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NOTES:

CHRISTIAN SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2008/2009
FIRST PLACE

Please note: this work is copyright by the author and may not be used, copied or shared in any way whatso-ever without his/her express written permission. If you wish to be put in contact with this author, please contact us.

This story text appears exactly as sent in by the writer. No changes or corrections have been made; however, all stories to be included in the published Anthology will be edited for grammar and punctuation before printing.

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"Sister Salsa"

by Elizabeth Wood - London, UK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Elizabeth Wood is a civil servant and aspiring novelist who lives in London. She is a Christian who worships in the catholic tradition of the Church of England.

(Elizabeth prefers to maintain her privacy, for professional reasons; we thought you'd like a picture representing "Sister Salsa" instead.)

COMMENTS FROM JUDGES:

1. Well written and kept the interest well. I didn't even see the ending coming - though it was perhaps a little simplistic.

2. I really enjoyed the meandering reminiscent voice, and the use of allegory. Very good writing skills, well structured, a good meaty story sandwiched between a solid beginning and strong end. Fun, too! Lovely story.
 

THE STORY:

On my sixtieth birthday, only one card came through my door, and it wasn’t a birthday card. “Free Salsa lessons,” it said. I was about to toss it in the recycling when I read the smaller text beneath: “for the over-60s.”

Well, I’ve always been a sucker for odd coincidences, and though until then the only Salsa I’d known was the kind I dipped my tortilla chips in, I thought there was no harm trying it out.

I wouldn’t want you to think I was lonely, by the way. I’m too emotionally self-sufficient for that. And it isn’t that I don’t like people: I enjoy meeting clients (I’m a photographer), and most Saturdays I pop into the White Boar for a few pints with whoever’s around. I’ve just never felt the need to form close friendships, let alone look for anything more.

Actually, that last bit isn’t entirely true. I was married once, a long time ago. Ishani was the most beautiful girl in the school, without a doubt. Our classmates laughed at her for the saris she wore at weekends, but she walked among them like a princess, her head held high, as the rich jewelled reds and bright cornflower blues swirled around her, making their mini-skirts and jeans look faded and dowdy.

I was seventeen, but though it was 1968, the spirit of free love hadn’t reached Kettering yet. In short, she fell pregnant and both our families insisted on marriage: me, an atheist Anglican, she an agnostic Hindu, at the local Unitarian chapel because they were the only ones who would take us.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the baby had lived. Would we still be together? Would we have fallen properly in love? Or would we be one of those old couples who hate each other but are too scared to split up? As it was, we divorced within the year. She went to visit relatives in India and I backpacked round Europe for a while. By the time I got back we had lost contact for good.

In my twenties and thirties I had a few girlfriends – nothing serious – and then… I don’t know. Maybe I became too set in my ways. I no longer met women I liked in that way. I no longer wanted to meet them.

Where was I? Ah yes. Salsa. The classes were held in the hall of St Stephen’s, the local Catholic church. As I walked there I began to have second thoughts. Should I have booked in advance? Was I too old to be starting something new? What if the others were all couples?

“Welcome!”

The teacher was clearly the real Latin American deal. She had dark hair and an accent that spoke of sunshine and mojitos. Her face suggested she was about my age, but her posture and movement were those of a much younger woman. None of these things were her most striking feature, however. That was the fact that she was dressed from head to toe in the habit of a nun.

“Hello,” I said. I’d never spoken to a nun before, and had no idea whether I was supposed to shake her hand or… I don’t know… bow, or cross myself or avert my eyes. I decided just to smile, and she beamed back as though I were her long lost brother.

I looked nervously around the room. The others did mostly seem to be couples. Perhaps there would be no-one for me and I’d have to go home. I was relieved rather than disappointed by this prospect.

About a minute after the class was due to start, however, a woman rushed through the door. She was dressed in a sharply tailored business suit, and said “sorry, sorry, sorry” as she sprinted to the toilets. She came out again wearing a long linen skirt.

And she was paired with me.

“Sophie,” she said, holding out her hand and smiling apologetically.

“David,” I said. David James, which was my mother’s maiden name. I was born David Bailey, which as you can imagine, would have been a bit of a problem in my line of work.

To say I had two left feet would be an understatement. I just couldn't seem to follow the instructions. But I don’t know… perhaps Sophie had two right feet or something, because although both of us struggled to do what we were being shown, by the end of the class we were definitely moving together, and definitely moving in time to the music.

