The Flower

Everyday, before she put peat on the fire, hauled the big black kettle over on its chain, and set up the breakfast cups for tea, she had the wee ritual of looking out the bedroom window, through the four tiny panes of bubbled, warped glass, at the tiny patch of garden she had below the window. It was just a strip, some ten foot wide, and she’d had to build a fence to discourage the dozen or so hens from scratching the life out of it.

It wasn’t like the rest of the place, with neat rows of carefully tended vegetables, laboriously weeded, raked and hoed and crammed full of kale, cabbage and neep, leeks, onions and of course, tatties, which took up most of the space.

This wee patch was hers alone, for her man had wanted nothing to do with such foolish and useless things as flowers.

She’d never grown flowers before... this was her first year. Before, to satisfy her desire, she had scoured the hedgerows, coming home to the crofthouse with armfuls of ox eye daisies, or foxgloves, honeysuckle, dog rose or some of the creamy white meadowseet....

They were placed in an old cracked vase she had found at the back of a cupboard, something that had once belonged to his mother, another ‘foolish woman’ who, according to her man, had seen soon enough the folly of wasting time on profitless flowers when the soil was better put to producing food, provision that should be put by against the lean, mean months of winter...

But they cheered the tiny scullery, glowing soft in the sunlight that padded in through the small window on a silken river in the late evenings, for the scullery window faces west, and the whole room lit like fire sometimes with the setting of the sun beneath the nearby hills, with their dark trees, old pagan stone circles and thorned, overgrown paths that only the poachers knew intimately.

Her man would walk in after the days work, the kye bedded down, the few sheep tended to, and unknowingly, cast a quick sneer at the wild flowers. And at the look, her heart would cramp, almost, wishing he could see the value in such wildness, in the difference that wasn’t as tamed as he liked nature to be, but still of worth, with beauty that pleased eye and soul and senses, with the heady smell of outdoors.

And stubbornly, she kept bringing them into the house, whenever she found them, never taking too much, but just enough for the old cracked vase, just enough for the scant days they lasted, to brighten the homely scullery, to glow in the setting sunlight, to soothe her eyes when the days toil sometimes looked bleak and unending to her.

So when she thought to grow flowers of her own self’s doing, she took up the courage from her backbone and broached the subject with her man, who at first laughed, thinking she joked, then tried to dissuade her, pointing out that flowers can’t be eaten, that they took toil and graft and gave nothing back, for no great time....

But she persisted, in her soft and quiet highland voice, and in the end he shrugged, told her if she could sow the seeds in the soil under the bedroom window... and nowhere else, mind you... she could grow her blessed flowers...

So each day she rose, and it was the first thing she did, look out of the window, watching the soil for signs of life, hoping the earth had warmed enough to birth the seeds, hoping they had the energy to fight through the thin dark soil to reach the light, hoping for flowers, grown by her own hands so she needn’t thieve them from the wild any more....

And came the morning she thought she saw, through the warped and uneven glass panes, a few pinpricks of green above the black, so that, excited, she forewent tending the fire and the kettle, and walked swiftly past the stacked breakfast cups and plates, out to the garden, kneeling down in front and lowering her gaze to the ground....

And there, right enough, were the seedlings, a rich scattering of tiny wee green jewels, like eleven children, coming up above the ground.

So it was with a grin on her face she worked the day’s tasks, often stopping what she did to go back, kneel down and look again, just making sure....

The first handfuls of flowers she picked were simple pansies, and she brought them into the scullery cradling them like a babe... the old cracked vase was no use, too tall, and she worried over what to do with the flowers, where could she put them now?

Taking up her own broth bowl, she half filled it with water, and arranged, unthinkingly, with simple grace, the pansies in it.

And put them on the windowsill, and allowed herself a cup of hot black tea, sitting by the peat fire, listening to it burn soft and quiet, listening to the low tick of her clock, a wedding present from her mother, on the mantelpiece, hearing the lowing of the kye in the byres as her man saw to them, watching the flowers, grown by her own hands, glow in the light, like jewels, like something wildly exotic and strange.

A single tear rolled, unnoticed, down one cheek. She didn’t even known, quite, why she was crying....

Her man came in, asking for supper, not noticing the flowers, even to throw a scornful glance. She said nothing but did her wifely duties, feeding him, making sure his boots were cleaned and dry for the morning, folding the laundry as he relaxed by the fireside, pipe lit and the perfume of tobacco mingling with the scent of pansies....

The warm, red light faded from the scullery, and she told her man she`d be off to bed, and kissed his brow lightly and took herself into the bedroom, lighting the oil lamp on the dresser.

Turning back the sheets, a flash of colour and scent met her gaze. Upon the thin worn pillowcase, a single pansy glowed.

Turning to the doorway, she smiled as she held it to her nose. And her man smiled back at her...

- THE END -