Oggbashan Stew Pt. 03

Penelope intended to be away on the archaeological site for a week. It would take two days each way to get to the remote area once they were in Saudi Arabia. Allowing for the flights and the time to and from the UK airport Penelope would effectively be missing for a fortnight, or two weeks of the twin's school time. I thought I and Britta could manage easily. It might delay some of my research. As I was working for myself and already had a more than adequate income I didn't see that as a problem.

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Story 054

Round Robin

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Finally I had found Jean's Christmas list. She had put it away with the unused Christmas Cards from last year. This year, as a widower, I would have to send out the Christmas Cards. I was saddened to reflect that this was one of the tasks Jean had done during our long marriage.

I had begun to get to grips with all the things Jean had done to keep our household running smoothly. The cooking, the washing up, the laundry she had done, refusing help from me because she did it her way. The household cleaning and maintenance had been my tasks as were paying the bills and helping with the shopping.

After thirty years of childless marriage we had established a regular routine and clearly defined roles. Over the past ten months I had gradually begun to find my own way of working.

In January Jean had been killed in a car crash and I had been badly injured. I was still in a wheelchair at her funeral. It was April before I could walk with crutches. Now, in late November, all I needed was a stick sometimes.

The Christmas Card list was more accurate than our address book. I think Jean remembered friends' addresses or she must have written them down but not in the address book. I found that there were about thirty people on the Christmas list that I hadn't written to after Jean's death. I thought I had invited everyone to her funeral. This list showed me that I had overlooked too many friends. They might live further away even on different continents but they wouldn't know that Jean was dead.

I don't like Round Robin letters but I think I'm going to have to use one to tell those thirty people that Jean is dead. I will write it in Word and try to personalise it for each person, but the basic information will be the same. Jean is dead and I'm living alone.

The word alone made me feel momentarily sorry for myself. I am alone. Jean couldn't have children. That was what broke her first marriage. Alan wanted children. Jean's gynaecology, not diagnosed until after three years of trying, meant that she couldn't conceive. Alan and Jean reluctantly agreed to divorce. I met Jean a couple of weeks after her divorce became final. I wasn't looking for a wife. I was house hunting after returning to the UK at the end of a lucrative ten year contract.

Jean wanted to sell her house and downsize. I went to view her house and we liked each other. I asked her out and to my surprise she said yes. I didn't buy her house because someone else had made an offer before I had even looked at it.

Jean and I went house hunting together. I hadn't converted my International Driving Licence to a UK one, so she drove us around. She was looking for a small two bedroom bungalow. I was looking for a three or four bedroom detached house because I thought I would have to house my elderly parents. We shared a sense of humour about Estate Agents' florid descriptions of decrepit properties.

The sale of Jean's house took much longer than it should have done because there was a temporary shortage of mortgages. By the time the completion date had been set, Jean and I had become an item. I had proposed and she had accepted me.

We bought a four bedroom house for which I paid outright. We had our own house and capital from the sale of her house and the remainder of the accumulation from my work abroad. We were both employed and earning good salaries but for what or for whom? We had no children. We couldn't have children. Jean and I were only children and although there were more distant relations we had no close ones except our parents.

Twenty years after we had married all four parents were dead. Jean and I were inseparable and looking forward to enjoying a well funded retirement. We amused ourselves by considering which good causes should inherit when we died. Sometimes we were ridiculous, suggesting mythical causes that would use our money for weird projects. Other times we were more serious. Our wills specified the survivor and then some national charities. We had left token sums to the younger distant relations even if they seemed financially secure.

Four names on the Christmas list made my eyes moisten. How could I have forgotten them? I checked the list of people I had invited to Jean's funeral. No. They weren't there. I hadn't invited Jean's four bridesmaids. Every third year the five of them would meet for a weekend together at a Spa hotel. They had met the November before Jean died. She had taken off to the hotel driving herself. When she returned she had obviously enjoyed herself, as she usually did. They didn't know she was dead unless someone else had told them.

