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.
Sunday, 29 November 2015
STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
chapter four part eight
Through dinner silence was absolute but for the loud ring of cutlery on china. I had no hunger but I ate to avoid his eyes. I chewed and swallowed but tasted nothing. The weight of fear and panic pulled me down so that the sheer effort to stay sitting in the chair and pretend that all was well, shook my body like the straining of a bough and tremor of leaves on a tree that cannot run so it stands, waiting to be uprooted , while the hurricane blows from all directions.
We sat far away from each other at either end of the long dining table. His silence said everything. I felt his malevolence shining from his eyes and filling the room. He could not supress his pride, his victory and insight. As though the insight was his own and not an offering he had stumbled upon. As though there had been no discovery, no dream written and found. Only my weakness, my transparency, only me imprisoned in my own humiliation, left helpless and pathetic behind bars of my own making.
He spoke, his voice came down at me from a great height,
"This self indulgence must stop, " he said "I never envisaged such selfishness. It's time you behaved as a wife should behave. Do something about the way you look ! Look at your hair for Christ's sake !"
I looked up like a frightened child and suddenly he was smiling and his voice changed from the vile rebuke to a gentler tone, a pretence of kindness.
" Now do as you're told or the crocodile will et you !" He laughed long and loud. He insisted it was a joke and asked while I was so sullen, why would I not be teased, why could I not laugh with him. I did not laugh with him because his laughter was not kind but vindictive, his mirth was not to tease but to destroy. While his laughter continued I recalled my whole life, my years of growing with my family and I could find no memory of the word 'selfish' ever having been used towards me, neither could I remember any emotions or sensations of selfishness. At the same time as knowing that I was not selfish my husband had convinced me that I was. I now believed myself to be selfish. The emptiness, the darkness and the numbness was now complete. I had fallen so far there was nowhere lower to go and somehow I no longer cared, instead I felt relieved that I wouldn't have to fight anymore. The battle was over, though lost, and so the key was turned and the padlock locked.
chapter four part eight
Through dinner silence was absolute but for the loud ring of cutlery on china. I had no hunger but I ate to avoid his eyes. I chewed and swallowed but tasted nothing. The weight of fear and panic pulled me down so that the sheer effort to stay sitting in the chair and pretend that all was well, shook my body like the straining of a bough and tremor of leaves on a tree that cannot run so it stands, waiting to be uprooted , while the hurricane blows from all directions.
We sat far away from each other at either end of the long dining table. His silence said everything. I felt his malevolence shining from his eyes and filling the room. He could not supress his pride, his victory and insight. As though the insight was his own and not an offering he had stumbled upon. As though there had been no discovery, no dream written and found. Only my weakness, my transparency, only me imprisoned in my own humiliation, left helpless and pathetic behind bars of my own making.
He spoke, his voice came down at me from a great height,
"This self indulgence must stop, " he said "I never envisaged such selfishness. It's time you behaved as a wife should behave. Do something about the way you look ! Look at your hair for Christ's sake !"
I looked up like a frightened child and suddenly he was smiling and his voice changed from the vile rebuke to a gentler tone, a pretence of kindness.
" Now do as you're told or the crocodile will et you !" He laughed long and loud. He insisted it was a joke and asked while I was so sullen, why would I not be teased, why could I not laugh with him. I did not laugh with him because his laughter was not kind but vindictive, his mirth was not to tease but to destroy. While his laughter continued I recalled my whole life, my years of growing with my family and I could find no memory of the word 'selfish' ever having been used towards me, neither could I remember any emotions or sensations of selfishness. At the same time as knowing that I was not selfish my husband had convinced me that I was. I now believed myself to be selfish. The emptiness, the darkness and the numbness was now complete. I had fallen so far there was nowhere lower to go and somehow I no longer cared, instead I felt relieved that I wouldn't have to fight anymore. The battle was over, though lost, and so the key was turned and the padlock locked.
Sunday, 15 November 2015
STARSHINE , THE SEA AND THE UNICORN.
