Snippets of Downshire Life – Mother’s Day

 

The Finchbottom Vale is nestled comfortably between the Ancient Dancingdean Forest to the south and the rolling Pepperstock Hills in the north, those who are lucky enough to live there think of it as the rose between two thorns.

The Vale was once a great wetland that centuries earlier stretched from Mornington in the East to Childean in the west and from Shallowfield in the south to Purplemere in the north.

But over the many centuries the vast majority had been drained for agriculture, a feat achieved largely by the efforts of famous Mornington Mills, of which only three had survived to the present day and even those were no longer functional and were in various states of repair.  

There were only three small bodies of water left in the Vale now one in Mornington, one in Childean and third of course was Purplemere which was to the north of the Vale, where in the lee of Pepperstock Hills, lay the modest town, of the same name.

On the western side of the town was the residential area known as Hill Side, and in one of its many quiet roads, was the home of Vera Williams, an ED doctor at the Royal Downshire Hospital, and just a few streets away George Harris.

 

53-year-old George Harris was retired, and he had been since he turned 50, he was up until then a Quantity Surveyor for Barraclough Ventures, but after his wife died he decided on a life change.

His wife was gone, his children were all grown up and all living independent lives and his work had lost its appeal so that was why he retired.

In the three years of retirement he led a largely solitary existence and spent his time enjoying the simple pleasures, and the two thing that gave him the most pleasure, were birdwatching and fishing.

The only anchor he had to the real world was his elderly mother who was in the Oak Dale Retirement Village and Nursing home in Dulcets Green, which was run by a marvellous woman, Alexandra   Barrileau, who was a tour de force, and it was through her that he was reacquainted with an old flame, Vera Williams.

 

He was at Oak Dale to visit his Mum, for Mother’s Day, not that she knew what day it was, or indeed who he was, but he did and so he went, as he did on all the other special days and sat in her room reading to her.  

 

Alexandra and Vera were old friends and the latter was a regular Sunday afternoon visitor, when she was off duty, where they would sit in what she called her drawing room, where they would have tea.

She only drank tea on a Sunday afternoon, because it reminded her of her mother, and it became a bit of a ritual, and Vera was more than happy to share in that ceremony.

 

After the ritual was complete Vera and Alexander left her private rooms on the second floor and walked towards the stairs.

“I’m working the next three weekends, so I won’t be over until next mon…” she began but stopped when she saw George Harris approaching the stairs from the opposite direction, and when he saw her he stopped in his tracks.

 

It had been on another Sunday afternoon when they had their first providential meeting, although that time it was a collision, it happened quite by chance on one damp miserable Sunday in a car park where they had a minor fender bender.

He was stunned that someone had driven into him, but when they both got out of their respective cars and he saw her he was stunned again.

She was a very beautiful young woman, tall and willowy with long light ginger hair, and a smiling freckled face.

She was a year or two younger than him and considerably more attractive than the girls he had been involved with up till that date, and to be honest he thought she was way out of his league, but  looking at her merely as a casual observer, he thought she was perfect, beautiful, shapely and had a gorgeous smile, and she was dressed in such a way that did nothing to hide her assets.

After inspecting the damage they shared a laugh and a joke and while they spoke, she flicked at her hair flirtatiously and he was staggered, because he thought that him and her was a nonstarter, but her body language told a different tale, so he thought he would chance his arm and ask her out, it was worth a shot, so he did and she said yes.

The two of them had a very special year together but then came University, him in Portsmouth and her in Edinburgh, and it inevitably fell apart.

 

That first meeting was thirty plus years earlier but he recognised her instantly even though all those years had passed.

She was still tall and willowy and her light ginger hair was streaked with grey, and her face was a little more freckled.

But when she smiled in recognition he knew without a doubt that it was her.

“Vera Coleman?”

“Used to be” she replied “Its Williams now”

“Ah married then”

“Divorced” she corrected him “and you?”

“Widowed”

“I take it you two know each other then?” Alex said and they both nodded in affirmation without averting their gaze.

“Ok then back to my drawing room” she said, sensing the rekindling of an old flame “I’ll make another pot of tea and you can both tell me all about it”