Open Writing

Every time he went home that way, down the steep hill and past the mill-house, he noticed the chair. It was green and rickety, made of wooden slats, and it stood, or rather leaned, in the middle of the meadow at the top of the next hill.

It was a tiny valley: you were in and out of it before you realised. The only house was the mill-house, just by the narrow bridge and the little river. One or two shells of cottages were among the trees, but he had never stopped to look more closely. They might have been just barns or cattle byres, of no interest to the young man on his way home from the shoe shop where he worked six days a week, 9 o’clock till five-thirty.

His wife Beth would be looking out for him, he knew; some days he did a bit of shopping for her, or called in to see if his widowed mother needed anything, and Beth knew he would be late then. But once or twice a week, he would change his mind at the last minute as he drove home, and take the left hand turn down to the mill-house instead of the usual ‘drive straight on’ down the main road. No reason - just a whim, a desire to see something different.

He had laughed out loud when he had first seen the chair, months before. It had seemed so incongruous. A rich, beautiful meadow with flowers of all the colours of the rainbow, and a forgotten chair marooned in the middle; no cottage in sight, and no sign of anyone who might come and sit on it sometimes.

As the weeks passed he had come to feel a strange sense of excitement and anticipation as he climbed up the hill. Would it still be there? Was anyone ever coming to rescue it. that poor lost little chair?
But no. It was always there. He decided one day to pull off the road and park for a while under the trees. He got out and stood looking for a long time. The light was wonderful, clear and piercing with a brilliance not often seen in England. The flower heads nodded in the breeze and the grass shimmered, and even the unseen occupant gazed into the sun.

He didn’t always pause after that, just occasionally. Beth was inclined to complain if she hadn’t expected him to be late.
“What on earth’ve you been up to ?” she’d say. “I’ve had your tea ready for ages. It’ll be your fault if it’s a hard as leather.” And he’d apologise and mumble about stocktaking and eat his tea without noticing what he was eating. Then he’d drink a mug of tea and think about the chair and how it came to be there.

One day in late summer Beth said she wanted to go and visit her sister for a week. He’d be all right, she said. She’d make a fruit cake and there were potatoes and carrots in the garden, and anything else he could organise himself. “Will you be all right?” she said, having just answered all the possible questions beforehand. “You can stay with your mum. if you like.”

Her told her he’d be fine, and, yes, of course she must go, and he’d got plenty to do in the garden. And so it was arranged. Beth went off and he settled down to be on his own. He took her into town to catch the train, and then turned without thinking down towards the mill-house on the way back.

It was later than usual - eight o-clock on a Friday evening, and the sun was already low on the horizon. There was no hurry this time, no Beth to say “Where have you been?”, and he drove slowly and quietly, as if to leave the peace of the valley undisturbed. As he crossed the bridge and began to climb up the hill he felt like an intruder. Was he really creeping up on someone? The feeling was so strong that, as he reached the top and came to the meadow, he was half-prepared for what he saw. There, under the trees and gazing towards the chair, was an old lady. As he turned the car into the clearing and switched off the engine, she didn’t move at all.

He got out of the car and closed the door quietly. Minutes passed. He wanted to say something, to ask her if it was her chair, and should he go and reclaim it for her. At the same time there was a feeling of resentment that ‘his’ space was now occupied by someone else. He had just decided to go and stand beside her, say something perhaps, when she turned and walked past him without a glance. She walked away down the hill, and he was left with the faintest smell, of lavender and his questions unanswered. He stood for a long time gazing across the meadow as the grey colours of dusk crept over the land, until at last there was no more light. He went home with a strange feeling of sadness that came from he knew not where.

The next day was Saturday and he was busy in the garden. Then Sunday and he visited his mother, but on Monday, as soon as the shop closed, he headed for the mill-house valley. It was raining, but as soon as he saw the chair, still there, still unclaimed, he felt better. There was no old lady, no more strange sad feeling. Even in the rain, to see it still there was reassuring. It was the same on Tuesday and Wednesday: he hadn’t given a single thought to his wife, and when, on Wednesday evening, she telephoned him to ask why he hadn’t telephoned, he was at a loss to say why.

“Er, there’s been a lot to do in the garden, dear,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of weeding, you’ll see.” And he left it at that.

The truth of the matter was that he longed to walk into the meadow grass and go right up to the chair, even sit on it. But he didn’t, he couldn’t say why. Then on Friday he realised with a sudden sense of shock that Beth would have to be collected the next day. And that would be his last chance of loitering for an hour or two. It was going to be a lovely evening, if a bit cool, so he planned what he would do: he wouldn’t go home at all, not until later, that was, but would take a pack of sandwiches and a can of beer, and sit and wait for dusk to come. He wanted to be there when the chair finally dissolved into the evening shadows, and he could no longer see it on the grass and flowers that caressed it during the day.

A car or two went past as he ate his sandwiches. There was a skylark high above the meadow, and it hung there filling the sky with its lovely abandoned song. Gradually the sun slid down towards the tree line, and the greens turned gently to grey - and suddenly he began to walk into the long grass towards the chair. “Why am I doing this?” he asked himself out loud. Was it to have a closer look, or to retrieve it, or to turn it round? Or was it for some other reason as yet unknown?

It seemed a long way, but at last he was there, standing behind the small, rickety wooden chair, green and damp and old, that had dominated his thoughts for so long. Carefully he put out a hand to touch it, to see if it wobbled, to see how fragile it really was. His fingers slid underneath the back and he was just about to lift it a little when he heard the voice, clear and strong.

“No!” came the call, and again “No, no!”

He turned to look down to the trees and there, standing exactly where she had been before, was the old lady. She was beckoning to him to leave the chair alone and to come back, and her appearance was so commanding that he let go of it, and the chair fell to the ground. It was only a matter of inches, but it was just as if he‘d thrown it down a cliff. Every slat, every nail, every inch of wood seemed to disintegrate, and all that was left under the tangle of stems was a pile of wood fragments, like the debris from a severe attack of dry rot. He stared down in disbelief, then turned and ran.

When he reached the car he was out if breath and his heart was pounding. She had gone. There was no sign of her, no footstep on the road, just the faintest scent of lavender. He looked back across the meadow, but there was nothing at all to be seen. Dusk had settled, and he drove home in silence, his thoughts without form or anchor, trying to understand what it was all about.

The following day he collected Beth from the station.

“I can’t see a lot of difference in the garden,” she said. “The weeds look even more, if anything. I thought you’d been doing the garden.”
He said he had and changed the subject to what was in the local paper. They both read it in silence for a while, sharing the pages so that he could have the sport and she could read about the weddings and the deaths.

It was a short entry in the cricket columns that caught his eye. The local club wanted to put up a plaque to one of their old members, who had died ten years ago that month. He’d served as umpire for fifty years, and he always insisted on taking his own chair with him wherever the club played. He and his wife had lived in a cottage near the mill-house, he read, but since her death five years before, no-one had lived there. The old couple were remembered for their complete devotion to cricket and to each other, and she had always made it her business to look after his chair, and to see that it was in exactly the right place for him.

On the Monday he went that way home for the last time. He didn’t even slow down as he passed the meadow. He sent a donation of five pounds to the cricket club, but he didn’t tell Beth.