Grandma's Roses

A little darker than the previous story, but just as compelling!

Grandma's Roses
By Sarah Evans

We were clearing Grandad's place. He'd died the day before and Mum wanted to blitz the old weatherboard house with its peeling paint and rotten floors.

"This feels wrong," I said, hovering at the back door.

"It's not," said Mum. She marched passed me, clutching two plastic buckets loaded with cleaning paraphernalia.

"Grandad would be evil. He hated us invading his personal space." I stepped inside. Memories flooded back of torturous Sundays sitting at the chipped Formica table, enduring Grandad's monologues on how society had gone down the gurgler since the war. He'd ranted about the fall of morality, loose women, adultery.

We'd forgiven him, because of Grandma.

During these tirades, Mum would disappear to tend Grandma's roses. Those sweet-smelling, deep red roses at the bottom of the garden were the only concession to beauty at the austere farm.

Mum interrupted my reminiscences: "He's beyond caring. Always was. Not that we should speak ill of the dead." She quickly crossed herself.

Grandad, a tough cocky farmer, had raised three children single-handedly after Grandma had shot through with a serviceman during the war. Mum had been ten, Uncle Wal thirteen, Aunt Sylvia six.

Grandma's desertion put a huge strain on the family, not least the loss of free labour. To compensate, Grandad swapped sons with the neighbouring farmer. The men reckoned they could extract more work from the boys doing it that way.

Dennis had slept in the sleep-out. It was freezing in winter and boiling in summer. He'd run away after six months, lied about his age and joined the army.

Inspired by Den's escape, Wal tried it too. But he got caught and Grandad flogged him half to death.

Mum took Grandma's desertion hard. She was forced to grow up fast. She'd had to clean, wash, cook, and be mother to Sylvia. But as soon as they were old enough. the girls left home.

Duty, Mum said, was the only reason she'd kept in touch with Grandad.

And the roses.

My job was the kitchen. It hadn't changed much in the ninety years of Grandad's life. Only the Metters stove had been upgraded. I started with the drawers. There was the usual build up of used envelopes, rusty drawing pins, perished rubber bands, discoloured lamb's teats and untidy bundles of oddment string.

I binned everything except an old tobacco tin that had something rattling inside. There were names written on the lid: May, Evelyn and Sylvia. Grandma, Mum and her sister. A deep scratch had almost obliterated Grandma's name. Age had welded tight the lid.

"Do you know what's in this?" I asked Mum.

"Bullets," she said and reached for the tin.

I lost interest. I'd found plenty of loose ammunition rolling about in the dusty drawers. What were another few bullets?

Mum traced the scratch mark. "One bullet for each of us," she murmured.

"Sorry"

"During the war your Grandad would chart the progress of both the Allies and their enemies on a big map he had pinned up there." She gestured to the nicotine-stained wall. "As the Japanese flags got nearer to Australia, he put these bullets in the tin. He told Wal that they were for Mum, Sylvia and me if the Japs invaded our farm."

"He would have shot you?"

"He reckoned it was a better fate than being taken by the enemy."

"Good job he didn't panic and use them."

She stared at me, or was it beyond me?

"He wanted us to believe that she'd betrayed us. That she had failed as a wife and mother and left us. But we knew. We were too afraid to say anything, but we always tended Mum's roses. 1t was the least we could do."

"Mum?"

"Open the tin."

After much exertion; I levered off the lid.

"Where's the third bullet?" I said.

Mum wasn't listening. She was gazing out at Grandma's blood-red roses.