Chapter Four Part six
..........White marshland of wet, chalk mud and pale reeds that rattled like dry bones in a soft breeze. Through the marsh ran a great river, slow and wide, its water clouded white like thin milk. I saw a figure swimming down the centre of the wide river and seeing that the figure was me I then became the swimmer. I stopped swimming and looked around me, gently treading the warm, fetid water. My dress and petticoats billow up around my shoulders while my underwear dragged at my body. The air was moist and heavy to breath. The sun, though hidden in the bright white of the sky, scorched my face and a hot wind rippled the surface of the milky water.
I saw I was the same distance from each far shore. I had to choose, but the more I tried the more a choice escaped me. The harder I tried to think the more vacant my head became. My mind emptied and numbed. Time slowed and distorted, long minutes stretched by before I moved and when I did it was fear that chose my direction. My powers of mind and spirit had been paralysed and taken from me, in their place was fear. Fear filled me, it poured itself into me and weighed me down. I sensed evil in the water. I swam towards the marshes. I swam hard and fast though my fear pulled me down and the water thickened. The whiteness of the river concealed the evil, I was blind to its whereabouts and in my panic I sensed it to be all around me and beneath me, gaining on me all the time. I swam with an insane strength in a frenzied attempt to escape it, though I held no belief that I could.
I turned my head quickly to look back and I saw the crocodile in the middle of the river where I had been treading water, before fear had pushed me on. I was paralysed by its cold, reptilian stare. I knew the crocodile to be the bearer of my husbands soul. The crocodile and my husband were one and the same. Its vast body darkened the water, only its wicked eyes and long nose stood out above the surface and I knew that beneath the water it was grinning as it faced me. Its stillness was absolute and so was mine.
After my panicked swim there was some distance between the crocodile and myself, but I was scared to continue my race for the marshes because if I moved so would the crocodile and as soon as my back was turned, in two flicks of its massive tail I would be its victim, snapped and crushed in its jaws. Although I could already see my blood spilling and turning the white water pink as I died, fear again chose for me and I did turn and swim for the marshes. With every stroke my body became heavier and the water thicker, but still I swam with a speed that came from madness. I dared not look behind me for I knew the crocodile to be swimming slowly at my heels to prolong my agony, to tease my futile desperation and to ridicule my need to survive.
Exhausted I reached the marshes. I clutched a the reeds and slid from the mud. I scrabbled and I screamed, waiting for my legs to be torn from my body.
Time escaped me and without knowing how or why, my body was still whole and my legs were standing on firm ground. Only then did I look back and see that the crocodile had not moved from its spot in the middle of the river. Its evil eyes and ugly grin still faced me. I stared back. My fear turned to rage and my rage filled my body and made it strong. I tore off my wet silk and lace and stood naked before the crocodile and when it saw that my naked body was a strong body it sank beneath the white water and when its dark shape disappeared the water cleared and reflected the sun in a cloudless sky. I looked down and saw that the earth beneath my bare feet was dark brown while the reeds bore leaves of vivid green.............
Chapter Four Part six
..........White marshland of wet, chalk mud and pale reeds that rattled like dry bones in a soft breeze. Through the marsh ran a great river, slow and wide, its water clouded white like thin milk. I saw a figure swimming down the centre of the wide river and seeing that the figure was me I then became the swimmer. I stopped swimming and looked around me, gently treading the warm, fetid water. My dress and petticoats billow up around my shoulders while my underwear dragged at my body. The air was moist and heavy to breath. The sun, though hidden in the bright white of the sky, scorched my face and a hot wind rippled the surface of the milky water.
I saw I was the same distance from each far shore. I had to choose, but the more I tried the more a choice escaped me. The harder I tried to think the more vacant my head became. My mind emptied and numbed. Time slowed and distorted, long minutes stretched by before I moved and when I did it was fear that chose my direction. My powers of mind and spirit had been paralysed and taken from me, in their place was fear. Fear filled me, it poured itself into me and weighed me down. I sensed evil in the water. I swam towards the marshes. I swam hard and fast though my fear pulled me down and the water thickened. The whiteness of the river concealed the evil, I was blind to its whereabouts and in my panic I sensed it to be all around me and beneath me, gaining on me all the time. I swam with an insane strength in a frenzied attempt to escape it, though I held no belief that I could.
