STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Five Part one
The mother of pearl beads gleamed faintly through the gloom of the pawn shop, a tiny string of soft whiteness in the dimness of the room. The necklace lay on top of a tangled pile of old buttons and worthless jewellery, tarnished silver and unpolished brass, beneath the glass top of the counter. Joe wiped away a semi-circle of grey dust with his arm. He looked down at his granny's pearly beads. Above them in the dull glass he saw a face he did not recognise, a pale, sharp boned face with a redness around the eyes and blue in the hollows of the thin cheeks. Joe did not understand, he did not know where this face came from, he did not like this face. Joe raised his arm and brought his sharp elbow fast, the face cracked and splintered. Joe reached in through the broken glass and took back his granny's beads.
A door opened from the back room, Mr Samuels stood in its frame, his hand rested on the doorknob. He wore a brown velveteen dressing gown, tied at the waist. His grey hair was mussed and his large sad eyes were wide and startled, surprised out of sleep. He looked at the shattered counter, then he looked behind Joe at the shop door and saw the broken catch, then he looked at Joe holding the necklace possessively like a child obsessed with one treasure. Mr Samuels looked at Joe's ghost white face and the old man's brown eyes were made sadder. Joe's face told a story the old jew had seen before. Forgiveness was easy but not enough, for the story was over, Mr Samuels knew that but Joe did not. Joe knew nothing, his mind was blank and numb, no comprehension, no vision, no voice. The jew could see the blankness in Joe's face, nothing would register, be it good or evil, nothing would reflect, be it forgiving or deceiving. Mr Samuels held out his upturned palms and shrugged his shoulders.
"So what's the problem? You want your necklace? So take it !"
His voice was kind and forgiving, his sad heart showed on his face, but his pity could not be seen by Joe whose soul was in pieces, all jumbled and crazed.
Joe put his granny's beads in his jacket pocket and left the shop. The night was fading into dawn and the air was cold. As he climbed the steps from basement to pavement Joe's mind cleared for an instant and showed in a moment of absolute clarity that everything he had ever done , he had done without knowing why. He had no control yet he was controlled, but by whom he did not know. Then he saw Jason and immediately his clarity disappeared and the clue to his confusion was clouded. The clue having left him, only his madness remained, an empty silence locked inside his willing, automated outer shell.
The long black car had parked behind the rusty, blue Morris Minor, bumper to bumper. The black windows were sealed bar for the front passenger window which was open and filled with Jason Donovan's ugly , fleshy face. His steady eyes looked out from beneath his heavy lids. His slow monotone speech was bland but menacing.
" Joey boy ! We didn't know where you'd gone. We don't like it when we don't know where you are. A whole week's gone by. " He paused, " Never mind, you just came back in time for another little job. "
He held out a brown paper bag. Joe stepped close to the car and took it. He saw the smallness of his own hand next to Jason's titan hand and palony fingers. Joe could see the driver and another of Jason's slant eyed, dark suited, yellow muscle men who sat in the back with a taller dark haired man who wore shades and a green gabardine, he had a thin moustache and a scar down the left side of his face. A far off note jangled inside Joe's empty silence, but it was brief and feint and died without so much as an echo.
" So where did you go ?" asked Jason, disinterested as the electronic window began to whine and rise.
" My godmother's." said Joe brightly and truthfully.
" She don't feed you enough." was Jason's cynical reply before the black window closed and made the car's occupants invisible. The sleek, silent machine backed away from the Morris Minor, pulled out slowly and drifted away.
Joe was alone. The cold air had bypassed his clothes and skin and reached the centre of his bones. His body shook and his teeth began to chatter. He looked inside the paper bag. There was a flick knife and a photograph of an old woman with a blue rinse, and an address on the back of it;
25 Orchard Road,
Morden
Joe returned Annie's car to the back yard of the Drakes Head. He closed the high, wire mesh gates behind him and got back into the Morris Minor to get out of the cold wind. The early morning sky was dark grey with a heavy rain waiting to fall. Joe looked at the plastic crates stacked close around the car, yellow, red, green and blue, all of them filled with empty bottles of brown, green and clear glass. Then the rain began to fall. Swollen raindrops broke and merged on the windows and windscreen and soon the shapes outside were blurred and the colours made patterns . Joe remembered Roy's kaleidoscope many years ago when they were boys with short trousers and scabbed knees.
Roy used to sit for hours in the front room with the kaleidoscope to one eye and the other eye closed. His body would be quite still but for his hands turning and shaking the coloured glass. Everything around him would be wild and frantic. Their mother shouting and trying to cook the tea, Bessie and Tim screaming and fighting, the radio on loud, but nothing could pierce Roy's serenity. He would sit on the lumpy sofa, close to Joe but so far away, travelling through his one open eye and never wanting to return. Joe remembered how lost he felt when Roy was gone. He would sit and scowl and feel his temper rise and muddle because it had no direction. He could not direct his anger at the kaleidoscope. Roy would not let no one touch it, it was his own and inside it was his own world where no one else could go.
