Dancers in Life.

A chance encounter on a ‘Park n Ride,’ led to this story.

DANCERS IN LIFE.
They intrigued me from the moment they boarded the ‘ Park’n’Ride’ bus. It was late afternoon and the evening rush hour was just starting. The bus was crowded with shoppers leaving the city for the out of town car park.. With all the shopping bags there was very little room between the seats and the two woman smiled apologetically at me as they took their seats facing me. The bags they were carrying indicated that they had been shopping at the better end of town.
The eldest, whose name I later overheard as being Gwen, appeared to be in her middle thirties with short cropped auburn hair, brown eyes, and a good complexion with very little make up. Her companion was much younger, in her early twenties with straight black hair cut and waved in at the neck, and hazel eyes emphasised and enlarged by the dark horn rimmed spectacles she was wearing. By listening carefully to their conversation, ( well what else was I, as a single traveller without any reading matter, to do?) I learned that her name was Clare. She was by far the most vivacious of the two, laughing readily and , for the most part, taking the lead in their conversation.
Gwen was more reflective and, in keeping with her age, more adult in her attitude. While Clare talked almost continually as if trying to cram a weeks conversation into a thirty minute bus ride, Gwen seemed given to moments of introspection during which she would simply stare out of the window beside her at the darkening streets and buildings as they flashed past us. It had begun to rain and I sensed that in some way this suited her current mood.
I wondered what their true relationship was? Their age difference, only a decade or so at the most, ruled out them being mother and daughter. They could have been sisters but somehow I didn’t think so. At one point Clare, without even breaking the flow of her chatter, took off her glasses to give them a polish with a white handkerchief, and I realised there were no sisterly similarities in their features. I therefore assumed that they were simply friends sharing an afternoons shopping trip into town.
Nonetheless there was something intriguing in their relationship, a closeness and warmth that seemed to go beyond simple friendship. It was evident in the way they looked at each other, (when Gwen wasn’t staring forlornly out of the window,) and in the way they seemed to need only the slightest hint, odd word, or half sentence to understand each others meaning entirely. In that way, I realised, they were very similar to Sandra and myself.
I too glanced often out of the window, and studied my hands and shoes far more closely than I have ever done before in order to disguise the fact that, as the journey went on, I was listening ever more closely to what they were saying.
They had recently been to the theatre together. A rather controversial play it appeared which Clare had enjoyed, but Gwen had found a little obtuse and difficult to understand. I formed the opinion that she didn’t really want to understand it!
“But the whole point is,” Clare emphasised, “ That people do live their lives in separate compartments don’t they? Most of us don’t make any real contact with each others lives at all do we?. We experience other peoples lives as if they’re images on a television screen, or even actors on a stage. I felt that was what the writer was saying.”
“I didn’t get the feeling he was talking to me at all,” Gwen protested quietly. It was at this point that Clare began polishing her glasses.
“I don’t mean you and me, but most other people. Society is breaking down into smaller and smaller units. At one time people had all manner of relatives and friends they could relate to, but now people live in little units that never connect. Look how many people die alone and sometimes its days before even their closest neighbours know that they’ve gone. It’s very sad really and that was the point of the play…well at least I think that‘s what I thought was the point.”
She suddenly laughed. “ I suppose it was really a little confusing. The character made up to look like a vampire who kept prancing about in the auditorium didn’t really help did he?”
Gwen nodded and also smiled at the recollection. “No he didn’t, well not for me anyway. I suppose it was what they call ‘experimental theatre’, but at least you enjoyed it didn‘t you?”
“ Yes I did really. I mean sometimes it pays to look at things in a different way. It’s like, …well it’s like when you move a picture from one room into another, or even onto a different wall so that the light strikes it in a different way. You see things in it you hadn’t noticed before. See it with different eyes really.”
Gwen murmured “ I suppose you do…. if you are able to move it into a new room that is. John doesn‘t like me moving anything without asking him first! Mind you he never asks me why I want to move it. Just expects me to ask his permission first.”
Her words seemed to strike a different chord between them, perhaps even a painful one. Clare’s smile, which I found an attractive one, disappeared. She replaced her glasses and, reaching across her bags, took hold of her friends hand.
“You’ll probably enjoy the weekend once you get there,” she said, but Gwen glanced out of the window, and shook her head. The traffic in this part of town was so heavy the bus was moving almost at a crawl.
“ I don’t think so. It will be all John’s friends from work, and for the most part I never really understand anything they’re talking about. It’s not that I’m stupid or anything, ….I’m just not interested.”
“Will none of their wives be there that you can talk to?”
“ A few but I’ve nothing in common with any of them either. For the most part they talk about their children, and I’ve none I can talk about. Usually I just let the whole weekend wash over me, read a book, and think about something else.”
Clare’s response was barely more than a whisper. “Think about me then.”
If I hadn’t been watching them at that point I would have missed what happened next, and then who knows what direction my own life might have taken!
Clare suddenly giggled, leaned across the space between them, and rested her head onto her friends shoulder. Gwen turned towards her and brushed a kiss onto her forehead. Not a passionate kiss, but the briefest display of something more than friendship; and I realised with a shock the true nature of their relationship.
And I felt again the soft pressure of Sandra’s lips on mine.