I turned my head quickly to look back and I saw the crocodile in the middle of the river where I had been treading water, before fear had pushed me on. I was paralysed by its cold, reptilian stare. I knew the crocodile to be the bearer of my husbands soul. The crocodile and my husband were one and the same. Its vast body darkened the water, only its wicked eyes and long nose stood out above the surface and I knew that beneath the water it was grinning as it faced me. Its stillness was absolute and so was mine.
After my panicked swim there was some distance between the crocodile and myself, but I was scared to continue my race for the marshes because if I moved so would the crocodile and as soon as my back was turned, in two flicks of its massive tail I would be its victim, snapped and crushed in its jaws. Although I could already see my blood spilling and turning the white water pink as I died, fear again chose for me and I did turn and swim for the marshes. With every stroke my body became heavier and the water thicker, but still I swam with a speed that came from madness. I dared not look behind me for I knew the crocodile to be swimming slowly at my heels to prolong my agony, to tease my futile desperation and to ridicule my need to survive.
Exhausted I reached the marshes. I clutched a the reeds and slid from the mud. I scrabbled and I screamed, waiting for my legs to be torn from my body.
Time escaped me and without knowing how or why, my body was still whole and my legs were standing on firm ground. Only then did I look back and see that the crocodile had not moved from its spot in the middle of the river. Its evil eyes and ugly grin still faced me. I stared back. My fear turned to rage and my rage filled my body and made it strong. I tore off my wet silk and lace and stood naked before the crocodile and when it saw that my naked body was a strong body it sank beneath the white water and when its dark shape disappeared the water cleared and reflected the sun in a cloudless sky. I looked down and saw that the earth beneath my bare feet was dark brown while the reeds bore leaves of vivid green.............
Saturday, 7 November 2015
ew house STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter four Part five
After our honeymoon I moved into my husband's town house, number seven Devonshire Street, off Portland Place. It felt grand to live there. It felt grand to walk up Portland Place, so wide and regal, lined on either side with a long terrace of solid, regal houses, tall and proud, deep and spacious, each containing its stairways and airy rooms of luxury and comfort. I would hold my head and spirits high as I walked to the door of one of the same, as lady and mistress of such a house. And it was so, that I walked to the door after each outing, whether I had been to a lady's for lunch or a friend's for tea, to a department store, a jewellers, a milliners, a furriers or a dress shop, I always walked proud and happy back to the door of number seven Devonshire Street. Pride and happiness were appearances for myself, not for others, they were beliefs I carried right to the door and even beyond, where it was dark and I was humble, and nothing was mine. The furniture was not mine, the food I ate was not mine, the clothes I wore were not mine, all were gifts for which I had to constantly show my gratitude. The thoughts I thought and the words I spoke were not mine and for those too I had to be grateful and I was always in great debt to my husband for his guidance. I thanked him, I honoured him and I obeyed him, but the debt was never paid and I was always humbled. I fought every instinct and voice that cried inside me, I battled to stay numb and empty, so that I could continue to smile, to sparkle and to love and I succeeded with my hard held beliefs of pride and happiness. My beliefs deadened truths and killed mistakes. My beliefs locked and barred me, and condemned me to serve long years of pain and penance. I suffered those years and was emptied and broken before truths were resurrected and mistakes came back to haunt.
It was dark inside my husband's house. The ceilings, walls and carpets were all deep shades of brown. The chairs were darkly upholstered and tables and cabinets were of the darkest woods. If ever the sun managed to slant its way through the window the maid would quickly draw the curtains to keep all the darkness from fading. The nights were sullen. I moved from one low gas glow to another, from the dimness of the drawing room to the darkened dining room where we ate our evening meals at a table, dimly lit with two small candles. After dinner my husband would often go to his study and leave me alone as I had been left all day. A strip of intense yellow light would shine out from beneath the study door, but I was locked out. Sometimes I would wait a while in case I was invited in, but I never was, so I would retire to bed and each night in the pitch black hallway I would pass the mirror and think I was passing a ghost at the foot of the stairs.
