“That’s your bed made. What else shall I do? Remember, this is my last visit,” called the carer, her cheerful sing-song voice echoing around the empty hall.
“I know, I haven’t forgotten, so there is a gift on the kitchen table.” Emily had heard such negative stories about carers, but Amy was delightful. The granddaughter she had wished for, so unlike the one she was moving to be with.
“Thank you, but you are my favourite client, and I get paid to be here.” Amy skipped into the room, holding the gift-wrapped box from the kitchen table.
“You have been a wonderful help. Now, bring those last bags and put them on the porch for the Cats Protection League to collect, will you?”
“Of course. Are you going to miss this house? Your new flat will be so different.”
“No, I have my memories in here.” Emily pointed at her heart.
She lied, of course. This had been her home for so long, as familiar as the bed she slept in.
Amy bumped and clattered the bags on the stairs. Young people were so full of life, and she had missed the noise when she gave up teaching, much preferring it to the lonely solitude that her daughter insisted she needed now. “The annex is at the bottom of the garden, Mum, no one will ever disturb you there. She had told her.
“Do you want to keep this? It fell out of an old handbag.” Then a photograph fluttered to the floor and Amy picked it up. “Oh, it’s a letter, and this picture. Is it you and Mr Burton? How lovely. You look so happy.”
Emily’s eyes misted over as she looked at the photo. ” No, it’s me and someone I met a long time ago. My husband didn’t waste stamps writing to me.”
“Oh, is it a tragic tale of a lost love? How romantic?”
“Nothing so dramatic. In fact, it should never have happened.” But the memory made her smile.
“Ah, a secret lover,” said Amy with a sigh. “If I make us both a cup of tea and bring the shortbread that Mrs Garret gave you. Would you like to tell me the story?”
“You, young lady, should have left five minutes ago, and Mrs Garret’s shortbread is a health risk.”
When she saw Amy’s disappointment, she softened her voice. “What about your next client?”
Amy’s face brightened “As you are my last this morning, shall I put the kettle on?”
Emily nodded. She had vowed at the time that this story must go untold to the grave, but that was a long time ago.
“I love your stories, Mrs Burton. Mum tells me how precious memories are, especially as you grow older.”
“The things in your heart never age.”
That wasn’t true. Memories twisted and shifted with time. Those diminished by regret grew smaller and sharper, and others smoothed out, their blemishes’ fading and edges blurring in a halo of joy.
“Now, let’s start with the photo. Who’s the hot guy?”
“Mark Winters was his name, and he was the county archaeologist for Durham.” Emily’s voice had become wistful. She was recalling his face animated with enthusiasm, a single lock of dark hair hanging over his eyes.
“Was — Is he still alive?”
“I don’t know, I never saw him after that weekend,” she said, her mind in another place fifty years earlier.
Amy settled in the armchair. “Now, I want the lowdown, and the details, so start from the beginning,” said Amy, with a cheeky glance over her teacup. And Emily remembered the weekend as though it was yesterday.
“In those days, I was a stay-at-home parent, with toddlers to look after. John worked away for weeks at a time, so I was bored. I was never much of a housekeeper. One day, I took the children to the museum for an outing and met a friend from my university. We got chatting, and he told me about a local amateur archaeology society, and suggested I join because there were local young mums who belonged. They had a rota for babysitting while the rest visited a dig or attended a lecture. It was exactly what I needed, and I loved it.”
“And that’s where you met, Mark.”
“Now don’t interrupt if you want to hear the complete story.”
Amy mouthed, “I’m sorry” and settled again.
“There was a competition to win a place at the National Conference for Archaeology, expenses paid, and I won. John didn’t want me to go, because they held it in Durham, and I would have to stay in a hotel. He couldn’t understand why I was interested, but I was adamant and persuaded my mother to look after the boys.”
“The symposium began with a lecture by Mark on the future of archaeology. It fascinated me and I queued at the end to ask questions. I had so many questions. I dreamed that once the children went to school, I could study in the daytime, and volunteer at the local museum.
He answered my queries, and my questions about local digs and we talked for so long, the conversation continued in the bar. The archaeology crowd drank real ale, so I did too. Only I wasn’t used to anything that strong and it robbed me of my common sense.”
“Then you fell in love. What about your husband?”
“Well, I’m not proud of that part. It happened because I spent my days at home in old clothes cleaning up after the children. John was so tired when he came home that he didn’t want to talk. Mark treated me as if I were the most sophisticated woman in the world, and it flattered me that he was interested in what I said, as though it was worth something.” she could hear his voice with that odd little gasp he took when he had talked so fast, he hadn’t taken a breath.
