Free Spirit
Opposites attract in this emotional short story by Gabrielle Mullarkey
Theo was captivated by her, and would go to the ends of the earth to make her happy . . .
THEO had never been much of a dreamer – not like Ethel. They met in a mushroom field at dawn during a music festival.
Ethel had run into the wood, barefoot, to see the sun come up.
Theo, who’d only attended the festival because friends had talked him into it, had got lost on his way back from the Portaloos, brooding on his final exams.
Ethel, poised on a tree stump with arms held aloft, had watched him tiptoe through the mushrooms.
“Can you feel it?” she had exclaimed.
“These brambles clinging to my kneecaps? Yes.”
She’d smiled, almondeyed and wild-haired, exactly the kind of woman who irritated him.
Just as he’d braced himself for some nonsense about tree spirits, she sighed.
“You couldn’t carry me to my tent, could you? My big toe’s gone all numb.”
On closer inspection, she had a large splinter in it. He’d lectured her about tetanus, then piggy-backed her to the festival field.
“Are you a doctor?” she panted as she clung on.
“I’m a vet. Or hope to be. I’ll take you to the medi tent. Then, for goodness’ sake, put some shoes on to keep mud out of that cut.”
She slipped off his back, doing a double-take.
“Are you wearing cords?
Wow! Can I see your elbow-patches?”
“A simple thank you will suffice.”
Later, seeing her trudging ahead of him in the mud, a blur of cheesecloth and wellies, Theo caught up with her to recommend a foot disinfectant.
“You’ll have to water it down a bit, as it’s usually for dipping sheep.”
He was surprised to learn she was called Ethel. The name conjured up images of an older lady.
“Victorian girls’ names are very in nowadays. Just so you know,” she said. He nodded cautiously. “Goodbye, then, and good luck.”
A few minutes later, she caught up with him, matching his stride in unmatching wellies and waving her smartphone.
“You never gave me your name or number.”
On their first proper date back in London, she confided that he was cranky and a bit odd, but well worth the effort.
“As backhanded compliments go, that’s a zinger,” he acknowledged. “You’re worth the effort, too. Just so you know.”
They were an unlikely couple from the off.
He realised he enjoyed confounding expectations that he’d fall for a co-worker, such as no-nonsense Lavinia, a small mammals specialist rarely seen out of scrubs.
It was funny how the name Lavinia conjured up images of cocktails and necklaces worn back to front over flapper dresses, while Ethel still had that Victorian ring to it.
After he and Ethel got married, she painted their wonky-walled house a bewildering range of primary colours and they discussed starting a family.
Theo was apprehensive, but not averse. He was doing well in practice, while keen artist Ethel planned to sell her big, splodgy abstract paintings.
Her paintings didn’t sell, however. She had no training; her work was simply a triumph of aspiration over talent.
“She needs to start living in the real world,” Theo’s mother said firmly.
“She’s a lovely girl,” his father remarked, “but she needs to take her head out of those clouds and put her shoulder to the wheel.”
Ethel’s parents were divorced and moved in elusive ways in Canada and Australia respectively, as if they needed to put as many miles between them as possible.
Ethel was their only child. Her comparative aloneness in the world, coupled with his family’s bracing advice, only made Theo love her more protectively.
And she did work hard; it was just that the results didn’t match her efforts.
When their hopes of starting a family came to nothing, they went for tests.
That was how they found the Other Thing.
Theo felt himself going hot and cold in the consulting room, tuning in and out of clunky, lumpen words – biopsy, radiotherapy, prognosis.
The words were so at odds with fey, flyaway, cloud-dwelling Ethel.
“What can I do?” he fussed a few weeks later, visiting her in a magnoliapainted hospital ward.
“You are doing everything by being you,” she replied in that way she had of making him feel special just by existing.
“Mind you, I would love to paint those walls,” she added, eyeing them up. Theo grinned.
“If I could, I’d get you a stepladder and paint this minute!”
She came home after successful treatment.
Theo’s parents had helped him put up a banner across the sittingroom: Recovering artist back in residence. They painted it in a range of primary colours.
Ethel had been ordered to rest, and mostly obeyed, but she was restless, in need of a project.
It was Theo’s mum who provided inspiration when she brought some magazines round while Theo was at work, and spent the afternoon by Ethel on the sofa.
After his mother had left, Ethel drew Theo aside.
He thought she was going to complain about the rhythmic clack of needles, the seemingly unending ball of khaki wool spooling from his mother’s knee.
“I’ll tell her to pack it in,” he said straight off.
“No!” Ethel’s eyes were alight. “Could you get needles and wool for me? I’ve had an idea.”
