STARSHINE, THE OCEANAND THE UNICORN.
Chapter Four Part Eleven
........ I stood apart from my body and looked down at it, asleep in the grass and the summer flowers. On my right arm, a small brown snake was curled, its tail at my elbow and its head at my wrist. It bit the back of my hand. I felt the pain. I saw myself wake with a start. I sat up, I was frightened, I looked at the snake. The snake spoke to me in whispers, it soothed me, insisting that it had bitten me in the name of love, there was no poison, only love. So I lay down again and slept. I stood over the sleeping body, watching. The snake watched too, its head raised and its tiny eyes fixed on the sleeping face. I kept watching. Time passed. The body would not wake, it grew pale and thin, it was wasting, it was dying, and all the time the snake looked on as its own slow poison killed. The snakes eyes were small points of light, they gleamed with a macabre hunger about to be satiated as the insidious death drew near ........
I awoke, I sat up and sucked at the wound on the back of my hand and spat on the ground. And again I sucked hard and spat hard until I was sure all the poison had been drawn. It was then that I realised that I was no longer standing over my body looking on but it was I who had awoken and it was me who sucked at the back of my own hand. I looked at my hand and there was no wound and there was no snake on my arm.
I looked up at the sky. It was evening, I had slept all day. A tiny breeze tried to breathe through the suffocating air and thunder clouds drew their black shrouds across the sky. I sat in the meadow as the first rain fell, each heavy drop was cold and cleansing.
White lightening filled the world, deep thunder rolled and echoed and rain spilled from the sky. The downpour drenched me. Water ran from my hair and clothes, its coldness trickled against my skin. My senses quickened. I was aware of all my body. My heart and soul were one with my limbs, my breasts, my belly and my womb and all of me was at one with the storm. The storm filled me, I cried out to it, it clenched me then released me. My dark journey was at an end. I was purged. I left the meadow. Guilt, poison and death all washed away and my life was reborn. I walked back to the cottage and the storm and the world walked with me. I knew of the world's existence and I knew that the world knew of my existence.
It was night when I arrived back. My husband stood at the back door ready to greet me with his anger. My steps did not falter as I approached him. He looked at my drenched hair and my sodden hair and his eyes gleamed ready to strike. But when the snake met my eyes it could find no virgin that had wandered away from her engagement party and come back with her dress all dirty and her hair all wild. For the storm and the world were still with me and when the snake saw that my eyes held no fear and that my body stood straight and strong , it turned tail and ran to its armchair and its books. And there it stayed all night in silence. Its fear and dread having been rejected by another, now turned in on itself. The snake was poisoned with its own poison, an emptiness and confusion it would never understand. While I lay upstairs, untortured at last, at peace in a dreamless sleep.
I awoke to the sound of the army car driving my husband away and I knew it was forever. I got out of bed and went downstairs to the larder. I poured the slow, smooth honey from its jar and retrieved the key. I washed away its stickiness and took it back upstairs. As I unlocked the drawer at the foot of the bed I was aware of how my body had changed. My breathing had deepened, my movements were precise, my mind focused clearly and I could feel an intensity of purpose that looked outward and defined the past, present and future all at once within one sure beat of my heart. As though all the shallow breaths, the dizziness, the fear that was blind, deaf and dumb and all the vagueness of before had belonged to a dewy white lava that had squirmed and wriggled with pain as it ate its way through mounds of lies and then hid itself away in a long sleep. So now I had broken the chrysalis walls and emerged. My wings had dried, they were strong and ready to fly.
I dressed simply, I wore my pearls and my only luggage was my hat box and its precious contents. I left my wedding ring on the page of an opened book my husband had left on a desk and from the bookcase I took a bible, beautifully bound and scripted, it was the bible on which we had sworn our vows of marriage.
Lettie had arrived, she was standing in the kitchen doorway. We stood silently, looking in through each others eyes, reflecting each other's strength and hope. No words were said, for sisters, even when they part forever, never say goodbye.
Tom was at the front gate, his cap in hand and once again in our excitement we exchanged our idiot grins.
I walked away down the road to the village.
Friday 25 December 2015
Wednesday 16 December 2015
SHINE,THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN.
Chapter four Part Eleven
One morning in the late summer Lettie and I were washing clothes outside in the warm September sun. The fields were being harvested and the apples were falling. There was a sadness in the air because the summer would soon be gone and the work that had to be done was no longer light hearted but urgent. Tom was not in the garden but with other folk in the fields, fields that were filled with activity and silence. I sat on the kitchen steps, deep in thought, scrubbing clothes on a washboard while Lettie dunked them in tubs of clear water and when they were rinsed she fed them through a mangle and slowly turned the handle with her free hand. She sighed, she was tired and bored. She kept looking at me and waited for me to speak, but I could not speak, neither could I look at her. My husband's cruelty could no longer be hidden by the light of day. His arrogance, his disdain, his cold glory at the top of his dark mountain and his looking down from it with disgust and revulsion at me, my ignorance and my pathetic need for companionship with the lowly and the worthless. Lettie read my thoughts and said softly,
" Ee's a wrong 'un Missus. There's an evil in 'is eyes that the devil 'imself would be proud of. "
Her words were true. I knew him to be evil, akin to the devil, a destroyer of souls. But I had thought that if I did not look I would not see and the world would do the same. If I kept it from the world the world would keep it from me. His mother had tried to open my eyes but I had ignored her and so she had branded me with the immortal tears. Her pearls had not been gift but a sentence. Now Lettie had spoken the truth, but it clarified nothing, it only oppressed me more.
