STARSHINE,THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four Part Fourteen
For three days I trekked the streets of Florence. I absorbed its beauty, its domes, its towers and its colours. The earthy yellow of its houses and the fiery red of its roves. But its beauty made me feel all the more lost, all the more lonely. I was aware of the emptiness around me, where there was no one to touch me, no one to whisper my name. I sheltered from the heat in the cool of churches and art galleries. I stood in wonder in front of many statues and paintings , but always their beauty merged with my loneliness.
On the evening of the third day I walked down a narrow street. Washing hung between windows, way overhead, five stories high. The buildings leaned inwards as they reached up to the ruby sky. I came out into an open piazza of long shadows and a deep orange light that came from the gold of the setting sun falling over the city's reds, yellows and browns. At the far end there was a church raised up above the piazza with steps leading up to it on three sides. I crossed the piazza and climbed the steps. A beggar was sitting there in the shadows, as I passed him I felt him move. I walked into the church and knew that he was following me. I could feel him behind me as I walked down the aisle to the alter. I was angry and a little frightened. I had entered the church to be alone, to think, to clear and settle my mind and to reconcile myself with my loneliness. I stiffened, kept my face forward and my back towards him. I reached the end of the aisle and still he was behind me. I grew impatient, I took some coins from my purse and turned harshly to offer them. My anger turned to joy that pierced my heart. He took the coins. I felt his touch on my palm of my hand. He wore a leather jerkin, his shirt and trousers were torn and his feet were bare. His face was bearded and tanned. His clear blue eyes looked into me and saw that I was no longer lost. And I could see that in his wildness and raggedness he was no longer sad. The woods and all the questions our lives had had to find and then answer were gone.
He carried a small bundle of muslin, knotted at the top. He put the bundle on the floor and knelt down. He untied the four corners and laid out the muslin to reveal the most beautiful shells; spined and smoothed, fanned and curled. He looked at me and smiled, like a child, proud of his treasures. I knelt down and gazed at their beauty, their weird shapes and colours of pale rainbow and speckled orange.
"They're for you ! I took them from the ocean !"
At last the waiting was over. His voice was beautiful, it did not hide from emotion, his voice was his heart, it unlocked my loneliness and made me whole.
The shells were for me, his thoughts had been with me and the seed I had treasured, all this time. We had never been parted. We were one and the same.
" What's your name ? " he asked.
"Clare." I said.
Sunday 31 January 2016
Saturday 23 January 2016
STARSHINE, THE OCEANAND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four Part Fourteen
One night I dreamt of my room in Bath. I saw the willow pattern punch bowl in my window. I saw a tiny green shoot push its way through the dark earth. The sleeping, dreaming seed that had lay dormant all this time, had at last decided to grow.
I sat up in another strange bed in another Spartan hotel room. The floorboards were bare, the mattress was thin, the sheets and bolster were of white cotton with a thin blue stripe. The half opened shutters showed me another blue sky, another hot day. I had been travelling for many months through France, Switzerland and Italy. I had seen their rivers and their chateaux, their mountains and lakes, their cathedrals and their ancient ruins. I had wandered through their landscapes from city to town and they had filled me. I had no need of the past's memories or the future's dreams, they had left me, and for the first time in my life it had been the present that had overwhelmed. Each passing moment had been lived, breathed, seen and felt.
But that morning I woke to my first day in Florence and I was lonely. I longed for love. I sat with a Russian doll I had recognised from my paintings and immediately bought in Switzerland. She lay open in my lap. I pulled each one apart, daughter after daughter, until I reached the last tiny figure that would not open. It was me. But it was not a child's love I longed for. I had grown thankful for my barrenness. I was glad to be excused the bearing and rearing of children. My spirit had grown too selfish to be drained into others, yet it longed to meet its reflection, it longed to meet itself in another, it was lonely and crying, it wanted to be held but it still feared the destroying arms of evil and possession. I wanted to be held and hold a sibling spirit that would see me and know me and never stop my flow or my journey. I wanted to hold and be held by George.
Chapter Four Part Fourteen
One night I dreamt of my room in Bath. I saw the willow pattern punch bowl in my window. I saw a tiny green shoot push its way through the dark earth. The sleeping, dreaming seed that had lay dormant all this time, had at last decided to grow.
