jml297

It had all come undone. The careful preparations for a perfect life from her earliest memories carved from fairy tales, where everything works out in the end. How had it come to this, with her life reduced from glamour, comfort, and convenience to being kept in a place of shadows, her every moment monitored?

The sanatorium was at the end of a long road, accessible only in dry weather. Heavy rains ate away at the track, making it difficult to cross. She recalled the sense of dread that had overwhelmed her on the ride out to Sunny Corner. The bush was too thick to allow much sunlight to penetrate the scrub that surrounded the buildings, and she’d noticed on her daily walks that the extensive vegetable gardens looked as lacklustre as she had felt.

‘It’s for the best, just until you’re more like yourself.’ Her mother’s face was drawn, and she could see how her mother was suddenly old. For a brief moment, there had been an urge to hug her mother, to hold her close with a fierceness that she hadn’t felt since childhood. But the moment passed, and she looked down at the trimmed handkerchief in her lap, twisting and pulling at the lace.

‘And I’ll come to visit, and Father will too.’ But at this, her mother’s voice had faded, as if knowing that this was unlikely. Yet by then it hardly mattered to her whether the surrounding faces were familiar or otherwise. People and places were merely momentary distractions.

What was going on inside her mind, the images of sand disappearing under the pull of the ocean, of trees gobbled up by flames, the bright flash and colour and bursts of sound of a travelling circus, all of this was more absorbing than what was going on around her.

A lifetime of obedience had set her in good stead. She did what she was told, mostly. Go there, eat this, swallow that. She learned early on that being agreeable meant that there were moments when she would be left alone, allowed to wander the garden perimeter, to run her fingers along the cast iron gates which were always locked tight. It was when she was less agreeable, when she spoke loudly and shouted and struck out, that things had started to fray and the certainty eroded from her life.

This was written to a prompt at my local writing group: a postcard of an old garden behind ornate gates.

Photo: old gate entrance to the Hydro Majestic, Medlow Bath