It was only ever a rainbow. It wasn’t even a particularly beautiful rainbow and certainly not a lovely setting to see it in. On the way to a hospital appointment driving down the A21 towards Bromley in late winter, with suburbia spread out below a grey sky and just the promise of blossom on the roadside trees. But we still looked at it, me and my friend Louise, and said it was a good sign.
It put me in mind of other rainbows. Of the ones on Dartmoor the day we went to scatter my mother’s ashes. To reach her favourite spot we would drive to the end of a lane and stop at a five bar gate. Over the gate and up the side of the tor, following the path to the Water Authority land. Quick, over the gate, keep a low profile as you pass the “keep out, water authority” signpost. You don’t want to get spotted and have to go squelch squerch through the bog on the other side of the dry stone wall. Hop over the gate at the other end, follow the rocky footpath a half mile to the rowan tree – you know you’re nearly there when you see it – and down to the river with the best swimming pool on Dartmoor. Sun captured in the narrow valley and a spot to visit only on the best of the best of summer days; shrieking from shock of the cold of diving into the black moorland river, skin tingling as you climb out.
It was December when we took her ashes. Two hunting dogs, their owners somewhere unseen, kept us company as we walked. The rowan was bare and its beacon of late summer bright orange berries long gone. As we walked down to the river the rain that threatened to engulf us from the other side of the valley came to a stop and the sun came out at our backs. Then there they were – two rainbows that for all the world looked as though they ended in the stream and at the very spot where we would scatter her ashes, bury our box of letters and tokens before saying our last goodbyes.
It was tempting to think she’d sent the rainbow. Proof for a moment that I was right to give myself a stern talking to before I set out. That being called in ahead of my official appointment ten days hence meant nothing more than the secretary had said: my consultant was off on a course and could fit me in earlier than expected. It wasn't, of course, and my consultant delivered the news quickly and concisely. "It's bad news. You have cancer. I'm so sorry," was all she said.
So in the end it was only ever a rainbow. A scattering of light through raindrops, as random as the mutation in my genes now scattering the order of my life.
