Oh, Magdalene (or, Maggie Can Sing!): Chagall & a Warm Cuppa

2

Not long after her coffee, Maggie hung the last of her husband’s things on hangers dangling from the clothes horse to dry. Next she went into the bedroom and from her single – again, oh-so-effortlessly seamless and imperceptible - closet, a closet she loathed as all ‘closeted closets’ - and oh give her a gorgeous wardrobe of cherry wood any day – but finally she retrieved a jumper! She loathed seamless cupboard almost as much as she loathed synthetic fireplaces. But they were everywhere. He had insisted. As they all were, from the kitchen to the bedrooms, guest room included, to the telly unit, and so the same with the closet of her few treasured clothes, bargain bin finds and precious family hand-me-downs, each item unique and dear to her, meanwhile his vast and so filled with chic designer anonymity so chic that the labels barely showed, little to no branding, all but almost a whisper of an insignia if anything at all.

She flung on her woolly jumper her nan had knitted for her, in all manner of green hues – her favourite colour – so life affirming! – a jersey that to her meant nothing but love. Next she yanked on her white gumboots, a rubbish tip find that had just needed a little bit of TLC.

House keys. Check. Leftovers. Check. Bag of cat food. Check.

And with that she left the warmth of the indoors and weaved her way around the river inlet and wandered down the quay to the Valerie, where the ever dear widower, Fynn, lived the simple life on his boat with his two cats, Zafira, and her loveable ginger brat, Olly.

Not too imposingly tall, but still somewhat lanky, Fynn carried all 6 feet well. A strength to him seasoned by boat life, toiling away as he did on a boat named after his wife gone too soon, and living as much as possible ‘off the grid’ as it were.

As for the original Valerie. Quite the gal she had been.

Almost without fear. Or so it seemed. But truly, gone too soon, as a doctor bravely assisting in yet another war torn battle zone when their building had been rendered to nought but dust and medical supplies scattered, the last remaining remnants, scattered no longer with purpose like meaningless bits of shrapnel. Everything, everyone, just shrapnel.

Ever since, Maggie had felt a kindness, a generosity, to care for Fynn. To her mind, most men were useless without a good woman to look after them.

She always brought him cat food, for she loved Zafira and Olly, a very tender place especially for Zafira who had known a far tougher life before her and her kitten, Olly had come to be rescued by Fynn. Reluctantly, but adopted in the end, caring only for fosters before. But there was a rare brand of loyalty in Zafira that wasn’t always common in the feline species prone to roam and to stickier affections. Certainly not in her haughty Siamese! His, really. But Zafira was steadfast.

Beyond this, Maggie religiously made sure she cooked a little extra every evening to bring him a takeaway lest he waste away on a diet of toast and baked beans. Like some savage in holey underwear. This time she’d brought chicken breasts stuffed with gorgonzola cheese and wrapped in streaky bacon with a side of roast vegetables and baby spuds drizzled in a little olive oil and sprinkled with parsley fresh from her garden.

“Ah, Maggie, you’re a saint, you know that!”

“Well, Fynn, you’re the finest of the lot and someone’s gotta make sure you don’t waste away on tinned foods and 2 Minute Noodles!”

“Fancy a warm cuppa? Let’s get out of this rain!”

“Sure.” Maggie could think of nothing better.

Fynn helping her step over and come on in inside, Maggie always delighted in the boat’s cosy quaintness. Bright little curtains in tangerine orange, so cheerful, so gay. Prints of Chagall secured to the walls almost wherever you glanced. Marc Chagall had been his wife’s favourite, and now, Maggie, too, considered the artist an utter revelation. A turquoise glass blown ashtray took centre stage on the secured small square table of kitsch blue. New. The ashtray. She had never even seen Fynn smoke but she supposed there was a first for everything.

Fynn meanwhile had placed the cherry red kettle that sang on the right side of the gas hob – and oh, how she loved when it sang!

