Gift of a Rose

 

There is a small village in Norfolk where some of our ancestors once lived many years ago.

We pulled off the main road to visit it. A man was cutting the triangle of grass in front of the church.

I had never been inside the church but coming towards us was a woman with flowers who seemed to be holding a key.

“The church is never locked,” she told me.

It seemed there was a knack to opening the door, which had defeated us on the last two occasions we’d visited.

It was odd to find myself in a small white washed church where once my ancestors were baptised, married and buried. Odd to think that they too would have studied the carvings on the font, or wondered at the lopsided features of the altar as they sat in the pews. Odd to think that they may too have worked their needles to design the patterns on the kneelers.

The woman standing at the font was rearranging the flowers. She had sprays from a small pink floribunda rose.

“Smell that,” she said.

I did.

The scent was faint and delicate.

“Beautiful,” I said.

I told her why we were there. That we were descendents of people who had once lived in that village. We later established that both she and my son shared a grandmother with the same surname as she readjusted the flower display, and I wished she would also replace the wilting greenery.

“Would you like a cutting of this rose?” she asked.

“Yes please,” I replied.

She took me back towards her house.

I had been told earlier before we arrived that day, that the original houses when my ancestors lived had long since been pulled down and that new buildings had taken their place.

I asked her about a road with Kiln in the name, for that had been the road where they’d lived.

She didn’t know of it. But she asked the man cutting the grass who said that there had been a brick kiln down that road. It turned out that he was pointing towards this woman’s road.

So I’m pretty sure that I later found myself standing in the garden that my ancestors had once stood in long ago even though the original name of the road had been lost and forgotten.

She then gave me a cutting of a rose that was growing there.

I felt I was under an enchantment.

Nearby was a tumulus called Peace Hill. And I wondered if there were older more ancient ancestors stirring there awhile to witness this gift of a rose.