Danny the Guru Cat: Winnie's words

Hello, it's Winnie. I just sneaked in while Dan is out owning the neighbourhood. I just wanted to say that he is very uncouth, rude, abrupt and sometimes just plain insufferable - but I love him because it's what makes him Dan. I think he's too hard on G. I won't use his-name-what-they-call-him as I don't want to embarass him, but I'm certainly not calling him 'Softboy'. That is just so rude! He's kind to us, and sometimes when Dan isn't owning the house, we get some squeeze time. The other day he was looking through some old photos. He saw I was interested (I was sat on the coffee table next to him) and he told me a story. It was a love story. I asked him to share it...

Bett had always feared the dark. Not dark corners or nights generally - although in the days before streetlights, when she had to walk for four miles through forest roads at the back of Parkhurst prison, and when prisoners were on the run she did - but her fear was more of the 'eternal dark'. In truth, she feared many things, being quite emotionally fragile. "Free-floating anxiety" was the diagnosis of more than one medical professional who had clutched at the intangible straws of her psyche. She had always been overly aware of what what people might think of her, how she'd be perceived maternally, professionally and individually. But most of all it was her fear of the dark, the ultimate, eternal dark, the end.

Brought up in a poor farm worker's family, one of seven, she was virtually given away with the hope of a better life to a local priest at the age of ten. He had a housekeeper who wanted to be more to him. His eyes were unfortunately tainted with sin, and they fell upon Bett. The housekeeper made it her duty to inflict the viciousness that her sexually repressed jealousy caused her to feel upon Bett, and her life was for a few years a misery. Caught between the resentment of two desperately flawed individuals, Bett committed herself as an escape to her work in a local department store where she was respected for her 'head for figures'.

When she met Reg, she was still a delicate and beautiful seventeen year old. Tall and film star handsome, and not long back from the horrors of war, Reggie was her salvation. They fell in love, and it showed. His father - with whom he worked in the family wood-cutting business - loved her, but his mother only tolerated her. She didn't care, you don't when you are in love. Her parents loved him. He was a gentleman in all senses of the word, quiet, patient, strong but fun. For the first time she had a life rather than an existence, and the fears she'd always harboured subsided. Their romance had a warmth that radiated from their pictures together, and everyone felt it was a natural union.

Soon, when she was 18 they married, and found a place of their own, The romance blossomed and so did she . She found another gift, cooking. Plain simple baking was her forte, with wholesome stews and casseroles - but mainly it was her pastries and cakes that people visited for. Her chocolate sponges were legendary. As the war had not long ended, they managed to be allocated a house that could only be inhabited by agricultural workers, and they moved to number 23. It was the beginning of an era.

Sadly, the romance was not to last, but the love still remained. It is said the course of true love never runs smoothly. His father died at the age of only sixty three, and the business became Reggie's responsibility. Having been made responsible for far too much and far too many throughout the Seige of Malta in the war while not much more than a boy himself, he was not looking for any more responsibility. His mother, and her Edwardian outlook wanted them to move in with her, and for him to run the business from the family home. Bett was having none of it. She'd found her freedom, her own life, and was giving it up for no-one.

Having lost his businees mentor and the driving force behind his work, Reggie began to spend more and more of his time at his demanding mother's - sometimes for weeks on end. Bett did what she did best, she survived. The romance had sowered, but the love that was never extinguished remained. She threw herself into a life of self-sacrifice that would cause her to take on anyone with a need. Despite his becoming more reclusive by the day, and her opening both her door and her heart to anyone with a need, their marriage of attrition endured for the next sixty years.

A phenomenal if awkward team, he was always quietly in the background supporting her charitable deeds, doing whatever was required of him - quietly, patiently, and never a complaint. Five confinements saw five children born in their home, only two of them hers, some of the births were touch and go. For years people came to stay for the summer season, and when the room became vacant, it soon attracted others. Some stayed for days while their own marriages dissolved, others for years at a time.

It was where everyone went when they met, parted and sorted things out. There was always a chocolate cake, a spare fag, a spare ten bob, even if Reggie and her had to go without. All the family news came through number 23, and the people returned year after year. Politics, fashions and outlooks changed, but always, Our Bett was the one stable factor in the lives of so many. If they couldn't make it to her, she'd send out to them. Sunday was the day her kids would be seen running up and down the road with trays of roast dinner and a "hot pudden" for all the old folk that were house bound. No matter who turned up, or when, there was always a spare plate and a spare bed. You could sleep on the floor if you had to, but you ate at the table please.

But for Bett, it was never fulfillment. She always felt she could, should, have given and done more. Her anxiety wasn't removed by her life of service, it was just repressed. There were rows, and threats of divorce, long silences and seperate rooms, but there was never, ever anyone else - for either of them. She always cared for him, and he only ever spoke well of her to others and was always grateful for all she did. A mis-match made in heaven. It was quite simple really. Neither of them ever truly embraced this world, nor it them. They belonged together - but not here.

In March 2007, after a long and uncomfortable illness in which his heart and lungs could no longer cope, he said thank you to her for the last time. She said on that day of the sanctuary that was number twenty three, "Within two years, this house will be empty", because you see, without him, it already was. She stumbled on, but never lost the depression, and became too tired to care. Always showing her brave face to those around - until her character began to change, and the quick mind began to dim.

Her acute myeloid leukaemia was in the final stages when they told her. Her fear of the dark once more came to the fore. In every knock at the door, and in every overheard conversation, she heard the hooves of the four horsemen. In every shadow she saw the Reaper - until the last few days. In those last few days, he visited her. He brought with him many others, and with them the eternal love that is nowhere on this Earth to be found. As she conversed with them, they made her understand the truth. Life is the living death, and far more to be feared than crossing the divide. On the other side was waiting her reward, and far from the darkness she feared which were only shadows cast in the dim light of the Sun, there was the brightest light of all.

Eighteen months after he left here, at 2.30 on a September morning, surrounded by those who loved her here, and beckoned by those who would love her there, she finally realised she would leave nothing behind. Her greatest love was there, just waiting to be reunited with her, but this time in everlasting peace and joy. The sixty fleeting years shared here were now just a memory with no more longevity than the flash of a shooting star, but the thought of an eternity of love over there allowed her to finally leave her fear behind her. Forever.