THE HAPPY ENDING

It's called The Happy Ending, but is it? Really?

1

It was a brash night. A bitter, howling monster of a night, and Pedro paused on the corner of the lane that led past Mavis's house.

“I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be doing this,” he muttered, and the wind, a monster that had come from nowhere it seemed, whipped his words away and tore them to shreds.

He struggled on, rounding the corner and sighing as he glimpsed, through the acerbic wind-torn night, the gentle amber of lights from her bedroom window.

“She's there, though,” he sighed, “she's there, in her nightie, the little white and lacy nightie of hers, the one she hangs on her line in the sun, all snuggled up in her bed, all warm and reading that book of hers, the one she reads every night.”

He shivered with fear and the cold.

“Dared I?” he asked himself. “She'll not be expecting me. She's there, on her own … is she on her own or has some other swine wheedled his way into her bedroom? Is she lying there, even as I stand here and worry, in the arms of another? Is that what it's come to? That I should have been so close to her, and yet lost … everything...?”

The wind grabbed the broken branch of a tree and whipped it past his ears, narrowly missing his head and his brain.

That would have hurt, he underestimated.

The light in the bedroom went out. Suddenly. One instant it was amber and soft and beckoning, the next it was black.

“What might she be doing, now, with no light on?” he asked himself, knowing he was tormenting himself, but unable to stop it. “Is that other bloke in there, naked in her bed, maybe, arms round her, words in her ears, come to me, Mavis, I need you, I'm here for you whilst the b*****d Pedro isn't... he's out there in the cold and the wind, Mavis, and I'm in your bed, big and strong for you, full of promise for you whilst he's shrivelled in the bitter cold … Mavis, let's make love...”

Pedro stamped his feet, both of them, angrily. The movement helped his temper and his circulation.

A howling, biting, clinging blast of wind slid into him from nowhere, scattered the debris of the wild forest on him like confetti on an awkward bride, dragged him almost off his feet. Almost, but not quite.

“And I'm out here,” he muttered, “out in the cold, and I love Mavis. I love everything about her. I always have. Yet she hasn't even acknowledged that I exist! We live in the same world, we went to the same school, we worship the same idol … and I might be no more substantial than a shadow, all the notice she takes of me.”

It was true, of course. Painfully, he'd seen it. Mavis always ignored Pedro. She ignored him because, to her, he wasn't there. He never had been. She had enough worshippers not to need invisible men in her retinue. Pedro knew that. of course he did! He had eyes, didn't he? And those eyes saw the way things were, didn't they?

She would walk past him on the street, going here or there, jaunty, happy, singing, smiling, sometimes laughing, her tiny cotton dress not leaving much to the imagination, her perfect figure barely protected from prying eyes by its fragile fabric.

His prying eyes.

Oh yes, he knew better, of course he did, his parents had taught him manners, hadn't they? But his eyes did pry where Mavis was concerned.

Another gust of wind slammed into him, and he forgot prying for a moment as he found himself sprawled on the dusty ground with a mouth full of dead leaves and a bump on his head.

“Ouch!” he shouted.

There is a moment in every storm when a moment's silence separates two mighty, noisy events, and that moment's silence occurred as he shouted his monosyllabic declaration of pain.

“Ouch!” echoed down the lane and into the brick and stone walls of Mavis's little house.

A trail of blood was running down his face when he stood up. He could feel it, sticky and warm, when he rubbed it with a finger.

“Who's out there?” called a voice from the cottage. From Mavis's cottage. From her wonderful sanctum.

He couldn't answer. Not with blood on his cheek. Not with the storm's debris in his hair, his clothes, even inside his shoes. He just stood there.

“Go away,” he begged her, silently, “Go away, Mavis, you never notice me and if you were to just spot me for the first time I don't want it to be with me looking like this...”

But he did look like that.

And Mavis saw him.

Braving the worst of the weather she ducked and dived up to him.

“Pedro? Is that you, Pedro?” she asked.

He daren't say “yes” and he couldn't say “no”.

“Thank goodness it's you, Pedro,” she whispered, and he heard despite the worst efforts of the wind to steal her precious voice from him.

“You poor boy, you're bleeding,” she continued. “Come with me, I've got bandages and ointment and stuff like that. I'll mend you and then, when the storm's died down, you can carry on your way...”

He spluttered. “You want me...?” he asked.

She looked at him through those big eyes, the ones he'd worshipped for so long.

“I know I'm not your sort,” she said above the wind, “and I know you can never even begin to like me, Pedro, you never notice me even when I wear my naughtiest clothes! But this once I think you need some help.

“You... you want me...?” he repeated, lost for any words but those.

“I'm sorry, Pedro … I shouldn't presume...” she said, sadly. “I'll go. I'm sorry you're hurt. I only want to help you...”

“But...!” he found himself shouting as she turned to go.

She smiled awkwardly at him. “But?” she asked.

“But … Mavis...”

“Yes, that's my name.”

“Mavis?”

“Yes?”

“Don't you know...?”

“Don't I know?”

“Mavis … all these years … I love you! I always have! For ever!”

