by Jan Ruth
‘I had to walk to the top of Hafod Y Cae to get a phone signal,’ she went on, but in doing so she’d discovered there was a train, if Frankie could drive her to the station? He wasn’t surprised in the least by this, but it was an uncomfortable parting, in that she was so matter of fact.
‘I’ll maybe... maybe see you after New Year?’ she said tentatively, then shot him a wry smile, ‘You’ve got stuff to sort out.’
‘You mean with Ella?’
‘Of course, with Ella,’ she went on, then began to push clothes into a holdall. ‘You can’t see clearly with me here.’
Maybe? She’d said maybe.
They were silent on the way to the station, and Frankie had no words while he waited with her to board the train to Chester. They embraced as it drew in, and his throat constricted as she scrambled on with a lot of unwieldy bags and slammed the door shut. Although, Clara showed virtually no emotion throughout all of this, Frankie lingered on the platform for longer than was necessary, and at the last second, walked the length of the carriages, feeling as if he were in a Sunday afternoon matinee, looking for a final glimpse of her. Clara didn’t look at him, she stared straight ahead, but then he was astonished to see her face was wet; wet with tears? He banged on the window.
‘Clara!’
At this, she managed a limp wave and a pathetic smile as the train pulled away.
Frankie watched as the train quickly disappeared, then went and sat in his car outside the station and watched the rain coursing down the windscreen. Opposite, there was an old signal box and a shop, long since boarded up with a fringe of weeds circling the window, but someone had placed a basket of produce from a nearby farm, with an honesty box. The old, next to the new and the worn out.
He’d thought the fun he’d enjoyed with Clara, was just that; so why did he feel so utterly depressed, like he was back on the very first rung of the ladder and if Clara didn’t have any feelings for him, why did she cry like that? Worse than this, why, at his age did he have to question it all, as if he were fifteen and he couldn’t read the situation? It was Ella’s fault, she’d thrown such doubt and confusion into his life, he was struggling to filter information into the correct compartments, with the result that his own, personal honesty box was empty.
He thought about the conversation with his wife, over the lunch table, the lunch she’d planned somewhat deviously.
‘I’ve made a terrible fool of myself with Peter,’ she’d begun, grasping his hand, ‘and I think you know, you’ve made a fool of yourself with Clara.’
Frankie had nodded his agreement at the time, wondering if it made them both equally foolish. Adolescent behaviour, she’d called it. Funny, how a matter of hours later with a different perspective on his feelings could change everything. Today, this minute, the only possible foolish behaviour on the current agenda, was that of not seizing the moment.
No... no it was Ella, that had a made a fool out of him.
Despite this obvious revelation, he found himself smiling as another abstract thought popped into his mind; all those childish snowball fights on the ever so posh slopes of Cloisters, and the way Clara had moved, both through the snow and into his heart, melting both. Wasn’t that a touch of magic?
Would it be terribly immature and foolish to drive to Chester and intercept Clara’s train?
Deciding that it would, Frankie turned the key in the ignition and reversed the car.
THE END
Over the Moon
It’s Pattie’s birthday, but do all her wishes come true?
Birthdays definitely lost their excitement with the onset of middle-age, but since everyone else seemed to want her to enjoy it, Pattie went along with it. She went along with most things in life; she was one of life’s givers, a pleaser, a yes person. A nurturer by nature, some would say she was too soft for her own good and why did she let folk take advantage?
The day began with tea and toast in bed and a grand total of three cards and one… gift? Not exactly Miss Popularity for all that giving in, was she?
‘You’ll get loads more cards tonight, at the party,’ Karl said, helping her to finish the limp piece of toast on her plate. ‘That’s when you’ll get mine and my amazing present!’
‘What present? We haven’t got any money.’
‘It’s a secret and anyway it’s the thought that counts.’
‘Okay, so it’s a bit of nonsense?’
Karl looked a tad hurt at this, ‘No! And it was your sister’s idea, she wouldn’t stand for any nonsense, now would she?’
