Mary.

 FLOWERS! Whenever I wake up it’s usually cause there’s a nosegay for me. It’s nice to wake up for that. Is it from William?

This time, it’s a posy of purple flowers. They looks foreign. Who’d bring foreign flowers? Not William. He wouldn’t, not ever. He’d get some bluebells or some daffodils or something like that, probably from Wheeler’s farm or from outside Poppa’s barn, where the marigolds grow, and the primroses and all the hocks and stuff. Yeah, he’d just pick some from there, would William, not go to the trouble of getting foreign ones! Apart from anything else, how would he know when a boat was in and how would he get to the boat without a horse of his own? He might ask my Poppa but my Poppa would most likely get angry. And his Poppa hasn’t got a horse.

Waking up is easy cos I don’t get tired, so I don’t ache when I wake up any more. It’s funny, I don’t know what you’d say about it, but I just sort of wake up and that is that. It’s easy! And if I want to look around, I just look around like anyone looks around only now I can look around anywhere I want and I can look around two places at once.

Like now, I’m looking down on the purple foreign flowers, all laid down in a neat little row, and I’m looking down on Poppa’s barn at the same time. Except Poppa’s barn isn’t there any more, cos it hasn’t been there for a while now, and it’s all just a field and part of a hard grey lane, smooth as a window, with lines drawn on it. And Poppa isn’t around any more and I don’t think William is around any more and that’s also part of the reason why I don’t think William brought me the foreign flowers, cos I don’t think he would, and I don’t think he could get to the boat and I don’t think he’s around any more like I just said.

So yeah, there’s flowers in a row, and they woke me up. The stalks are long and green and I love getting flowers even though they wake me up and I probably should just be asleep all the time, even though I don’t have my cough any more. And sometimes I just wish I could pick them up and hold them, those flowers, like I was a May Queen or on my way to a wedding or to church or something. I can’t do that though. But I tell you what. It’s good that I haven’t got that cough any more, cause that cough was horrible, it was. It rattled the whole of me ribs. Poppa used to say no good would come of a cough like that.

So I can’t pick the flowers up, but I can get right up close to them and even smell them a bit, I fancy, but I just can’t hold them or pick them up or anything. Only just get down close to them. But when I get close to the flowers, it makes me tired again, most of the time it does anyway, and I sort of fall down between them without being able to pick them up. It’s nice to get flowers, even foreign purple ones, but once I’ve seen them there’s not much I can do apart from go back to sleep again. And that’s when I like fall down between them, and I go inbetween all the little bits of sand and mud and stones and the grass, and I slide under that big stone with all the writing on it except I can’t read the writing any more, not that I learned to read but William could and he would read it out for me probably.

I wish the flowers were from William, but I don’t think they are. I said that already. William used to bring more normal flowers like primroses and he’d lay them down all neat on the ground so I could see them and then go back to sleep again when I go down between the sand and the bits of stone and mud between the flowers. He used to bring me flowers all the time. First he came with his Momma when he was still 15 and I was 14, which was when I fell asleep. And he put the flowers down with his Momma and he cried and his Momma put her arm around his shoulders, and then he came when he was older and older and older and older and older and older and older and older and always at the same time, and he got bigger and older and he grew a beard and then he got so old he was like an old man. And he’d cry or say something about how I would always be his sweetheart and how he’d give anything to be able to give me the flowers in person and how he’d hold my hand and look after me and how one day he thought we’d get married and how he wished we could have gotten married but then I got that cough and I had to go sleep first time around so that was that.

And William just got older and then he turned into a proper man like my Poppa and then he got married, but not to me, but he still came to see me for a while with a posy. But then he stopped for a while, like he stopped coming with flowers, and then nobody came with any flowers and so I just stayed asleep, like you’re sposed to. But today I’ve got some flowers, nice foreign ones, so I woke up for them. But like I say, they ain’t from William and I don’t rightly know who they’re from. So I think I’ll just go sleep again.