Beyond the Begonias

I have been very fortunate to find a writers' group to join in my new location. They have been very welcoming and I already feel very at home with them all.  It's such a pleasure to share writings with others who write, and to hear everyone's contributions at our monthly meetings.  It is often only when you read a piece out loud that you find the stumbling blocks - literally tripping over words and so finding out that they are probably not in the best order after all.  There is always something to learn, things that can be done better.

As a result of joining the writers' group, I've recently had the great pleasure of being invited to record some of my short stories for the wonderful local radio station - Two Lochs Radio.  A couple of these have been broadcast in the half hour programme, Westwords, which is broadcast on the first Wednesday of the month (at 9pm), and then repeated on the first Sunday (at 8pm).  There are short stories, poems and longer pieces, all by local writers, delightfully interspersed by little snippets of appropriate music.   One of my longer short stories is to be included in the next programme, on Wednesday 4th March (and then again on Sunday 8th March).  If you are not in the local area, you can listen online, via the Two Lochs Radio website.    

In the meantime, I thought I would share one of the stories which was broadcast for the first time at the start of this month, "Beyond the Begonias".  It is also available in print in my first self-published volume of short stories, "A Short Collection of Small Stories".  For anyone who is interested, it is one of my "alphabet" stories, where each sentence starts with the consecutive letter of the alphabet (and the story thus consists of 26 sentences). A little leeway is allowed when it comes to the letter "X"!

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Beyond the Begonias - short story

After the rain stopped, she started planting again.  Blood red begonias in big terracotta pots.  Celia’s favourite flowers; she scooped handfuls of compost from the bag beside her, pressed the plants in firmly, watered them carefully.  Digging her hands into the warm brown peatiness, she felt something akin to relief.  Even breathing had been hard, recently.  Forever looking over her shoulder, watching her back, thinking carefully before she spoke. 

Gordon had become impossible. Hard to believe that the inert form sitting benignly beyond the French doors had once been a loving husband.  Inch by inch, he had tortured them both into a living hell.  Just when she had got to the point when she knew she must leave, a different plan emerged in her head. Kneeling on her cushioned weeding mat, a voice within had spoken quite clearly.  Laughable though the thought was, Celia turned it over in her mind for several days.  Moving through time in a stupor of misery, she nurtured the idea from tiny seed to little seedling.  Now it was firmly planted; had taken roots, put out grasping tendrils.  Only the timing had to be completely right.  Piggishness on Gordon’s behalf had become the norm; she simply could not tolerate it one minute longer.  Quelling her doubts, which were numerous, irrational and invalid, she acted quickly. 

Right after supper one evening, she summoned him to the rooftop terrace to examine a fictitious missing slate.  Shoving him over the tiny balcony had been easier than she had imagined.  The body landed close to the new flowerbed, dug that morning by the young gardener she had recently employed.  Under the dim sulphur glow of the streetlamps that night, she dragged the corpse into the hole.  Violent waves of nausea overcame her and she gave her stomach contents as a parting gift.  Where he had gone, no-one would ever know.  Exiled to another country, run off with that brassy woman from down the road?  Yes, maybe. 

Zinnia, that was the name she had been trying to recall; that would be perfect for the new bed, Celia thought with a smile.

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