Roses, Falling
.
My mother – dressed in nightclothes and staring through the oval window in the panelled hallway with its cold flagstones – gasps.
‘What?’ I say, cat-curled in an armchair, collections of John Clare and Blake nearby.
April’s dawn deepens the contours of her face which is lined like tree-rings. I wonder if she’s losing her hearing – or worse: her mind. I repeat myself and hear the sharp, frustrated point of an exclamation mark in my voice.
I’ve already been here too long. After three days together in this old, draughty home with its history and prayer-soaked stone – this former priory once haunted by silent nuns – we’re both going a little mad.
‘Clem,’ she says, marvelling. ‘Roses are falling.’
I glance at the foxed page open on my lap. The poem I’ve been reading is long and dreary, with relentless rhyming couplets.
My mother remains looking through the port-hole window at the dark Suffolk landscape. She turns to me and I see surprise and sadness in her eyes.
I don’t know if people have souls, if there is a heaven or a hell, but looking at my mother now, sad and alone and frail, but unrelentingly alive, I can almost believe it.
‘Roses,’ she echoes. ‘Falling from the sky.’
And then I hear it. A gentle pattering sound, like clothes being stripped off in the dark and dropped onto the carpeted floor of a lover’s bedroom. I look behind me through the leaded windows in their leaky frames and witness the impossible: roses, falling from the sky.
Like my chin and the tendency to ignore things which are hard to speak of, my gasp is also like my mother’s.
Truly, we have gone mad, I think.
Cooped up in this remote house, swaddled in our thoughts of a man we both loved, we have lost all sense of reality and wound up in a fantasy of our own. I cannot believe what I’m seeing, but there is no doubting it: roses are falling from the sky; the sort to fill vases or lay on gravesides: red and white, peach and pink, full-headed, green tear-drop leaves spaced along thorny stem.
The roses fall from far up above the pigeon-grey clouds.
My mother is so desperate to believe in miracles.
‘Christ,’ I say, and feel my mother – ever decorous – frown.
‘Must be a cargo plane,’ I say. ‘Or a YouTube stunt. You’d amazed by what people do these days.’
‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth … than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ she quotes. My mother is so desperate to believe in miracles and I feel, momentarily, ashamed of the cold touch of my certainty.
Rising, pulling at the cast iron handle of the front door, imagining the many hands that have gone before mine; soft hands of the quiet, devout women who once lived in this place, whispering their prayers to God.
Outside, the sight is startling: as far as the eyes can see, roses cascade. The ground is covered in a tangle of cuttings a foot high. The air is pungent.
For the first time since I’ve been home, my mother laughs. I pick a red rose from the heap. I cannot believe what I am seeing, what I am holding.
My mother wipes her eyes. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispers, clutching my arm.
She’s right. The world is rugged with rich hues, a constellation of colours draped over folding fields and trees.
I pass the rose to my mother who rubs the silky petals between her fingers.
‘It’s real,’ she says, betraying that sharp splinter of doubt that we must all, surely, feel.
We stare out at the landscape of Gainsborough and Constable. In the far distance there’s a tractor stranded in its field.
As quickly as it started, the miracle stops, and my mother and I watch the last of the flowers fall from the slate sky.
The abrupt silence is pierced by the trilling of birds.
Jug! Jug! Jug!
Their song is part delight, part horror.
And that is it.
There is no rolling voice from the heavens declaring peace on Earth. There are no rainbows and we spy no horsemen riding high in their stirrups, announcing the End Times.
There are just the roses, piled a metre high, a flood of thorned foliage.
I feel the pull of needs: to shower, to make breakfast, to tell my mother about Peter.
I stare at the layers of petal and leaf. Not for the first time in recent months, I ask how things can ever return to the way they were.
‘We should check the news,’ I say, already aching for someone to make sense of things, for the comfort of expert opinion. In this, I am like my father.
My mother shakes her head. ‘I don’t want to know,’ she says. ‘Please, Clem.’
