A LOVER’S RETURN

Sometimes we meet the true loe of our lives and nobody else will do...

     There wasn’t much time left. Miriam knew that when she looked at the note she had left for herself recently. Mabbut had rung and told her, and that had been good enough for her.

“Miriam, my love,” he had said, “be ready next Wednesday and I’ll be calling for you.”

That would be all well and good and something Miriam would have looked forwards to back in the day, but it was over five years since she had lost Mabbut. He had passed away in his sleep, only seventy-five and looking forward to their wedding anniversary, which was due soon. And it was a big enough anniversary: fifty happy years. And not only happy but gloriously happy. And then, there he’d been, still as a statue one morning in bed next to her, and when she spoke to him he hadn’t replied. And when she’d looked at him he hadn’t been breathing. And when the doctor called to see after she rung him he said that the love of her life had been dead, probably for most of the night.

Then, last week, he had rung her. He hadn’t said where from, just that he’d call on Wednesday to see her, and that was that. She’d scribbled it down on a note pad, like she did with most messages because she was a devil when it came to remembering stuff. “Mabbut on Wednesday” she’d written, and then wept with a hot cup of tea for company.

And today was Wednesday. Mabbut was coming to see her today and it filled her almost to overflowing with two feelings. Firstly, with pleasure because she really missed the man and secondly with dread because she knew he was dead. She’d even helped arrange his funeral, had told the vicar little bits and pieces about what he was like and how she had loved him, and then had stood in the cemetery when his coffin had been lowered into the ground with the sort of solemnity the man had deserved in life, and then had quietly wept her own personal goodbyes to him as she slowly made her way home. That had been five years ago and in that time she had learned, to start with, how to live on her own, but then, having been a loving wife to Mabbut she had decided that sleeping in a bed on your own all night was no fun. She had needed Mabbut there with her, not for anything childish like touching and stuff best forgotten at her age, but the awareness of his presence, the sound of his breathing and even snoring.

So she had found Griff at the supermarket, obviously shopping for one like she was. Or rather, she thought, he had found her.

Griff was no Mabbut. He was more self-opinionated. That’s how she saw him, a man who had ideas and notions that he was so positive about that if anyone gainsaid him he could be grumpy, or worse. But he was a presence in her life, he filled a vacuum left by the sad death of Mabbut, and so he was welcome. Not as welcome as Mabbut had been, but he had left a void no man would ever be able to fill no matter how hard he tried, and Griff didn’t really try at all. But he was better than nothing. Not much better but beggars, she decided, can’t be choosers.

Though maybe not always.

Last week they’d had a bit of a row. Nothing major, but enough to make her think of Mabbut and shed a few tears because he had died in her bed next to her whilst she slept, and Griff hadnt.

Griff had told her that she was too old to be wearing what she was wearing. Mabbut had never suggested anything about what she should wear because he knew that what a woman wears is her personal statement about herself. But Griff had suggested, no, told her, that the dress she had worn that day was too short for a woman of her age. A woman of eighty, he had said, and she was eighty now, should be more modest. What, he had asked, would people think if a draft of wind picked up the hem of her dress and raised it to her waist, revealing, he had said pointedly, her underwear? What would she think if that happened?

“I like this dress,” was all she could think of saying, and she did. It was bright enough to suggest that the woman wearing it hadn’t yet reached her dotage, and the hem of its skirt did actually brush against her knee, so it was hardly a mini dress.

“Don’t wear it again,” he had said, and that had brought the discussion to a one-sided end.

She had even got to thinking that maybe Griff was a mistake, but then she had consoled herself by remembering that Mabbut had been a hard act for any man to follow, and Griff wasn’t up to it.

She had stopped kissing him ages ago. Mabbut had been a warm and loving kisser and she had really loved it when their mouths had joined in a tongue-weaving dance of love. Griff was nothing like that, and he didn’t even clean his teeth properly. Rather than tell him about the odds and sods of food stuck between his incisors she had simply stopped kissing him, and he hadn’t seemed to mind if he actually noticed.

Now it was the important Wednesday and her lost love was going to call. He had phoned her up and told her, though how he had managed that was beyond her. Before his funeral she had actually wondered whether she should leave his mobile phone in his pocket when they buried him, but told herself not to be silly and sold it on Ebay instead.

In a wise moment she had known it can’t actually have been Mabbut phoning her, but then, neither could it have been Griff because he wouldn’t sink to doing such a cruelly daft thing. And she hadn’t mentioned it to him, and there he was in the front room, feet up on a pouffe, and smoking his pipe. He rarely smoked indoors, knew she didn’t approve, but when something was bothering him he did puff away at that stinky, horrible pipe.

If Mabbut had seen him smoking indoors in his house he would have said something. It would have been a mild rebuke, but even a mild rebuke cam seem mighty powerful when it came from the peace-loving Mabbut.

She wrnt into the front room and looked at Griff. What a sight! What ever possessed her to marry him in the first place? It wasn’t that she really needed him, was it? And why shouldn’t she wear a decently short dress if that’s what she wanted to wear? She had decent enough legs for an octogenarian, didn’t she? Why not let them be seen.

“That pipe fair stinks,” she said.

“It’s my one pleasure, woman,” he had replied, “and you know it is! What would I do if I couldn’t have the odd pipe every so often?”

“I just said that it stinks,” she replied, and the doorbell rang.

“Who’s that?” he barked.

“How on Earth would I know?” she replied, “I’ve not got x-ray vision, you know!”

“Mind your tongue, woman!” he croaked, and deliberately puffed on his pipe, blowing a cloud of acrid smoke into the room towards her.

“I’ll see who it is,” she said quietly, “don’t go away in case it’s for you.”

She opened the door and her heart began singing because the impossible loving man stood there. It was Mabbut in all his glory! The same man with the same face and the same twinkle in his eyes!

“I telephoned,” he said, smiling like he always had, and then he walked into the house past her. Still smiling he almost marched into the front room, his face suddenly becoming more grim than Miriam had ever seen it.

“Sir,” he growled at Griff, “I have come.”

“Who the hell are you?” snarled Griff, puffing frantically at a pipe that seemed to have run out of smoke.

“You’ll know when we get there,” replied Mabbut or the figure who looked exactly like Mabbut, “for there is a room prepared for you. Come.”

Although he spoke quietly and firmly there was enough power in his voice to make Griff stand up and follow him.

“Where are we going?” he asked, almost plaintively

“You’ll find out when we get there,” snarled the image of Mabbut. Then he turned and smiled at Miriam. “Change the sheets on the bed while I’m gone,” he said quietly, “for maybe I’ll feel like forty winks when I get back. Until then, darling, I love you.” He grabbed hold of Griff by the scruff of his neck, and he hissed, “and you, my fine friend, you’re going to a place where smoking of pipes is forbidden and there are no fine ladies to please you. You are going to Hell!”

© Peter Rogerson 17.04.23

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Reviews

[AYVID N]

Omg you have an imagination with no limits and it's just such an amazing thing to have for a story teller. The story is left open for readers to draw conclusions and I loved it. We're they all dead, was it that Miriam was hallucinating or was it that someone dead really returned? An absolutely delightful read! Keep posting sir!

[Peter Rogerson]

I love open-ended stories myself and so sometimes encourage any readers to work out for themselves what happens

[AYVID N]

And with great results here. Thank you for sharing.