The Rose Garden

by Maeve Brennan

  Bluebell looked at the sparrow, and then she sat down and began to contemplate him. There was nothing to smell, but the light breeze blowing from the south, from Sullivan Street, touched a loose feather and it stood up and waved, a tiny flag the color of dust. That was all. It was quite otherwise with the mighty pheasant, an emperor pheasant, Bluebell found dead on the beach in East Hampton one autumn morning, her third autumn by the ocean, years ago. That was an unearthly morning—one mislaid at the beginning of the world and recovered in East Hampton under a high and massive sky of Mediterranean blue. An Italian sky, a young and delighted ocean, a blazing sun; and far away on the white sand something crimson that caught the wind. The wind was so new that it blew cold, in its first rush across the world, but the air was soft. The pheasant’s head and body were almost buried in the powdery sand, but he had fallen with his wings wide open, and one of them slanted up to make a wedge of color in the air.

  That autumn morning was early in November—the time of year when millions of small stones appeared in flattened wind formations at intervals along the lower part of the beach, where the sand is hard and flat near the water’s edge. Some of the stones are as big as walnuts and some are as small as grains of rice, and they lie tightly packed, a harsh sea fabric, while their faint colors—ivory, green, silver, coral—are always vague, almost vanishing, always about to dissolve into the stone. Bluebell used to race along the beach until she was almost out of sight, and at that distance, far away, she became a big black insect with four waving legs and a waving tail and wings that were either transparent or folded. Because it was impossible that a creature who skimmed so confidently and at such speed across the sand and in and out of the water and along the top of the dunes should not also be able to fly up and away and out to sea, with the sea gulls. The sea gulls detested Bluebell and flew off screeching with irritation whenever they saw her hurrying toward them. They stood in a long single line, staring at the water, and waited until she came close to them before they took flight. Their feet left a delicate tracery of pointed marks, a Chinese pattern, in the clean wet sand. Bluebell’s big paws made untidy holes in the sand, and sometimes troughs, and even when she did make a recognizable paw mark it was indistinct and awkward, not to be compared with the delicate sea gull imprint. She had attacks of wanting to dig in the sand, and then she dug as frantically as a dervish looking for a place to whirl. She loved to chase her ball into the ocean. She had a succession of balls—red, green, blue, and white, and sometimes striped—but one by one they drifted out to sea while Bluebell stood at attention on the shore and watched them go. She knew the power of the big waves, and how they hurled themselves so far down into the sand that they were able to drag it out from around her legs.

  After Christmas, when the storms began, the beach was whipped and beaten into bleak terraces—long ranges of sharp sand cliffs descending from the dunes to a struggling, lead-colored sea that foamed into mountains against the sad sky, while the sea gulls screamed their warnings all day long. One day in January, Bluebell received a present from the grocery shop of an enormous bone, a bone of prehistoric size and weight, a monumental thighbone with great bulging knobs at each end. She took hold of the bone at its narrowest place, in the middle, but even so she had to open her big jaws to their widest and her head was pulled forward by the bone’s weight. She straightened up and carried the bone from the kitchen to the lawn in front of the house, where she placed it on the frozen grass and looked it over tenderly before she started to attack it. Two sea gulls appeared out of the fog and circled about not far above her, watching for a chance at the bone, and the day was so strange that the sea gulls seemed to speak as natural claimants for the fog that was taking possession of the house. It was a dark-white day under a lightless sky and the view was ghostly. The small grove of trees at the end of the driveway had become a dim outpost, and to the left of the house, toward the ocean, there was nothing to be seen except shapes formed by the fog. Outside the house only the two sea gulls and Bluebell with her bone had substance. The fog reached the windows as the afternoon wore on, and night came to find the house shrouded, lost, hidden, invisible, abandoned except by the ocean, which filled each room with the sound of eternity, great waves gathering themselves for the clash with earth and darkness. Bluebell had been in and out of the house all day. About seven in the evening she cried to be let in, but when the door was opened to her she backed away from the light and was immediately lost except for her face, a thin gray mask with imploring eyes looking out of the fog. Her eyes were pleading, not for permission to come in but for permission to bring her bone into the house. She vanished and reappeared a minute later, a transparent dog face that held in its ghostly jaws the great bone, which glowed phosphorescent, while beyond it four round diamonds flamed suddenly—two of the cats returning from their usual night-watch. There was no moon that night; no moon, no stars, no clouds, no sky, no real world—only the little house settling slowly into its place in safest memory, guarded by the silence that poured out of the voices of the waves.