I allow her this. For a few hours, at least, we shall wash ourselves in the fantastical, bathe in the fragrance of the unexplained.
Filling vases, pots and pans, we fill the house with roses. My mother’s mood is lighter than it’s been in days, and I can tell that the colour and the scent and the very act of doing something is like a balm against the hurt of my father’s absence.
As we work, I sift my own thoughts, wondering if now is the right time to tell her. If, on a day like this, when roses have fallen from the sky, she might listen, offer what advice and comfort only a mother can.
‘Mum?’ I say.
She looks up, smiling, and for a moment I’m confronted by the woman my father must have known, her smile ablaze, sun-like.
My courage fails me. I cannot bring myself to dim her joy.
Slowly, day by day, I am turning into one of the silent nuns.
*
It is late. The air is thick with their smell of roses and already I am tired of them, tired of their unrelenting beauty.
I look around this room with its low beams, its shadows, moth-mawed carpets, the second-hand oil paintings on the walls. A few years ago, I’d suggested my parents move somewhere with fewer stairs and single-glazed windows; closer to others, closer to me. By that point Peter and I had been discussing our life together, thinking of kids. But my parents were happy here – with their kitchen garden; their walks in the woods, the two of them hand-in-hand. And if you have a little one, they’d said, you can bring them here where they can watch the blinking stars and smiling moon in the dark sky.
How could I argue against all that?
I know my mother dreams of grandchildren. Of hearing small feet running along the floorboards once more. I have felt the quiet weight of her hopes tethered to my own.
When I first arrived here a few days ago, she had looked surprised. Worried. ‘Where’s Peter?’ she’d asked. He couldn’t come, I’d said, unwilling to say more.
I watch chaos unfold on my phone: flights grounded, roads and waterways clogged; the government in crisis. The arteries of the country are clogged, viscous with sap, the curl of bright petals. And still there are no explanations, no causes.
Just consequences, seen and unseen.
I place a hand on my growing bump and wonder if my mother has noticed.
*
The next morning, I feel little rested as I peer from my bedroom window. Yesterday was no dream. There are roses layered on the ground as far as the skyline. In the private hideout of my old bedroom, I wipe my eyes.
It is Friday; we had planned to walk to the church, to visit my father’s graveside, but we’re besieged.
Downstairs, my mother seems brisk and bright. She seems unbothered by the fact we’re trapped here; that there’s only so much food in the fridge, that her pills will soon run out; that she might, at any time, take a tumble.
I will spend the day clearing the roses from the driveway. I will forge a way out.
.
I borrow my father’s old wax jacket. It hangs below the pockets of my jeans, but there’s a comfort in the way it engulfs me; the lingering smell of him hugs me close. I pull on gardening gloves and tie back my hair.
I begin at the front door, grabbing handfuls of roses, dumping them to the side, creating a channel with banks to the left and right. Soon I’m too warm beneath the coat and strip down. As I work, my clothes get caught on the sharp needles of the stems. I feel as if I’m being unthreaded, pulled apart one weave at a time.
I pick up great armfuls of the cuttings; the ground beneath is wet and mulchy. The petals drop like dead butterflies.
It’s slow progress and I’ve only cleared half-a-dozen yards when my mother appears with steaming tea and a plate of digestives.
‘Your arms,’ she says.
My skin is covered in angry scratches.
‘You shouldn’t exhaust yourself too much,’ says my mother. I feel my heart catch and wonder if she suspects what I’m hiding.
Who I’m hiding.
.
Nettle soup steams in my bowl and warm bread sits on a wooden board.
Throughout the day, I’ve felt a tension in my neck. I am waiting, I realise, for some other miracle to take place. What next will fall from the skies? Geraniums? Sunflowers? Hyacinths? Increasingly, I feel untethered from reality. It is hardly a surprise – the laws of the world have been upended. The unexpected is now expected.
What would the nuns in their sombre habits have made of all this? Would they have proclaimed it God’s work? And what would they have made of me? Would they have called me sinner and seen in me the mark of Eve, fallen from the start?
