Hester: An Unexpected Friendship

If he was truly honest with himself, he couldn’t really remember how it felt to be alive. Melodramatic, perhaps, but under the fluorescent blue lights of the train carriage, thoughts of melodrama kept his mind busy. He searched the carriage for a fitting metaphor. His joy was as fleeting as the trees passing the window. That was awfully poetic.
Perhaps he should have been a writer. But then again, a total lack of talent aside, he didn’t look much like a writer. Only eccentrics did, like…Well, like the wizened old lady sitting opposite him, who smiled, revealing several missing teeth. She was always smiling, every morning, rain or shine. What made people so enduringly, obnoxiously happy? He certainly wouldn’t be smiling when he was that ancient, crammed into an overcrowded, early commuter train, with ducks on his pink wellington boots. Boots like that were the beginning of the end.
“Cheer up, love,” she chirped, startling him. “Have a sweetie.” She proffered them across the aisle. “My husband, God rest his soul, always cheered up with a sweetie.”
He plucked a red gummy from the tin, then resumed his study of the ceiling.

Hester – her name was embroidered on her brightly-coloured scarf; what a cliche – repeated this routine every morning, occasionally swapping sweets for peppermints. She also added compliments to the offering, admiring the yellowness of his ties, or the shininess of his shoes. By the third week he could, had he been so inclined, have penned a bestselling novel on how she met her husband – God rest his soul – such were the frequency and vividness of the retellings.
He didn’t much like Hester, but Hester certainly liked him.

It was remarkable what 86 years could teach a person, and even more remarkable what they could teach a disinterested stranger. Hester delighted in her past, memories like eels slipping through her fingers. Once, she had rolled down a mountain just to hear it sing. Had he known that mountains sang? Everything sang. Everything had a story to tell, especially Hester.
What else did he know about her? Hester liked bright things, cooed at blushing couples and enquired after his lineage. She liked it when he described his wife and wondered aloud to him if he thought his wife was beautiful. She questioned him with irritating regularity about his life after being called to the bar, and about his new baby, aged just 4 months old.

One bright Thursday morning, when his current case was almost won, and his baby had slept through the night, he asked Hester what she did every morning and why she came to be on the train. She was like a dragonfly, fidgeting and shimmering in his peripheral as she replied:
“I visit my husband, God rest his soul, and tell him the colour of the sky.”
That was awfully poetic. What a good line. She was very pleased that he had asked.

It was on the following Monday that Hester was robbed. Really, he thought. Mondays were bad enough as they were without robberies on top of everything else, especially since Hester had nothing worth stealing.
He didn’t even see the thief. The train doors opened, Hester smiled at him, they closed, and her bag was gone.
He didn’t much like Hester, but he didn’t much like that either.

On Tuesday, she didn’t smile at him. She didn’t smile at anyone. Her embroidered scarf, she told him, a gift from her husband – God rest his soul – had been in the bag. He didn’t reply. Of course he felt sorry for her, but he was no police detective, and besides, he didn’t even like her. It was a shame, but Hester was hardly short of bright clothes.
He climbed off the train, berating her for bringing something so precious onto it in the first place. That was such characteristic naivety, and she had no excuse at all for wearing such dark clothes and acting like she was attending someone’s funeral. He was grumbling to himself as he exited the station and crossed the market square, where a plethora of stalls was being erected, guarded by impatient hawkers ready to sell their wares. And there, right there, was a stall glowing with scarves of every shade. He paused. Dancing in his peripheral was a green scarf; green, like her husband’s eyes – God rest his soul. There was another one with butterflies imprinted on it, fluttering beside it.
Mulling over how much Hester irritated him, he bought them both.

Typically, the next day, there was a purple scarf waving on the stall; when reciting her favourite colours, she delighted in reminding him that “purple is made of happiness”. So, as he carried it home, he thought, “This is the one, this will stop the incessant moping.”
Should scarves be hung in a wardrobe? Maybe not, but looking at them neatly arranged helped him decide which one was the best to give her. His wife stared blankly at the hanger, adorned with a dozen scarves, none quite right. He could feel her wondering what type of affair he was having. She looked tired and resigned, but still, he remembered to tell Hester, beautiful. Hester liked beautiful things.

After a midnight conversation, a course of action had been decided on, even though respectable lawyers had far better things to do with their time than wander through overgrown cemeteries.
The headstone was far from civilisation, in a worn plot, with only ‘Beloved Husband, died 1982’, to mark a life, along with several bunches of fading flowers, left daily. One day, there would be no one to leave flowers.
Rosy light shaded the grass, as the respectable lawyer brushed specks of moss and mildew off the stone and draped over it a rainbow of scarves.

The next day Hester wore them all and waddled happily like a penguin. She introduced him to a yawning stranger as her friend, and he didn’t bother to remind her that he didn’t even like her. He was too busy watching the colour of the sky.
Blue.
Nothing groundbreaking, but a good start.