The Gardener

By Guy Portman

A slave and a stoner’s dreams are going up in smoke.

Illegal immigrant Hoàng was hoping to see Buckingham Palace. But as he was locked in a shipping container, he never even saw the White Cliffs of Dover. Now the Vietnamese national is holed up in a cannabis farm hidden from the light of day. If the modern-day slave gets a shot at freedom, he will have to seize it.

Teenager Amelia is a sextortionist with a penchant for video games and smoking weed. Unfortunately, the wayward adolescent hails from a long line of prestigious accountants, and she is obligated to follow in the family tradition. A crucial exam is just days away. Amelia’s only hope is to blackmail the teacher. Failure is not an option.

If you’re a fan of suspenseful fiction, you’ll relish these two darkly humorous tales.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guy Portman
• Release date: Jul 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215916001

Guy Portman

As far back as anyone can remember Guy has been an introverted creature, with an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and a sardonic sense of humour.Throughout a childhood in London spent watching cold war propaganda gems such as He Man, an adolescence confined in various institutions, and a career that has encompassed stints in academic research and the sports industry, Guy has been a keen if somewhat cynical social observer.Humour of the sardonic variety is a recurring theme in Guy’s writing. His first novel, Charles Middleworth, is an insightful tale of the unexpected. Like the author, the protagonist in Necropolis and Sepultura is a darkly humorous individual – though, unlike the author, he is a sociopath. His latest effort, Tomorrow’s World, is a satirical book of vignettes about the future.

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THE GARDENER

Guy Portman

Published by Guy Portman

Copyright Guy Portman 2023

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organisations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

THE GARDENER

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

SEXTORTION

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

The Gardener

I

As he was stuffed in a shipping container with ten other migrants, Hoàng never got to see the White Cliffs of Dover. The container was unloaded onto the docks, where it remained for the entire morning and well into the afternoon before being hoisted onto a lorry and driven northwards. In a depot, its door was prised open, Hoàng was dragged out, and bundled into the back of a transit van. It is here that the new arrival is now, travelling along a motorway. He parts the lace-effect curtain. A towering chimney stack is bellowing dark smoke into the grey sky. There is a landfill with mountains of rubbish, above which screeching seagulls are circling.

During his rudimentary education in rural Vietnam, Hoàng had learned of two places in England. The Tower of London and Buckingham Palace. In the weeks prior to embarking on the six-thousand-mile journey, he had pictured the day when he would see them. As he gazes at the bleak landscape, Hoàng wonders if they will be passing through London. If so, perhaps he will catch a glimpse of the historical landmarks. He considers asking the driver, a burly native of his homeland, but decides against it. The man has not uttered a word to him, other than In, when he shoved him into the van.

They leave the motorway, swerve around a roundabout, drive along an A road, and enter a large town. Concrete council estates give way to a high street with boarded-up retail units, charity shops, pawnbrokers, and fast-food outlets with grimy windows. People are milling about on the pavement. Hoàng is surprised that many of them have dark complexions, not something he would have associated with the UK. After exiting the thoroughfare, they traverse roads lined with semi-detached houses and prefab blocks of flats. The driver’s head swivels around.

‘Đóng rèm lại đi!’ (Close the curtain!)

Having done so, Hoàng asks, ‘This place, London?’

‘No, Peterborough.’

Hoàng has never heard of Peterborough. He yawns and his eyelids flicker. The thirty-four-day trip from his house in Vietnam’s Central Highlands has been exhausting. It began with a flight from his nation’s largest city Ho Chi Minh City to Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent. From there, he travelled overland in lorries through Kazakhstan, Russia, and across Europe. The best part of a week was spent locked in a safe house in northern France before being stashed in a container and transported across the English Channel. Hoàng took out a twenty-thousand-dollar loan to get here. He plans to earn enough in this country to live simply, pay off the loan and send money to his family back home.

The driver parks in a cul-de-sac, peers through the windscreen, checks the side-view mirrors, disembarks, jogs around to the rear of the van, pulls its door ajar, and says, ‘Move!’

A palm shoved in Hoàng’s lower back sends him stumbling down the litter-strewn pavement. Shouting is coming from a property, dance music from another. He is pushed through a rusted gate and across a front garden overgrown with weeds. The handler extracts a key and unlocks the front door. Behind it is a plywood board, the same width and height as the door. When the handler moves the board to one side, Hoàng sees bright light emanating from a room on the right of the hallway. He follows his handler into the room. The property’s former living room is immersed in a blinding white light and its floor is covered in flowerpots. Each contains soil and a single shoot, replete with two tiny green leaves. Stationed at intervals are whirring electric fans.

‘Stay here!’ His handler hurtles upstairs. Hoàng surveys his surroundings. The windows have been boarded up with lead sheeting. A bunch of taped wires are dangling from a hole in the wall. Several minutes have passed when the handler reappears. ‘I go now.’

‘What about me?’ The handler turns his back on him and strides into the hallway. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Stay here.’

The plywood board is put back in place and the front door closes. A key is turning in the lock. For quite some time Hoàng stares at the plywood board. He shakes his head and pivots slowly around. The hallway leads to a narrow passageway that serves as the property’s kitchen. It has a stainless-steel sink and a counter with a rice cooker and a kettle on it. There is also a small television and a DVD player. Behind the kitchen is a cubicle with a toilet bereft of a seat. He returns to the hallway and ascends the stairs. The carpet is tattered and stained with earth. Blazing white light is exuding from the first floor. As with downstairs, the rooms are filled with flowerpots. In one of the rooms, there is a tinfoil-covered extraction pipe protruding from a hole in the ceiling.

