The May Queen

Today is April 31st.

She has lived a life full of firsts, so why not April 31st?

That was her thought as she woke.

By her bedside sits a faded monochrome photo of them in their younger years. Tamsin, with a crown of flowers on her head, in a plain white dress, posy in her hand. And Jory, whose reddened button nose and cheeky smile can just about be seen peeking out from the foliage he proudly dons. The Queen and her Jack in the Green.

As she gets out of bed, she slips on her patched pink dressing gown and felted slippers. The plug for the alarm clock lies unused by the leg of the mahogany table. She'd woken before it would've rung anyway.

She goes to the sitting room.

The early summer sun shines through the front window of their cottage, illuminating his taupe corduroy armchair. White fibres peek from between the holes of his cigarette burns. The smell of Virginian tobacco is faded yet present still.

Tamsin opens the windows to freshen the room, then, without really lifting her feet, makes her way to their small galley kitchen to make breakfast.

In a cast iron pan, she melts some lard and begins to make their breakfast. Eggs, bacon, fried bread. Simple. Satisfying.

"Since man was first created,

His works have been debated."

She can hear Jory singing his favourite song. The song he sang every year.

"We have celebrated

The coming of the Spring."

Yet, it isn't just one voice. No, the sound of the outside world slowly makes its way through the cottage, from the open window to the kitchen. She leaves the sizzling pan and shuffles to the sitting room.

"Hal-an-tow, jolly rumble O

We were up long before the day O"

As she enters the room, she can just about make out Morris dancers passing by the hedge in the front garden. The black tops of their hats remind her of her father's funeral.

"To welcome in the summer

To welcome in the Ma-"

She closes the window. Jory's hayfever could never take too much fresh air in the house. Strange, to be a gardener with hayfever.

She makes her way to the mantelpiece. To the wooden calendar Jory made for them when he retired. She turns over the blocks.

| 3 | 1 |

| April |

She can smell bacon burning from the kitchen. She never has been a great cook. It was a kindness that Jory always told her he preferred his bacon a bit crispy.

She sets out two plates and serves her breakfast for one. She leaves the rest in the oven, on low.

Keep it warm for when he's ready.

As she sits on her matching, unsinged Parker Knoll armchair to eat, a pile of unopened post sits on the side table. One envelope holds the Parish newsletter. Details of baptisms, funerals, and memorial masses. The usual goings on of any small village.

It's unusually sunny for April. But it is April.

Later, she'll turn the oven off, eat the leftovers, and place the second plate away, ready for tomorrow.

---

33 days since April began.

And from inside the cottage the village looks much more like April again. No bunting. No songs. Though the days seem to keep getting longer.

Today, Tamsin was woken by the ringing of the doorbell. She'll remind Jory to unplug it when he wakes. What an ungodly hour to have a priest ringing at your door.

Lying still, she waits patiently, then rises when she hears the garden gate close behind him.

As long as her standing order to the Church continues, he'll know she's okay. He'd been very meddlesome since the garden anyway. She preferred Father Blair. A bit too fond of the drink, but he always kept to himself. To his own business.

Entering the sitting room, she makes sure to turn over the blocks on her calendar.

| 3 | 6 |

| April |

---

The fridge is fairly empty 12 days on. No matter, growing up just after the war meant learning to love tinned food. Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pie made a fine dinner. A tin of Bigga Peas on the side. Just enough for two.

The sun almost sets before she remembers to turn the blocks over.

| 4 | 8 |

| April |

---

She didn't mean to come to the boot room. Not really. But as she turned over the blocks for the day, she got a splinter from the second digit. Jory would have to sand it down when he found time.

The sewing kit was kept in the boot room. There would be tweezers there. She could fix it. She didn't like the doctor anyway.

In the boot room she got angry at Jory. His garden trowel was lying by the back door, covered in dried and hardened soil. His boots were lying where she'd left them. On the stainless steel drying rack of the boot room sink. She had worked so hard to scrub them clean.

She found herself crying.

She closed the boot room behind her, and made her way to the sitting room. She sat down in his singed armchair. The divot of his body wrapped around hers. She sucked at her thumb till the splinter came free.

On the mantelpiece:

| 5 | 9 |

| April |

She fell asleep in his chair.

---

On day 24 since she'd closed it, she opened the front door. They had run out of milk.

For the first week she'd managed to make do with the glass bottles in the fridge. There was enough to make them both three cups of tea a day.

For the last while, she'd been using UHT. Not her favourite, but it reminded her of their hotel stay for their 40th wedding anniversary.

But now, it was all gone. She could put up with black tea, but not Jory. He needed milk. He needed sugar. So, she opened the door, and slipped the bottles out through the opening.

The next morning, she cracked the door again and grabbed the top-up bottles the milkman had delivered. She left his note on the step.

She placed them in the fridge after making the cups of tea, then sat again in his armchair.

| 6 | 3 |

| April |

---

The priest came calling again on the 74th of April. For him to call once in a month was rare. Twice was the height of rudeness.

By this point Tamsin had closed the blinds in every room facing the street. She had managed to take the batteries out of the doorbell. Good curtains make good neighbours. With enough persistence he would understand.

---

Tamsin was running out of April.

She was at the hob. She had one tin of beans left, but wasn't so fragile that she couldn't make her mother's pancakes. As she flipped them, she caught it. Out of the corner of her eye. An impossibility. Purple.

Foxgloves in April.

She left the kitchen towel on the handle of the pan, turned the hob off and made her way out, through the boot room, into the back garden she hadn't been in for over a year. The back door hung open behind her.

She shuffled through the overgrown grass, over to the unkempt flowerbed, and fell to her knees where he had. Jory's flowerbed.

One by one Tamsin, in her dressing gown and kitchen apron, pulled at the foxgloves. She tore them from the ground and piled them high. They were far too early. They couldn't come yet.

Her chest tightened as she went, but it didn't stop her. By the time she was finished, thirty stems lay stacked on top of each other.

And then, covered in the soil that he had tilled with great care, she lay, looking at the house she had left for the first time in forty-four days. As she breathed she saw it.

His shed.

He hadn't the time last year to paint it, and an overly warm summer followed by an uncharacteristically wet winter had left the wooden hut warped and worn.

She staggered to her feet and slowly made her way to its green flecked door. Inside, he had made them their calendar. Their calendar that now read April 95th.

She lifted her hand to the bolt, and slid it open. As she did the warped wood pushed the door open by itself. Light from the doorway fell upon his workbench, and there lay something he had left for her. Something unfinished.

On the table, a crown for his May Queen. Bent wires and dried May flowers. Like the one she wore at thirteen.

This is what he was doing when he fell in the green.

Tamsin placed his wreath on her head. She gently stepped out of the shed and shuffled back inside the house, leaving each door open behind her. Through the boot room, past the kitchen and the smell of her last tin of beans. Through the hallway, and by the room with their calendar that she had set that morning. The post lay, still unopened.

Out through the door. On to the step. On to the threshold.

As she continued down their front garden path, in her pink dressing gown, felted slippers, apron and crown, she was surrounded on each side by rows of foxgloves.

She stopped for a moment at the painted cast iron gate, before pushing down the lever and swinging it open. She stepped through.

Inside the calendar read:

| 9 | 5 |

| April |

But Tamsin was outside. And outside, it was June again.