Emily

Another Christmas tale - and a love story too.  There is a five letter word to describe Emily, but to state it would give the ending away.

I've noticed that a lot of my stories have an apocalyptic theme and/or feature someone meeting a sticky end.  I suppose it can't be helped for now - it was the PABC that encouraged me to start writing again after all.  I plan to rectify this situation in due course.

The world doesn't end in this tale - or at least not in the literal sense - but the protagonist might disagree.  

(Again...  Is this story auto-biographical?  In parts, yes.)

                                                                                                  

As a child I hated going to church.  Absolutely hated it.  I disliked getting up early on a Sunday morning and being frog marched into town with my parents, especially when it was cold and wet.  The awkwardness of having to parade out for Sunday School after the first hymn.  The incongruous jollity of the vicar when he tried to shoe-horn something funny into the sermon that he had heard on Radio 4 that morning. Not knowing what to do with my hands during prayers, or indeed what to pray about when we were supposed to pray for something of our own volition. And then there were the hymns.  Dreary dirges, every one.  Which was a pity, really.

Let me explain.

When I was in Junior School I had a young and enthusiastic form teacher called Miss Hadley.  I thought she was very pretty; she was petite, she wore her dark hair in a short bob and always wore dresses with a fine flowery print.  I remember once seeing her with wet hair when it rained during P.E. and being utterly transfixed by her (think Janet Leigh in That Scene in a certain Hitchcock movie).  Yes, I admit it - I loved her in that slightly confused, innocent and uncomprehending way that nine year old boys tend to love their female form teachers.  But the thing I liked most about her was the way that she played the piano during school assembly.  Most of the time she was like an over-excited labrador, playing as loudly as she could so that every child in the school hall could hear.  Occasionally she would play quieter, more subtle pieces and I loved to watch her delicate, slender fingers glide over the keyboard, showing that she had a musicianly skill and sense of expression in her playing that belied her usual sturm und drang.

This teacher always - always - played the happier, more modern tunes for the hymns during school assembly.  The ones that would make God Himself want to tap a dignified holy foot in time to the music.  All of this was completely lost on the vicar.  Every time he would announce hymn number 501 - 'O Jesus I Have Promised' - there was a ripple of anticipation in the congregation.  Would the tune be 'Hatherop Castle' (the one Miss Hadley played)?  Or boring, stentorian 'Wolvercote'?  It was 'Wolvercote'.  Every - single - time.  If I was God and 'Wolvercote' had been my worship music I would have made my displeasure very obvious.

I'm sorry. All this makes me sound ungrateful for the church upbringing my parents tried to give me.  I guess it didn't make much sense to the nine year old me.  A few years later, however, it did.  Perhaps not quite in the way that God might have intended.  Or maybe He did, I'm not sure.  ...But something changed and I suddenly wanted to go to church every Sunday, much to my parents' surprise.

Her name was Emily.

Remember what I said about my former teacher, Miss Hadley?  Emily looked like her, played the piano like her, wore the same kind of small floral print dresses as her... Unfortunately she was also completely oblivious of my presence.  I had known Emily since Infant School but I didn't really know her.  Small boys are highly suspicious of girls - or at least I was - so she didn't really register as being someone I wanted to get to know better until I was, well...  Fourteen, I guess.  Unfortunately (again) wanting to speak to someone so absolutely desperately and being able to string together any kind of coherent thought in her presence were two mutually exclusive concepts.  ...So every Sunday between the ages of fourteen and sixteen I would willingly go to church (because I knew she would be there), try to catch her eye across the congregation (and fail), shyly say 'Hello' to her if we met afterwards and then be angry with myself for the rest of the day for my complete inability to talk to the object of my affections.

As you can tell, I didn't particularly enjoy being a teenager.  And I am still ashamed that my near perfect teenage church attendance had nothing to do with wanting to be closer to God.

--

The years passed.  I never did manage to summon up the courage to ask Emily out.  She went to another college in the town for her 'A' Levels and we lost contact.  I went to University in another part of the country and overcame my teenage shyness around women (thank heavens).  When I returned to my home town during the holidays I used to visit the places of my childhood - a sort of morbid curiosity, I suppose.  I wanted to see if these places had changed.  I wanted to see if I still felt an affinity to where I grew up.

--

My parents' church always held an annual carol concert in the week before Christmas.  This was an opportunity to sing all the 'While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Nights' and 'O Come All Ye Faithfulls' interspersed with the traditional Bible readings from Luke and Matthew.  I really enjoyed singing these old traditional hymns - still do.  In my opinion it doesn't feel like Christmas until the Holly and the Ivy and King Wenceslas have had a proper airing.

So this is why I went to the annual carol concert the December before my finals.  There had been a couple of unexpected snowfalls in the week before, giving everything outside that chocolate box Dickensian feel.  Unfortunately the snow had frozen into ice; there had been an accident on the ring road that afternoon. I didn't feel safe driving so I walked into town instead.

I arrived a quarter of an hour early.  Even so the church was quite full so I had to sit upstairs in the gallery.  I was able to look down on the rest of the congregation and see some familiar faces from my childhood looking slightly older and greyer than before.  Then I heard a giggle and a familiar voice.  A voice that filled me with excitement and a peculiar, contradictory dread.

'Hello?  Is that really you?'

It was Emily.  She looked even more beautiful, even more desirable than I remembered - if that was possible.  Suddenly I was that tongue-tied fourteen year old again, incapable of talking to her.  She laughed then she held my hand.  It was colder that I expected, but she was still wearing her coat and it was cold outside so I thought nothing of it.  We smiled at each other and that angst - that fear that my love for her wouldn't be reciprocated - evaporated.

Like me she had come down from University and was revisiting old haunts.  I asked her the usual perfunctory stuff -  which university she was attending, what she was studying, how her parents were - and then she grinned at me.  It was a grin that I had seen many times at school, but she had never directed it at me before.  I could tell she was going to ask me something mischievous.

'All this stuff about University is a bit boring.  What I want to know is this...  You fancied me something rotten for years when we were at school together, yet you hardly said a word to me yet alone asked me out. Why was that?  And why didn't you pick up my incredibly unsubtle hints that I liked you too?  You were such a silly shy boy, weren't you?  Now shut up and sing - we can talk about this later.'

Well that told me, didn't it?  

The church organ had started playing.  So we sang.

--

Afterwards we went for a drink in a nearby pub and, as promised, we talked. At last, all that longing for Emily seemed worth it.  She was with me, talking and laughing with me, being the friends (and maybe lovers) that I had wanted us to be.  Five minutes before closing time, Emily said that she would need to leave soon - her parents were expecting her - so she scribbled a telephone number on a piece of paper and told me to call in the morning.

Then she kissed me goodnight.

--

I called the number in the morning.  A man answered it.  I asked for Emily and he said no-one with that name worked in the hospital mortuary.  I gave him a quick description of Emily and my name and number and asked him to call me if he heard anything from her.

I didn't hear back from him.  Perhaps it was foolish for me to think that I would.

--

There was an article in the local newspaper a couple of days later.  Two cars had been involved in the accident on the ring road.  The first - an SUV - had been driven by a man in his forties.  The second car - a Volvo estate - had been driven by a man in his late fifties.  There had been two passengers - his wife, also in her fifties, and their daughter who was in her early twenties.  The SUV had skidded on black ice and careered into the other car, killing the occupants instantly.

--

I never did see Emily again.  I miss her, even now.