  The lawn in front of the house belonged to Bluebell. In the summer she stretched herself out on it to bake, and in the winter when the snow was very deep she played boisterously in it, rocking and leaping and plunging, a dolphin again. The lawn was separated from the emerald acres of a famous golf course only by a thin line of trees, and from her place near the house Bluebell could see the public road and the cars passing along there, going south to the beach or north to the village. Sometimes a car turned into her driveway and then she ran forward to welcome it. During her early days in the city she was surprised to find so many cars and all so close to her, parked along the sides of all the streets where she walked, and at first she thought they were all friends and she used to notice each car, and smell it, and look to see if there was a place in it for her. She soon discovered that in the city cars had no connection with her, and she stopped expecting anything from them, although it made her very restless to see a dog looking out of a car window, because she could not help hoping that somebody would offer her a ride, even a short ride, anywhere. Away from home, that is where Bluebell dreamed of being, when she saw dogs in cars, and when she watched for the house on West Tenth Street. Away from home, that is where Bluebell wanted to be.

  One afternoon, just before the start of her holiday in Katonah, her walk took her a long way west, to Hudson Street and the walled garden of St. Luke’s Chapel. It was a cool afternoon, with thin sunlight, and a complicated country fragrance drifted across the walls of the old garden and through the bars of the garden gate. Bluebell put her nose to the gate and smelled. She could see the big, old-fashioned garden, fading in autumn, and she smelled leaves, grass, and earth. Bluebell smelled fresh earth. Somebody in the garden was digging.

  In secret places in the neighborhood of her house in East Hampton Bluebell used to bury her best bones. They were her treasures, and she knew they were still where she had left them, safely hidden, waiting for her. She smelled earth now, the same old earth, but she could not get into the garden because the gate was closed, and locked. There was a lady in the garden, walking near the gate, and Bluebell wagged her tail, but the lady didn’t see her, or didn’t want to see her. Bluebell stopped wagging, and two or three minutes later she turned from the gate and went around the corner onto Christopher Street. And there, as she walked west on Christopher Street, Bluebell saw a vision. She saw the public road that cuts through the golf course in East Hampton, with the cars passing each other, going north and south, just as they always did. She was looking at the West Side Highway, which is cut out of the air around it just as the road in East Hampton is cut out of the green golf course. All she really saw was cars moving in the distance. It was months since Bluebell had seen cars at a distance, and the distance between where she was on Christopher Street and the elevated highway was much the same as the distance between her old lawn in East Hampton and her old view of the golf course. Everything was happening at once. Her head was still full
of the smell of new earth, and she was seeing her view again, and now she smelled, very close to her, the Hudson River. The river did not smell like the Atlantic Ocean, but Bluebell knew she was walking toward water, big water. Perhaps she was going to have a swim. Her ears went up and she began to hurry, pulling on her leash. But then she turned another corner and found herself back in the same old concrete quadrangle, walking her geometrical city-dog walk, with only miserable lampposts to tease her starving nose. In her disappointment Bluebell lost her temper and charged furiously across the sidewalk to threaten a five-pound nuisance, a miniature white poodle who yapped rudely at her, and who stood like a hero on his four tiny paws and glared up at her until she was dragged away, seventy pounds of raging disgrace.

  Poor Bluebell. She is being made foolish in her old age. She would like to go swimming, show them all what she can do. She would like to go swimming, show them all what she really is. She would like to dig up a bone. She would like to go for a ride in a car. She would like to find that door on West Tenth Street. Most of all, she would like to get away from Home. Yes, she would very much like to get away from Home, who now marches along behind her, holding her leash.

  Home speaks: “Good Bluebell. Good Dog. Nice Walk. Good Bluebell.”

  Home’s voice is consoling, but Bluebell can’t be bothered to listen. Bluebell is sick of Home, who holds her on a leash and won’t let her go anywhere or do any of the things she wants to do.

  “Good Bluebell,” Home says.

  Bluebell begins to go faster and now it is Home’s turn to be dragged along, hanging on to the leash. Home protests angrily.

  “Stop it, Bluebell,” Home says. “Bad Bluebell. Bad Dog. Bad.”

  Bluebell doesn’t care. She begins to speed.

  Home shouts, “Bad, bad!”

  Bluebell is puffing so hard that her chain collar hurts her throat, but she only goes faster and faster. Disappointment and boredom have turned her into a fiend, and all she wants is to get as far as she can from Home.

  But that was several days ago. Today Bluebell is going to Katonah for a holiday in the country. The car comes at twelve, as it promised to do. Bluebell is led out of her apartment house on her leash, just as though she were going for her ordinary walk. But then the car door is opened and Bluebell leaps into the back seat. She is mad with joy. She tumbles over herself and tries to tumble into the front seat, but as soon as the car starts off she quiets down and sits looking out through the window at the streets she is leaving. She is trembling with happiness. She makes no sound, but her eyes are shining with adoration for everything she sees—for the streets, and for the car she is in, and for the driver of the car, and for Home, who sits beside her in the back seat. Yes, Bluebell is going away from home, and Home is going with her. Bluebell turns her head from the window and looks at Home, who is smoking a cigarette and smiling. “Good Bluebell,” Home says, and Bluebell stretches herself out on the seat and puts her head in Home’s lap. “Good Bluebell,” Home says. Bluebell sighs and half closes her eyes. Her tongue comes out and she licks her lips. She settles herself for a long ride. The wheels of the car go round and round and they sound as though they might keep going forever.

