PERSONAL WRITINGS

Featured on this page are personal writings of my own - something which I am trying my hand at, other than fanfic.
Not that I don't enjoy fanfic, but sometimes...
well, you just have to write what's in your heart, don't you?

Dryad

The following piece was a competition that I entered this year. I didn't win,
but it was a wonderful exercise, and I was quite pleased with my attempt. So I thought I'd share it with you.

The BBC have a project called 'End of story' where a well known author submits a piece of a story that they have written, and then you - the amateur - follow on within a word limit. In this case it was 1200 words.

I picked 'Dryad' by Joanne Harris, purely because I loved the storyline. Here is a rundown of her part...

A pregnant lady meets Mrs. Clark in the park. She is sketching a huge tree. They get talking and she discovers that Mrs. Clark is absolutely fixated with the tree and always has been. It is a huge part of her daily life, filling it with purpose and joy. So much so, her husband, Stan thinks that she is having an affair....

Final lines of Joanne's part...

"You have, haven't you?"; Stan's face looked like a rotten apple, his eyes shone through with pinhead intensity. "Who is it?".....

My Entry

It was an effort not to laugh at his outrageous question. 'Who was it' indeed.? Would he like being told that these days I preferred The Beech's company to his ? No. A man has his pride and being told that I sometimes loved a tree more than him would be unforgivably cruel. And yet, Stan hadn't once even tried to understand my compulsion to be with my friend, no matter what. It wasn't a man's way, was it?

I didn't want to move away. But maybe I wasn't going to have a choice. I knew couldn't live without The Beech, but, could I live without Stan? There was only one simple answer to that; No.

We'd reached that mellow time of our lives when most of the time, we could sit in the lounge, each in our own armchairs and wallow in the peace that surrounded us. Peace that we had striven for from the day we had met. Daniel was grown. The house was our own, lock, stock and daffodils, and our future was resigned to dying, probably sooner rather than later at our exceptional ages.

But I knew that without my tree, life would be different. He is my happiness, and without him near, well, I couldn't even bare to contemplate life without him. I wouldn't. I needed my tree like some people needed God. He was always there, always non-judgemental. Solid. Safe. Quiet.

I sidestepped around him. How could I tell him that my heart's desire was a huge hunk of wood that, between my mundane days and Stanley's sour looks, was the only thing that kept us together?

"Nobody, Stan," I said with a sigh. the magic spell of The Beech drizzled out of me as the weight of the impending argument surfaced. "I was just in a soppy mood, what with the moonlight, and everything." I could tell he didn't believe me when my eyes finally, guiltily, met his, and with a smidgen of defiance, I told him, "You should have come out and joined me, Stan. A touch of moonlight and romance in your heart would take years off you."

As I turned away, Stan's voice boomed along the hallway after me. "I demand that you stay away from him, or...or..." he faltered. He would have only have seen me shaking my head as I continued on up the stairs, away from him. Away from the pain. "Goodnight, Stan. " I mumbled, knowing that he stood on the bottom of the stairs looking up at me, stunned.
~~~
When I woke in the morning, I was surprised to find myself alone in the bed. 'The silly old fool.' I guiltily muttered as I pushed the heavy coverlet away from my stiff legs, gently lifting and swinging them over the edge, slipping my arthritic toes into my comfy moccasins. Walking over to the window, I pushed back the curtains and looked out. Normally I couldn't wait to see what weather the night had brought me for breakfast, which was daft because I didn't really care. I liked The Beech basking in the sun's rays, and I liked it when God gave him a good watering. Today, I could see, he'd only been fed with dew-drops. I could see them clinging to his leaves, making him shimmer against the early morning's sun.

This morning though, for the first time in a long time, Stan filled my thoughts. 'I bet he'll be curled up on the settee, the stubborn old coot, and then grump all day about his back. Well, serves him right. That'll teach him to get in between me and mine.' As I walked down the stairs, empty silence crept up to meet me. Even the creaking stair didn't manage to hide the ominous quiet, and with a jolt I realised that if Stan left me, this would be what faced me every day.

It wasn't a nice feeling, even though I'd got The Beech. But The Beech couldn't take me to the shops, or take me to get my pension every Tuesday. Nor could he be by my side when I had my annual check-up at the hospital. Nor would I wake up on the occasional morning with him snuggled up against my back, his fingers laced in mine, his stubbly chin, scratchy against the back of my neck. His snore, somehow soothing, even though it drove me batty at times, but at least it told me that we were going to spend another day alive together.

By the time I had reached the sitting room, instinct told me that I wasn't going to find him there. Walking to the window, I pushed back the curtains and peeped through the net, my eyes searching out the shed for a movement; a sign - any sign that he was hiding away in there. I waited for a while, watching to see if he walked past the tiny window before giving up and going to put the kettle on, decision made. 'I'll take him a nice cup of tea,' I thought, 'say I'm sorry.'

"Stan," I called, "you'll catch a chill. You know what the doctor said about your chest," as I pulled open the shed door. More than a shed, it was more like a workshop really. He'd even got an old armchair in there - and a small bottle of whiskey that he didn't know that I was aware he had. I didn't approve of course, we'd never been drinkers, Stan and I, but sometimes it did get cold in the shed, and he'd had the bottle for over a year and it was still just over half full.

"Stan?" puzzled, I stepped into the gloomy interior where all that greeted me was a curtain of dancing dust particles captured by the morning's sun as it streamed through the tiny window. He wasn't there. Nor had he been. So where the devil was he? It was the first time I felt fear begin to crawl through my veins. Such had been my certainty of finding him there. My eyes swept around the garden, the house, hoping to see his wizened, old, familiar face looking back at me with tolerance and forgiveness, but all I saw was emptiness. I suddenly felt like a fool standing in the garden in my dressing gown and my slippers, holding a cup of tea. I also felt a desolate loneliness creep into my soul and stay there.
~~~
Macey raced through the hallway, shrugging off her shocking-pink anorak and haphazardly kicking off her shoes at the same time. "Mummy, can I do drawing? You said I could, and I have been veeeery good," she said breathlessly, looking up at me as I took off my own coat.

"Of course, darling," I smiled, "What are you going to draw?" I asked, but I already knew her answer. Ever since we'd taken the man in and made him a part of our family, he'd become her life. Her surrogate father-figure.

"I'm going to draw Auntie Josie's tree and stick it on the fridge with my alfe-bet letters so's grandaddy Stan will see it at lunchtime. " she said, decided.