Barbra

Many thanks to my friend and editor Dawnj! Any mistakes in the story are mine.

This is a long story (for me) and I would like to warn my readers that it contains no sex until the second part of chapter 19. If you don't mind waiting that long, please read on...

Prologue

Barbra wished she could have skipped 2010. Perhaps things would have been better if that had been possible? She knew they wouldn't. Still, it had been the absolute worst year of her life.

It had started alright. Christmas had been simply wonderful, spent in the family circle with her parents, her photographer husband Mike Nelson Laing and her twin sister Emily, in an atmosphere of real good will and happiness. She hadn't even had a quarrel with her sister once, which was rare to say the least, her parents had been in extremely good spirits despite their high age and physical discomforts, and Mike had been home!

But then her life ran off the rails completely. Joe Kirkland, her father, got a stroke on the 23rd of March, and he lay in intensive care for just over a week. Barbra and Em took turns watching over him in hospital; Minnie, their mother, kept going as well as she could, but it hit her hard. She'd always been frail, and now, white-haired, slim and wise, she looked more fragile than ever, and the twins made sure she got enough rest and they tried to comfort her as well as they could. They stayed at their parents' place. Barbra sorely missed Mike, who was in Afghanistan working for a French newspaper and freelancing; the daily phone call was quite simply not enough under the circumstances. However, it was the best they could do.

Joe died on April 1st, with his daughters and wife around him. They pressed his hand, and he nodded at them and tried to smile, but his faculty of speech had been impaired by the stroke, and he was too weak to write. At 7:56 in the evening he suddenly made a sound -- like a hiccup, Barbra thought -- and then lay back on the pillow, staring up at the ceiling with dead eyes. They laid him off themselves, washing him and dressing him all in the family. It was a truly valuable time as such, but one that would hurt for a long, long time, whenever she thought about it and that would fill her with longing for the togetherness of that moment.

Barbra called her aunt Kitt, her father's favourite sister, and his only remaining sibling, who still lived in Port-of-Spain, in Trinidad where the family came from. She was in her nineties, and too old to travel. She tried to comfort her niece, and it did help Barbra some. She'd never seen her, but she sometimes called, and regularly wrote -- by snail mail, as Aunt Kitt didn't have a computer. Barbra loved the letters in her spidery handwriting.

Mike landed at Gatwick on the 3rd. Barbra had never been happier to see and hug him; she really needed her husband more than anyone. He was practical, he was sweet, and someone to hold on to...

The burial was a great success, as far as burials go. Barbra realised once again how popular and respected her father must have been; the auditorium of the cemetery was filled to capacity, and there were throngs of people in the waiting rooms, watching the ceremony on big flat screens. There were speeches by a few old friends and colleagues of her father's. His oldest friend told a very funny story about Joe's youthful days in Port-of-Spain and Minnie held a short but very moving exposé about her husband's life, and their life together. She touched on his love for his daughters, and his position as a family man, and though she had to stop once or twice to master her emotions, she carried it off very well. Barbra looked at her mother stand at the microphone admiringly; she was so old and wizened, and yet she was such a commanding personality that her audience sat listening to her spellbound.

When she had finished, though, she suddenly turned very pale and she stood at the microphone swaying on her legs. Mike made a dash for her and grabbed her shoulders just in time to stop her from falling.

They took her into the coffee room and sat her down on a chair, and she gradually got some colour back in her face. Barbra and Emily hovered around her, feeling very worried, but Minnie pooh-poohed their concern for her welfare. No, of course she was quite alright. What DID they think?

She insisted on doing the cooking that evening. Barbra and Emily were on hand to help out, and the four of them had an old-fashioned family dinner. It was cosy and satisfying enough, and Barbra sighed with relief that her fears appeared to be ungrounded.

One week after the burial, on Saturday the 11th, Barbra woke up well before dawn. Something made her feel uncomfortable, and she lay tossing and turning, feeling very restless. Eventually she decided to get up and prepare the breakfast table. Better to be up and doing things than to lie in bed fretting, she thought. She put on her robe and went downstairs; and when she entered the living room she stopped dead in her tracks.

