Oh, Magdalene! (or, Maggie Can Sing): A Green Velvet Box

A third installment for all the romantics out there... with a feminist twist of course! x

Fynn woke at 5a.m. like clockwork, cats still slumbering peacefully on the bed for it was cold out. Gingerly stepping out of his single bed, not to rouse them, he popped the cherry red kettle on the gas flame. He opened the small kitsch blue cupboard for the coffee granules. Childhood Memories. The cover packaging art had reminded him so much of Maggie, so very soft, so very much a child at heart when she could be, still to this day. He rinsed the bodum of the coffee he’d made for her the day before, hoping she’d be back again soon.

Kettle singing, he switched off the gas.

First he poured a little bit of hot water on the granules to release their full-bodied flavour and fragrance. Next, he filled the one man bodum leaving the granules to brew a little before he gently and patiently plunged and then poured his coffee into the mug first warmed with a swirl of hot water. Then two sugar cubes and a swirl of creamy milk. Then he took up his seat at the table, gazing out at dark velveteen waters beyond, sky grey, water grey, tangerine curtains pulled back even though the sun was long gone.

Awash with nostalgia and thoughts of Maggie, he got up and reached under the kitchen sink, returning to the table and his coffee with a small green velvet box. He opened it.

In it, a small Claddagh ring, dainty but with small imperfections, utterly unique and with character and not polished at all, just how Maggie would have liked it. If only she knew.

He’d always hoped, and wished, and prayed, she’d remembered that night, her dancing, him laying his heart bear. During their days at varsity he’d lived in the feverish hope for the days she’d visit their campus, for all it was to see another man, now husband. But he’d seen the Irish promise ring at a young jeweller’s stall at an outdoors market back then and bought it for her, instantly and without a moment’s doubt or hesitation.

Impressed by her penchant for green, be it a pendant or gloves or scarf or all the more daring, a pair of stockings, well, he had made a little ring box in his father’s workshop, handy that he was, and had covered it artfully in green velvet with an ivory silk interior.

Oh the days and the days and the sleepless nights when he had vowed he would boldly wrest her away from that artful rogue so undeserving of her soft heart and her glimmering emperor jade for eyes when they alighted on you alone, and then there was that dreamy expression when she thought no one was watching, or the way she bit her bottom lip when digesting a dense passage in a book, or the way she collected feathers, rarely, but never said why.

He had desperately craved to give her the ring in a bold display, to win her over, make her his and place that little silver circle upon her finger… But ardently romantic as he was, and so madly in love from afar, he just never found the courage, or perhaps he’d feared rejection, yet again. Every day he’d gone to campus with that emerald velvet box burning a hole in his pocket.

“Oh, Fynn, you bloody fool! You should’ve have saved her!” he admonished himself now.

Ring following him wherever he went like the searching beam of a lighthouse, guiding him back to Maggie. God, he loved her. The ring glared at him now, beseeching. Maybe one day. Maybe he’d steal her heart yet. He made another cup of coffee, his mind not really in it. Yes, he’d win her love. For Fynn, for her love, truly loved her, not like he loved. No. Fynn truly loved her.

Save both being architects, Fynn had chosen an altogether different path in life and could not afford Maggie the ‘finer things’… But Fynn knew her better besides. Maggie didn’t need those inconsequential excesses. Besides, it didn’t seem her husband ever truly bothered to afford her the likes for all he could afford it. Not really. Not sincerely. Not in any way that mattered.

But he saw it each and every time she visited, a deep well of well-concealed sadness.

For all she tried to be strong, for all she tried to hide her hurting, her eyes could never lie, not those big, green expressive eyes. He’d see too the change in her. In her posture. In her tone. And again in those big, green eyes. The change when she would sit and he would make her a warm cuppa on the hob.

Before he’d finally settled for good on his two strays, Fynn had fostered many an animal from many a sad and tragic background. And he knew that shift all too well. That first tentative lick of the hand when a creature hopes it has finally found refuge, a pocket of hope. And so it was with Maggie, and he felt for her all the more. His heart aching for her all the same.

