The Happy Story

The Happy Story

The Happy Story begins with two lovers. Being in love, they are happy, or at least they have the good sense to know that they are as close to being happy as one can expect or hope for in a lifetime. They have more than a few of the requirements attributed to many people’s recipe for happiness: they have health, they live decently and honestly and they love each other.

The Happy Story begins on Christmas Eve.

Because this is the Happy Story - There has been some light snow, the rooftops are dusted, like ginger bread houses with icing sugar, gardens lay dormant beneath the frost and ice. You can picture the lovers together, laying under a soft white duvet, still softly dozing, dreaming the end of the dreams which will soon wake them up. And when they open their eyes and try to remember their dreams, this recollection is like opening mail from the subconscious, but it will be interrupted by daylight and feelings, thoughts of snow, the sound of the world turning, the warmth of the bed and each other wriggling. Wrapping arms around pillows and limbs and bodies, snuggling down, they will next think of breakfast, maybe croissants and hot chocolate or tea and toast. But then suddenly they jolt with the remembering of the fizz of those three lovely words: It's christmas eve!

Now the remarkable thing about the couple in The Happy Story is they had no idea they were in The Happy Story. They did not have a clue that they were in this story at all, as is very often the way. I always found this part of The Happy Story quite strange and a little hard to believe, but so often in life, we don’t know where we are, until we are not there. They might have at least tried to be aware of being in a story, particularly a happy story, because surely that is the point. Please do me a favour, if you ever find yourself in The Happy Story it is imperative to realise it. It is a splendid sensation to know you are in The Happy Story, to be present and notice The Happy Story unfold before your very eyes; you may look around yourself and note the change in the light, the turning of a page, the beginning yielding to the juicy middle and sadly, the end, which of course isn’t really sad at all and is usually just another beginning.

It is a great skill to know when you are inside a story. There have been times in my long life when I have been convinced somebody else wrote my story their way, which was not my way, and I could have almost ended up with someone else's middle and then this might have been called The Lost Story or The Muddled Middle Of A Story which would have to be another story altogether. And if that had happened, well, then I wouldn’t be nearly as capable of telling you this, The Happy Story, in the first instance. Everything happens for a reason, and your decision, right now, to sit here and read The Happy Story or to hear it or to even know its name, well are you sure you made that decision yourself too?

Exactly!

That is the point, precisely, my point.

Now, I’d like to describe a person for you. The most striking feature is the hair, it is as copper as a copper pot. Although magazines might call this person a redhead, the hair is not at all really red. It is not a vegetable or fruity colour. It is not orange, there are no tones of carrot, it is not tangerine or mandarin and certainly not the colour of a butternut squash or a pumpkin. This hair is not bronze or sandy or straw-coloured nor strawberry blonde neither. It is not any shade of yellow spice, turmeric or mustard or saffron. And nor is it the plummy tones of a plum, a cherry or a chestnut. No. This hair is not rust. It shines with the most vivid copper and it dances as this person walks, it bounces, flouncing in ringlets of generous curls. This person's personality reflects this, they are aflame with laughter, with a vivacious spirit, a peppery energy and a contagious, wicked sense of mischief. This person is headstrong which might be mistaken for bossy, but put it this way, if this particular human being was your classmate at school they’d be the one with the clever ideas, the one that got you to do scary things, but oddly enough also the same person that never got caught and managed to save you both from detention. When you watch this freckled face you will notice they frown too often because their eyes are mildly short-sighted. This unique human being was born in the summer, they eat with their fingers and have very little patience with fiddly things.

Now try to forget this person if you can, please, try to forget this lovely specimen of human, with the hair like fire and with a soul all warmth and flames. A face all brown sugar and cinnamon, all freckles and curls. Try to forget this person for many reasons, primarily because you mustn’t think of people too much unless you want to call them to you, people tend to appear before you when you think about them too much. However it is so difficult not to think of a person you like once you start, don’t you think?

