Why I chose this story: It has a quirky truthfulness, and a poignancy too. I love this line from Poppy, the woman from the launderette: ‘You have a lovely thread count on your bedding if you don’t mind me saying.’
Dead knots are a fault and weaken the wood. Rot seeps in. Some people prefer it.
by David Abbott
Ricky prefers it. He loves rot. He loves mould and fungi and decay. Ricky goes to the local cemetery in his lunch break to be closer to decomposition. He orders boxes of worms on-line to keep in his food waste bin. He watches things come apart.
As a child, Ricky collected any and all the dead animals he could find in the park or by the side of the road on his way home from school. Nobody ever troubled him about it because Ricky’s Dad had once appeared on World’s Strongest Man and had a reputation.
At Christmas, when other children gave the lollypop lady small bars of chocolate, Ricky would pop the perfectly preserved skull of a rodent or a bird in her pocket. He was annoyed that she never seemed to mention it.
One particularly lovely, spring day and Ricky is enjoying a cheese bap whilst leaning into the headstone of Wilma Lynch who had died peacefully at the age of seventy-two. It’s a pleasing plot as he has full sight of the wire bin that folks use to dispense of their flower detritus. Next thing and taken quite by surprise, a voice.
‘Did you know, Wilma?’
Ricky spins around and sees the woman from the launderette. He thinks her name is Poppy.
‘Oh. Oh no. I just, em…’
‘She was my mother,’ Poppy says. ‘There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think how lovely my life is without her.’
Ricky had only prepared a condolence type of response and now feels a bit befuddled.
‘Can I join you?’ Poppy sits down on the grass mid-question, so Ricky wonders why she asked.
‘Seen you at the launderette,’ says Poppy as she reaches into her bag for a watermelon and an alarmingly long knife. ‘You have a lovely thread count on your bedding if you don’t mind me saying.’
As untroubled by love and romance as Ricky has been for all of his life, he feels certain that this is a moment to practice what they teach him at LIFE SKILLS CLASSES. It’s in capital letters in his head because the things he does most days are usually in capital letters. And laminated. And on a wall.
‘My favourite duvet cover has all kinds of insects on it as a pattern. Mostly spiders and beetles.’
‘Why do you sit here at lunchtime?’ Poppy asks as she sets about her melon with gusto and enviable knife skills.
Ricky pauses. He tries to think if this is a ‘no-filter’ or a ‘try and be like other people’ moment. Unsure but emboldened he looks at her quite directly.
‘I like to be with things that are breaking apart but beautiful all at the same time. There’s something so much more truthful about it.’
Poppy hands him a slice of melon and Ricky notices that though her face is wet with tears, she is smiling as well.
‘I think it’s on the turn,’ she says. ‘Just how you like it.’
David Abbott lives up a hill in Wales with a husband and a rescue dog, and is an occasional writer of fiction.
Cath Barton 