*********************************************
We had been friends since we were at school together. Perhaps an unusual friendship in some ways because we were so dissimilar in character. Sandra was always the go ahead one, whereas I tended to hold back and take the second place. I often thought that any friends I had were only my friends because that gave them access to her. I couldn’t blame them of course because she was very attractive. People, especially men, just liked being around her., although sometimes she treated them with appalling indifference. From our childhood she had been the one who excelled at sports, and anything on the practical side of things, whereas I was always happier with a book, or something academic.
At university our paths did diverge slightly, although we still remained close friends. She took Business Studies while I took English, and afterwards, when she started to climb the corporate ladder, I went into teaching. We had this rather silly undeclared race between us; would she make it into a boardroom before I made it into a headship?
It was silly because there was never going to be any other winner but her!
“Don’t you want to reach the top?” she had asked me only a few months earlier when I told her I had no intention of even applying for a vacant head of department position.
“No.” I replied quite simply and quite happily. She had shaken her head and looked at me as if I was beyond any normal persons reasoning or understanding.
“Is it that you don’t think you’re qualified enough? Because, if so, that’s absolute poppycock. I don’t know anyone better qualified than you to run an English department, or any other department, or school, for that matter. You’ve twice as many letters after your name as I have, and I’ve seen you with the kids. They almost kiss the ground you walk on; even the most difficult ones. You say yourself you’re able to relate to them when nobody else can reach them. What is the matter with you? Do you always want to be second best?”
“Well thank you for that. Don’t worry about hurting my feelings will you?” I tried to continue smiling but it had actually hurt. Realising this she softened her approach and tried another tack.
“Is it the responsibility you’re afraid of? Is that it?”
It had been my turn to shake my head. “It’s none of those things, and I’m certainly not afraid of responsibility either.”
“Well what is it then? I don’t understand.”
“It’s that I’m perfectly happy as I am. I’m not like you always looking for the next mountain to climb, the next great prize to be won and put into my trophy cabinet. I’m perfectly happy paddling along the river bed picking up a few shells here and there.”
“ May I remind you,” she had stated in her best ’I’m saying this for your own good’ voice, “ That you’ve just got yourself engaged. When you’re married that means you have responsibilities for somebody else’s happiness besides your own and you’ll need more than a few shells from the river bed to meet those and make the marriage work!”
Her reference to my recent engagement brought the conversation to an abrupt end. It was typical of Sandra to be so forthright, but I was left wondering whether the responsibility for making a marriage work really was frightening me?.
********************************************
Gwen began rooting into one of the shopping bags on her lap. It’s label indicated one of the most expensive fancy good shops in town. Clare was watching her with an expectant expression on her face.
“Have you lost something?” she asked.
“ No… well I hope not anyway! It’s something I meant to give you when I got back from this weekend buried away with John, and his appalling business friends, in deepest Gloucestershire.”
“You don’t have to buy me a present,” Clare protested, “ You’ll only be away for the weekend. Just try to enjoy it and come back to me afterwards.”
“ I know I don’t have to buy you anything but in this case I wanted too. I know it’s only a few days until I will see you again but I don’t expect I’ll be allowed any opportunity to go off by myself and buy you anything over the weekend and… Aha, here it is..”
She looked up. “ I want to give it you now and know that you are enjoying it while I’m away.”
She passed Clare a small bundle wrapped in fine white tissue paper. For a moment Clare stared at it nonplussed, and then her eyes slowly filled with tears.
She whispered, “ It isn’t what I think it is…is it?”
I couldn’t look away at that moment, but Gwen seemed to notice, for the first time, that I was watching them. She eyed me warily as if questioning my right to intrude, but when I smiled, she turned her head away to look out of the bus again.
“ Oh Gwen, you shouldn’t have.” Clare was exclaiming.
By now the tissue packaging had been removed to reveal a small porcelain figurine, white, and no more than three or four inches tall on a flat delicately thin base. It depicted two young female dancers, one of them kneeling on the floor as though weary and exhausted, the other bending over in a caring, solicitous pose. The features, even on so small a piece, were so beautifully defined that you immediately felt an empathy for both of them.
I couldn’t help but smile even more, and Gwen glancing back at me again, took my reaction as a sign of approval. She immediately dismissed me from her mind, and returned her attention to Clare.
“I saw you looking at it when we first went into the shop” she explained. “ I realised how much you like it…”
“It’s absolutely beautiful… I just love it. But when did you buy it?”
“ When you went in next door looking for a toilet. I nipped back in and bought it. I was dreading you would come looking for me before I could have it wrapped and get it into my bag.”
“There was a queue a mile long for the ladies… but Gwen.. the price!”
“You’re worth it, every penny of it, and you did like it didn’t you?”
“Oh God yes, of course I did. I do… even more now. Thank you so much” And without embarrassment she leaned across and pressed a kiss of her own onto Gwen’s cheek. And I recalled how Sandra’s supportive kiss onto my cheek had suddenly turned into a passionate kiss onto my lips!
*****************************************
“I’ve broken off the engagement,” I had said. “ I’ve realised it isn’t the right thing for me, for us, and I can’t go through with it.”
Sandra, because she had no husband to call on, had asked me along to make up the numbers at a dinner party she had arranged at her house for some important clients. Afterwards we were cleaning up in the kitchen and she asked me whether something was wrong.
“You’ve been really quiet all evening” she observed, “Even quiet by your standards.”
So I told her about breaking off the engagement. She was silent for a long minute, her head bowed, and concentrating on some point among the pots and pans in the sink as if they were a management problem that had suddenly landed on her desk with a memo from above telling her to solve it.
“Well say something for heavens sake,” I muttered.
“I’m wondering if you breaking it off has anything to do with me, with what I said to you the other week about marriage bringing its own responsibilities?”
