Tis the Last Rose of Summer

Theme – A Story of someone being haunted

TIS THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER

The sun was setting as Sally tripped across the bridge and up the hill to Brown’s Barn, swinging her basket, in joyous steps. To stop at the rise and listen, for in the quiet of the evenings when the wind was in her face she could hear the guns in France but tonight she heard just the birds, for at last the war to end all wars had ended and her heart was full to burst with happiness.

     Her inner joy was for the returning boys. She craved youthfulness to dispel the old and fill the fields with their young hearts. “For young is once” and she felt her womanhood wasted in this fallow time, “For what is the point of being a woman in a land devoid of men” she cried on her lonely days.

    The barn stood alone and silent, for the hens were strangely quiet and did not greet her as normal. But she did not notice as she climbed the ladder to the chicken hutch and only perceived the oddness on opening the hutch door; to be greeted by the cooing hens huddled at the back of the nesting shelves.

“Good evening my sweeties” she whispered to the unusually frightened hens as she gently collected the eggs, as they huddled and shuffled nervously away. “Tis the last rose of summer” she quietly sang to settle them “left the blooming alone” as she slowly backed out of the hen-house into the darkening evening. Shutting the door, she felt the strangeness of the moment, the utter stillness of the night. Turning she walked lightly down the steps “All her lovely companions are faded and gone” she sang as at the last step she passed a man standing in the shadows.

“Evening sir” she said with a nod as good girls should.

“Evening Sally” came the reply and it was two paces passed when she realised the reply she had heard. ‘Sally, he said?’ Stopping she looked back, but he was gone.

“I met a man upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there” she said aloud to the darkness to bolster her courage as she looked at the space where he had been. But she was alone and a little afraid. Turning she hurriedly marched up on to the hill’s crest to stop with a gasp to see the whole sky a fiery red.

“No flower of her kindred, no rosebud is nigh. To reflect back her blushes and give sigh for sigh” she sang to the distant shores, in hope for the coming peace.

    In her heart she longed to see no more unhappiness. No more poor women in black or bearing black armbands for lost husbands, sons and lovers. She longed to see girls in bright dresses and boys in white shirts. To feel the renewing of life like the spring shoots and early corn, filling the world with bright colours and hope.

   With that thought in her breast she set off down the hill singing “I’ll not leave thee, thou lone, to pine on the stem, since the lovely are sleeping, oh go sleep with them” and walked into the deep darkness of the hedge’s shadow, but she feared not the dark for she knew these paths all her life and as she walked in the silent darkness, she thought she heard from behind, “Thus kindly I scatter thy leaves o’er the bed, where thy mates of the garden lie scentless and dead” in a voice so familiar, it was almost her Jamie’s. 

    The words had come as if in her own head, but the voice was of her Jamie, and in that moment of remembrance of her love, so far away, but so close in her heart, she drew a great breath; to stifle a sob of joy, that filled her senses with the sweet smell of the damping hedge with its primroses and cowslips. Then as the sun set lower, its dying light breaking through the trees, to set the whole world into sparkles. Great shadows danced about her and but for the beating of her heart, not a sound, not a bird or breath of wind disturbed the magical silence.

    Sally stopped on the stone bridge to see the whole world ablaze with dazzling rays of the setting sun puncturing the darkening evening, transforming the dying day into a mystical time. And there she placed her basket on the parapet and stood looking at the stream, dazzled by jewels of light dancing upon the water.

   She stood, mesmerised as if in a trance and felt a presence, as though someone was standing very close behind her left arm, it felt a warm comforting feeling, to ward off the loneliness and re-assure her. “So soon may I follow when friendships decay, and from loves shining circle the gems drop away” she almost whispered to the night. Afraid to break the unnatural stillness that had descended upon her.

   The urge to look, to see, for she was sure someone was standing behind her almost touching her arm, was just too great but somehow, she could not move, transfixed by the sparkling river, she feared to move would break the spell, for already in her heart of hearts she wanted it to be him, impossibly him. Tilting her head, she saw her Jamie standing close by her side in his finest uniform, with his bright brass buttons and badges, gold red from the blood sun, just as she had last seen him as he left the village. Turning with such joy to embrace him and as she did, he disappeared leaving only the song floating in the air “When true hearts lie withered and fond ones are flown, Oh, who would inhabit this bleak world alone” in his so familiar Wiltshire tone.

And then she knew, as the sun dipped and the darkness of the night surrounded her and her happy heart was gone, as she sang in tears.

“Oh, who would inhabit this bleak world alone”