Source? Probably picked up from a charity shop
Significance? They helped Beatrice to fit
in with the other residents of Summerleigh
Grange
Fate? Last seen being pocketed, but Beatrice probably
put them back where she got them
Author’s inspiration? I wish mine
were unnecessary
Five people in the front row were alert and
twinkling determinedly at them over their spectacles,
but many others lay inert in high-tech chairs that were more like beds.
Tab and Josefa took their music act Sunshower to sing at Summerleigh Grange. They had an ulterior
motive, but it was a genuine performance. One of the more alert residents asked
for a hymn.
…one of the determined twinklers in the
front row waved a hand.
“Hello?” Tab smiled at her.
“How about a hymn?”
The request was for Sib, her friend and
sister-in-law; one of the residents in the bed-chairs. They gave the tune Slane; Lord of All Hopefulness which
satisfied the bespectacled twinkler but which had an effect they hadn’t expected
on Sib.
The efficient nursing staff wheeled her away…
“What just happened?” There was a catch in
Josefa’s voice.
The twinkler took Josefa’s free hand and
patted it. “Sib’s gone, just as I wished for her.”
Tab stiffened.
“That’s it, lad. While she was still
talking sense, she told me she wanted to go out to a hymn but not what she
called canned syrup. She wanted someone singing as if she meant
it.”
Now Sib had died, the twinkler, who gave her
name as Beatrice Florin, declared her intention of signing herself out and
heading off to look for husband number three.
“I’m in better shape than I appear. I play
up the decrepitude so I don’t stick out too much.”
…Beatrice was surprisingly nimble on her
feet. She took off her spectacles and tucked them into her cardigan pocket.
“Don’t need ‘em. Never did. Just fitting in,” she said in answer to Josefa’s
look.
Beatrice
was ready to shake the dust of Summerleigh
Grange off her sensible shoes, but she did pause to help Tab and Josefa out
with their real quest. As she said herself she was …
…“not the most altruistic of folk, but Sib
was a good woman…and the least I could do was to keep her company for her last
few weeks.”
Beatrice was done with the home and done with
the spectacles. Her practical heart wouldn’t want to see them wasted, so she
probably donated them to a good cause.
Sally is Sally Odgers; author, anthologist and reader. You can find you way into her maze of websites and blogs via the portal here.(Sally is me, by the way.)
The goal for 2017 was to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. 2017 is well behind us, but I ran out of year before running out of books. As of June 2018 I STILL hadn't run out of books, but many of those still to come are MIA by which I mean I don't have copies and remember little about them. There are more new books in the pipeline, and I'm certainly showcasing those, but in between times, I'm profiling some of my characters, places, objects and themes. Thank you so much to everyone who's come along on this journey so far!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for reading