We pegged out the washing and I walked away, alone through the fields, sombre and sullen as the sad September day. The harvesters were absorbed in the sweeping of their scythes and the bundling of the corn. They did not see me as I walked by over the stubbled ground they had left behind them. I walked for miles. My sorrow was so great it was like a heavy stone from which the tears could not flow. I knew that I was nearing the very end of a dark journey but its last stages were the darkest and most treacherous. It was the last confusion before the destination could be reached, from which a light would shine. I came to a meadow and there I lay down in the grass exhausted and I slept.
Chapter four Part Eleven
One morning in the late summer Lettie and I were washing clothes outside in the warm September sun. The fields were being harvested and the apples were falling. There was a sadness in the air because the summer would soon be gone and the work that had to be done was no longer light hearted but urgent. Tom was not in the garden but with other folk in the fields, fields that were filled with activity and silence. I sat on the kitchen steps, deep in thought, scrubbing clothes on a washboard while Lettie dunked them in tubs of clear water and when they were rinsed she fed them through a mangle and slowly turned the handle with her free hand. She sighed, she was tired and bored. She kept looking at me and waited for me to speak, but I could not speak, neither could I look at her. My husband's cruelty could no longer be hidden by the light of day. His arrogance, his disdain, his cold glory at the top of his dark mountain and his looking down from it with disgust and revulsion at me, my ignorance and my pathetic need for companionship with the lowly and the worthless. Lettie read my thoughts and said softly,
" Ee's a wrong 'un Missus. There's an evil in 'is eyes that the devil 'imself would be proud of. "
Her words were true. I knew him to be evil, akin to the devil, a destroyer of souls. But I had thought that if I did not look I would not see and the world would do the same. If I kept it from the world the world would keep it from me. His mother had tried to open my eyes but I had ignored her and so she had branded me with the immortal tears. Her pearls had not been gift but a sentence. Now Lettie had spoken the truth, but it clarified nothing, it only oppressed me more.
We pegged out the washing and I walked away, alone through the fields, sombre and sullen as the sad September day. The harvesters were absorbed in the sweeping of their scythes and the bundling of the corn. They did not see me as I walked by over the stubbled ground they had left behind them. I walked for miles. My sorrow was so great it was like a heavy stone from which the tears could not flow. I knew that I was nearing the very end of a dark journey but its last stages were the darkest and most treacherous. It was the last confusion before the destination could be reached, from which a light would shine. I came to a meadow and there I lay down in the grass exhausted and I slept.
Sunday 13 December 2015
STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter four
Part ten
At Salisbury station an army car collected my husband and drove him away. I was left to be driven to the cottage in an army lorry, along with all our boxes and trunks. We drove through Salisbury's pretty streets and out into the countryside. I looked back at the Cathederals' tapering spire until it was out of sight.
I sat happily next to my silent driver, a young soldier, as we chugged through many miles of narrow country roads. I peered over the hedgerows and found enchantment. Wiltshire was a hazy summer's morning swollen with dew.
We came to a village that was a mixture of grey-brown stone and red brick, there were thatched rooves and latticed windows. It had a squat, norman church, a village green, a duck pond and an old well with a low, circular wall around it and a little roof like a conical hat.
Two miles up the road from the village was a cottage of white walls and green ivy. It was tucked in the fold of two hills and its small, deep set windows looked out to gentle slopes of patchwork fields and red roofed farmsteads. There was a large vegetable garden with a pathway through it to the cottage door. Orange and yellow nasturtiums grew on either side of the doorstep.
I sat in the parlour on one of the trunks. Boxes were stacked all around me. The lorry and its driver had left and I was alone. The flagstone floors kept the cottage cool while outside the summer's heat was rising. The coolness grew cold and a chill shivered through my bones. I had at last found a home but I was lost in it. Memories of warmth were too old, I could see and touch but I could not hold, I was still lost, I was still cold. Then Lettie came.
I heard her bicycle on the pathway. I looked up and there she was, sanding before the open doorway, her hands still holding her handle bars. Her eyes were the blue of a cloudless sky and her hair was like sunlight on corn. She propped her bicycle against the wall and entered, bringing her sunlight with her.
" Ello Missus. I'm Lettie, I'm from the village. I'm to cook and clean for you while you're here. "
Her accent was west country, full and rounded and good, like orchards of shiny red apples and dairies where rich yellow butter is churned.
" Shall we start with the boxes then missus ? "
She had already started to pull books from the tea chests before I could find my voice and utter a shy agreement. It was not fear but Lettie's warmth that made me shy. I had not felt so much warmth so near to me for so long. I had nothing inside me to give out, nothing to return, so I absorbed what Lettie had brought to me and deep inside I felt the slow loosening of chains and the quiet slipping of bolts, a hushed and timid awakening that must not yet be heard for fear that the chains would again be tightened and the doors would again be locked and bolted. Lettie smiled at me and her young , honest face seemed to understand. She did not mind that I was shy, it made no difference to her. To Lettie life was rosy and uncomplicated, her simplicity was strong and just. Nobody could take away her warmth, nothing could deny her her goodness.