I sat up in another strange bed in another Spartan hotel room. The floorboards were bare, the mattress was thin, the sheets and bolster were of white cotton with a thin blue stripe. The half opened shutters showed me another blue sky, another hot day. I had been travelling for many months through France, Switzerland and Italy. I had seen their rivers and their chateaux, their mountains and lakes, their cathedrals and their ancient ruins. I had wandered through their landscapes from city to town and they had filled me. I had no need of the past's memories or the future's dreams, they had left me, and for the first time in my life it had been the present that had overwhelmed. Each passing moment had been lived, breathed, seen and felt.
But that morning I woke to my first day in Florence and I was lonely. I longed for love. I sat with a Russian doll I had recognised from my paintings and immediately bought in Switzerland. She lay open in my lap. I pulled each one apart, daughter after daughter, until I reached the last tiny figure that would not open. It was me. But it was not a child's love I longed for. I had grown thankful for my barrenness. I was glad to be excused the bearing and rearing of children. My spirit had grown too selfish to be drained into others, yet it longed to meet its reflection, it longed to meet itself in another, it was lonely and crying, it wanted to be held but it still feared the destroying arms of evil and possession. I wanted to be held and hold a sibling spirit that would see me and know me and never stop my flow or my journey. I wanted to hold and be held by George.
Tuesday 19 January 2016
STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four Part Thirteen
Morning came and the train ran on. A tiny flame was burning inside me, a spirit was growing, I was carrying the enormity of everything it would know and be. It ran through my veins, took my heart and settled in my womb. As if a child were growing there, but it was not a child, it was me.
I saw the sunlight crown the hills and in the valley at their feet, a white mist lay over a sleeping town, a mystery from which church spires and a gothic abbey rose like pale gold in the early sun.
The train drew into Bath Spa station. I stepped down to the platform and stopped running from my past. I had found a place of beauty beneath the mist, a place that would nurture me so that I could grow. I had at last accepted my life and myself. Humiliation and despair stayed on board the train, went down the line and disappeared.
Bath Spa was a town built with a view to pleasure. It was a town of warmth where time lay in suspension, like a foetus in its life giving waters. The town's unashamed beauty, its calm smile, its unrepressed joy engendered itself within me. Its indefined peace excited my spirit. Bath was a womb in which I attached myself, safe within its seven surrounding hills. Time no longer pushed and pulled me, it lay quiet and I lay quiet alongside it.
I lived in a Georgian terrace, in a second floor room. My room was my world, its colours comforted me, it gave me balm and succour and kept my thoughts and secrets safe. My willow pattern punchbowl was set in the window on a stand and the apricot seed lived with me , alongside my dreams. When the sun shone in its outside world, it would flood through my windows to touch me in my world, like a mother touches a child.
I worked in the library, in the silence of books being passed from hand to hand, their thoughts being revealed time after time, but always in the privacy of one reader's mind and imagination. I stamped the books in and out, from one mind to another, like a messenger carrying sealed secrets to one person at a time.
When I wasn't working I would walk for miles and miles around the parks, admiring their pruned trees and velvet greens and the vivid colours of their carefully tended floral art, or I would walk down the toe paths by the river or the canal and out into the country, or just wander through the town, delighting in its Georgian charm built in the soft gold of Bath stone.
My soul was so contented it had little need of rest, so at night I would sit in my room at an easel with a gas lamp at my side and a palette in my hand. I would wait for the flame inside me to flare and when it did the oils would spread themselves over the canvas, choosing their own colours while the brush strokes were guided by the flame's hand, like a good demon that took its light from the stars, to look inside me and search out my past. My painting was a journey of the soul, a laying down of the subconscious. If the demon flame did not come to me, then I would gaze at the stars and think of George. I would see his clear blue eyes and the jet black curls of his hair. I would watch his lips and wait for him to speak and while I waited to hear his voice his image would always fade, then the demon would come back and the journey would continue, as though George's voice was being purposely withheld until my journey had reached its end.
