Melvin Burgess Stuff

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Happy Ever After

Juliet awakens in her bed alone, as she has done every day for the past five years.

A day off to do just as she likes. She sighs and forces herself to get up.

She feels upset – but about what? Nothing has changed A dream? A memory? She has no idea.

She feels bereft.

She pauses on her way to the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror.

Pretty good for thirty eight.

Too bad there's no one to enjoy it.

She showers, dresses and gets on with the day.

A week off, in her lovely home, in her lovely garden, all by her lovely self.

Juliet goes into the garden to drink her juice, and as she stands soaking up the sun she hears a cry.

Curious – what is that? A bird, a puppy? It sounds oddly like someone her calling name.

But, no. Not human. A mistake.

She turns away - but that call again! Curious, Juliet walks up the garden to investigate.

She hears something crash through the undergrowth as she gets to the untended area at the end - a large bird, perhaps.

The other birds have fallen silent around her.

She pauses, caught in the morning spring sunshine. For reasons she cannot explain she is filled with both apprehension and excitement.

Just as she is about to leave, she hears another sound.

A sneeze, is it? From over there …

Something small. Like a child. Or a cat?

For some reason she thinks of bear cubs.

Anxiously, she moves towards it.

A scuffle. A muffled cry. Another sneeze.

Something is hidden inside the composter.

Plucking up her courage, Juliet walks forward and gingerly removes the lid.

A cloud of fruit flies and a breath of warm air is accompanied by a delighted squeak.

Inside, looking up at her, is the strangest creature she ever saw.

It has a thatch of brown, scruffy hair, faming a pair of baby blue eyes.

There’s a turned up nose at the end of a rounded muzzle, set in what is still a humanly flat face.

It’s ears tick out a little. It has hind legs rather like a rabbit, and pair of paws in front that end in a pair of square, mobile hands.

Looking up at her it smiles, revealed a set of even white teeth, so human they makes her jump in fright.

She steps back.

Anxiously, the little creature sticks it head out of the composter to see where she’s gone.

It seems harmless. Juliet steps back to have another look.

The creature hunkers back down into the compost. It sneezes again – one, two three. The fruit flies are getting up its nose.

Sweet! How could you resist? Juliet has fallen in love with it already.

Laughing, she steps closer and holds out a finger. The creature coos, and, reaching out, takes hold of it, as a baby might.

Reassured (but is it it a trick?) she decides to take it in the house.

Leaning over, she grabs hold of it. The creature gurgles happily and holds out its arms.

She wrinkles her nose. It stinks

She heaves it up out of the composter. Face to face, she sees something she never noticed before.

It has stubble on its chin.

Shocked – she was thinking of it like a child - Juliet looks down.

As she thought.

Down there, it is all man.

With a squeak – even she does not know what the squeak significes – Juliet looks right and left, and makes a run for the house,

Anxious that her neighbours will not see her with something so cute, so bizarre, and so indecent.

Hurriedly, she puts it in a cardboard box with a a bowl of water and a banana.

What is it? What does it want?

As she closes the lid, it looks up at her reproachfully.

Somehow, she feels as if it knows her from before..

Later, friend and neighbour Naomi calls round for lunch.

She, too, is feeling the strain of life on her own.

“Ten years in the Gobi desert,” she sighs. “Where are all the single men?”

“At home, living with their mums,” suggests Juliet. They smile.

They are halfway through the meal before Juliet decides to tell her about her find.

The little thing is delighted to be let out and cavorts around the kitchen floor like a puppy.

“What are you going to do with it?” Naomi wants to know.

“A zoo?” suggests Juliet. Her life is too busy for a pet.

“I could take it off your hands,” suggests Naomi thoughtfully, watching it play around the legs of her chair.

But … “I’ll keep for now, anyway,” decides Juliet.

The company. A pet, after all, is better than nothing.

“I shall call it Ivan,” she declares. A name. And now it hers alone.

That night, she makes him up a bed in the kitchen.

He begins to cry as soon as she locks the door.

Hour after hour after hour.

Juliet lies awake until dawn, when she falls into a light sleep, heavy with dreams.

She is woken at three by the sound of weeping.

Surely not …

Yes. The kitchen.

When she opens the door it throws itself at her and wails, it’s arms tight around her.

Juliet make sit up a bed by the side of hers, but it keeps climbing in with her.

The attention it gives is not desirable.

Again, she locks it in the kitchen.

Again she locks it in the kitchen and the whole things begins all over again. Eventually, it cries itself to sleep at 9am.

Juliet cannot even go in and make herself a cup of tea for fear of waking him up.

She decides it would be better to give it to Naomi after all.

She plans to hand him over first thing, but lingers until late afternoon.

When he is gone, to her utter surprise, she is bereft.

How sad – to feel so much for a pet. On impulse, Juliet signs on to a new dating site. Hope, after all, springs eturnal

One thing though – a decent night’s sleep.

So she thinks.

At three in the morning, someone is battering at her door.

It is Naomi, standing in her gown with a cardboard box.

“He’s learned a new trick,” she says, in a tight voice.

She shakes the box. Ivan pushes up his head. His blue eyes are red with tears.

“Ju – li –et?” he croaks.

Silently, she accepts the box. Ivan buries his face in her bosom with a gulp.