She began stacking books willy nilly on dusty shelves, spines were back to front and titles were upside down. I tried to tell her of my husband's intolerance of disorder and dust. She laughed and said he could sort it out himself, why should the two of us stay in longer than we need when the sun was shining outdoors. Her cheerful militancy elated me and my heart sang as I scooped up armfuls of books and did the same.
Lettie found my hatbox and she lifted it gently from the bottom of the tea chest.
" Oh missus, " she said, " This is a heavy hat. "
I looked up at her shyly and again she could see my thoughts.
" Its a secret isn't it Missus: Like a secret wish. "
I nodded silently. I was embarrassed, but Lettie's smiling eyes told me that such secrets were precious and should be treasured. Her acceptance of my secret made me want to share it with her, but she stopped me as I opened my mouth.
"No, no Missus " she said, " This is your very own and you must keep it hidden. Secret wishes don't ever come true if they're told. When a secret is broken its magic is broken too and a life is made unhappy. Everyone has secrets, its not normal not to have secrets. "
She looked down at the large hat box in her hands and her eyes were full of admiration.
" Besides this is a powerful good secret, I can feel its goodness. "
Se handed it to me,
" Here, you take it ! I've got an idea. Follow me ! "
I followed her upstairs, carrying my hat box and I was proud of it and the secret it held I was proud of myself for being the sole owner of such a powerful secret. We entered the bedroom of white sloping walls and dark, heavy beams. Lettie took a bunch of keys from the top of a chest of drawers. At the foot of the bed there was a deep draw beneath the mattress, she found the right key and opened it. I placed the hat box reverently inside and we both watched it disappear as Lettie closed it away safely. She turned the key twice and then detached it from the ring. She put the bunch back on the chest of drawers and went downstairs with the single key. I followed her, excited by our merry plotting and our joining together in mild treachery. I felt wonderful, I felt released. Lettie had already taught me that to hide oneself was not bad but good, to be hidden was to be free. My dark years in London had been dark but free, my spirit had hidden itself so well that not even I had been able to find it. Now Lettie had found it for me and it was still whole, it had never been captured and it had never been broken.
I followed Lettie into the kitchen, past the scrubbed wood table and out into the larder. There were shelves upon shelves of jars upon jars of preserves and honey. Lettie took a large jar of honey from the back of the shelf, she untied its string and folded back its piece of muslin, she dropped in the key watched its slow sinking through thick, clear liquid bronze. It reached the bottom, Lettie tied on the muslin and replaced the jar at the back of the shelf. We both noted its exact position.
" There ! " she said, " If he's the fusspot you say he is he won't be lookin' to plunge his hands down jars of honey and gettin' them all sticky. You just tell 'im that key's lost when he wants the drawer open, 'ee won't be none the wiser."
We set about the rest of the trunks and hung clothes haphazardly in wardrobes or folded them away in drawers. When we had stacked away the empty trunks and boxes Lettie sighed with satisfaction. In her opinion the job was done.
" C'mon Missus ! Let's go and find Tom." She took me by the hand and led me out of the back door. We ran across two fields. Lettie ran in front, her hand still holding mine. She was taller and sturdier than I, her body was strong and powerful while mine was frail. At first it was her strength that pulled me and I stumbled along behind, but then her strength seemed to feed mine and an energy was suddenly awakened and alive and I bounded along at her side, smiling wildly. We came to a wooden shack at the far end of the second field and we stopped there and fell to our knees in the long grass, laughing and gasping for breath.
" Who'd 'ave thought we were two grown women" said Lettie. But of course we were not and neither did we ever wish to be. We were still girls and I guessed Lettie was even younger than I.
To be kneeling in the grass, breathless and happy under a hot, yellow sun in a summer sky reminded me of the fated day I mindlessly walked away from my engagement party. I closed my eyes and banished time so that I had never left the man in the woods and there had been no going back to my husband's black shadow. I heard Lettie's voice calling ,
"Tom ! Tom !Where are you? Come out Tom !"
I opened my eyes to find that I had married a black shadow and lost the man in the woods. But now it was the summer in the country and I was safe with Lettie. I looked up and there she stood outside the shack, a tall, gangling lad at her side, his head hanging awkwardly towards his great long feet. Lettie had a firm grip on his elbow to stop him from running away or curling into a ball and trying to hide himself on the ground.
" This is Tom Missus. 'Ee does the garden. Ee takes so terrible shy when new people come to the cottage, 'ee always goes 'n hides himself. Ee's a deaf mute Missus. Ee lives in this shack. Ee stays away from the village 'cos they make 'im the idiot there. But ee's no idiot Missus. There aint nothin' ee don't know about the soil or what it can grow. 'Ee'll know a frost or a thunder storm three days afore it 'appens. There's wisdom inside this one the rest of us can't even guess at. "
His clothes were faded and patched and his untidy hair was the colour of straw. He would not have heard me if I had said hello, so I went up to him and reached up to touch his bristled cheek. He raised his head a little, his hazel eyes were like saucers and as they looked at me his face widened with glee and his idiot smile reflected my own.
The day passed by, Tom in the garden and Lettie and I in the house and all the while my sleeves were rolled up and my hands were busy potato peeling, washing or scrubbing and topping and tailing gooseberries and beans. My hands moved with a speed and fever that disregarded the years they had lain in my lap, idle and sad, excluded and forbidden from work. But then as the day drew to its close an army car drove up to the gate and my husband was home.