I painted dark landscapes inside the broken heads of pale china dolls. I painted barren landscapes inside the hollowed out halves of Russian dolls. I painted evil crocodiles of black slate in rivers of sour milk. I painted snakes coiled around the slender forearms of weeping women. I painted George as he had appeared to me in the woods, and seeing his face I cried because I did not know his voice and there were no words for him to say to me while my heart craved his love. I painted lush, fruit bearing apricot trees growing from the palms of women's gently cupped hands and I painted dreamscapes of love inside a china willow pattern punch bowl that told its own blue and white story of reunited love.
My last painting was of the ocean beneath a night sky. The dark waters reflected back a million stars into space where they shone like the bright white flames of distant candles and in the ocean's movement their images floated and danced like pearls. In the midst of the pearls was a simple, wooden boat, rocking gently over the waves, empty and waiting, for who I did not know.
I knew that my journey had ended with this vision of the next. I kept the painting of this one vision while all the rest, their roads well travelled and their destinations found, I exhibited and sold. The money bought me a ticket to Europe. I had grown and it was time to leave the womb.
Chapter Four Part Thirteen
Morning came and the train ran on. A tiny flame was burning inside me, a spirit was growing, I was carrying the enormity of everything it would know and be. It ran through my veins, took my heart and settled in my womb. As if a child were growing there, but it was not a child, it was me.
I saw the sunlight crown the hills and in the valley at their feet, a white mist lay over a sleeping town, a mystery from which church spires and a gothic abbey rose like pale gold in the early sun.
The train drew into Bath Spa station. I stepped down to the platform and stopped running from my past. I had found a place of beauty beneath the mist, a place that would nurture me so that I could grow. I had at last accepted my life and myself. Humiliation and despair stayed on board the train, went down the line and disappeared.
Bath Spa was a town built with a view to pleasure. It was a town of warmth where time lay in suspension, like a foetus in its life giving waters. The town's unashamed beauty, its calm smile, its unrepressed joy engendered itself within me. Its indefined peace excited my spirit. Bath was a womb in which I attached myself, safe within its seven surrounding hills. Time no longer pushed and pulled me, it lay quiet and I lay quiet alongside it.
I lived in a Georgian terrace, in a second floor room. My room was my world, its colours comforted me, it gave me balm and succour and kept my thoughts and secrets safe. My willow pattern punchbowl was set in the window on a stand and the apricot seed lived with me , alongside my dreams. When the sun shone in its outside world, it would flood through my windows to touch me in my world, like a mother touches a child.
I worked in the library, in the silence of books being passed from hand to hand, their thoughts being revealed time after time, but always in the privacy of one reader's mind and imagination. I stamped the books in and out, from one mind to another, like a messenger carrying sealed secrets to one person at a time.
When I wasn't working I would walk for miles and miles around the parks, admiring their pruned trees and velvet greens and the vivid colours of their carefully tended floral art, or I would walk down the toe paths by the river or the canal and out into the country, or just wander through the town, delighting in its Georgian charm built in the soft gold of Bath stone.
My soul was so contented it had little need of rest, so at night I would sit in my room at an easel with a gas lamp at my side and a palette in my hand. I would wait for the flame inside me to flare and when it did the oils would spread themselves over the canvas, choosing their own colours while the brush strokes were guided by the flame's hand, like a good demon that took its light from the stars, to look inside me and search out my past. My painting was a journey of the soul, a laying down of the subconscious. If the demon flame did not come to me, then I would gaze at the stars and think of George. I would see his clear blue eyes and the jet black curls of his hair. I would watch his lips and wait for him to speak and while I waited to hear his voice his image would always fade, then the demon would come back and the journey would continue, as though George's voice was being purposely withheld until my journey had reached its end.
I painted dark landscapes inside the broken heads of pale china dolls. I painted barren landscapes inside the hollowed out halves of Russian dolls. I painted evil crocodiles of black slate in rivers of sour milk. I painted snakes coiled around the slender forearms of weeping women. I painted George as he had appeared to me in the woods, and seeing his face I cried because I did not know his voice and there were no words for him to say to me while my heart craved his love. I painted lush, fruit bearing apricot trees growing from the palms of women's gently cupped hands and I painted dreamscapes of love inside a china willow pattern punch bowl that told its own blue and white story of reunited love.
