35. The Next Kiss

THE POETESS Part 35

And that was that. It had to be. Roy might have been in France, but I had no idea where he was in that fairly large country and anyway I’d never been abroad, never acquired a passport and had no intention of going on a wild goose chase looking for the memory of a special kiss.

So the last few years slipped by. I kept in touch with Archie ‘just in case’, and the gathering storm of Covid 19 cause lockdown after lockdown and there was little I could do besides caring for my back lawn and its flower beds. And I wrote these notes, not in the form of verse but as an accurate recollection of my life in prose.

I could write quite a lot here about our political masters, but I won’t. I have quite a few thoughts in my mind concerning them, thoughts that are more critical than critical. I can see a pattern in what they say and do which I believe is reminiscent of the politics of Germany during the 1930s. But less of that.

More than once I went into my garden and asked Harry Smithson’s bones what he thought and his reply came loud in the form of silence. They may have said nothing, but they comforted me

Once or twice his grandson popped in until he married the love of his life a couple of years back, and then nobody popped in.I had chosen to live in Millers Cottage on my own, and this was my reward.

Except, of course, the pandemic, and it’s been that behind my need to compile my memories in this little exercise book. One day someone may find it, may read it, may even ask themselves why the memory of one teenage kiss has been like a shadow over the greater part of my life.

But it has. I tell myself it’s been the kiss, but I rather suspect it was the lad who kissed me.

And now, suddenly, I can go into town. Without being arrested for breaking this or that lockdown rule. And the shops will be open. Some of them. Many, during the long year since this all began will have shrivelled and gone out of business. It’s what our lives are all about: business, and the ebb and flow of money.

Most people have forgotten what money really is: a token standing in the place of something you may wish to barter with. You know, I’ll swap you a bag of flour for a brush and pan because I’ve done with cooking and my house is dusty.

It isn’t, but you know what I mean. People tend to think of money as a thing of innate value, but in truth its only worth is what you can swap it for.

One bonus of this long period of isolation is my hair. It’s growing again, already past my shoulders, and, you know, I’m going to let it! I’ll be the old lady with long white hair, and the kids will probably want to know where my broomstick is!

So now I’m off out into the world. Finally after so long keeping safe. I gave up my car a few years ago because I hardly ever used it and anyway I need the exercise. So I’m walking.

Rosie stepped out proudly, taking it easy because, well, at her age she must take things slowly and anyway Strong Lane is as it always was, a scruffy, barely made-up lane that nobody seemed to use any more. There were weeds growing in potholes, there to fool old legs into taking a step in error!

It was about a mile to the shops and it wasn’t long before Rosie needed to take a break, to rest her weary legs, but mostly because so much exercise out of the blue was making her breathless. Anyway, she didn’t mind the odd break. It was a chance for her to look around and remember the very first time she’d found her way down here.

But eventually she arrived in town. Brumpton seemed very much the same as it always had, but there were people everywhere. She wasn’t the only person to take advantage of the end of a lockdown!

She pulled her mask into place. Bloody thing, but if it saved lives a little inconvenience didn’t matter.

“Hi, Rosie,” came a voice. Several voices, and she answered them with a smile hidden by the mask she was wearing.

“Hi Donna! Glad to see you! And you look so well…”

Then: “Hi, Sylvia, look, it’s growing again!” That was her hair. Sylvia had been the stylist who had cut off the long swirls of her hair a decade earlier and tended it ever since, until the privations of the past year.

She even saw Constance from the library, now as old as herself and using a walking frame. “Hi,” she said, and “hi,” they all replied.

Then, out of the blue.

“Rosie!”

Such a familiar voice. It had to be.

She swivelled round and almost fell in her haste, but yes, underneath his mask it just had to be Roy.

“Roy?” she quavered, needing to make sure that it was him underneath the black mask that covered half of his face.

But it was. It had to be.

“Right!” she almost shouted, “Don’t you dared move, Roy Taylor!”

And he didn’t.

In seconds she was at him, In seconds her mask was off and in her pocket and his pulled down below his chin.

And, yes, it was the same mouth, the same lips, the same tongue, the same kiss. But this time she wasn’t going to stop. Not for anything. Not for the eyes of strangers staring at her. Not for the grey fog that slowly swept over her, the mist from above the Heavens as in the serenity of her joy her heart paused, and paused, and beat again.

“Oh Rosie,” breathed Roy, “my lovely Rosie.”

THE END

© Peter Rogerson, 10.04.21

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