The Call

4 DECEMBER 2012 – 500 WORDS.

CHARACTERS:

Audrey – Wife.

Doris – Narrator.

Alan – Husband.

Ted Garner – Dead husband.

Gwen – Ted's daughter.

Sue and Sandra – Daughters.

Norman – Audrey's lover. 

The Call

That was Audrey.

‘Doris, Alan hasn’t come home. He said he was meeting you. Have you seen him?’

‘No’ I lied. Has she only just noticed? She’s probably been too busy with Norman.

We met at work when we were teenagers. Audrey was in Wages and I was new out of secretarial college working for Mr Garner, the Deputy Works Manager. He was a widower with a grown-up daughter called Gwen. I started at eight and finished at five, but Ted, as he became later, expected everything on his desk by four o’clock ready for signing. He was OK. He used to pat my bottom as I moved away from his desk and I got to like it.

Only Thursday was different. That was when Audrey and I took the wages round the frame shop — which is how we met Alan. He was a right tosser then, but drop dead gorgeous. He came onto both of us, but I backed off when I saw how Audrey was with him.

They married a year later, May 1962. I was a bridesmaid and in the photographs I look like a right tart. I have never worn pink or lace or a push-up bra since. They made a good team. Audrey was great at accounts and organising and Alan was a whiz with racing bikes. They left Raleigh in 1965 to start their own business.

Me? I married the boss. As time went on, Ted got more adventurous. He was good fun and after the works outing in 1963, I was hooked. I was devastated when he died after five years, leaving me with Sue and Sandra, but I got a good widow’s pension and a lump sum. The house was paid for and I was able to give half its value to Gwen. She died last year. Never married.

I invested in Alan and Audrey’s business and joined them. We sold out in 1999 to a Dutch company and I became a lady of leisure. The girls had gone by then, both married and living away, Sue in Sydney and Sandra in Aberdeen, so I’ve got in the habit of doing my chores in the morning, having lunch out and my afternoons relaxing or entertaining, before settling down in the evening to watch TV.

Audrey?  Alan was away a lot because we supplied hi-tech frames to racing teams and, in the absence of kids or hobbies, the only thing left to occupy her spare time was men and, somehow, Norman became her one and only.

Later, Alan and I got it together whilst talking about the old days, and I told him about what Ted did when he got more adventurous. I like to be wanted. So does Alan. Now, we spend most afternoons together.

A voice brought me back to the real world.  ‘Who was that?’

‘Audrey’.

‘Ah’.

‘You don’t want to go home, do you?’

‘No’.

I pressed ‘4’ on my ‘phone and waited.

‘Audrey…’

©ROBERT HOWARD