One day while Roy was out playing football Joe had taken the kaleidoscope and looked inside it for the place Roy went, but all he could see was church windows. He hated church windows. He wanted to know where Roy went but the place would not show itself to him. Frustration seared inside him and burst out like fire. He threw the kaleidoscope across the room and it smashed against the wall. He ran across the room to where it had fallen and picked it up. He put it up to his eye but there was no pattern through the end, only a white circle and in amongst the shards of coloured glass that lay useless along the bottom of the cardboard tube, there were pieces of shattered mirror. Joe put the broken kaleidoscope in a shoe box and hid it under his bed.
When Roy came home he searched the flat, every corner, every cupboard, every drawer. His search was silent and obsessive, a small whining sound came from deep inside him like a puppy searching for its mother and knowing she would never be found.
At bedtime his feverish search continued in their bedroom. The more obsessive Roy became the more helpless Joe felt. The thought of admitting his guilt drew further and further away as fear overcame honesty until fear ruled and honesty had disappeared.
Roy found the shoe box. He wailed and sobbed. He climbed into his bed where for hours his sobs shook his body in great tides of wretchedness and loss.
Roy said nothing to Joe, as though the deed had been too bad even for Joe to have done it. As he lay in bed and listened to his brother's shivering and sobbing, Joe felt his guilt weigh heavy and he knew it would stay and weigh forever because Roy would never accuse, so how could he ever admit. And he wondered why he always did bad things. He did not want to do bad things but he was helpless and everything he did was bad.
And now in the car Joe tipped back his swimming head and his exhaustion drifted into sleep, made uneasy by the memory of his brother's desolation and the knowledge that he was still helpless and bad.
Sunday, 21 February 2016
Saturday, 13 February 2016
STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four Part Sixteen
Joe sat cross-legged on the floor in the round tower. It was night. Many moons had risen and many glasses of brandy had been drunk since Clare's story had begun. Joe looked through the window and saw that the moon had waned to a half circle. He drank back another glass of brandy, it burned through his empty body.
As he had listened to Clare he had wanted to reach out and touch her, to hold and be held by her. But he could not, because he was not George. He had listened to her story and had understood, but now that the telling was done he understood nothing. Clare had taken him into her world, he had seen and heard her world but now she was sleeping, she had left him alone in his own world where it seemed to him that nothing could be seen or heard. His understanding of Clare's world made the confusion of his own more dark. He sat in a dark room with a black void in his mind and all he had was a sadness that trickled from his eyes because he did not understand.
In the feint light of the half moon he looked at the outlines of all the strange objects in the room and he left his blankness to be drawn back through Clare's words. He knew about the punch bowl filed with earth, he knew about the broken china bride and the dead daughters from the two emptied halves of the barren Russian doll. He knew about the shells and the wooden Noah's ark and about the picture on the wall. But he did not know about the school desk beneath the window or the puzzle at his side. He made up the sides of the jigsaw puzzle and joined them to the four corners, but there was nothing in between. Nothing but the blackness of the void. Then a cloud covered the half moon and the black void darkened and in it Joe forgot Clare's world and lost his mind. He saw pearls sinking in black water. They were white and pure and perfect. He wanted them. They were beautiful. They were precious. They were jewels. Their loss terrified him. To watch them sink was like death. He grasped and clutched at the black water but the pearls had disappeared.
Chapter Four Part Sixteen
Joe sat cross-legged on the floor in the round tower. It was night. Many moons had risen and many glasses of brandy had been drunk since Clare's story had begun. Joe looked through the window and saw that the moon had waned to a half circle. He drank back another glass of brandy, it burned through his empty body.
As he had listened to Clare he had wanted to reach out and touch her, to hold and be held by her. But he could not, because he was not George. He had listened to her story and had understood, but now that the telling was done he understood nothing. Clare had taken him into her world, he had seen and heard her world but now she was sleeping, she had left him alone in his own world where it seemed to him that nothing could be seen or heard. His understanding of Clare's world made the confusion of his own more dark. He sat in a dark room with a black void in his mind and all he had was a sadness that trickled from his eyes because he did not understand.
