SHORT STORY

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BROKEN CHINA

When Kay's engagement was broken off, nobody quite knew what to say. They were afraid to say that she was better off without Larry even though a lot of them might have thought so. They didn't want to say it was just a lovers' tiff because it was obviously much more than that. It would have been heartless to shrug and say that like a bus there was a new man around every corner. So, with the best of motives, Kay's friends decided not to mention it at all.

Kay felt unbearably lonely. She and Larry had been so happy, so sure of each other. They had saved the deposit for their house together. Their wedding was planned for summer, they had booked a honeymoon in Italy. And then he met another.

The Other was a tall noisy girl called Zappie, who seemed to be a combination of everything that Larry hated. Or said he hated. When Larry started to tell her about Zappie, Kay thought it was a joke. He couldn't mean these things he was saying. He was talking to her in that responsible tone he always used when speaking of money. He would work out exactly what her contribution had been to their Building Society and return it to her, together with the correct interest that had accrued.

She listened horrified. He was talking about their life, he was unpicking their plans neatly and meticulously as he would have done a file at work. Three times, and three times only in the middle of all this, did he tell her he was sorry and that he wished things had been different. It was just that when Zappie came into his life, there was no room for anyone else.

Kay didn't sleep these nights. She got up and paced her flat. She felt that someone must be mad. Was it Zappie with her crazy clothes and her shouty voice? Was it Larry with his nit-picking division of goods and insistence that they were very lucky Zappie had come into his life before he and Kay had married rather than after. Or was it Kay herself who was going mad? Had she been insane to think that Larry loved her?

The date came when it should have been her wedding, and her honeymoon in Italy. In order to avoid the silent sympathy Kay said she would take holidays anyway. They seemed relieved, but didn't even dare to ask her where she was going, which was just as well.

Her last job was to deliver a birthday cake to an elderly woman who lived in a cottage about ten miles away from town.

It was like the kind of cottage you see on the front of a calendar, beautiful thatching and window boxes with flowers tumbling out. In the garden tall hollyhocks were waving and there was an air of peace about the whole place which was in great contrast to the busy traffic and crowds she had left behind.

Anna White held back the door to let her in. Kay looked at the brasses, the jars of dried flowers, the rugs, and the walls covered with different kinds of plates. This was a happy place, people had lived a good life in this house. Kay looked around and sighed happily.

Anna White was making tea and they sat together in the kitchen. They talked easily.

She worked mending broken china. It was deeply satisfying, she said. She wasn't up to museum standard or anything, but she could mend pieces that people valued. She had a little workshop out at the back, and she never noticed the hours passing as she worked with the broken cups and plates and cracked jugs that meant so much to the people who had brought them to her.

Kay found herself telling the whole story of Larry, and how they had met and that tomorrow should be their wedding day. She told Anna White about the honeymoon they had planned, and how Larry had divided up the refund they got from the travel agency. She told about Zappie and the hurt of it all.

Anna remembered everything and everyone in the tale. She asked if Larry were mean, and thinking back Kay decided that he was a little. Not dishonest or unfair but tight with money. She asked whether Zappie came from a rich family. Again something Kay had not thought about, but it could well be so. Those clothes and that manner could well be the product of a rich spoiled upbringing.

Together they went down the path through the back garden. The table was covered with pieces of china and ceramic.

"Let's try a little blue bowl," said Anna White. She wiped the edges with acetone, then with a tiny toothpick, she spread the adhesive over the edges to be joined. Very little was all that was needed she explained, and if a tiny bit oozed out at the size you wiped it away with meths. If it had been a plate she would have put it on its side in a biscuit tin of damp sand, but bowls and cups were best just turned over on their rims. It would be as good as new in no time.

It did look deeply satisfying Kay thought.

"What a pity you can't do that to a heart," she said.

"But that's just why I took it up"’ said the old lady. "My heart was broken, not simply like this bowl but cracked all over, I thought it would never mend."

"And the man who broke your heart. Did he come back?" Kay asked. It seemed very important to her to know how Anna White's story had ended. She seemed to live alone in this cottage and yet it had a look of a place that had known years of love and contentment.

"He tried to come back. But by this stage I knew that hearts could mend. And mine had. Perhaps it was all that china restoring." She smiled brightly at how simple it had been once you understood.

"And did someone else..."

"Oh yes, someone else did come along, when I least expected it. And he wasn't like the man who broke my heart. He was just like himself.'

And Kay saw how fragile things could be put together again if you realised that this was possible. Rather than just putting them in the back of a cupboard and pretending that the break hadn't happened at all.

© Maeve Binchy

© Copyright on all webpages Maeve Binchy 2002