The Castle Grounds Team.
The very first time that Ricardo insulted Marcelo by addressing him as “Merda”, Marcelo knew that one day he would have his retribution.
When Marcelo began work at the castle grounds, Ricardo (only five years or so his senior) took him to one side and complained how until then, he, Ricardo had been the youngest of the litter, as it were, the runt. He’d been badly treated by the other men. Marcelo found this hard to believe – they seemed a decent lot and were kind to Marcelo from the start. They did not demand too much, and Marcelo was able to spend much of his time watching how things were done, paying attention to as much detail as possible, until eventually he took his tools and had a go himself, whether it was weeding the seedbeds, clearing debris from the trees that had fallen on the paths or digging out topsoil from the pathways to repair burst water-pipes. The men had even respected his wish not to be involved in the care of the fishpond; Marcelo could not abide fish, even though, or perhaps because, he was from a family of fishermen. There was something about the smell, the slime of the pond weed that made him nauseous.
But Ricardo was different from the others. The looks he aimed at Marcelo were malicious, his greetings rare. When Ricardo addressed Marcelo it was mostly to pick on him. Not in front of the other men, but in quiet corners of the gardens, or when they had been assigned a job as a duo. However, because Marcelo’s mother had always taught him not to tell tales, he tolerated Ricardo, though a root of disquiet grew within him like a knotweed.
Even now, Marcelo remembers the particular day Ricardo picked to give Marcelo his new name. It was windy, though not cold, and every so often a shower blew in, hampering the men’s efforts as the team went about their work. A soft drizzle soaked Marcelo’s face, the wind flapped at his coat, scrambling his efforts as he tried to shovel the pile of manure into the wheelbarrow for distributing on the top-end flower bed. A task allocated to both Ricardo and Marcelo.
“I know the weather’s not great for it,” the supervisor had said, “but if you both work hard, you’ll have it done in an hour.”
But once the supervisor was out of sight, Ricardo had made excuses and slipped off, leaving Marcelo to struggle on alone. After an hour and a half, Ricardo re-appeared. He stood with his arms folded, appraising Marcelo’s progress and shaking his head in a slow disapproving motion.
“Thought you’d be finished by now, Merda,” he said. “Boss’ll be back to inspect soon.”
“You were meant to be doing this too,” Marcelo stammered, wiping the rain from his face.
Ricardo shrugged, spat on the ground. And walked off, leaving Marcelo to finish the task alone.
After that, Ricardo had always called Marcelo “Merda”. And Marcelo said nothing.
After a year or so, there was an opportunity in another team for a senior worker. Marcelo’s supervisor came to him.
“I have been watching how the gardens thrive in your hands, Marcelo. You deserve a rise.”
And so Marcelo, not Ricardo, was transferred to the better job for the better pay. And so too, eventually Marcelo was given his own team of men to supervise, and Ricardo stayed in the old team avoiding work and making scapegoats of each new apprentice as they came and went. There were others in the Castle Grounds team who stayed in the same place for years with no thoughts of more pay or higher rank and were contented, but Ricardo was bitter; a resentment screwed up his features and gnarled his fingers, and whenever Marcelo encountered him, Ricardo would snarl at him, “If it isn’t Merda, the old muck shoveller…”
Marcelo worked his way up the ladder, as his mother had always quietly but insistently wanted him to do, and he became overall manager for the gardening contractors, keeping an overview of all the teams. And always Ricardo was a source of trouble. Some apprentices complained. Ill-feeling and back-biting built up in the Castle Grounds team. Marcelo knew that Ricardo was no longer content to pick on one team member. He played one off against another for his own amusement. Supervisors found him hard to manage – they came and went. Ricardo had become the puppet master, though he never put himself forward to organise the team or allocate the work. Yet Marcelo found that there was never enough firm evidence for Ricardo’s dismissal. The maggot stayed in the apple.
When yet another supervisor of that team told Marcelo that Ricardo was the reason he was leaving, Marcelo decided that he must act.