The days passed and sometimes I felt like a hidden child whose existence was so secret that even her presence in a room was ignored, she could stand or sit or lie down and only ever be space and air. My husband had no need of me as the tall, grey man, his chauffeur and valet attended to his every need. The grey man would sweep past me in the house, without a look or a word. Only once did he look in my direction and I looked back at his grey uniform, grey skin and grey hair and I smiled , but he did not see because he was looking at the hat stand that stood behind me.
Every morning at nine o'clock sharp the grey man would start up the motor car and drive my husband to the university. My husband was an important man of science, a doctor of chemistry and he led the way in important research. I knew no more than that, all I knew was that every day I lost him to his laboratory and that I was left alone with the cook and the maid.
The cook was fat and ugly and the maid was thin and sharp. I was frightened of them both. They ran the house with no help from me. My help was forbidden. Sometimes I would battle against my fears and summon up the courage to request a certain dish be served at dinner or that a vase be placed elsewhere and each time they would quickly turn aside and not hear me. Like the grey man they had no voices and went about their tasks in silence. Every meal was served to the minute, breakfast at eight, lunch at twelve and dinner at nine. There was no tarnished silver and no speck of dust. The house was perfect, ordered and exact. Every picture, every ornament and every piece of furniture, everything had its place but me.
I was a loose end, a misfit. I grew pale and anguished and would often take to my bed with sickness and fever. I would think I was pregnant and in spite of my illness I would eagerly await the doctor's prognosis. I longed to have children to nurse and to love, so that they could love me and know my worth. I had failed as a wife and was desperate to prove myself as a mother. But each time the doctor's prognosis was otherwise and on the last of his many visits he took my hand in his and told me gently that I would never bare a child. His voice trembled and his words seemed to cause as much pain in him as they did in me. He was a plump man with a kind, ageing face and lots of fluffy white hair on his head and down the sides of his face. His sad, dark eyes looked into me through my own as I wept and begged him not to tell my husband. He read me as I could not read myself and there were tears in his eyes. It was not clear to me why my husband's knowing of my sterility should terrify me so, but it was clear to the good doctor. He left me to weep, I cried into the pillows, tears streamed and my heart screamed at my hopelessness and my failure. I could hear
through the bedroom door as the two men met on the stairs. They stopped and talked, my husband's voice was loud and confident, his spirits seemed high. The doctor was terse with him as he spoke of my nervous disposition. He told my husband that I was suffering from a severe melancholia and needed plenty of rest, but he kept his word and said no more. I heard the front door close as the doctor left. I was still weeping when my husband knocked at my door and then entered without being bidden. His smile was broad, he sat on the bed and patted my hand, he seemed to be in ecstasy. My stomach turned at his obscenity, but once again I pushed my intuition to the bottom of the well where it was lost deep in the darkness and I hated myself for having such cruel thoughts towards him when all he was trying to do was to lift up my spirits with a show of happiness and warmth.
Through my illness he lavished me with gifts and caresses. He would sit in my room with his wide smile on his face and he would talk to me as though I was a five year old child. I listened to banalities he thought I wished to hear and I listened to his servile flattery. Then when I was tired he would tuck the sheets tight beneath my chin and kiss me on the forehead, before leaving me to sleep. His obsequious warmth left me cold, but still I believed that to be no fault of his but the fault of my illness, and my illness was me.
I blamed my illness on my infertility, but it was my whole being that was barren. Many weeks I lay in bed, stupefied, too scared to look inside or out. Inside was black and hollow and outside was the empty life I had led, both were sterile. I would lie with my eyes wide open and staring, petrified like a creature of the forest so trapped by a predator I became senseless and unable to absorb my own danger as it rushed towards me. My wide eyes would see my sickroom, but see nothing and sometimes they would glance inside down the deep, dark well but quickly look away again when memories of a past happiness would echo upwards from far down where it was black and sightless and out of reach. Dark sensations rushed at me while my body lay ossified, turned to white stone. My thoughts became wordless and my mouth became dumb.
