Susan's Friend

Susan’s friend.

My latest piece for the writers group inspired by some children who had just buried their pet cat Pedro.

It was Susan who saw the kitten. It was sitting under the ‘fairy hedge’ watching her. Her younger sisters Lorraine and Mona had christened that part of the garden the ‘fairy hedge’ because they claimed they could see fairies dancing through it. They’d even managed to convince their sceptical parents not to cut back those particular straggling branches for fear that the hedge trimmer might damage the fairies glittering wings.
“ And without their wings,” Lorraine had patiently explained to their father, “ Fairies can neither dance nor fly!”
Lorraine and Mona were inseparable five year old twins, and both were very protective of their friends in the hedge. Their older brother Thomas, who was seven and liked dogs, thought that fairies were a ‘girly’ thing, but claimed that he could hear a puppy barking under the hedge.
Susan, who was nine and therefore a lot older and wiser than either of her sisters or her brother had never actually seen any fairies dancing in the hedge, or ever heard any puppies barking, but she was still young enough to realise that didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t there. She had noticed that the older people became, the more difficulty they had believing in anything they couldn’t actually see …. and now she definitely could see the kitten.
It was tabby coloured with short almost stumpy ears, and it was sitting watching her as if it had always been there, and had just been waiting for her to recognise its existence. She noticed that unlike her other cats, this one did not watch her with an unblinking stare. In fact its eyes kept closing and opening in a quite regular but inviting way as if it were already conversing with her.
“ Oh, what’s your name?” she exclaimed bending forwards and reaching out her fingers towards its flat little head.
“ I have no name,” the kitten replied dismissively; rather surprising Susan because she heard no sound, not even a purr. The voice seemed to be inside her own head. “ It’s humans like you who insist on calling me something when in fact I’m just…. well …. me!”
“ Who is …. you?” Susan persisted.
“ Well that’s rather up to you isn’t it? I’m whatever you want to make me.”
“ I need you to have a name so that I know what to call you.”
The kitten, who Susan already realised was obviously an animal with a mind very much of its own, raised one of its rear paws, leaned sideways, and began to scratch feverishly behind its ear; scratched so furiously in fact, that it fell over onto its side.
Susan, who knew how offended cats can become when humans laugh at them rather than with them, managed to maintain a serious expression until the kitten had reassumed a dignified sitting posture. Then she remembered that kittens are much more playful than grown up cats so she risked a short laugh,
“Oooh you are quite funny,” she observed.
“ Well that’s probably because you’re quite funny too. Now, what are you going to call me? You’d better tell me and then I’ll know when it’s me you’re talking too.”
It was obviously intended as a serious question by the kitten, and Susan thought it only right that she would think about it for a long time. In fact she thought about it for so long that the kitten almost lost interest in the answer, and gave an enormous yawn instead.
“ I thought I might call you Coco after the clown because you made me laugh, but instead I’m going to call you what you are, “ Susan finally announced. “For now I’ll call you ‘Kittycat’, and then… when you’re a lot older, and much bigger, I’ll just call you ‘Cat.’”
The kitten too thought about this for a while and then stood up, arched it’s back upwards and then stretched forwards each of its front paws in turn.
“ Well I certainly think ‘ Kitty’s’ preferable to ‘Coco,’” it murmured.
“How long have you been here?” Susan wondered aloud.
“I’ve been here as long as you have,” Kittycat stated.
It seemed to be trying to decide if all humans were this stupid? But went on to explain in a noticeably patient tone, “ You sisters have their fairies, Tommy has his puppy dog,…. and you have me! It isn’t my fault you’ve taken so long to notice me. You just haven’t been looking properly. Far too busy being the older and cleverer sister I suppose.”
“ And will you stay?” Susan asked. Now she too had a friend under the fairy hedge she didn’t want to lose it.
Kittycat sighed. Some humans obviously were this stupid!
“ I have to stay as long as you want me to.”
“Until I’m grown up?”
“ I have to grow up with you.”
“ And when I’m really, really old?”
“ Then I’ll be really, really old too wont I?”
Kittycat who was getting a little tired of all these silly questions turned and made as if to disappear back into the tangled undergrowth, but Susan asked it one more question.
“ Will you ever grow wings like the fairies, or bark like a puppy dog?”
Her new friend stared at her, but this time with unblinking eyes…. and this time Susan did hear a purr.
“ Certainly not. That would make me ridiculous!”

THE END.

Regret can hurt.

I was given the opening sentence at my writers group, and this is the finished story. Enjoy.

