Life, Love and Death Read online

  She did not comment at the funeral, she wore black and was quiet as befitted a widow but all through the long service that his faith demanded she could only think of herself.

  He has left me, he has deserted me, I will be alone, I have no one, I am dead myself even if still living. I hate him for dying, I hate him more for leaving me behind.

  *

  Funereal thoughts should never be broadcast but Ann left me her Diary in her will and I read of her thoughts and those of Rob who had passed before her.

  So despite herself and her regular boredom she steadfastly watched the ripples on the river and after a while could even tell the different hues of brown that he had talked of so often.

  She could not remember what he had told her about them. Sometimes she was not even listening, thinking of what she wished to do in her garden the next day as that is what she loved the most, Sometimes more than Rob.

  On their long evenings together, for he, being a strange sort had never wanted a television or many of the things other people wanted he just accepted her as a wife and she with no choice really in those days; him as a husband.

  She found it strange at first, she remembered, but he was her husband and in those days you did as your husband told you to.

  She realised that she was lucky, as she never had to do as he told her as he always asked and never ordered her to do anything; he never expected of her something that she did not wish to give.

  She accepted that as normal but in later years found that to be unusual.

  Ann did what she had to do anyway, as that’s what a wife did in those days. She wondered, as she grew older, and read of the many things that women did now if she should not have asked more from life, but realised in that contemplation that she was happy and had always been so with him.

  She Knew with an Iron certainty, having had so much time to think that he was just happy being there with his river and her to talk to.

  He moaned about this and that, often, he drank too much for her liking but never did he hurt her and was often funny when drunk rather than obstreperous. She never realised until too late that all she really needed was her garden and him; being around, talking to her, keeping her company, keeping her warm at night.

  At night in her bed she lay awake for now she had little to rise early for; as she once had. Once she knew Rob liked the flowers around the house and the fresh vegetables in the summer and autumn that she grew and harvested. Those thoughts gave her a goal, something to aspire to and something to achieve and she would think back and realise that she had achieved her heart’s desire, to live well and long.

  But now it seemed so hollow, all the joy had left her life even though she knew that she should be grateful to be living.

  She knew that he loved her garden and could smell the flowers that she had cut so lovingly, thinking of him as she had done since they were first betrothed, now there was no one but her to smell them.

  They were still pretty, the reds and greens, crimsons and violets but there was no one to appreciate them apart from her.

  She heard the rustle of the wind in the branches of her trees that she had so lovingly planted. Cherries, plums pears and apples, they stood around the edges of the small garden, breaking the wind in winter and providing fruit in the autumn. She had kept them small to preserve the few day’s of brilliant sun that the Scot’s summer offered.

  That harvest had once adorned her home-grown table, cherries, apples, fruit salads with gooseberries, strawberries and brambles picked, not from the garden but the hedgerows nearby. She was Proud of her efforts her green fingers and her ability to grow and nurture vegetables fruits and flowers. And then she would weep as she grew them for him, it was her way to prove her worth, she could tease food from the earth with a talent that few possessed, she did.

  Then she would cry and remember how it blended in with the faint murmur of his expelled breath, which she could feel on her cheek, which she always rested on his shoulder.

  She did not know why she had always done that. In later life, she thought to herself; I rest my head upon a block of stone, with loads of knobbly bits, but it felt warm and comfortable at the time.

  Perhaps it just drew me closer to him. “It is”, “was”, she corrected herself as she started crying again, such a bony shoulder, as most of the fat fell from him when he grew older.

  Ann nodded to herself and knuckled the tears from her eyes. She had never felt more comfortable than she did close to him.

  There was something in the comfort, the smell, the imagination, the safety.

  She never knew, she could still not figure it out. He was in a grave and she was still here. He had become her world over the years as the garden had and they had a good life.

  Eventually, on her own, she would drift into sleep till the morning sun and the spate river noises; rushing and gurgling brought her again to another day.

  She did not wish to die, never had suicide entered her head, “Her pretty head” he had always said and as she remembered she began to cry again.

  She was the worst wife ever, as she was crying again and he had asked that she did not weep for him. She tried to understand his wishes but she could not, she felt lost without him.

  She understood that they were not that close, she understood that she would continue living when he was gone but he had always been there. He was there whenever she wanted him to be. He was there even on those odd days that she wished he had drowned in the sea.