I was rolling down my sleeves as I met him at the door. He stared at my hands, they were pink from the cold water. His eyes bored into mine. Then he looked at the low ceiling and the walls that closed in around him. First he was silent and his silence was as heavy as my guilt. Then the tantrum began and all my awakening was once again dead and all his evil was turned towards me and laid at my feet disguised as my own guilt and wrong doing. And as always I believed myself to be the cause of all this unhappiness, I believed my hopelessness to be the cause of his rage and without ever understanding the evidence I would plead guilty and I believed my plea, and while his justice was realised my body was again emptied of everything but its crying and trembling. As I knelt on the floor and wept I heard bicycle wheels on the path outside. Lettie had gone.
I awoke alone, hazy and frail, still awash with tears and sleep. It was late in the morning. The sun shone in the room and over the white sheets. It warmed me and put its strength into my body. I remembered my hat box locked away in the drawer beneath me and that too warmed me and filled me with strength. I threw back the sheets, I ran downstairs, through the kitchen and out into the garden and I dragged my bare feet through the cold, dewy grass. I looked up and saw Lettie and Tom. They had been picking peas and their baskets were full. They stood and looked at me in my nightgown. I grinned and they grinned back at me. Lettie was back. The day was here and the night was gone.
And so the days and nights passed through the summer. The days were glorious and the sun made me strong. I would work in the garden with Tom or in the house with Lettie and when we were not working we would run off into the fields and walk for miles up hill and down dale, down lanes, through woods and across streams, and all the time there was laughter. Lettie showed me all my heart had forgotten. I rediscovered the excitement and the wild happiness I had left behind me with my childhood and my brothers. But each evening the sun went down and with it went my companions.
The nights were cruel. My husband's moods would twist and turn and my frightened responses would twist and turn with them. He was the puppet master and the strings that attached me to him were my beliefs that he loved me and I loved him. Yet all the while he operated those strings with his hatred and the knots were so great and the strings so taught that my thoughts and emotions became rigid and were no longer thoughts and emotions but just a rigidity that was deaf, dumb and blind and there was nothing to see, hear or say until sleep finally found its way to me and the apricot seed sent me its dreams.
Chapter four
Part ten
At Salisbury station an army car collected my husband and drove him away. I was left to be driven to the cottage in an army lorry, along with all our boxes and trunks. We drove through Salisbury's pretty streets and out into the countryside. I looked back at the Cathederals' tapering spire until it was out of sight.
I sat happily next to my silent driver, a young soldier, as we chugged through many miles of narrow country roads. I peered over the hedgerows and found enchantment. Wiltshire was a hazy summer's morning swollen with dew.
We came to a village that was a mixture of grey-brown stone and red brick, there were thatched rooves and latticed windows. It had a squat, norman church, a village green, a duck pond and an old well with a low, circular wall around it and a little roof like a conical hat.
Two miles up the road from the village was a cottage of white walls and green ivy. It was tucked in the fold of two hills and its small, deep set windows looked out to gentle slopes of patchwork fields and red roofed farmsteads. There was a large vegetable garden with a pathway through it to the cottage door. Orange and yellow nasturtiums grew on either side of the doorstep.
I sat in the parlour on one of the trunks. Boxes were stacked all around me. The lorry and its driver had left and I was alone. The flagstone floors kept the cottage cool while outside the summer's heat was rising. The coolness grew cold and a chill shivered through my bones. I had at last found a home but I was lost in it. Memories of warmth were too old, I could see and touch but I could not hold, I was still lost, I was still cold. Then Lettie came.
I heard her bicycle on the pathway. I looked up and there she was, sanding before the open doorway, her hands still holding her handle bars. Her eyes were the blue of a cloudless sky and her hair was like sunlight on corn. She propped her bicycle against the wall and entered, bringing her sunlight with her.
" Ello Missus. I'm Lettie, I'm from the village. I'm to cook and clean for you while you're here. "
Her accent was west country, full and rounded and good, like orchards of shiny red apples and dairies where rich yellow butter is churned.
" Shall we start with the boxes then missus ? "
She had already started to pull books from the tea chests before I could find my voice and utter a shy agreement. It was not fear but Lettie's warmth that made me shy. I had not felt so much warmth so near to me for so long. I had nothing inside me to give out, nothing to return, so I absorbed what Lettie had brought to me and deep inside I felt the slow loosening of chains and the quiet slipping of bolts, a hushed and timid awakening that must not yet be heard for fear that the chains would again be tightened and the doors would again be locked and bolted. Lettie smiled at me and her young , honest face seemed to understand. She did not mind that I was shy, it made no difference to her. To Lettie life was rosy and uncomplicated, her simplicity was strong and just. Nobody could take away her warmth, nothing could deny her her goodness.
She began stacking books willy nilly on dusty shelves, spines were back to front and titles were upside down. I tried to tell her of my husband's intolerance of disorder and dust. She laughed and said he could sort it out himself, why should the two of us stay in longer than we need when the sun was shining outdoors. Her cheerful militancy elated me and my heart sang as I scooped up armfuls of books and did the same.
Lettie found my hatbox and she lifted it gently from the bottom of the tea chest.
" Oh missus, " she said, " This is a heavy hat. "
I looked up at her shyly and again she could see my thoughts.
" Its a secret isn't it Missus: Like a secret wish. "
I nodded silently. I was embarrassed, but Lettie's smiling eyes told me that such secrets were precious and should be treasured. Her acceptance of my secret made me want to share it with her, but she stopped me as I opened my mouth.