“Aha, the photo doesn’t do him justice. He had a brown, weathered face with crisscrossing lines, and I loved his eyes, which were brown and warm, and the corners crinkled when he smiled. Honestly, he was so handsome that I wanted to spend the night looking at him. Later, we walked back to the hotel through the park, and stopped by the lake, and counted the stars that were reflected in the water.”
She paused.
He had stopped talking about archeology and looked at her quizzically, as though he didn’t understand what was happening. He had touched her hair and then her cheek and even when he had moved his hand; it left an imprint on her face. They didn’t speak. Words would have broken the magic.
“The next morning, he asked if I wanted to visit a dig site, and of course I did. The archaeologists were at the conference, which meant we were alone on the moors. It was a lovely day, and he showed me their finds and explained why they were digging there.
It fascinated me, it was so different to my normal life, and he answered my questions as though I was a colleague. He explained how to tell where man has influenced the landscape as we walked. He had taken a picnic, and we ate it, sitting in the heather by a stream. My heart did flip-flops as we held hands and gazed at the distant city.”
She could smell the heather. The fragrance isn’t strong, but ever since that day, it reminded her of him. She had wrapped a sprig in her handkerchief and when she got home, kept it in a pot on her dressing table. She wondered what had happened to it and remembered her daughter had thrown it away on one of her periodic ‘helpful’ spring cleans.
Amy was watching her intently now, so she went back to the story.
“There was music after dinner that night and he laughed at my jokes as we talked. I wore a silk blouse that I had made myself and used the matching scarf as a hair band which he untied, to admire my hair, and I felt so free and so confident. Then we danced until dawn, and I had never done that before. A colleague took that photo that evening and caught the chemistry between us.”
“What happened then?”
“We were living in a bubble as if our real lives didn’t exist. The next day, when the morning lectures ended, we returned to the lake in the park and hired a boat to row round the small island in the centre. But we were both hopeless at rowing and we got soaked when the boat tipped over. But we laughed and then lay on the island to dry. The ripples danced and sparkled in the sunshine as though we were in the land of fairies and as we watched the reflections on the water, time didn’t matter anymore.”
She closed her eyes to picture that scene, and the details were so clear. These days she forgot appointments and where she had put the cheese and her glasses, but she remembered that day so clearly. The pebbles that got caught in her shoes, the dry grass, and the warm earth under her shoulders, the way her hand felt in his.
“Then later, clouds shaded out the sun, and it was raining when I arrived back at the hotel. Real life had intruded into my daydream. I had to pack and ring John to tell him when I was due at the station the following day so he could collect me.”
“So you and Mark never talked about the future?”
“No, we never did. He had to sit with colleagues at the Gala dinner. The next morning, he drove me to that train, but we were late, and I had to run.”
“But you didn’t leave, Mr Burton, did you? So, were you trapped in a loveless marriage?”
She smiled and her young companion.
“In modern films, love is so black and white, isn’t it? No, you see, John was a good man. Perhaps he never had Mark’s passion, or shared my love of history, but we had a wonderful marriage.”
“What about the letter and photo?”
“Mark wrote two weeks later, asking to see me again and saying he couldn’t get me out of his mind.”
“No, he didn’t? And then you turned him away? Didn’t you ever regret doing that?”
“By then I discovered I was expecting Helen, so I said no. As for regrets, I wondered what life might have been like with him, but there were no genuine regrets. I loved John and I miss him still.”
“Did you carry on with the archaeology?”
“No, I was still interested, but it felt wrong, so when Helen was old enough, I trained as a history teacher and did that till I retired.”
“But you kept the letter and the photo, so it must have meant something to you.”
She had regrets, of course she did; she had done the right thing and had no doubts, but once you have seen what love and passion can be like, you can’t forget it. From time to time, she had wished that John looked at her with the intensity that Mark did that weekend. With a sigh, she continued.
“I gave Mark a piece of my heart, and the memory of the way he made me feel is precious even now.”
“Maybe you’ll get another chance at romance once you have moved into your granny flat.”
“In two weeks’, time, I’ll be eighty. I’ll never be young again!”
“Not in years, no, but rumour has it you broke your hip, falling off your grandson’s electric scooter? That’s not what old folk do. If I were you, I’d join the local archaeological society. After all, you never know.”
The end.
If you enjoyed this story, why not buy one of my books.
Abigail Thorne 