'Do These Toffs Have Any Concept Of How Much Time I Spend Maintaining This Hedge Maze?'

"If it were up to me, I'd have planted a bleeding vegetable garden. Not that it would do these fools much good -- you know their cook would just boil all the vitamins out of any beetroot or courgettes anyway -- and if I'm honest, Mina could probably do with more red meat than fiber anyway, pale as she is. But the rich are different to you and me. They put that country house in the middle of an absurdly large tract to set it off, not to make practical decisions about the land. Sir Malcolm's an explorer, not a gentleman farmer.

"So when he comes to me one day, and says, 'Stevenson,' he says, 'I've decided what to do with the lawn, and I want a hedge maze,' well, it's certainly not my place to tell him that's a stupid idea. But between you and me: it's a stupid idea.

"And he's just so proud, mind. He tells me he's met a fellow at his Club in London who's designed a maze, and he gives me a scrap of foolscap, tells me to replicate this puzzle in shrubbery. 'You can see how challenging it is, Stevenson,' he says. 'Our garden parties will be the talk of the county.' Just as carefully as I can, I says, 'Sir Malcolm, I've no experience constructing a hedge maze. I'm not sure how I would be able to make sure as I'm going that I'm even getting the design right. The tallest ladder we have is fourteen feet. I don't think that would even allow me to see over the wall.' 'I'll get you a taller ladder,' he says. Well, what can I say to that?

"I was well chuffed when I actually managed to get the damn thing together, because it wasn't easy, besides which I never thought it was a worthwhile use of my time. I worried every day that I was neglecting the peonies in order to construct this gigantic bit of nonsense that I assumed would be used once and then forgotten, just like the life-size chessboard and the lawn bowling course and the regulation-sized cricket pitch. But the peonies turned out fine, and I was surprised by how often I saw members of the family taking the air in the hedge maze, and I was proud that I gave them this experience even if I was sure they never once thought of old Stevenson as they strolled through it.

"Then one evening I was up on the twenty-four-foot ladder clipping a few errant branches when I happened to look across the way and had a terrible shock.

"Well, wasn't it Sir Malcolm having it off with Mrs. Ives from next door -- and little Vanessa wandering up to see the whole sordid assignation! Poor tyke, it probably scarred her for life seeing such a terrible sight. So much for any notion she might have had of fidelity or sexual ethics! Worst of all, so much for her conception of the hedge maze of a safe and lovingly kept sanctuary right here on the Murray property! It was all tainted for her after that! Of course when she decided to have her own first sexual experience today with young Peter, it would be in the selfsame hedge maze, and of course her attempt at seduction is a failure because as we all know, Peter is an asexual who has less interest in girls than he does in serval pelts.

"And of course old Stevenson can't say a thing about the Murrays and their guests using the hedge maze in any nasty way they see fit to -- it's not my hedge maze, much as I might think of it that way. But do these toffs have any concept of how much time I spend maintaining this hedge maze? Do they think those shrub walls just grow that way? I used to grow prize-winning roses, but that's all behind me now, and for what -- to keep up a place where they can get up to any kind of dirty business that crosses their perverted minds? It's enough to make an gardener sick! May the Devil take them all!

"I mean that literally: may the actual Satan take them all straight to Hell. And when he does, we'll all know it's because they befouled my hedge maze with their filth and fluids."