Obviously satisfied that he’d got her brain working overtime, Karl popped the last piece of her toast into his mouth and went jauntily from the room. Pattie slid down the bed and dwelt on the trio of cards on the dressing table. The combined one from her girls, who were both away at the same university, amounted to a sarcastic joke about the age of her car and her mobile phone. Then there was the usual gushing sentiment from her mother, roses, cats and a long verse which Pattie didn’t bother reading. Plus one from a friend who couldn’t make it to the party, and then there was the driftwood ‘gift’ from the environmentalist next door. She’d invited him to the party of course, but he’d declined. He didn’t even come up with a good excuse, just a firm no thanks. She’d been a bit miffed, but his birthday message was rather unique and she looked at it more than the others. It was the time he’d put into making Happy Birthday out of petals and twigs, coloured stones and leaves, and then fixing them onto a branch of bleached, sea-washed wood. Karl had laughed, saying it was something a kid would do, and was he a bit simple?
Sometimes, simple was good though, wasn’t it? Padding across the bedroom, Pattie glanced through the window, and Teddy Roberts was there, stripped to the waist and digging. He looked up the second she looked down, and Pattie dived back behind the curtain and rolled her eyes. Damn it! She was always getting caught looking.
Teddy was recovering from an ‘occupational hazard’, or so he’d said, but it must be something emotional because he looked in pretty good physical shape to Pattie. He was friendly too, and they’d struck up an immediate neighbourliness. At first it was just chatting over the privet hedge, but then it moved on to edible, homegrown gifts. Nothing wrong with that, they could all do with eating more natural food. Of late though, the whole veggie gifting thing had the distinct flavour of a double entendre. The previous week, it had been a large, positively mutant-sized carrot and two small turnips. Nothing unusual in that, but it was the way he’d positioned them. Also, the vegetables used to arrive in paper bags, but now they were naked, not even wrapped in newspaper. Her sister, Caroline, just laughed and said Teddy Roberts was a hunk, and the whole phallic symbol thing was hilarious.
*
Caroline collected her just before ten.
‘Happy Birthday!’ she said, and planted a perfumed kiss on her cheek.
Her sister looked slightly smug, but then Pattie reasoned she had every right to. Although she was a good few years older than herself, Caroline always managed to look a good few years younger. It helped enormously that she was married to William the Wonderful. Childless, they led a charmed, semi-retired life in a nice modern house with a home help and no hint of money problems on the horizon. Middle-age didn’t happen for a long time when you had those kind of buffers.
Pattie had lived life the long way round, or maybe it was the wrong way round? Two daughters out of wedlock, both with two different, mostly absent fathers. To top it all she’d met Karl at one of Caroline’s dinners and a couple of months later found herself cohabiting, much to her mother’s disgust and Caroline’s amusement. But what the hell, after years of being in relationship wasteland, he’d paid her some attention and everyone kept telling her to have some fun, and the poor guy seemed down on his luck. Homeless and divorced through no fault of his own, Pattie had offered her sofa to start with, and well, the rest was history. William the Wonderful was meant to be finding him a job.
They
pulled in to the snobby spa at the hotel in town, Caroline’s treat. Pattie knew she should be grateful, but there was a familiar niggle at the back of her mind, and it had been there since she was about twelve. Caroline wanted her to be polished and preened when all eyes were upon her.
It wasn’t Pattie’s cup of tea at all, the beauty salon. She would rather have had some books, or a pair of Wellingtons that didn’t leak; and it irked her that Caroline, who should know better, had pre-paid and arranged it all in the form of a birthday present.
Too late now.
‘I’m not in the mood for this,’ Pattie said, removing her jogging bottoms and quickly sliding into the white towelling robe. She caught her sister’s arched eyebrow and sighed. ‘I’m sorry, that was rude. It must have cost a fortune.’
‘Pattie, you need to relax and have some ‘me’ time. Look at the state of your nails! You’ll thank me later.’
‘Yes, yes, you’re right,’ she said, knowing that her own me time was significantly different to Caroline’s ‘me’ time. What she really wanted was grown-up time. To Pattie, all this preening and self-absorption was something they’d already done, as teenagers.