Sitting on the couch, dressed in her nightgown, was her mother, entirely motionless, smiling but somehow looking completely wrong. When Barbra greeted her, there was no answer. Barb shook herself, hurried over to the couch, and took her mother's hand. It felt stiff and unnatural. She wasn't even surprised; she'd often thought her parents would go together. But knowing both of them were dead, she slumped down next to her mother on the couch and cried until she had run out of tears. Then she went upstairs to wake Mike and Em. The rest of the day was one long, bad dream.

Somehow she'd survived. The burial as such went off well, and Mike stayed with her for another fortnight -- in retrospect two of the happiest weeks she remembered. Then he flew back to Afghanistan, where he got killed in a bomb blast five weeks later.

An officer came to inform her in person. Mike had been damaged so much she was not allowed to see him. When Barbra got the news she simply didn't take it in at first. She didn't believe that it could be true. But it was. When she finally realised it really was true, she crumpled up. Of all four people who really meant something in her life the only one she had left was Em, and their relationship had always been troublesome. There was no one to turn to, now that she needed a shoulder to cry on and an arm around her shoulders. No one. Oh Mike... Mike... She sat down and bawled. As a girl she'd always turned to her father in times of need, and in her married life Mike had been the one to comfort her, to talk to, but now there was no reassuring voice to be found, no ear to listen to her.

Mike was buried on a beautiful day in late May. Barbra thought the weather was an extra insult. It should have been cold, grey and gloomy, like the way she felt. Everybody was very kind to Emily and to her, but it wasn't long before she was alone again, really alone in the house she'd bought with Mike, among the things they'd collected together, in the ambiance they'd created together, and it seemed all the light had gone out of her life -- all life out of her days.

1 - Doctor's Orders

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountainside,

And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;

But last year's bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.

There are a hundred places where I fear

To go — so with his memory they brim.

And entering with relief some quiet place

Where never fell his foot or shone his face

I say, "There is no memory of him here!"

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Edna St. Vincent Millay seemed to be rather preoccupied with death and disease, but she wrote beautifully. Barbra loved the poem. It wasn't quite what she felt, but it came near. The presence of Mike in the house, in everything around her, his ghost on her shoulder... The constant reminders were hard to take, so hard that she sometimes wondered if it was all worth it. Though she never noticed, she became a recluse, withdrawn into herself, shunning human contact. She grew thin, a grey-faced shadow of her former beautiful self with unhealthy hair and dull skin that had lost its shine, and the people that knew her were not a little worried.

She wasn't the person to ask anybody's help. Instead, she shied away from any friendly face and she kept on trying to cope for months, rather unsuccessfully, going it alone; and that autumn Barbra was told by her GP to leave off work and get herself back into shape first. She'd come to have some vague complaints seen to, but halfway through the consultation she lost her composure altogether. Dr James was an old friend of her father's and his kind words and the memories they kindled were too much for her. The doctor first let her cry. Then he tried to comfort her and told her to go and have herself a holiday and a change of air.

"But my job..."

"I'll see to that, Bee. You cannot go on like this. You have to get yourself sorted out!"

Barbra nodded dumbly. She knew he was right. She was getting too moody, too sour.

"Just so. Do send me a postcard, right?"

She smiled a little at that. "I will," she said. "Alright."

She went home and called the office, to find Dr James had already informed her employer.

"Have a good rest, Barbra," he said. "It's high time you found some purpose in life again! How about a month to start with?"

She thanked him profusely, but he didn't want to hear.

Alright, then. A holiday. But where to go? She wondered vaguely for some time, and then she remembered the enthusiastic stories her parents had told her about a holiday they'd had on the Isle of Wight. Barbra had never been there. Why not, she thought, and she booted her laptop to find out.

The next morning she packed her suitcase. She leisurely had some coffee, and a friend drove her to the station. She took a fast train to London, a slower one to Brockenhurst and then on to Lymington Pier.