A doctor was called, a young sallow faced man with thin brown hair and half moon glasses. He was solemn and unmoved, he parted my lips and administered a tonic and he told me to buck up my ideas. I immediately obeyed without question and seeing my obedience the doctor immediately left, leaving my husband at my bedside. He stood over me, victorious. His face quivered between a sneer and a smile. I saw how tempted he was to lift the mask and reveal my defeat, but he was too wise, he knew the campaign must continue a while before his final victory was certain. He masked his contempt with the sweetest of smiles. I was overwhelmed by his ugliness, just as I had been once before, across a restaurant table in Paris. I was not afraid of an ugly face, for an ugly face can be full of goodness. It was my husband's soul that was ugly and he carried his soul on his face. There was a darkness that shone from him, there was a menacing light in his eyes and each expression was a false contortion. His trickery, his malice, his disdain and his dark wizardry were carried on his face, always, for all to see, but I chose not to look. Once again I banished all traces of his ugliness from my thoughts because I had made a choice of acceptance and defeat. I now accepted my life, its sterility, its emptiness and its defeat. My acceptance and my defeat were official, they had been witnessed by both my husband and the young doctor.
My husband sat on the bed and took my hand. I could see nothing but kindness and caring in his wide smile. He waited for me to speak, I could think of nothing so I broke my silence by asking why the old doctor had not been able to come. He explained patiently that the old doctor was a fool and the younger one was the man that would cure me, had that not just been proved. He tucked me up and kissed my forehead. He told me to sleep tight as in the morning I would leave my sickbed and breakfast with him. He turned out the lights and left me in blackness.
Exhaustion flooded me. My head sank through the pillows while my body was so weak it seemed to float. As I drifted towards sleep, faint echoes from inside me cried out at my folly and I knew I had done wrong. I had let the young doctor dissuade me from a journey I should have faced. A journey that would have led me through thick forests and dark floods, down slopes and valleys, across mountains and plains, much climbing and falling and all in the deepest black of starless, moonless night and always stumbling and crawling under my heart's heavy burden of sorrow, horror and shame. And then at my journey's end I would have found what I had lost and finding myself destitute, starving and mad I would accept my humiliation and therefore align myself with the truth and step through the doorway of bright light. But I knew nothing of this, for my husband was too clever, the doctor too terse and I, too weak. I had been recalled from the dark road and the terrors it held for me and there would be many dark nights with no moonlight or starlight to guide me, before I would again embark and complete the journey. All I knew was that I wished sleep would wash over me and then drown me in the depths from where I would never wake and never breakfast with my husband.
I did wake. It was in the early hours when night fades into a dull, leaden grey, heavy and oppressive. I awoke from a dream, I was gripped in its urgency and there were long minutes while I struggled to separate the vision from the coming dawn. The dream and the dawn would not be parted. The feint echoes from deep inside had sent me a message in a dream. I knew the message was of great import and must be kept at all cost, though its meaning was not yet clear. I had not been released from the dream state and it was my subconscious that controlled my sleep-walking body as I wandered through the house in my nightgown, like a white ghost, in search of pen and paper. The drawing room was dark grey with black shapes for furniture. I sat the black shape that was the writing desk and I turned the key. I drew a sheet of white paper from a pile, dipped a pen in ink and began to write. My hand and mind flowed with the vision but in the gloom my eyes were blind to the words I had written.
Chapter four Part five
After our honeymoon I moved into my husband's town house, number seven Devonshire Street, off Portland Place. It felt grand to live there. It felt grand to walk up Portland Place, so wide and regal, lined on either side with a long terrace of solid, regal houses, tall and proud, deep and spacious, each containing its stairways and airy rooms of luxury and comfort. I would hold my head and spirits high as I walked to the door of one of the same, as lady and mistress of such a house. And it was so, that I walked to the door after each outing, whether I had been to a lady's for lunch or a friend's for tea, to a department store, a jewellers, a milliners, a furriers or a dress shop, I always walked proud and happy back to the door of number seven Devonshire Street. Pride and happiness were appearances for myself, not for others, they were beliefs I carried right to the door and even beyond, where it was dark and I was humble, and nothing was mine. The furniture was not mine, the food I ate was not mine, the clothes I wore were not mine, all were gifts for which I had to constantly show my gratitude. The thoughts I thought and the words I spoke were not mine and for those too I had to be grateful and I was always in great debt to my husband for his guidance. I thanked him, I honoured him and I obeyed him, but the debt was never paid and I was always humbled. I fought every instinct and voice that cried inside me, I battled to stay numb and empty, so that I could continue to smile, to sparkle and to love and I succeeded with my hard held beliefs of pride and happiness. My beliefs deadened truths and killed mistakes. My beliefs locked and barred me, and condemned me to serve long years of pain and penance. I suffered those years and was emptied and broken before truths were resurrected and mistakes came back to haunt.
