Make the most of it
It was a sleepy town at the best of times, and a bitter wet Monday in February was most certainly not one of those. The occasional lifeless person blended into the grey streets and skies, and only rarely would one person meet another. When this happened, they would exchange a startled greeting, a few courteous words about the weather or who had died that week, and then be on their way, to post a letter, to walk the dog or to check that the sea still rolled in and out. Ethel had met no-one on her hunched and slow schlep up to the high street, and so Nigel at the post office cum café cum village store was the unfortunate target of her chatter.
“Bob’s wrist’s swollen up so bad after that procedure he had along at Colynton, that it looks like something from the butcher’s window,” shouted Ethel at Nigel. Her husband, Bob, was partly deaf and had been so for the last decade, which meant Ethel had been shouting for the last decade.
“Oh, yes?” said Nigel from behind his newspaper.
“Yes. It was done over a month ago, and the doctor said it would be right as rain in a fortnight. But Bob says it’s as useful to him as an inflatable dartboard. So now he can only eat with his left, with a spoon, or with a fork if I cut everything up for him, but I don’t have the patience for that malarkey so its baked beans with those nice little sausages in for tea tonight.”
Ethel heads towards the tinned foods, but to Nigel’s disappointment she turns and walks into the section of the post office designated the café. He sighs.
“Can I get you something Ethel? You know we close very shortly for lunch.”
“Oh no dear,” she shouts. “Just fixing a few loose ends here.” She walks along the three tables turning the tiny vases, each with an artificial rose inside, so they all face out from the wall. She then pushes a couple of chairs in till they meet the tables.
She’d always wanted the position of postmistress cum barista cum shopkeeper in the town, but Nigel (who was close friends with the late mayor) had been given the spot. She wasn’t one to grumble, but he wasn’t even a Breathless Head local, and his attention to detail was shambolic. Like all men.
She covered the short distance between the café and the village shop in four strides, picked up four cans of cat food and placed them on the counter in front of Nigel.
“I tried him on spaghetti the other day,” she shouted.
Nigel looked in puzzlement at Ethel. “Your cat?”
She looked in puzzlement at him for a few moments, their expressions mirrored in each other. “No, my husband.”
“Oh.” Nigel went back to his newspaper as Ethel turned to cover the two strides back to the village shop. She started pulling cat food tins forward and lining then up on the shelves. Nigel ignored her, as ever, and concentrated on The Bugle. The paper typically specialized in weather and people who had died that week, but this edition had an interesting article about a fossil hunter who had sunk up to his chest in the clay at Chiddlemouth.
“Yes, I thought he could make do with a fork and eat it like the Italian people do. You know, by spearing it in the middle and then twirling it round and round, until they get a neat little mouthful on the end of their fork. But not my Bob, no. He shouted and screamed and said some dreadful things about the Italians. Then he threw the bowl at my head. Luckily his aim left-handed is much worse than his right.”
Nigel was scrutinizing the photo of the fossil hunter and wondering if a beard would make himself seem more rugged and thus attractive to Gillian, the horse whisperer from up town. He looked up.
“He threw what at you?”
“A bowl of spaghetti. Made an awful mess. Looked like murder.” She was piling tins of custard into a neat little pyramid, and she stopped with a tin in the air to remember the moment. “Or at least murder of… a load of worms, yes, that’s what it looked like, worm massacre.”
Nigel thought beyond the worms and considered asking about Bob’s behavior at home, did he really throw things ate Ethel? But did he really want to know? And could he blame Bob Inglesworth for throwing the odd thing at his tiresome wife? His pondering was interrupted by Ethel placing two tins of beans and a loaf of bread on the counter.
He closed the paper and noticed it was February 29th. The date had been highlighted with a red star and the words – ‘An extra day, make the most of it readers!’ Ethel noticed it too.
“Well I never, a whole extra day for us Nigel,” she said with a grin. “I wonder what treats and wonders are in store for us today.” He sighed, knowing exactly what was in store for him and assured none of it constituted a treat or wonder. With painstaking slowness he rang through her purchases and double-bagged them.
“That’s £4.21,” he said.
Ethel gulped and opened her purse, peering inside as though one might look into a badger set.
“Be a dear and put in on the tab Nigel,” she said. She looked at him over the top of her verifocals like a nervous Beatrix Potter character.
Nigel sighed. It was his reflex reaction to almost everything in life. A discarded crisp packet darting along the high street elicited the same response as the news his sister was visiting. A darkening storm cloud, a barking dog, the death of a friend, the price of fish, every article in The Bugle. Life was a deep sigh for Nigel, the postmaster-cum-barista-com-shopkeeper.
“It’s quite a tab you’ve grown here,” he said. “May I ask when you intend on settling it.”
Ethel straightened up and grew a good inch. “Your tone would suggest you doubt that will happen.”
He sighed. He didn’t have the energy for a confrontation, ever. “No, no. Just wondering when. I’ll add it to the list.”
Nigel made an exaggerated gesture of turning the many pages of Ethel’s tab, before scribbling down her purchases. In similarly exaggerated style, Ethel picked up her bag of shopping from the counter and let if fall to the floor like a lead weight.
“Oh my goodness, that’s heavy,” she said aloud. She placed her hands on hips, or at least on top of the many quilted layers that covered her hips, and stared in puzzlement at the shopping bag, and then up to Nigel. “I’m not as strong as I used to be.”
Nigel knew what Ethel was angling for, and he also knew she had timed her strategy with the precision of a military operation. Just as she cocked her head at him, the cuckoo emerged from his hour’s nap and told anyone within a few hundred feet that it was time to close the post office cum café cum village store. Nigel sighed.