  A Large Bee

  A large bee, carried by the wind to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, lay on his back and struggled to free himself from the wet sand. As the wind continued to blow, more sand drifted over him and packed itself around him, and by the time Mary Ann Whitty came along, walking with her dog, there was nothing to be seen of him but a tiny coffin of sand with his black legs waving feebly out of it.

  This was on the strand in Amagansett last April, and at first she thought she was looking at some kind of sea insect, something that lived in the sand. There was no color or shape to show that a bee was there, no evidence that the creature had wings, only the black legs to show that something was alive and wanted to stay alive. With a big shell she scooped this something up and carried it back to the high dry sand and tried to turn it right side up, so that it could find its feet, or free its wings and balance itself, or fly away, or burrow down, or do whatever it had to do. But it could not stand, and kept tumbling over on its back, and after a minute the wind picked it up and blew it right back to the edge of the water. The tide was coming in. Mary Ann had a silk scarf in her pocket, and she took that and went after the bee—she still did not know the creature was a bee—and scooped him up again and placed him in the middle of the scarf, which she then tied into a bag by its four corners.

  Her dog, Bluebell, a black Labrador retriever, rather fat, had been amusing herself while Mary Ann was rescuing the bee. Bluebell had raced to a distant line of sea gulls who were standing sentinel at the edge of the water, a long way off, and had destroyed their afternoon by making them all fly up into the air. Now she came racing back to Mary Ann and they continued to walk until they came to the opening between the dunes that put them on the path to their house. As she walked along the sandy path, Mary Ann looked into the silk bag to find out if the insect was ready to be set free, and it was then she saw that she was carrying a bee and that he was still half covered with sand, and she thought, I will take him home and let him dry out and see what he wants to do next.

  Halfway along the path, she saw what she expected to see—from the undergrowth at the edge of the woods the cats were coming out to meet her. They came out slowly, stretching at intervals, down the bank, onto the road, and then they all sat down heavily and watched, yawning. When she came close to them, they stood up and waited for recognition, which she gave each of them separately. Then Bluebell offered to recognize them and they backed away in disgust, because she was wet and salty from the sea. The cats all began to run for home, running like rocking horses, with their tails arched. Bluebell was tired from her swimming and content to waggle along beside Mary Ann. The bee made no weight in the scarf. It might as well have been empty. There were woods on both sides of the road for a little way, and then woods on one side only, because on the right a clearing had been made, and there the house in which she lived stood, but it stood up on a height, and from it there was a clear view across the tops of the trees to the dunes and across the dunes to the ocean. There were wide, irregular steps cut into the side of the bank that sloped from the road to the house, and in front of the house was a wooden deck. She went in and laid the scarf on the table. She lighted the fire. She poured milk for the cats and lured them with it to the deck and then shut the door on them, shutting them out. Then she untied the scarf and looked at the bee. He was still moving his legs feebly and the sand was falling off of him. She left him there and went to sit by the fire. Bluebell lay down with her head on the hearth and closed her eyes. Mary Ann was always afraid her brain would boil when she did that, but she spoke to Bluebell and Bluebell opened one calm eye and then shut it again.

  Bluebell almost never barked, but when she had been waiting outside the house for too long, when she began to lose patience and feared that the door would never be opened, she summoned from some point at the top of her head a sound that was at first so thin and unearthly that it might be called ethereal—an ethereal note from far away. This sound dropped quickly into a vulgar, insistent whine, which dropped without delay into the most shameful manifestation of her impatience, fear, and anger—a sustained squeal so penetrating that no one who heard it ever wanted to hear it twice. Now, as Mary Ann sat by the fire waiting for the bee to revive or not revive, she knew that something had been whining at the back of her head, and as she listened the whine gave voice, and what she heard was not a squeal but a harangue that was familiar to her because it sounded at intervals from the side of her brain where the random insights that other people had had about her grew and flourished and multiplied themselves, like the weeds that they were. They had a weedy strength, a weedy tenacity, a weedy life, and their own weedy truth, and she supported them, and she allowed them to live and to express themselves, because she could afford them. At the time that they took root in her mind she could not affor
d them, but she accepted them, after a struggle—by that I mean that she made room for them. There are some natures that can expand to include anything, even the things that ought to be thrown away.

  Mary Ann was hearing the voice of her conscience, which, of course, was familiar to her, although it bore no more resemblance to her own voice than Bluebell’s unpleasant squeal did to her ordinary gentle silence.

  The bee would have been dead by now. Why do you bother all these creatures? Why not leave them alone? The field mouse the cats brought in this morning has been living in the box you arranged for it in the bedroom all day, waiting for the darkness, when you will put it out again, and the cats will probably catch it again, and in any case it has nothing ahead of it but fear and the search for food. It was dead when they brought it in, but you would bring it back to life. Why don’t you let these animals alone? The same with the baby rabbits and the chipmunk and the rest. Nothing but egotism. Why not let things be? Let everything alone. Stop interfering. Nature must take her course . . .