Twirls of Red

Soft sand glided along the dreary road as it surfed the buffets of wind under the fiery midday sun.

The faded red umbrella, revolving by the twist of the thumb, came meandering its way down the dusty side path and the waiting young man prepared himself.

She stopped at the window of the antiquities store across the road and stood swaying from foot to foot, bending and peering, moving up close and backing up far.

He watched the twirling umbrella, the scuffed pointed shoes and pondered how the dance today would be different.

He drew deeply from his cigarette and idly flicked the ashes off his smoke. 

When he lifted his eyes to the window again, the umbrella had twirled its way further down the road and the scruffy shoes were again leaving shallow imprints in the sand, soon to be swept up by the burgeoning wind.
 
The young man casually peeled himself away from his shop wall, opened the dirt-stained glass door and flipped the sign over to OPEN.

The quiet town had all but been emptied of its former glory. Between the boarded up homes of families and destitute buildings shying away indecorously, the inhabitants scuttled about their business and looked upon others only from the safety of their closed up windows.

Years of civil war had stolen from the town its men, its youth and its spark.

The young man waited the next day for the twirls of the umbrella, but they never came. He opened up his hardware shop, sold a tool set to a returning plumber and wrote to his brother who had gone to sea.

As the darkened shadows began to stretch the length of the hardware store, pushing out the last of the light, he again looked at the vase across the road and wondered if the girl would be back tomorrow to admire it.

*      *      *

The girl had not been at work for a week.

Her grandmother, her spirits ravaged beyond repair, had stubbornly taken to her bed to live out her remaining days. She’d tirelessly committed herself to educating her grandchild of the evils of the world.  The young girl, however, had seen how the tentative returning families were received with joy and sparked such hope. She knew the town would soon recover. 

But with the heat that autumn had brought, inactivity and a sour disposition, the girl’s grandmother had developed a tropical fever of sorts.  Only after a week of vegetable soups, cold baths and herbal concoctions of precise instruction did the girl feel comfortable enough to leave the ailing woman and return to work.

On the morning when the old woman’s temperature had eased and hues of rose were again showing on her cheeks, the girl bid farewell to her grandmother, dusted off the tips of her shoes, opened up her umbrella and walked in the shadows of the sizzling midday sun down Main Street.

It was etched in her mind, and a week’s absence had ballooned her wanton craving to see it. 

As she neared the antiquities store, her steps quickened. She moved up to the glass and peered through.

The ice blue paint turned in magical sweepings as it spread itself around the plump divisions of the vase, collecting threads of purple dreams and splashing glimmers of diamond divinity. The colours meshed in a mystical swirl, wrapping around the neck of the vase, and working up to the lip where, on a marble encrusted setting, the components erupted in ecstasy splashing globules of colour over the interior walls of the gold-plated vase.

She had studied this vase well, but still the small painting on its face entranced her.

She was enthralled by the postcard-size encapsulation of a deep velvet green meadow basking under the gold rays from a heavenly light. A solitary figure, in an array of pink and white flowers, walked through the lush image.

O to be that flower! Or to lie on that grass!

She stepped away from the store window, taking from the small painting the lines and curves she hoped to create in her own life.

*      *      *
The dry heat had given way to a heavy humidity when the girl returned for work the next day.  As she neared the store window, she felt her chest constrict and her steps slowed.

It was gone!

She never imagined this day would come. It was too expensive for anyone in this town and no one with money, at this time especially, would spend it so fitfully on an extravagance like a vase.
Stricken, she left her opened umbrella on the steps and entered the store. The greying man, who on many occasions had told the girl what he knew of the vase’s origin and type, spoke quickly: “Sorry lass…it sold”.

But before her disappointment overcame her, he pointed a steady finger, adding: “But just across the road… that young man bought it.”

Across the road, through the humid haze, she could see the vase sitting in its fresh situation, under the new ownership of a young man in worn jeans and baseball cap, looking intently at her. He looked away when she saw him and so did she.

*      *      *

The young man, blowing circles of smoke into the airless trappings of his store, was startled almost from his stool the next morning when he saw the red umbrella twirling in front of his store window.
He had feared he might scare the girl away with his odd acquisition of the vase, but had nevertheless carefully positioned the treasure to its best advantage by the window, in the hope that she would return to admire it.

He stood up as the girl let herself inside.

“How much are you selling the vase for?” Her eyes held a shine.

“It’s already sold. The new owner is coming today to pick it up.”

“What did they pay for it?”
“Nothing. It was a gift.”

The girl fell silent. He had hoped to engage her a little longer, but seeing her face resigned to the loss of the vase, he rounded the countertop and moved towards her. The utensils on the walls seemed to move inward and, as she turned to face him, he suddenly felt very small. He straightened his T-shirt.

“It’s a gift for you,” he said hesitantly.

She stepped forward, into the ray of sunlight streaming through the window, grown moist and teary from humidity, and looked into the eyes that had admired her from afar. Gingerly, she smiled a new smile.

Copyright Gillian Gilbride

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