An unlikely friendship

I saw her again three days ago. I walked past the Church this time and I saw her coming out with all the others. None of them took any notice of me, hypocrites the lot of them. 

   My daughter Pat claims the middle of my sofa and looks at me as though I’m losing my marbles.

   ‘That means it was Sunday. You saw her six days ago.’

   I put her straight. ‘My memory’s just as sharp as it always was, my fine lady. What are you doing here today, if it’s Saturday?’

   ‘I told you. I’m here to wish you happy birthday today because I’m not free tomorrow. I’m never free on Sundays, you know that.’

   Pat reaches in her handbag and gives me a card illustrated by the number “90” in large blue letters above a sparkling cake. She doesn’t think I’m worth the real thing. Then she leans back, pouting.

   ‘Those new glasses?’ I ask her. ‘They don’t do anything for you. They turn your eyes into saucers and make your nose look even more squashed up than it is already.’

   ‘Speak for yourself. I got my looks from you.’

   I push a button on the arm of my recliner and am propelled forward far enough for me to cover my only other card with the one Pat has just given me. Someone put the other card through the door this morning and I don’t want Pat asking me who it’s from. In any case there’s no writing in it.

   ‘So, tell me more about this lady friend of yours,’ Pat continues.

   I’m not going to encourage my daughter’s idle speculation about a woman aged at least twenty years younger than her. I think about the woman instead. I’ve seen her several times since Christmas walking through the village, but Sunday was different because she didn’t have her head buried in her mobile phone. She pretended she hadn’t noticed I was looking at her, turned away and then looked back at me I don’t know how many times before she made the effort to cross the road.

   This is how the conversation went.

   ‘You’re going to speak to me, then. At last.’

   ‘Well, it’s difficult checking phone messages when you’re wearing gloves.’

She may have had gloves on but other than that she had no idea how to dress for the cold weather. No wonder these young people spend so much on heating. She wasn’t even wearing a scarf, her coat was wide open and her head was bare. I told her as much.

   ‘I suppose I could do with a lovely balaclava like yours,’ she said, laughing at me, ‘but I’d never get it over my head.’ She swung her hair, as if I should be interested in her looks at my age. But that’s why I keep recognising her. Her mane is even thicker than my wife’s used to be.

   As Dierdre’s double stood in front of me, I remembered the only other time she had actually spoken to me, way back in October or November. She had been playing with her telephone under the Chestnut, her hair the same colour as the tree. I hadn’t been able to push past her because of the nuts and the leaves. She had only deigned to ask me where the new housing development was when I bumped into her, and she had been forced to help me get the stroller onto a clear patch of road. I had sent her away to the opposite end of the village.

   From the way she smiled at me on Sunday I don’t suppose she remembered me doing that.

   ‘Nice view from your new house?’ I asked her.

   ‘It’s lovely, thank you. How kind of you to remember.’

   ‘Blocks my view completely. I used to be able to see for miles across those fields, watch the skylarks, hear them singing. They’ve all gone now, unlike the lorries.’

   ‘I think the building work may have finished.’

   ‘Bet it hasn’t. I’m sick and tired of the constant rattling, they send dust all over my flowerbeds and I can’t even walk into the village without them blocking the lane.’

   I can’t remember what else I said, but when I told her the thing that was the final straw, that I used to walk my little pug dog in those fields, she had the cheek to tap my arm. Then before I could manoeuvre my frame and look at her expression, she had skittled off.

   Pat brings me back to the present.

   ‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.’

   ‘Don’t suppose I’ve missed much.’

   Interfering as usual, Pat purses her lips and walks over to the mantelpiece. Before I can stop her, she pulls out the other card and gives me one of her rare grins, the biggest her tiny mouth will allow.

   ‘It’s Sukie!’

She waves the picture of the pug in the balaclava at me, as though I hadn’t already seen it.

   ‘It’s from her, isn’t it? That woman you were telling me about.’

   Pat goes into the hallway and comes back with my outdoor clothes and places them on my walking frame.

   ‘Go and see her. Ask her what she’s playing at.’

   I’ll have it out with her all right! Agreeing with Pat for once I allow her to help me on with my greatcoat, balaclava, and scarf and to lift the frame over the front doorstep. She walks with me as far as the new development and then leaves me staring at the chequered three-storey semicircle. I don’t know which of these toytown houses she lives in, but I have already decided to knock on every one of the six identical doors.

   No need. She is waving at me through the curtains of the house at the end, nearest the field. As I move closer, she opens the front door then runs up the pathway to join me.

   ‘I knew you’d work it out,’ she says, pulling the walker with me behind it through the front door. ‘You told me it was your ninetieth birthday this weekend, and I’ve made you a cake.’