OK. Now I’d like to describe another unique individual. This person has the most beautiful eyes; clear eyes, they are striking, and as clear and blue as water. They are blessed with a light that makes a cynical heart retreat to its shadows. It is quite rare to find such a clean smile in the eyes, that seem to assure you that you are in the presence of someone easy and someone fair. Such a true blue, in fact, it is as if those eyes deliver some even-handed honesty. The eyelashes are as long as a baby giraffes. Can you imagine those eyes? Exactly? No? Well, try to recall the first day of a holiday and the calm blue of untouched water by the edge of a swimming pool. Or imagine the sparkle of the inside of icicles on a peak of an silent mountain, when the ice contains nothing but the memory of the sound of running water. Maybe you have seen a wolf with eyes this blue? Perhaps a kitten? But this persons eyes are neither fierce nor curious, but warm, dancing like a low gas flame. An exquisite gentle tone of blue, a bit like the underwing of a young swan. So no, they are not the cold blue of the deep Atlantic ocean, or freckled and denim as blue jeans, or the robin’s egg blue of a cricket game under a summer sky – that much is for sure. This person is a lovely long human shape with odd hands like odd gloves, one seems bigger, flatter than the other. When this person concentrates they look just like a friendly person. In fact if you were to greet this human you might find this face a kind face. When this mouth smiles the face cracks open as wonky as a broken egg, the yolk all dripping with sunshine; this is so charming. This person was born in the winter, the eyebrows knit when they read maps. Sometimes this human sleeps fitfully and grinds the teeth. Oh and it is worth remembering they can be just a little scratchy very first thing in the morning before they have coffee.

Now try to forget this human if you can. It is a challenge, I know, to forget those blue, blue, blue eyes, they are piercing, that is how the ladies’ magazines would describe those eyes: piercing. They are indeed memorably blue, but try to forget those blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue eyes and you’ll find it is as hard as trying to forget your first love or your last dance.

And so the story has begun, with the couple and their names are … Olette and Bastia. Yes? Ok let's call them this: Olette and Bastia. They have each other and they are in love. Please excuse the cliché, it just so happens they are in love in The Happy Story. They live here like this; Bastia loves to bake fresh bread and takes too long in the bathroom. Olette successfully grows herbs and tomatoes and loves bicycles.

Olette and Bastia met at college, they moved to the big city to live together and they turned twenty-one together. They visited Europe and made some beautiful, treasured memories of being hungry in Paris, stranded in Barcelona and accosted in Rome. Snapshots of this would be replayed in their memories and it wasn’t until they were much older they realised how precious that time, that particular stained-glass window, that sunset, that shabby youth hostel and those cold train stations would become. Memory is a quite astonishing tool, memory chucks out the moments we really ought to remember and clings to the smallest details we thought we had forgotten.

They were a handsome couple. If you danced with them at a party, and you would want to, you couldn’t help but imagine them naked together, they were beautiful together, you would want to swim with them. You can imagine watching them as they fall asleep at night, spooned into each other, skin against skin. You can easily conjure an image of them wrapped together, softly murmuring, I love you, oh I do love you, and I love you more.

Though they hardly tired of each other, they were not overly sickly in public with their affections. The truly enviable part was the easy care and consideration they had for each other, the way they naturally liked to please each other. Olette would have a cup of tea in hand, made to Olette's liking, before Olette knew to ask if the kettle had boiled. Bastia would find the bath already run with a towel already warming on the radiator. And the thank you would be followed by a knowing nod, a secret code of teamwork. It was quite a lovely sight to behold, it made you warm inside to watch. So yes, although they sometimes finished each other’s sentences, it made you wish to have that in your life and you wanted to be around them, to see such happiness, to be near to love. And let's face it, its magnetic, everyone wants to be near love - love is the point of all of this.

Now Olette and Bastia were both afraid of ageing.

Most people fear change, ridiculous isn't it, when often a change is a wonderful thing - What do you think a caterpillar feels when it sees a butterfly? - When Olette was a child of six years old, granny told Olette a story about a person who got into a bath and lounged in the bubbles so long that when they came out they were shrivelled, wrinkled like the furrows and grooves of a barnacled whale. Olette looked down, Olette's hands wrinkled in the bath and Olette screamed. Since then as a consequence Olette never stayed in the bath for long. As for Bastia, Bastia had cheeks that were soft and smooth as butter. Bastia didn’t have a crease or a line or a single wrinkle, except when Bastia's eyes squeezed shut in hysterical laughter or to sneeze. Still, Bastia used a great many oils and serums, potions, lotions, steam baths and face packs. Cold chamomile teabags and slices of cucumber on the eyes, facial scrubs of lemon juice and pomegranate seeds. In fact, Bastia spent quite a substantial amount of time in fear seeking signs of ageing, applying anti-wrinkle creams.