"No, no Missus " she said, " This is your very own and you must keep it hidden. Secret wishes don't ever come true if they're told. When a secret is broken its magic is broken too and a life is made unhappy. Everyone has secrets, its not normal not to have secrets. "
She looked down at the large hat box in her hands and her eyes were full of admiration.
" Besides this is a powerful good secret, I can feel its goodness. "
Se handed it to me,
" Here, you take it ! I've got an idea. Follow me ! "
I followed her upstairs, carrying my hat box and I was proud of it and the secret it held I was proud of myself for being the sole owner of such a powerful secret. We entered the bedroom of white sloping walls and dark, heavy beams. Lettie took a bunch of keys from the top of a chest of drawers. At the foot of the bed there was a deep draw beneath the mattress, she found the right key and opened it. I placed the hat box reverently inside and we both watched it disappear as Lettie closed it away safely. She turned the key twice and then detached it from the ring. She put the bunch back on the chest of drawers and went downstairs with the single key. I followed her, excited by our merry plotting and our joining together in mild treachery. I felt wonderful, I felt released. Lettie had already taught me that to hide oneself was not bad but good, to be hidden was to be free. My dark years in London had been dark but free, my spirit had hidden itself so well that not even I had been able to find it. Now Lettie had found it for me and it was still whole, it had never been captured and it had never been broken.
I followed Lettie into the kitchen, past the scrubbed wood table and out into the larder. There were shelves upon shelves of jars upon jars of preserves and honey. Lettie took a large jar of honey from the back of the shelf, she untied its string and folded back its piece of muslin, she dropped in the key watched its slow sinking through thick, clear liquid bronze. It reached the bottom, Lettie tied on the muslin and replaced the jar at the back of the shelf. We both noted its exact position.
" There ! " she said, " If he's the fusspot you say he is he won't be lookin' to plunge his hands down jars of honey and gettin' them all sticky. You just tell 'im that key's lost when he wants the drawer open, 'ee won't be none the wiser."
We set about the rest of the trunks and hung clothes haphazardly in wardrobes or folded them away in drawers. When we had stacked away the empty trunks and boxes Lettie sighed with satisfaction. In her opinion the job was done.
" C'mon Missus ! Let's go and find Tom." She took me by the hand and led me out of the back door. We ran across two fields. Lettie ran in front, her hand still holding mine. She was taller and sturdier than I, her body was strong and powerful while mine was frail. At first it was her strength that pulled me and I stumbled along behind, but then her strength seemed to feed mine and an energy was suddenly awakened and alive and I bounded along at her side, smiling wildly. We came to a wooden shack at the far end of the second field and we stopped there and fell to our knees in the long grass, laughing and gasping for breath.
" Who'd 'ave thought we were two grown women" said Lettie. But of course we were not and neither did we ever wish to be. We were still girls and I guessed Lettie was even younger than I.
To be kneeling in the grass, breathless and happy under a hot, yellow sun in a summer sky reminded me of the fated day I mindlessly walked away from my engagement party. I closed my eyes and banished time so that I had never left the man in the woods and there had been no going back to my husband's black shadow. I heard Lettie's voice calling ,
"Tom ! Tom !Where are you? Come out Tom !"
I opened my eyes to find that I had married a black shadow and lost the man in the woods. But now it was the summer in the country and I was safe with Lettie. I looked up and there she stood outside the shack, a tall, gangling lad at her side, his head hanging awkwardly towards his great long feet. Lettie had a firm grip on his elbow to stop him from running away or curling into a ball and trying to hide himself on the ground.
" This is Tom Missus. 'Ee does the garden. Ee takes so terrible shy when new people come to the cottage, 'ee always goes 'n hides himself. Ee's a deaf mute Missus. Ee lives in this shack. Ee stays away from the village 'cos they make 'im the idiot there. But ee's no idiot Missus. There aint nothin' ee don't know about the soil or what it can grow. 'Ee'll know a frost or a thunder storm three days afore it 'appens. There's wisdom inside this one the rest of us can't even guess at. "
His clothes were faded and patched and his untidy hair was the colour of straw. He would not have heard me if I had said hello, so I went up to him and reached up to touch his bristled cheek. He raised his head a little, his hazel eyes were like saucers and as they looked at me his face widened with glee and his idiot smile reflected my own.
The day passed by, Tom in the garden and Lettie and I in the house and all the while my sleeves were rolled up and my hands were busy potato peeling, washing or scrubbing and topping and tailing gooseberries and beans. My hands moved with a speed and fever that disregarded the years they had lain in my lap, idle and sad, excluded and forbidden from work. But then as the day drew to its close an army car drove up to the gate and my husband was home.
I was rolling down my sleeves as I met him at the door. He stared at my hands, they were pink from the cold water. His eyes bored into mine. Then he looked at the low ceiling and the walls that closed in around him. First he was silent and his silence was as heavy as my guilt. Then the tantrum began and all my awakening was once again dead and all his evil was turned towards me and laid at my feet disguised as my own guilt and wrong doing. And as always I believed myself to be the cause of all this unhappiness, I believed my hopelessness to be the cause of his rage and without ever understanding the evidence I would plead guilty and I believed my plea, and while his justice was realised my body was again emptied of everything but its crying and trembling. As I knelt on the floor and wept I heard bicycle wheels on the path outside. Lettie had gone.