Regret can hurt.

She was sorry now that she hadn’t told him from the very beginning. Standing at her apartment window, drinking her umpteenth bacardi and coke of the evening, Hilary watched a group of young girls, obviously a hen party, but all too scantily clad for a cold night like this, tumble out from the hotel across the street below, and gather in noisy, but shivering groups, to await the arrival of whatever transport home they had arranged.

‘Do they,’ she wondered, ‘Have things they regret not having said?’

She wanted desperately to turn back the clock, make things clear from the beginning; from that first night when he approached her after her talk to the Rotary Club.

“ Inter-personal relations in business,” she snorted into the half empty glass in her hand. “What the hell right have I to be lecturing anyone on inter personal relations,… either in business. or life for that matter?”

Two months ago it had been. Two months during which she’d not only begun to feel more alive than she could ever remember feeling, but two months during which for the first time in her forty one years, she’d learned both the joy and the pain of sharing who she was with another person; and rendered herself vulnerable by admitting him into her carefully guarded privacy, and space. Yet still she hadn’t told him what he had the right to know. So now it was her feeling of regret that was impelling her to drink, and to drink like this alone, perched in her fourth floor luxury apartment overlooking tottering young revellers below.

“I really enjoyed your talk,” he’d said placing himself, as if deliberately, between herself and Jason. “ You made your points very well. I’m sure everyone has learned a lot this evening.”

She’d thanked him, and taken his hand into her own, but found herself fascinated, even held, by his smiling blue eyes. In his early fifties he was well built but without any evidence of fat or middle age slouch. His hair was greying slightly at the temples, but not receding, and his impact was immediate.

‘Oh my god,’ she’d thought, ‘ Whatever charisma is, you have it in spades! You certainly didn’t need my talk tonight….”

“How many of your suggestions will be acted on of course,” he was saying, “ Isn’t for me to judge, but there were a couple of your answers at the end of the talk which left me with even more questions of my own. I’d appreciate the opportunity to explore them further with you over dinner sometime….unless you think I’m being too forward? My name’s David by the way, David Harrison. I attended a talk you gave a few months ago, and it was I who proposed you as tonight’s speaker.”

He was still holding her right hand, but then pointed towards her ringless left hand. “ I had noticed that you aren’t married.”

She remembered glancing quickly past his shoulder to where Jason was lifting the overhead projector she’d been using from the table. He was already frowning and seemed ready to say something.

“ I should have told him then,” she murmured into the almost empty glass. “Got it into the open then….”

Instead she’d enthused like a love struck adolescent how much she would enjoy answering his questions over dinner… how he wasn’t being at all forward, and then… retrieving her hand from his, had rooted feverishly into the folder under her arm for a business card.

“Ring me,” she’d said, “We’ll arrange something.”

Then, as he walked away, shed reflected that those old chestnuts about ‘ heartbeat racing,’ and ‘knees turning to water,’ were apparently true!

They had arranged something, and in no time at all it seemed their dates and arrangements became the single focal points of her everyday existence. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this way about any man before, and she had always intended to tell him the truth… but never ‘right now’. Always she’d waited, just wanting one more time when only she and him in the present moment mattered. As those times became a week, then a month, her fear of what he might do when she did tell him, made the telling more difficult. Turned an uncertain prospect into a possible crisis to be postponed for as long as possible; and now, it seemed, she was forever recalling that awful evening when further procrastination became impossible.

************************************

She’d realised as soon as he told her that he’d booked their table at the Royal George that he intended the evening to be one neither of them would ever forget; so she made a special effort to look her most beautiful. She’d even taken the afternoon off, and gone up to town to have her hair done, and buy a new outfit.

He’d picked her up in the new car he’d just bought, and if he was uncharacteristically subdued during the drive to the hotel, she’d put it down to nerves he might be feeling about the night ahead. It was when he seated her at the table that she noticed how his features in the candlelight betrayed a harshness she’d never seen before. Despite the restaurants soothing ambience and background music she’d become suddenly fearful.

Apart from giving their order to the hovering waiter he’d barely spoken until the main course was on the table. She for her part, had chattered incessantly; silly. stupid things she knew in her heart he’d no interest in.

Finally he’d glared across the table and interrupted her with a curt, “ I had a telephone call today from somebody called Jason. I believe you know him?”

She’d nodded and tried to gather her racing thoughts into a manageable sequence.

David was doing the talking now, but in slow deliberate words as if he’d rehearsed them all in his head beforehand. No racing unmanageable sequence there!