I tried to laugh but it came out all wrong, like a pained cough. “ Is that what you were trying to say? I thought you were trying to make me feel inadequate.”
She looked across at me her eyes challenging me.
“Don‘t duck the issue… was it what I said?”
“No it wasn’t what you said. Well not completely anyway. Perhaps a little… Oh for heavens sake I don’t know do I? I never know how much what you say affects what I do. Sometimes I just wish you wouldn’t say anything at all. Just keep your mouth shut, let me decide for myself ….and get on with it.”
I picked up the nearest tea towel and started drying the pots. That had always been my function in our friendship. Sandra washed and polished, and I trailed along behind her drying up!
After another awkward silence she said, “ Well for what it’s worth I think you were right to break it off. From the beginning I never thought it would work, and I didn’t want to be around and watch you suffering when it all went pear shaped.”
I tried to lighten the mood a little. “So at least I…we, have your approval then?” And it worked because she laughed, and nodded.
“What was it like, breaking it off I mean?” she asked.
I told her as much as I felt I could tell her, but then thought I had probably told her more than she had any right to know. That was another long standing feature of our friendship.
“ Finally we both agreed it was for the best” I ended. Pots and pans were cleaned, dried, and stored into their rightful cupboards. Everything was neat and tidy, and in it’s proper place. So why the hell, I wondered later, couldn’t it have stayed that way?
At first I assumed it was because she recognised that the tone of regret in my voice indicated my uncertainty and unhappiness. She came to me, put her hands onto my shoulders and, looked me straight in the eye.
“ The idea that marriage is first of all a social responsibility, went out at the end of the nineteenth century. This is the twenty first century. Our first responsibility now is to ourselves, and if it was the wrong thing for you to go and get married, then you were right to break it off before either you, and in this case somebody else, got hurt.”
“So why,” I asked, “Is it hurting me so much now?”
Her arms went around my shoulders and she gave me a hug and then kissed me on the cheek. It wasn’t the first time we had physically expressed our affection for each other, but this time it was different. Perhaps she sensed how much I needed something more than mere words, but suddenly her lips had moved and she was kissing my lips.
The kiss was a passionate one, no longer the sort of kiss friends would exchange. I was stunned; for a long time unable to move, respond even, step back, or do anything. Least of all break it off. Finally it was she who took the step backwards staring at me with an expression I had never seen in her eyes before. Confused, angry perhaps, but most of all, uncharacteristically for the friend I thought I knew so well, afraid.
“Oh gawd,” she gasped turning away as if she could no longer trust herself to look at me. “ Now I’ve done it haven’t I? I’ve let you know how I feel haven‘t I, what I really want? Gawd but I never meant it to happen like that. Not when you’re on a rebound!”
“Sandra,” I asked, trying to take in what had just happened, “Why?”
“ What do you mean, …why? Why the hell do you think? Why not for gods sake… Oh no, no…please forget I said that. In fact… just forget it happened at all.”
She opened the fridge door, not because she needed anything from the fridge but because she needed to do something. Anything as long as it involved physical activity. In a corner Sandra always needed to act, do something, whereas I….
“I can’t just forget it” I gasped then, feeling totally at sea and challenged beyond my resources, I turned and went into the living room.
Her voice followed me as she slammed the fridge door shut. “Don’t just walk away from me like that.” But the act of moving away from her impelled me to keep moving. Perhaps, just once in my life, movement might lead to a solution of some sort.
“I can’t handle this,” I managed to mutter and, collecting my coat from the hallway, I left the house by the front door and walked to my car on her driveway. Getting into it I looked back.
She was standing at the open door looking alone and frightened. Vulnerability was not an aspect of her character I had ever seen before. As I got into the driving seat her voice, low and desperate, still followed after me.
“Rachel, please! Don’t go off like this… stay and talk to me.”
*******************************
“ Where will you put it?” Gwen asked. “ In your living room among all your other ornaments?” Her tone seemed to indicate some desperation as if she needed her friends reassurance. Clare was still holding up the figurine studying it, and turning it around so that the light within the bus met it at different angles.
“Oh heavens no, it’s too beautiful to be put with anything ordinary. Just look at the way it changes when you turn it around. From the front the taller figure seems to have appeared from nowhere, almost by chance, to help the one kneeling on the floor; but then, when you look at it from the back, the initiative is clearly the other way around. It’s the one kneeling who is holding on to her companions hand, as if stopping her from leaving. It‘s just so very, very sad, but in such a beautiful way.”
“So where will you put it then?” Gwen persisted.
“Beside my bed of course, then every morning when I wake up, you will be the first person I think about.”
She began to carefully rewrap it into the tissue paper and place it into one of the bags on her lap. “ I just wish I could buy you something as beautiful that you could place beside your bed so it would remind you of me.”
Gwen smiled ruefully, “It’s probably as well you can’t. I’m not a very convincing liar, and how would I explain to John where it came from? We so still share the same bed you know.”
They sat in silence for a while, holding hands and, to my eyes, sharing their own private thoughts. When they broke the silence, they seemed to confirm this. It was as if they had simultaneously decided to change the subject.
“ When are you?…” Clare began, while Gwen, for her part began
“ We’ll have …..”
Clare laughed and Gwen continued as if them both thinking the same thought was something she took for granted.
“ … to leave early tomorrow morning. John hates having to rush, and always wants to arrive long before the first working session begins. I can’t see the point myself. We can’t access the rooms until after ten o’clock, and the first session doesn’t even start until eleven.”
She pulled a face. “ It’s what they call the ’brain storming module.’”
Clare pulled a face but laughed again. “ Sounds almost painful.”
Gwen’s frown became almost rueful. “ Not half so painful as sitting in my room watching Saturday morning television, and waiting for lunch at one o’clock!”