She’d relax a little, and soften, her innately gentle and feminine nature, just to love and be loved, unveiling itself if you knew to pay close enough attention. Her eyes no longer quite so sad. A genuine smile of gratitude curling at the corners of her sweet lips.

Even at times, a lightness to her eyes suddenly, fluttering, alighting upon him. Bashful. Flirtatious. Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking on his part.

Still, an act of kindness, so slight, so small, and each time she left just that little bit lighter.

And him again, longing all the more to be the cause of her lightness, her joy, her happiness, for the rest of their days.

“You daft prick! Just tell her how you feel!” He swirled the dregs of the coffee and knocked it back. He placed the pale minty green mug in the sink.

The mugs he’d gotten expressly for Maggie. For her love of green. He shifted the turquoise blue blown glass ashtray centre stage on the little fixed table. Again, an ashtray he’d gotten expressly for Maggie. Her husband banning her from her one and only vice, the occasional rollie. While he came home so often, Fynn knew, reeking of cigars. But for Maggie, Fynn kept, again under the kitchen sink, a pouch of her preferred brand, Golden Virginia, and some hemp papers and eco-friendly filters should she ever need it one day. Should she have a monumentally crummy day. But bio safe, the lot of it, for Maggie loved nature and nature loved her back. Ah, his dreamy Maggie. But she wasn’t his Maggie was she? Not yet anyway, and maybe never. But he wasn’t about to give up on her. She’d wear those Smiths fan tees, worn thin, same as The Cure. And he remembered. He always remembered.

Once she’d danced like it was just her and that grimy dance-floor in that seedy wonderland of a club. Not another soul. She’d bewitched him. She didn’t dance any more. Snuffed out.

But Fynn was good with kindling, he knew.

He would watch her sometimes, from the boat with his father’s old binoculars, making sure she was safe, that she was okay, and there she’d be cleaning, cleaning or stubborn mule she could be – and that he loved her for! – for all others underestimated her, stubbornly there she’d be tackling that barren patch with no signs of giving up, and with nothing but little succulent cuttings from her nana’s. And say what you will, but the patch was a little less barren, a little less hopeless, each and every time. But not once, not once, no not evermore again had he seen his lady fair dance when she thought no one was watching.

The cats now roused, he gave them some clean water and topped up their pellets. Fostering and re-homing strays since he was a young boy with his folks, Zafira and Olly had made of him a committed man for the first time in his life with rescues, never before having to provide the necessary support, love, for a cat so starved and bony and terrified as Zafira had been, having been left in a box to starve with her babies. No, she was his now. And while it had been difficult the other kittens, like family they all had felt, at least he’d kept Olly, the mommy’s boy of the whole brood.

So no more fosters. Now only one more to add to their family. Maggie.

`

He suddenly felt peckish and reached for the copper pan hanging up. Again a small gesture of sorts for Maggie, for all he knew she one day dreamed of a copper bath in which to lie back and soak. Out from the fridge came the leftover sauce with peppers and plum tomatoes from the Basque Chicken Maggie had brought him a few days prior. The chorizo she’d insisted he have with the leftovers for breakfast , to let them sizzle in the pan, before adding the sauce and peppers and tomatoes to cook down and simmer a little and then finally a couple of eggs.

Following her instructions as always did to the letter, he eventually cracked a couple of eggs for the perfect shakshuka… Well, his version anyway! He’d cooked the eggs so the yolks were still soft for the dipping of the sourdough Maggie had insisted he get, and slices that he’d slathered in salty fresh farm butter. “A breakfast of champions!” she’d promised him when she’d brought it all over. And his ol’ Maggie was so very right as always. His Maggie.

Well, a guy could dream.

