Agnes Owens: Roses

Roses

By Agnes Owens %W E GLMPH SJ ½ZI 'EVSP PSZIH XS VIEH QEKE^MRIW progressing to novels when she was 10, all the foreign legion tales by P. C. Wren, then Thackery and Dickens.

She even attempted Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but could not grasp the Russian names. Her favourite book was Oliver Twist. Soon she had read every book in the local library and accumulated a pile of reminder notices to return them that she tried to forget. In the end her MRJYVMEXIH QSXLIV [EW JSVGIH XS TE] HS^IRW SJ ½RIW ‘Carrie!’ she shouted one day, ‘Come and give me a hand to hang out the washing.’

Her daughter, lounging book in hand on a sofa, said: ‘Just let me read to the end of this. I’ll only be an hour or two.’

Her mother marched into the living room, seized the book from Carol’s hand, returned to the kitchen and threw it into the washing tub where it disintegrated into a soggy mass. Carol did not complain, said nothing, but never forgave that, deciding to wait until revenge was possible.

Soon after that a legacy made them rich and Carol was sent to an expensive private school from which she was expelled for completely ignoring her teachers and reading Frankenstein when she should have been writing an essay about the countryside in spring.

‘That child has perverse tendencies,’ the headmistress told her mother, who agreed wholeheartedly. When 17 she pushed her mother off a cliff top as they walked by the seaside. This was not premeditated but done on impulse because the opportunity had arisen. Luckily this was regarded as an accident. Carol regretted it when forced to make her own meals but shed no tears. It was her mother’s fault for destroying a perfectly good book because of not being helped with washing. Carol vowed she would only wash and clean up when it suited her but never put cleaning before reading, so the house became a terrible mess. It was only put in order when a maiden aunt visited and forced Carol to pay cleaners who came every day for a fortnight. Even then the result was far from perfect.

‘Now promise me you will never let the place get into that state again,’ said the aunt.

Carol promised but then let the house become much, much worse. Rather than face the aunt’s terrible wrath, when she came visiting next time Carol waited for her behind the front door with a hatchet in her hand, disposing of the body in the earth beneath the OMXGLIR [MRHS[W [LIVI SRI SV X[S VSWIW ¾SYVMWLIH in the summertime. The police made no headway with XLI Q]WXIVMSYW HMWETTIEVERGI ½REPP] HIGMHMRK XLI EYRX LEH ¾IH XLI GSYRXV] FIGEYWI WLI [EW SR E GLEVKI SJ shoplifting.

After that everything went well with Carol. She read Emile Zola from end to end and was going to start on Jane Austen when a young gardener appeared on her back doorstep, asking for work. He was handsome but not too handsome, lean and brown with the right size of bare muscular arms. She decided she would marry him if he asked her.

‘How did you know I needed a gardener?’ she asked in a winsome tone while boldly making eye contact. ³%LE ´ LI VITPMIH [EKKMRK LMW ½RKIV ³% PMXXPI FMVH XSPH me.’

‘As you see,’ she said, ‘I have a big garden which I cannot possibly manage on my own, and would like new plants growing all over it, but the plot under the kitchen window must not be disturbed. I have a special reason for insisting on that.’

‘What might that be?’ he asked in a mildly curious manner.

‘I’ll let you know when I’ve made up my mind.’

He shrugged. ‘Oh well it’s your garden, but I have a suggestion.’ In glowing terms he described a glowing bed of roses he would like to plant, whose scent would waft into her nostrils whenever she entered the kitchen. She interrupted him harshly.

‘Don’t talk about what you want. A dead dog is buried in that plot whom I loved dearly. His remains must not be tampered with. Is that clear?’

He gave a slight bow, said her wishes would be respected, and they agreed on the weekly wage he would receive.

After that she often watched him from the kitchen window, digging, planting or trimming the hedge. She liked to see his muscles ripple under his shirt or better still, if the weather was warm, his body when

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he wore no shirt. Sometimes he asked for a drink of water and entered the kitchen when invited. He appeared to be a young man who knew his place in WSGMIX] WIIQMRK MPP EX IEWI MRHSSVW FYX ¾MVXEXMSYW [LIR they met outside, as if he was two different people.

