Wild Rose – Chapter 9

Chapter 9 — The Ash Tree’s Secret

The kettle clicked off and the house fell back into its slow evening hush. Rose stood in the blue room with the key warm in her palm. The desk looked smug, as if it had been waiting to win this round. Last week she had yanked and pleaded and called it names. Tonight the lock turned with a neat little sigh and the bottom drawer slid open like a good dog.

Inside lay folded brown paper, a garden ledger with neat columns in a tidy hand, and a slip of card tied with a scrap of faded blue ribbon. Three words were inked in a slant she now knew as Edith’s. Under the ash.

She held the card until the edges pressed moon shapes into her fingers. The orchard map was already spread on the bed, the small X sitting beside the ash tree like a dare. She could wait for morning. She could make a sensible plan, write a list, find gloves, ask a villager where one buys proper tools in a place that shuts by five. She put the key in her pocket and went to the back door.

Dusk softened the garden to pewter. The ash stood at the far end, tall and stringy against a sky the colour of slate. Wind fussed through the leaves, a dry rattle, like a whisper that had learned to speak. Roses leaned from the fence in ridiculous, hopeful blooms. Rose apologised to them for the name thing, grabbed the shovel she had left by the potting bench, and set off across the grass.

At the tree she checked the map again, then the ground, then the map, because it felt important to pretend she knew what she was doing. The shovel bit into earth that gave easily, damp and sweet, then struck a net of roots that tugged back like stubborn children. She dug, rocked, dug, and told herself that this definitely counted as exercise and might earn cake.

The first inch was manageable. The third asked questions about her life choices. By the sixth she had mud on her knees, dirt under her nails, and a new respect for anyone who did this for a living. She stopped to breathe, listening to the late birds checking their wristwatches, and that was when the shovel rang on something that was not stone.

The sound was small and bright, a bell in miniature. She cleared soil with the side of her hand until wood showed through, dark with age, smooth as river bark. A corner first, then a long edge, then the iron of a hinge as frail as lace. The chest was no bigger than a bread tin, the sort of thing that would look sweet on a mantelpiece and hold letters that smelled of lavender and regret. Getting it out was another question. She widened the hole, worked her fingers under, and lifted while her back made remarks. The earth released it with a wet kiss.

On the lid, tied once and knotted twice, lay the ghost of that same blue ribbon. It had been blue once. Now it was the colour of old rain. Rose touched it and then, because patience had abandoned her at the third inch of digging, pried the rusted latch with the flat of the shovel blade.

The lid stuck, then gave. A faint breath rose, apple and tin and the damp library smell that lives at the bottom of old things. Inside, everything was wrapped in oiled cloth, careful, careful, as if someone had understood that this would be a long sleep.

She laid the contents on the grass in a row, wiped her hands on the back of her jeans, and began.

Photographs first. Black and white, edges scalloped, faces bright with that peculiar light from another century. Aunt Edith, younger than Rose had ever pictured, hair pinned, dress simple, a sturdiness to her that made Rose want to stand taller. Edith held a baby in some, the same baby across seasons, chubby and serious, a small hand clasping the brooch at Edith’s collar. In the corner of one frame stood a man. He was not touching either of them, but the space between them felt threaded with something that did not need touching. He had a fine head, an air like polished wood, and on his right hand a ring, oval and deep, engraved with the same crest that sat inside on Rose’s table. The camera had caught its flash. Proof without a caption.

Under the photographs lay envelopes with their tops slit neatly, the insides stacked in order and bound with string. Rose glanced at one and saw the tidy rhythm of bank drafts, month after month, amounts rising and falling like a tide. In the margins of some, Edith’s hand had added dates and small notes. Shoes. Coal. Doctor. There were receipts from the post office, each stamped and initialled. There were two letters, signed with a name that meant nothing to Rose and everything in context. I will come when it is safe. I am not gone.

She did not realise she was holding her breath until she let it out and the ash leaves answered with a hiss. If the man in the photograph was the father, he had not vanished into smoke. He had stood in lanes and back pews. He had watched, and paid, and hoped. The ring in Rose’s kitchen was not a bauble lost to sentiment. It was an emblem of a promise that had tried to be kept.

Beneath the letters lay a folded map in thick paper, brittle along its creases. She opened it slowly, palms flat, and saw the farm as it had been. The fields were numbered. Hedges drawn in little rows. The orchard sat as a neat rectangle that spilled into a long thin strip of pasture reaching past the ash, down to the old stream. Someone had traced the boundary in ink, then traced it again in a firmer hand, as if to insist. In the corner sat a second sheet, a conveyance with names and seals, a list of parcels included, and a paragraph marked with a faint pencil line. The strip beyond the orchard was part of the whole. There was no break, no little gap where it might have slipped away. At the bottom, a note in Edith’s hand. For my boy.

Rose read the names on the conveyance again. She knew two of them from whispered talk in the shop and the church noticeboard where cake raffles lived. Bledwynn and Elsie. Everyone said their names as if you should know them, because you did if you lived here long enough. They owned, it was said, the line of ground beyond the orchard, land that let their sheep nose the bank of the stream where the shade stayed cool. It was theirs because it had always been theirs. It was theirs because no one had said otherwise.

She held the map against the last of the light. Edith had said otherwise. Edith had said it in deed and in documents and in ink that still held its black. There was more in the chest. A small tin with seeds in paper twists. A locket with a curl of hair that time had tried to fade to nothing. A single sentence on a note that had been folded and unfolded until it went soft. Do not let them shift the lines.

The grass tickled her ankles. The hole at her feet waited like an open mouth. Somewhere over the hedgerow a dog barked once, then thought better of it. Rose gathered the papers into the oiled cloth and set them back in the chest for now, because it felt wrong to leave them loose under the sky. She closed the lid as gently as you fold a lid over a sleeping child.

On the way back to the house she paused, chest heavy in her arms, skin prickling. The orchard lay still, the ash rising black against the sky, but the feeling of being watched tightened along her spine. She glanced toward the lane. Empty. The hedgerows stirred once, then stilled.

For a moment she could have sworn a figure had stood there, cap low, hands folded as if waiting. Perhaps only a trick of light, dusk playing games with shadows. Still, the words seemed to hang in the air all the same.

Bit late for gardening.

She shook herself and hurried inside.

In the kitchen she set the chest on the table and laid the photographs out in a line like a card trick. Edith, the child, the man with the crest, the three of them fixed in light. The kettle clicked again because she had forgotten she had boiled it already. She made tea and did not drink it. The house seemed to lean in, the blue room above, the garden beyond, the ash holding its place like a witness.

Morning would come, and with it choices. She could say nothing and let the village keep its comfortable story. She could ask questions at the council office and at the post office where everyone always knows. She could take the map to Bledwynn and Elsie and see what their eyes did. News travels faster than wind in small places. A story like this would race the length of the high street and beat the school bell for time.

Rose took the ring from the first box and set it beside the photographs. The crest looked back at her, calm as a seal. A son had been given away. A father had not gone. The land lay where it had always lain, despite what paper fences claimed. She folded the map once, then again, and slid it under the breadboard, out of sight for tonight, as if secrecy could give her courage.

Outside the ash rattled and then rested. Rose pressed her palm to the cool wood of the chest. She was very new here and already neck deep in the oldest thing a place can hold, the thing that outlives weather and weddings. Blood and ground. She smiled, small and fierce. Interesting news indeed.