To her dismay, they were made to lie on those high, narrow beds covered in white paper as if they were about to have a smear test at the Well Woman’s clinic. Briefly, Pattie thought about making a joke then quickly decided against it, just in case Caroline didn’t find it funny, plus the two white-coated women in attendance had those kiln dried, glazed faces that didn’t look designed for any kind of movement, let alone laughter.
The aromatherapy massage began. Lavender might have soothing properties, but to Pattie it had overtones of old ladies’ bags, it was right up there with mothballs. Not only that, she found it all enormously embarrassing, having a stranger’s hands ride up the inside of her thighs. She was nowhere near as well groomed as her sister, and her knickers; although not exactly from the pound shop hers were not the kind you’d want on show. Pattie was certain that lying prostrate and silently gritting your teeth was not how it should be. She tried to lose herself in the music, if you could call it music; it was just the sound of waves rushing over shingle and the cries of seagulls. Luke… Karl’s son, looked like he’d been washed up on the shore.
At first glance, Pattie thought he may have had a brain operation but then was relieved to see it was merely sculpted hair, shaved into geometrical, interlocking shapes with a re-growth not dissimilar to iron filings. The other half of his head had been all but abandoned, and the resultant dreadlocks had taken on the look and odour of knotted seaweed.
He’d arrived wet and bedraggled, with no prior warning, carrying a huge backpack, full of a whole range of stinking items and a mouthfull of verbal abuse, all directed at his mother. Karl had been secretly pleased to get one over on his ex-wife, Patti much less so. Raising two rebellious daughters whilst juggling three jobs had been enough parenting for Pattie, and she didn’t relish the thought of an unemployed seventeen year old crashed on the sofa all day. He wasn’t very hygienic either and he also smoked something that didn’t smell like ordinary cigarettes.
Despite this, she had to accept that Karl had fussed around her girls on those few occasions when they flitted in and out of her life, in-between jobs, boyfriends, university courses, all the on and off-line social life, and the travelling (no, it wasn’t a holiday, it was travelling). And he was only being a bloke when he looked at her daughter’s legs when she went up the stairs, wasn’t he? Gina was an awful flirt with those legs of hers, and Pattie tried not to show her obvious relief when both girls had gone back to Uni, but she knew she was in trouble when she began to feel sorry for Luke. He’d not had half the opportunities her daughters had enjoyed, and it wasn’t his fault he didn’t get on with his mother’s new man, was it?
They moved into the next room for exfoliating and spray tanning. The girl said not to be alarmed by the initial colour of the tan, it would wash off a bit and then look more natural.
Then it was manicuring.
‘Are you getting excited?’ Caroline said, when Pattie suddenly had a vision of Teddy Roberts, striding through his forced rhubarb, or whatever it was he grew in that little poly-tunnel. Forced, that was a little how she felt.
Pattie sighed and turned her head in Caroline’s direction and frowned. ‘What about?’
‘The party!’
‘No,’ she said, brought back down to earth, and not liking it. Teddy’s earth was better…rich, nurturing, fragrant. ‘It’s a party, Caroline. I don’t like them much, never did, even as a child. I’ve no idea why you and Karl have even arranged it for me,’ she said; thinking she must have had some kind of meltdown in the tanning booth, a five minute mid-life crisis. It was no good; she couldn’t carry on pretending. Ignoring her sister’s astonished face then, Pattie made a grab for her clothes and fled. Dramatic, but the effects lasted only seconds. Hunched on the steps outside, looking at her orange skin, was as far as she got, like an old bloated pumpkin, ready for cutting out and making into a scary face for Halloween.
Caroline materialised, flapping her fingernails and full of misplaced concern, exasperation clearly close to the surface. ‘What’s got in to you?’
‘I’m sorry, I honestly don’t know. Can we go home, please?’
Her sister sighed in much the same way their mother did, the kind of way that made you feel a bloody nuisance.
