Wear
Valley Writers meet in
the Town Hall library on Wednesday evenings, but last week we were a very small group, because of torrential rain.
Instead of the planned programme, we had an impromptu one.
The titles of ten novels were chosen at random from the shelves:-
“Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings.” “Sisters.”
“A Friend of the Family.” “Past
Remembering.”
“Full Circle.” “Star
Light.”
“Going Places.” “Emma.”
“Falling.” “The
Price of Coal.”
The remit was to write for forty minutes and produce work
that included at least five of these titles. As usual, it produced a variety of
poetry and prose of a high standard.
I included 9 of the titles.
Parallel Lives.
Emma
was a friend of the family. She’d known
the sisters since school days when they’d skipped happily along the lanes together
whatever the weather. In summer they’d
dawdled, tempted by the blackberries in the hedges or the cowslips in the
meadow; picking bunches of flowers to present to the teacher as an excuse for
their lateness.
The
girls had drunk the milk Emma hated so much – a third of a pint in a clumsy glass bottle – in return she’d whispered the answers to their hardest sums.
Now
she was past remembering the price of coal or understanding that few homes used
it any more. She lived in the cottage where she was born and refused to move
away. She had a tortoiseshell cat and she kept a
cow, although still she didn't drink its milk. Her chickens scratched at the
bottom of the garden and when they laid an egg Emma boiled it for breakfast –
three minutes exactly while she toasted her bread on a brass toasting fork at
the open fire where her mother had cooked for so many years.
The
sisters, on the other hand, had been ambitious and adventurous. They were going places; each tired of being a clone of the other.
Mary moved to the city, becoming a buyer in Ladies Fashion at the most
prestigious department store. Margaret,
very daringly, had travelled, finding employment on the great liners; wallowing
in the richness of the food and the luxury of the furnishings. But now life had come full circle and they
were back in the village. They’d bought a four-bed roomed house with a
landscaped garden and employed a man to care for it.
Emma
was invited to visit but she wasn't comfortable there, so the sisters trudged
down to the cottage in all weathers, occasionally even wearing muddy boots and
silk stockings, but always pleased to see her. She walked them home, sometimes in
star light, enjoying the same scents they’d known so long ago.
Happy
to be together where they belonged.
