Marjorie

Marjorie sat on the settee, cup of freshly brewed tea perched on the knee of her crossed legs, prepared to take a sip then tutted to herself. She stood up, placed the cup and saucer precisely on the coffee table in front of her. Though for the millionth time she admonished whoever had named it such a thing, for it was so very clearly a table for tea. Placing the cup and saucer precisely on the tea table in front of her, she turned delicately, more a sort of pirouette really, so surprisingly graceful was her movement. Measured and intentional. Having turned thus, she plumped the cushions, rearranged their position. Rearranged them again, then sat once more upon the settee. But it was no use. However much she tried to get comfortable, she just could not seem to sit in a way she had used to or a new one that felt satisfactory. And her programme would be starting soon. She always liked to sit on the settee with a cup of tea and a jaffa cake to watch her programme. She glanced at the carriage clock on the mantlepiece. It was almost three o’clock. She hated missing the start of her programme. She did so enjoy humming along with the theme tune. With that in mind, she left the room, returning a mere minute later with an upright chair from the dining room. She positioned it just so in front of the settee, as close as possible to her usual seat and tried that instead. After having first placed her favourite cushion on it. The one Janet from the bingo had embroidered for her. Marjorie took great satisfaction from placing her behind upon it. But the dining room chair was even harder to try to sit on than the settee had been. Practical as ever, Marjorie refused to be defeated. She carried the dining room chair back, glancing at the carriage clock on the mantlepiece before she did so. It was now just after three o’clock. She was missing the start of her programme, her tea was getting cold and the chocolate on the jaffa cake was starting to melt. She could always just stand she supposed. But no. She dismissed this thought as soon as it arose. She had one idea left. Having deposited the dining room chair back where it belonged, she continued down the hallway, moving at a bit of a pace now, grabbed the step-stool from the pantry and dashed back to the lounge. Marjorie plonked the stool down, plonked Janet’s embroidered cushion on it, then plonked her own self on that. She felt a little preposterous she had to admit but finally, finally she was able to relax and sit down without this blasted tail making everything so dashed difficult. When the doctor had told her it was possible there might be the odd side effect from the new medication he was prescribing for the joint pain in her right hip, the tail wasn’t quite the kind of side effect she had in mind. She had supposed maybe a bit of bloating, like Doris across the way. This obviously hadn’t been the case for Marjorie. Marjorie clicked the television on with the remote that lived on the tea table just as the theme tune finished for her programme and she huffed at the imposition of having missed it. Then immediately brightened when the presenter came on and she called out his catchphrase along with him, giggling to herself and flirting with him from afar. Her tail swished in accordance, by now grazing the floor in a motion she found quite soothing. Though she would never admit that to Janet at the bingo. Marjorie had thought at first she might perhaps have been bitten when she felt the swollen lump a few days ago. You heard all kinds of stories of large spiders stowing away in boxes of bananas. Not being as agile as she once was, she hadn’t been able to quite see the back of herself, why back in the day she could do the splits for a threepenny bit. Now, what with her hip playing up and all, she couldn’t quite turn enough to tell what the lump was and things always felt bigger than they actually were. So she paid it no mind, rubbed a bit of calamine lotion from an old bottle on it, and went about her day. She’d had no problems that night slipping her nightie on, nothing had seemed untoward for a good wee while in fact. Then she started to notice how her hips seemed to swing a little more as she walked. She put it down to the new medication. Which was true in a way, just not for the reason she might have thought. What was really most remarkable was how quickly it had grown. If you’d have asked Marjorie, over a glass of stout say, after the bingo, to have a guess at how long it might take a person to grow a tail, she would have thought it a whole lifetime. Like an arm or a leg. But hers had developed in less time than it took the milk to go off. Marjorie nibbled on the jaffa cake and smiled secretly to herself, as her tail swished contentedly behind her.