Before Jim left, he’d given Sara a gift, a book called Wayside and Woodland Blossoms. It contained all the varieties of British wildflowers you could possibly imagine, complete with illustrated color plates and a detailed description of each flower and the family it belonged to.
‘I expect you to have learnt the names of all the flowers in this book by the time I get back,’ he joked. ‘I’m not interested in wildflowers,’ she said. ‘I just wish you weren’t going.’ ‘We’ve been over this a million times,’ he said. ‘I can’t stay here twiddling my thumbs. I need to earn a living and there’s nothing for me here. We’re in the middle of a depression, remember. At least you have a job. And they’re always going to need teachers. ‘But why do you have to go so far away?’ she said. ‘And what makes you think it will be better anywhere else?’
‘Well, I have to try,’ he said. ‘There are always plenty of jobs down South, fruit-picking. It’s not as if I’m leaving the country.’
With that he packed his bags and was gone. A letter arrived soon afterwards. He’d found a job for the harvest season in Kent. He’d be home for Christmas. But Christmas came and went. Next thing she knew he’d gone and signed up to work on a ship. It was an opportunity he couldn’t refuse, he said. He was sailing the next day. He’d be home in the spring.
The book lay on the bedside table all winter. What was the point in looking at pictures of wildflowers during the winter? It had been raining non-stop and the ground was soddened, so she couldn’t even get out for a walk. But when spring came and the weather bucked up, she was determined to make the most of it. She’d try to identify as many wildflowers as she could on her walks.
Soon the first primroses were pushing up their pale, yellow petals along shady banks, followed by delicate white, wood anemones. There were carpets of celandines and bluebells amidst wild garlic, violets, and wild strawberry flowers. The boggy areas were awash with marsh marigolds.
His letters were becoming less and less frequent. Maybe he was too busy, too caught up in his everyday life to find time to write. Or maybe the letters just went getting through. When a letter finally did arrive, it contained some lines from a poem called the Seafarer.
‘Sometimes I heard the song of the swan
seized gladness in the cry of the gannet
and the sound of the curlew, instead of
the laughter of men: in the screaming gull,
instead of the clanking mead-cups.’
What was that supposed to mean? The poem, it turned out was written by an anonymous poet in Old English. Some said it was a sailor’s lament. Others said that it was an account of a religious hermit in search for God. Would Jim ever be coming back?
Curlews came inland in March for the breeding season, preferring to live most of the years on riverbanks by the sea. Come July, they would be going back there. You had to be careful with nesting birds. They would come at you, screeching in alarm if you got too close to the nest. Whenever she heard their calls reverberating across the valley, she thought of Jim. They became her constant companions.
Whenever she spotted an unfamiliar variety of wildflowers, she looked it up in Wayside and Woodland
Blossoms. There were far more of them than she’d ever imagined. She’d always thought Jack-by-the-Hedge was a weed. It had tiny white flowers and was everywhere. Silver weed, on the other hand, was striking with its feathery leaves which were silver on the underside, but its flowers could easily be mistaken for buttercups. Bistort, an unusual name, she thought, had flowers which looked like pale pink spikes. Bugle reflected the shape of the musical instrument with the same name but unlike the orchid, which it was often taken for, had leaves coming off the stem. It was hard to tell the difference between all the clusters of small white flowers she encountered on Queen Ann’s lace, Earthnut and Ground Elder.
May blossom was everywhere, lighting up the hedgerows. May or hawthorn blossom gave off a delicate, fruity smell, a smell of spring. She remembered the old saying ‘Cast ne’er a clout, till May be out.’ The book said that in pagan times the hawthorn was regarded as a fertility symbol. Hence the ritual of dancing around the Maypole. And in medieval times, people thought hawthorn smelt of the plague and that if you took the blossoms into your house, you would be scourged by illness or death. Thank Goodness the days of magic and superstition were over, she reflected. As a biology teacher she knew that there was often a logical explanation for such beliefs. Dead wood gave off a chemical, called trimethylamine which smelt like decaying animal tissue.In June, the weather turned windy. The forecast had predicted gusts of up to fifty miles an hour. When she looked out of her bedroom window, the branches of the rowan and elderberry bushes, top-heavy with leaves and blossom, were being blown this way and that. Her fiancé was adrift at sea, being tossed about by the elements. As the branches swayed rhythmically in their hypnotic dance, they seemed to be beckoning her to join them.Someone had said there were fairy foxgloves growing in the old quarry down by the disused lead mine. According to Wayside Blossoms, they weren’t real foxgloves. They weren’t even native to this country, having been introduced from Alpine regions hundreds of years ago, but they were growing wild in isolated spots. Now was as good a time as any to go and investigate.
She nearly got blown off her feet as she walked along the ridge to the limestone quarry. Once inside the dell, the wind dropped, thankfully. Halfway up the rockface, growing out of cracks in the rock, she spied a clump of tiny, purple flowers. They must be the fairy foxgloves she’d heard of. She needed to take a closer look. She recalled a picture she’d once seen of a long-skirted, Victorian lady, clambering up a rockface in pursuit of some rare variety of fern.
Just as she was nearing the ledge, a curlew came screeching overhead. She must be close to its nest. She put her hand out to protect herself from the encroaching bird. Thoughts of Jim flashed through her mind, as she lost her grip and fell.Jenny Palmer
First published in Creative Mind No 5, Preeta Press.
Editor's Note:This short story is just one piece among thirty in Jenny Palmer's latest book, 'Butterflies and other stories'. It's out now, published by Bridge House. It is available from Amazon, linked here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Butterflies-Jenny-Palmer/dp/1914199685 and naturally it comes with the highest Dead Good recommendation. Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook