Mrs. Murdoch and Mr. Smith Mp3
Read by Carrie Cohen
It wasn't like Mr. Smith to be late. Eleven o'clock on the dot: that's when he always came. She couldn't remember a time when he'd ever been late, before. Eleven o'clock, on the dot, every Saturday. Her morning break would begin, and there would be Mr. Smith, with his tea and her coffee and maybe a flapjack or a macaroon or a Belgian bun. Oh, she looked forward to it so much. She knew it was ridiculous, but she didn't care. But today he was late. And he was never late. She sat in the Granary Café on the fourth floor of Williamson's, drinking her coffee alone, watching his tea go cold, looking around for him, wondering what was keeping him, trying not to think about what might have happened to him.
If you would like to read the rest of this story, please check out Lovers' Lies, the Arachne Press anthology in which it, and many other sexy and lovable stories from the League archives, appears.
Entering the Granary Café this morning she'd been flustered and a little confused at not finding Mr. Smith sitting there. She looked at their usual table, which was empty. Then she looked around at the other tables, searching out his Daily Mail, his little flat cap. He wasn't sitting at any of the other tables. He wasn't in the queue. The café was, as usual, about half full. There was a wide variety of elderly people in it, from tiny old women to large middle-aged men and their large wives. The walls were covered in tasteful pastel images of grain and fruit and seeds. There was piped music but it was so quiet Mrs. Murdoch could hardly hear it.
She didn't know what to do. Normally Mr. Smith took care of everything. Normally she arrived just after eleven and he was already there, folding away his Daily Mail as she sat down, saying good morning to her, not standing up (he had trouble with his knees).
She would say, "Lemon meringue pie today" or, "coffee and walnut, is it?" or something, depending on whatever cake she found on her side of the table. He just had tea. No cake for Mr. Smith, thank you. Without going into too much detail, he'd once said, I like cake, don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like cake, far from it, in fact. Let's just say: cake doesn't like me.
She smiled now at the memory of it. She didn't know which cake to buy. She ordered a coffee. She glanced about, trying not to look too desperate. It was so unlike him, and already there were only twenty minutes of her coffee break left.
She got a plate with a rather tired-looking piece of shortbread on it, added this and the coffee to a cracked brown tray, and went to the till. How long had it been since she'd had her Saturday morning break alone? A year? Oh, at least. She could hear Mr. Smith saying And the rest. She was always getting dates wrong or lengths of time wrong, that sort of thing.
"How long since they pedestrianized the precinct?"
"Five years?"
"And the rest. 1999."
"No."
"Yes. 1999."
"1999."
"1999."
And she kept forgetting things. She didn't tell anyone. She had a million little pieces of paper in various pockets, with all sorts of vital bits of information on them: codes for doors and alarms, at home and at work, phone numbers of hospitals and of her daughter, of friends and neighbours for emergencies, the routine to follow when a customer wanted a refund on a credit card, her own date of birth.
She set the tray down on the table and sat down. Next to her, a black woman with three young children was cutting up a sandwich and trying to open a carton of apple juice and wrestle a child out of a coat, all at the same time.
She wondered what Mr. Smith would have said. She could see him, raising his eyes to heaven. She could hear him, reading out something from the paper, something that only proved to him once again that this country was "going to the dogs". Some story about immigrants or some politically-correct council or some child raping a blind pensioner and getting off with no more than "a slap on the wrist".
Butt he was such a gentleman, with his cravat and his blazer. Every Saturday he popped into Leeds, leaving the car at the park-and-ride. First stop – Williamson's. Half an hour or so to get what he needed, then a very welcome break in the Granary café, with a cup of tea, and Mrs. Murdoch for company. And he'd tell her something or other, some story or just about something he'd seen. Listen, I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Dolphin-friendly tuna. Hardly tuna-friendly though, is it? But we've decided, or someone's decided, in their infinite wisdom, that dolphins we have to be friendly to, and tuna we don't.
Always so polite and so happy to see her. She needed that. She needed to see someone's eyes light up when she entered the room.
But sometimes she got so bored with him, he was so pompous and silly, with his old-fashioned talking and his old-fashioned clothes. But he always had a good word to say about her appearance, even though he only ever saw her in her Williamson's uniform.
"Have you done something with your hair?"
"No."
"Well. It looks very nice, whatever it is you've done."
"It isn't anything."
"Now, you can't fool me. It looks very nice."
And she'd start to doubt herself. Had she done something to her hair? Something out of the ordinary, out of the routine? She might have done, and completely forgotten about it.
