Grand Prize 2024 - Winner

Mrs. Tattershall first met Joan of Arc at the end of the biscuit aisle in Lidl. She had been struggling to locate a packet of her daughter’s favourite lemon puffs when the young Maid of Orleans kindly picked one out and passed it to her. “Thank you,” said Mrs. Tattershall with a smile. It had been a nice gesture from someone who had died in 1431.
She put it into her basket along with her bread, jam and tea (loose leaf, not bagged). Food wasn’t something that Mrs. Tattershall often splashed out on but when it came to afternoon tea in the garden, a little luxury was worth it.
It wasn’t until she had left the store that she wondered what Joan of Arc had been doing in Lidl. Otley wasn’t the first place that came to her mind when considering dead French saints. She wondered if it had been her imagination but then decided it was more likely to have been a store promotion for something like French cheese. It was curious though why they had chosen to dress and make her up in the style they had. This Joan harkened back to her origins as a French country girl of the lower classes. Her red linen dress and apron were a little worn and frayed at the edges. Her hair was cut short, dark brown, falling down beneath a plain, white cotton hat.
The more that Mrs. Tattershall thought about it, the more she wondered how anyone was supposed to have known that she was Joan of Arc at all. She remembered her daughter’s Ladybird books with their colourful paintings and vaguely recalled an image of the young Joan herding farm animals as a child. The promotions company had probably used it as a source for her costume. The books were still in a cabinet in her daughter’s room. She would have to go and look them up sometime and seek the image out.
But not yet.
Maybe later.
Maybe never.
It was almost two o’clock in the afternoon when she got home. The sun would soon be moving on, its heat and light blocked by Mr. Coffey’s Leylandii at the side of the garden. It irked her that he never responded to her requests to cut it back. It irked her even more that she no longer got the cooler, late afternoon sun across her patio that she and Claudia had enjoyed for so many years.
“I could despatch him for you if you like,” said Joan of Arc.
“What?” Mrs. Tattershall exclaimed, turning to see the same young girl standing in the kitchen doorway.
“I could despatch him for you,” Joan repeated. Her French accent was distinct although she was speaking in English which seemed surprising. She was wearing a dark green doublet and pale green hose with leather boots just below the knee. Her hair was now the more familiar bob. In her right hand she brandished a sword.
“I don’t think I want anybody despatched,” Mrs. Tattershall affirmed, although deep down she wondered if that was true.
“Does he not care nothing for his fellow man?” Joan asserted.
“I don’t know about that,” said Mrs. Tattershall. “But he did give me some carrots a few weeks ago. And he always clears the snow and ice in front of the house in winter.” She watched Joan of Arc’s face closely as she spoke but there was not a flicker of emotion to be seen. She had hard, cold features, maybe a suppressed anger beneath. It made Mrs. Tattershall sad to see such a young girl so hardened by her life.
Sad and a little scared.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” asked Mrs. Tattershall. “I was just about to make a pot and sit outside in the sunshine.” She got no response and added, “There’ll be toast and raspberry jam.” Still no answer was forthcoming. Mrs. Tattershall got on with making the tea and piling toast up neatly onto a white plate, then carried them through to the garden.
She pulled out two chairs and turned to see Joan of Arc now donned in a suit of armour with a very regal ermine surcoat of white and scarlet thrown across the shoulders. She thought about offering Joan a lemon puff, her daughter’s favourite, but it didn’t seem right to open the packet without Claudia being there.
The breast plate and armoured leggings made it a little difficult for Joan to lower herself onto the chair and she had to lean back and slide herself onto the seat. It all looked rather unwieldy and comical. Claudia would have been laughing her head off had she been here to see it.
“I was a little surprised to see you today,” said Mrs. Tattershall. “It’s not every day that someone like you comes to Otley.”
Joan shrugged as much as one could in armour, metal epaulettes clinking at the shoulders. “I come where I am needed,” she said.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Tattershall, a little surprised. “What makes you think you are needed here?”
“You need me,” Joan replied flatly.
At first, Mrs. Tattershall was a little uncertain what to say. She wasn’t normally one to ask for help, even if she did need it, and had she wanted it then she wasn’t sure that Joan of Arc would have been the first person to spring to mind.
“I am a daughter of France,” Joan said with pride, “but I fear I am gone and forgotten now.”
“Oh no, not forgotten, never,” Mrs. Tattershall insisted.
She looked at the packet of unopened biscuits. “I wish Claudia were here now,” she said. She turned to look at Joan but the chair was empty. She looked up and down the garden and back to the kitchen but there was no sign of her. It was curious. She felt sure that she would have heard some clanking armour if she had got up to move but there had been no sound.
As Mrs. Tattershall walked back to the kitchen something made her glance up. In the small window upstairs she thought she saw a familiar young face with bobbed hair looking out at her, but no, there was nobody there. She stepped back indoors and considered what to do next. There was no sign of Joan in or out of the house. The afternoon sun was moving around, a long shadow starting to form across the patio from Mr. Coffey’s Leylandi.
It was time, Mrs. Tattershall decided. She had put if off for far too long and this was something that she needed to put to rest. Something about that Daughter of France had put the idea into her head. She required the same conviction, the same resolve. She turned out of the kitchen and headed up the narrow staircase.
The bathroom and Mrs. Tattershall’s bedroom were on the left but Mrs. Tattershall turned right. She laid the palm of one hand on the wooden door with the china nameplate with images of plants and animals and the name Claudia written in black serif. She lowered her hand and turned the door handle, pushing the door slowly before tentatively venturing in.
Everything was exactly as she remembered it. The cotton bedspread with the gold velour spread across the top. Piles of paperwork, pen holders and accounting books in disarray across the work desk. Shoes stacked up against the side of the wardrobe, make-up bags and brushes on the small dresser, sun bouncing off a mirror and reflecting onto the wooden trunk and cabinet by the window. Even her daughter’s odour was still there, that light scent of citrus and hops.
Mrs. Tattershall ventured over to the trunk full of fluffy toys and puzzles that Claudia had loved. In the cabinet, her small collection of books. And there in the middle of the shelf, the faded, tattered Ladybird book about Joan of Arc, so well-thumbed, an image of Joan in her slender armour and robe, just as she had been wearing in the garden.
For so long Mrs. Tattershall had kept the door to Claudia’s room shut, unable to acknowledge the reality, let alone be reminded of it in such a physical way. Yet somehow it wasn’t how she had imagined it. It was all rather comforting, without the angst or the pain of loss that she had been expecting.
She perused the book and smiled as she flicked through it’s pages. There was the one of Joan, the young girl, toiling on the farm, the girl in Lidl who had been kind enough to seek out and pass across a packet of her daughter’s favourite lemon puffs.
Mrs. Tattershall caressed the book and gently placed it by the photo of her daughter, face beaming, her bobbed hair falling by the sides of her rosy cheeks. Then she stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her.
Outside a loud whirring noise had started as Mr. Coffey began cutting back the height of his Leylandi. Late afternoon sunlight was spreading out across the patio.