I awoke alone, hazy and frail, still awash with tears and sleep. It was late in the morning. The sun shone in the room and over the white sheets. It warmed me and put its strength into my body. I remembered my hat box locked away in the drawer beneath me and that too warmed me and filled me with strength. I threw back the sheets, I ran downstairs, through the kitchen and out into the garden and I dragged my bare feet through the cold, dewy grass. I looked up and saw Lettie and Tom. They had been picking peas and their baskets were full. They stood and looked at me in my nightgown. I grinned and they grinned back at me. Lettie was back. The day was here and the night was gone.
And so the days and nights passed through the summer. The days were glorious and the sun made me strong. I would work in the garden with Tom or in the house with Lettie and when we were not working we would run off into the fields and walk for miles up hill and down dale, down lanes, through woods and across streams, and all the time there was laughter. Lettie showed me all my heart had forgotten. I rediscovered the excitement and the wild happiness I had left behind me with my childhood and my brothers. But each evening the sun went down and with it went my companions.
The nights were cruel. My husband's moods would twist and turn and my frightened responses would twist and turn with them. He was the puppet master and the strings that attached me to him were my beliefs that he loved me and I loved him. Yet all the while he operated those strings with his hatred and the knots were so great and the strings so taught that my thoughts and emotions became rigid and were no longer thoughts and emotions but just a rigidity that was deaf, dumb and blind and there was nothing to see, hear or say until sleep finally found its way to me and the apricot seed sent me its dreams.
Saturday 5 December 2015
STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter four Part nine
Inside my prison I filled my life with the belief that I loved my husband, I devoted myself to him. I smiled and my eyes always shone. I dressed and looked as he bade me. I flirted and caressed him as I knew he wanted me to. I doted on him. His losses were my losses, his gains were my gains. His hates were my hates, his loves were my loves. I charmed away his tantrums and sang praises to his feats. I lived my life as an extension of his, so that he no longer fought for supremacy and I no longer searched for a self.
Only in the deepest pockets of my soul did I keep my secrets and only in the dead of night and the privacy of sleep would I unlock them and gaze at them like precious jewels. There I found countless dreams that showed me my fear and desolation and how in the future all my strength that had lain weak and dormant on sterile ground would find new unfurrowed fields where it would burst and flourish and reap from its own fertile crops and green pastures. And visions of George passed through my thoughts as I slept. I would see his blue eyes and the look they held. I would hear the woman's voice calling out his name and then hear my own voice calling him. I would feel the touch of his fingers on the palm of my hand and I would see the apricot stone that I still treasured. I would stand in the woods and wait forever to hear his voice but I never did.
In the waking hours visions and dreams were safely locked away where secrets of the night could never be read by the light of the day, and hidden away with them was the rising tide of tears. My daylight life never dared reach deep inside for fear that just one gentle touch would open the gates and release the flood and it would all be too soon and I would be drowned. I needed time to find a way to ride the waters. And while time passed my only comfort was a hat box in the attic.
When I moved into number seven Devonshire Street I asked that a large, round hat box be stored somewhere, safely. I explained that it contained something dear to me that had ben left to me by my grandmother. My husband thought nothing of my little whim and was only too pleased to oblige me as part of his show of welcome to his household and neither did his man in grey suspect my endearing lies as he carried the tan leather drum off to the attic. Inside the hat box was my only piece of truth and although the secret was a disloyalty to my husband it was the only loyalty that I still held for myself. It was a hope, a reason for everything and it was mine, I owned it. The blue and white willow pattern punch bowl was inside that hat box, it was filled with brown earth as in its centre my treasured apricot stone was still buried.
So I lived my life as a wife. It was a pauper's life, ragged and starving. I owned nothing but a necklace of pearl strung tears, an apricot seed and the hope that one day they would make my life rich.
It was a solitary life. I was parted from myself, my past, my future, the girl I had been and the woman I wanted to be.
I socialised at tea parties given by the wives of my husband's colleagues. I would listen to their chat, their laughter and their talk of the terrible war. But their voices were always distant and neither could I hear my own words as I spoke them I feared these women and I cowered from them. They always asked after my health and used their mock concern to pry into things I did not understand myself and when my answers could not satisfy their questions they would smile pityingly and ask if there was any sign of s newcomer yet. I would feel put out to sea on a raft, the slow shaking of my head would drift back towards them but never would I admit to my barreness while they stood so firmly along the seashore, each on their own grey, slab of rock. Then their eyes would turn from me and their pity would turn to dismissal and while their gossip was directed elsewhere I would enter a place where I believed I was happy, where I believed myself to be a lucky woman and my life to be a charmed life. I would sit and enjoy the scene, the sophistication of my companions, the elegance of their dresses and fashionable hats, the pictures on the walls, the furniture and the finery and the delicacy of the thin, china cups from which I drank the finest of china tea.
