Getting Hitched Fiction - Loose Ends

By David Cookson

Norah’s gone. The third time in their two years together. As before, she’s taken just toothbrush and back pack. And as before, there’s no note. Her mobile’s switched off.

Scott’s rung her friends. They’ve heard nothing.

There’d been a fight. It wasn’t their first and certainly not in the blue ribbon class, so Scott hadn’t expected this. Okay, he should have remembered Norah was not a morning person and playing Bach during breakfast might spell trouble. But he really wanted to hear his new CD, and by the time he realised what he’d done, it was too late. In silent fury Norah had ripped the CD from the stereo and flung it like a flying saucer across the room. Insults followed, a plate smashed.

She’d screamed at him, ‘Aah, sometimes …’ and was about to say more, but retreated into sullen silence.

Scott knew that silence. Usually it didn’t last long. While not daring to kiss her goodbye, he went to work confident that by evening it would have all blown over.

Thirty four hours now. Previously, she’d returned the next day. Disquiet grows in Scott’s gut like a vinegar plant.

The phone. He rushes, but it’s just Norah’s wind chimes tinkling in the strengthening nor’easter. Horrible wind, the nor’easter. It always sets Scott‘s teeth on edge. Norah doesn’t like it or any wind. If anything was likely to drive her back it’d be a windy day. But in her present mood, maybe not. All so uncertain and Scott doesn’t like uncertainties.

He rings her friends again. Still nothing.

The wind scratches at his patience. He pads around the empty flat. The rooms echo. Once more he’s fooled by the wind chimes and stands frustrated, looking at the silent phone.

Perhaps some music, but even Schubert fails to calm him.

The wind rattles a loose fly screen against the window - he should have fixed it ages ago, but…. Where is she? He rings different friends but is no wiser. All they can say is, ‘Sit it out, she’ll be back.’

Scott wishes he knew, one way or the other.

A walk might help. He goes the way they always go, along the seafront, hand in hand. The wind snaps at his anorak collar. It stings his cheek, reminds him of Norah’s firecracker temper. Aah, sometimes …

Funny how memories are so much sharper today. This lych gate, where they’d huddled from the rain once, kissed and raced home for wordless, unfinished sentences in bed. From this bench they’d seen a seagull entangled in fishing line. Together, badly pecked, they freed it. Together. How they had laughed as the bird flew off. Norah said, ‘It didn’t even look back.’

Is she looking back? Is she coming back? Why hasn’t she rung? In happier days she’d ring him just to say, ‘I love you,’ and hang up. He gazes at the confused, grey sea.

Love. All the words that have been written about it, spoken about it and now he’s not even sure what it means. He grins wryly, knowing he’s not the first to think that. But Norah, what does she think? She’s left behind most of her stuff, cleared out in such a hurry she hadn’t even made the bed. Not her at all. So what does that mean? Perhaps that she doesn’t care anymore?

‘Aah, sometimes …’ she’d said. Why stop there? She’d been angry enough to go on. What else was she going to say?

‘Sometimes I wish I understood you?’

‘Sometimes I want to kill you?’

Or just, ‘Sometimes I think we should call it a day?’

All conjecture, loose ends. He kicks free a piece of seaweed tangled round his legs. It flits off. Just like Norah. Damn and double damn.

He rouses himself. All too hard. Coffee and company, they’ll take his mind off things.

Nonetheless, at the Esplanade Café he still sits at their usual table beneath that poster of a concert they’d attended. A corner of it had come unstuck. The wind worries at it. Bloody memories.

Michaela, the barista, elegant, white fingers and hipsters.

‘Scotty. The usual? Norah not with you?’

His silence is enough.

She stifles a gasp. ‘Oh, Scotty, no. Not again?’

‘Yeah, looks like it.’

‘Is it, you know, for good?’

‘No idea.’

Those fingers reach out to him, hesitate. ‘Oh dear. So sorry. In the circs, something a bit stronger than coffee? Smirnoff?’

With the delicacy of hanging an Old Master, she places the shot glass before him.

He gulps down the vodka, watches Michaela pick up some sugar papers blown around by the wind. A Celtic tattoo peeps from between her T-shirt and jeans. He wonders what she would think about sharing breakfast with Bach, what other women might think.

‘Now,’ she is brisk and business like, ‘A double strength cappuccino, extra cream?’

She watches him sip it. ‘Scotty, there’s a blues band at the ‘Green Onion’ tonight. If …’

‘Yeah, thanks, Michaela, but …’

‘No, no, of course. Silly of me. Anyhow …’

As she picks up his empty cup, her moonstone ring, pale and cool, clinks against the rim. Those fingers.

‘Anyhow,’ Michaela says again. ‘Take care, hey?’ The tattoo twitches as she walks away.

Aah, sometimes … Now, of all times. Bugger it.

Back home, there’s still no Norah, no message. The phone is impassive as the Sphinx. The wind niggles at the loose flyscreen, rattatatta, rattatatta.

He tries his new Bach CD, but its maiden flight had been fatal. He paces, rages. Damn her, damn her, damn her. But then, does he want her back, anyway? Aah, sometimes ...

The wind is determined. A gale force gust tears the flyscreen from the window, sending it bowling down the drive. Scott lugs it back, but trying to secure it on the verandah, it tangles with Norah’s wind chimes. Scott wrenches free the screen, but in doing so pulls down the chimes. With a last jangle they fall to the floor.

Scott looks at them, now just bits of tarnished tubing and rusted piano wire. Junk - too far gone to repair. Were they like this, too? He stands in the wind for a long time, thinking.

Enough. Steeling himself not to think any further, he collects all her clothes, rats the laundry hamper for soiled bras and knickers, her intimate scent still clinging.

He stuffs everything into her holdall, tosses in the wind chimes for good measure and dumps it by the front gate. Out of sight, out of…

Night. The wind shrieks around the eaves. Scott dozes to Chopin’s Etudes. The elegant white fingers of their chords caress him. He doesn’t hear the unfamiliar car stop outside, see her pick up the holdall, or look long at his flat before being driven away.

***

© David Cookson 2008

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