Less than ten pieces left to post!

(Onto another longlist in a competition and outside it's been snowing again. Have only just recovered from last winter! Ho hum! Hope to have this whole Port Brokeferry posted before Xmas, so here's another piece.)

HUNTLY MAKING SENSE OF WHAT HE FEELS

I see only the space where she was. At the window. Looking out of mine and into hers. Looking as I have always looked. For as long as years on years, and I have not ever counted them and so they seem without number. But she is gone from her window, when my back was turned. Only the space and a memory of her standing there. And I miss her.

I should be happy for her. Isn’t it what I have wanted for Alice Greyling? If not me then someone else. That’s every thought I had for her. And I gave up waiting, so why did it take so long for her? Find someone, I said in those first letters I wrote. Find someone to make Alice smile. Someone to stop Alice looking out to the empty sea and dreaming lost dreams and getting older faster than anyone should. Find someone, I wrote. And now she has, and I should be happy.

And I am. I must be. I am happy for Alice Greyling. The girl and the woman. Glimpses of Alice laughing these last days, and the years have slipped from her, and clocks can be turned back, it seems. Not all the way back, but a little. Alice no longer pale, no more the ghost of who she was. Instead a brightness in her and in all her steps and they seem like skips, like a young girl hop-scotching her way to and from school. And I am happy for her.

I know him, too. The man who has done this for Alice. The man who has rescued her from deep dark waters. He is a teacher, just as she is. Not from Port Brokeferry, but here time enough we think he belongs. Always laughing, was Dodie Bredwell. Never saw him but he was laughing, that’s what it seemed. And there did not appear to be a serious thought in his head. Only now there has been a change in him, too. Like he has traded some of his laughter with Alice, and taken some of her seriousness for himself. I have seen them together, hand in hand, a tight hold on each other, and Alice skipping and Dodie skipping after.

And I am happy for Alice. It’s everything she deserves. And more than I could give her. More than I give my wife, I think, with some regret. Stuck as I am. In this chair, and the wheels can turn, but it’s not like skipping. And it’s not what she thought she was getting when she married me. Lucky is what I am. Not because I love two women, but because one loves me. She has offered to take me out. It will do me some good, she says. And it will. I think that tomorrow I will take up her offer. And I will wear a brighter face and be brighter, knowing what I have. And no more Alice-letters and no more standing in my life looking into hers. I am happy for Alice even though I miss her, too. But now she is living again, and it is time for all those around her to be living, too.

And then and there, I feel something, a skipping of my heart. And I never thought to be so sensible and I laugh at that.