The Little Green House. Magpie#52

         The little green house had always been there for as long as Laura remembered. It was her second home and Mrs Cole was the grand mother she had never had. Laura visited her every day when she was growing up and now as she was away in University she visited each weekend she came home. But things had changed with Mrs Cole and now that Laura only saw her every other weekend, she noticed the differences more. Her mum had said Mrs Cole had what the old folk called, the Memory Stealer illness. And she certainly did look at Laura with different. eyes. Some times she called her Mary who had been her sister and who had died several years previously. Sometimes she thought she was Stella her daughter, who had left the little town when she married and rarely returned. 

        That last weekend Laura sat with Mrs Cole and looked at her hands, restless in her lap, but no longer busy cleaning or baking.. Her far away eyes said it all, she was in her own world.

‘What was she thinking?’ thought Laura. ‘Was she seeing the children playing outside, rolling out pastry or mixing one of those delicious cakes she had made through the years?’

 Mrs Cole smiled, not at anything but to herself. Long past memories only known to her.

‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea’?  Laura asked.

‘I ‘m fine,’ answered Mrs Cole, ‘Your Aunty Mary will be here soon. Do you have to go back to your children, Stella?’ She said.

‘No I am here for you ’ Laura said, but Laura was just a little upset that after all this time Mrs Cole didn’t know who she was. But, as her Mum had said Mrs Cole wasn’t like her old self.

       That weekend was the last time Laura saw Mrs Cole in her green house. The next time she was home there were new people in it. But Laura wasn’t sad. There were children running around in the back garden laughing and playing, Mrs Cole would have loved that. 

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The Brick Pathway Magpie Tales#51

She tugged her scarf tightly round her face against the icy wind.

‘Not far now ,’she thought as she turned into the narrow passageway. She looked down at the worn bricks and wondered about all the other hundreds of feet that had trudged this way through London. Perhaps some of Dickens characters had stepped this way in his stories; Scrooge or Bob Catchit or even the Artful Dodger.

‘Such silly thoughts,’ she thought. Hearing footsteps behind her made her stop and listen and shivers went up her spine. Was someone following her? She wished she hadn’t let her mind wander to Dickens stories as the ghost of times past seemed now to be in every dark corner. She glanced behind her. It was quiet, the sound of footsteps had stopped. She started to run and her scarf flew off behind her.

‘Hey,’ some one shouted.

But she didn’t stop as she raced toward the lamp shining at the end of the brick path. She quickly joined a group of people all jostling along the main pavements and walked at their pace, hoping she had left whoever it was behind her.

The stranger looked down at the scarf he held, that the young woman had dropped. It was rather nice and would suit his Mum nicely. He wouldn’t tell her where he had picked it up. She would be quite cross if he told her he had taken the short cut, the brick path passageway. According to his Mum wicked women hung around there waiting for a young chap just like himself. That woman who ran off in front of him, who dropped the scarf was probably looking for someone just like himself. It had been a scary time when she had looked behind her but he had ducked into the shadows out of sight.

‘ Yes....... Mum will like this scarf,’ he thought.
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