Fynn unhooked two pale mint green mugs from the wall just above the rudimentary sink. A small copper pan – also new Maggie noted – as the two bacon wrapped, cheese stuffed chicken breasts began to sizzle, next spooning in the vegetables and spuds with parsley. He was a man with a strongly held position against microwaves.

“Coffee or tea?”

“Ah, I’d love a coffee!”

From a little kitsch blue cupboard out came the sugar, to rest on the secured table. Then a blend of coffee granules entitled ‘Childhood Memories.’ A very vintage image of a girl in blacks and seafoam greens and burnt oranges with pigtails trailing a little cart on the packaging. She loved it. And so it was that Fynn readied it for her in his one-man bodum. He scooped a generous serving of the coffee into the bodum just as the kettle began to sing its victory song as Maggie rejoiced. A small long life milk was set down next to the brown sugar with a spoon for his honoured guest and fondly leaving the bodum for her to press when it was good and ready. After all, he knew Maggie was no stranger to a good brew!

Gently pressing the filter coffee, Maggie delighted in the arresting aromas. She poured the strong, drank and dense brew then added the milk and sugar. A sugar cube. He always had sugar cubes. She had once watched a documentary where a giraffe had bent its elegant neck only to crane in through a hotel window and steal a sugar cube with its long and purplish and illustrious tongue from the couple’s silver tea set. She’d loved sugar cubes ever since.

Fynn soon joined the table opposite her, with her leftover grub and a mug of builder’s tea. He was already tucking in, ravenous, when she smiled to herself. It was nice to once in a while have someone seem to savour at least an iota of the effort she went to in the kitchen. While he was otherwise preoccupied with the meal she’d brought over, utterly oblivious, she leaned back with her coffee to drink in the shape of him.

Since the passing of his wife, there was a bit of the wild man to him. Hair grown now to his shoulders, forever ‘the tousled look’ maybe was the best description, but never quite curly and certainly never straight. His eyes hazel, that on brighter days sparkled like amber to the light, and other days, mercurial, they were, flecked with glimmers, shards, of sheer green. His face freckled, but handsomely so with the tan he seemed to carry with him all year round always out and about with his boat duties. Toiling and tinkering. She always found herself smitten most of all by the charming asymmetry to his nose and also that sidewise boyish grin, as he ran a hand through his hair, cheeks flushed.

She wasn’t immune to fantasising, and she hadn’t ever hid their friendship, for this town could talk and she cared not, hiding nothing. That’s why the lady is a tramp… Sinatra had her down.

All the same, she who had so little, for all it seemed she had so much, she was just happy, so very grateful really, to settle for this easy friendship. Real friendship. And the smallest act of human kindnesses by way of a warm cuppa once in a while, and to feel almost needed, at least a little, and beyond that, to find in another human appreciation. She needed it. The comfort. To keep going. To keep believing she mattered. That she mattered more.

Besides, her husband wasn’t the jealous type. Perhaps he knew better. Better than she realised. In truth, she had always been as loyal as a Labrador, frothing for every scrap flung from her husband’s table. Hoping that a pair of pearl and diamond earrings meant something when they weren’t her style at all anyway, hers far more down to earth, and probably ordered by the PA anyway…

But fantasise she might, from time to time and from afar as she did, gazing even as she did from her window over a coffee or glass of lucked out wine, yes, gazing out for Fynn or even just watching the Valerie bobbing up and down on the sky soaked water, calling to mind those tangerine orange curtains, all that glorious Chagall, even the new glass blown ashtray… It’s cosy intimacy… And sometimes she fantasised more than she cared to admit.

But as always she returned to the mustard stains on the drying dish towel.

