Plot:

A meeting, an incident, a small miracle.

Natalie, at forty nine, was three years a widow, two years a cab driver and one year into the acceptance of her fate when she met the man with jelly green eyes and barely any sight.
“Are you here for Edward?” he’d said, as she met the incoming train.
“I am he.”
And he’d lifted his right hand to show her his white stick, innocuously folded into three.
“I see very little, fudged monochrome on a sunny day, nothing at all on a dull one, and nothing at all at night time.”
“Honestly?” she’d said.
She had looked closely into his bright eyes and in their blank steady stare saw that they were indeed, all but innocent of vision.
Six months later, and the only nights they didn’t spend together were Saturdays and Wednesdays.

The storm took everyone by surprise. One minute the velvet sky was lit by a low slung grapefruit moon, and the next, scudding cumulus clouds were gathering for a fight. Wind was running amok in the heavens. Sixty mile an hour gusts were teasing roof tiles into tiers and whittling into long abandoned corners. Suddenly the heavens had the suffused glow of fine bone china held up to the light.
An old ghost, drifting through Rhodes Avenue, got blasted by a gold leaf of lightening and ended up in the bare branches of number 67’s old oak tree. He hung there like last week’s laundry. His haunting days, he gathered, were over.
There was a momentous crack of thunder and number 35’s deaf boxer dog stirred, shaking his head. He almost woke up.
A yearning neon fork shot across the sky. The orange fissure wound around a silver birch and in a minute stripped it of all its splendour. Small wisps of smoke spiralled heavenwards from the tips of the blackened twigs.
The river Fal, charged with a thousand vaults, disgorged perch and pike with impunity; a watery one armed bandit spilling its jackpot.
Mallards unlucky enough to be on the water were turned into clogging clumps of flesh and feather. Detached, the beaks and webbed feet bobbed downstream to the weir where, like some eternal circus ride, they swirled without rhyme or reason.
A tine of lightening hit the Peugeot like a tuning fork. For a second the car was lit up like Christmas. It was 2.30 am. Natalie was alone, driving along a tree lined lane mid way between Townsend and Riawla. Rarely used in daytime, in the early hours the blue road leeched into empty oblivion.
Natalie blinked at the brightness, gold momentarily enfolded her. Then her thoughts returned to sushi and Edward. The two were not connected, sushi awaited her, Edward did not; it was Saturday night.
She had been reflecting on a small snippet Edward had amused her with last Wednesday. It concerned woodpeckers.
“The woodpecker’s head goes at 1,300 miles an hour when it drills into the bark of a tree. It keeps its eyes shut and a millisecond before each impact, it tightens the nictitiating membrane, which to you and me, is the third eyelid. This prevents the eye from leaving the socket. It also wraps its tongue around the base of its brain, to keep it steady. Clever, eh?”
“I love you,” she’d said, in reply.

The storm was forgotten by the time she got back to the rank.
3am, the last few revellers were being scooped up, some of the cabbies had already left for homes where sleeping wives or sleepy lovers lie.
Paul was leaning on her cab, preparing a rolly. She looked up to ask some forgotten question.
“Your eyes,” he said.
“What, what about them?”
“They looked golden then, for a minute. Take your glasses off.”
She did, wiping wearily at her brow. 3.15, time to go home.
“Oh,” he said, “it must have been reflection.”
At home she shared sushi with Lola Bubble, her black and white cat. She put her feet up and sipped wine which did not enhance the raw herring.
Lola purred.
The clock ticked its way to 5am.
Dawn was almost a presence when she stirred and disturbed the sleeping cat.
As she brushed her teeth she glanced in the mirror. Two soft golden orbs glowed from deep within the glass. She stepped back, and stood on Lola’s tail. Her indignant yell distracted her. When she looked again, her eyes were button brown, as usual, as always.
“Must have been the light,” she said to Lola, who had discovered a sizeable spider.
She adjusted the overhead light, though it had been at the same angle for twenty years.
In her dreams that night she ran down cinder roads chasing old ghosts astride dirigible beasts with wings of gold. She also dreamt that the cat’s tail came off in her hand and blue tac just wasn’t up to the job.

After the storm, the fuel gauge in the Peugeot stayed at an ineffable half full.
After the storm, Natalie’s eyes glowed with a strange golden light, attributable to the equinoxes or the lustre of the moon, or the angle of the bathroom light.
After the storm, Natalie did not see Edward till Tuesday.
Monday had been wrapped up with chores from another life. She laid flowers on a grave, brought succour to an aged mother in law, and celebratory smiles to an old friend, finally free of cancer.
North Cliffs was laying on its grandeur with a trowel.
The cliff walk was wild with bouncing sunlight, egg yellow gorse and negative ions tossed up by a mint green sea.
Edward turned to her; they were discussing the properties of opinion.
Without warning the sun left the sky, scurrying behind a lumbering dark cloud.
Natalie tightened her grip on Edward’s arm. No light, no sight.
“Stop,” said Edward.
“What, what’s wrong.”
Edward lifted his hand to her face.
“I can see you,” he said, “I can see your lips, you’re wearing lipstick.”
“Yeah, well, I do, sometimes; it’s a new one from Lancôme, Dance Floor Rouge.”
Then she caught her breath, “Oh, can you, but it’s quite dark.”
Edward scanned the horizon.
“Is that a ship out there, I can’t believe this, is there a ship our there or am I imagining it?”
“Yes, it’s a ship,” she said and slipped her arm from his.
And like a TV screen the picture faded.
“Oh, it’s gone, it’s dark again,” he said, stepping forward, as if to catch sight.
Natalie laid a restraining hand on his arm; they were only four feet from a thundering drop.
At once the shimmering sea and the solid silhouette of the far away ship reappeared. By her touch she was dispensing sight.
Natalie took both his hands in hers and, searching his jelly green eyes, found wonder, excitement and quivering curiosity.
It was the beginning of a profound and complex love.

About me…..

I drive to earn a living, I write to prove I’m here. I regret many things, most of them that I did not take my writing seriously many years ago.