Most days and most nights were pretty empty, but Saturdays was work, and her little break with Mr. Smith and that was better than nothing. Since her Derek had passed away, five years ago, she'd kept thinking she should do something, get out more, go to classes, learn about something, get involved in something. There never seemed to be enough time and yet she never actually seemed to do anything either. She didn't know where the time went. She'd said this to Mr. Smith one day, I don't know where the time goes and he'd laughed a little, not unsympathetically, and said he had the opposite problem: not enough time to cram in all the myriad activities with which he found himself involved. He was forever going to evening classes and learning new skills and he had so many friends and relatives around all the time that sometimes, it was terrible, he knew, but sometimes he just wished they'd all leave him alone for just a morning or an afternoon so he could hear himself think.
"That's why I do so enjoy our quiet little half-hours together," he said to her once.
Every week she would write a letter to her daughter, eking out a series of non-events into a couple of pages. And every few months a reply would come, along with a few photos. Her grand-daughter in the paddling pool, or running around in the garden. And her daughter would always finish her letters with two pleas: when was mum coming out to Melbourne to see them? And, when would she get with it and get an email address? Then she could send her millions of pictures, and video, and lord knows what.
Mr. Smith was a great one for gadgets and web sites and what-have-you. Couldn't believe she didn't even have a mobile.
If she had a mobile she could phone him now and find out what was the matter. It was already almost quarter-past.
She couldn't quite remember how she had first met him. She vaguely recalled a time when there was nowhere to sit, in the days when Williamson's had been a lot more popular, and she'd ended up plonking herself down opposite this rather funny-looking little man, and somehow a conversation had begun, and now here they were. So, she could remember how she'd first met him. She could actually remember it very well. She wondered what was the matter with her, sometimes. Now that she was alone, a widow, she knew it was an effort to keep control of things, to stop everything sliding. It was a very fine line between normal life and the funny farm, and the men in the white coats, as they used to say at school, sixty years ago.
She remembered Mr. Smith looking up at her as she got up to go, and the very nice way he had said, "Well, maybe see you next week? Same time? Same place?"
Where was Mr. Smith? Her mind filled with horrible thoughts, thoughts of accidents and death, broken limbs, heart attacks, muggings. She told herself that if she thought of all the terrible things that could have happened to him, it would mean none of those things could actually happen in real life.
That evening, after work, she sat on the bus home and wondered what to do. If only her life were more like Mr. Smith's, with its network of friends and family, so she could have someone to talk to about it all. When Derek had still been around she'd left all arrangements and decisions to him, and now he was gone and she still had no idea about anything, really, she was just muddling through, and if she didn't go to work on Saturdays she'd probably never say a word to another living soul all week, and if she didn't have Mr. Smith to look forward to then what would she have, exactly?
At home she laid out a million tiny scraps of paper, blue, yellow, pink, white, on the kitchen table and eventually found his mobile phone number. She rang it and a recorded voice asked her to leave a message. She rang it again. The same.
Did she have his address? She knew he had told her, more than once, the area of Leeds where he lived. What was it called? Had he even mentioned the street? Why hadn't he written it down for her? Could you find out someone's address from just a mobile number?
The Library was not open on a Sunday so she spent that day worrying and doing nothing, which made a change from just doing nothing.
On Monday a very helpful young librarian showed her how to use a computer, a mouse, a keyboard, all that sort of thing. It gave her a headache after two minutes. After an hour, she went outside for some air. She sat by the war memorial and watched a group of school girls shrieking and giggling. Why weren't they in school? Why did they have to make so much noise? Mr. Smith would have given them short shrift.
Back inside the library she asked the same nice young man about finding someone's address.
"All you've got is his mobile?"
"And his name. Mr. Smith."
"Well," he said, "that should narrow it down."
"Sorry."
"No need to apologise. Trouble is, it's not much to go on. In fact, it's not anything. You'd need a private detective."
She left the library. She wasn't about to start hiring private detectives. Hiding behind bushes, waiting outside people's houses. It was real life, not the telly. How did you hire a private detective? How much did they cost?
Back home, she rang his mobile again, and this time someone answered: a young woman, Asian-sounding. At first, Mrs. Murdoch thought she'd rung a call centre or something, by mistake. But it was a hospital.
Mr. Smith looked smaller than ever. There was a tube under his nose that forked into two smaller tubes that actually went up into his nostrils. There was another tube going into his arm.