It was dark inside my husband's house. The ceilings, walls and carpets were all deep shades of brown. The chairs were darkly upholstered and tables and cabinets were of the darkest woods. If ever the sun managed to slant its way through the window the maid would quickly draw the curtains to keep all the darkness from fading. The nights were sullen. I moved from one low gas glow to another, from the dimness of the drawing room to the darkened dining room where we ate our evening meals at a table, dimly lit with two small candles. After dinner my husband would often go to his study and leave me alone as I had been left all day. A strip of intense yellow light would shine out from beneath the study door, but I was locked out. Sometimes I would wait a while in case I was invited in, but I never was, so I would retire to bed and each night in the pitch black hallway I would pass the mirror and think I was passing a ghost at the foot of the stairs.
The days passed and sometimes I felt like a hidden child whose existence was so secret that even her presence in a room was ignored, she could stand or sit or lie down and only ever be space and air. My husband had no need of me as the tall, grey man, his chauffeur and valet attended to his every need. The grey man would sweep past me in the house, without a look or a word. Only once did he look in my direction and I looked back at his grey uniform, grey skin and grey hair and I smiled , but he did not see because he was looking at the hat stand that stood behind me.
Every morning at nine o'clock sharp the grey man would start up the motor car and drive my husband to the university. My husband was an important man of science, a doctor of chemistry and he led the way in important research. I knew no more than that, all I knew was that every day I lost him to his laboratory and that I was left alone with the cook and the maid.
The cook was fat and ugly and the maid was thin and sharp. I was frightened of them both. They ran the house with no help from me. My help was forbidden. Sometimes I would battle against my fears and summon up the courage to request a certain dish be served at dinner or that a vase be placed elsewhere and each time they would quickly turn aside and not hear me. Like the grey man they had no voices and went about their tasks in silence. Every meal was served to the minute, breakfast at eight, lunch at twelve and dinner at nine. There was no tarnished silver and no speck of dust. The house was perfect, ordered and exact. Every picture, every ornament and every piece of furniture, everything had its place but me.
I was a loose end, a misfit. I grew pale and anguished and would often take to my bed with sickness and fever. I would think I was pregnant and in spite of my illness I would eagerly await the doctor's prognosis. I longed to have children to nurse and to love, so that they could love me and know my worth. I had failed as a wife and was desperate to prove myself as a mother. But each time the doctor's prognosis was otherwise and on the last of his many visits he took my hand in his and told me gently that I would never bare a child. His voice trembled and his words seemed to cause as much pain in him as they did in me. He was a plump man with a kind, ageing face and lots of fluffy white hair on his head and down the sides of his face. His sad, dark eyes looked into me through my own as I wept and begged him not to tell my husband. He read me as I could not read myself and there were tears in his eyes. It was not clear to me why my husband's knowing of my sterility should terrify me so, but it was clear to the good doctor. He left me to weep, I cried into the pillows, tears streamed and my heart screamed at my hopelessness and my failure. I could hear
through the bedroom door as the two men met on the stairs. They stopped and talked, my husband's voice was loud and confident, his spirits seemed high. The doctor was terse with him as he spoke of my nervous disposition. He told my husband that I was suffering from a severe melancholia and needed plenty of rest, but he kept his word and said no more. I heard the front door close as the doctor left. I was still weeping when my husband knocked at my door and then entered without being bidden. His smile was broad, he sat on the bed and patted my hand, he seemed to be in ecstasy. My stomach turned at his obscenity, but once again I pushed my intuition to the bottom of the well where it was lost deep in the darkness and I hated myself for having such cruel thoughts towards him when all he was trying to do was to lift up my spirits with a show of happiness and warmth.
