The Rescue(Kristin Dockar) The rescue

‘We gather here today to inter your ashes as a tribute to a life now passed. We will remember your laugh, so bright and sunny, and we thank you for the love you shared. In our heads your memory will live on and now we celebrate the life you lived. We will remember those times we shared and the memories you helped to create’.

Miriam stood back a little from the people gathered around the empty hole in the cemetery. Then moving forward, she tipped the ashes from the urn into the freshly dug hole. Each person added a flower, a poem, a letter, or anything that had connected them to their friend Patricia. Some clutched each other, some wiped tears away. Then they all walked away towards the pub where they would toast their friend’s memory.

Once seated in the pub, relief spread though and they began to chat.
‘It was so sudden’.
‘Didn’t even know she was ill’.
‘She was always very closed about personal matters’ and so the comments flowed on.
Miriam looked around at her friends and colleagues. Some had been gym members with Patricia, some from the local choir, some journalists from the national newspaper she had worked so diligently for.
One of the journalists asked Miriam curiously:’ How did you two meet? You seemed to have been together forever’.
‘ I met her on the train’ and the memory came back so clearly. They had been sitting opposite each other, Patricia working on her laptop. Miriam was reading essays of her students. As the train pulled into Stratford, a man got on holding out a plastic cup. ‘Beggar’ thought Miriam and looked the other way, as did most of the other passengers. But Patricia didn’t. She looked interested.
Miriam did notice his feet. Blue with cold, dirty, just wearing plastic flip flops. She wondered where he was from.
To her amazement Patricia spoke to him.
‘Have you got time to sit down and tell me your story? What’s your name?’
‘Josef’.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Tajikistan’.
‘Why are you begging?’
Josef looked at Patricia warily. ‘You the police?’
‘No, no. I’m a journalist. Always looking for a relevant story’.
‘Ok. I tell you. I came over with people smugglers, paid 10k. They say I will have a job and somewhere to live. Will work in a Takeaway shop in Stratford. But I come, no job, no passport, they take this away. Now I’m trapped’.
‘Why are you begging?’
‘It’s a gang. They take the money and I get a meal and a mattress at the end of the day’.

As the train approached Chancery Lane, Miriam stood up ready to leave. She noticed Patricia giving the man £20.
As the two women walked along the platform, then up the escalator, Miriam turned and said ‘that was kind of you’. And that’s how their friendship began. Patricia introduced herself and asked Miriam if she fancied stopping for a coffee.
‘Certainly’ answered Miriam, highly intrigued.
Over time this friendship turned into a partnership. Of some 20 years. Miriam was astounded that she could be attracted to a woman. But she was.
Now as she sat in the pub, she turned to Josef. He looked so sad. Miriam touched his arm.
‘You made her so happy Josef. To see you flourish and make something of yourself was wonderful to her’.

That day, so long ago, she hadn’t noticed Patricia also slipping him her card with her phone number on it’.
Just a week passed before he called and said one word ‘Help’
‘Where are you Josef?’
‘Stratford’.
‘Hang on, I’m coming’.
Patricia had jumped on the train and found him sitting on the station steps, bruised and bloody. She took him home, didn’t ask any questions, but once home, made him shower and then lie down in her spare bedroom.
She asked his permission to tell his story in a series of articles. In these articles she documented his progress and his rehabilitation. The lengthy process of getting him UK citizenship, and then his training to become a carpenter. Patricia had been at his wedding and was godmother to his first-born child.
Neither Patricia nor Miriam had ever been told why he had fled but they had seen his battered body which spoke of torture.
They looked at each other and raised their glasses.
‘To a truly remarkable woman’ said Miriam.
‘And a wonderful human being’ said Josef, ‘she saved me’.
They put their glasses down and hugged as the tears streamed down their faces.

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