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Briar Rose
by Alex Clark
EXCERPT
… ‘And what can I do for you?’ I say, giving him my very best Twinkly-eyed Old Duffer. After all, he’s started that way.
‘Don’t want to bother you if you’re busy,’ he says.
‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘Just gardening.’
‘Lovely,’ he says, giving a cursory look at the plants. He is not a gardener. If I asked him, he would say he doesn’t have the patience. I’ve seen him already with his strimmer, slashing and conquering. ‘I’m just wondering if you’d like to join me in having a word with Number Three,’ he says, gesturing up the road.
Number Three is next door to me. Number Three gets more like a fairy-tale castle every day: not the sparkly magical kind, but the original kind with deathlike sleep and the slow creep of thorny tendrils. On this street, an unkempt garden attracts attention but Number Three’s garden has moved beyond unkempt, beyond tutting and peering. It is an outrage, a madman: the other houses seem to turn away from it, like ladies in Bedlam. It started out like all the others, of course, and I can remember it when it was genteel, but long years of neglect have bred a wilderness. To the side of the house the leylandii, once unassuming uniform cones, have become great ragged, shade-throwing despots. The lawn is a shaggy weed meadow, rich with couch grass and ragwort. The hedge at the front has spread like a rising loaf. It’s trimmed twice a year on the road side by the council, but on the inside it is wild with brambles and bindweed. The knotty miniature trees which knock against the front windows were roses once, down in the flowerbeds now concealed by the long grass. In summer they flower high up by the first floor, beyond the reach of our grasping hands and our secateurs. Give it another ten years and the house will be invisible, swallowed by a determined green behemoth. The birds will get under the tiles and raise loud families, and foxes will sleep on the kitchen floor.
‘They’re blocking my satellite signal,’ says James. ‘Those bloody roses. Sorry, darling.’ …
… The complete story appears as a standalone book in our Little Uncertainties series.
Alex Clark
Alex Clark is a novelist, short story writer, poet, and connoisseur of all things Gothic. She is an undercover Northerner based in Cheltenham, where she lives with her husband and children. Her career has been varied, including stints as a cathedral stonemason, industrial archaeologist, and gardener.
