Crooked Pieces (42 page)

And so, quietly and with hardly a snort or whimper, the vote was granted. To women aged thirty and over. Tucked in amidst a dozen new laws as though it was nothing more than a detail that scarce deserved the mentioning. A detail.

Is that what we were? I was? I am? A detail in history’s long march? Maybe. Maybe a thousand years from now it will make no difference, just as what people did a thousand years back is all but lost or forgotten. Or perhaps we shall all be saints like Joan of Arc. What does it matter? Today is what counts. And tomorrow. If you have a life you must live it.

Yes, today I am happy. Freda and I are at The Mascot, invited down while Freda gets over the chicken pox. She has made a great friend of Mrs Cliffe, who quite spoils her. The two of them spent the morning making flour paste animals
which Mrs Cliffe then cooked so that the pie was half an hour late going in and Mr Pethick Lawrence pretended to cry for hunger, delighting my hard-hearted daughter!

And here she comes. Little fat legs thudding across the grass to where I sit, wrapped in my coat in the cool autumn sun, looking at the lake, which does not change.

‘Ma.’

‘Yes, lovey.’

‘Come quick. There’s a man. He’s got a pot.’

‘Well, tell Mrs Cliffe. She’s in charge of the pots.’

Feet stamping like a little wild bull.

‘A pot. A pot like mine.’ She waves her arm at me.

‘Your spots have gone now, Freda. You’re better.’

‘This pot. My pot.’ The tiny little strawberry under her wrist.

My heart begins a somersault. ‘Did he tell you his name, Freda? Did he say what he was called?’

‘Limpy.’

‘Limpy?’

‘He’s got a funny leg.’

‘Did he have another name?

‘Yes, but I have to guess and I can’t. He said you would know. Auntie Sylvia sent him. And here.’ She hands me a screwed up piece of paper. It says, ‘
Be glad today and sing
.’

And now I am running.

He is standing in the hallway. No sun, no light behind him. Only the shadows of a winter’s afternoon. But the dark has no fears for me now.

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S
ARAH
G
RAZEBROOK
exchanged a career as a television actress for one as a writer following the birth of her second child. Her first novel,
Not Waving
, won the
Cosmopolitan
Fiction Prize and she has written six others. She wrote a monthly column, ‘Notes from the Garret’, for
Kent Life
for four and a half years and contributes to a variety of satirical radio programmes. Sarah has wide experience of teaching creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and at Macon in France. She now lives in Deal, Kent.

Mountain Pique

Foreign Parts

Page Two

A Cameo Role

The Circle Dance

Not Waving