She brought him some grapes and a Daily Mail. "Illegal immigrants force house price crash". Mr. Smith lay there. Mrs. Murdoch ate a grape.
Outside, in the corridor, she spoke to the nurse who told her it was so nice he had a visitor, at last. They all hated it, she said, when someone didn't have… well. Anyway.
Mrs. Murdoch almost said, what about all his friends, what about all his family? But she stopped herself.
She went back into the ward and sat down next to him again. She held his bony soft hand in hers and said, "Well. See you tomorrow, I hope. Same time, same place?"
She didn't know what to do. Normally Mr. Smith took care of everything. Normally she arrived just after eleven and he was already there, folding away his Daily Mail as she sat down, saying good morning to her, not standing up (he had trouble with his knees).
She would say, "Lemon meringue pie today" or, "coffee and walnut, is it?" or something, depending on whatever cake she found on her side of the table. He just had tea. No cake for Mr. Smith, thank you. Without going into too much detail, he'd once said, I like cake, don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like cake, far from it, in fact. Let's just say: cake doesn't like me.
She smiled now at the memory of it. She didn't know which cake to buy. She ordered a coffee. She glanced about, trying not to look too desperate. It was so unlike him, and already there were only twenty minutes of her coffee break left.
She got a plate with a rather tired-looking piece of shortbread on it, added this and the coffee to a cracked brown tray, and went to the till. How long had it been since she'd had her Saturday morning break alone? A year? Oh, at least. She could hear Mr. Smith saying And the rest. She was always getting dates wrong or lengths of time wrong, that sort of thing.
"How long since they pedestrianized the precinct?"
"Five years?"
"And the rest. 1999."
"No."
"Yes. 1999."
"1999."
"1999."
And she kept forgetting things. She didn't tell anyone. She had a million little pieces of paper in various pockets, with all sorts of vital bits of information on them: codes for doors and alarms, at home and at work, phone numbers of hospitals and of her daughter, of friends and neighbours for emergencies, the routine to follow when a customer wanted a refund on a credit card, her own date of birth.
She set the tray down on the table and sat down. Next to her, a black woman with three young children was cutting up a sandwich and trying to open a carton of apple juice and wrestle a child out of a coat, all at the same time.
She wondered what Mr. Smith would have said. She could see him, raising his eyes to heaven. She could hear him, reading out something from the paper, something that only proved to him once again that this country was "going to the dogs". Some story about immigrants or some politically-correct council or some child raping a blind pensioner and getting off with no more than "a slap on the wrist".
Butt he was such a gentleman, with his cravat and his blazer. Every Saturday he popped into Leeds, leaving the car at the park-and-ride. First stop – Williamson's. Half an hour or so to get what he needed, then a very welcome break in the Granary café, with a cup of tea, and Mrs. Murdoch for company. And he'd tell her something or other, some story or just about something he'd seen. Listen, I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Dolphin-friendly tuna. Hardly tuna-friendly though, is it? But we've decided, or someone's decided, in their infinite wisdom, that dolphins we have to be friendly to, and tuna we don't.
Always so polite and so happy to see her. She needed that. She needed to see someone's eyes light up when she entered the room.
But sometimes she got so bored with him, he was so pompous and silly, with his old-fashioned talking and his old-fashioned clothes. But he always had a good word to say about her appearance, even though he only ever saw her in her Williamson's uniform.
"Have you done something with your hair?"
"No."
"Well. It looks very nice, whatever it is you've done."
"It isn't anything."
"Now, you can't fool me. It looks very nice."
And she'd start to doubt herself. Had she done something to her hair? Something out of the ordinary, out of the routine? She might have done, and completely forgotten about it.
Most days and most nights were pretty empty, but Saturdays was work, and her little break with Mr. Smith and that was better than nothing. Since her Derek had passed away, five years ago, she'd kept thinking she should do something, get out more, go to classes, learn about something, get involved in something. There never seemed to be enough time and yet she never actually seemed to do anything either. She didn't know where the time went. She'd said this to Mr. Smith one day, I don't know where the time goes and he'd laughed a little, not unsympathetically, and said he had the opposite problem: not enough time to cram in all the myriad activities with which he found himself involved. He was forever going to evening classes and learning new skills and he had so many friends and relatives around all the time that sometimes, it was terrible, he knew, but sometimes he just wished they'd all leave him alone for just a morning or an afternoon so he could hear himself think.
"That's why I do so enjoy our quiet little half-hours together," he said to her once.
