18. Meeting Michael.

THE POETESS Part 18

Rosie, now in her seventies, got to wondering where the years had gone.

When she looked back on her life she found herself mentally dividing it into three parts: childhood and schooldays were one, then the rest of her life a second, and finally the present.

And it all seemed, so far as she was concerned, to have gone virtually nowhere.

The schooldays had been crowned by that magical kiss with Roy, but she hadn’t seen Roy in years. He had done what he saw as the right thing and stuck by Violet. Archie had grown to be his father’s son and even gone to college to learn how to teach while she believed Roy still worked for Jones the builders.

Aunt Mildred and Mrs Babbage became man and wife and he faded into relative obscurity while she continued to smile. In the end, and quite recently, they both passed away in the way people do when their time is up.

Woolworths had been closed down, but she had no need to look further afield for work because it was time for her to think of retiring. And that meant retiring to the solitude of her pretty cottage home.

I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, though. How old was I when I fell in love with this place? It was so derelict I even thought it might fall down if we pushed the door too hard to open it. But I did it! I bought it and paid to have it restored to wonderful glory.

Over all the years I’ve wanted to share it with someone special to me.

I nearly did way back in the late seventies when I met Michael Micklecott. I suppose I was thirtyish by then, and had become a supervisor at work. I had a little car of my own because, much as I love Strong Lane in spring and summer, it can be a long walk in winter.

Michael worked for the council. They were measuring things for a detailed map of the town and my cottage, which had never made it onto any earlier maps, was in their eyeline.

“Excuse me madam,” said the youngish man with a clipboard and strange little beard that seemed to be no more than a tiny hairy extension of his lower lip, “Do you mind if I...?”

He had knocked the door quite politely, and it was a matter of fortune that Rosie heard him because she was in the garden tidying up the flower bed that she called Harry’s Grave. It was early summer and she hated it when unwanted weeds put in their annual appearance. That grave with its deeply-buried wooden box that she had made herself was a connection, in her mind, to a past she knew precious little about but wanted to enjoy as if it was, in some obscure way, part of her own story.

“Yes,” she said, smiling. She usually smiled at strangers. It put both them and she at ease.

“I’m from the council,” he said, “you’re not any any maps.”

“Really?” she said, and giggled, “maybe you should mark me next to my house on your map.”

“No. I meant the house isn’t,” he said, frowning, “there’s reference to a mill. I guess there might have been a windmill near here in days of yore.”

“A watermill,” she corrected him, “this was the miller’s cottage, long ago, probably in Victorian times or even earlier.”

He frowned. “That might explain it,” he conceded, “so I should imagine it’ll be a comfort to you when you end up on a proper map as a proper home and not some old mill.”

“I can’t say I’m really that bothered about maps,” she said, still smiling, “but you can do whatever your lords and masters at the council have told you to do and measure me up.”

“I’m not to measure any people,” he replied, and she could tell that he was blushing.

“I was joking,” she explained, “would you like a cup of tea to go with your exertions?”

“The sun is rather hot.”

“I was weeding the garden and thinking of going in for a break myself before I got sunstroke,” she told him almost truthfully.

“That would be very welcome, madam,” he murmured in reply.

“I’m not married,” she said, “and if you like you can call me Rosie.”

“That’s a nice name,” he said, a little shyly.

“My parents thought so when I was born,” she grinned.

“I’m Michael,” he said, “Michael Micklecott, which is one big mouthful, so I answer to Mike.”

“Then that’s what I’ll call you, Mike. So come on into the shade and I’ll make us some tea. Milk and sugar?”

“No sugar, thanks.”

Mike followed Rosie into the kitchen and sat at her table while she bustled with the kettle. And he watched her. He was a single man and she was a woman and he did something extraordinary for him. He found himself admiring her without actually knowing her first.

“It’s a bit out of the way down here,” he commented, breaking what might have become an awkward silence if the thoughts creeping unbidden into his mind took root.

She smiled at him. “That’s what I like about it,” she said, “there’s no hustle and bustle, and if any cars come this way I can hear them rattling down the lane long before I see them!”

“You like your own company, then?” he ventured, “you said you weren’t married, but how about boyfriends. I’d hate to be sitting here sipping your tea when a jealous boyfriend came in!”

“No boyfriend,” she said, “so there’s no toes for you to worry about treading on. What about you? I’d guess a good looking bloke like you will have a very pretty wife at home, and maybe a toddler or two.”

He shook his head. “Nobody,” he replied, almost mournfully, “I did have a girl, and she was pretty. We were together for about a year and then she decided that Brumpton is too small a place and left to go to University in Leeds. Then she wrote to me, when she’d been there for about a week, and told me she’d fallen in love with a long haired drummer in an avant-garde pop group. And as I can’t play any kind of musical instrument I’m left in the cold, which is just as well because the last I heard she was she was somewhere in France with a drummer who had to sell his drums because he had a wife and toddler in tow.”

“That’s quite a story,” she said. “I’ve not got any kind of toddler in tow and there won’t be one unless I go off the pill.”

Why did I tell him that? It wasn’t long after the famous contraceptive pill was made freely available to all that I opted to take it as soon as I could because I had a memory of how a teacher who should have known a darned sight better blighted Violet’s life. Yes, Archie was a smashing kid, but his existence in her life sent it careering off-course. And Roy. I doubt that he’d ever have settled with Violet but for another man’s misbehaviour. Why, he might have even fallen for me!

“You’re on the pill?” he asked, surprised.

She smiled at him again. “It’s the only sensible thing a girl can do if she wants to take control of her own life,” she said, “I’ve never actually slept with anyone as such, but I don’t want the option to be taken off the table if an opportunity comes along! You lads have all the luck when it comes to the safety of the more glorious paths in life!”

“You’re too nice to be messed with,” he muttered, “I tell you what, let me measure up before we talk the day into night and I get to like you too much!”

And that’s what he did. Carefully, methodically, he measured my garden and commented sweetly about Harry’s grave when he got to it.

Poor Harry. I’d like to have known him.

But I got to know a little bit more about Mike instead.

© Peter Rogerson 24.3.21

...