She looked at him and smiled a great big broad smile.

“Well I never,” she said.

2

“You look ill,” purred Mavis as she took Pedro by one hand and guided him to a chair in her parlour. He watched as she pulled her own coat off, revealing what he had known she would be wearing underneath: a white, snowy perfectly white, uncreased, nightie that clung to her shape here and there and hung loose everywhere else.

The only light in the room was the flickering from a log fire, and the room, in stark contrast to the world outside, was warm and cosy.

“Here, let me see to the bump on your head,” she said, her quiet voice like jewels turned into sound.

“I'm all right,” he said, awkwardly. And: “I'm sorry...” he rumbled.

She raised her eyebrows. “Sorry, Pedro? Why are you sorry?” she asked.

He felt even more awkward. “Because … I said... you know,” he stammered.

“That you love me?” she said lightly, tossing the words into a fragmented conversation, leavening it until her shining eyes forgave everything about him. Or so it felt.

“I do! I always have!” His timidity became ardour, his doubt became faith. I love you more than words can say, he thought, and I don't want to let myself down by trying to say the unsayable...

“You are sweet,” she purred. “I have seen you walk this way many times and I have wanted to run out, to take you by the hand, to bring you into my little cottage and … you know....”

He didn't know, but her leaving of a sentence stranded in mid air gave him strength. It redressed a perceived imbalance, and he was grateful.

“In the summer...,” she began, smiling, her eyes like jewels, and she sitting down on a sofa in front of the fire and beckoning him to join her.

To sit next to her! To feel the warmth of her as we share the same tiny space!

“Why don't you slip off that coat of yours and sit with me, here, next to me...?” she asked, patting the seat.

She hasn't really left enough room,” he mused, excited, it'll be quite a squash, on that small sofa...

But he did as he was told, and draped his coat over a chair near the door.

When he sat down on the sofa he was immediately aware of her warmth, a special glowing cosiness suffusing the sofa and the air around him, and then she leaned slightly towards him, not too close, not seeming too breast-pushing forward, and whispered, “I know what you mean, Pedro, for my heart has been aching too... As I was saying, in the summer, the sun-shining warm-aired summer with blue skies radiant above me and the fragrance of my flower garden all around me I have yearned for you, not anyone else, but you... I have ached to feel you near me, to know your strong arms could catch me if I fell...”

He swallowed. It was all getting to be too much. Her words … they reflected precisely what he himself had been scared to put into sound. And he still was. A man can dream, he told himself, a man can dream but those dreams are his and his alone, private, unrepeatable...

“I have looked at you in your summer dress, with your … legs ..,” he whispered, ignoring his own advice to himself, “I have seen the way you stand or sit, the way your dress hangs on you like a curtain that shuts off the wonders of Heaven... and I have wanted … you can have no idea how much I have wanted ...”

“Me?” she breathed.

And he nodded. He had to nod. Words were failing him. He knew, there and then, that this woman, a virtual stranger minutes ago, must share his life with him. He could accept no alternative, for she was perfection and all other women, however beautiful, were subordinate to her in his mind.

“I have wanted you,” he sighed.

“And here I am... think of that! Do you know what, Pedro? Can you imagine what? On this windy, nasty evening...?”

He shook his head. The subject had changed. The winds were back, the rain, the tearing gale, the battering storm. And he only wanted to think about, to talk, about, to be obsessed by her, and that precluded imagining anything else and certainly not the world outside her cottage windows.

“Pretend it's summer once again,” she almost crooned, and she stood up, slim and tall and with eyes that having looked at a man instantly owned him. Then she did the impossible. In the most dreadful, fascinating slow motion she slipped her pristine white nightie to the ground �" first off one shoulder then off another and then let it trickle down her perfect skin until it was a snowy pool at her feet.

And underneath it she was naked.

“This is for you,” she whispered. “This is for my Pedro lover-boy. Are you too shy to join me? Come... come here … follow me, my big, big Pedro...”

His mouth was drier than a desert even though he could hear rain lashing against the window. But he stood up. He had to.

And she glided to the foot of a staircase and started climbing up, up, up...

No! he shrieked inside his head, this is all too much... it's a dream that'll turn into a nightmare, I know it will, Heaven can't be like this, and I can't be in it!

His coat was near the door. But he was indecisive. “I've got to go,” he stammered, “you're too perfect, I'm just a wretch, I must go out into the cold, I can't stay in Paradise...”

“Big boys don't cry off,” she teased, turning her face to smile at him. “Come on, Pedro, I have a real treat for you, and my boudoir's waiting... It's all so special and it's all for you...”

He groaned. He was a divided person. Half of him needed to stay and half to go, now, swiftly, before he could no longer decide.

But the conflict within him decided, and whilst his mind was raging against itself he followed her up the stairs and into a pretty-as-pink room, with lacy curtains and an amber light from a lamp that suffused the room from everywhere.

“Welcome to my boudoir,” she breathed, and lithe and young and beautiful, she slid between the glowing sheets of her bed.

“Come, join me, Pedro,” she whispered, “come and let me tell you a story of love and hope and the special spouses of we black widows everywhere...”