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By Root 1382 0

from the Eastern districts, indigenous. The pompom tree. Escallonia. Hamelia: rather like a honeysuckle flower, always in bloom. Pampas grass. The kitchen herbs. Indigenous waterlilies. Day lilies. The indigenous red-veined banana tree, from the Bridal Veil Falls at Chimanimani: it is really a plantain. The yellow daisy bush. Penstemon. The Cape honeysuckle: orange. The Mediterranean rock rose, magenta: a cistus. Hebes. Cannas seven foot tall, in orange pink. ‘You could garden with cannas alone.’ Barberton daisies. New Zealand flax: maid-of-all-work with red currant-like flowers. Yellow lantana. Cape may: a mass of white blossom covering a bush. Miniature white poinsettias. A guava. Acanthus: purple. The wild fig tree: indigenous. The giant ageratum, covered with fuzzy mauve. Lemon and orange trees. Bauhinias, purple and white. A large yellow bush, nameless. The yesterday, today and tomorrow bush. Pomegranates. Sage shrubs, very large. Daisy as ground cover, pink. Fuchsias. Chinese lanterns: orange. An anonymous pink creeper. The handkerchief bush: white. Moonflowers, white and yellow. Cotoneaster. From South Africa, a succulent with minute magenta flowers. Cascades of nasturtiums. Cycad: Japan. The powder puff bush, faint pink, like a delicate thistle flower. Hypericums. The flag bush, grown with the white and the red handkerchief bushes. Aloes with dangling red spikes, from Nyanga. The bottle brush tree, which birds like so much. The Chinese sacred bamboo. Honeysuckles. Azaleas. The mirror plant from New Zealand. The lady’s slipper plant, a thumbergia from Mysore, like an orchid, dark rust and yellow dangling panicles. Monstera: a tree-sized creeper. ‘I always feel sorry for monsteras when I see them as prisoners in English offices.’ Rothmania, a tree with pink bellshaped flowers. Oleander. Plumbago. Petunias, pinks, cornflowers. The Norfolk Island pine, from New South Wales. Marigolds.

We stand at the bottom of the garden, the list in my hand, listening to the noisy louries. As the bush thins and goes, will the birds come in to the town gardens for refuge, as happens in Britain?

A team of black men are working in Ayrton R.’s swimming bath, which has developed a crack. I am listening to the talk and laughter as I have done half my life, from outside, not part of it. But in the Training Centre I was part of it, and never thought about the colour of anyone’s skin.

‘A fairly dizzying business, this,’ I say, ‘swooping from the verandahs to the grass-roots and back again.’

‘White master and white madam, watching black people work,’ says Ayrton R. ‘Whether you like it or not.’

‘Would you say that patch of rape down there is bigger than it was last year?’

‘Hmmmm, yes, I think it is. Well, that’s all right.’

In my mind’s eye that paradise of garden slowly submerges under a sea of green mealies and rape. Well, it is certainly the way of the world. Only a week before I was reading how two female explorers travelled across the Gobi desert–that was before it was criss-crossed by military roads–and came on a wonderful walled garden, all flowering trees, plants, and the splashings of water, a paradise in the midst of leagues of stony dusty emptiness. They returned that way some months later. A minor war had destroyed the garden, and all that remained were hillsides full of charred trees and fouled water channels. But: one of the prettiest gardens in London grew vegetables right through the War (Second World) and on the day the War ended began the work of restoring lawns and pools and roses.

‘Who do you think will be living in this house in thirty years’ time?’ I ask, not meaning to be abrasive.

Ayrton R. is terribly upset. ‘I hope I will.’

Our eyes travel up past his house and on up the hill to the houses of the new rich black class. We are both thinking that it would not be Dorothy or George or their children who would buy this house, nor the men working in the swimming bath.

This poem criticises the new black rich class.

The Vengeance of the Poor Man

You treat me like dirt,

Pull, push and kick me,

With boots