Geropolous

Occasional diary of a gardener.



Gardening for Mr. Geropolous.

I placed my first advert in the Home and Garden section of the Mersey Help pamphlet for the princely sum of £20 as a lady gardener. It was April 1992. The telephone lay dormant for the next three weeks. A few days before the invoice arrived it rang and a hoarse voice bellowed at me.
"Are you the gardener, yes?" then, almost before I could answer "when can you come and do my garden?"
Mr.Geropolous was tough and wiry, with gnarled, brutish hands and a peck of nose-hair. He barked his orders from a few feet away, steamrollered his commands over any hesitations on my part (I suspected a naval connection, or perhaps a lifetime's work with heavy machinery.)
He looked like a cross between Telly Savalas and Picasso and his own home was pervaded by his Greek virility. Although he wore a Dutch marine cap sometimes, it was not, I think to disguise his shiny pate, since he frequently went out hatless.
He drove a red Metro which he 'warmed up' by over-revving in the drive at a standstill.
His feet were cushioned sometimes in carpet slippers worn down by his rolling gait, or else in comfortable fell boots.
Mr. Geropolous had developed the habit of sitting on his kitchen doorstep, legs apart and hands clasped together as if clutching the bowl of a pipe. I judged him to be a pipe-smoker.
In fact I found a pouch of Dutch Flake tobacco in his kitchen drawer and a cherrywood briar while I was rummaging for bin bags (his wife had confiscated both pipe and tobacco the year before.)
Outside the kitchen door stood a crate of empty Lambrusco bottles. It wasn't clear whether they were the property of Mr. or Mrs. Geropolous, though I saw no outward sign of her.
Occasionally however, some wisp of her could be detected in the hallway. One had the distinct impression that it was she who organised the small shopping trips that he made twice a day in the red Metro. I felt that she was tucked away somewhere in the house with some imaginary illness.
On the third day I worked in the Geropolous' garden, I had started to prune a Cotoneaster which was growing over the garden wall when I caught sight of a tiny movement at the side of a bay window overlooking the garden. What I had seen was Mrs.Geropolous's face, moon-like and with dark circles under the eyes. I felt like a safari hunter who had spotted a rare animal. Another face would appear from time to time below it. I recognised the second face as that of the family dog, an unappealing cross between a terrier and a Corgi, and having the worst attributes of both. Sometimes the dog would make sly sorties from the back kitchen, meandering across the lawn, waddling, sniffing round my ankles or grizzling at me. It knew that I loathed it from the start.
My first big job for the couple was to dig up two Holly bushes, a thing that goes against all my humanitarian instincts. I tried to dissuade Mr. Geropolous from the idea, telling him that the soil would be eroded and washed away, but the plan backfired and he was even more determined to uproot them.
"Jas move those booshes if you could Louis" he barked, cleaving the air with the hams of his hands.
"And could you move that wall back a few feet-d'you see what I mean?"
I saw what he meant but was silenced my my own disbelief since he had provided me only with a stunted builder's spade encased in cement and a very old hacksaw.
"I'll come and see how you doin' later." With that he thrust the spade into my hand with enough force to move any wall.
"Cat those booshes down, Louis, right down to thee base."
He waved the hacksaw tanatalisingly, then finally placed it on the wall.
I told him that my landscaping rates were twice as much as my maintainance rates so he thought better of the wall idea.
I made slow progress and then the germ of an idea came from nowhere, became a minx, then an imperative.
I was starting to plan my escape.
Every now and again Mr Geropolous would come bowling over the lawn, clearing his lungs to give me single instructions, then he would scuttle back into his kitchen and the silence of the garden would be resumed until his next appearance. Or else the dog would drop crustily from its sentinel position on the doorstep, tumbling towards me, pausing only to scratch the fleas on its belly. (There is a certain type of dog which one naturally assumes to be flea-ridden. The fur is dull, the gait awkward, waddling. The tongue lolls anarchically. This dog was one of them.)
