“Buy one!”
Turning, it took us a second to find the unfamiliar voice.
“Go on, it’s a lovely area.”
Exchanging a little knowing look, my boyfriend and I laughed as we replied, “We wish! Maybe, perhaps one day.”
The elderly lady looked eagerly up at us, the three of us standing together admiring the estate agent’s window.
She wasn’t to know that curiosity had merely gotten the better of us.
Nor was she to know that we’d be lucky to afford a new car between us, let alone a four-bed detached home in the serene Shaftesbury countryside.
And yet, her encouragement was welcome. It dented our cynicism. At the very least, it made me believe ever so slightly in our wistful “one day”.
Much more importantly, it was the start of a conversation I hope to always remember and one I wish could continue.
“I was born here you see. I lived with my parents here, then I went off to school here. I was a boarder and I absolutely loved it. We used to have such fun.”
“Do you live here?”
Replying, Chris told her about how he came to live in London, whilst I explained that I was the local one living in Salisbury.
We continued to talk about the minutiae of life: how sad it was that the high street no longer resembled the one she knew with its family-run businesses; how busy London is, which prompted questions regarding why Chris wanted to live there; how, if you knew where to look, there were still a few places you could get a good lunch for a decent price.
“Anyway, what do you both do then?”
After successfully decoding our classically nebulous job titles, she began to tell us more about her intriguing life.
“I wanted to leave home after school to become a nurse, but mother said ‘no’. And in those days you did what mother said!”
We chuckled, asking what she ended up doing instead.
“I got a job just down the road there with the local radio. It wasn’t radio as you probably know it now, but it was fun and I got promoted and so on.”
Just as we thought her tale was coming to a cosy close, perhaps as she’d once feared, she embraced the unexpected.
“Well, eventually I rebelled and went off to live in Oxford.”
We didn’t get to hear any more.
She began to move off up the street, but not before she’d told us that having never visited Oxford, we should most definitely take a trip to her beloved city.
“Yeah, we should definitely do that.”
“Not too far from London.”
“Not too far from London,” we echoed purposefully.
We think she might have gone on to become a nurse, just as she’d wanted to all those years ago.
When she’d told us about her daughter, she’d said that she was a nurse ‘too’.
With kindness, care and the ability to ask thoughtful questions seemingly a family trait, her daughter had initially wondered about her Mum’s return to Shaftesbury.
“Why are you moving all the way out there Mum?” the elderly lady told us she’d asked.
“I want to go home,” was all she’d replied.
Nothing more was said on the matter.
I can’t help but feel grateful for the fact that no one stopped her from once again becoming ensconced in Shaftesbury and the fond memories the town held for her.
If they had, we might never have encountered her.
And whilst we didn’t get as far as exchanging names, I hope she somehow knows that she touched our lives in a small, significant way on that freezing January day.
Modernish 