Dead-heading, by Alasdair Mennie

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

Hector Laidlaw had been head gardener at Craigmount Gardens for thirty-one years, and in all that time he had never once called a rose by its proper name. He called them ‘my girls’. He spoke to them every morning as he walked the beds with his secateurs, telling the yellow ones to stop showing off and the white ones to cheer up, and he did not care who heard him.

Visitors he cared about rather less. A man who let his dog near the borders received a stare that could have stripped paint. Children who picked the flowers were chased the length of the pond, Hector’s boots slapping the gravel and his cap clutched in one fist.

In the spring of 1974 the council sent two young men in a van to discuss ‘modernising the planting scheme’. They had drawings. They used the word ‘low-maintenance’ four times. Hector listened in silence, leaning on his rake, his face as still and grey as a gravestone.

‘Low maintenance,’ he said at last. ‘Aye. So’s a car park.’

When they had gone, he knelt in the wet earth beside the oldest bush in the garden, a dark red climber his father had planted before the war, and stayed there a long time, his big cracked hands moving gently among the leaves, as if he were checking a sleeping child for fever.

What impressions does the writer create of Hector Laidlaw?

You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.