My last painting was of the ocean beneath a night sky. The dark waters reflected back a million stars into space where they shone like the bright white flames of distant candles and in the ocean's movement their images floated and danced like pearls. In the midst of the pearls was a simple, wooden boat, rocking gently over the waves, empty and waiting, for who I did not know.
I knew that my journey had ended with this vision of the next. I kept the painting of this one vision while all the rest, their roads well travelled and their destinations found, I exhibited and sold. The money bought me a ticket to Europe. I had grown and it was time to leave the womb.
Wednesday 13 January 2016
STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THR UNICORN
Chapter Four Part Twelve
Autumn found me somewhere in the heart of England. I never knew quite where. I enjoyed the sense of concealment. If I did not know where I was then neither did anybody else. I was in hiding from time, place and identity. I lived and worked at a soldier's convalescent home. The house and its grounds were a perfect isolation, walled off and detached from the rest of the country. A quiet place where the wounded withdrew from the war, dulled their senses and cocooned themselves in peace.
In spite of their disfigurements, their lost limbs, burnt off faces and empty eye sockets, the soldiers seemed to be preoccupied with a silent, unworldly serenity, as though the losing of a limb and the gaining of a stump was of no importance. They had done what they had done, it had happened and it no longer mattered. They were washed, dressed and fed by brisk, starched nurses who trotted from one to the next. I would watch men as they were pushed in chairs or hobbling on crutches down the corridors or out in the grounds. The grandeur of the Georgian manor house and the quiet beauty of its trees and parklands meant nothing to them whether they were blind or sighted. They saw nothing, they were somewhere else seeing something else, but they never said where and they never said what. My innocence of the war was in keeping with their silence.
I preoccupied myself with work, hard, energetic, feverish work. I washed dishes, I scoured pots and pans until they gleamed, I peeled and chopped potatoes, carrots and onions by the sack full, I made gallons of tea and every evening when the men have been put to bed I spent four hours on my knees scrubbing floors. As I scrubbed at the dirt and then scrubbed harder at the germs and bacteria and all that was invisible but might be there, my mind would writhe and turn through bitterness, humiliation and guilt. These three had followed me from my past. When I had run from my marriage I thought that I had escaped them, but I had not. Memories of my imprisonment and my husband's wicked disdain would resurge in great waves that crashed and cut into me again and again, as though his destruction of me would not rest until complete. I would stand determined like rock but I feared these waves and their erosion of my mind and spirit. I feared being lost again in darkness and madness. I feared my weakness and I could not believe in my strength. I had been too humiliated to believe in my strength. I was still filled with his poison and his poison now took the form of humiliation. Sometimes I would rage with a bitterness that was itself poisonous and wanted to kill and wipe him off the face of the earth. Other times I would feel an overwhelming sense of guilt and my heart would stop at the sheer terror of my disloyalty to myself. I had let it happen. I had walked down my own path to my own fate and then I had closed my eyes and let myself fall into a deep, dark pit when I could have turned and run. I would remember the dream of the crocodile, how I swam frantically to the river bank, terrified of the crocodile right behind me about to snap at my legs and tear them from my body, and when I reached the bank and hauled myself onto the chalk mud, I turned and saw that the crocodile had not moved from the centre of the river. Although when I reached land I became strong and the earth beneath my feet became fertile, heralding my escape and progression, I still bore my own guilt for not understanding that the crocodile could not move and could not catch me and that I should have run sooner. I took the blame for my own inaction, my own weakness and I understood that it had been my own fears that had held me prisoner. Although there was no doubting my husband's insane cruelty, his crocodile's savagery, his snake's venom and his rape of my soul, it was I who had stayed and not run, so my humiliation was self inflicted and my guilt proven.
After scrubbing my floors and mind with harsh, abrasive, punishing brushes I would go to my tiny attic room exhausted and sleep. And so I lived, worked and burned until the end of the war.
