Touch And Go - Flash Fiction
It was touch and go whether I would attend the High School dinner. After all, Mavis had been ill and still needed me with her, or so she said. Anyhow, Miriam said I MUST come, and she would drive me there.
I put on my long turquoise dress, the one that Miriam is SO jealous of, and by 8:00 PM, was at the door waiting for her Ford Escort to come up the drive. Half past eight came, and she hadn't come, and it looked as if her mobile had been switched off. "Hell's Bells", I thought, and phoned for a taxi. I was only a LITTLE late, and sat down at the table, reserving the chair on my right in case Miriam should come. I did not recognize the faces around me. They had obviously attended Lance Green High School before my time... They all looked so OLD. I reckoned that most of them were over ninety and had been there at the time Lance Green himself had been Headmaster.
Before dinner we sang the first Lance Green Song, or rather I sang and the ninety-year-olds croaked...
"We give our ALL to Lance Green High, our ALL", and so on for forty lines it went...
I was getting hungry, and there was still no sign of Miriam.
Soup was served... It was a clear soup with bits of turtle floating in it. The ninety-year-old opposite me started to dribble, so I had to concentrate on my bowl, chasing the bits of turtle with my spoon.
No one spoke to me, but why should I care? I just wanted Miriam to arrive...
Before the next course, I excused myself to go out into the lobby of The Grange Hotel, where this Old People's Function was going on, to try and phone Miriam... I left a message for her to phone me.
Back I went into the dining room where our table was being served... Next course was fish and chips. Mmm! My favourite... The noise started to get deafening in there, not that I was adding to it. I just concentrated on removing the fish bones.
"When did you attend Lance Green?" asked a voice to my left. I was so vague! I just told the hundred-year-old man - "Oh in the sixties", but he was wiping his mouth and not concentrating... "Never mind, Lily, you are here for the food", I consoled myself.
The sweet was rhubarb pie and ice-cream and I demolished it so fast! It wasn't a bad evening really, if I ignored the people around me...
A Mr Junket, which sounded like another course, made a speech, thanking us all for being there and saying we were torch bearers for Lance Green High. I smiled at this, not understanding how we could be that. He then said that after the second school song we were to go into another room and be entertained by the sixth formers. If anyone needed assistance with walking, they were to tell him... I grimaced at this reference as to how old most of them were in there.... A poem fragment came into my head -
"Oh sea of white - the white hair on your head...
Oh years it was since you were on my bed."
How did it go on? Miriam had written it after last year's High School dinner, and she wasn't even HERE for this one.
The second school song started -
"Oh wave your banner, Lance Green High.
We'll remember you until we die."
An assortment of sticks later, we were in the adjoining room being "entertained" by eighteen-year-olds. It was a skit about mobile phones, which struck me as bad taste and the others too, except perhaps they didn't hear the jokes. The evening was over...
I arrived home, went to bed and lay there wondering what had happened to Miriam.
The next morning was chaotic! Mavis had a relapse, was taken to the hospital, and they told me it was touch and go. I heard the same phrase ten hours later about Miriam! She had been involved in a car crash on her way to collect me from my house, was at that moment in Intensive Care, and it was "touch and go".
Copyright Julia Ward, 11/24/2016
Comments