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From: "oosh" <oosh@NOSPAM.gmx.net>
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Subject: {ASSM} [rom fest] Still Together (rom, nosex)
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 05:10:04 -0400
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Still Together

by oosh@gmx.net

20 June 2002


They would have been in their late sixties, the "old girls" - that's
what my father used to call them.

I could see that my mother disapproved. She'd scowl and say "Well I
think they're odd." My father would laugh at that, and sometimes ask her
to explain. But to him, she'd just repeat "they're odd." He would laugh
again, then, and change the subject.

But to her friend Jean next door but one, she'd be a bit more specific.
When they went out together, the old girls always took a black taxi. A
taxi! In our street, if you ever saw a taxi you'd know it was for them.
In those days, when the street traders - milkman, baker, greengrocer -
still came round with horse and cart, or a specially adapted bicycle
hung with huge wicker panniers, even motor cars were still a bit
exotic. And when my mother spoke of the old girls and their taxi, her
voice would go quiet and low, as if using a taxi was somehow not just
odd, but positively dangerous. I was only about seven or eight, and
still didn't really understand. But my mother had grown up in wartime
austerity, and could never really reconcile herself to a way of life
that involved spending an unnecessary farthing. Taxis were for
millionaires as far as she was concerned.

As for the old girls, I can remember them now only vaguely. Households
like theirs were common enough then. I suppose there was a whole
generation of them: women who had lost husbands or boyfriends in the
First World War, and who found themselves thrown upon one another for
mutual support and companionship.

I do remember the quiet one as being slightly frail. I thought of her
as the quiet one because her only response to a polite "good morning"
would be a whimper and a rather guilty little smile. I remember her
stick with greater clarity. It was a stocky cane of varnished, knotty
wood with a rounded handle and a fat black rubber tip. Probably today
they'd have given her a zimmer frame. I would often see her making her
sluggish way down to the local shop - only five minutes away if you
were fit, but for her I'm sure it would have been more like fifteen -
with her old wicker basket on her arm.

And then I'd sometimes see them out together for a Sunday stroll if the
weather was fine. They'd be dressed rather more smartly, in long blue
coats, and although they never linked arms, they would walk so close
together - almost pressed together - that they seemed to me to be like
one vast animal. I say "vast" - but when I was little, even one adult
seemed pretty vast to me. I'm sure they would have seemed far less
intimidating to a grown-up. But at that age, I was always somewhat in
awe at the relaxed way my father would talk to the taller one, the
stern one. We children were terrified of her.

I had the impression that you had to be Quite Someone to engage her in
conversation. It was like being able to look directly at the sun. I
suppose what gave my father his entr e was his love of gardening. She
was very stiff and upright, and always kept a good distance away from
him while they conversed. She was like a particularly terrifying
schoolmistress. My father would pacify her by complimenting her on her
garden, and she would reply by making disapproving remarks about ours.
My father always seemed very grateful for her advice, however. He would
sometimes tell me how wonderful their garden was; occasionally we'd
walk up to their house and he'd point out this and that in tones of
enthusiastic, almost reverent admiration. I can still remember their
lawn. It was nothing like an ordinary lawn at all. It was greener and
more level, and the edges were cut precisely vertical. It was
preternatural. No wonder she so disapproved of our garden: in hers,
nothing ever grew by chance. Everything was laid out with a tape
measure.

One day, there were rather more taxis than usual. Clearly something was
going on. Later, we heard that the quiet one had been run over by a car
while making her way down to the shop. She'd just wandered out into the
road and been hit. I think that was the first time I'd ever heard of
someone actually dying as a result of a car accident, and it was
drummed into us as a dire reminder to look right, look left, look right
again.

When you're a child, even an hour can seem like an eternity. But I
think it stuck in my mind because of what the grown-ups were saying -
"so soon after," "how sudden," "one after the other, just like that!"
Indirectly, we were among the first to know, because we were one of the
few nearby with a telephone. The milkman could tell, because of the
overhead wires. When it got to three uncollected bottles on their
doorstep, he became suspicious. He used our telephone to call the
police. They had to break in. They found her tucked up on the sofa,
with the pillow and blankets from their bed. It seems she hadn't wanted
to sleep in that bed alone. She'd been dead almost a week when they
found her.

In the many years since, I've often heard tell of couples where the
apparently healthy one dies just a few days after the other.
Geriatricians come across it all the time. Everyone knows why it
happens, but nobody seems to have a name for it. I think they put
"natural causes" on the death certificate.

After the second death, they searched for months and months for
relatives, but it seems they couldn't find any. My father told me this
was most unusual, and that the house would belong directly to the
queen. I wondered if her majesty would come and live in our road
sometimes. Would she perhaps come to tea? Would she keep the garden as
trim as those two old girls?

Unfortunately, the queen was too busy. She sold the house, and the new
owners let that lovely garden grow as wild and chaotic as everyone
else's.

Ever since, I've imagined heaven as being like a great big garden,
where maybe one day I'll see them pottering among the flowers.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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