Lavender

There was a lavender bush near the front gate. The taxi had arrived and, with his kit-bag on his shoulder, he had walked slowly, reluctantly perhaps, from the front door to the gate; his mother following behind, gradually realising that this might be the last time on which she might see the young khaki-clad figure ahead of her.

He turned, as the gate closed behind him, muttered something about loving her and promising to write and then clambered clumsily with his kit-bag into the taxi and was driven off.

Now years later, he was remembering that day and how, unlike many of his mates he had returned home safely after the war had ended, to spend just long enough to marry his high school sweetheart and father his mother’s first grandson before migrating to settle in Australia.

He had never seen his mother again and now, after her death, he had received a parcel of her belongings from relatives in England and was idly looking through a small book containing all the photographs he had sent her from time to time as the children had grown. A small book with ‘Grandma’s Brag Book’ in neat gold lettering on the cover and with every second or third page interleaved with a sprig of dried lavender.