7. ‘ENDINGS’ – a curious word: may be either sad or happy – but may not in fact exist.

Detail from This House That I Cling To - Illustrator Sarah Keen

Endings were easy I thought. I truly believed I could finish a chapter and turn over a new leaf from the Word Tree and begin again.

I have another garden now, with richer soil and altered character. Yet I could not forget my history and its seeds: the plants came as so many stow-aways from Southampton. Their progeny jumped ship into as many pots as I could carry with me. The Word Tree followed too – though it now chooses the house to flourish in, scratching me with its twigs, invading the soft sofa – the tree’s fruit and its fragrance pervading my dreams.

Mauve coloured Shirley Poppies run laughing through the garden, rattling their full seed heads at me as I pass. But I never grew their cousin’s bloodied field flower nor scarlet roses –

I sometimes think that never blows so red, The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;

– as the poet had it. Secretly I am glad; for now I question the endless Gardens of Remembrance. I think we need Gardens of Forgetfulness and in forgetting, renew ourselves.

A clock strikes – my great grandfather’s clock sends a jar through a fresh summer’s day. I have forgotten to tell you the end of the story. I must hurry for soon I will forget.

I can’t explain how this has happened but I am writing to you from Elworth Hall. I can see the wainscoting and hear the rats whispering. There is some kind of House Party going on. I always think it’s wrong for houses to party. People should party, but in my experience most people don’t know how. They clutch a solitary wine glass and huddle near the walls. They have miserable conversations – listen, I can hear one taking place now.

“How is your dear mother?” an elderly woman is asking a man in his fifties. He takes a sip from his wine-glass and replies moodily, “She died on Tuesday last.” The man’s wife, a trim piece in her late forties – gathers up the reins of the conversation that her husband entirely drops. She canters on. “But we can’t bury her until the second week in August – simply too difficult. The entire family is booked for an evening at the theatre on the day the Funeral Director proposed for the funeral. Simply not going to cancel – we are all so looking forward to the play.”

A bad ending? or a sad one?

I have had enough and flee into a back kitchen that is mercifully empty. My mother stood here once, looking out of the window, watching while a haystack burnt violently in the night. In the darkness, I can see her and the flames that this time did not destroy the house.

I completely understand why my grandmother chose exile in Ruislip. I pour myself another glass of wine and lean again the range, where some filter coffee has been prepared: it is starting its slow journey through coarse paper, trickling into the pot. Suddenly there is a knock at the back door. When I open it, I find Adam the gamekeeper, as I first imagined him: stooped, white-haired, leaning on sticks. I too am grown old. But our faces light up on seeing each other and we hug . “Heard you were here,” Adam says.”Thought I would find you in the kitchen – you were never one for company.” His bird catching skills appear unabated.

Once settled in the kitchen, his news is hard. Arthritis gnaws at his bones. But as we talk the years slip away. He seems younger. I reach for a bottle of wine and offer him a drink. He shakes his head and asks for coffee. As I glance toward the jug on the range, he interjects firmly. “Instant coffee mind – none of that waiting around for filtered.”

And instantly we regain the garden. We sit once again under the flowering WordTree in a summer’s evening. Once more we are not alone. The WordTree has grown a poet – who blossoms and writes:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, — and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness —

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

I can see now how mistaken my grandfather’s clock is . It ticks off the seconds in measured, unforgiving steps from the cradle to the grave. Whereas Time spirals around us in great coils. Words slide through them with the snake, passing down the generations – resonating; combining the future and the past with an eternal present.

The Word Tree: its roots and its branches embracing us all