“Give the bloody thing what he wants,” shouts Naomi as she stamps up the path.

Behind her back, Ivan sticks his tongue at her and blows a raspberry. Naomi stiffens, but won’t look back.

Juliet stifles a jubilant moment, and closes the door.

Once again she makes him up a bed by the side of hers.

Once again, he climbs over and over again into her bed.

Once again, he is exiled to the kitchen. It takes three days of wails and tears for him to accept that Juliet's bed is out of bounds.

Meanwhile, Juliet is having her first good luck with internet dating for years.

She first dates Julian at a bar in town.

They get on so well. More dates follow - meals, the cinema. They have the same tastes. They make one another laugh. It’s great

The dates become more frequent. There are little presents. Earrings, a bracelet, cds.

There is a kiss in the car as he drops her off outside her house – like kids borrowing a parent’s car.

As she becomes increasingly fond of her new beau, do Juliet becomes increasingly irritable with Ivan.

His once endearing capers get on her nerves. As if sensing this, he tries harder and harder to amuse her.

He learns new words – his name, Ivan; play; milk; sausages. Love you.

Juliet is unamused. Ivan again tries to invade her bed. She exiles him to the shed where she cannot hear his cries.

Julian invites her to a hotel room. She accepts. It is a night like no other she has ever had.

When she gets back home the next morning, Ivan has thrown up all over the living room carpet and peed in her bed,

Furious, Juliet looses her temper and kicks him into the shed for the day despite his wails. Alone, the better to dream of Julian.

Julian is wonderful – but there is one small problem

It’s three weeks since they met, and he has still not asked her to his home. Nor will he come to hers.

He will not explain why. He suggests another hotel room. Juliet declines.

She suspects he may be married.
Despite her misgivings, Juliet agrees to meet him again. They meet in a bar where she confronts him with her suspicions.

He is distressed, but unable or unwilling to tell her what’s going on.

A row.

Tearfully, Juliet gives him back the beautiful jade earrings he gave her and walks away. What good are jewels when he withholds his heart?

He does not follow her.

She drives home in a mess, her hopes of a shared future once again dashed.

Ivan greets her joyfully, licking her feet. But she is sick of his useless attentions and kicks him cruelly out of her way.

He suffers the blow without a murmur and creeps off to his bed in the kitchen

Later that night he starts to cy outside her bedroom. When she opens the door angrily he shows her something in his hand.

Jade earrings.

Juliet snatches them off him. There is not doubt. They are the same ones. What can it mean? Julian must have posted them through the door …

“No.” She looks up. Who has spoken? But only Ivan is in the house with her.

“Julian," he says. He shakes the earrings at her. She seizes him and shakes him to get out more words. But not another one will he utter.

Two nights later, Juliet makes another date with Julian.

She dresses up; sexy underwear, her costliest perfume, a naughty dress. Ivan watches silently from the floor as she prepares herself.

She leaves, drives round the corner, parks up, and makes her way back to the house quietly on foot.

Avoiding the front entrance, she goes along the pathway leading behind the house, and hides behind an overgrown privet in next door’s garden.

Almost at once, Ivan appears at the bathroom window.

He opens it, swings out, grabs hold of the soil pipe, and climbs down, feet first, like a man.

At the bottom he stands on tip toe, peers about and then, dropping to all fours, gallops up the garden and into the back ally.

As quietly as she can, Juliet follows. The ally is overgrown, the way is difficult, but Ivan has eyes and ears for nothing but his secret mission.

He comes to an ancient elder tree growing up by the fence..

He stops in front of it. He peers behind and before him, then speaks. “Do you love me?” he asks.

A soft voice from among the branches answers. “I do. Oh, I do,” sighs the tree. Then it shudders, it groans - and it splits open.

Standing in the heartwood is the shape of a man. Juliet, hidden in the briars, resists the temptation to call out his name.

Julian!

Ivan steps out of his own shape. She can see his spirit glow paly like the light in a translucent gemstone.

He puts on the shape of the man.

The tree, shudders, groans and closes up around the shape of Ivan.
Julian hurries away, up the allyway to the road to meet his date.

Juliet reckons she has less than one hour to do her work.

She runs back home, tripping and staggering over the overgrownpath.

She collects an electric saw, an axe and a can of paraffin. The she makes her way back to the tree..

Juliet stands before the elder and watches it tremble. She tries to explain.

“I love him too,” she begs. The tree stares back at her in silence.

Merciless, Juliet puts on the headphones. Merciless, she starts the saw. She hears nothing as the steel rips into the wood

As she works, she shouts out prayers and hymns, fearful of that soft voice, and fearful too, of what she might be releasing.

She fells the tree, she does not stop. She chops its limbs in pieces. She hears nothing.

She casts the limbs in a heap.

She covers them with paraffin and sets fire to the pyre.

Only now, only now does the tree release a hollow groan of agony and despair.

Juliet runs back home and puts away her tools. she sits down in the living room, and waits.

Half an hour passes. An hour. Two hours. Nothing.

Suddenly feet are running up the path. Ragged breath. A gasp. Then, a tremendous cascade of knocks on her front door.

Trembling Juliet goes to open it. There befofr eher, covered in ash and soot, his cloth4s torn, his eyes red, stands Julian.

He staggers into her arms.

“My darling,” he cries. “Now, I can love you forever!”