Showcase: The Huntress + A Telephone Call Away

Edited by Mary Walsh

Hello, it’s me, Mary Walsh, back again with my fourth Showcase. The theme is ‘Evolution/Revolution.’ I thought I’d start with a poem from Ray Miles: the evolution of wild cats to our own domestic huntress.

The Huntress

She yawns, and shows her two white fangs, designed
by Nature to rip flesh or snap a neck.
Her whiskers twitch as a scent drifts across.
She is black, as black as the darkest night,
moving silently through the undergrowth,
some kind of grim reaper in feline form.
Her bright green eyes shine as she stalks her prey.
Inching forward, sinuous, slow and low.
The high grass hardly moves as she closes
In. She crouches now, waiting, poised to kill,
Focused only on her victim, tensed, ready.
Then she springs and with one flash of her paws
The mouse is caught, and clamped between her jaws,
A present, a meal for her family.
Though we may think that they are tamed by us,
our pets are still just versions of their past,
the age-old instincts never fade or die,
my house panther remains true to her roots.

© Ray Miles, 2025

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Next is a short story by Isabelle Audiger.  It demonstrates the evolution of grief; never quite as we expect and different for us all.

A Telephone Call Away

On the first day of November, last year, at 5.36pm, Mother called to break the bad news. It was cancer, after all. Pancreas. I held on to my phone, sat down in the dark on the closest armchair of the empty living room and tried to adopt her always cool and determined inflections. “What about the prognosis?”

“They’re speaking of surgery and light chemo. Prognosis is good. I’ll see you when you come over for Christmas.”

Who’s ever heard of a light chemo? By January of this year, we lost her. I lost her. Christmas had come and gone and I wasn’t allowed to visit. In the beginning, I had her on the phone, on Father’s old mobile that he would leave on her bedside table, among the pills, vials and gauze dressings she always complained about. “I might as well have stayed in hospital; it smells like one anyway!” In the end, she wouldn’t even pick up my calls, would let the phone ring and never listened to my messages. I blocked the voicemail in a record two weeks. Father had probably forgotten everything about his phone by then.

Every time I called Mother, I wondered whether Father would keep my messages. Had he kept all my messages over the years, asking to speak to Mother for little nothings, just to hear her voice, her slow flow and relish her controlled Northumberland accent while I was away in London? I secretly hoped he would. No. It was something else. Can I be honest with myself, for once? Now would be a good time to start, I suppose. What I really wanted to know was whether he’d kept the text I’d sent him when I left home all those years ago. His silence at the time made me feel guilty and, over the years, transparent. So, to be honest,  I didn’t really want to know whether he cared about that text. No. What I really wanted to know was whether he cared about me. There, I’ve said it. The bloody stupid message isn’t important. It wasn’t meant for him. If it got lost in telephonic limbo, I want to know. I deserve to know. I deserve a father again.

I’m home, alone with Father. I’ve taken time away from the office to spend a few days with him and go through Mother’s papers and things. The boys and Frank will arrive later, on Christmas Eve. It’s the best deal I could negotiate with Father. In his finest professional accent, my therapist husband declared it a necessary journey, seeing me off with a kiss. I’m not your patient, darling.

Father is still the same stern, silent individual, but he looks smaller and frailer as he climbs the stairs to the spare room which has become a storeroom for everything that belonged to her. “Too much stuff. Ridiculous. You deal with it, Claire.” And then he goes to sit back down in front of the telly, in the lounge, each step down the wooden stairs heavier. He seems angry, eaten from within and sometimes absent. He’s started to lose track of where objects are in the house. I worry about him staying on his own. Does he worry too? Hard to say. Things have been happening this year he had no control over: illness, death, and my mother’s unflinching will to shut everyone out. He had to face it alone. He had to accept. He had to let go. I can’t help but wish it had been me. But I’d been left out.

The sun is still high, darting its pale light through the small window of what has become a sort of mausoleum to Mother’s life and habits. It’s a lovely afternoon out there, and it’s been a long time since I went for one of my walks, exploring my beloved Northumberland country lanes. I decide to abandon Mother’s clothes, shoes, jewellery, collections of crystal animals and tax files from 20 years ago, to run downstairs. “Don’t run on the stairs, young lady!” Father would shout. But not today. I can see his white head popping above the sofa. Motionless. “I’m going for a walk, Father!” I can hear him groan. I breathe out. I hadn’t noticed but my heart had missed a beat.

I put on my boots, grab my coat, the one that’s always waiting for me, my faithful yellow raincoat that accompanied me throughout my difficult teenage years and that Mother has kept for me on the hook in the hall above my boots. It reminds me of the row that exploded one evening when I was coming back from school and Mother saw the big black letters forming the word FREEDOM on the back of the yellow coat.

“What sort of statement is this? What do you mean by ‘freedom’? Do you consider you’re not free?” She was furious. And probably annoyed at the fact that, once again, she would be summonsed by my form teacher and as a colleague from the neighbouring prep school, it was usually was more of a trial than a friendly conversation.

Father, who was having his tea in the kitchen, came to see the offence, grunted, and went back to his dinner. After a full day in the workshops of the dying Blyth power station, he was too tired and gloomy to get involved in any of our stormy discussions. He’d made a habit of it. A rule. It would have shocked Mother and I if he had only tried to intervene. So who am I to resent his silence this afternoon?

The humidity in the air, the smell of the wet earth, the clear sky after the morning showers; I’m not disappointed when I step out. Everything is here, as I expected: the sleepy December garden, the ever-growing walnut tree, rocking its branches to the cool north-westerly wind, the farms in the distance, the fields heavy with promising, fertile land, and the silence of the wind, telling nothing, a meaningless song that rests the soul. I set about my walk with long strides, feeling safe under my raincoat. My boots clatter on the road and I don’t try to avoid the puddles, my feet protected from the dirty rain trapped within the numerous potholes. I’m beaming. I’m 13, and when I come back, Mother will have prepared tea and cake. I’ll pour the tea. She’ll cut the cake. We’ll share, and she will say something about the cherry colour of my cheeks, patting them. I’m happy.

Why have I put my hands in the pockets of my coat? What does it mean that my father’s telephone is in its right hand pocket? Why do I find it here? Does he wear it? I can’t fathom why he would. He has his own yellow raincoat, and his own hook in the hall, with his boots underneath. As for Mother, she could never get herself to bother with walks and boots and raincoats, or mobile phones. I feel the telephone with the tip of my fingers. It’s definitely the old Samsung.

Suddenly, a large puddle bars the lane I’ve entered a few metres before. I realise I want to go back. Now. It starts raining. The sky is dark,  he wind colder. I jump over every puddle I meet, my feet almost not touching the ground. I’m running back home. Will he remember the infamous text? I don’t care.

“We need to talk, Father.” I’ll take his grunting for a yes.

(c) Isabelle Audiger, 2025

Connect with Isabelle on Facebook: Isabelle Audiger-Auteure, on Instagram: @isabelleaudiger and on LinkedIn: Isabelle Audiger.

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