In the feint light of the half moon he looked at the outlines of all the strange objects in the room and he left his blankness to be drawn back through Clare's words. He knew about the punch bowl filed with earth, he knew about the broken china bride and the dead daughters from the two emptied halves of the barren Russian doll. He knew about the shells and the wooden Noah's ark and about the picture on the wall. But he did not know about the school desk beneath the window or the puzzle at his side. He made up the sides of the jigsaw puzzle and joined them to the four corners, but there was nothing in between. Nothing but the blackness of the void. Then a cloud covered the half moon and the black void darkened and in it Joe forgot Clare's world and lost his mind. He saw pearls sinking in black water. They were white and pure and perfect. He wanted them. They were beautiful. They were precious. They were jewels. Their loss terrified him. To watch them sink was like death. He grasped and clutched at the black water but the pearls had disappeared.
Sunday, 7 February 2016
STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four Part Fifteen
We travelled down through Italy together and two weeks later we boarded a ship for Naples, a liner that was England bound. George had been to a barber, a tailor and a cobbler, but still the captain was wary of our simply cut clothes and missing luggage. We stood on the quay, me with my one small carpet bag and George with his muslin bundle. The captain stood on the ship with his blue, gold buttoned uniform. He leant heavily on the rail of the deck, his arms and hands spread wide to support his enormous, sagging weight. He looked at us over the bulk of his chest and belly and his long white moustache drooped and pointed down towards us, like a walrus amazed at our impertinence in wanting to join his floating menagerie of fashion and luxury. But when I produced the last of my money, the walrus took it without flinching and George and I were provided with the smallest cabin and a passage home.
That night the liner docked at a small Sardinian fishing port. George and I sat down to dinner in the ship's grand dining room The diners were dressed in evening dress. The women were powdered, feathered and jewelled and the men were cumerbunded and Dickie bowed. I could feel their eyes on me, scorning my blue, cotton dress my single string of pearls and my pale, ungloved arms. The light glittered falsely from crystal chandeliers on to the white, starched tablecloths and napkins. Food was placed in front of me and my glass was filled. I froze, I stared at my plate without seeing what was on it and all I could hear was the fizz of champagne close to my ear. I was angry.
Their scorning eyes were the eyes of crocodiles and snakes. They looked down from their high pinnacles, awaiting my answer. It was a trap. To answer their scorn was to admit humility. Though I had journeyed and found all my answers I did not speak, for they had no ears to hear my words.
I looked around at my fellow voyagers. I saw thick skinned rhinoceri, their horned arrogance, accusing and ready to charge. I saw the savage mouths and hungry eyes of big cats ready to kill. I saw stupid, self important ostriches and I saw camels with tall, haughty necks, lowered eyelids and mouth's filled with the bitter taste of old pennies. Their wealth surrounded them but encased nothing and their possession of nothing drove them to destroy. They sought power in destruction. Those who broke their rules were humbled and so too were those who obeyed them. Their disdain was unrestrained, while their eyes had never turned inward to see their own vile piety. I hated them, I hated their hatred.
I looked at George, he was serene. We looked into each other. My anger looked at his serenity and his serenity looked at my anger. I remembered the way he had looked in the woods and I tried to imagine how I had looked to him. I remembered being lost and having no sense of belonging, whereas George had belonged but was dissatisfied and sad. Only then did I realise that my being lost had meant that my journey was predestined, whereas George's was inspired by me and as I had stumbled at the very beginning of mine, so I had opened the gateway to his. Now our paths had met. George had lost his anger on the way, but I still carried mine. As he looked at me over our table of uneaten food and undrunk champagne, he could see that my anger would not go, that I needed his help. He took my hand and whispered,
" Let's get off the Ark and go and find the Unicorn."
We walked along the harbour wall and down onto the beach. The dusk sky turned through mauve and indigo. The village lay quiet in its shadows, shying away from the liner's painted metal bulk and fairy lights. We took off our shoes, the sand was chilly and silken on the soles of our feet. We found a little wooden boat, it looked sad, upside down and stranded, so we turned it over and dragged it down the beach to the sea's first beckoning waves that washed up around our legs. We jumped into the boat and George began to row. Only when we were far out into the ocean did he ship the oars and we drifted like a tiny shadow in the night.
There were a million stars in sky and ocean. There were no horizons. The night was timeless and silent. Water lapped quietly against the sides of the boat as we rocked gently over the push and pull of the waves.
George told me of his beautiful, lonely house and of his money sealed in a leaden box and buried deep in a bank vault. We decided to live in the beautiful house with our love, and the fire it sparked would build walls of flame that would keep us warm and the rest of the world at bay. We didn't want his money, we would keep that sealed and safe in the vault for the Unicorn.
We made our lover's pact. When death comes to one, the other would fast and follow. George unclasped the string of pearls from around my neck. He broke them and threw them one by one into the ocean. They floated awhile amongst the mirrored stars and then disappeared beneath the water. The immortal tears had at last been shed, their anger and their bitterness were no longer mine, the ocean had reclaimed them.
