By Lamplight

MODERN LIFE SHORT STORY BY HILARY SPIERS

Fiona was struggling to follow the instructions for her latest purchase…

It’s all a bit complicated,” Fiona said apologetically.

She hated the neediness in her voice. “I wondered if you could pop round.”

She knew as she said it that there would be a perfectly acceptable reason why David couldn’t come.

She could imagine Ailsa sighing in the background as he mouthed “It’s my mother” to her.

They’d be doing something. They’d be busy.

And they were.

“Sorry, Mum. We’re off for the weekend. We’re going to see friends in the Borders. Can you phone Craig?”

She’d phoned Craig first. He’d sounded less impatient than his brother, but the message was the same: “Sorry, Mum. I’m too busy.”

“Anyway,” David added, hardening his tone in that familiar way that presaged criticism, “what possessed you to order something like that off the internet? You should have gone to John Lewis. You know what Dad always said.”

Didn’t she just. John Lewis was the only shop’s threshold Alex would ever cross.

She had trotted obediently into John Lewis, store card at the ready.

Nothing there had taken her fancy. Everything was so practical, so ordinary.

So . . . conventional.

She hadn’t been sure what she wanted, but knew it wasn’t to be found there.

Then she’d started looking online and had finally found the perfect thing.

It was unusual, sleek and so different from the rest of their furnishings. Italian, too.

Now her beautiful, antique, brass, swan-necked lamp lay in pieces on the table, its poorly translated instruction sheet beside it.

She had pored over it for a good hour, trying to make sense of it.

At the end, it said: May your lamp shine nice.

If only it would.

“You must have a local electrician. Give him a ring. Sorry, Mum, got to go.”

“Have a nice weekend,” she said forlornly and put the phone down.

She sat looking at the jigsaw of pieces on the table as the night crept in to the echoing, lonely house.

Fiona woke early the next day. There was still that sense of an absence in the bed beside her.

She wasn’t a romantic: it hadn’t all been plain sailing with Alex over the years, but he had been there.

He’d been lugubrious, it was true, but kind at heart.

She was grieving, yes, but for what? His company? His financial acumen?

Or just his ability to wire up a bedside lamp?

Oh, Fiona, she thought to herself, you are an ungrateful woman. You didn’t deserve him.

But that didn’t stop the tears from falling.

Later, in the kitchen, she stood at the sink, looking out over the street.

It was quiet at this time of day. The hours stretched ahead of her interminably.

The woman across the road came out of her house carrying a large pot of paint.

She wasn’t wearing her usual jeans but a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt with an extravagant abstract design.

It was the first time Fiona had seen her in anything but heels. Today, she sported bright trainers.

She disappeared back inside to re-emerge with a tall step ladder.

As she was erecting it beside her porch, she caught sight of Fiona and waved.

Fiona shrank back into the shadows of the kitchen.

She’d got out of the habit of turning on the lights each time she entered a room.

The woman seemed to shrug. Fiona thought a look of disappointment flitted across her face, but it was hard to tell at this distance.

Mid-morning, having made a second unsuccessful attempt to decipher the instructions, Fiona dragged herself out to the shops.

She was at her gate when the woman, now wielding a paintbrush at the top of the ladder, called out, “Morning!”

“Hello,” Fiona said shyly. “You look busy.”

She wondered why the woman didn’t employ a proper painter.

“I’ll do yours, if you like!” the woman shouted gaily.

She clambered down the ladder, balanced her brush on the tin and crossed the road, to Fiona’s alarm.

She’d never spoken to the woman before. She and Alex had liked to keep themselves to themselves.

The woman stuck out a hand.

“Davina.” Now she was closer, Fiona could see the design on her T-shirt was splashes of dried paint.

“I’m Fiona,” she said, taking Davina’s warm hand.

A thought popped into her head.

“I don’t suppose you know a good electrician, do you?” she asked. “I bought a lamp off the internet. I just need someone –”

“Let’s have a look,” Davina interjected.

Fiona was regretting starting the conversation.

It was like Alex used to say: get too pally with your neighbours and they’d be in and out of your house every five minutes.

“The instructions are really complicated.”

Davina laughed.

“How difficult can it be?” She was already at the front door.

Reluctantly, Fiona retraced her steps and led her into the dining-room.

Picking up the instruction sheet, Davina scanned it.

“It looks easy enough. You start with those bits.”

She pointed at two of the components.

Fiona nodded.

“Go on, then,” Davina said with a smile.

It took her five minutes to assemble the lamp under Davina’s patient guidance.

Now it sat between them, delicate and beautiful.

“It’s nice,” Davina remarked. “Different.”

“I don’t know what my husband would have thought,” Fiona admitted.

“Does it matter?”

No, it didn’t matter, did it?

What mattered was that, with Davina’s help, she had managed to put the thing together herself.

“There’s courses for women at the local college,” Davina was saying. “Wiring, plumbing, you name it.”

“Really?” Fiona asked. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“We could go together,” Davina offered.

Fiona looked at her lamp.

She remembered her old self, when the world seemed full of possibilities, when experiences were exciting, not daunting.

She had liked that old self.

When had she become so cautious? So fearful?

“I’d like that,” she replied, reaching for the switch.

It did shine nice.

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