“ Oh my poor Gwen. Look, I’ll be at home all tomorrow. I’ll phone you on your mobile between eleven and one, and we can have a good chat.”
Gwen’s features brightened up at that point. “ Oh yes, that would be lovely. I’ll probably be in need of some decent human contact by then!”
I’d considered telephoning Sandra any number of times since that night of the dinner party. Sooner or later I knew I would have to. A lifetimes friendship could not be allowed to end like that. Once or twice I’d even got myself to the point of starting to dial her mobile number, but at the last second I’d ducked the issue, and switched off. The problem was that, like Gwen, I was a useless liar. Especially if the person I was lying to was myself. Furthermore I knew that in making the call I would have to face the truth, and Sandra was right. I was afraid.
Clare continued trying to cheer Gwen up. “ And then, next Tuesday afternoon we have the Mozart recital to attend. I’m really looking forward to that.”
“ Yes,” Gwen agreed, “It should be wonderful, but would you mind if I came over to your place in the morning and we could have some lunch together before we go to the recital. John still intends going off on this promotion trip to Brussels. He’ll expect me to be at home that evening to take his call, but if I thought we would spend the whole day together it would make this weekend a little more bearable.”
I thought both Clare’s look and response were unambiguous. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t”
Gwen however had again noticed me listening to their conversation. To forestall any suggestion that I should mind my own business, I leaned towards Clare, and explained that I couldn’t help but notice and admire the figurine she had been holding.
She smiled, accepting the compliment at its face value. If she did realise I had been listening in she, equally, was unconcerned.
“ I could never have afforded to buy it for myself“ she explained.. “It’s a present from a friend.”
At that point the bus turned into the shelter beside the car park, and everyone prepared to leave.
“Well it’s very beautiful” I said.
Without embarrassment she looked at Gwen and said, “ But nowhere near as beautiful as the friend who gave it to me.”
With that they began to gather their bags, and move off the bus. I remained where I was for a moment stunned by the feeling and honesty in her words, and by the warmth in her voice. No wonder Gwen almost glowed as she too stood up, and struggled off the bus with her own bags and parcels.
‘Go for it,’ I thought, ‘ Happiness doesn’t knock twice.’
But as I followed them off the bus, and into the car park, that nagging voice that assails us all sometimes whispered, ‘ physician heal thyself!’
By the time I got into my car I was already trying to extract my mobile from my handbag. I wondered why we women can never immediately locate, in our handbags, what we are looking for?
By the time I had retrieved my mobile from underneath the other detritus, Gwen and Clare had reached their cars, parked only a few bays apart, and had each stowed their shopping bags into their respective boots.
I dialled the number automatically, then waited anxiously while it connected.
Gwen crossed over to Clare’s car to say goodbye. I could see and almost feel the tension between them now the moment of parting had arrived. Or was it my nerves waiting for the ringing tone to stop?
They were illuminated by one of the car parks halogen lamps. Like two dancers in a spotlight they came together in a single synchronised movement.
I thought, ‘If it switches to the message minder, I’ll simply hang up and hope she returns my call.”
Without any apparent embarrassment, and ignoring the rain that was still falling, Gwen and Clare embraced and kissed. Envy of their happiness overwhelmed me and I thought how lucky they were to share such a bond, such a level of understanding, and such a commitment. Then I realised it had nothing to do with luck; it was their choice in life!
The ringing tone stopped.
“Oh Rachel,” Sandra’s voice exclaimed into my ear, “ Oh thank god you’ve rung. Hold on a minute, I’m in a meeting but…”
I heard the sound of a chair being moved, heard her apologise to somebody for moving away, and then the sound of a door being closed. When she spoke again her voice was soft and close into my ear as if she was whispering into the phone.
“ I’ve been so worried about you, about us…”
“ I’m sorry I haven’t rung you earlier,” I said.
“ No, no Rachel it isn’t for you to be sorry, not after what happened. It was for me to ring you and apologise, but… I couldn’t think what I might say that would make it up to you.”
She laughed,” Now that’s a first; me unable to think of what to say! ….. I’m sorry Rachel… for shocking you like that…I really am.”
“ I wasn’t shocked, “ I murmured. “ Surprised, yes, but I wasn’t shocked.”
“ You weren’t?”
“No.”
It was time for absolute honesty. I took a deep breath.
“ I’ve had time to think and what shocks me is … that I was surprised at all…”
Gwen remained standing where she was until Clare got into her car, reversed backwards, and then drove away. The tiny wave of her hand, as well as her posture, betrayed the loneliness she was already feeling. As Clare’s tail lights disappeared between the lines of cars she turned and went back to her own car. It was a 4X4 and she climbed into the drivers seat, and then sat there for a while before starting up her engine, reversing and following Clare’ little Fiat out of the car park.
“Rachel, are you still there?” Sandra’s voice echoed into my head, and recalled me to the matter of my own loneliness.
“ Yes, I’m still here. I need to see you Sandra. Will you be at home tonight?”
Please God don’t let this be the night she has a meeting that lasts forever! But her words when she answered came in a rush,
“ In an hour. This meeting is nearly finished and I can go straight home,… or come to you wherever you are. Whichever you wish. Rachel, ….you decide.”
“ No Sandra, please… I want it to be at your place!”
I tried to make it clear in my tone what I really wanted and, for a long moment the silence was at her end. I closed my eyes and could almost hear her breathing. I could certainly feel my heart thumping. In my minds eye I could see her standing there wearing her dark business suit looking strong, certain, and in charge…. Yet not at all certain, or in charge. I bit my lip so hard it hurt almost as much as the yearning, and I thought
‘ If she asks me am I sure, I’ll scream at her!’
What she actually said was “I’ve very little food in for both of us,” and my heart rose.
They say at such moments, moments of deep happiness, people sometimes hear music, and feel like dancing; but all I heard was the hope in her voice, and all I felt was the sudden rush of love.
“Well if I’ve an hour to wait,” I said, starting up my engine, “ I’ve time to fetch enough for both of us.”
THE END.

