My Father's Shoes

MY FATHER'S SHOES

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. Bethany pulled her coat closer around her and looked up at the street lights which gave a comforting glow of hope on this cold cheerless night. As she walked along the snow covered pavement she suddenly saw a cat washing itself in the gutter. She stopped to admire the precise movements of the cat as it washed itself. She had always been fascinated by the toilette of a cat. She loved the way they licked their paws and then carefully wiped all over their faces with their paws. She tried to do up the buttons on her coat with her freezing fingers, but just as she was trying to fasten the last button, it rolled off and into the gutter. The cat, momentarily, stopped its washing, lazily reaching over to sniff the button, perhaps hoping for food. However it soon realised that it was nothing interesting and with a look of catlike disdain continued it's daily ablution.

Bethany walked on, not knowing where she was going or what she was going to do. Her step-father had thrown her out of the house half an hour ago with taunts like, “You are a waste of space” and “You will come to no good”. His final remark had been, “Now get out of here, your mother and I never want to see you again”. On saying that he slammed the door, turning off the garden light as he did so. Bethany, too stunned to cry or yell or argue with him, just stood there in the dark as the snow began to fall. She could just hear her mother crying, but her mother had not raised a finger to help her.

Bethany thought longingly of her father who had died when she was only six years old. What a wonderful man he had been, so loving and kind. He was never too tired or too busy to play with her and every night he made up wonderful stories from his imagination. Her favourite one had been about a rather spoiled young girl who was not satisfied with her life . One day she had been granted 3 wishes by a fairy godmother who had appeared when she had been idly rubbing a ruby ring she had found in her mother's jewellery box. The girl asked her if she could be a gypsy, then a bird and finally a fairy. However she found that what you wish for is not always what it seems,so she was allowed to use a final wish to go back to being herself. Bethany had never tired of this story wishing now that she had a ruby ring that would grant her three wishes.

She found herself thinking over the last few years with much regret, but also perhaps with a bit of shame too. For several years after her father had died suddenly from a heart attack she and their mother had lived quite peaceably together. Admittedly they did not have much money but they managed. Then their mother had met Alan. She had met him through her work at the local supermarket. He was the new manager and almost immediately began to make a bee line for her. Yes, her mother was attractive Bethany thought and always eager to please at work. Alan started to drop her home after work and it wasn't long before he was staying for dinner and then overnight. He had tried to win Bethany over at first bringing her presents, but at this stage Bethany was a recalcitrant teenager of fifteen, certainly not prepared to be won over by this man that she instantly did not like. She recognised now that she had not even tried to like him and indeed had made his life very difficult, but hadn't he made hers difficult too? When he started to act like a parent, demanding where she was going and with whom,laying down the law as to where she could go, that had just became too much for Bethany . Huge rows became a daily feature until the last one where he had thrown her out.

So now she was out on her ear, hardly any money, 2 muesli bars, the clothes that were on her back and nowhere to go. She had her phone,so she started looking through her list of contacts to see if there was a friend she could ring who would put her up for the night. She didn't have many friends as she was a quiet shy girl, not particularly popular, hopeless at sports, certainly not in the “In Crowd”. It was her last year at school. She had no idea what she wanted to do after school, thinking that she wasn't going to get good enough grades to go to University, not that she wanted to go anyway. Perhaps she might be a hairdresser, she liked fiddling around with hair, but that was the only idea she had at the moment.

She dialled a couple of friends' numbers but they went through to voicemail and she didn't want to leave a message. Then she thought of her grandmother, her father's mother. She loved this grandmother dearly, but all physical contact had been severed with her when her mother had married Alan. He wouldn't let her grandmother in the house and certainly wouldn't take Bethany to see her. Her grandmother, Ganny, she called her as she had struggled to say Granny when she was little, lived on the other side of the city. She was a widow now, her grandfather having died over ten years ago . Unfortunately, she had no car and was rather incapacitated physically so the only contact that Bethany had with her was by phone but Granny didn't have a mobile only a landline. She decided to try and ring her, but no answer which probably meant that Granny hadn't heard the phone or was asleep.

“Okay” said Bethany to herself, “ I am going to walk there, I have my phone so google maps will show me the way”. With this decision made, she felt a little happier setting off at a brisk pace. It was hard going as the snow was now falling with great ferocity but Bethany struggled on. It was now 11pm . No-one was on the deserted streets for she was in an industrial area of the city. She took shelter every now and then in doorways, ate both her muesli bars but google maps was still telling her that she had five kilometres to go. Her coat was soaked , she was freezing , hungry, thirsty and extremely tired. She wanted to try and ring her Granny again but she was worried about alarming her by ringing so late. She was sheltering in an old church doorway. Unfortunately, the door was locked as all church doors were these days. Somehow it made her feel safer with the umbrella of the church looking over her. Bethany wasn't religious though she had been brought up as a Catholic by her father who always took her to church with him at Christmas time and sometimes at Easter.

Thinking about her father made her start to cry. Once she had started crying she couldn't stop. Great racking sobs shaking her freezing body. Eventually she was all cried out. All she wanted to do was to go to sleep but she knew she had to keep going somehow. From deep inside her came the urge to say a prayer, but the only prayer she could remember was the Our Father. She felt a bit silly saying it out aloud but it seemed to give her some strength and she raised herself up from the church step and trudged on. Luckily it had stopped snowing now.

Snow covered everywhere looking beautiful as it always does just after a big fall, until it becomes sludge. Her feet were freezing, almost numb with cold, her shoes soaked, but after walking for a while she noticed a strange feeling in her feet. They were somehow warmer and her legs did not feel so tired. The distance to her grandmother's house stretched ahead, but somehow did not seem so insurmountable now. Thoughts of her father seemed to be filling her head, as if he was with her, willing her on, warming her feet, giving her courage. “This is stupid”, she thought, but someone was definitely helping her. Had her prayer really been heard? Was her father helping her from above? Did things like this happen? Some lines from a Christmas Carol floated into her head. “In his masters steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted. Heat was in the very sod, which the Saint had printed”. The words from Good King Wenceslas. She remembered singing them at Christmas time, always loving this carol.

Could it really be that her father, like King Wenceslas, was warming her way to her Grandmothers? On and on she went with warmth pulsing through her body until at last there was her beloved Ganny's house with the warm red welcoming door. She was 'home' , and going to be with someone who loved her. She looked at the sky just as the dawn was starting to break through.

“Thank you, Dad”, she said and rang the bell.