Again she heard her mother. This time in resignation. “Oh, Magdalene, what are you going to do, my little bonbon?” And the answer was always, well: Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

She returned to the given moment, still sipping on the delicious blend, so much more intoxicating than the cheap instant blend afforded her at home, and it came to her again, and again more and more these days, a memory. So vividly… Stealing her away…

Fynn and her husband had been architect students while her a major in English Literature and African Film at the same university and in a relatively 7-degrees-of-seperation-or-way-less town. Student by day, by night Maggie had run the show, hostess and beyond at an upscale cocktail lounge. Without fail, and every evening after their shifts, her and her bestie, Eintjie, had hit the coolest joint in town to blow off some steam. The (in)famous and legendary Club 52. A hole in the wall in town with only the hippest underground DJ’s on the floor.

They’d knock back a few. Sure. Maybe the odd tequila. A cold beer or two.

Occasionally a Southern’s and lime.

But they were there to dance.

That was the raison d’etre for their entire entrance… to ravage that dance-floor mercilessly and make it count… To leave it all out on that floor, every last bit... And they’d slay until the sun itself rose in the sky. And slay they did…. Oh, they slayed.

But then, taking a break and cooling herself outside with an icy beer, Fynn had approached Maggie. He was handsome then too, though he’d grown into himself over the years or perhaps grown more into someone with that rare brand of self-assuredness, self-assured but never cocky.

All the same, he was none too shabby on the eyes even back then.

Shy, and sincere, and thinking on it now again, Maggie thought how insanely courageous, how admirable, he had politely approached her and told her how he’d been captivated by her dancing all night and please could he take her out to coffee. But he’d got her all wrong, the timing all wrong! He never quite understood she needed this time. Just. To. Dance. So of course she thanked him, ever genteel, but declined his invitation altogether. Eintjie told her she was both bloody blind and a bloody idiot.

And she probably was.

Months later, when she’d started dating her one day husband in the architecture department, she first awkwardly encountered Fynn in the elevator as he held the doors for her. She had to admit, that rugged yet boyish charm held its appeal. Secretly, she hoped he didn’t remember her. She’d felt awful for the swiftness with which she’d handled his brave encounter before she’d dashed right back to the dance-floor.

Ever after, when they met, she feigned benign ignorance only to later a faint acquaintance whenever they chanced upon each other in the architectural halls or elevator or in the library as she was usually dutifully saving her boyfriend from yet another presentation or failed essay, while he smoked marijuana at home and espoused on the benefits of bamboo. And truly she hadn’t minded the work – academic creature that she was. But her and Fynn would glance up over veritable tomes and smile every once in a while, a friendship kindling.

But no, she never minded the essays and little tasks for her future hubby. She loved him for his fanciful rants on the benefits and beauty of bamboo. She loved when he’d dress in costume and slice watermelon – splattered all over the kitchen of course – with a samurai sword just to ‘try it out’. She loved it when he spent all morning in the garden making a rudimentary puppet just to make short videos with and just for the hell of it.

Besides that he was a man coloured in a palette of watercolours, like her very first crush at the tender age of 12, a boy of her youth she just couldn’t forget, and well, beyond this her fiance was also breathtakingly beautiful. In a way almost ethereal. She imagined him the kind of man that might inspire in an Oscar Wilde, the protagonist of Dorian Gray. And there was nothing that she wouldn’t do for him. But now? She had never dreamed of pearl and diamond earrings sent with a customary note by a personal assistant. So garish they felt. And there were no longer puppets fashioned from the garden. And bamboo forgotten. And they never kicked back and smoked a little weed any more.

Sometimes when people grew up, grew accustomed to a new life – say of wealth, success – they grew into new people. People you seldom recognised.

For all his beauty remained uncontested, no wrinkle nor blemish, flawless, and a beauty that could stop many an admirer dead in their tracks and turn heads like that of an enraptured owl. But she wondered now. She imagined her and Fynn like Betty and Jughead. Maybe the pair that ought to have been. Archie was always such a goddamn nuisance!

But she wondered…

Did he remember that fateful night at that tiny thumping hole in the wall? Did he remember her dancing? Did he remember asking her out for coffee? Oh how she wondered, perhaps, just perhaps, secretly hoping he did.