There was a woman, young, pretty, not more than thirty, who had joined one of the teams, indeed the first woman in the region to have joined the labour teams. She had proved to be quick and capable and hard-working, and even though some of the men had initially moaned that she would not pull her weight, she had gradually earned their respect.
“I would like you to supervise the Castle Grounds team,” Marcelo said to her.
The young woman hesitated.
“It’s flattering,” she replied, “but I’ve heard that there’s a very difficult worker in that team…”
“Consider it a challenge,” said Marcelo.
The young woman smiled with doubt in her eyes, but held out her hand to shake Marcelo’s and the following Monday morning she was there at the Castle Grounds to address her new team.
Ricardo smirked. “A woman!” he scoffed, casting a mocking glance round at the other workers. “What will that muck shoveller think of next, sending us a woman to organise men’s work?”
But despite his bravado, Ricardo didn’t like it one bit. He went to see Marcelo.
“You can’t have a woman bossing us about,” he said. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Miss Abrega knows perfectly well her duties and how to carry them out,” replied Marcelo calmly.
“It’s all very well, you in your ivory tower,” spat Ricardo, “you haven’t seen the mess on the ground.”
Unfortunately, there was a grain of truth in Ricardo’s words. Marcelo had not been to visit the Castle Grounds in weeks. The next day he arrived unannounced. He was relieved to see that his hunch had been correct and everything under Miss Abrega appeared to be working like clockwork. Gardenia and Hibiscus, Oleander and Weigela, the labels, the verges and paths, all was as it should be. Except for one aspect. There were no smiles on the men’s faces. There was a sense of unease. When he asked members of the team why they looked so unhappy, nobody could tell him.
“Have you enough tools?”
“Yes,” they replied.
“Enough men in the team?”
“Yes,” they replied.
“One short,” muttered Ricardo beneath his breath, eyeing Miss Abrega maliciously.
“Enough direction?”
“Yes.”
“Enough pay?”
“We could always use more!” they laughed.
Afterwards Marcelo and Miss Abrega sat down together. Marcelo scratched his head. Miss Abrega’s dark eyebrows curved into a small knot of puzzlement.
“How to boost morale…” she said, a statement rather than a question.
“Change the dynamic,” said Marcelo.
“But how?”
“How do you remove a maggot from the heart of an apple?” was Marcelo’s reply.
“Remove the food,” said Miss Abrega with a hopeless gesture.
And that was when Marcelo had his Idea.
“Tell Ricardo,” he said, “that you are so impressed with his work that you have decided to give him a sole area of responsibility.”
Miss Abrega brightened. “Remove the food from the maggot, you mean?”
“We will feed the maggot to the fishes,” Marcelo grinned. ”Put him in charge of the fish pond. Nothing else. Feeding the fish, cleaning, plant management. You only need one to do that. And it can be done without seeing anyone else in the team for almost the entire day.”
“And when he goes on holiday?”
“He will have the power to decide who is responsible for the fish. Then if there’s any problem, it will be Ricardo who is ultimately responsible. We will pay him an increment accordingly.”
“How very clever,” said Miss Abrega.
The plan worked. When Marcelo returned to the site, the men in the Castle Grounds team greeted him with that old loyal joviality, and Ricardo could be seen sitting on the bench by the pond, feet up, tossing food to the fish, or gently scrubbing at the paving stones that surrounded it, or painting the railings with long relaxed strokes of the paintbrush. The snarl on his top lip softened, the gnarled fingers uncurled a little to fit into the special gloves he bought for use in pond water.
Then the day came when he wanted to take two weeks holiday.
“I have to nominate my cover, Merda,” he told Marcelo, then smirked, looking Marcelo directly in the eye.
The anger rose up Marcelo’s neck into his cheeks at the sound of the old nickname, but he said nothing.
“It’s my decision,” continued Ricardo, “that the only person suitable and responsible enough for this job is yourself.”
And Marcelo knew that for the sake of diplomacy, and despite his abhorrence of fish, he would comply.
The End