An Urgent Matter
Maggie O’Connell, florist by day, hard-headed business woman by night, squints at the rows of her spreadsheet, while Joseph O’Connell dips the rounded metal bowl of a spoon into his oxtail soup, and lifts the steaming brown liquid to his lips. He slurps, and Maggie flinches, a sharp pain stabbing between her shoulder blades. Can the man not eat a bowl of soup quietly? She frowns at him. He is tearing a piece of bread from the thick doorstep wedge on his side plate. ‘Have we butter?’ he asks. Maggie nods to the fridge, which hums in the corner of their tiny kitchen. She winces as Joseph scrapes back his chair, and as he plods towards the fridge, humming a tuneless melody, she becomes aware of a quivering throb somewhere behind her right eye. The sudden clang of the shop doorbell downstairs makes her jump, and Joseph chuckles as he plonks the butter dish on her carefully arranged till receipts.
‘You’re on edge,’ he smiles.
‘Fuck off,’ she says.
‘Oh?’
‘Whoever’s downstairs, I mean. Can they not see the closed sign?’
‘They’ll be away in a minute,’ says Joseph, as he smears butter over the slab of bread held flat on his broad palm.
The bell rings again, and Maggie, shaking her head, rises, shuffles her stockinged feet into slippers, and descends the narrow staircase to the shop.
Beyond the glass door, the blurred silhouette of a man hops foot to foot. Maggie breathes deep, allowing calm to wash through her, green-scented and floral. She unbolts, unlocks, unlatches, and pulls the door open.
‘We’re closed,’ she says.
‘Please,’ the man says. He’s smartly dressed in a dark suit, but he’s unshaven and crumpled. ‘My wife. She. I need to say…’
‘Anniversary, is it? Did you forget?’
‘No. I messed up. I need to say sorry. Please.’
He pulls a wallet from the pocket of his jacket and flips it open to reveal crisp £20 notes.
‘I can pay extra. Double. Please.’
Maggie scrutinises the man’s face. Chestnut-eyed as a spaniel. A head of dark hair swept back from a furrowed brow by desperate fingers. She glances at the wallet; sales have been slow this last week or so. She opens the door a little wider.
‘Thank you,’ the man says. He scrapes his shoes on the bristly mat, and gazes around the shop as though he has stepped from a plane into a new continent. Maggie gestures to some ready-made bouquets resting in a row of silver buckets.
‘One of these,’ she suggests. ‘Freshly arranged this morning.’
He stares at them. Tight-budded roses peer from between blousy pink peonies, and royal purple irises, rising above clotted hydrangea heads, flash their yellow throats like drinking birds. The man bites his bottom lip, eyes darting around the chaos of blooms and foliage, until he sees a vase of hibiscus; frail, papery petals unfurl from deep blood-red centres, the stamens explode like tiny sparklers.
‘They symbolise femininity. Beauty. Grace,’ says Maggie.
The man turns to her.
‘I made a friend,’ he says. ‘At work, a woman. Just a friend; there was no…I mean, just a friend, there was no…’
‘Affair?’ asks Maggie.
‘Yes. That’s it. I mean, no, but,’ he turns to gaze at the hibiscus. ‘We used to talk. Go for drinks together. That’s all, but she was hurt. My wife. She was hurt by it.’ His shoulders slump. ‘I told her not to be stupid.’
Maggie walks past him and selects three stems from the vase.
‘These would go well with roses,’ she tells him, but his stare is opaque as the fogged window-glass. The streetlight falls through like a spill of juice on the tiled floor, gilding the delicate edges of pale lilies.
‘After that, she asked if we could try for a child. God, how she smiled when she became pregnant.’
He lifts his face to Maggie’s.
‘We lost him. A boy. Born too soon.’
Maggie holds his gaze, her blue eyes prickling as his own empty of light.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispers.
‘She wanted to try again. I said no. Then she got sick.’
‘But now?’
‘Roses. To say I’m sorry. Yes,’ he says.
Maggie chooses scarce-opened buds, and busies herself at the counter, cutting stems to size with her wooden-handled knife, picking out dark green fronds of foliage, a spray of gypsophila to balance and soften. From the apartment above, she hears the soft shuffle of Joseph’s feet, the muffled blare of the television. He has never sought friendship, or anything else, with another woman. He cared for her through a difficult pregnancy, is an excellent father to their grown-up son. Quiet, calm Joseph O’Connell, who slurps his soup. She hands the flowers to the man, and nods her thanks as he hands her the notes from his wallet.
‘Good luck,’ she says, as he steps outside into a light rain. She bolts the door behind him, switches off the lights, and ascends the staircase. Joseph is snoring gently in his armchair as a soap opera flickers on the TV. She kisses him on the head, waking him, and flourishes the bouquet of £20 notes she has just received.
‘What? Did he buy the whole shop?’ asks Joseph.
Maggie shakes her head and perches on the arm of the chair. ‘He seemed a little lost,’ she says. ‘Wanted to apologise to his wife for this and that.’ She touches her husband’s rough cheek. ‘I love you, you know that, don’t you?’
Joseph blinks at his wife. ‘O’course,’ he says. ‘I love you too.’
Outside, rain clinging to his skin and jewelling the bouquet he carries like a new-born in his arms, the man crosses the street at the zebra crossing, and cuts through the city park to the church. It’s dark here, but he knows the way to the graveside as well as he knows the route to his own house.
He lays the flowers at the foot of the headstone, bows his head, and weeps.
Author: Mairead Robinson Writes and teaches in the South West, UK. She drinks too much coffee, but the caffeine fuels her story writing habit. SL Bridport, Placed Bath FFA, The Molotov Cocktail, Voidspace, Crow and Cross Keys, and others. She tweets @judasspoon and skeets @maireadwrites.bsky.social