5. Making First Plans

“Tell me about Peggy,” asked Helena. Joshua sat across from her in her kitchen, her mask pushed down to her chin like his, and he sighed before taking a large sip of tea.
“How long have you got?” he asked.
“I just wondered about her,” suggested Helena.
“She was young when I met her, and the fairest creature under the sun,” he replied wistfully. “They talk of love at first sight, and that’s what we had. Both of us. But things were more strict in those days and we didn’t so easily find time to be alone, without eyes searching for every thing they thought we might be getting up to, and in truth we weren’t getting up to anything.”
“I remember those days only too well,” sighed Helena, “keep your knickers firmly on, or else.”
“We went to the park,” sighed Joshua, “and on Friday nights there was dancing, and we sometimes went to that. She looked lovely in her best dress, all floaty, and when she twirled and it showed her undies I thought I might get heart failure! Then we got married, and that was such a precious day for both of us.”
“You mentioned her appetite?” put in Helena, cautiously for fear of rocking a boat she didn’t begin to understand.
He looked at her for a moment, and sighed. “I think she got bored,” he said, “we couldn’t have a family. She had two miscarriages, which broke her heart, and that seemed to turn her away from my body and attend to her own. She started eating a great deal more that she should, and fell in love with her chip pan. But she’s been gone some years now and I don’t like to remember that part of her life. When we met she was a young beauty, she was, and as lovely as a rose in summer, and that’s how I like to remember her. I dared say you didn’t get to know her?”
“I saw her about on the Close years ago,” she said thoughtfully, “and that was about it. We’d pass each other by and go our own ways. I didn’t know her at all.”
“Despite everything, I loved her to the end, and in a way I suppose I still do,” he sighed. “Something went wrong. After the miscarriages she changed. She fell in love with her chip pan, and didn’t seem to mind that she was putting on weight. I suppose she ought to have looked for help, but in all honesty I don’t think she really wanted any. Maybe in her head her life was already as good as over… I couldn’t understand back then, and I still don’t.”
“That’s sad. I’m sorry if I’ve brought it all back to you,” murmured Helena.
“No matter. In return you can tell me about you,” he said with a smile.
“There’s not much in my story,” she admitted, “just three failed relationships and one baby. That’s Rosie, and she’s grown up to be my best friend, married and with a not so little Rosie of her own.”
“I saw her, years ago, in the street, dancing,” smiled Joshua, “but there wasn’t any music! Yet she and another girl or two were dancing as if the whole world was filled with a rhythm only they could hear! I asked her once what she was dancing to, what music, you understand, and she just said the song of the stars, and smiled at me.”
“That was Rosie all right!”
“And then she grew up?” sighed Joshua, “she became a woman with a life of her own. We would have liked our babies to do that, Peggy and I. But it was never to be. But tell me, what do you do to entertain yourself these days?”
“What do you mean by entertain?” she asked, frowning.
“To fill the long hours between waking in the morning and sleeping at night,” he murmured.
“I like reading.”
“Books?” he enquired, knowing she might mean magazines, the sort his Peggy had buried herself in when he stomach was full, before she dosed off for an afternoon nap.
“Of course,” she smiled at him, “what else?”
“Oh, I wondered. What sort? Love stories?”
She shook her head. “No fear!” she laughed, “I’ve had enough love in my life, and didn’t get on with it!”
“What sort of book fills you with happiness, then?”
“To tell the truth, I like a nice complex murder! I like trying to solve it before the investigator in the story does, and you can if it’s sufficiently well written.”
“Maybe I should start reading again,” he said, sadly, “I used to, when I was a kiddie. You know, The Famous Five, that sort of thing. Then I grew up and found the real world held enough problems for me not to want to read about storyland secrets.”
“I love my murders,” she laughed.
“As long as it doesn’t give you any ideas when you see grumpy old me sitting here.”
“In your shorts,” she teased.
“Don’t you like my legs then?” he asked with a grin.
“I should imagine they were more likely to excite a young less when you were a lot younger,” she laughed, “but they’re all right.”
“Before I go,” he said, changing the subject.
“Yes? You want to leave me all on my own already?” she asked.
“Not yet. But I did wonder, it crossed my mind, I thought that maybe if I asked… would you fancy coming out with me for a drink one night?” he mumbled almost inarticulately.
His nervousness amused her. But at the same time she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“To the local pub?” she asked.
“For starters,” he smiled.
“Starters? You mean, get bladdered in the local and then go on a pub crawl?” she asked, eyes open wide.
“No! Now you’re being naughty and quite deliberately misunderstanding me…”
“I know I am. And yes, I’d love to take you by the arm and be escorted to the bar and be offered a gin and tonic or something even more salubrious…”
“Whatever you’d want.”
“So that’s tonight planned for, is it?”
“Would that be convenient?”
“My sweet Joshua, I’d like nothing better than going to the pub with you and spending a happy hour or so in your company. You wouldn't even need to take our flask!”
“Of course not.”
She reached across the table and stroked him on his cheek, gently, with, she hoped, a sense of affection.
“And afterwards?” she asked.
“Afterwards?” he repeated.
“Yes. A nightcap? A bite of supper? That sort of thing?”
He nodded. “Of course,” he mumbled, “Of very course. I’d love that.”
“Tonight, then.”
“I’ll go back home and have a shower and see…”
“You’ll see?” she asked, wondering what he might need to see.
“If I’ve got any trousers fit to look at!”
“If shorts make you more comfortable.. after all, it is only a pub, not the Albert Hall,” she teased.
“About seven?” he suggested.
“That’s fine. I’ll be waiting for you. In my finery.”
He smiled, not quite sure if she was teasing, and in all honesty, not really caring. He was going to the pub with Helena, and that might just be the start of the rest of his life.”

© Peter Rogerson 22.11.21