An Unlikely Alliance – a Short Story for Christmas

 

Lucy closed her eyes against the wintry light sneaking through her bedroom window and groaned. Turning on her side she reached for the alarm clock and pressed the snooze button. Another day had dawned, another morning had broken through and dragged her from the comforting depth of sleep. Another day without Henry, another day alone.

Fighting the urge to curl into a tight ball and pull the duvet over her head, she made for the bathroom. The face that looked back at her from the bathroom mirror appeared tired and old. She inspected the dark shadows under her soft brown eyes and smoothing her hair back from her face she made a mental note to get a colour for her roots. Should she try something different? Was auburn still appropriate for a woman approaching 50 or was it time to tone it down? She leaned heavily on the washbasin, her well manicured hands gripping the porcelain, and gazed deeply into her own eyes. The despair that nestled under her ribs seemed to throb with its own life, so that even something as simple as breathing became a chore.

How long was it now since he had gone? Mentally she totalled the days. It was four months – 122 days .The whole of the summer gone in a blur. Surely it should feel better now after this time but with Christmas and New Year looming everything felt so intense.

‘Just how long does grief last?’ she asked her own reflection. The eyes before her began to fill with tears, which she dashed instantly away with an impatient hand.

‘If you were a character in a soap, you’d have fallen in love with someone else by now,’ she told herself sharply, turning her attention to the necessities of beginning the day.

She dressed in a pale pink blouse and navy blue slacks. Her mind wandered. As always, Henry was never far from her thoughts. Images of his pale face as he had looked when she last saw him, seemed to assault her wherever she went. His voice spoke to her, so softly she could not hear what he was saying. His touch seemed almost to linger on her arm or her cheek. Once, she thought she had seen him, disappearing through the exit just ahead of her at the theatre and another time she thought she glimpsed him across the car park  at the shopping mall where well-meaning friends had taken her for retail therapy.

On one memorable occasion, just a week after he had passed away, she had walked into the kitchen and for an instant had been convinced he was standing at the kitchen sink. Later she had forced herself to make a joke of it to her mother, remarking that the kitchen sink was the last place she would have expected to find her husband in life. That he should choose to appear there after his death was laughable.

Today she had never felt less like laughing. The tears kept welling in her eyes and the pain in her stomach made eating breakfast impossible. Why were there days like this, when the shock and hurt seemed to be born afresh? Clenching her fists, she prayed silently to a god she wasn’t convinced existed:  ‘Please help me! Please please help me!’

Walking through the hall, she gathered up the Christmas cards that lay freshly on the mat and added them unopened to the pile gathering on the hall table.

Half an hour later she was standing in the street. Of course the car wouldn’t start. Frustrated and struggling to keep some degree of composure, she peered helplessly under the shiny red bonnet.

‘ Hi there! Having trouble?’ A small woman with a cloud of shocking red hair barely contained by a silver clip, was standing by her elbow. Lucy recognised her neighbour, a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, who had  moved into the neighbourhood with her two children, about two months before Henry’s diagnosis. Lucy had found cause to complain about their rowdy behaviour from the outset. The woman was obviously a feckless single parent and the kids, probably with different fathers, seemed to be lacking in any real discipline.

‘It won’t start,’ Lucy snapped, shocking herself by the sharpness of her own voice. She could almost hear Henry tutting. He was always the tolerant one. She recalled how he had responded to his wife’s complaints about the new family, with his usual gentleness.

‘I was talking to her the other day,’ he had told her. ‘She has had a very difficult time and she has come here to start a new life.’ Then turning and taking her tenderly by the shoulder, he had urged her: ‘Give them a chance, Lucy. Remember not everyone is as lucky as us.’

Well, she didn’t feel lucky now. She felt cheated. One moment her husband had been at her side and the next he had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The disease had progressed so rapidly that there had barely been enough time to adjust before he had been taken from her entirely.

But the kindness and consideration for others had been an essential part of Henry. Even as he had lain dying he had been worried about the trouble he was causing everyone. Lucy thought of how he would have liked her to behave and, turning to the young woman at her side, forced a smile. For Henry’s sake she muttered a few words by way of a grudging apology. ‘I don’t know the first thing about cars,’ she sniffed. ‘My husband always dealt with anything mechanical.’

‘I heard about his illness. He was a nice bloke. You must miss him.’ The younger woman’s face split into a smile. She began to roll up her sleeves. ‘Good thing I know a trick or two,’ she laughed. Then she was encouraging Lucy into the driver’s seat and instructing her when to start the engine.

Moments later and she was manoeuvring her own car into place and attaching jump leads to the batteries. Lucy’s car spluttered, died, and then leapt into sustained life.

