She had always harboured the secret suspicion that Mr. Vernon was a vampire. She didn’t know why, exactly. She couldn’t pin it down on one particular thing. Rather, it was a combination of factors: his extremely pale, almost luminous white skin; his shiny white incisors, which seemed to her somewhat sharper than one would expect; his soft, deep voice, which she imagined was exactly the sort of voice a vampire would use to lure unsuspecting females into his lair… She shuddered. Mr. Vernon, the vampire…she thought to herself, as she had many times before. Of course, he had a first name, but “David, the vampire” was inferior to “Vernon
Mr. David Vernon was not a vampire. He was, however, a high school Maths teacher with a secret talent: he played the bagpipes. Not frightfully well, I might add, but well enough that he could carry a tune. That is, if he played a song, one could generally recognise it, or at least vaguely recall it being in That Movie With The Famous Actor In It. Mr. Vernon also had another secret which was far more embarrassing: a fairly large crush on Miss Carolyn Waters. Of this secret she could never know for he was sure that his chronic awkwardness when talking to her was evident, and slightly repulsive.
But some women find awkwardness endearing, don’t they? Miss Carolyn Waters, though she did not know it at the time, was one of these women. And so it transpired that on the afternoon of Friday, the 12th of April at around five minutes past five, a meeting between the two took place. The meeting took place – as all meetings of importance do – in the staff kitchen of the school they both taught at. The Friday afternoon staff meeting had just ended, and they were, conveniently, the last people left. Mr. Vernon was rinsing out his dark green coffee mug, while surreptitiously glancing at Miss Waters every now and then. Miss Waters was rummaging around for another Royal Cream biscuit in the biscuit tin, completely unaware of Mr. Vernon’s shy glances. When, at last, she found one of those delightful biscuits at the bottom of the tin, she turned to face Mr. Vernon and nibbled on it with a gleeful expression. “Mmmm… Don’t you absolutely love Royal Creams?” she mumbled, through a mouthful of sweet crumbs. The thought occurred to Mr. Vernon that this was perhaps the most romantic moment of his life, and that Miss Carolyn Waters was perhaps the most elegant, charming woman alive. It was as he was thinking these very thoughts that his mind somehow managed to string together a coherent sentence, which he repeated to Miss Waters. “Yes, indeed. They are far superior to other biscuits, aren’t they?” These few words affected Miss Carolyn Waters deeply and unexpectedly, and she knew that she had found a kindred spirit.
The two teachers looked at each other for a long moment, each thinking their own thoughts. Mr. Vernon was thinking that Miss Waters’ eyes were the bluest he had ever seen, and that they were roughly the colour of the sky at twilight. He was also wondering if he should tell her this, or if maybe she knew already. (She did, in fact, know already. Many people had told Miss Carolyn Waters that her eyes were the bluest they had seen, but Mr. Vernon did not know this.) She was looking at his incisors, and wondering if they had ever bitten human flesh. No, she decided, they had not. She then looked at his very pale skin and decided that there was a certain charm about such fragile, delicate-looking skin. By the time Mr. Vernon spoke in that soft, deep voice of his, Miss Carolyn Waters had firmly made up her mind to like him. “Your eyes are the bluest I have ever seen, Carolyn” he said. Somehow, she thought to herself, when Mr. Vernon said this sentence, it sounded different from all the other times. Different, and more beautiful.
“I play a bit of piano,” she was saying on Monday afternoon in the staffroom, “Do you play anything, David?” (She had quite taken to the name David lately, for reasons she herself did not understand, but which we understand completely.) David Vernon had not told anyone about his secret talent, as he was rather embarrassed by it. The bagpipes are not, after all, a particularly fashionable instrument to play. It wasn’t as if he was a closet electric guitarist, you know. Now, though, he surprised himself by declaring the truth: “Actually, I do play an instrument, Carolyn,” (he had always been fond of the name Carolyn, for reasons he knew entirely too well.) “Meet me in the music room after school, and I’ll show you.” A little bubble of excitement – the kind that only arrives in anticipation of a surprise – welled up in the chest of Miss Carolyn Waters, and stayed there the entire day. It didn’t even pop when she was forced to correct the numerous grammatical errors of her Grade 11 essays.
The school music room had never held such appeal for Carolyn, and she hurried towards it eagerly. David was already inside, she saw through the window, standing awkwardly with something large and bulky in his arms. Never before had an awkward stance and an unidentifiable, large object been so utterly charming. She opened the door.
“Carolyn!” he walked over to her with a large smile on his face. His incisors glinted cheerfully. The object, she noticed now, was made of old tartan material, and had long pipes sort of sticking out… “Bagpipes?” she asked, disbelievingly. He grinned impishly and proceeded to blow into the pipes with gusto. What happened next is a curious thing indeed: the music notes, as he played them, grew wings and fluttered around the room. They landed on Carolyn’s shoulders, they tugged playfully at her hair, and when they entered the ears of Miss Carolyn Waters, they were infinitely sweeter than when they left the bagpipes of Mr. David Vernon. A curious phenomenon indeed, and one generally called “love”. The love, when it arrived, did so quietly and innocuously so as not to disturb the two teachers. Love, after all, is not intended to offend. After David had finished playing, however, they were both hit by a wave of intense affection for one another, which caused Miss Carolyn to exclaim, “Oh, dear!” David looked at her questioningly, “What is it, Carolyn?” he asked, innocently enough.
“David Vernon, I believe you have stolen my heart” she answered, quite out of breath.
The wedding, when it happened, was not a grand affair. Inexpensive and uncomplicated, it did not demand attention as weddings so often do. But when Miss Carolyn Waters walked down the aisle, the backs of the chairs straightened, and the organ’s notes became crisper: the love shared by her and Mr. David Vernon was tangible. To everyone present, the air suddenly tasted of vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries (because, as we all know, this is what love tastes like) and they knew that the marriage they were witnessing was as pure and beautiful as love itself.
Love is a simple thing indeed. All it takes for love to occur, you see, is two unremarkable people, and some very special biscuits.
aaaahh such a good valentine's day read ♥
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