Scents Recall.

There is a biographical aspect to the following story. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the recollection!

SCENTS RECALL.

For me expensive perfume always brings to mind Christmas in summer, coffin ships, and emigration. It’s not that I have ever sailed in a coffin ship, nor even, apart from a move some years ago from England to Ireland, that I have any great personal experience of what it means to be an emigrant; but Miss Shanahan wore expensive perfume and she broke my young heart when she emigrated to the land of ‘Christmas’s in summer.’
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself so let me start at the beginning, when I was eight years old and went into her class at St. Francis Primary school in Ashleigh. It was a mixed class of boys and girls and although the girls were delighted to have a woman teacher, especially one as young and darkly glamorous as Miss Shanahan, we boys were getting to an age when we wanted a man teaching us. After all we reasoned what could any woman know about football?
But that was an initial judgement on our part. In fact Miss Shanahan had abilities and talents which more than made up for her lack of sporting knowledge. Not only was she beautiful and elegantly dressed, and constantly surrounded by a cloud of expensive perfume, but she had a love of, and facility with words which fired our imaginations. In her soft Irish brogue she could paint word pictures so vivid and real that even the most cynical among us were irresistibly drawn into an imaginary world redolent with colour and excitement, and far beyond anything we could hope to experience in the reality of our whitewashed classroom, or the rows of terraced houses beyond its high windows She was unlike anything we had experienced before and in no time at all every boy in the class was totally smitten with Miss Shanahan… including me.
She told us that she grew up in Cork, a city in southern Ireland, and described the many Atlantic liners that passed her bedroom window when she was a girl, and breasted their way through the green waters of the great ocean that lay beyond. We could almost smell the salty air, and taste the spray on our faces. Then, with tears in her eyes she would relate stories of the dreadful ‘coffin ships’ that so many years earlier had borne their cargoes of human misery and despair away from the familiar comforts of their homeland, epitomised by what she called ‘ the sound of Shandons bells’ to a new, and more challenging life in a distant land called America.
“Some of them died on the voyage” she whispered sadly and then, tugging at the silk scarf she always wore around her neck, she added with pride throbbing in her voice “ But many more of them survived to build themselves a new life in that great and wonderful land.”
Then she would tell us stories about how they lived and worked in the great city of New York, a melting pot for so many races; how they built the Brooklyn Bridge, and how they became policemen and firemen to fight the gangsters and the fires.
“Did they meet Red Indians?” we asked excitedly.
Like all eight year olds in the 40’s brought up on a diet of Saturday matinees we fondly believed that Indians resplendent in feathered headdresses, war paint, and mounted on piebald horses surrounded even Ellis Island itself and would, given half a chance, scalp some immigrants before they even properly landed in America!
Miss Shanahan simply nodded and accepted our idiosyncratic sense of North American geography without correction. “ Later…. Well yes later some of them did meet Red Indians.” She told us how they moved west onto the Great Plains, their struggles to settle the land and build the towns and cities which are still there today, and added “ We know there were Irishmen with General Custer at the Little Big Horn.”
Thus released from formal limitations, and nourished by her extraordinary visual imagery, our own imaginations were let free to fly unfettered wherever they would.
In my case it was Miss Shanahan who, in those first few weeks, inspired me to write my first great novel! It filled all of sixteen pages of a penny copy book and it depicted in lurid detail the destruction of a north country Atlantis buried not deep beneath the sea, but under the barren Yorkshire Moors. She had asked us to write a story in a setting we had actually visited and, although I had never been to the ocean I had, on one occasion, visited an aunt of mine who lived in North Yorkshire.
I presented Miss Shanahan with my completed, and rather crumpled manuscript, at the end of school one Friday afternoon, and could hardly believe my ears when she announced that she would take it home with her and read it over the weekend. I felt it would be a bond between us, a bridge spanning the miles that would separate us for the next two days.
On the following Monday morning she called me to her desk and enveloped me in a cloud of her perfume. “That story you wrote was absolutely excellent” she informed me. “You have a very special gift. You must make sure you always use it. Now, if you don’t mind I would like to hold on to it for a while, keep it here in my desk so that I can read it again and again. May I do that? Will you let me hold onto it for a while.”
Would I let he? In that moment I would have agreed to anything she asked. I was so smitten all I could do was gulp, nod my head, and blush with pleasure.
Of course I was not the only one in live with Miss Shanahan. Everybody knew that Mr. Thomas the head teacher was in love with her also. You only had to watch the amount of time her spent in our classroom as opposed to any other in the school to realise that. And judging by the amount of additional colour in her cheeks, and the glow in her eyes whenever he was there, it was clear that she was not indifferent towards him either.
Each evening they walked together to Ashleigh Bus station and caught the same bus home. The girls in our class would sometimes giggle and speculate whether Miss Shanahan and Mr. Thomas had ever actually kissed one another, and when they would marry. Listening to such talk invariably made me feel a little uncomfortable and rather angry.
Then towards the end of the summer term Mr. Thomas did get married…. but not to Miss Shanahan, to someone else! Although Miss Shanahan continued to dress elegantly, and wear expensive perfume, it seemed to everyone that some of the colour and sparkle disappeared.
The girls, of course, who claimed to know more about these things than boys did suggested that she was suffering from a broken hear and would, in all probability, waste away and die of it like some tragic film heroine. Along with the other boys I could only wait for this inevitable end with silent dread.
One afternoon I went back into the classroom to collect a library book from my desk and found her sitting at her own desk staring into space with tears in her eys. At frist she seemed startled by my sudden appearance but then, as if recalling herself from sad reflections to practical realities she reached down into the drawer beside her and held out the still crumpled exercise book.
“I’m clearing out some of my things,” she said. “ Perhaps you had better take this back now.”
I stood there as mute and stunned as I had been when she first asked if she could hold onto it for a while. I wondered if I had done something wrong, offended her in some way but, reading my thoughts, she explained, “You see I’m leaving St. Francis’s at the end of this term. I’m going to teach in another country.”
“Are you going to America?” some of us asked when she told then rest of the class later, but she shook her head and sighed as deeply and sadly as she had when telling us about the coffin ships.
“ No…..no. I’m going much further than that. In fact I’m going to a country we call Australia. It’s a place we haven’t talked about very much but it is on the other side of the world.”
Somehow we sensed that this was one of its great attractions for her. Then, as if wishing to emphasise how different she wanted her life to become, she added, “ It’s a land where they celebrate Christmas in the middle of summer!”

