To Make an End
Jackie Hales
At the top of the moor, the ripening corn whispered its secrets. A chorus of birdsong answered it from the hedgerows, while tortoise-shell butterflies hovered over the footpath, like fluttering escorts. A rabbit darted from the hedgerow, stopped, listened, scuttled back again, knowing she was coming, unseen foe. The grass, reaching to her elbows, bowed with respect in the breeze at her approach, but thistles blocked the way, a warning that free passage between fields where harvest mice hid was theirs to give, not hers to take, and the nettles that claimed the verges stood guard, ready to strike at trespass. Everything seemed to threaten her. A skylark shot out of nowhere, its warning cry alerting all to rise and circle like an aerial display team. Nature was as nature is, turning in its annual round. This world belonged to the wild creatures, woven between the furrows and the crops, among the poppies and the cow parsley. She did not yet belong here, where nothing was within her control, and yet everything comforted her with its ignorance of the chaos of human life.
In the distance, the clang of a tractor trailer beat its familiar rhythm along the road, and a cockerel greeted the afternoon instead of the morning. She stood for a while, drinking in the landscape panning out on either side, the sheep quietly munching in the valley, where the wooden signpost clung to its roots at a crossroads of narrow lanes and dry-stone walls, as it had for so many years. The old horse, standing statue-still at the entrance to the farm, looked at her suspiciously as she passed, unused as it was to seeing this stranger at this time of day.
Trudging on, clambering over the stile so many had climbed before, she moved among the rocks, monsters formed by wind and rain, like creatures from the ancient myths. Medusa could have been here, where a giant fish’s face to the left and a dinosaur tooth to the right had always been the food of fantastic stories for the children. Solid and permanent, nothing changed here.
But everything was changing. The cards bore witness on the mantlepiece, full of good wishes and telling her she would be missed, but at the end she had slid away quietly, avoiding the inevitable emotion of goodbyes, slipping under the radar of those she could avoid by not being on site at the end. Hammering through her head was TS Eliot, with his “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper.” She wanted a whimper for the end of the world as she’d known it for so many years. Somehow, the excited promise of all that time to do as she pleased had evaporated, morphed into the spectre of isolation. Some had said they didn’t know how they ever had time to go to work, but others quietly confessed “Retirement’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” For her, there would be no grandchildren to care for, and the days of worrying about ageing parents were over. The promise of leisure was weighted in the balance with the knowledge that she was becoming one of the “elderly,” and her clock was ticking too fast. Now was the time for decision, before the days slipped past as easily as the changing seasons, stretching out without purpose…
The air was still and quiet, holding the threat of rain not far away. She saw the dark clouds gathering over the hills. She quickened her pace, trying to stay ahead of them, but the splattering caught up with her, the grey moving in, while the blue sky laughed at it on the other side of the lane. She sped up, passing the next field as if she were being chased. Then she saw it. In all its magnificence, its ends rooted in the soil, a whole rainbow emerged like a choir singing, its complete arc rising high above the crops. She watched, enthralled. A shadow rainbow crept into view behind it, as if some magical spell had descended from the rocks and been cast over the earth. Her mind flipped to DH Lawrence’s rainbow, symbol of hope for the women looking out on the world. There was still a future. She would meet it on her own terms.
She didn’t care that she was wet, drips falling from her hood to her nose, her trousers stuck to her legs. She had found the end of the rainbow and stood under its arc. Now was the time for a new beginning. She remembered Eliot again: “to make an end is to make a beginning.” Every drip was worth it.
Jackie Hales
Retired English teacher, Jackie, has had two novels published by Between the Lines Publishing - Shadows of Time (2022) and Nana Boo (2024). A third has been accepted for publication. She and her sister independently published a joint memoir, Remnants of War, in 2021. Her contribution to Poetry Archive Now 2020 is on YouTube, and she has had poetry and prose published in anthologies over the years, from “Bricks” in her student days to “Words on the Wire” in 2023. Since 2020, she has had CNF, flash fiction, micro-fiction and poetry published online, e.g. by Roi Faineant, Cranked Anvil and Flash Fiction North. In 2022, Jackie relocated from Yorkshire to Somerset, where she continues being inspired by the great outdoors, writes a blog, and chairs a local writing group.