Every week she would write a letter to her daughter, eking out a series of non-events into a couple of pages. And every few months a reply would come, along with a few photos. Her grand-daughter in the paddling pool, or running around in the garden. And her daughter would always finish her letters with two pleas: when was mum coming out to Melbourne to see them? And, when would she get with it and get an email address? Then she could send her millions of pictures, and video, and lord knows what.
Mr. Smith was a great one for gadgets and web sites and what-have-you. Couldn't believe she didn't even have a mobile.
If she had a mobile she could phone him now and find out what was the matter. It was already almost quarter-past.
She couldn't quite remember how she had first met him. She vaguely recalled a time when there was nowhere to sit, in the days when Williamson's had been a lot more popular, and she'd ended up plonking herself down opposite this rather funny-looking little man, and somehow a conversation had begun, and now here they were. So, she could remember how she'd first met him. She could actually remember it very well. She wondered what was the matter with her, sometimes. Now that she was alone, a widow, she knew it was an effort to keep control of things, to stop everything sliding. It was a very fine line between normal life and the funny farm, and the men in the white coats, as they used to say at school, sixty years ago.
She remembered Mr. Smith looking up at her as she got up to go, and the very nice way he had said, "Well, maybe see you next week? Same time? Same place?"
Where was Mr. Smith? Her mind filled with horrible thoughts, thoughts of accidents and death, broken limbs, heart attacks, muggings. She told herself that if she thought of all the terrible things that could have happened to him, it would mean none of those things could actually happen in real life.
That evening, after work, she sat on the bus home and wondered what to do. If only her life were more like Mr. Smith's, with its network of friends and family, so she could have someone to talk to about it all. When Derek had still been around she'd left all arrangements and decisions to him, and now he was gone and she still had no idea about anything, really, she was just muddling through, and if she didn't go to work on Saturdays she'd probably never say a word to another living soul all week, and if she didn't have Mr. Smith to look forward to then what would she have, exactly?
At home she laid out a million tiny scraps of paper, blue, yellow, pink, white, on the kitchen table and eventually found his mobile phone number. She rang it and a recorded voice asked her to leave a message. She rang it again. The same.
Did she have his address? She knew he had told her, more than once, the area of Leeds where he lived. What was it called? Had he even mentioned the street? Why hadn't he written it down for her? Could you find out someone's address from just a mobile number?
The Library was not open on a Sunday so she spent that day worrying and doing nothing, which made a change from just doing nothing.
On Monday a very helpful young librarian showed her how to use a computer, a mouse, a keyboard, all that sort of thing. It gave her a headache after two minutes. After an hour, she went outside for some air. She sat by the war memorial and watched a group of school girls shrieking and giggling. Why weren't they in school? Why did they have to make so much noise? Mr. Smith would have given them short shrift.
Back inside the library she asked the same nice young man about finding someone's address.
"All you've got is his mobile?"
"And his name. Mr. Smith."
"Well," he said, "that should narrow it down."
"Sorry."
"No need to apologise. Trouble is, it's not much to go on. In fact, it's not anything. You'd need a private detective."
She left the library. She wasn't about to start hiring private detectives. Hiding behind bushes, waiting outside people's houses. It was real life, not the telly. How did you hire a private detective? How much did they cost?
Back home, she rang his mobile again, and this time someone answered: a young woman, Asian-sounding. At first, Mrs. Murdoch thought she'd rung a call centre or something, by mistake. But it was a hospital.
Mr. Smith looked smaller than ever. There was a tube under his nose that forked into two smaller tubes that actually went up into his nostrils. There was another tube going into his arm.
She brought him some grapes and a Daily Mail. "Illegal immigrants force house price crash". Mr. Smith lay there. Mrs. Murdoch ate a grape.
Outside, in the corridor, she spoke to the nurse who told her it was so nice he had a visitor, at last. They all hated it, she said, when someone didn't have… well. Anyway.
Mrs. Murdoch almost said, what about all his friends, what about all his family? But she stopped herself.
She went back into the ward and sat down next to him again. She held his bony soft hand in hers and said, "Well. See you tomorrow, I hope. Same time, same place?"
--
Mrs. Murdoch and Mr. Smith was read by Carrie Cohen at the Liars' League Lovers & Liars event on 12 February 2008.
Peter Higgins was born in Dewsbury, a northern town famous for its connections with the Yorkshire Ripper, suicide bombers, and tripe. He lives in London, a southern town famous for its connections with suicide bombers and tripe.
Comments