The Rose Garden

I still felt a small tug of that same feeling now as we came to the top of the field, to the level place scattered with old weathered stones that had tumbled into a rough circle, and gave little hint of their earlier purpose, except for the stone at the centre that lay like a low table, cracked at one end.

The view from here was wide and unobstructed – I could see the whole unbroken line of coast, headland to headland, the waves beating white on the black cliffs and dark shingle beaches, and the sea deep blue today beneath a warmly glinting sun.

I set the box that held Katrina’s ashes on the table stone, and looked at Mark, who looked at me.

And then he reached into the rucksack he had carried up with him and brought out three small paper cups, the kind you find near water coolers, and a dark-green bottle. ‘We should do this right,’ he said.

‘What is that?’

‘Scrumpy. When Katrina and I came up here, we always brought a bottle with us.’

‘Scrumpy?’

‘Cider. With a kick.’ He filled a cup and set it on the wooden box, then poured two more and handed one to me, then raised his up as though to make a toast. ‘Here’s to …’ he said, then faltered. ‘Well, to hell with it,’ he finished off, and drained the cup.

I drank mine, too, and Mark poured out the third cup on the box itself before he stepped aside and gave a nod to me. ‘Go on, then.’

With uncertain hands I flipped the latch that held the box shut. ‘There was something I was going to read.’

Mark looked at me and waited.

‘From The Prophet,’ I explained. ‘Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. There’s a passage about death that Katrina always liked. She read it at our parents’ funeral.’

I had crammed the folded paper in a pocket, and I had to tug it out and spread it smooth against the blowing breeze.

‘For what is it to die,’ I read, ‘but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to … but to …’ And there my voice trailed off and would not carry on, and Mark reached over for the page and gently took it from my hand, and went on with the reading in his steady voice. I turned my face towards the sea and let my eyes be dazzled by the brightness of the water while Mark finished off the passage and came down to the last lines:

‘And when you have reached the mountaintop, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.’

It seemed the perfect time, then, so I tipped the box and let the ashes spill.

Beside me, very quietly, Mark told them, ‘Go and dance, now.’

And they caught the wind and did just that, and for that fleeting instant there were three of us again upon the wide and sunlit hill, before the ashes gathered on an upward swirl of breeze that blew them westward, out across the blue and endless sparkle of the sea.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Do you know,’ I said to Mark, ‘I think I’m getting drunk.’

We were still sitting on the cool ground at the summit of the hill with all the old stones of the Beacon tumbled round us, giving us some shelter from the strengthened wind that blew across the waving grass and wildflowers.

I looked down at my paper cup. ‘What do you call this stuff again?’

‘Scrumpy.’

‘Scrumpy.’ I’d have to remember that name, and avoid it in future, I thought. It came on at first like common apple cider, and then suddenly you realised you were ‘Definitely getting drunk,’ I said. ‘You have the rest.’

Without a word he poured the bottle’s dregs into his own cup and sat back and leant his elbows on the table rock, and looked as I was looking down the hillside to the sea. Like me, he seemed to be in no great hurry to go anywhere.

As if he’d read my thoughts, he asked, ‘How long till you have to go back?’

‘I don’t, actually.’ Far over the water the tiny white speck of a gull wheeled and languidly dipped and I followed its flight with my faintly blurred gaze. ‘I don’t have a job or apartment, I gave them both up. It’s not home for me there any more, not since …’ Letting the words trail off, I gave a shrug. ‘When Bill gave me those ashes, I had to think hard, really think, about where I should scatter them. Where she belonged. And it got me to thinking where I belonged, now that she’s gone. I have friends in LA, but not real friends, you know? Not the kind you can really depend on. And where I was living … well, it was all right, but it just wasn’t … just wasn’t …’

‘Home?’

‘No.’ It was comforting to know he understood. ‘I thought I might look round here for a property to rent. A little cottage, maybe.’

‘Everything around here will be full up for the summer,’ was his guess. Then when he saw my disappointment he went on, ‘But come the autumn you could have your pick of properties, and meantime you can stay right where you are, with us.’

‘Oh, Mark, I couldn’t. That would be imposing.’

‘Why? We have the room,’ he pointed out. ‘You always used to come and stay the summer.’

His tone had taken on a stubborn edge that I recalled enough to know I wouldn’t win the argument, and so I simply told him, ‘Well, you’d have to let me pay you, then.’

‘The hell I would.’

‘I have the money, Mark. I have more money than I need. I can’t just sit here like a sponge and let you feed me and take care of me when …’ Just in time I caught myself, remembering I wasn’t meant to know about Trelowarth being in financial difficulty.