Showing Chrysanthemums
By andy
- 484 reads
Me mam always said that if it wasn't for Dad's Chrysanthemums she
would have gone spare. And that they probably knew more about him than
any other person living or dead, but that it suited her fine. Although
sometimes you'd catch her looking out of the window with a bit of a sad
look on her face.
If there was ever anything that was troubling him he'd take it out on
those flowers. The more care and attention he put into them, the more
you knew that something was troubling him from work. Maybe one of the
pit ponies had died, or there had been another accident. Sometimes he
could go for weeks without hardly saying a word to anybody. He'd just
eat his dinner and wander around the Chrysanthemums with a trowel and a
watering can. And if he did decide to speak it was nearly always about
those bloody flowers. Telling us over and over again that it was the
Chinese and Japanese that began breeding them over 2,000 years ago. And
then the big show at the Palmer Morewood Club would come round at the
end of the Summer. And he would always get out his best jacket and cap
for that day; and stand in front of the mirror brushing his
lapels.
I went to see him last week and he was still there, tending to his
flowers, finding it difficult to bend down now though. And I asked him
why he had spent so much time with them. 'Look at the colour of that',
he told me, placing a newly cut Chrysanthemum into my hand, 'Feel how
soft that petal is. You look long and hard for that if you've been
locked up down there half your life. Long and bloody hard'.
And then he told me about the wet conditions at the Low Main Seam at
Swanwick, where he couldn't see the next man four yards away. But
because of the quality of the coal the work had to go on. And if the
conveyor ceased to operate, within three minutes everybody would get
terrible bouts of cold. And he told me about the accident at Markham
Colliery, where the chair went down the shaft with the men riding on
it. And for weeks afterwards whenever he shut his eyes all he could see
was twisted metal, and so he had thrown himself into the Chrysanthemums
like never before.
And that was the year he had won first prize. Bronze, brown, purple,
red, pink, yellow, and white, they were. And everybody knew when he
arrived that there wasn't a Chrysanthemum amongst them that could touch
any of those flowers. And they each came up to him, every gardener
there, and shook his hand quietly.
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