‘It’s a bit like a Viking pyre isn’t it, burning the person’s beloved goods so they can use them in the other world.’
‘I suppose so. I feel more as if I was about to burn a martyr at the stake.’
Mary took a box of matches and struck the flame. On top of a pile of kindling wood in the centre of the garden were the hacked and sawn up pieces of the old Templeton bed. She lit the wood beneath it which, dry and rotten, burst into an immediate blaze. In no time at all it began to roar and leap upwards with huge red and gold flames. Dark smoke began to pour into the blue sky above and to Mary’s fanciful ear the old bed shrieked with anguish as its hidden, clutching ghosts were forced to depart upwards and into the ether.
‘Seems a pity in a way, it was a marvellous old bed,’ said Charlie as he watched it disintegrate into the flames. ‘I agree. It is a bit like burning a martyr at the stake, a horrible feeling. Almost as if that bed had been alive.’
‘I feel I’ve committed a murder,’ admitted Mary. ‘But, you know, Charlie, I also feel cleansed and lightened. I can’t explain it. I couldn’t have lived with that bed in my house.’
Charlie’s daughter Isabel came out of the house with her two children running out after her, shouting with excitement.
‘You should have waited for Guy Fawkes Night, Grandad,’ said the little girl, laughing and dancing around the flames. ‘We could have had potatoes and chestnuts and lots of fireworks!’
‘We could have made a Guy to put on top,’ said the little boy. ‘He’d have burnt up so fast. Isn’t it a splendid fire!’
Charlie laughed.
‘We couldn’t wait till Bonfire Night, Timothy,’ he said, ruffling the little lad’s fair hair, ‘we have to clear Grannie’s house out, you know. Other people are coming to live here.’
Mary smiled but said nothing. The charred pieces of the bed fell now into the hot, molten mass below it and she felt a momentary pang of regret at its demise. She stood there for a long time and watched as the fire soared upwards, roaring, crackling, wrathful, leaping in a whirlwind of tempestuous flames.
In the morning, the little girl, Lucy, poking curiously amongst the remains of the fire, found a piece almost untouched. She picked it up, blew away the ash and looked at it with delight. The figure of a gallant lover was still discernible, smiling and bowing even though his ladylove was now no more than a heap of charred wood.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Sick Rose from William Blake’s Songs of Experience : Blake’s
Songs of Innocence and Experience by Joseph H. Wicksteed,
M.A published by J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1928
The Lady of Shallott by Alfred Lord Tennyson: The Works of
Alfred Tennyson Poet Laureate. Published by Kegan Paul Trench
and Co., 1883
Isabella and the Pot of Basil by John Keats: Keats Collected
Works,1884
Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson: The
Collected Poems of Tennyson publ. Wordsworth Editions Ltd.,
1994 edn.
Death in Love: Jenny: The Sea Limits - from The Poems of Dante
Gabriel Rossetti published by Ellis, London, 1907
The Blessed Damsel: this version of the famous poem was written
when Gabriel Rossetti was about 18-19 years old and he later
wrote to say that it had not been altered greatly since then. This
version would be the one that Henry Winstone would have heard
Gabriel recite in 1853. It was later altered to The Blessed
Damozel. Apparently the poem was inspired by the character of
Lenore in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. I am indebted for this
information to Jan Marsh from her book Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Painter and Poet p 23 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson London, 1999)
Turn away thy false dark eyes by Elizabeth Siddal quoted from Jan
Marsh’s Dante Gabriel Rossetti Painter and Poet p.190
Sudden Light by Dante Gabriel Rossetti from A Victorian
Anthology 1837-1895 edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman.
Cambridge Riverside Press 1895
In an Artist’s studio by Christina Rossetti from The Poetical Works of
Christina Georgina Rossetti. With Memoir and Notes &c, Ed.
William Michael Rossetti (London; New York: Macmillan ,
1904
Many thanks to Paul Newman, Jane Conway Gordon, and Patricia
O’Connor (president of the PreRaphaelite Society) for reading my
first drafts and their invaluable advice. Thanks also to my dear
friends M Jean Pike and Mary Cade for reading and enjoying and
constantly encouraging my work. Thanks to the very helpful staff
at the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum at Oxford in my
research into the PreRaphaelites.
Above all thanks to my daughter, Thalia for all her help with
editing and keeping me in order.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
Loretta Proctor Page 35