My mother walked carefully across the grass. What are you doing, Jacqueline, she said as she passed me. Reading, Mom, just reading, I said. Careful the sun, she said, don’t burn, Jacqueline.

I watched her walk in her careful way up the red stone stairs, into the house. I watched her pale stockinged legs. I wondered if I’d have to wear stockings like that one day.

I’ve never worn stockings.

The Black man looked across the grass at me, then he walked, a slow walk, wiping his hands on his shorts, around the back, I heard the creak of the back gate, the rusted metal, he must’ve gone into our yard, the grey yard where Maggie’s room was, near the washing lines.

Perhaps Maggie made him tea, in one of her dark tin mugs. Perhaps she gave him a slab of white bread and her jam, that she’d spoon from its tin, its large tin. Smooth Apricot Jam, it said on the outside. A deep orange.

Perhaps the man sat on her wooden chair, under the eave, away from the sun, so hot, then. I imagine they spoke a little. About the madam and what the madam wants, ah, that madam. A click of the man’s tongue. And then a conversation in their language about something else, about what was going on these days, at the Location. Maggie wouldn’t have been there for a while. The Location: that place I’d seen from my father’s car, sprawling, tin glinting a little in the flat sun. Along the long, straight road. Nothing, nothing else, there.

But the garden, the rose garden, was made. My mother spent so many hours with her roses, I remember her standing, her low heels as she walked on the grass, the prickly grass, and the small gardening gloves she put on, then.

I paid little attention to the roses, but I have an idea there were different kinds, different strains. I’d see her supervising, again, that Black man, as he brought boxes filled with pots, to plant. I’d see her arguing with him as they stood, a click of his tongue, again. Like this, she’d say. Like this. And she’d point. And they’d carry on: a strange partnership, surely.

There were peach-coloured roses, and pale pink ones, many were pale, pale blooms turned this way, or that, like small, frail people.

Under the sun, my mother’s roses flourished. How did they flourish, in that dry soil, under that bright, unwavering sun? I thought of their thorns, a shape unmistakable: small, sharp talons.

My mother never picked the roses, or brought them into our house. She didn’t arrange them in a vase or anything like that. Here I see roses everywhere, in flower shops, red roses, a dozen at a time, sometimes they’re tightly budded, and sometimes open and luxuriant. And white roses, even white roses. I’ve been in people’s homes with crystal vases filled, filled with roses, so many roses. I don’t like them.

Once here Stephen and his wife Marie arrived at our apartment, an occasion I don’t remember, but it was winter, and snow, snowflakes on Stephen’s dark coat, he shaking them off, and the stamping of feet at the door, on the mat, laughing. Boots off, and then Stephen: what weather! More exclamations and then Marie, her cheek cool, chilled from outside, I remember kissing her, and she was bearing flowers: a dozen white roses. The flowers were swathed in their tissue paper, and I took them, they had almost no weight, just that paper, rustling, or breathing, I opened them, and their scent, their white scent, and their pallor, came at once at me, and I felt ill and had to give them to Howard. And then Marie said, come, let’s find a vase, but I pretended to be fiddling with something else while Marie went into the kitchen, cupboards opening and closing, and then she emerged with a glass vase, and more fussing in the kitchen, cutting, she had found a scissors.