Sunflowers

Sunflowers
A short story by Charles F. Bond
Copyright © By Charles F. Bond 2018

It is a hot summer day long into July. I stand in the doorway of the greenhouse, a small one I grant, but within its global harmony lay all any gardener really needs − three tomato plants, five feet tall, with ripening fruits among their emerald boughs. Being a late developer, they aren’t quite ready for picking, yet their scent fills me with a taste of heaven each time I come in to pick the little unwanted shoots that seem never ending.

I'm rushing today for I am to join my wife of ten years down on the coast. She left with our two children Aidie and Jack at the beginning of the week (four days earlier) without me. I had a check-up with the doctor’s which couldn’t be missed − what with the wait for new appointments − and she wanted to be sure to be by her sister's side when the new baby arrived. I was pleased to miss all that huffing and screaming and suggested she went on ahead without me.

With the last task in the garden done, I leave the door open for my good friend Cecil, who will be arriving soon for the key exchange, and who will be keeping an eye on the place for the next five to seven days.

The front and back gardens are small affairs and I make full use of all space, growing enough vegetables (not to see me the whole winter, but well into it), and plants of all sizes, colours and smells. My favourite of all, the sunflower, has been somewhat a tyrant of a devil to establish in either garden, and I gave up trying. The first attempt, the seedlings grew well in their tray, but on planting in the ground, flopped and withered, and shrunk to nothing. The next year I planted straight into the earth, fearing the transplant is what killed them the previous spring, and they didn't start at all. I tried over the next few seasons an array of different techniques. None survived, nothing seemed to work. I guess I was destined not to have them.

As I walk along the lawn, all ten steps of it, I get a feeling, as I always do, of being watched. This very spot I tread is overlooked by Aidie and Jack’s room, and a chill runs down my spine. My usual ritual of looking up reveals the window to be vacant.

What lurks there is unpleasant. What I know of the spirit world is vague, but the things I’ve experienced, not just in this house, have made me a believer. Cecil knows more about it and has told me he’s spoken to her in short bursts, enough to say her name is Catherine. Whatever else he's learned of her, he's kept to himself, and hardly talks of her at all. In fact whenever I've broached her with him, he's changed the subject. It was her, he claimed, who pushed the armchair behind the living-room door one night when he babysat Aidie as a baby. She hadn't been able to sleep so well, and only in his arms did she finally drop off, so he curled up with her on the settee and dozed himself. Clara, that's my wife, and I came home to find them resting peacefully, and though his explanation of the armchair deal was not out of the realms of possibility I believe he did it himself. In short, he's scared of her.

In the kitchen, some thirty minutes later, I rinse the mug I used last for coffee and its accompanying spoon and leave them to drain. Through the dirty pane of the window, (a task I keep meaning to get around to), I see Cecil come in the rear garden gate. When he sees me he offers a smile I return, and I pop the kettle on as he enters the house.

'Coffee?' I ask over my shoulder. He always takes coffee, and seems to thrive on the stuff.

'Yeah, I'll have a quick one before you go.'

'You can stay if you like. You know you're welcome to use the kid’s room while we're away.'

'No not after last time. Thanks for the offer but there's no way I'm staying in that room again.' Cecil shakes his head as I hand over the steaming mug.

I laugh it off, but remember the night well. He was half drunk (we'd set up a single camp bed) and as far as I knew, was just about getting off to sleep when he came rushing out of the room, trying not to make a sound, with a face white as lily. I met him on my way to the toilet to relieve my somewhat coffee addled bladder, and he hasn't set foot in that room since, saying he never will again. I believe him. He never did tell me what happened, and remembering his shocked expression, I'll never press the matter further.

'Well, sleep on the sofa then.' I say knowing he won't. 'It'll do you good to get away from your lot, absence from the heart and all that, and will give you some peace to get on with that novel you keep saying you want to write.'

'There is that I suppose. But no, you're alright, I'll stay at home and come here to keep an eye on the place, water your gardens, and feed the fish.'

'And the hamster.’

‘Yeah, that, too.’

‘If you change your mind about staying, you know you are more than welcome.’ Cecil nodded. ‘Well, you know how the roads are. I'd like to get there before dinnertime.' I reach into my pocket, take out my bunch of keys, fondle for the house key, unclip it, and hand it over.

'Yeah, I know what you mean. I'll finish my coffee and come back later. I'm sure you'll have your greenhouse open, won't you?'

