Writing for Fun
February 2016
The Vanishing - Jeanette Rothwell
'I hate garden gnomes, they're positively ridiculous!' she exclaimed.
'I didn't know that,' said her very confused husband.
'The subject has never arisen,' she pointed out
'I thought it would finish off our nice new fish pond,' ventured Geoff.
'It most certainly will not,' affirmed Kate.
So the argument carried on. Geoff had stood at the front door clutching a large carrier bag which revealed the offending gnome. Kate opened the door and he had given her a lovely bright smile expecting her grateful kiss for his thoughtful gift and now he was confronted with an angry wife scorning his kind gesture.
In order to keep the peace, Geoff reluctantly took the gnome into the garage which, like most garages, did not contain a car but all the junk and unwanted tat that the family had grown out of. He found a space on one of the shelves and placed the gnome there and stood back to admire it. A red shiny hat, white beard, blue jacket, orange trousers, black shiny boots. The hands had a hole in each to take the little fishing rod. The eyes were a piercing blue and his grin was decidedly fiendish – the gnome that is.
Geoff went back into the house, firstly towards the kitchen, but as he got to the door he could see that Kate was starting to prepare dinner and was at that moment venting her frustration on a potato followed by some vicious tenderising of some steak, so he backed away quietly, trod stealthily across the hall into the lounge, picked up the newspaper and sank into his favourite chair.
Half an hour later, he heard the oven door close and some appetising aromas coming from the kitchen. Kate joined him in the lounge and no more was said about the gnome. Their peace was soon shattered by the arrival home of their two sons who had been to football practise and as Geoff and Kate had always agreed never to argue in front of the children, the boys knew nothing of the underlying tension. The evening progressed like many families, arguments about dirty football boots in the sink, untidy bedrooms, homework and reluctant bedtimes.
The following morning, once her husband and children had gone their separate ways, Kate set about some of her chores and when she had to go into the garage the subject of the marital argument was there on the shelf grinning at her. She uttered a noise of disgust and slammed the garage door after her. She sat down with a cup of tea and telephoned her mother to tell her about the latest unwelcome member of their family. Her mother laughed and offered to take the gnome to the church jumble sale.
Kate went shopping in the afternoon and when she returned she noticed that the gnome had gone. Her mother had kept her promise.
Later on that day, the doorbell rang. She could hear her two sons laughing at the front door and opened it remonstrating with them for not using their key. There stood her lovely sons carrying a large carrier bag which with a great deal of ceremony they opened to reveal said garden gnome in all its glory.
The boys shouted, 'Surprise, surprise, we went to Grandma's church jumble sale and bought this to go by our new fish pond. Isn't he splendid?'
At that moment Geoff's car arrived in the driveway and he managed to catch the last words his sons had joyfully explained to their mother. Geoff's grin got wider and wider as he looked at Kate's face which was a mixture of forced smile for the boys and consternation at the situation. How could she turn down her beloved boys' gift? She couldn't, and so the loathed gnome was lovingly placed by the fish pond, his little fishing rod trailing in the water.
However, she visited a garden centre the following day and bought two young laurel bushes which she planted on either side of the gnome. The family thought that looked really nice but what they didn't know was that laurel bushes grow very quickly and very large and in the not too distant future, the hated gnome would become a vanishing gnome behind strong robust foliage.