I think of Peter and wish, with all my heart, that things were not as they were.
‘Mum,’ I say. ‘I need to—’
There’s a loud knock at the door.
Entering the hallway, I glance through the window. There’s a large man standing in the cold, rubbing his hands together. Somehow, he has tramped through the heaped green. His coat collar is turned up and he wears a hunting hat with flaps down, covering his ears.
We are two women, I think. Alone out here, in wooded isolation. Our voices would not be heard for miles around.
I check the latch, open the door an inch.
We’ve spent the last twenty-four hours ignoring all that is beyond the limit of our eyes.
‘Hi,’ he says, his smile wrapped by the shadow of stubble. He looks strong, I think and I can feel my heart beating hard; I hate this fear. Hate the man who did this to me.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘I’m Jack,’ he says. ‘Jack Marson – I’m a volunteer from the nearby village. We’re checking on folks round here. You know, after…’ He casts his hands wide, encompassing the dense sea of roses through which he has waded.
My mother appears.
‘Jack!’ she says. ‘From the local Nisa!’
He beams. ‘How are you Mrs Collins?’
She unlatches the door. ‘Join us for some soup?’ she says. ‘It’s freshly made.’
The ghosts of a hundred Benedictine Sisters must be upon my mother’s tongue, affirming the welcoming of guests, the generosity of fraternity.
‘Let him in, Clem.’
I stare at my mother. We’ve spent the last twenty-four hours ignoring all that is beyond the limit of our eyes. We’ve shut out the world. I do not want to let it in.
‘Clem?’
.
Jack takes a seat. While my mother fetches bowl and spoon. ‘My daughter’s down for the week,’ she says. ‘It’s the anniversary of Gerald’s passing. Two years to the day.’
‘He was a good man,’ says Jack.
‘There are too few of them,’ I say.
Throughout the meal, I’m tense and sharp-tongued. And when at last Jack waves goodbye, I shut the door with a sigh of relief.
My mother glares at me. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she says. ‘I’ve never seen you like that, Clem.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s just—’
‘He was being nice. Poor man, it’s a miracle he still cares. His little girl’s resting not far from you Dad, you know.’
I turn away, unwilling to acknowledge my resistance to people, to their smiles, their good intentions and my fear of their dark potential.
One or two good men do not undo the wrong that was done to me, that is done to so many of us.
*
By the third day, the roses are wilting and clouds of gnats and aphids hover above the green mass. The smell, sweet at first, has also putrefied. I continue to clear the driveway and make a start on the kitchen garden where the rooted vegetables lie smothered. It begins to rain and although I am damp with it, I welcome this return to normalcy.
Eventually, I retreat indoors to the comfort of my father’s armchair, Hamlet on my lap. I have always enjoyed reading. It’s a comfort knowing I am not alone in my experience or the terrible thoughts that blossom in my mind in moments of impatience, jealousy and anger. Blake was right when he wrote that heaven and hell reside in every one of us, though I envy my mother’s faith – that firm consolation that sustains her days and weeks. To believe there is a higher power that has the answers, can parse right from wrong. It is a fantasy I wish I could entertain, knowing it gives the comfort of love, redemption and reunion.
I picture my father, his arms spread as wide as his smile, welcoming me into that place of light.
‘How’s the bard?’ my mother asks.
‘Ophelia’s giving out flowers,’ I say.
Poor Ophelia, who does not retreat from the cruelty of the man she loves, who refuses to get herself to a nunnery, who will not keep quiet, even in her madness.
*
On the fourth day, I wake at five in the morning to the sound of beeping trucks and yellow lights. Two lorries clear the road. I hope the workers are compensated for their time, for being in the cold and the dark, away from the ones they love.
I watch the men working out there in the cold. They could be women, of course – I cannot tell from this distance. But generally, it seems to be men.
Generally, men are more physical, heavier, have greater muscle mass. More prone to violence.