But, as we all know a fear conceals a wish, remember that, a fear conceals a wish.

Now, here we are, it is just after midday on Christmas Eve. Olette and Bastia are having an early lunch together in a tiny Japanese sushi bar in Soho and it is here and now that Olette tells a lie. Olette says to Bastia

I must go to see a sick work colleague this afternoon... but Olette really intends to pick up a secret Christmas gift from an antique bookshop. Bastia also lies

Oh I have to go back into work because I have forgotten my gloves.... but Bastia is planning to go to the jewellers to pick up a secret present too. They both know the other is lying, of course; it’s what we accept and call a white lie, but they both pretend not to notice the deception as this is part of the game of happy surprises. When you know someone as well as they know each other, it’s very difficult to keep things secret. At lunch they tease each other as they sip miso soup. They disagree mildly about whether it will snow some more, Olette swears it will and Bastia is quite adamant it will not. They shrug and then agree to disagree whilst sharing bento boxes of sashimi. Then they raise hot cups of saki and grin at each other knowingly.

There is a very light dusting of snow falling, just now and then, one or two flakes like the last of the wedding confetti or a scattering of white sushi rice. Perhaps though, it is just the wind blowing it down from the roof-tops or a robin in the rafters, but white feathery flakes occasionally float and pass the steamed-up windows of the busy pubs and cafes of Soho. And the gutters are brown with slush, like melted Coke floats. There are oil rainbows in the cracked ice puddles.

I want you picture them now in the window that busy lunchtime on that Christmas Eve. Olette and Bastia sharing the last of the edamame beans, dipping them in wasabi and soy, tasting the tang of pink pickled ginger, sipping the last of the warmed saki. They are eager for the waitress to bring the bill so they can go on their top-secret Christmas missions. But the waitress doesn’t seem to see them and she takes her time.

So let’s take our time, stand back and watch them for a moment, observe them as they say goodbye. They laugh, Olette says something rude that makes Bastia make an O-shape with the mouth. They are laughing and then they go their separate ways. Bastia looks back one last time and Olette, knowing Bastia is looking, looks back suddenly, Olette's curly hair flouncing flames, Olette turns and grins and waves, before taking a corner towards Cambridge Circus.

Imagine if that was the last time they ever saw each other. Imagine that in their store of memories of each other they never forgot those seconds. It wasn’t such a life-changing moment, minuscule in fact, but for no reason whatsoever, they’ll never forget that snapshot and the feelings, the sensations of those last smiles before they were out of sight of each other forever.

So, it is Christmas Eve and Olette and Bastia are out buying gifts. They are not together but separate, each is gazing into the windows of busy shops and making their steady way through the bustle of traffic and Christmas shoppers. They are in different parts of the city, but they are under the same wintery sunset, a raspberry swirl, those soft plumes of plum and berry clouds you really only get at the end of the shortest days of the year. And when night does fall, they will be underneath the same constellation of stars and the same rising blue moon. Whatever happens, as long as they are here and there, they will always be under the same moon.

Now, do you recall the person with the hair like copper? Yes? Well, just as the young Bastia leaves the jewellers, Bastia walks right into that flame haired person, and at that moment the shopping bag handle snaps, the vegetables roll everywhere, they drop a pail of water. What on earth was this human doing carrying a pail of water? Well, when I said, pail of water, I meant of course all ones hopes and dreams. This special person had decided a long time ago that if you want your hopes and dreams to come true you must carry them for yourself to make sure that none get spilt, just like a bucket of water. So when Bastia bumps into this, our freckled faced friend drops everything, physically and metaphysically, because looking into Bastia's face one was transported and instantly reminded of another time, another chapter and another lifetime. It is so powerful. The person with the hair like flames cannot speak. Meanwhile, Bastia flusters, apologising profusely and helps gather the shopping back together.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, Olette is at this very moment in time at the bookshop, trying to pick up that gift, a beautiful first edition of poetry by Bastia’s favourite French poet who is long dead. This particular copy has been living in a dusty ramshackle bookshop, one of those lovely establishments that we hardly see anymore. It is neatly hidden, tucked away off the Charing Cross Road, a place where books are more than objects, a place where books are sniffed and loved. Olette had picked the book out in October and the elderly shopkeeper had kept it under the counter for safekeeping whilst Olette paid for its purchase at two pounds a week. However, as Olette turns the corner to the alleyway, towards the entrance to the bookshop, Olette's heart stops dead still to see the shutters are down and the lights are off. There are no books in boxes outside and the place looks deserted.