At three o'clock, Mr Geropolous emerged from the back kitchen.
"You want a cap of tea? I made you sam" he said without looking at me.Then he turned towards me and beckoned me to the kitchen with a wave of his forearm.
He had laid newspaper all over the lino floor to protect it from my muddy boots.
"Don' warry" he said, still unable to look at me. Quite suddenly he thrust in front of me a plate whose contents slid about like a yacht in choppy seas.
"You like pizza?...here, take it." Saying this, he dumped the plate on the kitchen table and pushed it roughly towards me. I felt like a domestic animal. This feeling was reinforced by the appearance of the dog which pricked up its ears, twitched its nose and whined at him. I ate the pizza slice dutifully, though a certain anxiety had dried my mouth.The pizza was hot, having come straight from the oven. I wolfed it between gulps of tea. I was keen, in any case to finish the work and like the animal I now felt myself to be, was eager to be released from the confinement of the kitchen.
I worked along the border while Mr. Geropolous went in and out of the house. Finally, he sat on the kitchen doorstep gripping a copy of the Daily Star so tightly that it looked like he was about to rip it apart. Meanwhile, his wife's shadowy form could be observed through nylon gauze curtains, hovering over the kitchen sink or else as a chimera peering out from their bedroom. They were like two weathermen, independently swinging in and out of view, yet connected by the wooden strut that was their marriage, their life together.
Eventually I met Mrs. Geropolous quite by chance, almost bumping into her as I returned the crude garden tools to the garage. She was small and thickset with a rich, lugubrious but wheezy voice. I thought of Hattie Jacques. As she introduced herself, I recalled images of the actress and the warmth of childhood hysteria when my sister and I would roll on the floor with laughter at a look or pose from the 'Carry On' team whether it was an "Oooogh, m-a-a-atron" from Kenneth Williams, an eye-popping, delicate gesture from the heavyweight Bernard Bresslaw, a dirty chuckle from Sid James or anything at all from Hattie Jacques. We loved her breathless, nasal, laconic delivery, her bosom that heaved in passion or exasperation, the flapping movements of her great arms, the shrug of her shoulders and that glazed expression as her eyes rolled heavenwards.
I wanted Mrs.Geropolous to be like this but the image receded like that of a lovely dream as she began to air her views on youth unemployment.
"Sam people jes' don't wannt to work" she warned me with a panscrub.Then "care for a biscuit love?"
After the biscuit break, I began to transplant some rose bushes on the orders of my temporary boss.
I had never understood quite why roses were so highly prized and was giving this thought some consideration when a tea rose hooked me with one of its more delicate thorns. I detached the slender thorn carefully and as I did so was gouged in the leg by one of the larger more thickly-based thorns on the lower stem. I cursed the rose, depite my humanitarianism, setting off a volley of barks from the dog which appeared in the kitchen doorway, spilling eagerly onto the lawn and making a bee-line for me. It was about to lift a leg on one of the transplanted roses so I raised a hand to it. At the same instant, Mr Geropolous, who had been slowly puttering down the drive in the red Metro had craned his head out of the car window to guide himself out. He had seen me about to chastise the dog out of the corner of his eye.
"His dan nathing to harm you so I think is time to cam in" he barked, making exaggerated movements as he wound up the car window and dug himself out of the driving seat.
He ushered me to the kitchen with a sweep of his burly arm and swept his Dutch Marine cap off his shiny pate, doffed it on the table with a long sigh.
"How mach you want?" was all he said, opening the kitchen drawer where I had found the bin bags. Reaching behind the tobacco pouch he pulled out a small leather purse. I began to form the words "Well, it's about ten" but he cut in with a loud "Eh?!" then swiftly announced "here's six pounds for the afternoon, OK?" With his hand poised over mine so that I had to accept whatever money fell from it, the deal had been sealed. The money, in coins, had been carefully counted out. As I left, the dog made one more triumphant sally down the driveway as if to escort me off the premises and an intent face peered from the bedroom window.