The Rose Garden

A Story by Naomi

I remember the moment the letter landed on the faded rug that acted as a doormat, jumbled up in between the usual bills. I remember seeing it and confusion clouding my vision, as I recognised the neat handwriting that years ago I had craved glimpsing among the envelopes that the postman slipped through the letterbox. I remember sometimes sitting by the door when they were later than promised, waiting for the footsteps that brought my addiction. I had never moved house for fear that the letters wouldn’t follow me and so I have lived at 26 Maple Drive for nearly twenty eight years.

All those memories that I had tried to suppress in my attempt at distancing myself from her; when it was made clear that I would never see that writing again or its’ owner, suddenly leaped to the front of my mind and I felt tears pricking the corners of my eyes.

I blinked and sniffed as much as I could, but I could not hold back all the tears that had built up over 35 years, dammed by my own stubbornness. And so I sat in the narrow hall and bawled like a baby, until I had a headache and all the water in me was soaking into the sodden tissue I clutched in my left hand. While in my right I still clung to the letter, silently praying that she was coming for me at last. But not daring to open it for fear that my prayers would not be answered.

Eventually, I picked myself up and stumbled into the kitchen, where I placed the letter on the table and made a hot cup of tea. Whenever anyone is upset someone always makes them a cup of tea. It’s soothing in some way, I suppose.

I sat at one of the worn, wooden chairs and nursed my mug as I contemplated opening the letter and my mind wandered back to the past, when I was a young man, twenty one, to be precise. A gardener at one of the largest houses in England owned by a family whose wealth was only exceeded by the Royal family. It was luck that had brought me there: a chance encounter with the daughter, when she had fallen into the stream that signals the end of their vast grounds and the beginning of the village of Alveley.

I had been cycling down the lane there when I heard her shouts. I acted on pure instinct. Leaping over the sturdy fence, I saw her head just above the surface of the ice-cold water and her neck straining to keep it up. She was in the deepest area that none of us ever went except in summer. Diving in would have done no good, but, fortunately, there was a birch tree on the bank. I climbed it quickly and leaned down to the churning water as she was swept past me. Reaching out like a blind man, I caught her by the arm. Then I realised that getting her out from the position I was in was going to be none too easy.

While I was thinking about what to do she grabbed hold of the shirt on my back and started to pull herself up. Understanding what she was trying to do, I moved slowly backwards and soon she was on the branch coughing and spluttering as her body was racked with shivers. But while we sat precariously on the bough, I felt it creak.

“Uh,” I hesitated, not knowing what to call her as I didn’t know her name. “The branch is not strong enough to carry both of us. Um, so you’re going to have to move.”

She looked at me with a look so pleading I was tempted to let her stay and get her breath back. But a louder groan from our seat brought me swiftly to my senses.

“I’ll carry you down,” I said, holding out my arms, waiting for her response.

Nodding she shuffled towards me so she was wrapped in my arms. Slowly, I crawled backwards until I felt the tree trunks’ rough skin pressed against my back. From there I managed to manoeuvre myself and the shaking girl to the solid ground.

After that I don’t really remember much. I ran up to the house with her still in my arms and vaguely I heard worried questions and trembling thanks. While she got better, I stayed at the house and found out that her name was Sylvia. Her family discovered that I wanted to be a gardener and hired me to maintain their rose garden. It seemed appropriate as it was also known as Sylvia’s garden.

There we met nearly everyday and we became closer and closer as years past us in a rush. But as I got older, it seemed that my luck escaped me and Sylvia was told that she wasn’t to see me again. Yet she was not one to be told what she could and couldn’t do, and certainly not who she was allowed to see.

And so we kept on meeting in secret, but in hindsight, I feel that it was obvious from the start that we were going to get caught eventually. As you can imagine I got fired and Sylvia was sent away for some months to make sure she had forgotten me. That part did not work for she sent me letters once a month, by way of the nurse that had cared for her most when she was small. She told me of the suitors her family pressed upon her and of the arguments over her schemes to chase the men away. And every time at the end she wrote that her rose garden was growing wilder and wilder without me and that when she went in there she could feel the gloom surrounding her and filling her heart. I wrote back but my hope shrunk, unlike hers. I told her of my other jobs and my new friends. We wrote for years.

Until, one day they stopped coming. I waited and I waited. But it was all in vain. The last letter I had received was on the 19^th December 1996. She wished me a merry Christmas and assured me that one day we would be together. I hoped that her promises would come true, but I long gave up expecting them to happen.

My hands got warmer and warmer and my tea got colder and colder, until it would have been disgusting to drink. But I didn’t notice as I sat and stared at the unopened letter and relived the events of the only interesting thing that had happened in my life.

An owl hooting brought me back to the real world and I cursed myself for letting the memories of the past take over my day. Getting up I poured away the freezing tea and made myself a fresh cup and some toast. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and was ravenous. I didn’t sit at the table to eat but stayed standing at the sideboard. I was scared to be enticed into the painful memories.

Yet the food seemed to give me a boldness I had never had before, that if I had had I could have stood up to Sylvia’s family and would be with her now. I found myself opening the letter. At a snail's pace, mind, because courage doesn’t come without fear and fear slows your actions.

It was a short letter, but the few words pierced my heart deeper than an arrow.

Dear Howard (it read)

If you are reading this then I am no longer in the same world as you. It is likely I have died of a broken heart, since my brother, Charles, forced the truth out of Nurse just before she died. I have forgiven her and I hope you can too, but I have not forgiven Charles. There were times when I wanted to tell you things that no one else would understand, but every time I found that release blocked.

