A Rose in PB

(Two of my pupils have done well in a national writing competition - feels even better than personal writing success. And here's someone new in Port Brokeferry... though she has been here before.)

FOR THE GOOD OF ROSE

The doctor said she should. It would do her good, he told her. It would be a tonic. A lift to her spirits. So Rose rented a one-bedroom cottage on the front, windows looking out to sea, the gate twisted on its hinges, and seashells on the mantelpiece above the fire. She paid three months in advance, and bought a ticket to the station. She booked a car to pick her up from the train and take her to Port Brokeferry.

Rose’s sister came to see her off. Carrie stood on the platform. Looking old, Rose thought. Waving till Rose could see her no more. Then Rose closed the window, sat back in her chair and wondered what she’d done, her mind racing ahead of where she was, or running back to where she’d been. It was something the same in her head.

She’d visited Port Brokeferry as a child. Years and years past. With her mother and sister, and an uncle who’d shared her mother’s bed. Rose had a memory of that time, and photographs of two girls playing in the sea and laughing, or building fantastical castles in the sand, or eating ice-cream cones that needed two hands to hold. Rose and Carrie, their arms about their mother, all black-and-white smiles and eyes squinting against the sun. There were no pictures of the uncle; Rose does not remember exactly when he was air-brushed out of their lives.

The rocking of the train and the clacking of the wheels on the tracks and the stuffiness of the carriage, soon had Rose dosing. She dreamed of how it would be. The boats filling the harbour, jostling for position, and the rattling of the cables and the folded sails, the wind rolling in off the sea and every breath with the smell of fish in it, and the Port Brokeferry air hung with the screaming and screaming of gulls. At night, ‘The Ship’ all lit up like the sun had slipped inside, and the smell of whisky and beer and tobacco smoke leaking out onto the street. And music, too, the sawing of fiddles, and the nasal gasp and sigh of the accordion, and men and women singing.

‘It’ll be good for you,’ Carrie had urged. Rose nodded, hearing her sister’s voice in her sleep. ‘And I can visit some weekends. It’s just what you need. Maybe you’ll find the inspiration to write again.’

‘Maybe,’ said Rose out loud, and the other lady in her carriage heard what she said.

Rose thought she could smell the sea as she stepped down from the train. A man with a cardboard sign and her name written in marker pen was there to meet her. He took her case and said that he hoped she’d had a pleasant journey. She told him she had and that she’d slept.

The Port Brokeferry front was not as she remembered it. Nor was the harbour or the yellow sand. Not the sea or the gulls. It was all very much quieter, Rose thought. Maybe that was a good thing. She wasn't sure.