Rose Cottage by Mary Stewart

Author:Mary Stewart
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2011-02-16T13:00:00+00:00

15

The cemetery was large – two fields taken over from Low Beck Farm when the old churchyard became too crowded to be serviceable – and surrounded by a high wall. My grandfather’s grave was about midway along on the west side, a large plot, to leave space, as I remembered Gran saying, for late-comers. Among the flowers I had brought for him were clusters of his favourite rose, the cottage rose, Old Blush, which he had planted in every available space at home, because, he said, they wouldn’t let him grow ‘the real roses’ at the Hall, just ‘those coloured cabbages they breed nowadays, all size and no scent’.

‘You’ll want water for those,’ said Davey. ‘The tap’s over near the main gate, and there’s usually a can there. I’ll get it for you.’ He went off, leaving me to go to the graveside alone.

I had stooped to set my basket down at the kerbside before I realised that, when I had gathered the flowers that morning, I had not even thought about taking any for Aunt Betsy. Admittedly, she had never expressed a preference for, or even an opinion of, any flower or plant, except to complain about the scent of the wild garlic in the lane, but even so—

I need not have troubled. On the grave-space next to my grandfather’s there were already flowers, masses of them, arranged with some care in a couple of metal urns. Not roses, but a mixture of garden and wild flowers, lupins and delphiniums and Canterbury bells, along with dog-daisies and cornflowers, and trails of ivy and wild honeysuckle. The wild flowers were all dead or dying, but the others were fresh still.

Even in the presence of the quiet dead it is not easy to control one’s thoughts. My first one was, who in the world would have done this for that very unpopular old woman, my great aunt? My second was that she herself would have called it a sinful waste, and Popish at that.

So who? Miss Linsey’s ghosts? My dead mother and her long-dead gipsy, creeping after dark into the cemetery with this charming tribute to someone whom, in life, she had disliked, even hated, whose viper’s tongue had driven her from home? If there was any sort of truth in Miss Linsey’s tale of lights and people at the grave, no ghosts had put these flowers there. Then who? Not Gran; she had known that I would visit the grave-plot, and she surely would have told me if she had asked anyone else to bring flowers.

A sudden breeze stirred the grasses by the wall, sending a couple of petals floating to the ground, and bringing with it the scent of roses, and with the scent, a vivid memory of a garden crammed with roses and lupins and all the flowers of summer. Miss Mildred’s garden. Miss Mildred, the one person I knew whose simple loving kindness would have embraced even Aunt Betsy. Whose loving kindness put me to shame.

I detached

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