Sister Constanza was a brilliant teacher. I stopped feeling self-conscious almost at once. She made us feel that mistakes didn’t matter, that the important thing was to relax and have fun. And of course, once we did that the mistakes – or at least the obvious mistakes – started to happen much less. A couple of times I saw her demonstrating something with her grey habit hitched up round her knees and it struck me again how surreal it was, but for the most part I was able to forget she was a nun and just think of her as a person.

Afterwards I was out of breath, but already looking forward to next week’s class.

“Pub?” said one of my classmates. It sounded like an excellent idea.

Only six of us went, including me and Sophie. I surprised myself when I realised how much I’d been hoping she would, and I ended up mostly talking to her.

She was a lawyer, a few years from retirement, specialising in immigration cases. Her own grandparents had been immigrants, she said, though it was hard to tell from her coffee-coloured skin where they might have been from and it seemed rude to ask. I liked the passionate way she spoke about her work, though I admit it made me feel a bit inferior – there was I messing about with my camera, while she spent her days reuniting families and helping refugees escape persecution.

She didn’t see it like that though. She was fascinated by my work. She did a bit of photography herself, she said, and would love to see some of mine. I demurred, saying nowadays I mostly did weddings rather than the artistic stuff. And she said lovely things about how much joy things like that can bring, about how her mother was too ill to go to a recent family wedding and how much the photos had meant to her.

 “And why did you decide to come to salsa lessons?” I asked

“I go to St Stephen’s,” she said. “I’ve known Sister Constanza for a while now and she asked me to come along. I wasn’t sure at first, but I’m glad I did now.”

“She seems like an interesting woman,” I said.

Sophie smiled. “That she is.”

“But… you know. Salsa! A nun!” For some reason I was not at my most eloquent.

Sophie shrugged. “It’s not a sin,” she said.

“I suppose not.”

“And anyway, she leaves out the saucier bits. She was a dance teacher before she was called to the convent. She believes in people using whatever talents they have in the service of God. I think it’s great.”

I nodded. “Yes,” I said, “I can see that.” I could. And I confess it made me a bit envious. I love photography: the act of creating something beautiful is a pleasure in itself, and seeing clients’ faces when they’re impressed is another one. But to have something that goes beyond that – to feel called to do what you do by the creator of the universe – that must be an amazing feeling.

I’ve never been religious. I admit I was taken aback by the fact that Sophie went to church. I wondered whether she would even consider dating an atheist, and then caught myself, and realised that I was considering something I’d ruled out decades ago – dating anyone at all. And I realised I didn’t have the first idea about how to go about it. Ask her out for a meal? But what if she didn’t want to? I didn’t want to put her in an awkward position. And I didn’t want to face the embarrassment of being rejected.

Closing time came all too quickly. And although I wanted to, I just couldn’t form an ‘asking out’ sentence that sounded as though it could plausibly come from my lips. So I didn’t say anything except goodnight.

I spent the following week thinking about it, and decided the casual but straightforward approach would be best. “Would you fancy going out for dinner at some point?” I practiced it again and again. I couldn’t wait to see her, and yet I was dreading having to ask for real. It was like being a boy again, though I couldn’t tell if it was more like waiting for my birthday or waiting for a maths exam. I felt both ashamed and exhilarated by my immaturity.

As I walked up to the church, I wondered whether I’d even get as far as asking. What if it didn’t go as well as it did before? What if we were paired with other people? What if she didn’t even turn up?

I arrived even more nervous than the first time.

“Hey!” said Sister Constanza. “Good to see you again.” She sounded as though she meant it, and I couldn’t help smiling back. But I looked around and there was no Sophie.

“Don’t worry,” said Sister Constanza, “she’ll be here. She’s always late.”

Was I really that obvious? I wondered whether I was actually blushing or whether it just felt like it.

Sure enough, Sophie came rushing through the door at the last minute, though already dressed in her casual skirt.

She grinned apologetically at me. “Sorry,” she said. “Meeting.”

“No problem,” I said. It’s odd when you’ve only seen someone once and then you think about them for a whole week and then you see them again. If anything, she was more beautiful than I remembered. Last week her hair had been up in a bun, but this week she had it in a loose plait down to her waist, a few little wisps escaping to frame her face with its high cheekbones and big brown eyes. The hair was black, flecked with only a little grey. I found it hard to believe she could be eligible for an over-60s class.

