Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrows

Vina took the news like she did everything else.  Quietly and with acceptance.  Because in the end, what else could she do?  She’d known it anyway.  That’s why she’d gone to the doctor’s in the first place.

Granted, for a few minutes when she’d woken the morning after she’d been told, she’d considered doing something different, something momentous; but the thought hadn’t lasted long.  Besides, today was Wednesday and Wednesday was pie day.

It had been for as long as she could remember.  When Geoff was with her and when he’d gone. Through the raising of her children and their recent, at a distance, neglect of her.  Since she’d been on her own, she could make the pie on a Wednesday and it would last her through until at least Sunday. And now, even in the face of her imminent demise, she wasn’t going to stop making it.  That would seem like defeat.

Vina loved her walks down the high street - the implacable, chaotic road she’d lived off for most of her life.  It was a survivor.  Shops would come and go, communities would diversify, but the high street lived on.  Ragtag and down at heel, yes, but still ruddy with hybrid vigour.

As usual, Vina picked up her tartan shopping bag from the hook by the downstairs’ loo and shut the front door behind her.  She felt more tired than she sometimes did, but she supposed that was to be expected.

On the corner of her road, she looked up at the gym that had taken over the old bread factory, with the line of joggers, walkers and wobblers on the treadmills, framed by its huge window. She wondered momentarily if a life of exercise would have made any difference to her, but she didn’t think so.  As she walked on, the garish orange of the gym’s sign – ‘Get fit for free from only £29 a month’ – caught her eye.

At this time in the morning, the high street was experiencing a lull. The school kids had gone learning and the army of the old (of which Vina counted herself one) were only just rising to face the drizzle.  The grey of the day suited the high street, showing its true, frank nature.  The inevitable line of traffic cut through its centre, like the gleam of a blade.

Vina walked slowly and heavily on the up part of the up and down circuit she’d done for ever.  Past the unappetising puns of the many chicken shops.  Mr.  Chicken.  Chicken.com.  Monsieur Coq.  By the entrance to Dr. Chicken (Dr. Chicken?), she noticed the come inside enticer – ‘Enjoy a boneless banquet for one’ - and she thought she’d never heard anything so lonely.

By the bank, half way down the street, she tripped.  She wasn’t sure why, as she was careful these days how she walked and always watched her feet.  Looking down at the one part of her that hadn’t got fat and at cracks in the pavement, at chewing gum and occasional coins.  As she steadied herself, she smiled at a mother on her mobile and noticed what she had a number of times before.  That toddlers and cognisant babies in strollers and prams don’t look at the floor, but up at the sky.

When she went in to Mr. Ali’s he greeted her as he always did.

"Good morning, Mrs. Arden.  It’s nice weather for ducks.”  Always the same, come rain or shine, and her answer bringing the certainty and comfort of years.

"Ah, but Mr. Ali.  Can’t you see the sunshine poking through?  It’ll be brighter later.”

Mrs. Ali came out from somewhere in the back then and helped her put the fruit and veg. she wanted in her basket and then her bag; her singsong voice gently teasing.

“I’m sure I’m younger than you, my dear, but I’ll make sure you’ve got what you need, just like your mummy would.”

On impulse, Vina added something to her basket she hadn’t for a long time.  A lighter and a packet of cigarettes, because, well, how could it hurt now?  She stood outside Mr. Ali’s with her eyes closed against the unfamiliar smoke, breathing in, like her life depended on it.  The deep, complex taste gave fire to her insides.

Vina knew she was slower today and when she bumped into the Jamesons’ from number fifteen, she felt her own frailty.  Simon Jameson offered to carry her shopping, but she declined his help.  Veronica Jameson actually got a tissue out of her rucksack and asked Vina if she wanted her to tidy up her lipstick for her, but Vina declined that too.  She’d not seen them for a while and she listened politely while they relayed the numerous highlights of their Spanish holiday.

"Over there, it was walking by the lighthouse.  Back here, it’s walking by Carphone Warehouse!”  Oh, how Vina chuckled as she extricated herself, walking on past unlock your phone shops and cash convertors with nothing in the windows left to sell.

Outside the suite of charity shops, which if you were being uncharitable you would say made up most of the high street these days, she tripped again.  A little falter in her step, a little frisson of mortality nipping at her balance.

“Are you alright, Vina?  You nearly had a fall then.  You need to watch yourself.”

Looking up, she saw Marg from Tuesday night bingo and as she watched her go into the Cats’ Protection League (always bloody cats and not Save the Children!), Vina couldn’t help but notice the skip of triumphant Schadenfreude in Marg’s step.

The high street seemed very long today and Vina wondered if there was actually anything on it she wanted to buy.  But she needed to remain focused on her whole raison d'etre – meat from the Butcher’s for pie day.

So, onwards, past Fags and Mags (the timeless allure of shops that don’t advertise their wares!) and Grey Haze, the e-cigarette lounge with its classiest of signs – ‘Lifes so much better without ashtrays and fag butts’.   The old pedant in Vina thought life was also better with the correct use of apostrophes, but she didn’t feel strong enough to quibble. Instead, she tried to imagine Grey Haze as a version of Tolkien’s Grey Havens - where the end of life in one place, led to a slow moving on to somewhere else - but she couldn’t really do it.

When she tripped and fell for the third time, she knew that was it.  This time, she was flat on her back and she seemed to have no ability (or in fact, desire) to move.  She lay there, arms outstretched, aware of the incongruity of upside-down looking at the plastic, half torsos of men displaying jeans outside a clothes’ shop.  The voices of people around her were fading in and out. 

People were saying not to move her while the ambulance came, but she felt someone undo the scarf round her neck and unzip her anorak.  She began to shiver, but in the fade, she recognised the shrill voice of the woman from the nail bar.

 “I know her”, she said.  “I did her granddaughter’s nails last month.” 

Vina sensed the cold envelop her and her shivering became stronger.  The woman from the nail bar seemed to be holding her hands and she could feel the sharpness of her nails scratching her palms, even breaking the skin in leaking, little rivulets.

Is this where it ends, Vina thought and she wondered if it was preferable; this unlooked for death. Without her pie made.  Without anything made really.

And in the sudden, vivid blue of the autumn sky, she whispered, fuck; enjoying the feel of the dirty word in her mouth.  It tasted as sweet and forbidden as the cigarette had.  And in her dying, Vina smiled.  Not the Holy Land, she thought.  No, not the Holy Land, but fucking Poundland.

***

Footnote: Don’t worry about Vina –she won’t get better, but she won’t get worse either.   She’s only a construct, there to illustrate the journey down the Way of Sorrows.  That’s what these writers with their god-complexes do to their characters.

And the shops?   Available on a High Street near you.