When she arrived at Lymington dusk was settling over the trees, and the quayside, where the cars were waiting for the ferry to arrive, took on a slightly eerie aspect, the way such places tend to do; even in the daytime she didn't quite like them, and now it was slowly getting dark it felt a bit chilly between her shoulder blades. She'd got off the train, walked across and bought her ticket and now she sat on her suitcase looking out over the Solent.

The ferry arrived, and the cars and passengers disembarked. Then she walked on board. It was stuffy inside so she took her suitcase to the upper deck, and she stood looking at the distant blurred shape that was the island until the ferry sailed. There was a near full moon, and there were some wisps of cloud. She thought it was very beautiful and serene, and she stood on deck watching the island take on shape. Eventually she could even make out the contours of Yarmouth Castle in the moon light. It was a great change from sitting at home, mourning.

She'd booked a room in a B&B in Freshwater Bay, where she was received by Mrs Dee, a small, cheerful lady who made her feel quite at home. She went to the pub for a quick, late meal and a pint of cider. The publican was friendly and he didn't seem to mind serving food really late. When she felt well fed she went back to the B&B, where she went to bed, happy she'd taken James's advice.

Her holiday was a smashing success. She walked all along the coast, and visited all the sights; she bought a few books at the Freshwater lifeboat charity shop (the second-hand bookshop in Dimbola Lodge was a sight too expensive) and a nice blouse in West Cowes, she took the Red Funnel Ferry to go shopping in Southampton and a Wightlink one to Portsmouth and she duly sent a postcard to Dr James from Ventnor.

She didn't care for East Wight too much -- penny arcades and fast food and other sad kinds of entertainment -- but there was a pleasant coastal path with a great view across the water of Spinnaker Tower, and she loved the rest of the island. Smiling a little at the elderly people in Godshill having a good time, letting the wind blow into her face on Tennyson Down, tramping up to Newtown Harbour starting from Yarmouth, looking at the Needles from Totland Bay...

She most enjoyed a small cove with a few small houses and some fishing boats. The first time she went there the day, which had started grey, turned into unbroken rain. She had coffee at a cafe there, and she loved watching the way the rain flattened the waves, and the patterns it painted on the sea's surface -- dull lead, scrubbed silver, everything in between -- and listening to the pebbles being driven onto the shore and rolling back with the waves, a lovely sound that was both musical and soothing. She went there five times in all, and she realised that she loved the sea more than she'd ever realised.

Mrs Dee, who was a motherly woman of sixty-three, made sure Barbra had a run of excellent breakfasts. She loved cooking, and taking care of people in general, and she enjoyed seeing Barbra get more colour in her face and put on weight slowly. Barbra highly enjoyed sitting in the breakfast room, doing honour to the food and talking to Mrs Dee, who after a few days asked her to call her Alice.

She returned to the mainland in the daytime. Before she sailed she could see Tennyson's Monument in the distance, and Fort Victoria, and once out at sea she saw from the deck the whole shape of Tennyson Down, and Fort Albert, and eventually even the Needles.

She came home feeling refreshed and with a new zest for life. It had really and truly done her a lot of good, and she smiled when people complimented her on her looks. She didn't relish the idea of staying in her old house too much, though, and when she found a job vacancy in her line near the south coast she applied. To her delight she was taken and she sold her house and moved to a small but sweet cottage, a few miles from the sea.

It lay in a reasonably large garden that had been loved by its former occupants, with a few big trees and a well-kept lawn surrounded by a few small flower beds. It contained a nice, spacious bedroom, a reasonable spare room and a small study adjacent to the living room, and, Barbra thought, it was really just what she needed. She could put her dictionaries and her laptop in the study and leave the living room uncluttered by work-related stuff, and if she wanted to she could still listen to her music by leaving the door open.

As it had only recently been done up she didn't have to spend a lot of time redecorating; everything was well-kept and clean. All she had to do was put in new hardwood flooring in the living-room, and then she moved house in just one long weekend. Redoing the place in her own colours followed over the next few months, slowly and relaxed.

She kept no visible memories of Mike in there, apart from an enlarged, smiling photograph that she'd got framed and put up in her bedroom, and that she smiled at when she looked at it. The other memories stayed, of course, but they didn't encroach upon her life any more.