I imagine you are saying: I thought this was going to be The Happy Story? Well when Ollette knocks on the door, the elderly shopkeeper isn’t there either. No! The elderly shopkeeper has had a heart attack and died. He is cold and blue and dead and gone and buried and all full of worms. There – that’s the truth of it, but you may find some comfort in knowing that the elderly shopkeeper was very old and failing everything, failing eyes, failing ears, failing and falling and the last fall was the last. When Olette rings the doorbell, however, the door opens and it is then that Olette sees the most beautiful blue eyes. Do you remember the human I described earlier with the blue eyes? Ah ha! Yes it is this person who is taking care of the bookshop. Sandcastles fall, empty from the pockets of the trousers and all over the floor. The shush sound of sand. What was one doing carrying sandcastles? Well, when I said sandcastles, I mean of course, the sensation of regret. This blue eyed being had discovered a long time ago that if you regret the past and wonder what could have been, it is like building sandcastles, and like watching time through an hourglass, there is a perpetual sensation of sand slipping through your fingertips. When Olette says hello, all the sandcastles are washed away with a tide of recognition and this wonderful blue eyed person drops makes an O-shape with the mouth. This reminds Olette of someone and something that was very dear to their heart.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Bastia has picked up all the belongings scattered on the pavement, and for the first time Bastia looks at this cinnamon face and gulps; the heart is flames and the face, the mouth, the eyes, something about this is all so very familiar.

Please let me help you Basia says.

Thank you and they take the packages to a car which is parked just outside.

I think it will snow again, can I offer you a ride?

Yes, please, how very kind of you, Bastia says without any hesitation, although Bastia doubted it would snow, not again. Bastia remembers a gift, pats and feels in pockets for the velvet box and in it the silver locket for Olette.

And back in the bookshop, the bluest eyes you ever, ever saw, is telling Olette about the old shopkeeper that had a heart attack and died peacefully, everything was failing, falling, failing. Olette doesn’t find comfort in this at all and is very sad for the kind elderly shopkeeper. Olette offers her condolences and touches this blue eyed strangers hand. Olette notices how the hands are slightly different sizes and shivers with the familiarity and with goose pimples of pleasure. Just in case you want to know: the book of poetry is by Baudelaire and Olette knows Bastia will love it and read it out loud, it will sound like a low Loire valley lullaby, when they are wrapped in each others arms at night. How magical is this, this human with the blue eyes, wrapping the book in tissue extra carefully. And then writing the sale in pencil in a ledger book. Olette watches this face, the shape of this good-looking face, how it smiles; it is a wonky smile, it is contagious and Olette grins back like an idiot.

Whilst they drive across town, Bastia cannot help but watch the copper-haired person and how they drive. It is hilarious, quite animated behind the wheel and it amuses Bastia to note the impatience with traffic lights and when changing gears. Basia is overwhelmed by a strong sense of déjà vu and when they stop, Bastia says,

Would you like to come in for a hot chocolate?

It is so cold, shall I?

Oh yes, please do and I will even add a dash of brandy to really warm us up Bastia grins and the smile is so infectious and wonky that nobody could possibly resist.

Olette and the blue-eyed shopkeeper meanwhile will walk and talk together.

Where do you live? If you wait for me to lock up we can walk together?

Thank you, says Olette.

I love Baudelaire.

So do I. It is best read aloud I think.

Me too, I cannot speak a word of French. I am sure this book will make a fine gift.

Oh, look it is snowing, I said it was going to snow!

So it is. I thought we’d had the last of it!

And it snows, lightly at first, and up above them the moon is blue and whole.

Once in a blue moon!

One of them says and the other says yes it is a super blue moon too and on and on the two of them natter about blue moons and snow monkeys and Baudelaire and poetry, generously making sure to make plenty of room for listening and smiling as well as speaking and laughing.

Whilst they walk they link arms because the pavement is slippery and icy. Olette cannot help but take sneaky sideways glances at those blue blue blue blue-eyes, this person really does feel like someone very nice and easy to be around. The blue-eyes smile back, stealing glances at Olette too and Olette’s heart flips. Both have flushed and blushed, cheeks burn with the cold air and excitement.