On Armistice day my innocence of the war was shattered. I had never tried to understand it. I had never thought about it. I did not know whether it was glorious or inglorious. It was just something men went to and they either came back or they didn't. The day war ceased there was a change in the soldiers, it was not one of relief or joy but one of despair. Their quiet serenity left them and tears streamed from their dead fish eyes. They wept and screamed and in their wailing I could hear the horror they had repressed being unleashed. I covered my ears and ran from the house. I did not stop running until I was far away. I uncovered my ears, I could still hear the nightmare sound coming from the house. A dry, demonic whine came from the back of a throat behind me. I swung round and there at the foot of a tree sat a soldier. His face was burnt away, he had no eyes and no hands. He sat hunched up with his knees up to where his chin used to be. I knelt beside him and held one of his misshapen stumps. His dry, cracked voice came from his lipless mouth and he told me of war.
"I didn't know it was real, but now that its over it must have been real. We're cursing the dead that left us behind. Even if our bodies were whole, a man cannot live with what he knows."
I wept.
That night I was once again on a train with my hat box on my lap. The train rattled through the night. My naivety had been shed. I looked at my hat box and cried. Then I felt George's touch on the palm of my hand and I knew that he lived.
Chapter Four Part Twelve
Autumn found me somewhere in the heart of England. I never knew quite where. I enjoyed the sense of concealment. If I did not know where I was then neither did anybody else. I was in hiding from time, place and identity. I lived and worked at a soldier's convalescent home. The house and its grounds were a perfect isolation, walled off and detached from the rest of the country. A quiet place where the wounded withdrew from the war, dulled their senses and cocooned themselves in peace.
In spite of their disfigurements, their lost limbs, burnt off faces and empty eye sockets, the soldiers seemed to be preoccupied with a silent, unworldly serenity, as though the losing of a limb and the gaining of a stump was of no importance. They had done what they had done, it had happened and it no longer mattered. They were washed, dressed and fed by brisk, starched nurses who trotted from one to the next. I would watch men as they were pushed in chairs or hobbling on crutches down the corridors or out in the grounds. The grandeur of the Georgian manor house and the quiet beauty of its trees and parklands meant nothing to them whether they were blind or sighted. They saw nothing, they were somewhere else seeing something else, but they never said where and they never said what. My innocence of the war was in keeping with their silence.
I preoccupied myself with work, hard, energetic, feverish work. I washed dishes, I scoured pots and pans until they gleamed, I peeled and chopped potatoes, carrots and onions by the sack full, I made gallons of tea and every evening when the men have been put to bed I spent four hours on my knees scrubbing floors. As I scrubbed at the dirt and then scrubbed harder at the germs and bacteria and all that was invisible but might be there, my mind would writhe and turn through bitterness, humiliation and guilt. These three had followed me from my past. When I had run from my marriage I thought that I had escaped them, but I had not. Memories of my imprisonment and my husband's wicked disdain would resurge in great waves that crashed and cut into me again and again, as though his destruction of me would not rest until complete. I would stand determined like rock but I feared these waves and their erosion of my mind and spirit. I feared being lost again in darkness and madness. I feared my weakness and I could not believe in my strength. I had been too humiliated to believe in my strength. I was still filled with his poison and his poison now took the form of humiliation. Sometimes I would rage with a bitterness that was itself poisonous and wanted to kill and wipe him off the face of the earth. Other times I would feel an overwhelming sense of guilt and my heart would stop at the sheer terror of my disloyalty to myself. I had let it happen. I had walked down my own path to my own fate and then I had closed my eyes and let myself fall into a deep, dark pit when I could have turned and run. I would remember the dream of the crocodile, how I swam frantically to the river bank, terrified of the crocodile right behind me about to snap at my legs and tear them from my body, and when I reached the bank and hauled myself onto the chalk mud, I turned and saw that the crocodile had not moved from the centre of the river. Although when I reached land I became strong and the earth beneath my feet became fertile, heralding my escape and progression, I still bore my own guilt for not understanding that the crocodile could not move and could not catch me and that I should have run sooner. I took the blame for my own inaction, my own weakness and I understood that it had been my own fears that had held me prisoner. Although there was no doubting my husband's insane cruelty, his crocodile's savagery, his snake's venom and his rape of my soul, it was I who had stayed and not run, so my humiliation was self inflicted and my guilt proven.
After scrubbing my floors and mind with harsh, abrasive, punishing brushes I would go to my tiny attic room exhausted and sleep. And so I lived, worked and burned until the end of the war.
