21 THE START AND THE END

That's it, then

Sophia Stone sighed and picked up her laptop computer.

“Time to start my new book,” she said to herself, aloud even though there was nobody else listening bar the ears inside her brain. “I do hope I can find the right man for my lass!”

So she began.

CHAPTER ONE, she typed, and then:

Germaine Paltry stood by the grave of the love of her life, tears rolling down her cheeks and soaking into the linen of a clean fresh handkerchief.

“It’s not right,” she sobbed, “we hadn’t enjoyed enough years together, and now you’re gone…”

The vicar (not a priest, I’ll have a vicar, I’ve thought too much about priests this last few days) looked at her and shook his head. He knew how she felt. He’d seen it before as the tears of grieving partners had almost washed away the spirit of his faith. When his words were over and the small crowd of mourners shuffled away he remained where he was.

Germaine Paltry stood there, dressed soberly in black, and then, after whispering a few final words of goodbye to Kenny lying cold in his pine casket, she turned to walk away.

“I’m sorry, Germaine,” said the vicar quietly.

“It’s the work of your good Lord,” she replied tartly, “he should have lived a great deal longer, but he didn’t. He was taken away from me, and I loved him so much.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform,” intoned the clergyman, knowing the emptiness of the epithet but saying it anyway.

“I don’t want to quarrel with you. Not now. But what you just said is a load of so much nonsense and I suspect that you know it,” she said. “Your Lord wasn’t with my Kenny when he went out that day. He was smiling when he kissed me goodbye. Did your Lord detest that kiss? Did he frown upon that smile? Was that what Kenny did wrong, to love a woman and, by loving her, make her so wonderfully happy?

“I understand your grief,” he said, knowing that he didn’t. How could he? His own life was so tiny, wrapped up in a host of pointless religious services, prayers that he rather suspected were said to nobody asking for this or that boon from no-one.

“You don’t, Mr Summers,” she said, “you can have no idea… for you weren’t .there when I met him that first time. It was a wonderful day in high summer and I was on the beach in Roses. You know Roses, Mr Summers? A wonderful part of Spain? I was standing there, watching a small group of children playing. They were building something out of sand. It might have been sandcastles or it might have been anything. A cottage or a castle… who can tell?

“And Kenny was there. He was wearing tartan swimming shorts, so I guessed he was a Brit and that we at least shared the same language, and he was that perfect kind of man to look at, not totally muscle, nor going to fat, not pale like a snow-bound ghost, and his hair was long enough to be tossed by the winds from the sea, yet not too long to be, how shall I put it, feminine…”

“I’m sure he was your heart’s delight,” murmured the vicar, hoping that he was coming forth with the right words, but certain that he wasn’t. He knew nothing about hearts being delighted. He was married, true enough, but wasn’t blessed with delight in his state of wedded bliss. It had been a formality and she was a tartar.

“My heart’s delight? He was nothing of the sort!” she snapped back at him. “He was a stranger on a beach! I didn’t know him, we had never spoken, so how could he be anything more than that? A stranger on the beach! I’ve been with other men who may have become my heart’s delight, but few, if any, did. I’ve always been very selective when it’s come to love, Mr Summers. And I have never made snap judgements anywhere about hearts being delighted by what the eyes saw!”

“I … I’m sorry,” he replied, trying to look contrite but not properly understanding her.

“Tell me, Mr Summers, what has your Lord gained by taking my Kenny from me? You see, on that beach in Spain he had the cheek to come up to me and speak to me.

‘Hello,’ he said, ‘are you here on your own?’

“’I wasn’t. I was with Billy, but we’d had a quarrel over some trivial matter and he’d gone off in a huff. I don’t even know why I was with Billy nor why I was at Roses, and what we’d quarrelled about must have been so insignificant because I’ve no idea what it was. You see, Mr Summers, Billy was a man and for a while that was enough until I got to know him, and then it most certainly wasn’t enough. So to see a man and call him, at that moment, my heart’s delight, is most offensive!’

“’Yet that is what he became.’

“’I’m sorry, Germaine. May I call you that? It’s the way I see you … not as Mrs This or Mrs That, but Germaine...’

“’I suppose so, Reverence… does it matter what we call each other in life? It’s not names that are important, but the life we live, the matter of who we are… Kenny was a good man. Oh, he had his faults and I know that he had an eye for the ladies, but it was just an eye. He had an eye for me on that beach in Roses after all!’

“The vicar turned to walk away, meaning to leave the widow in peace for as long as she needed.

“Don’t go,” she said, quickly, “tell me about death...”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he began.

“You must see more than most, Mr Summers … your Reverence … you officiate at so many funerals, you say the same words over so many lifeless bodies to so many groups of mourners. So you must know more about death than most.”

“I know it’s without life,” he said, “the soul has departed...”

“Then tell me about the soul,” she insisted.

“What do you want me to tell you?”

“The soul you speak of. Is it real or just a convenient representation of a life that’s no longer being lived. Does it, in fact, exist?”

“Why do you ask, Germaine? What is it you need to know, and, yes, why do you want to know it?”

“I don’t know, Mr Summers,” she said, and then, and only then, she walked away, clad in black, and with a heart that was weeping. And she walked towards a stranger, not one watching children at play on a beach but one waiting for her by the cemetery gate…

Sophia put her laptop to one side.

“This isn’t going the way I planned,” she muttered to herself, “I guess I’ve been around too much death of late. Even the tragedy of the old man and his visitor were too close for comfort… And I don’t really understand the answers to the questions I seem to be asking. I wonder if anyone does. Anyway, time for a coffee...”

She wandered into the kitchen, wondering what Kenny, her fictitious Kenny, might really have been like.

“I’ve never really loved anyone,” she thought sadly, “and maybe like the old man who knifed himself over a slip of a girl I never will.”

Then the doorbell rang. Insistently, like doorbells shouldn’t, and she clicked her teeth in annoyance.

The young detective constable stood there, nervous, as if she both wanted to be where she was, and didn’t.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I hope you don’t mind … I need to ask you something...”

“Well you’d better come in. I’m having a mid-morning coffee, and you can join me if you like,” said Sophia.

“Thanks. You are … kind...” said Pamela Smythe.

“What was it you wanted to know?” asked Sophia.

“Well, you write about love and stuff,” began Pamela slowly, “and I’ve read some of your lovely books. Your heroines are so … so human...”

“Thanks,” smiled Sophia.

“But your heroes, the men those gorgeous women love … they sometimes seem to me, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but less sort of real.”

“Yes,” replied Sophia slowly, “I suppose they are...”

“Have you ever thought… asked Pamela so awkwardly she wished the floor would open up and swallow her, “have you ever thought that, maybe, it might be just as well if you had two heroines and no heroes?” And she blushed as if she’d said something that had come from so deep in her heart she’d never be able to funnel the words back in.

“You mean, like you?” asked Sophia, and she rested one hand gently onto Pamela’s, and smiled at her.

“Maybe...”

Sophia sighed. “Life and love ask so many questions,” she said, “and none of them seem to have a proper answer until one question comes along that is so blindingly obvious there’s nothing but right answers...”

THE END

© Peter Rogerson 27.01.19