'You got it, Cess.' I'm about to leave but spy the vase at the back of the sink, and notice its water is nearly gone. Then chastise myself quietly for not remembering to top it up. I run the cold tap and soon have the vase filled, replacing the glass when I'm done. The vase holds two sunflowers a neighbour up the road cut for me, knowing how much I like them.
They are a new addition to the house and Cecil hasn't been here since they arrived. With them being the only house plant, I'm glad to have topped up their water with him here. 'Don't forget these will you.'

'I won't,' I hear his reply, but when I turn he has one of those distant stares, as if his thoughts are off battling those dragons he likes dreaming about.

'Cess, don't forget the sunflowers,' I repeat and this time his stare returns to mine.

'Yeah, don't worry. Now you go off and have a good time. Give your kids a hug from me.'

'I will.' We shake hands and I leave. I've known Cecil since our school years. He's a good friend, though a little weird at times with his daydreaming, and I know the place will be well cared for.

On arriving back the next Friday, it is late and the kids are restless. They've slept most of the four hour drive, but I insist they go to bed.

'Stay, Daddy, stay.' Aidie says as I tuck her in. It's become a habit, staying until they've dropped off to sleep, but I'm so tired from the journey I need to get to my own bed.

'No, Treacle, I'm tired and worn out from the drive. I told you I can't tonight. You go to sleep, you'll be all right.'

'No, Daddy, stay.'

'I can't. I need to sleep.' My eyes are closing and opening.

'Can we sleep with you?' Jack asks.

'Come on then, but promise to go straight to sleep.'

'Promise,' Jack says.

'I pwomise,' Adie exclaims.

We all climb into the double bed and I fall to slumber before they're snuggled.
The next morning, waking with the kids between Clara and me, I reflect on our nightly ritual. Back when they were still babies − there is 18 months between them − they would be scared by the ghost in their bedroom. So much was their fear that they refused to be left alone and always needed either me or Clara to sit by them till they were sleeping.
This time of year things seem to worsen, and they take forever to settle and sleep. More often than not, Clara or I are so tired before then, we bring them to our own bed. They've told me of what happens in the night; once Jack woke up to see a shadow overlooking Aidie as she slept, (it'd prompted him to sneak out of the room and into our bed, but he'd felt so guilty at leaving his sister, we found him in her bed the next morning); Aidie once said of her toys, that they'd moved about when she wasn't in the room. We told her she'd probably forgotten where she'd left them and it was nothing to worry over. She wouldn't lie about it, we knew, and were trying to make her come to other reasoning in the hope she might stop believing, and not be so scared. It would happen; Cecil assured me once, once they were older and had chosen to forget the spirit world.

I slip from the bed, unsticking Jack's arm from mine, careful not to wake him. It is still early out, and being the weekend, the kids and Clara like to lie a while after dawn.

The fish look healthy enough, and the hamster in the living room, bought at the last local fete for Aidie, looks well fed and watered. I saunter out into the garden, with coffee in hand and check the plants. They are all flourishing and the soil beneath is the dark of damp. Cecil has been very good in his minding. I open the greenhouse door, pin it to allow in fresh air, and breathe in the finest aroma on Earth − fresh growing tomato.

Once the gardens are tended I head back to the house and prepare breakfast. Clara is first down, closely followed by the sleepy-eyed kids. After we've eaten I leave them all to the cartoons and set to washing the dishes. As the last bowl is placed on the draining board, I fill a pint glass to fill the jar with the sunflowers. It is then I notice they are withered and wilted. The bottom of the container is dust dry. Cecil had neglected them. I wouldn't mind so much, but I told him twice about them, and he knows how much I adore the plant.

'Remember he did it for free, Al,' Clara says from over my shoulder.

'I don't care,' I bark back, unable to contain a growing rage. 'He knows how much I like them.' I storm out of the kitchen, out into the back garden. The best place for me is in the greenhouse, plucking those extra shoots on the tomato plants that I know I will have missed earlier.

An hour or so into it and I've calmed. Most of my pottering has given me time to realise how silly I was to get so annoyed over something I can do nothing about. They are dead and I can simply get more. I walk out of the open door to see Clara running to me with tear stricken eyes.

'The kids?' is all I can manage as I rush to her.

She shakes her head. 'It's Cecil, Al,' she looks off trying to find the right way to say whatever it is she must.

'Just tell me.'

'He's been in a car crash,' she blurts, 'he's in hospital. It's bad.'

Ten minutes later, I drop Clara and the kids off at Cecil's, to relieve the neighbour looking after their daughter, a year younger then Jack, and rush to be by my friend's side.