  He would still be there, dozing in the chair by the fire or sitting at the table writing. Ann almost jumped from the bed despite the protestations of her old joints and bad back. Her creaks and groans had grown worse recently, her back harder to straighten and harder still to bend but she almost flew to her feet and made her way to the living room.

  The fire glow still lit the room a little and there was a faint moon glow creeping in through the small cottage windows but Ann could hardly see a thing. She found a table lamp and switched it on, then cursing her failing eyesight returned to the bedroom for her spectacle’s. They lay on the bedside cabinet as usual, they lay there all day long as Ann had little need for them. They lay on top of a book that she had bought in Martin’s, the small bookshop in Campbeltown about three years ago but had never read.

  It sounded good she remembered, a story of a young girl growing up on one of the Scottish islands. Perhaps she should read it now that she had more time.

  She just had not the chance while Rob was alive, her garden and husband taking up much of her time. She mused for a second thinking, he was always writing, sitting at the table writing yet she never knew what he was writing about. She would ask every once in a while though often she was busy attending to the things that she needed to do, when she saw him, pen in hand, hunched over the small metal foldaway table that they had against the back wall of the living room she would wonder and ask.

  “Rob what are you writing about”, and he would invariably reply something like “Oh stuff and nonsense, mostly just doodling” and wave her away as though that was all there was to it and she never thought for another second about it after all she always had something to do.

  She had just grown used to him being there, fair or foul, he was just a part of her life and now a there was a piece missing in the jigsaw of her life.

  Rob was missing and there was no reason for Ann to be alive without Rob to complete things.

  It really didn’t matter if he had not loved her as she loved him, he filled up her days and nights, they were like two trees that have grown side by side and intermingled.

  Ann carefully knelt, drawing the box out from under the cheap Formica covered table that she knew he had placed his stuff and nonsense in. She needed to look, it seemed urgent to her though she had many empty days now and so could not figure out why anything could seem urgent.

  There were blue cardboard folders piled one upon the other inside, they were covered in dust and a cobweb elastically detached from the folder below as she li
fted the top one out. She made a deal with herself to clean the box and folders in the morning, Ann did not like dust or cobwebs

  There was nothing written upon the folder and glancing into the box there was nothing written on the one beneath but it was packed full with paper. She opened the first folder to find that Rob had only partially lied.

  There were many doodles and there was much nonsense but there was beauty as well in among the cobwebs and dust, the doodles and notes.

  Ann remained upon her old knees for hours and hours reading more and more as each folder revealed itself. She was unable to read it all as there was far too much to get through but she read some of the poems and a short story and mostly they were very good and she was surprised to find that many were about her.

  She found herself crying and crying as he talked of her beauty and her steadfastness, of how lucky he was to have her as a wife. Her tears dried as she thought that perhaps he should have told her, when he was alive, rather than writing it down on a piece of paper that she would never see.

  Then she remembered that he always expected her to see them, he had told her often that he would die first and as it turned out, been true to his promise and so he knew that one day when he would be gone back to the dirt that she would find these and know just how much he had loved her. And now she knew.

  Her tears fell like rain making it difficult for her to focus never mind read but she tried to continue.

  Her knees were sore, her back screaming with pain yet still she knelt and tried to absorb all that he thought of her. It was too much to take in and she saw only a fraction of what passed before her eyes but she neared the bottom of the box and wished to finish. At the very bottom there was another blue folder, the same as the others but this wrapped in red ribbon. There was no bow or fancy card but she noticed that only this one had words scrawled in pencil across the front.

  She did not find them easy to read at first, there was a lot of dust and grime and the pencil had faded over time but when she moved the ribbon and saw the title she still cried but now with a smile on her face.

  Gethsemane

  He resolved that with all the time she had put into the garden and how much he remembered her being a part of it; he felt it her place rather than his, that he would, when he finally passed, be put to rest there.

  He owned the cottage outright, he had worked for a lifetime upon the sea and his life had been hard but rewarding in its own way.

  He had some money and so put it to use. He put a sum aside for her garden for that was where he thought of her most. Her Garden was still to be tended long after he was dead and gone as he was sure that she would have wished it to be. If he was wrong she would have forgiven him as all he was doing was for her no matter if it was misguided.

  He saw a lawyer and signed all the appropriate papers so that he would be buried there, with little ceremony and no fuss in her garden and the house left to ruin, it had been past its best for the last century, it would make no difference that it collapsed for what was it except a roof over his head, without her to make it a home.