She was going to knit her favourite celebrities, then he could put the photos on their Facebook page. She might even start taking commissions!
He looked into her shining eyes.
“I never knew you could knit, darling.”
“I’ve never followed a pattern or anything, but how hard can it be?”
A seed of doubt took root. He suggested enlisting his mother for advice, but Ethel demurred.
“Julie’s very good in her way, but I don’t want to pre-empt my vision by getting too technical about the ins and outs.”
There they were – those ins and outs she famously didn’t like to pick over. The devil in the devilish detail.
His nagging doubt sprouted into misgivings as her efforts began to bear the usual fruits.
It was painful to watch her struggle with wool strands, the clunky results clustered around her.
He dreaded her holding up a finished piece and asking him to name the celebrity. He always got it wrong.
“Er, is it that wizard out of ‘Harry Potter’? Dumbledore?”
“This one isn’t actually a person.” She sniffed. “It’s the Starship Enterprise.”
She dumped the mushroomy yellow blob next to other blobs.
“I thought I’d do it, as I’d already knitted the crew. Captain Kirk, Mr Spock – the ears were tricky – Doctor McCoy . . .”
He nodded, knowing he’d soon have to upload the pictures to the internet.
Her work reminded him of those waxworks where you had to guess the celebrities because they looked nothing like their famous doppelgangers.
That was what gave him an idea. A risky one, granted.
It took time, ingenuity and persistence. He didn’t play the illness card, though.
It wasn’t about that. It was about . . .
Well, it was about being the one barefoot in the mushrooms for a change.
He stalled her as long as he could before the grand unveiling, then brought in his laptop and set it up in front of her.
He just hoped she’d take this in the spirit in which it was intended.
Take That were first. He’d waited at the stage door with lots of fans, clawing his way to the front, waving his knitted boy band.
Gary and Jason came into view on the laptop screen, holding up the contorted thingummies in lurid shades (blue for Gary, orange for Jason).
“These are amazing,” Gary said solemnly.
“Thanks, Ethel. And for more knitted celebs who look nothing like they’re supposed to, cop this lot.”
Gary’s face was replaced by several other celebrities off the telly, all sporting small, woolly wonders and urging devotees of Ethel’s work to stay tuned to the internet for more knitted celebs “who look nothing like they’re supposed to.”
Theo, sweating heavily, sneaked a look at Ethel just before the last celebrity appeared onscreen.
Her mouth was open, her face a mask of shock.
William Shatner, Captain Kirk himself, hovered into view, hastily walking in the other direction.
The camera on Theo’s phone jerked about, followed by hasty conversation, and Captain Kirk appeared on screen, smiling and holding aloft the Starship Enterprise.
“OK, here goes. Ethel, I like your work. More power to you for . . .” he leaned forward to read whatever Theo was holding up
“. . . knitted celebs who look nothing like they’re supposed to.”
Ethel’s jaw raised slowly, like a drawbridge.
“That was humiliating.” Theo went cold to his toes.
“I didn’t tell any of my targets you’ve been ill, so they didn’t take part out of pity. They just saw the funny side.
“I was talking to someone in the know, and they said this could go viral. You’d get celebs actually queuing up to be knitted by you. It’s quirky, it’s –”
“Please leave me alone for a bit,” Ethel said quietly.
He did. He was in the kitchen when he heard her playing the “tributes” again. Then he swore he heard her laughing.
He ran back to check.
She was half-hiccuping, half-crying.
“Were you really chasing William Shatner?” She sniffed. “All those celebs – it must have taken for ever. And imagination.”
Her hand crept over his. “And love.”
A bubble of relief popped deep inside him.
He’d got it all wrong while trying to get it all right, which was probably how Ethel sometimes felt others perceived her.
She held up her latest unrecognisable handiwork.
“Go on. Guess,” she teased.
“Er, Richard Branson? Barack Obama?”
“It’s you!” She giggled. “Look, it has elbow patches, and I used brown for the cords.
“I was thinking about what you said about celebs wanting me to knit them,” Ethel continued happily.
“I could do it for charity. It could be like the ice bucket challenge.
“One celebrity nominates another to be knitted by Ethel the Unravelled.”
He hadn’t thought of that.
“Brilliant!” he exclaimed. “Let’s work on it together.”
She was always one step ahead, one idea in reserve, one foot poised above the mossy woodland floor.
“Can you feel it?” she enthused.
And he could. He really could.
The brio, the optimism, the uniqueness – all courtesy of the woodland spirit who’d let him carry her on piggy back into a world they could build together.
The End.
“Were you really chasing William Shatner?”