A Dandelion on the Roof & Other Stories by Georgina Scillio

Author:Georgina Scillio [Scillio, Georgina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short Stories
ISBN: 9781742982090
Publisher: Clouds of Magellan

The Girl with Jade Eyes

Graeme McEvoy took the lift up to his office on the twelfth floor of the Government Building, as he had done every weekday for the past fifteen years.

As the lift door opened to discharge some people on the third floor, he saw her. She was facing the lift. What she was wearing Graeme did not even notice, for what struck him like a bolt of lightning were her eyes. They were absolutely and indescribably green. He had seen a few beautiful women before, but never anyone with that colour of eyes.

All day he kept trying to remember the precise shade of that tantalising green: no, not emerald, not Irish green, not turquoise, certainly not hazel. The colour stirred in him a vague, pleasant, nostalgic memory which he could not identify.

That day Graeme worked absentmindedly, drank innumerable cups of coffee. He left his lunch untouched, walked up and down the office floor several times, and suddenly in a flash, the name came to him. Jade! His late mother’s jade ring! The stone of that ring was, as far as he could recall, exactly the same colour as that girl’s eyes.

That evening, when his father was watching television, Graeme crept into what used to be his parents’ bedroom, and slowly pulled out the drawer of the dressing table, which stood exactly as his mother had left it ten years before. He unwound the key of the jewellery box — which was also a musical box — and opened it carefully.

And there was his mother’s ring, an oval jade stone mounted on silver. He lifted it gently, held it to the light, then put it back in the box and returned to watch television with his father. Barry McEvoy, watching the news in his dressing gown, did not even notice his son’s brief absence.

Barry McEvoy had settled very comfortably into his widower-hood, for now he managed to perform all the tasks his wife used to do, as well as having a few other interests, like lawn bowls. He also looked after the garden in such a way that every weed was plucked the moment it emerged, and the edge of his lawn was as trimmed as the neck of an officer on graduation day.

Graeme did not share his father’s preoccupation with the garden and never raised a finger to help him there. So when Barry would declare that the daffs were out already, or that the buds on the roses were showing, all he got from his son was a disinterested grunt. Barry was particularly fond of daffodils, for not only did they herald the spring, but they were also resistant to snail and slug, and as an added bonus, they grew of their own accord each year, multiplying tenfold in a seemingly effortless process.

Barry did not care one whit if his audience did not share his enthusiasm, and he continued his conversation just the same.

‘Next thing we’ll have all the bulbs and the ranunculi blooming. Before you know it, it’ll be cherry blossom time again.

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