'She wanted to borrow someone else to locate herself’: a character confession

Dorothy had a headache. Today there had been too many visitors; her doorway had bulged with them, or so it seemed. After a long gap she wasn’t used to such frequency. Greta had come round; Greta had been dying to come round.

Dorothy secretly felt sorry for Greta. Murmurings, half heard things, her private opinions, all kept discreetly to herself. But she was beginning to wonder, perhaps sometimes she spoke them out loud - oh how beastly I’ve become! Dorothy Fortescue, you need a change of heart.

Why should she? Greta would come and divulge things – secrets, petty rumours, a few half-baked ideas – why should she pretend she was interested? Greta had a husband, she had a church, she had a parish, she had been to college, hadn’t she? Wasn’t that enough? Why couldn’t she finish herself off, resolve into a real person? Greta’s ideas were never properly finished, and, in truth, Dorothy didn’t want to be reminded of herself. No, she wanted a way out of herself. An escape route, an exit.

She wanted to borrow someone to locate herself and Greta was flimsy enough, that’s the cruel fact. Greta hadn’t enough of herself to go around. It is easy to borrow someone else when their character is running thin on the ground. Poor Greta, she needed to replant herself — but why am I thinking of Greta again when I should be thinking of myself – Dorothy Fortescue -- located somewhere between the well-spaced posts of middle age and counting the paces between them. They are shortening, my horizon is folding. I know this and Greta knows this, but no one cares because it does not matter. It is not an important what happens to a middle-aged lady in a small seaside town. No one will write home about Dorothy Fortescue. No one will cast her as a character because nothing happens to Dorothy, nothing except my pond. My pond is all that matters because I have made it matter, I, Dorothy Elizabeth Fortescue. Even my name is unsurprising. Nothing is straggling below the line. My details are all in check. In a few years from now my hair will be silvery-grey because I will make it so. It is my destiny to be an elegant lady living in retirement. It is what Mother would have wanted, it is what Mother had, it is what millions of Mothers have had over the years. A quiet life after a certain modicum of sorrow.

(POND LIFE: NOVEL FORMS OF LIVING, a work in progress)