Each and every piece she’d ever written, every novel published, he’d read each and every time. Her writing so very earnest and honest and a voice authentically her own. And always, he admired most, with heart. He thought on her suddenly as he did on the poor little mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen, poor mute mermaid, giving up her tail so that she could walk to be with her prince, dancing for him at his every request in the palace, him delighted, while every step would feel like treading on piercing blades for her. Unlike many of his tales, while she did not win the prince’s favour in the end, the little mermaid did receive kindness in the final ending. But still Fynn thought on Maggie. She who writ no more.

But he promised himself, oh she’d write again. He loved all the more, too much to have her forsake something that had brought her so much joy, a gift.

He loved her! He madly loved her! And he wanted to proclaim his love like a madman from the highest of rooftops. But how could he ever know, how could tell – how?! – when she would be ready?

He knew the villagers would not understand, not with him in their eyes him still the grieving widow. Not now, for all it had been nigh on 5 years now since Valerie’s death. Not now, even though he and Valerie had never really been madly in love, not really, not ever. They’d loved each other of course. And she had been a beauty without contest, that long ebony black silken hair and her bright blue eyes, penetrating and arresting, interrogating. An English rose but you’d have been an idiot to let that fool you. For all her soft complexion and rosy lips and flushed cheeks, for all her blue-eyed wonder if you gazed into her eyes like glistening rockpools they were, well she was as tough as they came, packaging be damned.

Her and Fynn had locked eyes on each other on a London tube in opposite seats, him on a gap year from South Africa abroad in that big, big city. Theirs had been an immediate chemistry and they’d fallen into bed with each other that very night. But it was a desperate and sad sort of lovemaking, though passionate all the same, and as tragic encounters so often are. A sensuality to sadness. A tragic encounter between two souls who have never felt they ever quite belonged, an irony for Valerie for all she fiercely guarded her right and absolute and uncontested independence. And since Fynn never fought her on this, never resisted, never interfered, she eventually figured him the perfect mate for her. Besides, he was ethical and intelligent and good humoured and she had to admit, pretty easy on the eyes. And so she proposed marriage. And with Maggie already married, and Fynn already heartbroken anyway, he’d said yes.

Theirs had been a matching of minds mostly, after the initial sparks of sexual longing between them short-lived. She left for months at a time, a doctor helping anywhere and everywhere she was needed the most. Him, at home, and occasionally abroad to oversee the final stages, designing the layout and sourcing the necessary in hand for gardens for the blind, the liaison. Gardens with quotes in Braille and in Braille too the common and Latin names of the plants. Water features here and there for their trickling melody and speakers strategically placed to play music on special occasions and during festivals.

He was a fiend for dogged research, trying as best he could to ensure for each and every garden a great many of the plants were not only indigenous but endemic too. Ultimately though, the most fragrant won out. Nonetheless he worked tirelessly with every single landscaping design to make it utterly unique and no two ever alike.

His very latest, in their native country this time, was an ode to Maggie. At the very entrance, already a quote by Annie Dillard that made him think of Maggie, where he had it writ and pinned with a magnet to his small refrigerator: I could very calmly go wild. He would rewild her, to her, her voice return. Her mermaid's tail. Her dancing spirit. Rekindled. And he would place a silver claddagh ring upon her finger if only she would have him.

He'd loved his trailblazer of a wife. He'd been in awe of her, and her, truly, a beautiful human being inside and out. But even Valerie had known she had never been his one true love. Even though she never spoke of it. But he'd been good to her. A resting stop, somewhere to call home, a place to be cared for, before she adventured forth again and took on the world against all odds.

But with Maggie, trying to be so very strong, he knew her heart, and sensed in her always a desperate femininity that craved care, a pure and true kind of love and heartfelt care. The love of a good man. An ol' Hollywood kinda love. A Clark Gable to scoop her up in his arms and carry her off. A man to love her above all else. And with this he removed the green velvet box with the Claddagh ring from beneath the far recesses of the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink and placed it alongside the coffee and sugar pot in the kitsch blue kitchen cupboard. To see it each and every morning, Her ring. His love. And he prayed for courage. Her his love eternal. It had always been her. Maggie. And he sighed the great sigh of the unrequited heart.