The China Cup and Saucer

I wrote this two years ago during an exam and happened to remember it when I got home so wrote it down....

The China Cup and Saucer

There are women for whom every day is the same. And to place change on that day would send worry through perfectly oiled minds. These are the women who drink from a china cup and saucer.

Every morning a small alarm clock will ring at a certain time. She will lift a corner of the sheet, slip out of bed and step into her slippers. She will delicately wrap herself in her silk dressing gown and leave her room – that looks like it’s never been touched.

Her breakfast is always the same: one Weetabix, four tablespoons of milk and a small glass of orange juice.

Her table only ever has one chair by it. Except for when guests are to come round.

On this Thursday morning she adds a drop of milk and sugar to her tea. Which she drinks out of a china cup and saucer.

With her coat perfectly buttoned she walks down the small garden path that is in the centre of perfection. On either side, green yards, where if grass was to exceed allowed limits it would have its head cut off immediately, without  trial or a last word. The roses would stay budding and fresh; the weaker ones not getting a single chance.

This is what she left on that Thursday morning, as she sat in her car to drive to work. But in the window, sat her tea cup from breakfast. An item that should have been washed and put away still sat there. The first sign of change: a hairline crack in the china cup and saucer.

This woman, as she drove off to work, was one of these women of perfection. Her name: Jane Eliza.

After work she pulled out of her bag a small black book, the ‘To Do’ book. As she walked into the café she got her warm smile from the owner, Mr Green, who had saved her regular table. On it he now placed her coffee.

Jane Eliza added a sachet of sugar and three drops of milk before stirring and bringing the mug to her lips to take a single sip. With her pen she crossed out the things she had done and the things she was to do. This is where her thoughts overtook her, and no-one came through her door. But today was different.

A man with whom she occasionally made small-talk smiled at her. He was wearing a big brown jumper with grass green trousers to match. She smiled, a weak polite smile, then closed the imaginary door. Leaving the exact amount of money on the table she stood up to leave. Then she walked into the shop opposite to buy a new china cup and saucer.

The rain was beginning to cry as she walked back into the street. She pulled out an umbrella and walked, like a lady-in-waiting: proper, delicate and perfect.

As she turned the corner into the car park the man from the café stood, smiling at her. In his hands was placed a small but powerful gun.

She stopped, with such composure, straight and fearless. In her hands she held her new china cup and saucer.

‘Your car is so clean,’ he grinned. ‘If a single splat of dirt was to caress it, it would be wiped from it. Disappear from the world.’ She stood silent.

He held up the gun: ‘You were the last job on my To Do list.’ And with a single shot, Jane Eliza was wiped from the world. The perfect little murder.

As he buried her in a small garden just off the motorway, the rain began to sob. As it did so, it wiped her away with it.

There is trouble with women that drink out of a china cup and saucer. They are trapped in a perfect world, so different to yours or mine.  And when something happens out of their control: change, their mind breaks down. Then, slowly they are dispatched from their world and placed back in ours.

So when it rains, and their gardens get too wet and things leak, this is the first stage of change.

Yet Jane Eliza was taken from the world in a different way.

By a man who couldn’t bear the woman he loved so much to ignore him, in every way. She had a list of life and he wasn’t on it.

A perfect rich man was to be his replacement. A perfect man, coupled with the perfect women. The woman he knew he’d never really be able to know.

So he killed her.

And now her china cup and saucer lies broken. With the rain gently falling upon it.