Lucy muttered her thanks, a little overwhelmed by the younger woman’s obvious abilities. It was only much later in the day that she realised that she didn’t even know her rescuer’s name. It was three days later before Lucy had the opportunity to find out.

Thursday was a filthy cold day. Dawning with torrential rain, it had the feel of midwinter rather than late autumn. Lucy, safe and dry in her car, was just passing the bus stop on the corner of the Angel Road when she caught a glimpse of that wild red hair, somewhat sodden, but nevertheless distinctive. She was about to sail on by when her conscience was pricked by the sight in her rear-view mirror of two equally bedraggled children clinging miserably onto their mother. Despite her reservations about the family she pulled up, and within minutes was driving along the high street with a car load of grateful passengers.

‘Thank you so much, the younger woman said as they climbed out at Angel Infants school gates. ‘I’m afraid my car battery didn’t stand up to jump-starting your car the other day. We don’t mind the bus, but today is filthy, isn’t it?’ She pulled her hood back up over her head forcing  a frizz of red hair to come forward over her face. Her daughter’s smiling face appeared at her elbow. Lucy noted that the child, aged about five or six , had lost her front teeth, giving the smile an appealing innocent quality.

‘I’m Karen, by the way,’ the red-haired woman said, smiling. ‘And this is Becky and Liam.’ The boy, a little older than his sister and  the image of his mother, inspected her shyly from under startlingly long lashes. The little girl reached out to Lucy and pressed a soggy toffee into her hand by way of thanks, then  giggling, she turned and ran away.

While depositing the sweet in a piece of tissue Lucy found herself watching the little family thoughtfully as they hurried out of the rain and into the school. They didn’t seem so bad. Not at all as she had first thought.

From time to time during her busy day, more thoughts of them popped into her mind. The little girl’s gappy smile, the boy’s shyness and their mother’s gratitude for a small act of kindness in a time of crisis. A crisis that strictly speaking had been Lucy’s fault. She was surprised to find herself looking out for them on her journey home from the office. She could almost hear Henry sighing happily at her new found sentimentality. She laughed it off. But oddly, she felt very close to him, closer than she had for some time, especially when she pulled up at the bus stop and invited them into her car for the second time that day.

Later as Lucy was steeling herself for another lonely night in front of the TV, there was a knock at the door. It was Karen, wrapped tightly against the still driving rain.

‘I came to say thank you for today,’ she said, holding out a bottle of what looked in the porch light like red wine. ‘I hope you like this. It’s nothing expensive, I’m afraid.’

‘How kind.’ Lucy took the proffered bottle and the younger woman turned to go. Suddenly the thought of  company overwhelmed her.

‘Would you like to share a glass with me?’

Karen nodded enthusiastically but it wasn’t until they had sat down together and their glasses had been charged that the younger woman admitted: ‘I’m so glad you invited me in. Mum came over to babysit. She said I needed a break but I had nowhere to go. It’s been a bit difficult making friends here,’ Then she spluttered with embarrassment: ‘Oh I didn’t mean to suggest that you were a last resort or anything.’

Lucy smiled and assured her that she wasn’t offended.

‘I hope not,’ Karen said. ‘I have been wanting to come and see you for a long time. I was so sorry about your husband. I know how hard it is, and it being Christmas seems to make it worse somehow.’

‘ You do?’ Lucy heard the surprise in her own voice and was herself a little embarrassed. How could this young woman know what it was to lose someone precious?

Karen peered uncomfortably into her glass. She was clearly upset. For a moment Lucy thought she had offended her, then the young woman spoke. ‘My husband died too,’ she said softly, ‘He was ill for two years and it was horrible. The kids and I moved here straight after. I wasn’t really thinking straight. I thought it would be good to be near my mum, but it’s so far from all my friends and the kids were really upset about changing school and everything.’  She paused and took a sip from her glass before continuing. ‘Your husband was so kind. He was the only one who spoke to us. I’m afraid I bent his ear a bit in the post office one day. He told me then that he was ill and he said something…’ She paused, biting her lip. ‘He said he hoped that if the worse came to the worst, we might be, well we might…’ Her voice tailed off.

Lucy nodded. She felt as though Henry had walked into the room and was standing behind her chair. It wasn’t the cold and unwelcome feeling she had always thought would accompany a ghostly presence. It was warm and loving and full of tenderness.

‘He hoped we would be able to help each other.’ Lucy finished the younger woman’s sentence. Karen nodded.

‘That would be typical of Henry,’ Lucy sighed.

‘He was a lovely man.’ Karen said quietly.

The two women sat for a while in the silence. Then Karen raised her glass.

‘ To Henry,’ she said softly.

‘ To Henry,’ echoed Lucy, ‘and to new friendships’. And they laughed because it was just possible that Christmas would be a little less lonely this year.