Do come inside! Olette says, Come on in! I will make you a hot chocolate with brandy to warm us up a bit.’

Really you don’t mind?

Yes of course, I insist. It’s Christmas Eve.

Okay, thank you.

Bastia? I’m home!

And just at the same time Bastian sings,

Hello, Olette!

Then there is a power cut. In the pitch darkness you hear Olette and Bastia clattering and muttering and it sounds like this:

Oh, bugger!

Have you got any idea where the matches are?

I can’t see a thing!

Me neither!

Where are the candles?

Over by the mantelpiece?.

Here, light this!

Light what?

This. Oh, you cannot see. Sorry, silly me!

What a pain.

Aha! At last, a candle. Right, now, what about the matches?

Matches by the stove

Sorry … oops!

Bastia? … Oh, bingo, lights!

Olette, I made hot chocolate but how queer …

Bastia, it is strange, I …

Olette, where have you been?

I was here all along. I was here ...

I feel odd, it is like I haven’t been home for days.

Funny, I feel like I have been dreaming.

Is it still Christmas Eve? I mean of course it must be, mustn’t it?

There is something I cannot put my finger on, I forgot to tell you something.

That’s funny, me too, Bastia. I am sure it will come back to us.

Did you have a nice day?

Have we been sleeping for a very long time?

Are we awake?

Come here, my love!

And now picture two lovers as they kiss and hold each other on Christmas Eve by the Christmas tree, twinkling with lights and magic and I will gently remind you how a fear concealed a wish. We are allowed to imagine that once in a blue moon we are permitted to see each other as we really are, how we once were and what we might become. Maybe once in a while your mind permits you to step outside and see your selves more clearly and also to see the people you love now and how you remember them. Sometimes, when you stand still, you can get a real sense of being inside a story, a page turning, how everything changes but stays the same, how we grow sideways and in somersaults, in spurts and cycles. We are always the same to someone no matter how old we grow. You might be surprised how you are stored in somebody’s heart, how someone remembers a moment that seemed so inconsequential to you at the time.

So, now, I describe a person for you, my curly hair has grown silver at the temples. I have a contagious mischief and no patience with fiddly things. I’d like to describe my love, those blue, blue, blue eyes, but they are soft and creased from years of sneezing and laughter. And now we see each other as we always were to each other and at last we know that we were always in The Happy Story. Absentmindedly, my love reaches into a pocket and there is nothing there, for I have worn that locket for almost fifty years. Inside it there is a photograph of me when I was a person with hair like a copper pot, with my love, his eyes so blue, as blue as my memory, as memorable as our first kiss and last dance.

© Salena Godden

‘The Happy Story’ was originally self-published as a chapbook and gifted to friends. It was later published by Shortfire Press in 2010.

I remember this story was written one Christmas holidays after a long and tough time, a most challenging year, I can recall sitting down to write this. Today I’m remembering the young poet I was and the feeling of writing this on a rickety fold-out table in a tiny yellow kitchen that isn’t there anymore. I woke up recalling the hope it holds, the love it shares, so I share this feeling here as we enter 2025.

My dears, I hope you have been having a peaceful holidays, I hope that you are replenishing your spirits and recharging your soul ready for the winter ahead. I wish you happiness, that you are feeling the hour pass, the times change and all of your selves changing with it.

Thank you for following and subscribing to this page. We now have 300 friends on Substack and I end this year by switching on the choice to get a paid subscription, for those of you that wish to pledge or switch to paid. No pressure though. Thank you to all that have pledged and wish to support my writing, thank you.

In 2025 I sense I have a very different year ahead. I’m unsure what happens next in my little world of books and poems but I know … in the words of my late great and much-missed friend Gigi, "Bravo, come mi pace a me, senza programmi" or "Good, how I like it, without a plan"

Wishing you all a peaceful and calm and loving new year, a year of gentle miracles and happy coincidences, a year of ‘yes and why the hell not?’ And a year of ‘If not now then when?’ I wish you a year of good health and good heart, good people and making good memories. I wish for peace and for positive changes, less silence and fear and sorrow, let us make more beauty and art, more humanitarian effort and community spirit, more courage and resilience and sharing the fire of all of that.

Eat your Greens. Read Books. Find the Others. Share Light. Stop the Bombs.

Happy New Year!

With Love, Love and more Love,

Xxsg