A contribution for Sunday Scribblings

Everyone knew Mrs Bennett .. and yet no-one seemed to know her at all.

The children knew her as the bent old lady who looked like a witch, with her long nose, her wrinkles and her damp, pink eyes. Those straight-backed, smooth skinned, bright-eyed youngsters never gave a thought to how people got like that, they merely assumed that old people were just … there. That God had randomly populated each community with its share of Very Old People.

The older kids, the ones just beginning to slouch into adolescence, figured that old people existed only to be someone’s granny or grand-dad, while the teens themselves just … well, most of them didn’t think about the old folk at all. Thoughts of old age led to thoughts of death, and death was something that happened to other people, because they themselves were quite clearly immortal. To them, Mrs Bennett was just a mad old bint who got in their way as they poured out of the school gates after school.

The kids who were introverted, or depressed and suicidal, they thought about death alright, but not about the process of ageing. They saw themselves dead now. Romantically dead. Tender young corpses, dead with their hair still dark and their lips still plump and rosy. Dead but uncorrupted.

Sarah had first met Mrs Bennett in a supermarket car park. She had just released a trolley from the line near her car and was hurrying to the store with it when she’d felt a frail hand on her arm and had turned to see an anxious, wrinkled face with faded grey eyes and wispy hair blowing loose from a bun.

‘Can I take your trolley, dear? It’ll save you takin’ it back, and I can use it to lean on,’ the old woman had said, and before Sarah could protest, she’d grasped the handle with her veined and bony hands, and made off with it, swinging one leg wide as she dot-and-carried her way toward the shop.

Sarah had had no time to react. She’d been annoyed at first, and then resigned, as she’d watched the trolley, the old lady, and her pound coin disappear between the automatic doors.

Since then, Sarah had learned a few things. Mrs Bennett had lost her husband to pneumonia ten years ago, and since then had lived alone in the end bungalow, right at the far end of Gorse Lane, where the bright, neat gardens softened into the broad fields of wheat and oilseed rape.

Mrs Bennett was seen in the little village shop from time to time collecting a pint of milk or a local newspaper, and people would always let her in at the front of the queue because they hated to see the old woman shuffling from foot to foot as she waited in the line as if her bunions were playing up.

But no-one walked with her, and as far as Sarah knew, no-one called on her, and as the weeks passed, she grew uneasy at the thought of the poor lonely soul passing her days alone and unloved, so today she was going to take Mrs Bennett a little posy of flowers and try to befriend her.

She knocked on the peeling front door, and she was soon sitting in a tiny kitchen with a cup of tea in front of her and old Mrs Bennett chattering nineteen to the dozen. She heard how lovely it was to have a visitor, and how Mrs Bennett’s children were too far away and too busy to come and see her anymore. She heard how many pills Mrs Bennett had for her arthritis and what the doctor had said last week. She heard what Mrs Bennett had had for dinner yesterday, and what she was going to have tonight, and how hard it was to get help from the council, and how she’d nearly been burgled two months ago, and as far as Sarah could tell, she had now heard Mrs Bennett’s whole life story together with a comprehensive list of the faults and shortcomings of all the local service providers.

Sarah left two hours later with her head reeling, having somehow promised to come again on Friday and bring her gardening tools to get the weeds out of the front flower beds and maybe run the hoover round. She had no idea how it had happened, but she’d also given Mrs Bennett her phone number in case she needed help at any time.

When she had gone, Mrs Bennett smiled a happy smile of great satisfaction.

Goodness, young folk were gullible these days, she thought to herself. How easy it was to get them to do exactly what she wanted, without ever having to ask outright - why, she had Lynn Scott coming tomorrow to clean the bathroom, and Gerald Rollins on Saturday to paint the front door! All she had to do was act feeble and lonely or pretend her feet hurt, and people fell over themselves to help her.

The young ‘uns thought they knew it all, and yet they ran themselves ragged looking after homes and children, and worked all hours in some dingy office, and forgot to enjoy themselves. She was practically doing them a favour letting them come here for an hour or two away from all that.

Although, heaven knew, if she were a pretty young girl like Sarah Woods with her husband away from home for weeks on end, she wouldn’t be wasting time on old ladies and gardening - she’d be kicking up her heels, stirring up all the local lads and picking up a few grass stains … but there. She wasn’t young and pretty anymore.

What she was, however, was old and crafty. She glanced fondly at the posy of spring flowers which Sarah had brought.

See? With the cultivation of a suitably guileless expression, you could steal shopping trolleys and jump queues with impunity!

And you only had to be sufficiently aged.