I was kicking myself for my stupidity. Jean was closer to those four than almost anyone. How could I have forgotten them? I suppose it was the effect of grief.

As well as the identical letters to the twenty-five or so people I hadn't already told about Jean's death I wrote a different round robin just to those four, apologising for not having told them about Jean's death. I sent those letters separately from their Christmas cards. I walked to the post box and sent them today. I would send their cards with all the others in a week or so.

By the late evening I had finished the whole pile of Christmas cards. They were in their addressed envelopes with the stamps already on. They could wait a week before I posted them.

The next few days I still felt sad about not telling Jean's long standing friends. My omission niggled in my brain. How and why had I forgotten those four?

In the middle of the week I went to the Post Office and sent all my Christmas cards. The size of the pile reminded me that I did have friends even if I didn't see many of them that often. I wasn't really as alone as I had thought. I didn't have relations. I did have friends.

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Next morning the postman delivered more letters than usual. Normally I get two or three bills a week and maybe a personal letter once a month. There were at least a dozen letters or cards for me. Most were from the people I had sent the identical round robin announcing Jean's death. They sent fairly conventional expressions of regret. The last letter was fatter. I sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and slit the envelope open carefully.

There were four handwritten letters from Jean's bridesmaids. They all expressed shock and surprise that they hadn't known that Jean was dead. They appreciated that I had been injured and trying to cope with Jean's loss as well as notify everyone but...

The gist of each letter was that if they had known, they would have offered their help to me. They knew how much I had loved Jean, how much she had loved me, and they had been jealous for years. Each of them had a failed marriage now in the past, and for the last two meetings Jean had been very careful not to compare her married happiness with their single states.

The four of them, led by Sheila, whom I remembered as the organising one, invited me to spend Christmas with them at the Spa hotel where they used to meet with Jean. If I accepted, they would arrange everything. All I had to do was get to the hotel on the twenty-third, two days before Christmas and be prepared to stay until after New Year's Day or perhaps a day or two longer. They offered friendship, companionship, and most of all they wanted to celebrate Jean's life which they would have done at the funeral.

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Story 055

Satin Ribbons

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"Irene? Can you use this?" Her sister Hazel asked as she walked into our house dragging a large wheeled suitcase.

"What is it?" Irene asked.

"We finally got to the back of the shop store room. Derek found some material and several reels of satin ribbon. It's no use to us but we thought you might be able to use some of it."

While the three of us were sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea Hazel opened the suitcase to show Irene the contents. Irene behaved as if she was a small child unwrapping Christmas presents. Hazel was almost laughing at her sister's enthusiasm.

Our dedication to our hobbies are not shared by families or our friends.

"Fred and Irene are boring."

We had heard that so many times from our friends. We knew they thought it was true. We didn't think we were boring, just contented with a quiet existence together.

But a year after our marriage the sex was becoming routine and occasionally non-existent. The boring statement was becoming true, even to us. Our friends would not have been surprised. They wondered why we had got married to each other. We were the most conventional and staid people they knew.

But that's what we liked about each other. We were predictable and enjoyed a peaceful quiet existence. While some of our friends might go off to remote parts of the world for adventure holidays we were happy going to stately homes, museums and gardens. We were happy to go to the same gardens several times a year to see the changing seasons.

Even our hobbies were predictable. Irene liked dressmaking. She was happy spending hours at a sewing machine. Most of the time she was making party clothes for her friends, dresses and gowns that she would never dare to wear. I restored ancient mechanical items from the 20th Century and earlier, small stationary engines, and volunteered at our local heritage steam railway. Irene's skills were useful to them too because she could make authentic looking costumes for vintage days.

We had been in a wider group of friends from the local technical college. Irene and I had worked in the finance department of our local authority in different rooms. We met because she had been given an older Singer treadle sewing machine. It was too stiff to work properly. Someone suggested that I might be able to service it. Irene asked me. It didn't take me long to get it running freely. She liked it so much that she started collecting sewing machines and needed my skills frequently.

