It would be a waste not to, really, especially on such a day as this. But I see you are enjoying yours, in your own way!"

"One has it to do," Gavin replied before realising he was repeating her, but she didn't notice. "I'm just happy to be helping out Mrs Fielden. She's been so kind to me since I moved out here." He had the decency to blush as he said this.

"Yes, well, I'm sure you are doing the best job you can with it all. Of course, it takes a real virtuoso to bring out the full potential of one's exterior spaces. I employed a landscaper to shape my borders, you know. I could not have sanctioned anyone who wasn't a professional tinkering in my garden."

"Really?" asked Gavin, gritting his teeth.

"Oh yes, a fellow from Islington, of all places. Terribly bright, a bit of a dandy, if you ask me, and he was probably a... well, you know. These creative chaps. It isn't our place to judge, of course. But I have to confess that he worked wonders with my lobelia, and that's what counts, isn't it? When I think of all the years that Mrs Fielden let that blasted Holden ruin her perfectly decent garden. She could have done so much more with it. I'd have sacked the man on the spot if I'd seen him pruning like he pruned."

Gavin didn't know what to say. He knew about Mrs Fielden and Farmer Holden, and he knew from her little asides that Mrs Edmundson knew it too: if he could fill in the gaps then Mrs Edmundson could, and probably had. Poor Mrs Fielden, Gavin felt rather than thought, and held himself in check as he coughed out:

"Well, he did what he could."

She sniffed. "I'm sure he did, but that's hardly the point, now, is it? If one doesn't excel, then it's not at all clear why one should really bother in the first place. Oh, but I'm keeping the worker from his task, aren't I? How foolish of me. I must let you get on, Gavin. You will let Mrs Fielden know I was asking after her, won't you?"

He couldn't be sure, but he thought she'd stressed the word "worker." He smiled back, bit his cheek and then gunned the motor back into life. Only when the head and finally the hat had disappeared back behind the fence did he let his features crease into a black scowl, and began to push the mower with renewed vigour.

Muttering under his breath he imagined bloody Frances bloody Edmundson pegged out among the nettles and dandelions, directly in the path of the bloody mower. Head going under first, but before that her bloody hat. He'd show what a worker could really do. Just you wait and see, Frances, he thought, aiming the words over the rhododendrons like a malevolent fly-tipping. He'd be the first person in the world to mow from here to Cheltenham. And beyond.