She fondly thought of Dr. James and his advice; she'd visited him and told him about her holiday's success before she moved, and he and his wife had taken leave of her as of an old friend. They were really nice.

2 - Mary's Birthday Party

Once she had completely settled, Barbra spent her weekends exploring the surroundings. There were a few beautiful paths in the neighbourhood. She especially liked the cliff paths; there was a rather precipitous path going down to the beach that made a sharp turn after some six or seven yards where the cliff went down perpendicularly, to become a little less steep. She often went down there; it reminded her a lot of her favourite spot on the Isle of Wight, and there was a small tea shop that sold good scones at the other end. She came to know Molly Barnes, the proprietress, very well. She quite liked her, and invariably had a nice chat with her when she went.

There was a good little pub in the village, and she met a few fellow-Caribbeans in the neighbouring town. Joan Boudreaux was a big woman with long plaits that she did herself, and Mary Ruddock was thin, tall and wore her hair short. It was nice to be around them, and talk girl things. Big girl things, admittedly, as they were all in their forties, but still. Joan had a quiet, friendly husband and three beautiful daughters, and Mary went in for the occasional lover but didn't keep any of them around for long. She often told hilarious stories about their clumsiness, larded with a good deal of self-deprecation, and whenever they met she would have the others in stitches within minutes. Barbra invariably went home smiling still.

That spring, at Mary's birthday party, Barbra was introduced to John Gibbons. He was at least six foot six, with very fine kinky hair, almost ebony skin and a royal bearing. He was very muscular, obviously in top shape, and he wore a white T-shirt. He had a small scar in the shape of the Nike logo on his upper arm, just over his elbow and the most beautiful smile, and Barbra was very impressed. His handshake was warm and firm, his eyes were brown and clear -- he was a really handsome man.

"Pleased to meet you," he said in a deep voice. "Barbra Laing... Are you Mike's widow, by any chance?"

"Yes I am. Did you know him?"

John shook his head. "I know his photography," he said. "He was a true artist, and a good reporter."

Barbra nodded. "He was," she said. "And a great husband."

"You were lucky," Mary said. "Husbands like him are rare."

Barbra smiled. "Thank you," she said.

Mike had been as handsome as John, she thought, in a slightly ragged way. He'd been less smooth, less poised, perhaps. But oh, oh, oh, how she missed him still.

"I don't talk about him much, you know," she said. "But he is often on my mind. It's about a year ago now..."

"Poor girl," Mary said, and she hugged her friend tight.

"I'm not. I wondered about it for a long time but I don't think I would have wanted to miss out on him, even if I'd known it would have spared me going through the loneliness that followed."

"Okay, sweetie, but let me hug you some more nevertheless!"

Barbra grinned. Mary was a great girl, she thought. Funny, sweet, weird sometimes -- and a real friend.

John stood looking at them silently. He seemed to like what he saw, and he waited until Mary had done hugging Barbra before he spoke again.

"Got a lot of his photographs about the house?" he said.

"No. I have a good many in portfolios, though. I like them, but there are too many war-related ones, and seeing how he died, I cannot get myself to put them up. They would conjure up the wrong kind of memory."

"Tear open half-healed wounds," Mary said. "Not a good idea."

John nodded. "Yes. Of course. I'd love one or two on my wall, though. Have you come down from the Midlands?"

"No, I moved here some months ago. Better for my mental health, and I love the cliffs."

"Okay. Right. In that case, as you'll be around here anyway, would you like to go out with me this weekend?"

"Sounds like a good idea. What do you have in mind?" Barbra said with a smile.

"Just a couple of drinks in the pub, to get to know you a little better?"

"Mmm, I don't know. I never drink and drive."

"I could pick you up and drive you home again."

Barbra shook her head. "No," she said. "Unless you want to live on Vichy all evening."

"Not me," John admitted. "There's no pub in your village where we could go?"

Barbra considered for a moment. She didn't want to make a bad impression, and she was afraid John might find the place very old-fashioned. "There is the Jolly Woodman. I rather like it, but I don't know if you would find it any good. It's a real village pub, you know."