At home, on the doorstep, there was a huge parsnip poking out from a tray of dirty, compost-enveloped mushrooms. Caroline giggled. ‘Oh dear, he really does fancy you, doesn’t he?’ Pattie tutted and collected them up, and marched quickly into the kitchen. She could make something for the party, a mushroom tart she thought, reaching into the cupboards for her pastry tin. Maybe she would see if Teddy had any rocket to go with it.
‘You’re blushing!’ Caroline said, hot on her heels.
‘No, I’m not. I’m this colour all over.’
*
Later, Pattie’s little terraced house was full of friends and family. Karl had dug out his Rolling Stones collection and the noise belted out, not quite drowning out the shrieking, groaning and arguing amongst the younger crowd. It seemed Luke had a lot of friends, but that was good wasn’t it, when you were down on your luck like he was?
‘I’d like to propose a toast to Pattie!’ Karl said and raised his glass, ‘Happy Birthday!’
There was a round of applause, then the room fell silent again, full of expectancy, and someone put a glass of bubbly in her hand. Karl kept grinning at her, he’d clearly had a few drinks and Pattie remembered the surprise present. She didn’t like surprises; it made her heart beat that bit faster, as she watched him dim the lights and ignite the wobbly candles on the cake she’d made for herself. Caroline shuffled a bit closer, obviously wanting a better viewpoint.
‘Tell me what’s going on?’ Pattie hissed at her.
‘All I can say is, it’s something you’ve always wanted, from being a little girl.’
‘I’m not a little girl anymore, my needs and wants have changed.’
Caroline laughed and patted her arm.
‘Okay everyone, listen up!’ Karl said, with a lot more authority than Pattie had ever previously witnessed. ‘I’d like to propose something else now,’ he went on, and began to fish about in his pockets. There was a lot of nudging and shuffling, throat clearing and exchanges of remarks and glances, some of them not very tasteful. When Karl produced a ring box, there was a sudden hush in the room, all eyes upon her.
‘Pattie Hopkins…’ He fumbled then to remove the ring and get down on one knee, his face alight with hope. ‘Will you marry me?’
It seemed a little ironic that Pattie was rescued by a sudden flare; not the searing, heartfelt kind of flare, but the sudden, frightening kind of flare that set fire to a pile of paper napkins. Too close to the cake candles, they chose that very same moment to ignite. The smoke alarms sprang to life and soon, the room was a mass of flapping d
amp tea towels, screaming and laughing. Mrs Armitage from next door but two diverted a lot of attention her way by having some kind of anxiety attack. Even William the Wonderful had his hands full, fiddling with a foam extinguisher from his car, but then in blind panic managed to spray most of Caroline’s dress with it.
It was easy then, easy to slip out into the long narrow, dark garden.
There was a wonderful smell on the night air, a mix of wild honeysuckle and damp grass. Pattie loved her messy garden. It wasn’t productive and organised like Teddy’s of course, but it had the makings of an old fashioned cottage garden and always looked at its best with minimum intervention.
Under the shadowy glimmer of the moon, she could just make out the crazy-paving path, partly sunken into the grass and slippery with moss, but she removed her shoes and followed it to the old wrought iron bench. The trousers she’d chosen to wear were far too tight on the waist. The saving grace to this outfit was one of Caroline’s long floating tops. Her sister had likely worn it as a dress, tall daring willow that she was, but it meant that Pattie could undo the pants and no one was any the wiser. Oh the relief! Relief to be free, not only of the clothing restriction, but of the party and all the pretence and the denial.
When the voice filtered through the dense hedge, Pattie knew it was Teddy. No one else sat at the bottom of their garden at midnight, although Teddy had a cosy looking potting shed with a wood burner and a storm lantern.
‘All partied out?’ he asked.
‘All smoked out!’ Pattie replied with a smile and began to talk through the hedge about the candles catching light. They laughed, and she tried to keep the conversation light and funny, but then against her better judgement she began to tell him about her whole disastrous day, her whole disastrous relationship and her whole disastrous inability to say no.
Before too long, Pattie was trying to hide the tears out of her voice. She found a scrap of tissue in her pocket and wiped her eyes.