On Armistice day my innocence of the war was shattered. I had never tried to understand it. I had never thought about it. I did not know whether it was glorious or inglorious. It was just something men went to and they either came back or they didn't. The day war ceased there was a change in the soldiers, it was not one of relief or joy but one of despair. Their quiet serenity left them and tears streamed from their dead fish eyes. They wept and screamed and in their wailing I could hear the horror they had repressed being unleashed. I covered my ears and ran from the house. I did not stop running until I was far away. I uncovered my ears, I could still hear the nightmare sound coming from the house. A dry, demonic whine came from the back of a throat behind me. I swung round and there at the foot of a tree sat a soldier. His face was burnt away, he had no eyes and no hands. He sat hunched up with his knees up to where his chin used to be. I knelt beside him and held one of his misshapen stumps. His dry, cracked voice came from his lipless mouth and he told me of war.
"I didn't know it was real, but now that its over it must have been real. We're cursing the dead that left us behind. Even if our bodies were whole, a man cannot live with what he knows."
I wept.
That night I was once again on a train with my hat box on my lap. The train rattled through the night. My naivety had been shed. I looked at my hat box and cried. Then I felt George's touch on the palm of my hand and I knew that he lived.
Sunday 3 January 2016
STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter four Part twelve
The sun was hot and the sky was clear. The village watched me as I walked over its green with my hat box and bible. I stopped at he well. I stood beneath its peculiar conical roof and I peered down through its calm darkness but its bottom was lost beneath its many ancient secrets and lovers' wishes that seemed to call back to me silently and wish me well.
I strode past the duck pond. The ducks eyed me and drifted towards the edge of the water in case I carried some bread or cake, but when they saw that my pathway was to pass them by and that all I carried was my own good fortune, they quickly turned their heads away and floated back to the centre of the pool, trying to cover their foolishness by shamming their indifference.
Once through the village I stopped at a fork in the road and I sat down to rest below a signpost that pointed to Salisbury. A milk cart loaded up with a neat, square squadron of silver churns and drawn by two sturdy white horses, clopped towards me and stopped.
The ride to Salisbury was cheery. The driver was a rosy faced man, fat as butter and always laughing. I listened to his laughter and his stories. I made little reply to his chatter. I had no stories of my own. My recent past was muddied and confused. I had not experienced the contentment that chronicles time and its events. Time and events had not crystallised in my mind, it was all behind a mist. So I listened to my fellow traveller and absorbed. He delighted in his world and its timing of night and day, moon and sun and seasons. His happiness made me happy.
At the rail station I waited in the queue at the ticket office. My appearance was causing interest. I could feel the sideways glances coming from all directions. I tried to imagine how I looked, was it my dress, my hat box, my bible, or was it just that I was alone ? I felt no shyness, only pride and an excited self-righteousness. I could not find fault in my action and situation. My intuition and my instincts were guiding me and their guidance could not be doubted, to possess them at last made me powerful, untouchable. I no longer feared the world, I had gained complete control over myself and my life. I looked around me and met the gazes of families, couples, maiden aunts, army officers and town clerks and I realised it was not my appearance or situation, it was the way I was inside, it shone from my eyes and showed on my face. They turned their heads aside uneasily, still disturbed but dismissive, like the ducks in the village pond.
I came to the head of the queue and pushed my bible through the gap beneath the window. The mousey, bespectacled clerk looked up at me astounded. I smiled. I told him to make me out a single ticket to a place of his choice, somewhere along the route of the next train due to leave, as far as he thought the bible was worth. He ran his hands over the leather binding and he opened it up and saw the beautiful script. I could see that he would be proud to own such a bible, to be passed down through his family and have it known that it was he who had acquired it. He looked up at me, his bright button eyes filled with excitement and his mouth and moustache stretched wide across his face in a smile that was wider than any smile he had ever smiled. Suddenly monotony and routine had become quirky and daring. He hid the bible hurriedly beneath the counter and checked over his shoulder that no other clerk or higher authority had witnessed the act. I watched him scribble ink over a ticket. His small mouses hands were attached to white shirt sleeves held back with metal bands. He passed the ticket under the window and winked.
I boarded the train.
