The new girl next door with daisies in her golden hair picks up the basket in the hallway and opens the blue front door and starts to walk down the hill towards Mrs Lanes Tuck Shop in town to buy liquorice. As she passes the brown door next door, it is open and she can hear quite clearly the voice of the young man who lives there saying through the wind and above the babble of the street:
‘There is that beautiful girl who dances by the moon in the garden Mother. Look at her golden hair. She has flowers in her hair’
But today his mother is occupied picking up her basket and her purse, while the two younger children are tugging away at her skirts, she doesn’t hear the young man.
But the girl next door with the golden hair is so delighted with the boy’s words, she looks up towards the sky and sees the puffs of clouds floating by against the blue, and just as she always will she ignores the passers- by as they will always ignore her. She looks towards the horizon where the hills climbing up beyond the bridge at the bottom of the hill and thinks this is such a lovely place to live. Then a noticeable breeze begins to blow, as it still does, from the top of the hill, and the girl with the golden hair moves effortlessly along the cobbled path by the Limes, towards the town, her cheeks soon flushing pink with the young man’s words and with the breeze which will continue to blow making her feel ever more….….
The boy’s mother still preoccupied with shutting her door and dealing with her excited children as they all set out for the Saturday morning Tuck Shop, does not hear what the boy says next:
‘I love her mother’
By now the girl next door has moved so far ahead she is lost in the crowds of people who gather in the town of purple rooves, yet she can hear his words on the wind as if he is whispering in her ear…….. as he always will.
Today as visitors who seek out somewhere to eat in the cafes pubs and coffee shops (no tuck shops any more) the girl still there, still walks, still listens in the wind for those words; for the moment a love story began.
That’s was Annie’s story about and her and Alfred’s love story based on what my Mum told me about her parents who lived and met in the place where I live now……….
(Such a lovely start but Alfred’s story runs a little differently. That’s for another day……I’ve sorted most of it out yeah)
Gill McGrath 2013