In pieces

Sometimes when I'm writing, a phrase or a song or a name or a memory gives me an idea. This is all of those and more.



In Pieces.



Cathy sat on the floor, the tears pouring down her cheeks. Through the open window of the bedroom she could hear next door’s children shrieking and playing in the garden, and the sound of a distant lawnmower. Any old suburban Saturday afternoon. And yet, she suddenly felt sixteen again, felt the pain and the heartbreak and the bewilderment that had followed Ash’s announcement. She wasn’t sixteen any more, of course, she was thirty eight, but her mind took her back through the veil of the years and into her own memories.

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Sixteen and naive, a summer job in the village where her Uncle and Aunt lived and ran a farm, a summer spent with her cousin Sarah, who was six months older than Cathy. The long hot summer of 1976. Cathy could almost smell the heat as they walked across the fields down to the village, the evening didn’t make it much cooler. They headed towards the Village Hall, the sound of disco music already filtering out and beckoning them. For once Cathy felt almost confident, almost as though she looked good, although she restrained herself from comparisons with Sarah, who walked alongside her, blonde hair shining, petite figure suiting the cheesecloth blouse and the wide Oxford bag jeans. Comparisons are odious, Cathy told herself. That’s what Aunt Jean says....

The Village Hall was quite busy, there was little for the young people to do in the valley unless you were old enough to drink, and there was no chance of sneaking in to the pub when everyone knew everyone else, and they all knew how old you were. Cathy sighed inwardly, remembering reading in her Jackie magazine about the sophistication of parties and discos in the towns.

There were a group of lads on one side of the hall, and a group of girls on the other. Some girls were dancing, the lads just leaned against the wall and tried to look cool. Except Ashley Richards. He just was cool. No doubt about it. Six feet tall, already filling out in the upper body, and with a tan from hay-making setting off his blue eyes. Cathy recalled how Sarah had told her about when Ashley started secondary school and some boys in the year above had tried to push him around and bully him for his “girly” name. A black eye and a severe nose bleed resulting from Ashley’s mean right hook soon sorted them out, and now he was, in every way, the coolest boy in the place.

Cathy gave herself a mental shake, no way would Ashley Richards look her way when he could have any girl in the village, any girl in the whole valley! So she danced opposite Sarah, danced with a group of girls she’d come to know, all of them dancing in a circle around a pile of handbags on the floor. George Benson, Kool and the Gang, Earth Wind & Fire. Her favourites. When the music changed to Northern Soul, the lads sprang into action, showing off their moves, and Ashley was the best. Sarah nudged her. “Look at that! Pete says Ashley went to Wigan for a weekend to learn how to do that!” They almost felt like applauding at the end.

As the evening drew to a close, the slow dance music came on, and Sarah disappeared to dance with her latest follower, Pete. Cathy leaned against the wall and watched the couples shuffling round, a few surreptitious snogs going on here and there. She didn’t hear the voice beside her at first.

“I said, do you want to dance?” Cathy’s jaw almost hit the ground and she made a strange squeak. Then she tried again. “Um...yeah, that’d be good, Ashley..” Grabbing her, the coolest boy in the place steered them both into the centre of the dance floor, obviously believing that was his place. Cathy didn’t dare look to catch Sarah’s eye, and when Ashley put his hands on her waist she put hers round his neck and they were off. She tried to make small talk but when she looked up into his eyes, she just mumbled “Oh Ashley...” He grinned, as if used to having that effect, and lowered his voice. “Call me Ash, my closest friends call me that.”

They were an item for almost a month. Cathy did all the running, all the compromising, all the walks into the village to meet up in the evening, sometimes with Sarah, sometimes on her own. She was blissfully in love, walking beside the stream with him holding her hand sometimes made her feel like she could burst with happiness. And when her birthday arrived, Ash turned up at the farm house with a package wrapped in purple tissue. Uncle Phil was off-hand when Ash came into the kitchen, his usually sunny smile missing. When Cathy opened the parcel, she found a small pottery dish with a mouse painted on it, and her name painted round the edge. Ash smiled down at her. “I got it ages ago, specially for you. Because you’re special to me...” Cathy hugged him and walked back down the lane with her hand in his.

Uncle Phil wouldn’t say why he didn’t like Ash, just that he was “too slick for his own good” and when pressed, even Aunt Jean wouldn’t explain. Cathy was sad that they didn’t seem to like him when it was obvious to her that they’d soon get engaged. Until the day her heart broke.

“It’s not you, it’s me..” Bewildered and lost, Cathy stood there in her new white broderie anglais skirt and white blouse with strawberries printed on it. She could barely take in what Ash was saying through her agony. “I just don’t think we’re suited. You’re too....young. Cathy, don’t cry, you’ll find someone else soon and it’s not your fault.” She raised tear-drenched eyes to Ash’s and sobbed. “You’ve broken my heart, you’ve broken my heart in pieces...why? what’s happened? I thought we were...” Her sobs overtook her and when she did eventually calm down enough to look he’d gone. So she walked back up the lane to the farmhouse, sobbing, as the longed-for rain began to fall and the endless drought, the endless summer of love, came to an end.

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Cathy sat on the floor holding the little pottery dish, broken into four bits, and sobbed like that sixteen year old girl again. Remembering the pain, the confusion, the realisation that he hadn’t been hers alone, Uncle Phil explaining at last that he – and most of the adults – had known Ash was seeing another girl from the next village as well, a girl Sarah had described as “the Village bike”. The resulting humiliation, Sarah’s encouragement to keep her head high, the weight loss as she didn’t want to eat, the long nights crying into her pillow knowing her heart was broken in pieces and nothing would ever mend it again.



“Cath? You all right, old thing?” Rob’s expression was hesitant, his brown eyes warm with love and affection. “I broke my dish. I caught it with my elbow when I was dusting and it’s broken. In pieces...” Cathy’s voice quivered on the edge of a sob again and gently Rob helped her to her feet. “Yeah, I can see it’s in pieces. You’ve had it a long time, haven’t you? Was it special?”

Cathy looked at the bits of pottery in her hand, and then up at her husband, her rock, her support through thick and thin. “Well.....it did mean something. A long time ago....” Rob gave her a hug and whispered against her hair. “I’ve got some superglue, love...I’ll make it good as new.”

And she knew he would.