Bluebells

The music poured out over the room like water. It flowed out from the piano to fill the room with a roaring cascade of emotion. It stirred the curtains hanging lifelessly by the windows, it whisked across the empty tiled floor and threw itself at the doors in a desperation for freedom.

Out in the garden, she heard the music of the piano and stood silently to listen. Leaning on the rim of the fountain, she trailed one hand in the emerald waters. Her fingers in the water glowed ghostly green as she paused, eyes closed, the music of the piano hitting her in an onslaught of memory. Each note of the music was a blow to her fluttering heart.

As the music slowed and quietened, she took a heaving breath and pushed her hair back from her eyes with determination. Slowly, she took one step forward, her footsteps heavy in the damp grass, her skirt tangled around her thighs, desperately holding her back from the path of memory she knew she must walk.

The sun was already sliding behind the horizon, the late afternoon shadows painting her face. She felt the day slip away from her, and once more, time was her enemy, limiting every movement she made, until the world became one more blur of motion, and stillness became once more just a memory.

Memory. She tried not to let her thoughts slip away, back to a youth where choices were as clear as the thoughts rushing through her head. She had walked this same grass, feet then light in the moss, bare legs flashing in the sun. She had listened to different hands play the same piano, and never thought of the autumn.

In the house, the music was silenced, and she heard the soft click of the patio doors opening. Eyes shaded from the sun, she looked back up at the house, and saw the silhouette of her husband, stood silently watching her.

Her thoughts strayed back to the first time she had met him, dragged into the house by her parents and introduced to rows of faceless strangers. They had filled the garden with their polite chatter and delicate laughter, while she had stood by the same fountain and trailed her fingers in the same water. But when she looked up, searching the faces before her, it was not her husband’s face she looked for, but the face of another.

She was tugged back to the present by a wave from the man on the patio. She waved back, fixing a smile onto her face, although she was sure he was too far away to see her expression. She turned away and walked down the lawn, her footprints a long trail down to the bottom of the garden. Here, she followed the path that disappeared into a shadowy maze of towering hedgerows and overflowing flowerbeds. She walked deeper and deeper, feet light on the rough stone, until the path stopped abruptly as she found herself at the edge of everything. Flowerbeds gave way to long grass, and long grass finally gave way to the relentless waters of the river. Here, she sat, feet skimming the water, hands caressing the wildflowers that cushioned her.

She had escaped here, nearly twenty years ago, from the polite words of the garden above her. She had sat on this same bank and waited for him, the boy whose words cast the wildflowers into jealous shadows, whose smile made the river seem dull in comparison, whose kiss made her forget herself, and the expectations of the life she led.

Now, the river is quieter, as though time has made it forget its own voice. The trees are older, their branches heavier, the leaves that shaded her then, now long gone. Gone too, is everything else about that summer. The voices from the lawn have been silenced, the glow in her eyes stolen by the slow decay of time. Only her husband remains, a silent shadow at her shoulder now, just as he was then.

She had waited by the river that day, full of hope for her sweetheart’s arrival. Away from the party, she had forgotten the eyes of the man that watched her, forgotten the expectant faces of her parents. She had forgotten everything that defined her, in that one moment, where love for the boy she waited for was everything. And even when shadows painted her face with the grief of the evening, and she knew he would not come, she still tried to forget what she had to return to.

In the silence of that summer evening, so long ago, she had felt a stir in the air, the presence of another. The man from the party, the man who would one day become her husband, sat beside her on the river bank and said nothing. With gentle fingers he pushed a bluebell into her unresisting hand. She took it, and tossed it into the river. It floated gently on the swirling water, pulled this way and that by a power it could barely comprehend, let alone fight. In that moment, with the salt from her tears dry on her face, and her only comfort the silent stranger beside her, she felt as lost and powerless as the bluebell in the water before her.

Their wedding was a small affair, the autumn dampness creeping into the church, the green blooms of the garden lost to golden leaves. She wore bluebells in her hair, and her forced smile was caught in every black and white photograph. Alone with her husband, she stood in the silence beside him as he seated himself at the piano. The music rang out over the quiet chatter of the guests in the next room, the undulating notes a barrage of emotion, each one hitting her like a blow. Picking up her skirt, she turned and flew across the room. She threw open the patio doors and ran. Ran down the lawn, ran through the footpaths and the flowerbeds to the long grass, where she threw herself down by the river in a fit of desperation. She plucked the bluebells from her hair, and scattered them into the river. Her regrets, her fears, were too large to acknowledge, so she pushed them aside, and tried to think of nothing. Nothing, but the flowers and the swirling water.

Now she still sits here, still trying to think of nothing but the present. The boy she loved before still paints the back of her eyelids when she dreams. She tries not to think of him; now a man, living in a house not hers, coming home to a life that never coincides with hers. Behind her, her husband has followed her running footsteps, and stands, a silent comfort to a grief he can never understand. His hand appears over her shoulder, and it holds a bluebell. As she did that summer long ago, she takes it, and lets it fall into the water. Instead of rushing and spinning away as she expected it to, it floats gently, caught in a still pool of water. It hovers, then drifts lazily over the rocks. It chooses its own path, as she did so long ago, when she told herself that she was caught up with currents she could never change. Its choices, its limitations, are its own. As are hers.