VALENTINE BLUES
A short story by Sharon Owens
Valentine’s Day was the busiest day of the year at Ruby Valentine Flowers. Well,
what else could she have been with a name like Ruby Valentine, but a florist? It
was also one of the most depressing days as Ruby watched the parade of usual suspects
come in and pick out the first thing that caught their eye. Hopefully something easy
to carry and not too expensive; something red and showy and covered with curly ribbons...
For that’s what most women wanted, wasn’t it? A lot of plastic packaging and a card
with I Love You printed on it by the manufacturer.
Oh, here was the first one of the batch, she noticed, as a tall and well-dressed
businessman came dashing in the door, mobile phone jammed to his ear as always. He
collected his order and flicked his credit card hurriedly towards Ruby’s face. Two
massive sprays of red roses, one for his wife and one for his mistress. Ruby knew
this was the case because she had seen him kissing his secretary outside a restaurant
one night, and she had also seen him in the local paper with his wife at a black-tie
dinner. Ruby handed over the bouquets and completed the transaction quickly. Mr Crawford
didn’t like to be kept waiting.
Next was a rather unpleasant-looking man with a broken nose, a shaved head and two
scars on his left temple. He was known to local traders as a bit of a nuisance; a
street-drinker who pestered passers-by for money. Ruby pitied the man’s wife from
the bottom of her heart as he counted out the cost of a single red rose in loose
change on the counter. She gave him the nicest rose-in-a-box she had in the shop.
A lovely, fat, deep-red bloom with a long stem and a gold ribbon tied round it. The
man didn’t bother with a card to go with his gift. Instead he staggered out of the
shop clutching the rose to his chest as if it were worth a fortune. It would probably
be crumpled by the time he got it home.
A few minutes later, three middle-aged men nipped into the shop from the bookmaker’s
next door and casually selected their Valentine posies, making woefully unfunny comments
about how grateful their respective partners would be that night. Ruby had to turn
her face away from their cigarette smoke as she took their money. They asked, as
they always did, if Ruby had a Valentine of her own tucked away somewhere. And Ruby
joked, as she always did, that she was dating a heavyweight boxer with a bad temper.
By mid-afternoon she was feeling very down. Most of the men who had been in to the
shop were awful, cheating, aggressive, vile creatures who didn’t know the first thing
about women or romance. And all the beautiful white lilies she’d done up with big
raffia bows and elegant silver twigs were left unsold. Men were very slow to catch
onto new trends, she thought sadly. It never ceased to amaze her how some marriages
survived; so many seemed tattered and hopeless.
And then at four o’clock, just as she was despairing of selling any of her beautiful
lilies, a little old man came in and stood shyly by the door, pondering the displays
of fresh blooms and nodding his head slowly as if he were doing mental maths.
“Can I help you at all?” Ruby asked gently, smiling at him.
“Well, yes please. I’m looking for something really special for my wife, Dorothy.
You see, we’re married fifty years today. But she’s a bit fed up since we moved into
the retirement village at the end of the street. She misses the big garden we had
in the country. I can’t decide what to get her, they all look so nice.”
“What were her favourite flowers in the garden?” Ruby asked.
“Anything blue,” he said. “Blue is her favourite colour. I never had to buy flowers
before because Dorothy preferred to grow her own. I did all the donkey work; the
hedge-trimming and the lawn-cutting. But Dorothy was the real gardener in our marriage,”
he added proudly.
Ruby’s heart melted. She snipped the price tag off a massive bunch of all-white blooms.
“I don’t have any blue flowers in stock right now but I’ll add blue ribbons to this
bouquet,” she offered kindly. “Would that do?”
“That would be great,” the old man said. “I hope I can afford it.”
“This one’s on special offer,” Ruby told him. “Your wife will adore these flowers,
I just know it.”
The old man had tears in his eyes as she dressed up the bouquet in new ribbons.
“Thank-you,” he said, touching his cap as he backed out of the shop, careful to mind
the crisp cellophane edges of his great prize.
“You’re welcome,” Ruby said as she watched him hurry down the street towards the
new retirement village, and hopefully to his delighted wife of fifty years. “So true
love does still exist, after all.”
THE END