  He worried about her garden, even as he signed the paper but did not the cottage even though it had been home to him for many a long year.

  He left the Solicitors and went back and tended her garden, watched his river and lived in their house. He did this for a few years and thought of the permanence of the river and the fleeting nature of humanity. She had gone, he cried, He wept for her, it was simply the nature of things or so he tried to convince himself.

  For the rest of his years he missed her, her presence around the house that they used mostly in the winter, her smile in the morning, her warmth in bed at night and the smell of the earth upon her, her grace as she worked the garden with a god given stoicism accepting his wishes as greater than her own. He never noticed that upon arriving home, staring down on the peat brown River, that his tears fell, missing her.

  Her grace, her beauty, her welcoming smile, her warmth, her understanding and he wept as she had left his life and that is what hurt him most of all.

  It was neither Ann’s fault or choice but at times he hated her for leaving him when she knew that he depended upon her so much. He really did not know how to live without her.

  Ann left him but he lived on, growing older and crotchetier, he spent less time working, less time watching the river, less time looking after himself.

  The neighbours, far flung though they were, began to avoid him, he was seen muttering to himself, tramping across fields in the dead of night and even mentioning that she may come back to him.

  When finally, he died he was buried according to his wishes in her garden and there he rested thinking of her.

  Brine.

  Her breathing grew worse with each day and she realised that her time was coming to an end. She did not mind, she spent everyday now staring into his river and each night lying in their bed, for she rarely slept now and she resolved to be cremated and her ashes scattered in his river for that is what he would have wished.

  He had been gone for many a year now but she still missed him, the bed was cold.

  She remembered having to pull back the covers as his warmth heated her in the winter, was annoying in the summer. He rarely cuddled into her following the things that he did, to try to sleep.

  She saw a lawyer and signed the will that she never wished to sign, that gave such instruction. She arranged that the house go to ruin for though it was only a house it had been their house and she wanted no unhappiness in it ever and there had rarely been a time, when together, they had been unhappy.

  She remembered all the days that she worked in the garden pulling weeds, planting vegetables, turning the earth and trying to coax flowers or vegetables from the earth whilst he sat upon his bench at the back door watching her or his river and being happy just being with them.

  Her time came soon but not as soon as she wished for, she lasted many long years alone.

  She lasted long beyond the time that she could tend her garden and later still where she could even see his river as her eyes gave out but her time came eventually.

  There were few at her funeral, most of their friends and relations had moved to the other side. Time is an indestructible force that decimates all before it.

  She was cremated in line with her instructions and her ashes were scattered in his river.

  Where she lay thinking of him.

  The Wish

  And so the years passed and he remained in her garden and she in his river and each, unthinking, thought of the other. For what else did they have to think about other than he; his river and she; her garden and when one thought of either then they would think of the other. For she was in his river and he in her garden. And it seemed that they, happy together, would forever remain apart.

  Scot’s Soliloquy.

  And so the years passed until a rainy Scots Sunday in October when it lashed so hard the raindrops bounced from the road and grass, water streaming from the hills and glens. Heavier and heavier it rained until even freaks and sinners were unable to breathe,

  This water accumulated and gathered from rills and streams; became torrents rushing down every river valley.

  These torrents joined earlier months of accumulated rain, which is not that unusual in Scotland and these torrents finally took their toll on the old ruined cottage that lay upon the bridge over the river Lussa.

  There was a deafening noise as the banking began to drift away from the trees and rocks below the weir. Which, with a wrench, took the garden and parts of the house. The old cottage that lay above the bridge, it slipped downwards and into the overflowing river to be swept away forever.

  An Ernest hope.

  In the water Ann felt a presence and reached out her arms looking to find another and solace. Other arms enfolded hers, other arms drew her close, other arms made her feel welcome and complete. She smelled her garden in his hair and skin, and he tasted his river upon the body that she showed, she laid her head upon a
familiar shoulder and He nuzzled into a familiar cheek and so they fell asleep together, as they always had while alive, they would always be together when dead.

  Epilogue.

  Ann never opened the sealed folder but read many of the stories that she was the inspiration for. She read many of the poems Rob had written and recognised herself in many of them. He had considered her thoughts and ideas much more than it had seemed when he was alive, he had loved her much more than she had ever imagined.