Green Grow the Rushes O

Green Grow the Rushes O

It had moods.

And she had painted every one of them. This tarn was her place. Of course the moods were determined in some part by the seasons. Like her, the tarn suffered from S.A.D but it was more than that. She’d seen it at every hour, of every day, in every season. She had no idea what had first drawn her to that little pool of water. It was bigger than a pond, smaller than a lake, and it had been hers long before she’d signed the deeds and bought it.

And she belonged to it.

She was a teenager when she’d found it. A lonely child, she would ride her bicycle on a Saturday, always looking for somewhere within riding distance that was new. Any road that hadn’t been previously ridden down was an adventure, most were disappointing.

She’d come to the beach at Roan Head because she liked it. She’d been several times before, it was a long ride from Ulverston that would keep her away for some hours so she brought along a cheese sandwich and a bottle of water. She’d sat on the sand dune nearest to the road, carrying the bike over the sand was thirsty work and she didn’t want to go any further than the first stopping place. She watched the dog walkers out with their animals and the sea was beautiful and majestic to watch. She ate half of her sandwich and stayed about an hour before the sun became too bright, and she felt tired and still had to face the long ride home.

The tarn was right beside the beach, not thirty feet away from the car-park. She had no idea how she could have missed it before. The road was covered on the left hand side by dense trees but there was a small path leading through them. There was no sign declaring it as private property, so she walked through.

The sight before her took her breath away. It was darker, cooler. The canopy of leafy trees shaded her and hid the tarn from anybody who didn’t know it was there. She wondered how she’d never heard of it before. The two pieces of water seemed like polar opposites of each other. The sea was wild and turbulent, the sands vast and dotted with pampas dunes, but this hidden place was as calm and serenely gentle as anything she’d ever seen. It was lush and green and beautiful.

She carried it in her head and painted it for the first time that very evening after her dinner. That was the first painting, number one of hundreds.

Ashness Bridge, near Keswick, in Cumbria is purported to be one of the most painted and photographed bridges in the country. She reckoned that Roan-Head Tarn was the most painted tarn in Barrow, and had the added brag that it was painted by only one person, as far as she knew.

Her work sold well, a gallery in the Lake District had been taking her paintings for years, and they cleared for remarkable sums of money. She knew the tarn had wanted her, or why else would it have paid for itself. Roan Head was all that he painted. It was all that she needed. The gallery owner once asked her if she painted anything else and she’d replied, ‘No, it changes by the minute. I don’t need anything else.’

She never married, never had children. It saddened her sometimes but she wasn’t lonely. She knew every moorhen and tern, every swallow and thrush. She’d had her house built at the water’s edge and she lived happily there.

The tarn had grown wild over the thirty years that she’d lived with it. She refused any offers of help to maintain it. It didn’t need maintaining. She’d never cut back a tree or hacked at the hedges. They grew free, as nature intended. The reeds and rushes grew tall and magnificent. She had a weasel and rats as her neighbours. It was sad when she found waterfowl nests damaged and pillaged, but the predators were only doing what they had to do to survive, they kept the numbers of the birds down and there were always plenty of birds on the water. She’d painted it all.

She’d even painted a knotted condom alongside a toadstool once, just as she’d seen it, kind of creamy white, kind of pink. The gallery owner had hastily re-wrapped the painting in the tissue paper and handed it back to her with a stiff, ‘Not that one, thank you.’

She didn’t want to be maintained either. She didn’t need pruning or hacking. Bits of her removed because somebody decided that nature should be interfered with. ‘It could be removed,’ they said. Minimally invasive, they said.’

‘Says who,’ she’d said.

And now it was coming for her. She hurt, it hurt more every day. Her time had come but she wouldn’t let it take her. She still had freedom of choice, whatever they advised.

She’d never learned to swim, she was grateful for that. She didn’t like tablets, nasty bitter things, but they would calm her. She didn’t want to struggle when her natural survival instinct fought against her need for peace and quiet. The water was green with submerged weeds. The rushes brushed against her legs, already clinging, claiming her lovingly. The flora would hold her and welcome her and keep her as their own.

This is where she belongs.