Love Letter to Lola by Carmel Bird

Author:Carmel Bird [Bird, Carmel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spineless Wonders Publishing Pty Lt

THREE

On the road back to Burnie, in the gathering twilight, I almost ran over a pair of Tasmanian devils fiercely mating in the middle of the road, almost crashed the car as I avoided them. The parcel, the size of a paperback book, was so potent that I was unable to bring myself to open it until I got to Burnie, to a tired and dusty yet comfortable old hotel. Burnie was at the time in turmoil because if industrial strikes at the paper mill. 'Always Rely on Reflex'. I saw no sign of the strikes as I drove up to the Bass Strait Inn.

The hotel bedroom looked out over the forlorn and wild grey waters of the Strait. The mournful cries of seagulls echoed the feelings in my heart. The place was furnished with floral chintz and faded lace, and pictures of English country scenes. Cheap china dogs on a mantelpiece above the fireplace where a small fire was burning in the grate. Old world comfort. A tiny elegant bookcase filled with sad old hard-cover volumes that looked as if they might fall apart at a touch. Edgar Allan Poe, Jane Austen, Dot and the Kangaroo. Some cheap, paperback Agatha Christies. A Gideon Bible, a dictionary. The bed was covered with a pale green silk eiderdown from long ago. The exuberant pink roses of the carpet were faded to a blush. I sat at a small oak desk that was stained with ink and marked with scratches. I cut the string of the parcel with a pair of nail scissors I found in a drawer. The paper wrapping sat tightly around a plain brown cardboard box as if it had been in place for a very long time. I unfolded the paper carefully and lifted the lid of the box. Inside were three objects wrapped in soft white tissue paper. Each had a handwritten label: Rose of Jerusalem, Rose of Jericho, Weena’s Flowers. So maybe the tales of the two roses were true. But Weena’s Flowers?

Trixie had never told me she actually had Weena’s Flowers—the flowers from the year 802,701. The flowers that Weena the little Eloi gave to the Time Traveller in the Wells story, the flowers the Traveller carried from the future to the present, which is now the past; the flowers he handed to the storyteller, the flowers he left behind when he disappeared into the future, never to be seen again. Weena’s Flowers? Surely this was not possible. Trixie had gone too far. A joke? There was a short note addressed to me. My hands shook a little as I unfolded it. Again, Trixie’s handwriting, which in fact almost mirrors my own rounded flowing script.

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