It was the same at dinners and dances. When my fears of the world and its people could no longer be born, my mind's vision would turn and see a paradise of champagne and waltzing, chandeliers and orchestras, ball gowns and jewels of great beauty and gentlemen of learning and charm. The most learned and the most charming of all was my husband. I would watch him while society's soft, eloquent whisperings hummed gently past my ears. I would watch him charm the ladies and cruelly chide their men, his words always masked with a smile. I would watch him holding court to captive audiences, his sharp edges melting over them and sticking like glue, leaving every one of them as oppressed and ineffective as my whole life had become. He bore no words of wisdom, it was his voice that penetrated and buried its seeds of malice deep inside his victims so that they were influenced and subdued. His insidious charisma left many paths of destruction. He spilt blood that would never be seen. He was a cruel and clever murderer. He murdered spirits great and small, shy and strong. Beliefs and confidence were killed and souls were slain. Not one of them could see from where it came. They thought that it was some fault of their's, something from within. Indeed their killer had already convinced them so. And his victim would smile at him gratefully as they died. Then their lives were suddenly empty spaces where they would laugh and drink to their assassin, so that their deaths would be forgotten . I witnessed all of this and believed it not. For I was his wife, his good wife, and I along with the rest believed his every word, his every move, his every attentive gesture, his every witticism. I believed his insincerity to be his sincerity. I believed his demoralising and belittling of others to be small talk and teasing and I believed his self obsession to be his sublime authority.
Only in the deep, dark chambers of sleep would these truths be untangled, where my dreams persisted and tried to show me that truths were lies and lies were truth. But I would awake to my empty space that I filled with imagined perfection while fear was pushed aside. But fear kept creeping in , no walls or locked doors could keep it from my existence, so that soon my imagined world was overrun.
Then one summer's day the news came that we were to move to the country, to Wiltshire. There was important work there for my husband, experiments and research that were important to the winning of the war. I was overjoyed. To move was to escape. There were no people to fear in Wiltshire, just green fields and hills where I would be free and happy. We were to move in two days. My empty space was filled with rejoicing and childish excitement. I wanted to pack and prepare, but of course I was forbidden. So I stood by and watched as the maid and the grey valet solemnly placed books in tea chests and clothes in trunks. I was glad that I would be rid of these two humourless characters and their staunch hostility. For they were to stay and see to the smooth and ordered running of the London house in readiness for our eventual return , while my husband and I were to rent a small furnished cottage and we were to live there alone.
On the last morning I walked up the Broadwalk in Regent's Park as I had so many times through its seasons of white frosts to pink blossoms and green leaves to gold. I paid homage to the Park for all the joy and tranquillity it had bestowed upon me when all else had appeared so dark. The spirits in the trees had always filled me as I walked through their kingdom of peace and light, like a lantern being held at the end of a long, black tunnel to show me that there was an end to be reached and that joy lay beyond. I bid them farewell and shed a tear knowing that the last two years had been my tunnel and now I was nearing its end. Then I remembered the hat box and I ran like a wild hare to retrieve it.
The maid was out, the grey man was away in the car and the cook was far back in the house, confined to the scullery. I ran softly up through the house to the topmost narrow stair of he topmost narrow staircase. I was breathless and flushed, my heart beat fast and my red cheeks tingled. I pushed open the small attic door and stooped to go inside. The air was musty, the eaves sloped steeply and there was a small window to the sky through which a sun-ray fell and the dust danced in its slanting path. The sun-ray fell to the floor behind a pile of crates and old pieces of furniture. I looked behind this dark, shadowed pile and there on the floor in the sun-ray's circle of light was my hat box. I lifted the faded, cobwebbed tan leather drum and I felt the life it held inside, it flowed into the palms of my hands and through my body. I stood awhile and let its energy beat alongside my heart. Then I ran softly down into the study where the packing of my husband's books had not yet been completed. I placed the hat box gently in the bottom of the wooden chest and I covered it with three layers of heavy books. I breathed freely and my soul smiled, my task was done and my escape made ready.
Chapter four Part nine
Inside my prison I filled my life with the belief that I loved my husband, I devoted myself to him. I smiled and my eyes always shone. I dressed and looked as he bade me. I flirted and caressed him as I knew he wanted me to. I doted on him. His losses were my losses, his gains were my gains. His hates were my hates, his loves were my loves. I charmed away his tantrums and sang praises to his feats. I lived my life as an extension of his, so that he no longer fought for supremacy and I no longer searched for a self.
Only in the deepest pockets of my soul did I keep my secrets and only in the dead of night and the privacy of sleep would I unlock them and gaze at them like precious jewels. There I found countless dreams that showed me my fear and desolation and how in the future all my strength that had lain weak and dormant on sterile ground would find new unfurrowed fields where it would burst and flourish and reap from its own fertile crops and green pastures. And visions of George passed through my thoughts as I slept. I would see his blue eyes and the look they held. I would hear the woman's voice calling out his name and then hear my own voice calling him. I would feel the touch of his fingers on the palm of my hand and I would see the apricot stone that I still treasured. I would stand in the woods and wait forever to hear his voice but I never did.
In the waking hours visions and dreams were safely locked away where secrets of the night could never be read by the light of the day, and hidden away with them was the rising tide of tears. My daylight life never dared reach deep inside for fear that just one gentle touch would open the gates and release the flood and it would all be too soon and I would be drowned. I needed time to find a way to ride the waters. And while time passed my only comfort was a hat box in the attic.
When I moved into number seven Devonshire Street I asked that a large, round hat box be stored somewhere, safely. I explained that it contained something dear to me that had ben left to me by my grandmother. My husband thought nothing of my little whim and was only too pleased to oblige me as part of his show of welcome to his household and neither did his man in grey suspect my endearing lies as he carried the tan leather drum off to the attic. Inside the hat box was my only piece of truth and although the secret was a disloyalty to my husband it was the only loyalty that I still held for myself. It was a hope, a reason for everything and it was mine, I owned it. The blue and white willow pattern punch bowl was inside that hat box, it was filled with brown earth as in its centre my treasured apricot stone was still buried.
