SHORT STORY: Summers

By Guy Dowse                                               

                                “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

He had gone to Rowntree Park with his mother and younger brother, Harry. Really, he was too old for that sort of thing, but all his friends whom he normally played football with on Little Knavesmire during the holidays had gone away with their families, and there was no alternative.

He sat on a swing, listlessly turning from side to side, his soles squelching on the artificial surface. Everything was suddenly boring in a way it had not been before, as if something had just finished and something else was about to start, like a new chapter in an adventure story.

He suddenly felt thirsty. When he got to the bench where his mum was sitting, she was deep in conversation with another woman who sounded different to her and was beautiful, like a goddess.

“—Hello, young man.” She moved quickly to the end of the bench to make room.

“Jamie, you could at least ask permission, before plonking yourself down! Sorry, he doesn’t think—”

“—Oh, he’s all right.

I’ve taken your seat, haven’t I?” and she put her hand on his wrist and lowered her face so that it was directly in front of his. With anyone else he would have turned away embarrassed, but so open and attractive was her smile, and her perfume so beguiling, that all he could do was smile back, until his mother broke the spell.

“Do you want an ice cream, Jamie?”

“Please.”

She offered to get the woman something and told Jamie to rock Harry’s pushchair should he wake up, then trotted off to the cafe.

Normally, he wouldn’t talk to strangers, but this felt different.

“Are you from York?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t sound like you are—”

“—Well, I am. I’ve lived away in London for a long time, so that might be it.”

“What’s your name?”

“Fay. Such a lot of questions, young man.” She poked him gently in the ribs and he squirmed, laughing. Then, emboldened, he did the same to her and ran off chuckling, but she was too quick for him.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” She caught him and tickled him under his armpits. He flopped onto the grass in a fit of laughter. Pulling him up, she dragged him back by the hand. “I’m going to tie you to the bench till your mother comes back.”

“Are you a secret agent?”

She laughed. “No, I’m an actress actually.”

“Are you famous?”

She smiled at him. “Well, you don’t know me, so probably not. What about you? What do you want to be when you’re older?”

He shook his head vigorously. He had thought about what he would like to be, but it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about now. This was a blissful moment outside normal time, and he didn’t want to waste it answering boring questions.

After his mother returned and they had finished their drinks and ice creams and the two women had chatted for a while, Fay checked her mobile, got up and shook each of them by the hand. “Must dash. So lovely to meet you both.”

Jamie wouldn’t let go of her hand and she bent down and kissed him on the cheek. It felt delicious.

“Say something, Jamie,” his mother said, prodding him in the shoulder with her index finger as Fay waved goodbye and walked off towards the river, but a sudden and simultaneous rush of extreme elation and extreme despair left him speechless.

If boredom had been bad, not seeing her again was excruciating, and next day he was irresistibly drawn to the bench in Rowntree Park, where he sat like an abandoned child, staring straight ahead, except when anyone approached.

When hunger finally outdid the gnawing at his heart and he returned home, his mother – who suspected he had a crush on the woman in the park and that he was feeling down – said she had read something about her in York Post. “—Fay—Fay Summers, that’s it. Well, she’s famous—”

“—She said she wasn’t!”

“She is. She’s playing the lead – Oh, what’s her name? – in As You Like It at the Theatre Royal.”

Next day he went to the theatre and stared for ten minutes at an enlarged photograph of her smiling face on the wall outside, then waited for considerably longer by the stage door in the vain hope that she might come out (or, for that matter, go in, since her personal timetable was a mystery to him).

Tired of waiting, he plucked up the courage to ask a doorman if Fay Summers was in the building and was told that she wouldn’t be there until the evening.

He would return later if he could get out of the house without being seen, he mused, but the fact was that the bench in Rowntree Park exerted the greater pull and besides, if she wasn’t in the theatre there was a chance she might be there.

He crossed Lendal Bridge, then followed the river in a haze and entered the park via the main gate, which was not his normal way and it took him a while to get his bearings. When he finally spotted the bench, it was down a long path and between it and him, two women were walking hand in hand. It was only when they sat on the bench that he really noticed them and only when they embraced and kissed passionately that he realised that one of them was Fay. For several seconds he just stood there, rooted to the spot, mouth wide-open, arms hanging limply at his side. The couple were so involved in what they were doing that Fay would not have seen him had he walked past, but Jamie would have been mortified if she had.

It was a slap on the face and he felt desperate. He turned and ran away, sobbing as he ran, until he found a bench at the other end of the park on which he collapsed in paroxysms of grief. After half an hour like this, he picked himself up and trudged home, a plaintive sob issuing from him every so often, strong enough to lift his upper body then suddenly drop it again as if he were being controlled by a merciless puppet master who took delight in tormenting him.

By the time he got home this had finished, but his face still bore the scars of his grief.

“What—?”

At first he was too discomposed to explain lucidly and simply buried his head in his mother’s breast as the floodgates opened once more, and she allowed him to recover before quizzing him, though she had a good idea what had provoked it all.

“I h–had to f–find her. She was with a wo–woman–. O—On the bench. They—they were ki—kissing—”

“It happens, Jamie.”

She stroked his hair. A hug was the best thing, really. Anything else could be counterproductive. He’d find out soon enough (albeit the hard way). At least, his sobbing had finished–

Then she remembered. There was something she had forgotten in the commotion. She stepped back and took his hands in hers. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Johnny called round. Apparently, they’re all back. They’re playing football on Little Knavesmire.”

She thought it would fall on deaf ears given the circumstances, but he had never known pain of this intensity and needed the instant analgesic that the old world of his friends could provide, and with a mumbled, “Thanks,” he was gone.

But it wouldn’t be for long. His life had been changed forever and he would never forget that golden afternoon in the park, with her.