The dancing went rather better the second time. Once, Sister Constanza even called on us to demonstrate a step that some of the others had been struggling with. I had to admit my mind wasn’t really on it though. It was half on how lovely it felt to put my hand on Sophie’s waist, and half on asking her out.

“Pub?” No-one else had said it, so I thought I would. The same people as last time came along, and annoyingly, we all sat round in a big circle, so I couldn’t get Sophie to myself.

“So what do you make of Sister Constanza?” asked a large man with thick glasses, who I remembered was called Gerald.

“Not what I expected from a nun,” I said.

“Have you worked out why you’re here yet?” asked Gerald’s partner Margaret, who was perhaps the oldest person in the class. She looked about eighty, and wore a black dress with a very large, very ornate cross round her neck.

I think it was the cross that confused me. “I’m not really into theology or philosophy,” I said.

Everyone except Sophie laughed. I was grateful to her.

“Margaret means at the dance class,” said Gerald. “Not anything metaphysical.”

“Oh… sorry. I got a voucher through my door. I thought it might be fun.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, “but why did you get the voucher as opposed to anyone else?”

“I suppose they just came through all the doors in the street,” I said

“No way,” said Gerald. “Sister Constanza never does anything by chance.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sophie.

“Didn’t you hear what we were talking about last week?” chimed in a little bird-like lady.

“They were at a different table, remember?” said the man who was surely her husband, and had his arm loosely round her shoulder.

“This is my and Gerald’s second time,” said Margaret. “We got invited to the last course because… well, it sounds silly now, but we’re neighbours, and we didn’t really get on. He objected to my cat coming into his garden, and I didn’t like it when he played his music, and all sorts of other silly trivial things. So you can imagine I was dismayed when I got the class and was paired with him. But I couldn’t say anything, not in front of Sister Constanza, so I thought I’d put up with it and just not come again. But it was all such good fun that I kept coming back and by the end of the eight weeks, we’d sorted everything out and were friends.”

“…though not particularly good dancers,” added Gerald. “Which is why we came back for more.”

“And our marriage had been going through a difficult patch,” said the bird-like woman. “It’s private, so I won’t go into details, but coming out and doing something together like this has probably saved us from divorce.”

Her husband nodded, and put his arm round her. If she was like a sparrow, he was like a vulture: big and gaunt, with hunched shoulders and a big nose. But he seemed friendly, and very much in love with his wife despite his foreboding appearance. “So what about you?” he asked.

“We never met before last week,” I said. “So no arguments to resolve.”

“Then she must be matchmaking,” said Margaret, with a twinkle in her eye.

Sophie laughed. “I doubt it,” she said.

My heart sank. I’d been prepared for a polite “no”, but was I really so far beneath her that the idea of us together was laughable? I didn’t dare ask why, but Gerald did instead.

Sophie shrugged. “I’m divorced,” she said. “And Sister Constanza’s my spiritual director, so she knows all about it.”

And that was when I recognised her. Of course, I was too scared to say it in case I was wrong. There was no: “Ishani?” “David?” “And they fell into one another’s arms” moment. Yet she told me afterwards it was when she knew as well. We fumbled about trying to ask the right questions and make it sound casual. Yes, I was brought up ten miles down the road in Kettering. Yes, I had changed my name. And her?

“Sophie’s my baptismal name,” she said. “I converted… what? About ten years ago now. Ishani’s the name of a Hindu goddess, you see, and I just started feeling uncomfortable with it.”

A fairytale ending? Not yet. I admit that at first I hoped we’d discover we had everything in common and move in together and restart the marriage we’d never had and live happily ever after, but real life just isn’t like that. And you know what? I’m glad it isn’t. Learning all about her, how we’re different as well as how we’re the same, working out what the challenges will be – that’s the fun bit, and I wouldn’t give it up for a thousand happily ever afters.

And anyway, fairytales are overrated. Who needs lies when you have the truth? Through Sophie, I have been given something far better than a happy ending: life without any ending at all. I used to think that faith was something you either had or you didn’t; or if it could be gained, it was only through a laborious act of deliberate self-deception. Neither is true. I simply asked the Holy Spirit into my heart and he came.

I now see I lied at the beginning of this, my story. I was lonely. But now, whether I face the rest of my life with Sophie or without her, I know I will never be alone again.
 

Copyright (c) 2009 by Elizabeth Wood - do not reproduce
without the author's written permission!

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