The train raced happily through green hills, trailing its grey smoke behind it. I sat with my hat box on my lap and looked out of the carriage window, unbothered by folks' spying glances. I put my fingers up to my throat and touched the pearls. I thought of my mother in law and her mother in law before her. The scene at the dressing table on the day of my engagement came clearly to me. I wanted to weep at my ignorance. I recalled the broken woman All she had was a life that longed for death, the smell of gin and eau de cologne and a chance to save me and I denied her. But I would wear her string of tears in her memory and in the memory of the woman before her, in remembrance of their deaths and my reprieve.
The train ran on and I watched as my beautiful Wiltshire and its summer passed by and was gone.
Chapter four Part twelve
The sun was hot and the sky was clear. The village watched me as I walked over its green with my hat box and bible. I stopped at he well. I stood beneath its peculiar conical roof and I peered down through its calm darkness but its bottom was lost beneath its many ancient secrets and lovers' wishes that seemed to call back to me silently and wish me well.
I strode past the duck pond. The ducks eyed me and drifted towards the edge of the water in case I carried some bread or cake, but when they saw that my pathway was to pass them by and that all I carried was my own good fortune, they quickly turned their heads away and floated back to the centre of the pool, trying to cover their foolishness by shamming their indifference.
Once through the village I stopped at a fork in the road and I sat down to rest below a signpost that pointed to Salisbury. A milk cart loaded up with a neat, square squadron of silver churns and drawn by two sturdy white horses, clopped towards me and stopped.
The ride to Salisbury was cheery. The driver was a rosy faced man, fat as butter and always laughing. I listened to his laughter and his stories. I made little reply to his chatter. I had no stories of my own. My recent past was muddied and confused. I had not experienced the contentment that chronicles time and its events. Time and events had not crystallised in my mind, it was all behind a mist. So I listened to my fellow traveller and absorbed. He delighted in his world and its timing of night and day, moon and sun and seasons. His happiness made me happy.
At the rail station I waited in the queue at the ticket office. My appearance was causing interest. I could feel the sideways glances coming from all directions. I tried to imagine how I looked, was it my dress, my hat box, my bible, or was it just that I was alone ? I felt no shyness, only pride and an excited self-righteousness. I could not find fault in my action and situation. My intuition and my instincts were guiding me and their guidance could not be doubted, to possess them at last made me powerful, untouchable. I no longer feared the world, I had gained complete control over myself and my life. I looked around me and met the gazes of families, couples, maiden aunts, army officers and town clerks and I realised it was not my appearance or situation, it was the way I was inside, it shone from my eyes and showed on my face. They turned their heads aside uneasily, still disturbed but dismissive, like the ducks in the village pond.
I came to the head of the queue and pushed my bible through the gap beneath the window. The mousey, bespectacled clerk looked up at me astounded. I smiled. I told him to make me out a single ticket to a place of his choice, somewhere along the route of the next train due to leave, as far as he thought the bible was worth. He ran his hands over the leather binding and he opened it up and saw the beautiful script. I could see that he would be proud to own such a bible, to be passed down through his family and have it known that it was he who had acquired it. He looked up at me, his bright button eyes filled with excitement and his mouth and moustache stretched wide across his face in a smile that was wider than any smile he had ever smiled. Suddenly monotony and routine had become quirky and daring. He hid the bible hurriedly beneath the counter and checked over his shoulder that no other clerk or higher authority had witnessed the act. I watched him scribble ink over a ticket. His small mouses hands were attached to white shirt sleeves held back with metal bands. He passed the ticket under the window and winked.
I boarded the train.
The train raced happily through green hills, trailing its grey smoke behind it. I sat with my hat box on my lap and looked out of the carriage window, unbothered by folks' spying glances. I put my fingers up to my throat and touched the pearls. I thought of my mother in law and her mother in law before her. The scene at the dressing table on the day of my engagement came clearly to me. I wanted to weep at my ignorance. I recalled the broken woman All she had was a life that longed for death, the smell of gin and eau de cologne and a chance to save me and I denied her. But I would wear her string of tears in her memory and in the memory of the woman before her, in remembrance of their deaths and my reprieve.
The train ran on and I watched as my beautiful Wiltshire and its summer passed by and was gone.
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