“I remember him of course from the evening you gave the talk at the Rotary Club. I’d assumed, because he resembled you so much, that he was your younger brother. But then he started asking me…. No, not just asking, … demanding, as if by right to know what were my intentions towards you? It was almost Victorian!”

She’d thought, for a moment, that humour might help, and tried to smile.

“Well yes… Jason does tend to be a little possessive of me….”

“Possessive is putting it mildly. Fixated would be a better word.”

Her smile had wilted. “Did you ask him why?” she’d enquired.

“I did not. I was so astonished I simply told him to mind his own bloody business, and put the phone down on him. I don’t care if he is your brother… or even one of your former boyfriends. Anyone talking to me like that… I put the phone down on them!”

He spiked a piece of beef onto his fork, and raised it towards his mouth.

She remembered now that he never swallowed it as she finally did what she should have done from the very beginning. Even the white tablecloth seemed to be glaring up at her reproachfully as she whispered,

“Jason’s neither my brother, nor a former boy friend…. He’s my son.”

She could recall clearly the way his expression changed from one of anger to one of pain… even betrayal. She’d wanted to reach for his hand, explain that it had all been a terrible mistake. Not the fact of Jason’s existence, but the circumstances surrounding his creation. That it had been a one night stand… she’d drunk far too much…. she’d been taken advantage of…

“And the father?” David had asked replacing his fork onto his plate. She couldn’t meet his eye. That had been the worst part, the part that, in her heart, she’d always dreaded telling him.

“ I can’t even remember who he was, “ she’d murmured. “ I was drunk… and later on, when I realised I was pregnant… Well I didn’t want to know who he was.”

She remembered how, at that point, she had felt a sudden surge of maternal defiance, and been able to raise her head, look at him directly.

“ But I did want the baby. I know I’d been very stupid, even irresponsible in not taking proper precautions, but I wouldn‘t… no I couldn’t deny Jason his life…. And I’ve never regretted having him… not once. I know sometimes he can be difficult, and overreach himself particularly with men he thinks I’m involved with. He hasn’t had the advantage of growing up sharing me with another man; but I wont regret having him…. not now… not ever… not even for your sake!”

She’d stopped; hoping, that her words might prompt him to understand and forgive her, but suddenly he’d stood up.

“ I have to go,” he’d stated, and put enough cash onto the table to settle not only the bill, but her taxi fare home as well. “ I need time to think…. You should have told me sooner…”

Well, now, she’d given him the time… two awful weeks of it!

For the first few days she’d been sick with confusion. On the one hand she’d wanted to telephone him, tell him how sorry she was, and plead with him not to end their relationship. But, equally, she was afraid that he’d simply put the phone down the way he had with Jason, or even worse, tell her bluntly not to contact him again. Then, when he didn’t telephone or make contact with her, her confusion had turned into anger. Clearly he wasn’t even prepared to let her explain further, so she rehearsed what she would say when he finally did contact her… as he surely would, wouldn’t he?

When, after two weeks, he’d still neither rung nor turned up at her apartment, she went into a downward spiral of self recrimination, self pity, and endless bacardi and coke’s which should have alleviated her pain, but only made it worse.

‘And now,’ she thought, ‘ Here I am at the window hallucinating that his car’s among the revellers transport in the car park below!’ She turned back into the empty room. ‘I really must stop drinking like this… I must put something solid into my stomach, …. get my life back again!’

On impulse she decided to get changed, telephone Jason and offer to buy him a late supper … at the Royal George!

“ I’ll wait until the food’s served before I tell him what I think of him interfering in my life, it has to stop. I’m his mother not his senile grandmother in need of protection from unscrupulous suitors!”

As she went towards the bathroom her mobile on the coffee table rang. The screen flashed ‘David’, and her heart rose.

“ Oh god David,” she gasped into it, “ Oh I’m so glad… I mean I’m so sorry… I should have told you everything at the very beginning…. Please forgive me… let me make it up….”

The silence on the line was deafening, and her heart sank. What was he doing playing with her feelings like this?

“David,” she demanded fiercely, “ Are you still with me?”

She registered the irony of her words and her feelings went into free fall. She wanted to lie down; but then his voice, strong and full of tenderness, penetrated her mental fog. She closed her eyes, and could almost feel his arms closing around her, and his lips press close into her ear.

“ Hilary… where else would I ever want to be?”

Suddenly, an exhilarating realisation prompted her to rush across the room. It had been his car in the car park….. and it was then that her doorbell rang!

The End.