“Shall I help you home with that shopping Ethel?” It was an offer made tersely, in the same way you might offer a shitty child an early night.
Ethel smiled. “That’s very kind of you Nigel. As long as I’m not troubling you, you’ve got nowhere or no-one else to run off to?”
He ground his teeth and sucked a deep breath through them. “Nothing that can’t wait,” he said, by which he meant nowhere or no-one.
“Well then. You finish up here and I’ll just tidy up that dusty old display in the window.”
Ethel starting re-arranging the pyramids of tins in the window while Nigel cashed up, pulled on his anorak, picked up his red post office bag and turned off the lights. He picked up Ethel’s bag of shopping and opened the tinkling door for her. She indulged the window display a few more moments before heading out into the drizzle.
Ethel spoke much on the short walk south to the coast road, while Nigel made mumbling affirmations and kept his head down. He watched the grey wet pavement throw quick splashes onto the tip of his brown boots. It looked like little watery panthers pouncing on his toes. Nigel only looked up from the panthers when Ethel stopped talking.
Her face was complete confusion. “Oh,” she said.
Nigel looked around them. They were on the coast road, and the wind and rain were swirling around them.
“What is it Ethel?”
She looked up the road and then down it, up and then down. Nigel sighed. “Ethel, it’s not really the weather for admiring the view. Can we just get you home?”
She squinted at him through her wet lenses. “Well, we could… if I could just find it.”
Now it was Nigel’s turn to look confused. “What do you mean find it?”
Ethel took a few tentative steps into the road and then stopped still. She held her position for a few moments and then turned around, her mouth wide and her eyebrows touching the rim of her knit hat.
“My house has gone,” she said into the blustering wind.
“What?” said Nigel.
“My house has gone!” she shouted.
Nigel chuckled, but then realised what she meant. He scurried to the centre of the road, next to her. Beyond the pavement in front of them was nothing, just an abyss of grey weather. He took a few steps in retreat.
“You’re sure?”
“Well of course I’m bloody sure, I’ve lived here 33 years. Across from the bus stop they closed down… that one.” She nodded to the derelict shelter behind them.
“Bloody hell,” said Nigel. “Bloody hell.” He dropped the shopping bags. “What about Bob?”
Ethel let out a wail, it pierced through the wind like a sea gull’s cry. “No! No!” she yelled. She took a few faltering steps towards the unknown.
“Ethel, wait!” He grabbed her. She looked at him and her magnified eyes were brimming with tears, her face the definition of misery. He gulped, not knowing what to say.
Her lip trembled. “Fluffy,” she said.
“What?”
“Fluffy. He must have… must have gone down with the house.”
“Oh. Your cat?”
“Yes of course my damn cat, you idiot.” She composed herself. “Now go over there Nigel and check over the side, she might be holding on somewhere.”
“Holding on?”
“Yes, holding on, with her claws. She’s a clever thing. Maybe there’s some of the garden left, or a ledge, or a something, and she might be there.”
Nigel sighed. “I’m not sure either of us should go close to the edge Ethel. We should probably call the fire brigade or the police.”
Ethel squared her feet and put her hands on her hips. “Yes, perhaps we should, perhaps we should call some real men.” She looked at him with defiance. “To save my cat.”
Nigel bit his lip. The chance of Ethel’s cat clinging onto the edge of the world were slim, but this was possibly the best chance he might ever have to act heroically, and to change people’s opinion of him. There had been one other time, in the post office-cum-village store-cum-café when a toddler had choked on a pear drop. The mother had been hysterical but Nigel had just watched as the curious little face had turned from red to purple, like a quick-ripening berry. Luckily Gillian had walked in, in her jodphurs, and after a brisk set of robust slaps, a sticky pear drop was on the floor and the child was wailing. The whole situation had been most awkward for Nigel, and to make it worse the mother had stuck around to insult him. She aggressively questioned his manhood, in front of Gillian, and had used language that made him turn from red to purple. When they finally had made their exit, the little boy had picked up the pear drop from the floor and popped it into his mouth again. Bastard.
Now was Nigel’s chance. Before he could change his mind, he put down his post office bag, strode toward the other pavement and up onto the kerb. At this point he could feel his vertigo kicking in and so he dropped onto hands and knees.
“Go on Nigel!” shouted Ethel. “Look for Fluffy!”
He crawled inch by inch toward the other edge of the pavement. A few metres to the right he could see that some of the paving slabs had slipped away, but in front of him they were all intact. His heart was racing and, even in all the wind and rain, he felt a heat pulsing through him. It must be what he had read about so often – adrenaline. It was a feeling that made him light-headed and giddy, but which excited him no end. Here he was crawling toward imminent danger, with God knows how much stability beneath him, all for the remote possibility of saving a cat. Goodness how valiant he was. No wait. “This is stupidity,” he mumbled to himself.
Just as he began his turn to retreat, he noticed a large crack on the pavement next to him, he stared at it a split second but in that most fleeting of moments, it grew, widened, circled him and his piece of world snapped off.
“Oh my!” said Ethel. She picked up her shopping bags, Nigel’s post office bag and hurried to the bus shelter. She sat beneath it a while, pondering her situation, and how odd life was. As she sat there, the greyness subsided and a skinny ray of sunshine crept towards Breathless Head. She was feeling a little peckish and so rooted around in the shopping bag. She pulled out a tin of beans and peeled back the metal lid. There was no one around and no other option, so she put the metal to her lips and took a few tentative sips. She drank down the whole can within a minute.
“Right,” she said to herself. “A change is as good as…” She cocked her head to the clearing clouds. “What is a change as good as?” she asked them. She shrugged and picked up her shopping and her smart new post office bag. It was strange how light it all felt now