These are the thoughts that soak my skull. I know I’m not alone in thinking it, fearing it; hating that the weight and strength and desire of men is enough to hold us down.
.
Between sips of Earl Grey, I tell my mother about the roads. ‘We could head to the church this afternoon?’ I say.
She agrees, knowing I leave tomorrow – back to the city, my small flat, my sixth form students. Soon, this whole strange week will soon be coming to an end.
We are busy putting on boots when Jack turns up with a bag full of groceries. I do my best to respond to his smile while my mother fills up the fridge. When she mentions we’re going to the church, I see him look away, the smile slip – thinking, I’m sure, of his daughter.
‘Join, if you like?’ I say, surprised at my own offer, the giving of ground.
.
The church is almost eight hundred years old and sits on the crest of a hill. In years past, there would have been a small village surrounding it. Standing at the entrance I ponder the fate of all those people and their homes, though the answer is right before me, hidden beneath the tangled mass of rotting roses and buzzing flies. Here stands the graveyard, God’s tombstone, his bone-laden garden.
A few people have come before us: a narrow channel to the church has been made. Perhaps amid all the uncertainty of recent days they sought refuge, reassurance, understanding. There is terror in the unknown, no matter how beautiful it is.
.
I watch Jack move the roses from his daughter’s resting place. With a gloved hand, he wipes the grey stone that bears his little girl’s name – and two dates, too close. Jack is a big, wide man, but standing there, stilled, he looks diminished, vulnerable, as if the air has been drawn out of him, his spirit with it. He crouches close to the cold ground, removes a glove, brings a hand to the earth. His head is bowed and he is very still.
It is hard to believe the shell of his daughter is six feet beneath the soles of his shoes.
There are so many things that are hard to believe.
And yet.
I turn my attention back to my father’s final bed. My mother stands beside me, an arm tangled in my own.
‘I miss him,’ she says.
‘So do I.’
‘He was a good man. Not perfect. But good. He was kind to me. Always kind.’
I look up at the vast white sky. My mother looks at me, pats my arm. ‘I’ll leave you here for a bit, shall I?’
She walks towards the church where she’ll take a pew near the front, bend her head in prayer.
There’s a redness to his eyes; he is dressed in grief.
I look at my father’s grave. I know he’s gone, but here at least there is a part of him. Here there is silence and safety because the dead do not respond. They are the silent witnesses to our secrets. I stand quiet and still, my eyes closed, listening to the wind in the trees, to the flies between the roses, the song of a bird.
‘Clem?’
I’m startled by Jack’s voice, his large, dark form against the papery sky. I take a step away, feel my face twist in fear.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s fine,’ I say, embarrassed, furious. I can feel the roar of my heart.
‘Look,’ he says, ‘I’d better be getting on. Will you and your mum be all right?’
There’s a redness to his eyes; he is dressed in grief.
‘We’ll be fine,’ I say.
‘It was nice to meet you,’ he says. ‘Give my best to your mum.’
‘I will,’ I say.
‘Great,’ he says. He begins stalking a path through the ruined vegetation.
‘Jack?’ I call out.
He pauses.
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘For checking on her.’
He smiles. He looks lonely, I think.
‘Take care,’ he says.
I watch him go and wonder: can one man so shape the way we see the world?
.
In church, my mother is leaning over her knees like she’s in the brace position of a falling plane. I slide in beside her, look at the altar draped in its finery, the gold cross at the centre. I love the smell of churches, the scent of centuries, burnt wax and wick, the breath of fervent prayer and song.
Is there a God?
And if not, who is there to speak of truth, of right and wrong?
I used to feel so certain of so many things.
And then.
Peter and I had been together three years – long enough, I’d thought, to have a sense of futures welded into one. We’d talked of marriage. Kids. Things weren’t perfect, but I wasn’t sixteen. I wasn’t looking for, or expecting, perfection. There’d been no red flags and I had been happier than I thought possible.
And still.