So Starshine and the Ocean were one, they were reflections of each other. There was an energy in our souls that burned like another spirit, a third presence, a ghost we both felt. We knew that the ghost was love and that it would remain with us for the rest of our lives.
We were no longer looking for the Unicorn. Everything was complete.
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Chapter Four Part Fifteen
We travelled down through Italy together and two weeks later we boarded a ship for Naples, a liner that was England bound. George had been to a barber, a tailor and a cobbler, but still the captain was wary of our simply cut clothes and missing luggage. We stood on the quay, me with my one small carpet bag and George with his muslin bundle. The captain stood on the ship with his blue, gold buttoned uniform. He leant heavily on the rail of the deck, his arms and hands spread wide to support his enormous, sagging weight. He looked at us over the bulk of his chest and belly and his long white moustache drooped and pointed down towards us, like a walrus amazed at our impertinence in wanting to join his floating menagerie of fashion and luxury. But when I produced the last of my money, the walrus took it without flinching and George and I were provided with the smallest cabin and a passage home.
That night the liner docked at a small Sardinian fishing port. George and I sat down to dinner in the ship's grand dining room The diners were dressed in evening dress. The women were powdered, feathered and jewelled and the men were cumerbunded and Dickie bowed. I could feel their eyes on me, scorning my blue, cotton dress my single string of pearls and my pale, ungloved arms. The light glittered falsely from crystal chandeliers on to the white, starched tablecloths and napkins. Food was placed in front of me and my glass was filled. I froze, I stared at my plate without seeing what was on it and all I could hear was the fizz of champagne close to my ear. I was angry.
Their scorning eyes were the eyes of crocodiles and snakes. They looked down from their high pinnacles, awaiting my answer. It was a trap. To answer their scorn was to admit humility. Though I had journeyed and found all my answers I did not speak, for they had no ears to hear my words.
I looked around at my fellow voyagers. I saw thick skinned rhinoceri, their horned arrogance, accusing and ready to charge. I saw the savage mouths and hungry eyes of big cats ready to kill. I saw stupid, self important ostriches and I saw camels with tall, haughty necks, lowered eyelids and mouth's filled with the bitter taste of old pennies. Their wealth surrounded them but encased nothing and their possession of nothing drove them to destroy. They sought power in destruction. Those who broke their rules were humbled and so too were those who obeyed them. Their disdain was unrestrained, while their eyes had never turned inward to see their own vile piety. I hated them, I hated their hatred.
I looked at George, he was serene. We looked into each other. My anger looked at his serenity and his serenity looked at my anger. I remembered the way he had looked in the woods and I tried to imagine how I had looked to him. I remembered being lost and having no sense of belonging, whereas George had belonged but was dissatisfied and sad. Only then did I realise that my being lost had meant that my journey was predestined, whereas George's was inspired by me and as I had stumbled at the very beginning of mine, so I had opened the gateway to his. Now our paths had met. George had lost his anger on the way, but I still carried mine. As he looked at me over our table of uneaten food and undrunk champagne, he could see that my anger would not go, that I needed his help. He took my hand and whispered,
" Let's get off the Ark and go and find the Unicorn."
We walked along the harbour wall and down onto the beach. The dusk sky turned through mauve and indigo. The village lay quiet in its shadows, shying away from the liner's painted metal bulk and fairy lights. We took off our shoes, the sand was chilly and silken on the soles of our feet. We found a little wooden boat, it looked sad, upside down and stranded, so we turned it over and dragged it down the beach to the sea's first beckoning waves that washed up around our legs. We jumped into the boat and George began to row. Only when we were far out into the ocean did he ship the oars and we drifted like a tiny shadow in the night.
There were a million stars in sky and ocean. There were no horizons. The night was timeless and silent. Water lapped quietly against the sides of the boat as we rocked gently over the push and pull of the waves.
George told me of his beautiful, lonely house and of his money sealed in a leaden box and buried deep in a bank vault. We decided to live in the beautiful house with our love, and the fire it sparked would build walls of flame that would keep us warm and the rest of the world at bay. We didn't want his money, we would keep that sealed and safe in the vault for the Unicorn.
We made our lover's pact. When death comes to one, the other would fast and follow. George unclasped the string of pearls from around my neck. He broke them and threw them one by one into the ocean. They floated awhile amongst the mirrored stars and then disappeared beneath the water. The immortal tears had at last been shed, their anger and their bitterness were no longer mine, the ocean had reclaimed them.
So Starshine and the Ocean were one, they were reflections of each other. There was an energy in our souls that burned like another spirit, a third presence, a ghost we both felt. We knew that the ghost was love and that it would remain with us for the rest of our lives.
We were no longer looking for the Unicorn. Everything was complete.
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Sunday, 31 January 2016
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.
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.
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.
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