She did not think she trusted him either, yet panicked one morning when he did not come.

He arrived as usual next day saying, ‘I had a sore throat,’ but with no sign of a cold or cough so she knew he was lying. On warm days after that she sometimes went outside, lifted a rake or hoe or spade and helped him a little.

‘What happened to your mother?’ he once asked as they stood outside looking at the plot beneath the window.

‘She fell off a cliff and died.’

‘How tragic,’ he said. ‘You must be very lonely.’

‘I have my books,’ she said. ³&SSOW#´ LI WEMH EW MJ FEJ¾IH ³- GER´X IZIR VIEH ´ ‘How awful,’ she murmured.

‘I don’t mind,’ he said, ‘Reading is not for the likes of me.’

‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’ She began to tell him about one of her favourite novels, but she sensed he was bored. ‘I like doing things,’ he said, ‘not reading or hearing about them.’

Carol, greatly angered, said, ‘In that case I am paying you off. At the end of the week you can collect any more due to you and go.’

He laughed as if highly amused and asked if he could ½VWX HMK YT XLI IEVXL FIRIEXL XLI OMXGLIR [MRHS[ since he was curious to know why the roses bloomed so well in such poor soil, for there must be more than a dead dog enriching it. Carol, panic-stricken, hit him over the head with a spade she had been leaning on.

He lay in a coma for a week before he recovered, but was never the same again. He smiled at her like an angel and QEHI WRYJ¾MRK RSMWIW PMOI E farm animal.

‘Why don’t you speak properly?’ she would say, shaking him by the shoulders.

He would open his mouth wide but no sound would come out except piggish grunts. She began to detest him, especially when she had to wash him and change his clothes like a baby. He joined her aunt in the plot under the window after which the roses grew better than ever, although she longed for winter when no ¾S[IVW KVI[ ERH WLI GSYPH VIPE\ [MXL E FSSO 8LIR E QER GEQI XS ½\ LIV VSSJ XLEX LEH FIIR PIEOMRK in the heavy October rain. He seemed honest enough

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until he tiptoed into her kitchen and asked for a HVMRO SJ [EXIV %W WLI ½PPIH E XYQFPIV JVSQ XLI XET LI grabbed her from behind, threw her down on a chair and gagged her with a dishcloth after tying her hands with a rope he took from his pocket. She had visions of being raped but he merely ransacked drawers PSSOMRK JSV QSRI] ERH ½REPP] QEHI SJJ [MXL TIEVPW WLI had concealed in a tea caddy which were actually fake.

Carol never reported the incident as she did not want the police coming to the house, in case they searched the garden where the plot under the window was now overgrown with roses that now even bloomed in winter. People passing by would stop and remark on them, and if she was in the garden ask what she fed them on. ‘Tea leaves,’ she would say, and they would walk on happily.

Time passed until one day she realised she was old and had done nothing much with her life but read books, most of them stolen from shops or the library, and some lying unread and covered with cobwebs.

Her eyesight was now so bad she could scarcely QEOI SYX E TEKI 7LI QEHI E FSR½VI SJ XLIQ MR XLI garden and when they were well and truly burned she danced around the ashes with a feeling of freedom.

Next day she bought herself new clothes, a suitcase and umbrella. She was going abroad to see the world and would undoubtedly meet with rain. She booked a cabin on a newly built ocean liner called the Titanic because she liked the name. It sounded lucky and she was excited and happy to be leaving home. No one heard of her after that but the roses bloomed, and people passing sniffed the air and said whoever had TPERXIH XLIQ QYWX LEZI LEH KVIIR ½RKIVW ERH E KVIEX love of roses, for such a colour of red had never been seen before.

‘Roses’ will be published in 2008 by Polygon Press, Edinburgh, in The Collected Stories of Agnes Owens.