I don’t know how long it has been since my letters stopped coming but whether it is one year or ten the pain of betrayal and misunderstanding I feel is still etched on my heart and I can imagine it must be for you too. This is why I am sending you this letter via the family solicitor, Mr Graves. I trust him to keep this a secret from my family and to deliver it to the right address and before the funeral. I have asked him to enclose the date and place of it so that you can see me one last time.

Our rose garden is alive, but only just, I hope that you will visit it before the end.

All the love that I possess I give to you.

Sylvia Grace.

An unnoticed tear ran down my face and dropped beside her name as the fact that the love of my life had died before we could fulfil the promises we had made to each other. But that one tear was all that was left inside me today and I felt even sadder that that was all I could show for my grief.

I read the letter over and over again and found the small piece of paper hidden in the envelope.

Thursday 20^th March, 11 o’clock at St. Mary’s church, Alveley.

That was tomorrow. I would have to leave now to get there on time.

Suddenly I was full of energy and started rushing around to find my suit and some clean underwear. I grabbed a bag and threw a muddle of random things. As I hastened to the door, keys in my hand, coat hanging off one arm, I thought that I should bring the letter in case the Graces wanted to know how I knew where the funeral was. I snatched it from the table and jumped into the car. And I was soon racing down the familiar roads to my real home.

I got a room at the Dog and Duck and paced the cramped room looking at my watch every five seconds. Finally the long hour was over and I left for the church I had been to every Sunday without fail when I was young. It hadn’t changed a bit except, maybe for looking smaller than I remembered. Rough, grey stone surrounded by the grave studded grass, where Sylvia would soon lie. I walked through the massive wooden and cast iron double doors and into the cold, dim, pew-lined body. A crowd were already sat and no one looked up as I settled into the back pew by myself.

I could smell the wood of the pews and the sweet smell of honeysuckle from the open doors. I could feel the rough and smooth patches of the wood where people had sat and fidgeted for hundreds of years. The vicar’s soporific voice droned in my ears and I found myself concentrating on the breeze outside. The rustle of the leaves in the trees, now green after the long months of bare branches, like the one I had sat on with Sylvia the first time we had met. It seems like an age since I heroically pulled her from the clutches of the wintry water.

And I sat at her funeral; emptiness filling every part of me. I watched as everyone else stood up and sang some religious song that had nothing to do with my Sylvia. And someone read a Bible verse that, as far as I could see, had no connection with her life or death. At last, they stood up, sadness a thin veil of the boredom they truly felt, and walked out past me. Half of those people must have been distant relatives that had barely known her and to them it was just another family reunion.

I kept my head down for fear that my anger would show on my face. I could see smart black shoes shuffling past me and whispers from their owners about what’s for lunch. When one pair of shoes stopped in front of me I dared to look up and to my surprise I saw a man who was obviously grieving. I recognised him. Although he had more grey hairs and wrinkles than I remembered and a fair bit of fat around his stomach he was still clearly Charles. From the knowing expression on his face, he must have remembered me too. But instead of anger, I saw relief covering his face. I gazed curiously at him, waiting for him to speak first.

“There’s some – ah – paperwork for you at the house,” he said distractedly.

And with that he turned on his heel and walked swiftly out. I sat as still as a statue with my mouth hanging open. No one was left in the church except the vicar and me.

“Excuse me, sir,” he murmured reproachfully. “I have to lock up the church now.”

“Yes, sorry,” I muttered, absent-mindedly. “But what about the burial?”

“It was the last wish of Miss Grace to be cremated, sir.”

Well, that short and distant service would be the last time I could stand near her ever again. It is unlikely that the Grace’s have changed their views of me and it is inevitable that she will be sitting on their mantelpiece along with some vase that cost thousands of pounds and the china horse that could have paid for my house, car and food for a year. There would be no grave for me to visit, no patch of grass to lay roses on, no head stone where I can look at her name and the pointless poetic sentence they always add that I feel is nothing to anyone but to the one who thought of it and really meant it.

With a heavy heart I got in my car and prepared to get my things from the inn and to go back to my empty life. But as I drove down the lane I saw the turning that went to Grace House. Maybe I should go and find out what that despicable man meant. Paperwork? What paperwork did he mean?

Screeching around the sharp bend I rocketed up the hedge lined tarmac, with the indistinct outline of the house up ahead. I had a new focus, a determination to tell the people who forbade me the one pleasure of my life what I thought of them, expecting them to do the same.

I wasn’t expecting the warm but guilty greeting, the box of letters and the surprise that made me feel as though maybe they did love Sylvia as much as I do.

When I look back on that day and indeed the whole of my life since I met Sylvia, it seems like a fairy-tale. All the romance, trauma and promises of undying love, worthy of a novel written by Jane Austen. To think it happened in real life, to me even is quite astounding. But what happens in those novels not often enough is the ‘bad people’ turning out to be kind at heart, and, I am happy to say, that is what the Grace’s revealed to be: as a last gift to his sisters’ memory, Charles employed a gardener to turn the rose garden into what it should be; a riot of colours and a festival of scents. He had bred a new type of rose: Sylvia Grace. A shocking pink and cream flower; with simple petals that are strikingly soft. It takes pride of place in the centre of the garden and, in my opinion, it is the most stunningly beautiful and sweet-smelling there ever was.