Where new writing finds its voice
Short Story

George and Pat Forever

Anne Goodwin

Astrange light appeared over the white cliffs of Dover. Pat screamed or, at least, she thought she did. Her mouth was stretched taut like the string of an archer’s bow and there was a shrill note in her throat that vibrated right through her head, but no sound. Silence. Not even the squawking of seagulls.

‘Shh, it’s ok,’ she told herself. Shh, it’s ok: the long-ago voice of her mother when screams had summoned her to banish a childhood nightmare. Was she awake now, or still dreaming?

She couldn’t move – or didn’t want to – but she sensed a certain softness below her; her body held, but almost floating, as she imagined a waterbed would feel. Pat laughed. George would be none too pleased. He had always favoured a firm mattress.  He said it was better for his back.

What else? Cold, but a friendly cold, not sharp like wind or ice; a cold that might wrap itself around her like a duvet of fresh snow, pure as a line of just-washed sheets on a bright winter’s day.

And grit – not much, but enough to notice – scratching at her tongue and the corners of her eyes.  ‘That’s why I can’t hear anything,’ thought Pat. ‘It’s the sand clogging up my ears.’

And, finally, the white light over the cliffs. All-pervading white flooding the frame of her vision, bleaching the grass, the cliffs, the sky. White pulling her towards it, drawing her in like the hose of a powerful vacuum cleaner.

‘Don’t be scared,’ she said to herself. ‘It’s just like they do it in the films.’

But why here? Why Dover and not the bathroom floor with the contents of the medicine cupboard strewn all around? And if she were lying on the beach – which she surmised she must be – why was she looking at the cliffs head-on, as if from a boat out at sea? As if from the Calais ferry, coming back from the school trip. From the first time abroad, when George Turner had kept his arm around her waist the whole time, even when she vomited over the side of the boat and he had to buy a box of tissues to clean her up.

George again, familiar and comforting as watching repeats of Only Fools and Horses in her dressing gown and slippers. Childhood sweethearts – what a cliché! But fifty-seven years together must count for something. She could hardly just let him go like yesterday’s newspaper. Perhaps he was in that strange light up there, urging her to join him.

The Indians had suttee, although Surinder next door said it was all nonsense, an archaic custom designed by men to keep women in their place. Pat couldn’t imagine anyone being able to keep Surinder in her place. George used to call her the Untamed Shrew, the way she nagged him about the leylandii hedge and the smoke from the barbecue. After all that bickering, Pat had been touched by the wreath that she and Gurmeet had sent.

Voices now: her ears must have cleared. A man and a woman, breathless, as if they’d been running. ‘What happened? Did she fall? Did she jump?’ The man. His voice hovering above her, blocking out the light.

‘Go away!’ Pat wanted to say.

‘Oh my God.’ The woman, high-pitched, hysterical. ‘Do something! How do you do mouth to mouth?’

‘Leave me alone!’ Pat thought she said. What a fuss they were making!

Suddenly, there was a clash like saucepan lids being dropped on a tiled floor and the white light over the cliffs divided into stars of red and blue and yellow and scattered in all directions. Ever-changing patterns, beautiful, like bonfire night, like looking through a child’s kaleidoscope. The voices of the strangers faded away and all Pat had to do was to lie back and enjoy the spectacle.

And then, just before it all went black, the fragments of colour assembled themselves into some kind of order, and stood in line above the cliffs, as proud as the letters on the Hollywood sign. Just before the moment when everything stopped for Pat, she read the words that the colours spelt out, and thought she smiled. Like on the windscreen of their Ford Capri all those years ago, both their names in capital letters, his above the driver’s seat, hers above the passenger’s. GEORGE and PAT. Forever. Just as it should be. 

And then the lights went out.