Books Burn Badly

The White Roses

THE WILD, WHITE roses on the road from Castro to Elviña are small and seem to be putting all their effort not into growth, but into their fragrance. You can miss them, hidden, shy as they are against a backdrop of myrtle, but then they lift their heads and fill the place. Polka says the most envied bees visit those rosebushes.

‘Some bees go in front to look for the flower and then keep quiet about it back in the hive.’

‘That means they’re selfish, not envied.’

‘No. When you and Olinda stop looking for wild roses, there won’t be any.’

In the bundle of clothes and the basket, she’d put white roses, everlastings, fennel, marjoram, rosemary, aromatic herbs for the house of the painter. The knowledge she’d inherited from Olinda. And on her return, Neves, the maid, would hide fashion magazines she liked to read sitting on the toilet.