Cecily Looking for Love at Cyril's Creek-Part One

Chapter One

Cecily Brightwater sighed with contentment and happiness as she looked round at the perfect house. She knew that the kitchen table was scrubbed clean, that the honeysuckle was entwined around the porch just so and that the garlic press was in the garlic press drawer. She popped her head round the door to the lounge and saw that her employer was dozing as expected in his armchair. His head was nestling snugly on the hearth rug. Cecily sighed at his eccentric habit of sleeping upside down and smoothed the tartan blanket over his knees. Softly, she slipped out. Gently, oh so gently, the blanket slid down over her master’s chest and flopped over his face.

Cecily was off on her daily constitutional walk. There was a lightness to her step as she walked gaily along, adjusting her dress until it fell just so. If you had seen her that day, your eye would have been taken by her straight back and confident step. She had twinkling eyes and a smile was never far from her lips. Everything about her was a picture of benign order; things had to be just so but mainly because they should be just so. From a hedge, a robin let loose a volley of whistling and song that pleased her intensely. It gave Cecily the impression that all of nature loved her and that she was popular and lucky. In fact, her neighbours were not too keen on her, preferring solitude or talking about other people without really knowing them properly. Indeed, her only contact with any of her neighbours was with the Hendersons , who seemed to be very gregarious. Once a month, they hosted rather boisterous parties where the guests turned up in varying degrees of leather-based dressing-up. The curtain-twitchers decided that they enjoyed dabbling in black magic and shunned the couple whilst the Hendersons tried eagerly, almost desperately, to make new friends.

So it was that,  on this particular day, Mr Henderson looked up from the rather mechanical device he was attending to and called a cheery “Hello!” to Cecily.
“Hello, Mr Henderson. Is that some form of gym equipment?” asked Cecily.
In reply she just got a cough at first before he could finally manage to respond “You could certainly enjoy a workout on this, dear.”
“That's very kind,” she said.
“It would be my pleasure,” he answered her honestly.
Flushing with genteel pleasure, she strode away. Behind her, Mr Henderson watched her with an equally ruddy complexion.

Her walk through the morning air took its usual route. The heels on her shiny boots clicked and clacked-the only sound in the slumbering streets. Neat gardens sat beside the pristine pavement and did nothing but grow as Cecily passed. Worms wriggled and proved to be little help in moving the narrative along. The houses, which were as often named as they were numbered, hid demurely behind well-tended roses. Anyone with any kind of reasonable sensibilities would have chosen to burn  the entire neighbourhood with scarcely a twinge of guilt whilst cackling maniacally, silhouetted against a full moon.

Cecily passed ‘Toad Hall’, ‘Hare’s Haven’ and past ‘Stoat’s Stable’ without the merest flicker of pyromania, which was an incredible feat in itself. Her heart sang purely - an innocent song of joy and of wonder which would have rotted the ears of any unfortunate who heard it like treacle eroding the unbrushed molar of the slovenly. She turned the corner of the street, smelling the warm aroma of a sprout  and bacon pasty baking  in a nearby kitchen. The cook, a short lady bouncing on a trampoline  in order to prepare the meal, waved at Cecily. Cecily returned the wave cheerily, wondering if it was convenient for the lady to cook in the open rather than in a house. But there, all she had was a kitchen, the sink and units and cupboards and tea towels out in the open nestling against the beautiful chain link fence of the drawing  pin factory. Onwards she walked, passing the streetlights which she had secretly named and loved as second cousins twice removed.

At last, dull suburbia gave way to dull ruralopolis. Cecily lovingly stroked the plants she met- poppies, cornflower, snowdrops and Old Man’s Gout. She even stroked nettles, until she remembered that they stung. This was a surprising turn of events for her every day but it never upset her for she had forgotten and did not remember that she had forgotten. For Cecily, memory and botany failed to go together rather like rhubarb did not go  with light  green emulsion, especially after a good meal and a rather terrifying encounter with a hostile umbrella stand. Nursing her mild injury and wondering if this unpleasant event had ever happened to her before, she walked on.

At last, she reached the real  object of her walk. It was a muddy stretch of water, known locally as Cyril’s Creek. It was a slender ‘s’ on the landscape, framed around the edge by reeds. Busy waterfowl swam to and from across the creek, avoiding predators and also maintaining their rather sophisticated financial hub, which they kept hidden from prying human eyes whilst also managing to wheel and deal on the global market. Never underestimate the ability of a water rail in a currency negotiation. The creek itself was owned by a rather unfortunate lady who had been rather unwanted by her parents and therefore rather unsuitably named.

Cecily looked across the Cyril’s Creek. The calm depths stirred something within her; a longing to be other than she was. She experimented with being a reed but it wasn’t what she wanted. Restless as a piece  of mouldy cheese, she watched the water for a quiet moment. She liked looking after her boss but she had never been to herself. She  wasn’t even sure if there was a road that went there. So, every day, she did the jobs she needed to do: cooking, cleaning, polishing and tending to the cucumbers in the cold frame. That’s who she was and that is what she did.

Suddenly, there  was a flash of movement in some of the nearby reeds. Cecily looked but she had missed whatever it was. However,  the gently shaking reed, with maybe a hint  of yellow behind it, kept her attention for longer than you might think (as long as you thought she  would  only  look for one minute  and 23 seconds) . The world seemed to hold its breath but that was only because it had hiccups. In Cecily’s head, the promise of that stem  was somehow the biggest draw she had ever felt. Her slender, fine hands crept up to her heart and nestled there as if they were trying to hold her ribs together. Finally, sadly, she turned to make a lonely  walk home. Behind her, the reeds parted slightly and something wistfully watched her go.