The day had set about harassing Anita the moment she had awoken to it. And now she wished it would just find someone else to pick on as she bustled her way out of the supermarket, a disobedient two-year-old toddler in tow. She wielded the trolley before her single-handedly, weaving her way through a wall of oncoming shoppers seemingly being fired at her from all directions. The sun dazzled off wet Tarmac and car bonnets making Anita screw her eyes to a squint until they grew accustomed to the brightness.
She stopped at the edge of the pavement and on tiptoes she scoured the car park like a prairie dog, not remembering where she’d left her car. She soon spotted it. It was never difficult to pick out a car such an incongruous shade of purple.
Pearle protested passionately as she was plucked from the ground and returned to the relative safety of the trolley, for the potentially hazardous journey to the car. When they reached it Anita bundled Pearle into the back, buckling her in securely whilst the little girl happily amused herself tugging at mum’s necklace; and whilst – unbeknown to her – Anita’s groceries slowly made their way down the car park.
A sudden moment of realization and short sprint later, and a potentially nasty incident involving a Mercedes Benz and a runaway shopping trolley was narrowly avoided. Anita cursed the people that thought it wise to build a supermarket car park on a slope.
Anita’s husband always told her that she looked most attractive when she was flustered, as she was right now. Her auburn hair was a little untidy and a volley of stray locks bounced playfully at her cheeks. Her skin was flushed with a healthy rosy glow. She thought of her husband, hopefully waiting at home prepped to brew a fresh cup of tea on her return. This thought brought the tiniest of smiles to her otherwise anxious face.
She just wanted to be home.
But, if this pernicious day had its way, she never would be. The cyclist would see to that; and the oncoming lorry; and the other cars.
* * * * *
The radio was not tuned correctly; there was a constant background hiss and the occasional crackle to the voices of the afternoon news.
‘… nine were killed in an accident at midday today. Among those killed were mother and daughter Anita and Pearle Turner. It is thought Mrs. Turner swerved to avoid…’
The voice was cut off.
A wrinkled finger returned from the off-switch of the radio as the room was bathed in silence. The old lady looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and the wrinkles on her forehead grew deeper with concern. The hands of the clock read just after eleven in the morning. It didn’t give her long; she knew that.
She reached down into the wooden sewing box beside her chair and fumbled about for a moment before pulling out two knitting needles and a ball of wool. Her movement had caused the tartan blanket upon her lap to slip down a little and she tugged it back to her waist. She cleared her throat with a croaky cough.
‘Mmmm, purple,’ she mumbled to herself. ‘Yes, purple, I think.’
The old lady was frail but her fingers were still nimble. Soon the ticking of the mantelpiece clock that relentlessly announced the passing of every second was accompanied by the rhythmic clicking of knitting needles.
Occasionally, the old lady glanced up at the clock, allowing her stare to linger for a moment, her eyes narrow and unforgiving. The clock stared back. The battled continued. Tick versus click.
It was a bright day outside the old lady’s living room, but it was hidden behind a heavy set of curtains. That’s the way the old lady insisted it should be, now that she was virtually bound to her chair. What was the use, she would argue, of being witness to a beautiful sunny day that she could never hope to enjoy? Not properly. Not like she used to. A small girl with her brother skipping through a meadow; a young woman and her lover punting down a canal; a mother and her family building sand castles on the beach. A lifetime of sunny days shut out by a pair of curtains.
Besides, the sunlight just made the dust just show up on the mantelpiece – another reminder of the old lady’s immobility. Now the only dust visible in the dim room was that that danced in the blade of light that sliced through the room from the slit in the curtains. Even that was ample to vex the old lady. She endeavoured to focus her mind on the stitches before her, forming one-by-one in the pool of light cast by a lamp.
Abruptly, the tense silence was broken by the sound of the front door unlocking, followed by shrill call.
‘Hello, Mrs. Johnson. Only me.’
The old lady rolled her eyes at the intrusion. She didn’t need a visitor right now. She didn’t look up from her knitting – wishing to emit signs of an antisocial disposition – as the home-help waddled into the living room. She was a large girl and had an oversized personality to accompany her frame.
‘How are you today Mrs. Johnson?’ said Helen jauntily, her tone verging on a shout: an occupational hazard of working with the hard-of-hearing.
‘Oh, just fine dear.’
‘What are you knitting there?’
‘Purple.’
‘Purple what?’
‘Just purple.’
The old lady didn’t see it but sensed the expression on Helen’s face.
‘Does it need to be a purple anything?’ the old lady continued. ‘Some days the world needs one thing, some days it needs something else.’ She paused for a moment as she concentrated on a cast-off. ‘Today the world needs more purple.’
‘I see,’ said Helen as she squeezed herself past the old settee. She didn’t see, of course. She didn’t see at all.
* * * * *
Pearle reached a tiny arm out from the trolley spying the shiny packaging of chocolate biscuits. Anita was occupied comparing the nutritional content of various brands of snack bar. Her husband was developing a bit of a spread around his middle but he did love his chocolate and Anita knew that if she didn’t buy something for him to take to work he would just get his fix from the vending machine. She hated the idea of vending machines in the workplace. Offering a hit of chocolate for thirty-five pence to make it through the nine tedious hours, like bourgeois drug dealers soliciting on corridor corners.
She decided to take a risk on the Go Ahead range and slung a couple of packets in the trolley. As she did she spotted Pearle’s reaching arms, but just too late, as a packet of biscuits toppled to the ground. Anita cursed herself silently for leaving the trolley within grasping distance of the shelves. She quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed then stooped down to pick up the broken biscuits and placed them back on the shelf. Sometimes it seemed to Anita that life was just a purposeless attrition of her soul.
