A Life of Grace

Grace by Jo-Ann Hughes

She was dear to everyone in the small community she had faithfully served for over forty years. Working in the local pharmacy, Grace had seen everything in three generations of warts, skin rashes and fungal infections. So beloved was she, that for years folk even revealed their most intimate of ailments. Red bunches of swollen ‘grapes’ dangling from sore bottoms was her secret and hers alone. Never would she disclose who they belonged to nor would she broadcast the name of the teenager who appeared one day with an egg sized bulge on her labia, that made her walk bow legged for at least a week. And it would never have crossed her mind to gossip about the crusty, puss filled scabby lumps that appeared under the local counsellor’s bosoms.

That’s why Grace was loved and despite entering her late sixties she could not retire. She knew too much, saw too much, but more importantly she loved too much to hide away from her kinsfolk in peaceful retirement. Her ambition to help save the orangutang from de-forestation and extinction would have to wait, while she saved her loyal community from their ‘indulgence and excess’.

Grace smiled as she pondered on her morning. The local disgruntled window cleaner turned up to see her. His face was puffy and red as he wept. He had thrust out a swollen purple finger and muttered through his agony managing to say, ‘wasp sting! The bugger was sleeping in a gutter full of leaves as I was clearing it out. It’s throbbing like hell. Will I die?’ Reassuring him, Grace offered the tiniest lozenge shaped pill, no bigger than an ants body. He squirmed at the thought of having to swallow it, but to be fair his throat was beginning to swell in allergic irritation. Once gulped, then calmed, the window cleaner cheerfully went back to finish Mrs. Smith’s gutter. Grace was satisfied.

Lunch time only happened when the chemist shop was quiet and seeing her opportunity, Grace turned the welcome sign around in the window. ‘Out for lunch’, it said. She made her own lunch these days after Ray had passed. Every morning he had devotedly made her favourite cheese and ham on fresh white bread; a guilty secret they enjoyed. The local bakery made delicious artisan loaves with burnt crispy crust. Who could resist them? Smeared with the creamiest of best butter made it worth being late. The way he crafted her sandwich was a delight to watch. Nothing was done in a hurry. ‘More haste, less speed’, he would recite for everything undertaken was unhurried, precisely placed on the oak worktop and carefully constructed. He cut and sliced with accuracy and assembled and wrapped with exquisite neatness, before presenting it to Grace as a gift. She felt a twinge of guilt now as she remembered how irritated she was at times when she was running late. But by lunch time she was always grateful, as she knew she was eating his love wrapped in a waxy paper coat. How she missed him, even after ten years!

They had brought up two very clever children both now in their thirties. Hope was a GP working in an inner city practise and Ben a barrister after passing his bar exams with flying colours. They were soaring high with barely enough time in the week to press the speed dial. Perhaps the only way she got to hear from them was when they remembered to diary a call into their electronic calendars. But she understood, for she was pleased with all they had achieved and quietly satisfied that she and Ray had given them a loving, healthy start.

With a cheese and ham panini purchased from the deli next door, Grace headed to her favourite bench in the local garden centre. The wooden pew was next to a bright red acer which curved its branches over her like a parasol protecting her from the hot sun and passing showers. Relieved when the rain stopped she emerged from under her brown waterproof hood and smiled before sitting down. Lighting up her day opposite her was Joy (affectionally named for they had never spoken), pottering about in the glasshouse.

Joy was in a world of her own and happiness radiated from her kind and rosy features. Her work bench was quintessentially uncluttered as each tool was responsibly placed in its spot. Busy as she was, she was totally unaware of being watched as she graciously planted seeds into minuscule eggcup sized pods and transferred tiny seedlings into bigger pots. She took such care over every precious seed. Engrossed and dedicated in her calling she often sang along to BBC radio three’s lunchtime concerts and would pick up her violin to bow out a few tunes for her listening greenery and the rest of her concert lovers hidden from view. It was unmistakeable seeing her plants stretch up and grin adulation at their talented mother. Grace had a real sense of how they must feel. Joy was incredibly creative.

There was something familiar and friendly, endearingly eccentric about Joy; something Grace adored and which filled her with warm sunlight in long days. She had been her visitor for several years now; spending only minutes of each day valuing and appreciating Joy’s love of shrubs, ferns, tiny trees and melodies. As these plants grew, they become surrogate friends, watered and loved each day by Joy. If only she knew that through the looking glass was Grace in quiet admiration and secret longing.

It was, of cause, a fantasy. Grace could never cross the garden path let alone enter through the looking glass. She could only secretly admire Joy as she parcelled up her most precious exotic trees to be sent as far away as Borneo; where local women formed cooperatives to replant the habitat of the orangutang, in long connecting corridors between palm oil plantations. Joy’s trees giving life to the very creatures that Grace cared about and wanted to save, would have connected them in shared high regard.

Joy’s dedication and skill was beautifully enjoyed by Grace but this devotion would remain incomplete. Only able to watch and listen from afar, Grace would never intertwine with Joy to once more find true happiness. She would smile tenderly as she returned to care for the afflictions and suffering of her faithful. Remembering she was hosting the teenage obesity session at two o’clock, Grace left taking joy to them.