No Adjectives

The committee was Joyce, Cameron and an empty chair. Four nominations, one plate of biscuits, and the hall booked until four.

“Number nine,” Joyce read. “‘Kind, generous, always cheerful. A real ray of sunshine.’ That’s it. That’s the whole nomination.”

“Who’s number nine?” Cameron asked.

“No idea. That’s the trouble with sunshine.”

Cameron took the next one. “Right. ‘He is a very direct man who says what he thinks and doesn’t care who hears it.’”

Joyce laughed. “That isn’t a nomination. That’s a complaint with a stamp on it.”

“It says ‘brave’ at the bottom.”

“It would.”

“There’s a note at the end, too,” Cameron said. “‘He isn’t rude. He’s honest. There is a difference.’”

“Somebody’s been arguing about that at home,” Joyce said.

The third was longer. Cameron read it twice, once to himself and once aloud, because the first time he wasn’t sure which way it went. It described a woman who was shy, reliable and stubborn about the recycling bins, and who had not once said hello in eleven years. “Is that praise?”

“It’s affection,” Joyce said. “From somebody who’s given up expecting hello.”

The fourth had no adjectives in it at all.

Cameron read it slowly. “‘On the fourteenth of January my boiler stopped. The man at number four came at half past nine at night with his tools and stayed until midnight. He wouldn’t take money. In February he did the same for the flat above me. In March he taught my son to change a wheel in the rain. He has lived here two years.’”

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“No adjectives,” Cameron said.

“Not one,” Joyce said. She wrote something on the form. “Read me the sunshine one again.”

“You don’t want the sunshine one.”

“I know. I want to hear the difference.”