THE END.

The Letter.

Another story set in my imaginary location 'Ashleigh.' Mind you, in this case I'm not sure who is making an 'april fool' of who!


The Letter.

16 Canal View,
Ashleigh .

To. Mr. Herbert Prendergast,
20 Canal View,
Ashleigh.
1st. April.

My dear Herbert,
I am in receipt of your letter and proposal of marriage received this morning, and I have decided to reply immediately lest any delay on my part should be misconstrued on your part as a sign of encouragement. However I have decided to respond in the same manner in which you chose to submit your proposal to me…. that is by letter.
Now Herbert I realise that neither of us is in what might be termed the ‘first flush of our youth’; you being already five years in the receipt of your old age pension while I am… well we need not dwell indelicately on how close I am to receiving mine. I would not therefore expect a proposal of marriage from you, or anyone else of your age, to be accompanied by ‘moonlight and roses.’ Though, on reflection, I cannot help but feel that, even during this Lenten season, a nice box of chocolates would not have gone amiss! Nor would I expect you to go down onto your knees with such a proposal.
Especially I would not expect such a romantic gesture in your case when I consider your not inconsiderable weight problem, nor the war wound to which you make frequent, nay interminable, references. Indeed considering your aforementioned girth I am not at all sure that, having descended onto your knees in order to effect your offer of matrimony you would then, irrespective of my response, be able to regain an upright posture without considerable outside assistance which I, as a now single woman, would be hard pressed to provide.
But what my dear Herbert am I to make of a proposal of marriage which is submitted to me on British Legion notepaper? Am I assume that were I to accept your offer I would also be marrying an entire regiment of the Lancashire Fusiliers? Or, at the very least, those members of that august company who are still alive all these years after hostilities have ceased?
To say that your proposal, and the manner of it, has left me speechless would be to grossly understate the effect your eloquence has had upon me.
For the life of me Herbert Prendergast I cannot understand how you can ever have imagined that I might entertain feelings for you reciprocal to those you insist you feel for me. I have thought long and hard about our past meetings and I can recall no words or deeds on my part which could have led you to form such a profound delusion.
For one thing, other than a few pleasantries we exchanged during last years old folks day trip to New Brighton, I cannot recall ever having had a proper conversation with you.
Yes, dear Herbert, I do recall the incident you mention in your letter when I grabbed hold of your arm on the deck of the Royal Iris ferry, but I should also remind you that a force nine gale was blowing at the time and, if I hadn’t grabbed hold of something, I would assuredly have ended the day floating face downwards in the River Mersey.
And while I am in the business of correcting your romantic if erroneous recollections, I should also point out that our pairing in the Silver Threads dancing competition last Christmas, which you recall with such emotion in your letter, was hardly the runaway success you describe. I must be the only woman in history to have been eliminated from a slow waltz competition because her partner experienced a shrapnel movement in his right leg seconds before they took the floor!
In truth Herbert I am forced to observe that, other than the fact that we both share the same view through our respective front windows, we thankfully have nothing else in common and, frankly, the idea of awakening one morning to, as you put it in your letter, ‘ find our two sets of dentures sharing the same jam jar on the dressing table’ is a prospect too nauseating for words!
Finally Herbert Prendergast I have to tell you that it will certainly not be in order for you to call upon me either now, or in the foreseeable future to, as you put it, ‘ press your suit.’ Indeed since receiving your letter, and its unwelcome proposal of marriage I have been prompted to accept a long standing invitation from my daughter in Bury St. Edmunds to stay with her, and my grandchildren, for an extended holiday.
I can only hope, and pray, that my absence from Canal View for an indefinite period will, at the very least, serve to cool your inordinate ardour, and bring to a halt those nauseating fantasies which you describe to me in such graphic and nauseating detail!
Your neighbour,
Nora Scatterthwaite. ( widow!!)
The End.

