SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT

Sometimes I find myself creating a simple sort of love story, like this one.

It didn’t take long for Louise to fall in love with Derek. Greg had told her to and she usually found herself agreeing with what he said.

“Go ahead,” he had suggested, “take him out, mother him, he’ll love you for it.”

“And if I find myself falling for him?” she asked.

“Then all in the world will be perfect,” he had sighed, “it will have gone a full circle and you’ll be back where you should have been.”

That didn’t make much sense to her, but then Greg said quite a lot of things that didn’t make sense to her. He was a wise man and with an almost magical ease he could his finger on most problems, and solve them.

Her problem, though, was Greg himself. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with him, not per se, he was clean in his habits, kind in his manner, bright as a button and generous to a fault. But he wasn’t for her.

He had tried, poor lamb, he had bestowed all manner of things on to her, he had even taken her to his bed only weeks after his wife Annie passed away, and he had loved Annie with a special kind of love, everyone knew that, so taking Louise to his matrimonial bed so soon after the cancer had done for his dearest Annie the one woman he had ever called the love of his life, had been something more special than Louise could have imagined.

But it hadn’t been fun, and being in bed with a man ought to be fun, oughtn’t it?

In the end she had, very sadly, told him it wasn’t working. She put it kindly, though, suggesting that Annie had been the one for Greg and she herself clearly wasn’t good enough to even sleep in her shadow.

It’s what Greg himself had thought, not because he wanted to criticise Louise but because it was true.

“Why don’t you see what the new fellow across the road’s like?” he had asked, “you might find yourself being swallowed up by a wave of affection from him because, Louise, from the way I see things you are unbelievably loveable, but not, sadly, by me.”

Then he did something spectacularly generous. He held a party with loads of bottles containing an awesome percentage of alcohol between them, and amongst his guests, besides Annie’s parents, were Louise and Derek.

And when Louise saw Derek her heart almost stopped.

In her mind she had constructed a sort of shadowy image of what she thought the perfect man should look like. He should be, give or take a month or two, about thirty years old, he should have the very first suggestion of a receding hair line and the rest of his hair should have maybe one or two white strands struggling through a thick dark thatch. He should dress casually but smartly, should emit the gentlest aroma of a manly aftershave and, finally, should have a mouth made for laughter because mouths made for laughter were almost always good when it came to kissing. That, briefly, was her shadowy image of the perfect man, and there he was, Derek by name and unbelievably fanciable by nature.

What she didn’t know, though, was that Derek also had a resident shadow in his brain, a mental construct of his own perfect woman, and had she known she would have looked at her reflection in her bedroom mirror and sighed her pleasure, because she was it, no doubt, from the top of her head, as the saying goes, down to the tip of her toes.

It was in Derek’s nature to be reserved, but when he saw her he swallowed and backed into a corner so that he could watch her, making sure that if he boldly marched up to her and told her that he really fancied her he wouldn’t be putting another man’s nose out of joint.

Also, it was in Louse’s nature to be a little on the shy side which was probably why she was still single at thirty-two, and she backed against a wall in order to watch him just in case some repugnant tart claimed him for her own.

And it was at the same precise moment when they were watching each other secretively that the shadow of the perfect man oozed out of Louise somehow whilst the mental shadow of the perfect woman broke free from her consciousness and drifted among the party goers.

And the two shadows met in the centre of the party, under the light that marked the architect’s assumption of where the centre of the ceiling must be, and knew that they were in love with each other. They had to be didn’t they? It was as if they had been designed by a deity to spend eternity with each other.

Their language was silent yet deafening to each other. While the flesh and blood Louse and Derek stood mute and perfectly stationary at the edge of the party, the two shadows became a lot more animated.

“I think I love you,” began the one created in Derek’s hopes and dreams, and “And I love you,” crooned the one forged from romantic ideals in Louise’s imagination.

Then one shadow reached out and took the insubstantial hand of the other and slowly, as if guided by the stars themselves (it was by then well after nightfall) and hand in hand they made their way as one, invisibly, to the door and out into the street where such unlikely shadows walk, gazing with adoration into each other’s eyes.

Meanwhile, back at the party where drink was flowing in rivers and Ed Sheeran’s voice worshipped the shape of his woman, the substantial Louise shook herself and looked shyly towards Derek and he, equally substantial flesh and all, stared at her and knew in that instant they must be together for all of the rest of their lives. It was a foregone decision and nothing and nobody could gainsay it.

The party was soon over and midnight fell upon the world. Derek, still holding Louise by the hand, led the way out of his house and walked towards hers, which was across the road and down the street past half a dozen houses.

“I feel I’ve lost somebody,” murmured Derek, pausng to look about him, and Louise nodded and replied “that’s funny: so do I.”

Then two shadows, unseen in the darkness of a black night, came towards them and with a kind of secret joy, and somehow nobody would ever understand how no matter how long the Universe lasts, they merged insubstantial flesh into very substantial flesh. Twice.

“That feels better,” whispered Louise.

“I know,” he smiled.

“You are coming in for a goodnight glass of something warming?” suggested Louise, “and I’ve got a double bed if it gets a bit late…”

“It’s already late, darling,” replied Derek.

© Peter Rogerson 07.04.23

Reviews

[AYVID N]

Such a beautiful and romantic ending! I loved it. This tale was so very imaginative and such a pleasure to read. I had a great time reading your stories today.