Eternal Love

Eternal Love

A Romance of sorts.

“The garden looks really overgrown”, full of flowers and vegetables each vying with the other for little space within the confined walls of the property, was his first thought.

“It is only a small garden”, attached to a small cottage that sat below the weir and above the bridge over the small but fast flowing river, was his second.

“I really must make more of an effort to get it back into order, back to some semblance of the way she had it”, was his third.

He knows it is actually fine with all in its place and that were another with a less critical eye to look out upon It they would see a pleasant Highland garden. To his eyes, however, it is overgrown, mismatched, the flowers in the wrong places and he hates to think of it so; for there was never a weed to be seen when Ann was alive.

He also knows perfectly well that such a thought is as stupid as his earlier one but he will never forget how everyone spoke of her garden at her funeral.

The garden was small, bordered on three sides with a low dry stone wall, on the other by the back of the cottage itself. The cottage was long, narrow and low, built stone that had been whitewashed with a grey slate roof that had begun to sag a little between the stone buttresses.

Such cottages could be seen here and there throughout Argyll each one similar to many others except that this cottage; Rob’s cottage was notable for the many hanging baskets that decorated all the outside walls.

In the summer they bloomed with a verdance unmatched in any cottage nearby and probably not one in a hundred miles, or so Rob thought.

It had always been her garden. Ann’s garden, some would say but Rob just thought of it as her garden, and it was part of her being, her very essence was contained within the borders of her garden.

“She always kept it so nice” everyone had said at her funeral and they were right, she had. Rob had never been a gardener, was never really interested in growing things, though he liked to eat the produce that Ann would cook for him when the harvest came.

They had, however, spent most of their retirement in the garden. She weeding and hoeing and generally looking as fit as a fiddle.

“As fit as a fiddle” was another phrase he had heard often at the after funeral tea and it was a phrase that he hated to hear now as how could someone who was “fit as a fiddle” die and leave him alone as she had?

He spent his time in the garden, after her death and internment to be with her and watch the river as it passed.

It was something he had never grown bored of in all his years of retirement, listening to Ann humming along behind him as she weeded and planted and turned the earth making the garden grow whilst he sat on his bench and watched the peat brown river swirl past thirty or forty yards down the bank from him.

When she had died he had decided to keep up her garden as a kind of epitaph to her days for she had loved it so much. It was a kind of homage to her spirit, for putting up with him for so long and a penance for not really caring for her garden. So religiously he got himself out of bed in the morning listening to all his joints protesting, creaking and groaning as he pulled on his old brown corduroy trousers and wellington boots and with nothing more than a cup of tea flung himself into daily gardening.

He hated it, hated the dirt beneath his fingernails, they were filthy and no matter how he seemed to scrub them with nail brush and soap he could not dislodge the dirt or smell. The gravel pierced his boot soles, making his already protesting feet hurt even more, the smell of rotting vegetation, the noises his back made when he tried to straighten, all of it; he hated.

There was nothing about gardening he liked. All he had ever liked about it, was her love of it, watching Ann tend her garden as he sat on the bench and watched the river. The smell of cut flowers in the house the taste of garden vegetables when it came to dinnertime were the only things that he did not hate about gardening.

He, for his efforts, allowed himself one respite, for an hour at lunchtime he would sit on his bench at the edge of the garden staring over the low dry stone dyke at the river passing beneath him. He watched the peaty brown water with its eddy’s and false currents, seeing the occasional fin of the small brown trout that inhabited it, fascinated and mesmerised by it.

And that made him happy. It was the highlight of his day.

At night he lay awake in the empty wide bed and listened to the river gurgling and rushing and liked his time alone for a minute or two. But then he remembered that once he had listened to the gurgling and rushing, and the noises of the river had been echoed in her soft snore and the warm smells of her garden had been in the cheek that she rested upon his shoulder. The susurration of her breath expelled had sounded like the rivers noises, the smell of soil a little like the peat the river carried to the sea and watching her work in her garden still supple and well despite the tolls that age took, reminded him of the winding sinuous currents that carried his river to the sea.

It was then, missing her beside him that he would start to cry.

His sobs he hoped reached the heavens and she would know that he missed her.

He always fell asleep crying.

2.

And then he would cry for while until the sounds of his sobs were like to him the noises of the river and there he would sleep until rough morning sunlight drew him again into her garden. The work that he said he would never do in his retirement for he had worked hard his long life.

3.

She gazed Out over the garden wall down to the muddy river below and thought of him as she always did though her hands itched to be digging again.

She did not know why she still did the garden; she gave away all her vegetables now that she had no one to feed them to. She still cut flowers in the spring and summer and placed them in the glass vases she had dotted all over the small cottage. But what use was there in doing such things now that he was gone? There was no one to see them anymore.no one to smell their scents, no one to know that they were a small message of her love.

She liked the flowers in the garden and had only cut them and brought them inside for Rob, she had only placed them here and there and made sure she had flowers as she thought Rob liked their smell. She seemed to remember that he had once remarked upon it when they were much younger. That had been enough for her to make sure that when it was possible to have cut flowers, she would, for him to enjoy them.

She hated that dirty brown river with its endless noise, its endless swish and swirl and dirty brown, muddy sides but still she took time out each day to gaze into its depths for she knew that’s what he had loved most.

And that was her epitaph to him as she knew that he had loved it so. In fact, she found herself watching it more now everyday though she was desperate to turn and run her hands through the rich brown, peaty earth that made up her garden, she longed to grow things and draw things from the earth.

But what was the use.

There was no one to see the glories of the cut flowers that she once gathered in the morning and put in vases around the house other than her and she knew every colour and hue of each of them, could picture them in her own mind, she had grown them for him.

She remembered the funeral and that all his old friends, well the ones that were still living, were giving her their condolences and some of the words he had said to them, of her. Words, like “steadfast” and “true”, beautiful, loving. Some that they said of him. A true fisherman, he could read the water and tell where the fish were, water and steadfast and true was what she now remembered; That he always had been.

So despite herself and her often 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.

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.

But she 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 and 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, 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

Me.

She heard the rustle of the wind in the branches of her trees that she had so lovingly planted. Cherries, plums pears and apples, stood around the edges of the small garden, breaking the wind in winter and providing fruit in the autumn.

That harvest had once adorned her home-grown table. She was Proud of her efforts her green fingers and her ability to grow and nurture.

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. Yet she 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 rivers noises; rushing and gurgling brought her again to another day.

5.

He resolved that with all the time she had put into the garden and how much he remembered her in it and 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. It was still to be tended long after he was dead and gone as he was sure that she would have wished it to be.

He saw a lawyer and signed all the appropriate papers so that he would be buried there 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, not the cottage even though it had been home to him since a child.

He left the Solicitors and went back and tended her garden, watched his river and lived in their house for the rest of his years. When finally, he died he was buried according to his wishes in her garden and there he rested thinking of her.

6.

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.

She saw a lawyer and signed the will 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.

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 but her time came eventually.

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

Where she lay thinking of him.

7.

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

8.

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.

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 from the old cottage that lay above the bridge, it slipped downwards and into the overflowing river to be swept away forever.

9.

In the water Ann felt a presence and reached out her arms and other arms enfolded hers. She smelled her garden on him and he her river upon her and she lay her head upon a familiar shoulder and together they slept forever more.