So I lived my life as a wife. It was a pauper's life, ragged and starving. I owned nothing but a necklace of pearl strung tears, an apricot seed and the hope that one day they would make my life rich.
It was a solitary life. I was parted from myself, my past, my future, the girl I had been and the woman I wanted to be.
I socialised at tea parties given by the wives of my husband's colleagues. I would listen to their chat, their laughter and their talk of the terrible war. But their voices were always distant and neither could I hear my own words as I spoke them I feared these women and I cowered from them. They always asked after my health and used their mock concern to pry into things I did not understand myself and when my answers could not satisfy their questions they would smile pityingly and ask if there was any sign of s newcomer yet. I would feel put out to sea on a raft, the slow shaking of my head would drift back towards them but never would I admit to my barreness while they stood so firmly along the seashore, each on their own grey, slab of rock. Then their eyes would turn from me and their pity would turn to dismissal and while their gossip was directed elsewhere I would enter a place where I believed I was happy, where I believed myself to be a lucky woman and my life to be a charmed life. I would sit and enjoy the scene, the sophistication of my companions, the elegance of their dresses and fashionable hats, the pictures on the walls, the furniture and the finery and the delicacy of the thin, china cups from which I drank the finest of china tea.
It was the same at dinners and dances. When my fears of the world and its people could no longer be born, my mind's vision would turn and see a paradise of champagne and waltzing, chandeliers and orchestras, ball gowns and jewels of great beauty and gentlemen of learning and charm. The most learned and the most charming of all was my husband. I would watch him while society's soft, eloquent whisperings hummed gently past my ears. I would watch him charm the ladies and cruelly chide their men, his words always masked with a smile. I would watch him holding court to captive audiences, his sharp edges melting over them and sticking like glue, leaving every one of them as oppressed and ineffective as my whole life had become. He bore no words of wisdom, it was his voice that penetrated and buried its seeds of malice deep inside his victims so that they were influenced and subdued. His insidious charisma left many paths of destruction. He spilt blood that would never be seen. He was a cruel and clever murderer. He murdered spirits great and small, shy and strong. Beliefs and confidence were killed and souls were slain. Not one of them could see from where it came. They thought that it was some fault of their's, something from within. Indeed their killer had already convinced them so. And his victim would smile at him gratefully as they died. Then their lives were suddenly empty spaces where they would laugh and drink to their assassin, so that their deaths would be forgotten . I witnessed all of this and believed it not. For I was his wife, his good wife, and I along with the rest believed his every word, his every move, his every attentive gesture, his every witticism. I believed his insincerity to be his sincerity. I believed his demoralising and belittling of others to be small talk and teasing and I believed his self obsession to be his sublime authority.
Only in the deep, dark chambers of sleep would these truths be untangled, where my dreams persisted and tried to show me that truths were lies and lies were truth. But I would awake to my empty space that I filled with imagined perfection while fear was pushed aside. But fear kept creeping in , no walls or locked doors could keep it from my existence, so that soon my imagined world was overrun.
Then one summer's day the news came that we were to move to the country, to Wiltshire. There was important work there for my husband, experiments and research that were important to the winning of the war. I was overjoyed. To move was to escape. There were no people to fear in Wiltshire, just green fields and hills where I would be free and happy. We were to move in two days. My empty space was filled with rejoicing and childish excitement. I wanted to pack and prepare, but of course I was forbidden. So I stood by and watched as the maid and the grey valet solemnly placed books in tea chests and clothes in trunks. I was glad that I would be rid of these two humourless characters and their staunch hostility. For they were to stay and see to the smooth and ordered running of the London house in readiness for our eventual return , while my husband and I were to rent a small furnished cottage and we were to live there alone.
On the last morning I walked up the Broadwalk in Regent's Park as I had so many times through its seasons of white frosts to pink blossoms and green leaves to gold. I paid homage to the Park for all the joy and tranquillity it had bestowed upon me when all else had appeared so dark. The spirits in the trees had always filled me as I walked through their kingdom of peace and light, like a lantern being held at the end of a long, black tunnel to show me that there was an end to be reached and that joy lay beyond. I bid them farewell and shed a tear knowing that the last two years had been my tunnel and now I was nearing its end. Then I remembered the hat box and I ran like a wild hare to retrieve it.
The maid was out, the grey man was away in the car and the cook was far back in the house, confined to the scullery. I ran softly up through the house to the topmost narrow stair of he topmost narrow staircase. I was breathless and flushed, my heart beat fast and my red cheeks tingled. I pushed open the small attic door and stooped to go inside. The air was musty, the eaves sloped steeply and there was a small window to the sky through which a sun-ray fell and the dust danced in its slanting path. The sun-ray fell to the floor behind a pile of crates and old pieces of furniture. I looked behind this dark, shadowed pile and there on the floor in the sun-ray's circle of light was my hat box. I lifted the faded, cobwebbed tan leather drum and I felt the life it held inside, it flowed into the palms of my hands and through my body. I stood awhile and let its energy beat alongside my heart. Then I ran softly down into the study where the packing of my husband's books had not yet been completed. I placed the hat box gently in the bottom of the wooden chest and I covered it with three layers of heavy books. I breathed freely and my soul smiled, my task was done and my escape made ready.
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