AM I GOOD ENOUGH?

Some years ago I created an imaginary town called Ashleigh in which to set my stories, This was one of the first I set there. Hope you enjoy it.

AM I GOOD ENOUGH?

It struck Dennis Hill as curious that the question only presented itself to him when, in a sense, it no longer mattered if he was good enough. Not so much a question of ‘am I good enough?’ but ’ was I ever good enough?”
For the thirty years he had been a teacher, most of them at Gratton Lane Comprehensive, it had never occurred to him to question his effectiveness in the job. Now on the very day he was due to retire, he found himself not only uncomfortably challenged on the issue, but also wondering whether his failure to ask the question earlier was not, itself, an indication of his unworthiness. Was it evidence of a level of arrogance on his part that probably disqualified him from ever being a really effective teacher?
In the end it was not the retirement day he had expected. That, he had always imagined, would be a day suffused with a warm glow of personal satisfaction in a lifetimes work completed, with many fine speeches and expressions of appreciation from both pupils and fellow members of staff. He would have the opportunity he imagined to make a speech, not too long, but with a few wry observations on the current state of education. Then, as a few tears were shed he would take his final leave of the Gratton Lane assembly hall, and walk off through the school gates with head held high ….. and catch the bus home! (Living only a few miles from the school he had never seen the necessity of buying a car, or even learning to drive.)
It was perhaps ironical, because he was probably the only member of staff never to have had a problem with her, that it was Trish Henry, the scourge of the 4th. year who brought his fantasy crashing down. So much so that when, later on that final school day, when he was told by the Henry Leighton, the head, that the planned formal presentation would need to be postponed until after the summer vacation., he was quite relieved. The reason given was that only a few members of staff were able to remain behind that evening. Clearly a weak excuse but nonetheless welcome because it allowed him to slip out of the building without any fuss and escape almost unnoticed into retirement..
**********************************
He had come to teaching in his early twenties shortly after he and Shirley got married, and after he had tried his hand at a number of jobs without any great success in any of them. It was Shirley who, prompted by his natural empathy with children suggested he consider becoming a teacher. It was also she who supported him through training college; even enduring her parents disapproval of a situation where their daughter supported a husband who, in their view, ‘whiled away his time sitting in a library reading books!’
“It’s something we both believe he has to do,” Shirley had explained but there was no doubting that it had been a real struggle and his teaching certificate was only achieved at a cost.
For one thing it had meant Shirley working long hours of overtime at the supermarket, hours which often left her too exhausted at weekends to keep up with his socialising. Consequently they slipped into a married routine which resulted in them having few shared experiences. When he finally did qualify, and they could have started the family they both wanted Shirley’s health had broken down and having children of their own had become impossible. He had often wondered if over the years the pupils he taught had not become substitutes for the children Shirley could not give him?
He took to classroom work like the proverbial fish into water and his enthusiasm for his two subjects, English and Drama had, in the early years, been infectious and made him popular with both pupils and staff. But his late nights and weekends spent at school, especially when exams or a production were in the offing meant that Shirley saw even less of him than before.
Mind you, she never complained. Not even during her increasingly frequent periods of illness when she could have done with his help around the house and garden they had bought. He had insisted on a large house, and garden, as being commensurate with his position. Insisted on holding regular dinner parties, (’networking’ he called it,) with other members of staff, fellow teachers, and friends held over from his student days. Long evenings of ’ teacher talk’ around the dining room table which she found difficult to follow, or contribute too. Eventually she learned to just slip away to the bedroom when the meal was over, and listen to the radio, or read a book until it was time for the guests to leave. If her absence was commented upon at all Dennis usually laughed it off as one of ‘Shirley’s headaches!”
“You have your job to do,” she always commented if he enquired whether she minded being left out of things so much. Now, as he thought back over those years, he wondered why she had never added “… and you’re good at it!” Was it really because she saw no reason to state the obvious, or was it because to tell a lie would devalue what little relationship they still had?
Trish Henry had collided with him that morning just inside the entrance to the school. Running inside the building was strictly forbidden, but Trish was not the sort of girl to let a rule prevent her from doing what she wished; in this case, catch up with a boy from the sixth year who had just thrown her lunch bag into the boys toilet, and then himself run off towards the stairwell.