We enjoyed each others' company so much that we decided to marry. My parents owned a large farm that had been several smaller farms. They offered us one of the unused farmhouses to live in. It needed work to make it habitable but crucially it didn't have any restrictions on its use as a house. Irene's parents had helped us with finance for the specialist work that we and our friends couldn't do. We had lived in part of the house while the rest was being repaired and restored. A year after our marriage the whole house was in a sound condition. We could always do more but every room was useable, the wiring and plumbing were new, and importantly the roof and exterior were fixed.

One large room had been made into Irene's sewing room and sewing museum. A large outbuilding, formerly a wagon house, had become my workshop. Next to it was an open-fronted barn. I could run my stationary engines in there without choking on the fumes.

We were content with our existence. We were both employed in the local town with reasonable incomes. We didn't have a mortgage. By the standards of most of our friends we were financially secure, so much so that some were jealous. They weren't jealous of our lifestyle. They couldn't understand how we could be contented with such a mundane existence.

The only sad part was that we could never have children. The details don't matter. I couldn't make any woman pregnant. Irene couldn't conceive even from the most virile stud. We knew that we couldn't have children soon after we became boyfriend and girlfriend. Now we are resigned to that. We do have young nephews and nieces. The boys like my mechanical items. The girls like Irene's sewing skills particularly for parties and dressing up. Actually that's incorrect. Both girls and boys like my machines and the boys like their superhero costumes Irene can make. Although our friends might think us boring, the children like our predictability. We're always the same...

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Irene's elder sister Hazel lives with her husband Derek and children in a town about twenty miles away. They had rented a large flat above a bridal shop until the owner retired and offered the whole building to them at a discount. With parental help and a mortgage they had bought it. As boyfriend and girlfriend we had helped them with the conversion into a house with a much smaller shop area. The skills we practised there helped on our own house.

Hazel and Derek had partially repaid us for our work on their premises by giving all the unsold bridal gowns, materials and the specialist sewing machinery from the old shop. Even a couple of years after the major conversion work they were still emptying store rooms in the annexe behind the shop where the seamstresses had worked. The suitcase Hazel had dragged in was their latest find.

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Story 056

Sea View

We loved our house. With help from both sets of parents we had been able to buy a small end-of-terrace house on a new estate. The repayments were almost too much for us to afford but we hoped that in a few years we would have more money for us.

In the meantime we had furnished the house with relative's cast-off furniture and curtains from a freecycle offer. We didn't have much but what we had was ours with no payment plans to cripple our budget.

The estate had been named "Sea View". While that might be true from the field before the estate had been built, now it was only true of the large expensive executive detached houses at the front of the estate. We could see the sea if we stood on the ridge of our roof, but not otherwise.

We thought we couldn't have a sea view until Jason was helping me to decide where to put the post for the washing line. He was standing on a step ladder holding string in the air for me to see if I could reach to peg the clothes.

"Helen," he said suddenly, "I can see the sea from up here."

"You can? I don't believe you."

He dropped the string to the rubble field that we hoped to plant with grass.

"You try. I'm sure you could see it too."

He came down and held the ladder while I climbed it. He held my legs and had a peek at my panties. I slapped his head away before it disappeared under my skirt.

"Jason! No peeking!" I hissed. "Not here. Not where the neighbours can see..."

"Spoilsport!" he whispered back.

He was right. I could see the sea from the stepladder. That part of the garden had a view over the garages between two houses in the next row. The view included a beach and the lighthouse on the headland. It was framed as if in a picture.

I turned around on the ladder just in case there were any more views. All I could see were the houses behind us and they had a direct view into the back of our house. Anyone in them could see straight into our kitchen, living room and main bedroom. Of course we could see them too. I turned round and came down the stepladder with my back to it. Jason slid his hands up my body so that I wouldn't fall. I stopped as the garages just began to obstruct the view.

