The Daisy Grave

 

Tom was busy on his father’s farm, repairing a stone wall, when a young lady on a horse rode by.

“That is very skillful work you are doing”, she said, “The way you make the stones fit so perfectly together.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice, Madam,” he said.

“Don’t call me that”, she said. “My name’s Emma. What’s yours?”

“Tom. Don’t I know you? Aren’t you Squire Ryland’s daughter?”

“That’s right, Tom”, she said, “I’m his only daughter, and I’m out riding today because I get so bored having nobody of my own age to talk to.”

“You’re a very good rider”, Tom said. “I’ve seen you out before, galloping across the fields.”

“Watch me”, she said, and she stuck her heels into the flanks of her mare and sent her charging off in a wide circle. When they came back to the wall Tom was working on, the horse and rider jumped over as high as if they were in a race at Cheltenham, then galloped round in another huge circle until they jumped back over the wall and came back to where Tom was waiting.

Emma dismounted and stood next to Tom.

“I’d really like it if we became friends”, she said.

“I’d like that too,” said Tom.

Things progressed from there as the weeks passed, and Tom and Emma fell deeply in love with each other.

“I wish we could get married”, Tom said one day, “but there is no way I could afford to support a wife. And besides, I don’t think your father would approve of me as a son-in-law.”

“That’s true enough”, said Emma, “But I love you and want to be your wife. And don’t worry about money – I have an income of my own that will be plenty for both of us.”

So they ran away from home and were married in secret, taking a small cottage in another county where nobody knew them. Tom got jobs with local farmers, his skill as a wall-builder ensuring that he was never short of work.

Emma stabled her horse with one of those farmers and enjoyed riding out every day. She had also taken much of her extensive book collection to the cottage and enjoyed reading them in the evenings. Tom’s education had not been as complete as hers, but he could read and write, and he was curious about the contents of Emma’s books. A number of them were collections of poems, which she sometimes read aloud to him. He wondered if he could compose a poem himself, and was surprised to find that he could indeed do so. Just as he enjoyed fitting stones together in the right places to form a bond, he also found that putting words in the right places was strangely satisfying, but something else was bothering him.

“One thing I have never done”, Tom said to Emma one day, “is buy you flowers. I never had the money to do so before, but now that I have a decent income from my wall-building, I want to fill the cottage with beautiful blooms that will always fill you with delight. What are your favourites? Dahlias? Chrysanthemums? Red roses?”

“Daisies”, she said.

“Daisies?”

“That’s right. Just daisies – exactly like the ones that were growing at the base of the wall on the first day I met you. I have always loved daisies, just as I will always love you.”

It was not very practical to gather daisies and decorate the cottage with them, so Tom made sure that the lawn in their small garden always had plenty of daisies growing there. He would remove any dandelions or other wildflowers that tried to gain a footing in the grass, but the daisies were always left well alone.

The time came when they decided they wanted to start a family, but that was also the time when Emma started to complain about feeling pains in the lower part of her body. These became steadily worse, so she went to the doctor’s surgery and came back with very bad news.

“The doctor says I must have an operation”, she said to Tom. “I’m sorry, but that means I can never have a baby”.

Tom was deeply disappointed by this news, but it did not mean that he loved Emma any the less.

“At least we will always have each other”, he said, “And that’s the most important thing.”

But that was not how things turned out. Emma started to get pains in other parts of her body, and was soon very ill indeed and confined to her bed. Tom did what he could he make her life as easy as possible, and that included reading poems to her just as she had done to him in the past. He propped her up in bed at these times, so that she could look out of the window and see the daisies on the lawn below.

The day came when it was clear that Emma would not recover, and she talked to him about what would happen when she died, which she knew would happen before long.

“I want daisies on my grave”, she said. “Can you manage to do that?”

So that is what happened. When she was buried in the churchyard, Tom cut some sods from their lawn and laid them on top of the earth mound, thus ensuring that her grave would always be covered in daisies.

Tom was distraught at Emma’s death, and turned to poetry as his way of coping with what had happened. He found he was inspired to write poem after poem, many of them about Emma and the life they had had together. He had no thoughts about anyone reading them apart from himself, but when a cousin of Emma paid him a visit a few months after she died, she found one of the poems and read it.

“This is a wonderful poem”, she told Tom. “Do you mind if I take it home with me when I leave?”

That is what she did. She showed it to her husband, who was a magazine editor, and he printed it in his next edition. The poem was widely admired by his readers, who demanded that he publish more poems by this new writer.

That was the start of Tom’s new career as a poet, which went from strength to strength. Every poem he wrote was published and appreciated, and he was soon able to have a collection of his poems published, the book being a roaring success. Many more would follow.

One of the poems that made a particularly strong impression was one in which he wrote about Emma’s love of daisies and how he fervently wished, when his time came, to be buried in the same grave as Emma, over which a carpet of daisies continued to grow and to bloom every summer.

Tom survived Emma by many years. His abiding love for her meant that he never thought about marrying anyone else – he was quite content to live on his memories and to continue to write his poems.

When his time did eventually come, though, his fame as a poet was so celebrated that there was talk of him being given a funeral in a big cathedral with a huge monument raised over his grave. However, the local people remembered his wish, which he had expressed many times, to be laid to rest with Emma in the daisy grave.

This was granted, but people in authority made it clear that such an important literary figure could not be remembered as humbly as that. They insisted that the grave be encased in a stone tomb with a suitable inscription carved on it, so that was what was done.

The tomb is there to this day. Tom’s name is prominently displayed, but there is no mention of Emma. And no daisies can grow through the grey stone.

© John Welford