Teddy was packing his bag at the kitchen table when Esther came home from town.
“Oh bother,” says Esther, “they’re early this year”
“Early?” says Teddy, concerned. “What do you mean early? It’s not for another few days yet!”
“Yes I know dear, but they seem to have arrived early because they didn’t have a proper one last year. One silly so and so nearly ran me over just now, as I was out getting messages!”
“Blast!” exclaims Teddy. “Not to worry, we’ll just have to leave a little bit earlier ourselves. Anyway, I’m all packed and ready to go. How about you dear?”
“I just need to put a few things together and we can leave. You know, I’m rather looking forward to this little break away!”
Esther goes upstairs to pack her bag, leaving Teddy in the kitchen to make the last of his preparations.
“Blast! How can she be so calm…” Teddy mutters to himself. “Doesn’t she realise we won’t have a home to come back to? These animals haven’t had their fix of braappp braappps and vrooom vroooms in years! It’s going to be carnage. Just last year dammit, they descended upon us without a damn rally to come and see! It was hell! Poor Esther, she’s always so cheery. So naïve. So fragile. Better get a move on, I can’t have her stuck in the middle of it, not with her mother having just passed. It would break her. I must protect Esther…”
“Did you say something dear?” asks Esther as she returns to the kitchen.
“Oh no dear, just muttering away to myself. You know how I get when I’m concentrating!” Teddy forces a smile for his beloved wife, and she believes it.
“If there’s one thing I know, it’s my Teddy bear!”
“Yes, dear…”
They leave their home of twenty seven years, and venture out into the great unknown. The distant echo of shitty sounding engines rumble and roar, growing ever closer, but the two of them march on, man and wife, hand in hand. Esther smiles at the sights and sounds around her, taking in every moment of her adventure. Teddy feigns a smile to match his wife’s, but in his heart, he knows. He knows.
As they climb the valley and make for the hills, the town stands in full view behind them. The town they were leaving forever. Teddy presses forward with the steely determination that had characterised his days as a youth leader in the Beavers.
“Once a Beaver, always a Beaver,” he thought to himself. Esther looks over her shoulder to take in the view, unaware that it would be for the last time. Plumes of exhaust smoke rise from deep within the streets and car parks, with the ghastly sounds of engine and man ringing out like the bells of St. Eunan’s, up the valley and ‘oer the hills.
“That smoke,” she says as her smile momentarily slips, “…will everything be OK?”
“Let it burn,” says Teddy, not once looking back, “…let it burn…”