She just wanted to be home.
* * * * *
Many people that knew the old lady thought that when she was confined to her chair she would waste away into a sad and bitter woman, and some people thought that she had. But they didn’t understand, and they never really could. The old lady had too great a mettle than to allow her mind to atrophy whilst she sat alone. On the contrary, her mind was allowed to grow far beyond the trivial human trappings of everyday life. She finally had time to think, properly think. Not about driving the car, or filling in the tax return form, or cooking the lasagne, or grooming the children, or walking the dog. She had time to think about the way things really were. And eventually, she understood. She understood many things, but most importantly she understood that no one had to play servant to the vagaries of time or fate. And so she made a vow not to.
The old lady knitted her purple as furiously as her hands would allow, to the soundtrack of Helen preparing lunch in the kitchen in her usual less-than-delicate fashion. Eventually Helen thudded her way back through to the living room clutching a tray.
‘Here you go Mrs. Johnson,’ she blared. ‘Scrambled egg, just as you like it. Shall I take your knitting?’
You don’t know how I like scrambled egg, thought the old lady.
‘No, no. Just pop it there on the side love.’
‘Come on now Mrs. Johnson, you must eat.’
‘I shall eat it when I’m done here.’ A hint of truculence edged into the old lady’s voice.
‘But it’ll be cold in no time.’
The old lady smiled a thin smile, still not looking up from her knitting.
‘Yes, no time,’ repeated the old lady. ‘No time at all.’
Helen shook her head and placed the tray on the sideboard, obviously in no mood to argue.
‘I want to see it all gone when I’ve finished in the bedroom,’ she called as she stomped out of the room.
The old lady didn’t reply; a greater task was at hand than scrambled egg consumption.
Anita scanned the array of queues, bulging into the aisles, trying to determine which might shrink the quickest. She joined a queue that seemed to consist more of people than groceries, and began idly analysing her fellow queue members’ purchases. The man in front of her had a bottle of red wine; a bunch of asparagus; two cartons of organic unsweetened Soya (‘a natural alternative to milk’); and what seemed to be a silver heart-shaped clock with arms and legs, in fancy packaging. The heart-shaped clock was certainly a whimsical acquisition, thought Anita. No one goes to the supermarket expecting to buy a heart-shaped clock. It will have been in one of those seasonal displays at the end of an aisle, designed – like sirens of the supermarket – to lure weak-willed shoppers to an expensive fate. Anita realised that the theme of this particular display would be Valentines Day – as it loomed merely three weeks ahead! – and she sincerely wished that her husband would do better than a heart-shaped clock from Tesco. She thought of home once again.
Almost done now. Just the short drive back and then she could relax. She allowed herself a deep satisfying sigh. But as she was beginning to be seduced by thoughts of a much nicer place, her darling daughter – that had insisted a few moments earlier on being released from her trolley prison – had dashed up the tinned-food aisle, and was causing a couple of old ladies much distress. Anita dashed after her.
She just wanted to be home.
* * * * *
When Helen returned from cleaning the bedroom, the tray on the side still offered untouched and now cold food. The old lady was asleep in her chair, her breathing heavy with a rasp. Helen touched the old lady’s hand gently.
‘Mrs Johnson,’ she said.
The old lady stirred.
‘You didn’t eat your lunch did you Mrs. Johnson?’
‘Sorry,’ the old lady paused to moisten her lips. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’
Helen noticed the old lady’s pale hands clutching a pair of bare knitting needles.
‘Where’s your knitting?’
The old lady sat herself up in her chair and looked down at her lap. A smile formed on her lips making a dozen wrinkles appear on her cheeks.
‘I finished it,’ she said. ‘I finished it in time.’
Helen frowned and looked into the sewing box beside the chair. There was no knitting to be seen. There was just one ball of wool, but it wasn’t purple. Helen picked it up and studied it. She couldn’t tell what colour it was. It was iridescent, seemed to change colour as see rotated it in the dim light.
The old lady cast a contented glance over Helen’s puzzlement, then let her eye’s fall shut, pretending to sleep, not having the strength to elucidate to one so pervaded with youthful ignorance.
* * * * *
The day had set about harassing Anita the moment she had awoken to it. And now she wished it would just find someone else to pick on, as she bustled her way out of the supermarket, a disobedient two-year-old toddler in tow. She wielded the trolley before her single-handedly, weaving her way through a wall of oncoming shoppers seemingly being fired at her from all directions. The sun dazzled off wet Tarmac and car bonnets making Anita screw her eyes to a squint until they grew accustom to the brightness.
She stopped at the edge of the pavement and on tiptoes she scoured the car park like a prairie dog, not remembering where she’d left her car. She soon spotted it. It was never difficult to pick out a car such an incongruous shade of purple.
As she neared the back of her car she was startled as the driver-side door opened and a middle-aged balding man hopped out. Anita did a double take and realized that it was not her car at all, very similar, the exact same shade of purple, but not hers. She stopped and scanned the car park again, and spotted her car in the next row. She diverted her trolley to the new heading and found herself mildly vexed at the thirty seconds she had wasted walking to someone else’s car. Another thirty seconds she had wasted!
She just wanted to be home.
* * * * *
Anita was totally unaware of the inconsiderate cyclist that pulled out of the side turning without looking. She didn’t see him. But then, she never needed to. He was some thirty seconds along the road when she came by.
Anita and Pearle arrived home to a husband waiting with a smile on his face, a hug for both of them, a kiss on the lips for his wife, and a freshly brewed cup of tea.
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