"That's it, Jason" I said. "That's the lowest point at which I can see."

"Can you hold that position if I let you go for a second?"

"Yes."

Jason picked up the string and held one end by my head at eye level. He put his foot on the string where it reached the ground. We measured the length. With my eyes at eight feet six inches from the ground I could see the sea. If I moved any lower than that, I couldn't. I'm five feet six in my bare feet. Jason is ever so slightly over six feet. He insists that he is over six foot tall. I humour him. I don't care whether he is five foot eleven or six foot one but I know it matters to him.

"Helen, would you sit on the bench please?"

The bench is one of our inherited treasures. It came from a great aunt. It has cast iron ends and teak slats. Each end is in the shape of a crouching sphinx holding a railway's coat of arms between the paws. The great uncle had bought the bench at an auction in the nineteen-fifties and the bench had stood in their garden until the great aunt decided to move into a warden assisted flat earlier this year. She was happy that it was going to someone who would like it. We loved it. It is very heavy but comfortably shaped.

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Story 057

Silence

Why didn't she scream? Or at least shout?

I was walking back from an evening at our local public house in the street next to mine and passing a footpath to some communal garages when I heard the scuffle as I walked past the dark entrance. I thought it might be an animal such as a fox until I saw the shapes struggling. She was propped against a wall. I heard the thuds as his fists hit her body.

I yelled "Stop that!" and rushed towards them. The male figure's face turned towards me just as a car's headlights flashed from behind me. Under his hood I could see his white face. It seemed like flash photography had stopped the moment showing him very clearly. His mouth was open showing a gold tooth. His chin had an edging of black stubble. He wore a silver nose ring. There was a distinctive spider's web tattoo across his right cheek.

"Fuck off!" he yelled back at me. He might have intended to add something else but he thought better of it. I am not small. I was running towards him. Even on the rugby field I sometimes intimidate opponents when I'm charging them. It seemed to work for him too. He turned and ran.

I would have chased him but the woman slid down the wall. I had to hurdle her legs. I ignored him and the commotion as he scrambled over garden fences. I braked myself against the wall, stopped and then went back to the woman.

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

There was no reply. I bent down towards her. In the darkness I could make out her shape but no details.

"Are you OK?" I asked again.

She didn't reply. Her hands reached up towards me. I took them and pulled her up. She swayed on her feet. I put an arm around her and helped her to the street. In the streetlights I could see blood trickling from her mouth and nose.

"Shall I call an ambulance?"

She shook her head.

"Police?"

She shook her head more violently. The movement hurt her. I could see the effort it had cost her.

"My house is just around the corner. We'll go there and tidy you up."

She didn't object.

I held her up as we staggered the few yards to my front door. Her weight dragged against me. She was nearly as tall as I am. I took her through to my large kitchen, shooed a cat off the armchair beside the Aga cooker and lowered her into it. In the fluorescent light her face was unnaturally pale with the marks of old bruising underneath the new reddening and trickles of blood.

I wet a flannel with cold water and handed it to her. She wiped her face, grimacing as she touched the open cuts, and then accepted a towel.

"I think you need some plasters. Shall I put them on, or bring you a mirror so you can?"

Her hands made frantic gestures. I couldn't understand them but it was obvious that she was using some form of sign language.

"I can't understand you," I said. "Are you dumb?"

She nodded.

"But you can hear and understand me?"

She didn't need to nod again but did.

"Can you write?"

Another nod.

"OK. Stay there and I'll get you some paper and a pen."

Once she had a pen in her hand the explanations began.

We introduced each other. I'm Harry. She is Clare.

Her attacker was her nearly-ex husband. She has an injunction against him and he shouldn't come anywhere near her. The divorce will be final in about two weeks. She didn't want to go to court again because his family had money for lawyers. Each time she went to court she was cross-examined mercilessly and having to communicate in sign language made it difficult for her to present herself adequately.