Dennis, preoccupied with his own thoughts on this his ‘ special day’, had not seen her coming. The collision not only scattered the books and papers he was carrying all over the tiled floor, but knocked the breath out of his body as well.
“Shit,” Trish exclaimed, took a step backwards, and then, concluding that attack represented the most effective defence, blurted out angrily, “Why don’t yer watch where yer goin’?”
In his younger days Dennis’s response would have been to laugh, make a jocular reply, and defuse the girls insolence with humour. He often found Trish quite amusing and succinct in her observations and when she was not trying to justify her reputation as ‘the pupil from hell’, she revealed real intelligence. But ‘the day that was in it,’ and the sudden thump as a heavily built fifteen year old crashed into his chest distracted him. He was no longer a young man, and with the passage of time almost all his former fire and enthusiasm for the job had dissipated.
Staff ‘do’s’ in pubs and clubs that went on until the early hours had ceased long ago, and lately even the dinner parties had become few and far between. Almost unnoticed, he now realised, his dignity as a teacher had become what defined him rather than his effectiveness. It had been a milestone in his life when, checking the list of first years one September he had recognised the name of a former pupils child. Now when younger members of staff deferred to him for advice he suspected they did it more to establish what would be out of date and to be avoided than to find out what they should do.
Certainly they did not expect to receive words of encouragement. The last time he complimented one of the younger teachers she had reacted as if she thought he might be ill!
Of course Shirley’s death had affected him badly, making him more introverted and insecure. He could not help blaming himself to a certain extent for not reacting more positively to her increasingly frequent periods of illness and lethargy.
“You have a lie in today,” had been his response on that last morning he left her for school. “I can get something to eat on the way in, and the few extra hours in bed will do you the world of good.”
She had nodded wearily, rested her head back onto the pillow, but said nothing. Her eyes were closed as he left her.
Of course it was not his fault that a parents meeting had kept him late at school that evening and when he got home and found no lights on in the house he had looked into the bedroom where Shirley still lay in the bed. He still shuddered when he recalled how still and quiet she had looked under the duvet. Why on earth hadn’t he gone over to the bed and touched her?
Instead deciding it was better to let her sleep he had sighed, closed the bedroom door and slept in the guest room that night.
The doctor later confirmed that she must have died sometime during the morning. “In her sleep I imagine,” he had suggested as if he thought this might help Dennis cope with his loss. “Her heart just gave up the struggle.”
What struggle? It had bothered Dennis ever since that he had no idea what she might have been struggling against. “ Surely I would have known,” he often mused, “… wouldn’t I?”
“You were running,” he managed to gasp at Trish Henry when his breathing stabilised sufficiently for him to speak. She, aware that her classmates were standing nearby watching the confrontation develop went straight into her ‘ leader of the pack’ mode. She rested one hand on her hip, and brought her head up defiantly.
“So what?” she demanded.
He took another deep breath to steady himself. Shirley’s death had been six years ago but had been one of the factors that prompted him to seek early retirement. His lump sum and pension would be reduced but would still provide him with enough to live on. The house was paid for and now he would have the time to write the novel he had always believed he had in him. He was looking forward to retirement. But first he had to get through this last day…. And cope with Trish Henry!
“So it’s against the rules to run, “ he explained. He would try to be as patient and forbearing as the circumstances allowed… but he really could not let the incident pass. Not even today. “ I’ll have to put you on discipline report for this evening.”
She snorted dismissively. “We finish for the summer tonight… and in case you’ve forgotten Mister Hill you’re finishin’ fer good. So what’ll yer do if I don’t turn up?”
Her classmates were beginning to giggle and, emboldened, she decided to pree home her attack. “Send a note ‘ome te mi mum and dad? What d’yer think they’re goin’ ter do wiv it? Neither o’ them can bloody read or write. They’ll probably wipe their arses wiv it!”
Her friends guffawed with laughter and Dennis’s shoulders sagged wearily. He really was too tired to continue with his attempted correction. He pointed towards the papers scattered all over the floor.
“ Help me pick them up,” he muttered.
“ You dropped ‘em, you pick ‘em up”
She turned and started to walk towards the boys lavatory intending to retrieve her lunch box, but when she reached the door she turned back towards him. She seemed to recall something she had read, or heard, somewhere, and a pitying look crept into her eyes.
“ Tell me sir,” she asked in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone, and challenging enough to be still ringing in his ears that evening as he rode home on the bus. “ Were you always this useless and pathetic, or is it summat you ‘ad te be trained for?”
THE END.