There is no furniture, no doors, and the bathroom has been stripped of its furnishings. Only a single tap remains where the bath once was. Attached to it is a length of hose. Hoàng turns on the tap, bends over, splashes water on his face and takes a lengthy drink. Having turned off the tap, he goes into what had been one of the property’s two bedrooms. He slumps down the wall to the floor, where he sits with his knees pulled up to his chest, so as not to touch the flowerpots. His chin lolls forward and his eyes close. In his dream, he sees his niece feeding straw to the household’s water buffalo and his mother hanging clothes on a line.

Hoàng’s eyes open. He thought he heard something moving in another room, but all he can hear now is the relentless whirring of the fans. He yawns and his head tilts to the side. A dark shape passes across the entrance to the room. Hoàng blinks. He assumes it was a trick played by the blinding light.

When he awakens, there is a woman in the room crouched over a flowerpot. She is gaunt, has concave cheeks, sallow skin, straggly long hair, and appears to be Vietnamese. Her scrawny arms are jutting out from a heavily stained T-shirt. Hoàng clambers to his feet, and says, ‘Xin chào.’ (Hello.)

She does not respond, does not even look up. Having shuffled to the side, she examines a seedling. In his native tongue, she says, ‘In seedling stage, water plants every day.’ She picks up a watering can. ‘Watch.’ She pours some water into a flowerpot. ‘This much.’

‘Okay, got it. How long you work here?’

‘The lights are on a timer system.’ She stands up. ‘Follow me.’ Hoàng follows her downstairs to the living room. Dangling from the wall is a multi-plug socket. Attached to one of the sockets is a timer device. She twists it towards him. ‘Sixteen hours light, eight hours darkness. See?’ Her student nods. ‘When plants enter vegetation stage, change to twenty hours of light and four hours darkness.’ She releases her grip on the timer, leans over, and lifts a flowerpot up off the floor. ‘Just two small leaves now. When plant grows seven sets of leaves, it is ready for vegetation stage. This will happen in six or seven days.’

‘How many hours will I work here per day? And where do I stay?’

‘Don’t talk! Listen.’ The woman squints at him. ‘There is much to learn and not much time. Seven days after moving plants to twenty-hour light cycle, feed with nutrients three times per week. Add the nutrients to their water. In seedling stage, plants are too small for nutrients.’ She deposits two watering cans at his feet. ‘We water now.’

Watering the plants takes them an hour and a half. They have just finished when the lights switch off and the property is immersed in darkness. The woman switches on a torch. The pair weave along the rows of plants, down the stairs, and into the property’s narrow kitchen. When she presses a switch on the wall, a bulb hanging from the ceiling illuminates. Hoàng watches her pour rice and water into the rice cooker. He is feeling ravenous, having not eaten since arriving in this country. Several minutes have elapsed when he asks, ‘How long do I stay in this house?’

‘Until crop ready.’

‘How long is that?’

‘Including drying, fourteen weeks.’

Hoàng sighs. This is not what he envisaged he would be doing here. The agent who booked his trip had waxed lyrical about the UK. She told him he would be working in a factory or on a building site, earning at least a hundred dollars a day. Not imprisoned in a modified urban property tending cannabis. He is currently sitting cross-legged on the floor, eating rice with disposable chopsticks. Hoàng swallows a mouthful of rice and peers at his tutor on the other side of the kitchen.

‘How much do I get paid?’

‘I teach you how to grow only. Ask the boss when he comes here.’

‘When is he coming?’

She does not respond. After eating, they clean their bowls in the sink. Beside the sink there is a crushed tube of toothpaste. Hoàng squeezes a dollop onto his fingertip, smears it across his teeth, and then rinses his mouth with water from the tap. The woman gives him a rolled-up sleeping mat and a blanket. Hers is unrolled on the kitchen floor. Hoàng takes his through to the hallway, the only other part of the house with space to lie down. Having taken off his trainers, grey tracksuit bottoms and matching hooded tracksuit top, he lies on the sleeping mat and pulls the blanket over him. It is thin and dirty. Hoàng thinks about his mother and niece. What with the time difference, he assumes they are sleeping.

Hoàng’s father died when he was young, and the niece’s mother, his sister, perished from cancer two years ago. Her husband, a gambler and drinker, disappeared. His daughter was left with her grandmother, adding further strain to the family’s precarious financial situation. It was these circumstances that prompted Hoàng to travel to the UK.

*

Two days later – Hoàng goes into the bathroom, sticks the length of hose in the watering can and twists the tap. When it is full, he repeats the procedure with another watering can. He then lifts them up and lugs them into what had been the property’s second bedroom. The horticulture neophyte is distributing the contents of a watering can when his tutor enters the bedroom, and says, ‘How do you know when plants ready for vegetation stage?’

‘When the plant has grown seven sets of pointed leaves.’

‘What do you change the light to?’

‘Twenty hours of light, four hours of darkness.’

She walks off. Hoàng picks up a flowerpot and examines the seedling in it. During his short time here, the plants have grown nearly an inch and developed an extra set of leaves. When he contemplates what would happen to him if the police were to discover this place, a shudder courses through his body. The watering is finished for the day. He