Louder Than Words

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Louder Than Words

Alice is a lady. That doesn’t mean you’ll find her listed in the ‘Queen’s Birthday Honours’ list. You’ve heard of ‘nature’s gentlemen’? Well she’s the female equivalent. She absorbed her manners with her mother’s milk. She sits in the sunporch overlooking the garden. It’s the warmest room in the house. She has her radio and library book and if she manoevres her wheel-chair close to the window she can see along the street. It’s her sanctuary, though once in there she can’t get out. The grandchildren know better than to enter uninvited. She isn’t anti-social, but in this busy household a body needs somwhere to call her own.

From her window she spots Mrs Enid Taylor-Brown approaching.

“Judith,” she calls, “Do something quick. That blessed woman’s here again.”

Judith hurries down the hall, “Hush Mum, she’ll hear you. Just try and be pleasant. the poor woman thinks she’s doing the Lord’s work.”

“And, I’m to be today’s sacrificial lamb, eh?”

Judith smiled, “Manners, Mother, remember?”

The bell rings, and is followed by a rat-a-tat-tat worthy of a man in blue.

Judith turns the knob and is nearly bowled over as Mrs Taylor-Brown sweeps through the door like a sloop in full sail.

“And how’s your dear mother today?” she booms as she peers into the sunporch. “Just came to cheer her up, we can’t have her feeling neglected now, can we? I don’t suppose you’ve much time to spare for her with your large family, Judith. I’ve often wondered why you had so many children - came from marrying an Irishman, I suppose. This must be the last straw having her living with you, especially as she refuses to count her blessings. Never mind, chin up, girl, I’m here to help and I’ll soon have her smiling.”

“Hadn’t noticed she was down,” mutters Judith as she turns towards the kitchen, “except after one of your visits.”

“Hello, hello, hello,” this is Mrs Taylor-Brown’s standard greeting.

Does she think there are three of us? wonders Alice.

“No negativity now, we want to see a smile,” orders her visitor.

There she goes again, or is that a royal plural?

As Judith finishes preparing the tea tray she hears a door slam. Must be next door, she thinks, but when she takes the tray into the sun porch their visitor has gone.

“Pooh, it’s a bit stuffy in here,” she grumbles as she reaches to open a window.

“Mrs Taylor-Brown gone already? That’s one for the book. What’s got into her? You didn’t say anything to her, did you Mum?”

“Oh, Judith, you know me, would I be so rude?”

“I do know you,” she grins, “that’s why I asked.”

“Never a word, I promise you dear.”

Judith raises an eyebrow.

Alice sips her tea with an innocent air and then looks at her daughter, smiles, and says,

"Why would I bother with words my dear, when two silent farts is all it take