The doctors say the coma will be a long one. His wife Martha is beside herself. I telephoned Cess’s sister an hour ago, and she'll be here come morning.

That night, sitting by his bed, I recount to Cecil of the wonderful mini break we've had. How the bouncing bundle was eight pounds two. How the donkeys at the seaside were Jack and Aidie's favourite pastime, taking rides every day. How they had built the finest sand castle, Jack, at least, with my help, and how creamy the ice-cream was down that way. I whittled on at length about nothing in particular, long into the small hours.

Over breakfast the next morning, I realised I hadn't mentioned the sunflowers, and vowed to chastise him for it, laughing about it, and then saying it would be all right, so long as he replaced them when he woke up. I never did.

Cecil was in his deep sleep for three of the longest days of my life. Angie, that's his sister, implored the machines be turned off when we were told he might not ever wake up, pleading he'd never want to be a vegetable. I wouldn't allow it and, with faith in my heart, protested so profusely I managed to gain him an extra 24 hours. In the end the doctors sided with his sister, who'd managed to convince Martha. Apparently family have far greater say in these matters than best friends, even though the siblings hadn't seen eye to eye for many years.

The place seems so quiet. My family, I guess, are giving me time to grieve, as I sit in my deckchair at the foot of the garden. Looking around, the weeds are a plenty. Everything can go to seed for all I care, right now. The funeral is tomorrow, three days after they terminated his life, a short time from death to earth so Angie can be off to her corner of the world all the sooner. In my life I've never hated anyone, Angie I detest with a vengeance, and it is making me not want to attend my best friend's final farewell, at all. I'll go of course, but won't be at the wake, nor will I attend the ceremony. I'll be there for the important part; lowering him into the ground. He'll be here, in my heart, after all, if not in spirit, though I will never see him, nor hear his voice again.

It is nearing dinnertime so I set off back to the house. The eyes are on me again from the kids' room window as I cross the lawn. I get a sense they are bearing on me harder than ever before as if she might be feeling my loss, knowing it is more to do with the time of year. I researched the house when Cecil gave no answers and discovered Catherine Tate. She was a single mum living in this house in the early forties. Her husband hadn’t come back, and when she learned of his death she lost her mind. Her kids were taken from her, and with little else in life she left it of her own accord. A neighbour complained of the bad smell wafting into his house and got the authorities to check out our house, finding her lying on her bed slits in both wrists. They put the date of death as 28th July.

Later, in bed, the kids went down without complaint, and Clara slides in beside me, silent as a burglar, snuggling into me, a hand on my chest. She knows I'm hurting, and try though I might I don't know what to say to her, on this the eve of the burial of Cecil. I kiss her cheek, cuddle her back, and drift to a reminiscent sleep.

Screams startle me awake. It is Jack. He is screaming for me, and calling Aidie's name. Opening their bedroom door I'm horrified to see my little Aidie turning around the room, as if someone invisible was there spinning on their heels like a living merry-go-round, holding her under her shoulders turning her round and round in circles at chest height. Jack is crying. Aidie is quiet; her body limp as she sleeps on. Clara gasps at my shoulder, pushes passed, and lunges at our daughter. Aidie pummels into her, throwing Clara to the bed. It shakes Aidie awake, and she screams, spinning ever faster. I rush forth as Clara jumps from the bed. She goes to Jack, and I watch for my moment to grab Aidie. She comes around and I move into her path. As I take her in my arms, I turn on my heel. Aidie realising she is with me, wraps her body around my chest. I rush out of the room. 'Come on, Clara, let's get out of here,' I say as I rush down the stairs. She is two steps behind me, holding Jack by the hand as I reach the hallway. We don't stop there, load the kids in the car and drive to Clara's sister's house.

It took two days to organise an exorcist. He inspected the house reporting there was no need for his services − the house was clear − and left with no charge. I gave him enough to cover fuel costs, and on this he was grateful.

The next day we moved back in, and the vibe had changed. I knew what it was, I knew it was Cecil. I can feel him, have felt his presence from time to time since, and somewhere inside I know he is the reason we have no more Catherine. I tended the garden, ridding it of the infestation of many weeds, pruning where necessary, and trimming the grass. Under the kids' bedroom window some odd new shoots had sprouted. Unclear at first what they were, I worked round them. Research told me their genus, and I nurtured them better than anything I've ever grown.

They are the tallest, fullest sunflowers that I have ever seen.

‘Thanks, Cess,’ I whisper, ‘these will do nicely.’

The End