I try to weigh it up. Those three years against a single incident. His own horror that followed, the apologies. And later, the doubts he cast and the excuses that so enraged me.
Could one night, one treacherous, time-tearing night, so diminish everything else?
At length, my mother rises from her knees, her back against the pew.
‘Mum,’ I say.
Her fingers tighten around mine as if she knows what’s coming.
I fear what she’ll say – because, dreadful though it is to admit, I have felt the tug of justification and doubt: of myself, of my memories, of the way I handled and am handling things; they’re the same doubts and questions asked in courts, written in newspapers, conveyed in the raise of a brow.
Did she, didn’t she? Did he, didn’t he?
I speak while holding my mother’s hand and this time my courage does not fail me. It is strange and awful that my words feel like a confession, though I am not the guilty party.
I keep my eyes fixed on the cross at the altar. At times, it blurs. When at last the past meets the present and my voice settles back into silence, my mother reaches for me. ‘The bastard!’ she says.
That word, in this place. From her.
My mother holds me close, and I rest my head against her shoulder. I cling to her, desperate, a child in her warm embrace. Here in the church, surrounded by the dead, I wonder what secrets women have whispered to heaven and later buried beneath the ground.
‘Did you go to the police, Clem?’
I give my mother a small, ironic, heavy-heart smile.
And my mother’s eyes widen in realisation, and she brings a hand to cover her dry lips, the dark O of her horror.
Peter was the police; six years in what was once the Force but has softened to Service – as if a name can change the essence of a thing.
‘There’s more,’ I say.
My mother releases me, gives me space to air my story.
When I tell her about the baby, she nods. She’d had her suspicions.
‘Does he know?’ she asks. ‘About the baby?’
I shake my head. On this, I remain in limbo, wishing he could be nothing to me but a villain, wishing things were simple in cause and effect.
My mother has a sudden, panicked look. ‘It wasn’t—’
‘No, I say,’ shaking my head. It was not that night. It would have been at least three weeks before then, in a time when things were simpler, when roses did not fall from skies and men did not eclipse the light.
It is a small comfort this: to know my child was made with love, in a time of love.
*
My last evening. I watch the sun slip low. I have been marking student essays, my mind filled with Shakespeare and Blake; thoughts of sweet ladies; sick roses and their crimson joy.
I am searching for a thread. A connection. Understanding. Where, in all this, is my epiphany, my ending?
Frustrated, I lift a rose from its vase, water dripping from the stem. They must have come from somewhere. There must be an explanation. Someone must have an answer.
I think of the baby – the little girl growing inside me – and wonder how I will answer her questions.
Why, she will ask, like the birds in the trees.
Why? Why? Why?
I am on my knees when my mother finds me, my elbows on the seat of my late father’s armchair, my hands clasped together. Beside me, dampening the fabric of the worn cushion, is the rose I’d pulled from the vase.
‘Clemency?’ she says.
She has not called me that for years.
Clemency. An act of mercy. Forgiveness, perhaps.
‘It’s the phone,’ she says. ‘It’s him.’
I go into the kitchen. I put the receiver to my ear.
He’s waiting for me to speak first.
Peter, I think. You were supposed to be my rock.
Why, I want to ask. Why why why?
I feel my mother watching from the doorway. And I sense the phantom eyes of the Sisters of this place, the many women who removed themselves from the world of men. I feel their anger and their righteousness.
Will he admit that it happened?
Will he tell me how and why?
‘Did you see them?’ I ask. ‘Roses, falling from the sky?’
The air is still. The sun diminished. I listen to the silence of the father of my child.
.
.
Rupert Dastur is a writer, editor and publisher. His work has been shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and the Fish Short Story Prize, and he won the Federation of Scottish Writers Award in 2018. He is the founder of TSS Publishing, is director of the Cambridge Prizes for Short Fiction, and runs creative workshops across the UK and abroad. Rupert read English at the University of Cambridge and currently works in London. Cloudless, his debut novel, is published by Penguin Fig Tree.
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