Hill [28]

Is this how the story ends?

Will the edges be tied together like a piece of cheesecloth containing three warm scones? Put gently into a woven basket and carried over the edge of the hill?

They never told her there was a cliff on the other side.

You don’t hurtle to your death, though. No. This isn’t that kind of story. Death and decay and spattered brains on relentless rocks do not soothe a soul.

When you walk over the edge of the hill, you don’t exist anymore in the world as we know it.

It was the calmest tempest. It swooped around her, lifting her hair, caressing her hem, plucking at her sleeves with a gentle roar. Its breath was warm, while the sleet fell around her. That is how she could tell the different between a storm and the Beast. It huddled over her, protected her from harsh elements. It whispered in her ear, and she knew which way to turn in a blizzard. Should she stray too far from the Lake, she would lose it. And that is what she was most afraid of.

‘You know,’ Tom said to Laura, one such day, when the tempest blew warmly around them as they stood on the edge of the Lake, ‘I always think that the Beast has you in its grip, and doesn’t want to let go.’

Laura smiled, but she didn’t look at him. It was as though… no. It couldn’t be.

‘You understand what it says,’ she told him instead, ‘you know the language it speaks.’

‘I do, and sometimes,’ he lowered his voice, ‘sometimes Laura I worry about the things it says.’

‘Tosh!’ she threw at him, tossing her head, and walking back up the path.

He stood at the edge of the lake as she vanished into the darkening woods behind him, and watched the sun set serenely over the waters.

There was no wind, save for the whirlwind that caressed his hair and blew kisses on his cheeks. He stood for the longest while, beyond the sunset. He stood until the stars glittered one by one into existence, revealing themselves in their shining glory when daylight removed its mask and became night. He stared up at them, and even as he did, a decision was forming itself in his mind.

If she goes, he said to the tempest, I will go with her.

Gardens [11]

She was a rose garden.

The kind you see in old houses. The ones where the Lord of the Manor builds a stone garden for his wife and fills it with roses. He carves her a bench to sit on, and tells the gardeners to clear off at 10 in the morning so his lovely wife can sit in the silence, the breeze gently ruffling her skirts, and contemplate.

She was the rose garden.

The gift that gives.

Gave.

A smile when things go wrong. Gentle hands to wipe away tears, caress a face, run over smooth silky hair.

He watched from afar for years.

He watched her roses bloom, but never for him.

She danced through life sunlight glinting on golden locks. Larger than life, large as life, real. But never tangible.

When she laughed, with him, at him, next to him, but never for him, his heart would ache.

She gave him her friendship, held it out on a gilded plate. A bouquet of roses, their edges curly, their centres blushing, their scent tantalising.

She put her hand out, and when he took it, she let go.

He was there, you see, for all her joys and sadnesses, but never a part of them.

And he asked her. He asked her once, and she…

Said no.

She was the rose garden.

He only wanted one rose, but she was a rose garden.

The rose garden at Tatton Park, which inspires my thoughts. It was actually built by the Lord of the Manor for his wife, and he did indeed tell the gardeners to clear off at ten in the morning so his wife could enjoy the roses, undisturbed by anybody.

October [4]

The most darling month of the year, she would like to argue.

Make a case.

Type it up.

Send it to court.

Not court. That would be too drastic.

Somebody must declare it for all to know. It would be a travesty if nobody were to be so absolutely certain of the superiority of October over all the other months.

In October, her roses still bloomed. Less enthusiastically, but they opened their soft delicate petals to the grim clouds above and strove towards life. Something she always took inspiration from.

Briskly tying her boots, brightly buttoning her coat, tucking the old brown umbrella that belonged to a certain someone that she would not name under her padded arm.

Every morning at ten o’clock she exited from the kitchen door to inspect her beauties. She had twenty varieties which she had cultivated lovingly over the last six years. She had climbing roses winding their way intricately around metal trellises and wooden archways. Shrub roses adorning every inch along the pathway which curved its way around the little rose garden, and in the middle an orchard of tree roses. Yellow, white, pink and lush peach. The scent in the summer was overpowering, wafting towards the kitchen on cool gusts of wind. In the winter it was a mess of thorns, with some roses struggling their way through the dreary storms of the season.

In October, however, there was still beauty.

The trees surrounding the rose garden were alight with colour. Fiery, furious, yet lovely and soft at the same time. Tame flames. And the rose bushes still nodded with blooms, even as the season’s change wrestled around them. In the morning they were bejewelled with droplets of glittering dew.

She would cup an ungloved hand under a deliciously fat rose, and bend her nose to it, closing her eyes.

October is the most darling month of the year.

Image Credit

Thorn [3]

The earth rumbles with the sound of the distant train. The sky, the atmosphere, the air she breathes crackles with it.

It’s both a humdrum event, but also a sound that signals to her very core. After all evidence of the distant train vanishes, it is still her and the sky and the earth in the pitch black night. The stars are numerous. So numerous they make her heart ache for some ancient sadness that she cannot explain.

Maybe a current sadness too.

She is waiting. And picking roses, snipping them in the silvery light of the moon. She can’t see the thorns on their stems, but her slender fingers know where to press, to hold, to pull gently into her basket without pricking her fingertips or getting scratched. Her feet are bare, the cold grass and earth are soft, soggy under her feet. The night breeze, the one they caution is so terrible for health, brushes its calm hands through the locks of her hair that have escaped their braid.

It took about an hour. She stands in the light of the full moon. Her basket piled with rose stems, her feet icy, the stars speaking a language only she seems to understand.

An hour before she hears the clattering sound of a horse and carriage pulling up the drive of the Manor.

Murmurs, the sound of cases being put on the gravelly path. A door opening. A light behind her as the kitchen is warmed up for the person she knew would arrive at this time. She knew when she heard the night train. Three years of waiting; she knew.

And yet she sets her basket down in the inner porch, walks slowly to the backdoor, and melts into the darkness of the hallway within. The warmth immediately seizes her feet, encasing them in a comfort which awakens her as she walks silently in the dark, past the kitchen door which is slightly ajar, and where she can hear him telling Mr Baker about the delay, and which patients he had to see tomorrow. Up the stairs, through the numerous halls. Her bare feet making no sound on the carpets.

And into her own room at last.

She puts her face to the window, the stars gleaming at her, the moon so bright she almost has to avert her gaze. Her rose garden below, thorny yet beautiful, her roses are their own little moons, nodding in the breeze at the brilliance above.

And then her heart lurches as she sees a figure exit from the kitchen door, a floor below and adjacent to her bedroom window. It’s him.

She sees him turn towards the rose garden, and his face looks up… she moves sideways.. but he is looking only at the moon.

She watches him stand there for a long time. Until eventually he turns back to the kitchen and closes the door behind him.

He asked her, you see. Three years ago before he left.

And she said no.

Image Credit: Anne Ducrot