He'll Be Along....

When they were young, and Edward courting her, he'd given her a pair of earrings. Diamond they were, but discreetly so, small stones set in a slight band of gold, dangling from her ears. Since she received them - her wedding gift from him, in fact - they were never removed. They shone still, sitting daintily on her lower ear lobes. Brilliant still, like their marriage.

He always did delightful things, surprising her with gifts, large and small, reflecting his thoughtfulness and his profound love for her. A book for her to read, dropped casually beside her sewing table, for her to discover and be delighted with. A new basket for eggs-collecting. A cameo brooch to be pinned proudly to her Sunday dress. A bright, shiny new spade for digging in her garden.

Her face is the same it always was, only sagging a bit here and there. Her once copper-burnished hair, filaments thick and lively with an opinion of their own, now grey, but still curled around her face. He loved her hair, still does, says she hasn't changed one bit from the wee girl he courted.

She can be seen always in front of their neat little cottage. Tending her kitchen garden, her blooms, her little dog always there too, not far from wherever she stood. Its hair was much like hers; steel-grey with the merest glint of copper. That vivacious little dog: always named the same - Stanley - though it was a bitch, was descended from a long line of Stanleys.

As gentle and sweetly-dispositioned as she was, so was the dog. Little wonder Edward adored her. She and Edward wanted a family, but the Good Lord in His wisdom thought better of it. Instead of a family of their own, they, in good faith, adopted the children of their hamlet.

Their house was always a riot of children's voices, children who knew, with their parents' consent, they could drop by there on their walking-way home from school. For fresh-baked goods and frothy-fresh milk. And a chance, in season, to peel ripe apples - sweetly-sour and juicy - from the little orchard beside the house.

Edie still kept a milking cow, and continued to make butter and cheese. She prided herself on her clever hands and remarkable memory. She was, in fact, received as the village archivist. She remembered everything. She knew who was related to whom, and how. Everyone, in fact, was related in some dim and distant way to everyone else. Not exactly inbred, simply discriminating in their choices.

Lacking a name, the month and year of a particular event, someone would be dispatched to Aunt Edie, to gather that intelligence. She never forgot. Never forgot anything that ever happened in that village, to the people to lived there.

To the men, women and children of her village she was simply Aunt Edie. Famous even beyond their county for the quality, exquisite scent and beauty of her roses, the colour of her phlox and size of her stately hollyhocks, her luscious peonies. She taught generations of children to pluck a hollyhock in full bloom, another still in the bud stage, and to place the bud atop the downturned bloom, to produce ball-gowned dolls, which the children clutched happily to them, and ran home with, to show their mothers, well familiar with that particular tradition.

The delectable fragrance and mouth-watering taste of her rhubarb and currant pies; her pastries that did, actually melt in the mouth. Even her poultry laid larger eggs than anyone else's. Her bread was more aromatic, lighter, and moister than any others. She remained a legend of her time.

Her true christened name was Ida, not Edie. It was Edward who had teasingly begun to name her that, and Edie it was, evermore. Ida she might originally have been, but idle, never. Even at her advancing years, an inspiration for everyone. She did her Edward proud. Himself no slouch at anything he turned his hand to - an advocate by trade - a Jack-of-all-trades by whimsical inclination.

Anyone in the village who needed mechanical advice would turn to Edward. Edward and Edie (she his diminutive) were the most valued and honoured people in the county. Their vaunted reputation for generosity, kindness and industry meant they were often named a brace to be emulated.

Young girls and boys of earlier years, now mothers and fathers themselves imbued in their children the embrace of their living legend. For she was, in fact, old, very old now. She had always fretted about her fly-away hair in its exuberant youth, and now in her and its agedness, she no longer struggled with it, let it fly where it might, crowning her shrunken face.

She lived, she did, for her Edward, and he for her. The state of their cottage was a living testimony to their care for one another. They were fastidious in its repair and upkeep. The two small chambers back of the fireplace-heated kitchen they had intended as nursery-and-infant rooms for their children had been transformed over the years into a sewing room for her, a workshop for him.

A puzzling place to have a workshop, to be sure. She sewed and knitted tiny infant garments as gifts to be generally bestowed, and he constructed minuscule wooden carts, puzzles, dolls and building blocks for the older children.

At the county school they had both themselves attended as children, there had latterly evolved a revolving roster. A duty roster. The young who had once dropped by to take advantage of milk and cookie offerings generated into offspring who now dropped by to chop wood, draw well water, churn butter, weed the gardens and help Aunt Edie do her laundry by the stream that ran behind the cottage.

And whenever Aunt Edie would begin to fuss, as it had become her wont to do; wring her hands, and wonder what was keeping her Edward - it was getting on and he hadn't yet returned home - they would respond soothingly, as they had been carefully taught to: "He'll be along ... presently ... never fear."