Through my illness he lavished me with gifts and caresses. He would sit in my room with his wide smile on his face and he would talk to me as though I was a five year old child. I listened to banalities he thought I wished to hear and I listened to his servile flattery. Then when I was tired he would tuck the sheets tight beneath my chin and kiss me on the forehead, before leaving me to sleep. His obsequious warmth left me cold, but still I believed that to be no fault of his but the fault of my illness, and my illness was me.
I blamed my illness on my infertility, but it was my whole being that was barren. Many weeks I lay in bed, stupefied, too scared to look inside or out. Inside was black and hollow and outside was the empty life I had led, both were sterile. I would lie with my eyes wide open and staring, petrified like a creature of the forest so trapped by a predator I became senseless and unable to absorb my own danger as it rushed towards me. My wide eyes would see my sickroom, but see nothing and sometimes they would glance inside down the deep, dark well but quickly look away again when memories of a past happiness would echo upwards from far down where it was black and sightless and out of reach. Dark sensations rushed at me while my body lay ossified, turned to white stone. My thoughts became wordless and my mouth became dumb.
A doctor was called, a young sallow faced man with thin brown hair and half moon glasses. He was solemn and unmoved, he parted my lips and administered a tonic and he told me to buck up my ideas. I immediately obeyed without question and seeing my obedience the doctor immediately left, leaving my husband at my bedside. He stood over me, victorious. His face quivered between a sneer and a smile. I saw how tempted he was to lift the mask and reveal my defeat, but he was too wise, he knew the campaign must continue a while before his final victory was certain. He masked his contempt with the sweetest of smiles. I was overwhelmed by his ugliness, just as I had been once before, across a restaurant table in Paris. I was not afraid of an ugly face, for an ugly face can be full of goodness. It was my husband's soul that was ugly and he carried his soul on his face. There was a darkness that shone from him, there was a menacing light in his eyes and each expression was a false contortion. His trickery, his malice, his disdain and his dark wizardry were carried on his face, always, for all to see, but I chose not to look. Once again I banished all traces of his ugliness from my thoughts because I had made a choice of acceptance and defeat. I now accepted my life, its sterility, its emptiness and its defeat. My acceptance and my defeat were official, they had been witnessed by both my husband and the young doctor.
My husband sat on the bed and took my hand. I could see nothing but kindness and caring in his wide smile. He waited for me to speak, I could think of nothing so I broke my silence by asking why the old doctor had not been able to come. He explained patiently that the old doctor was a fool and the younger one was the man that would cure me, had that not just been proved. He tucked me up and kissed my forehead. He told me to sleep tight as in the morning I would leave my sickbed and breakfast with him. He turned out the lights and left me in blackness.
Exhaustion flooded me. My head sank through the pillows while my body was so weak it seemed to float. As I drifted towards sleep, faint echoes from inside me cried out at my folly and I knew I had done wrong. I had let the young doctor dissuade me from a journey I should have faced. A journey that would have led me through thick forests and dark floods, down slopes and valleys, across mountains and plains, much climbing and falling and all in the deepest black of starless, moonless night and always stumbling and crawling under my heart's heavy burden of sorrow, horror and shame. And then at my journey's end I would have found what I had lost and finding myself destitute, starving and mad I would accept my humiliation and therefore align myself with the truth and step through the doorway of bright light. But I knew nothing of this, for my husband was too clever, the doctor too terse and I, too weak. I had been recalled from the dark road and the terrors it held for me and there would be many dark nights with no moonlight or starlight to guide me, before I would again embark and complete the journey. All I knew was that I wished sleep would wash over me and then drown me in the depths from where I would never wake and never breakfast with my husband.
I did wake. It was in the early hours when night fades into a dull, leaden grey, heavy and oppressive. I awoke from a dream, I was gripped in its urgency and there were long minutes while I struggled to separate the vision from the coming dawn. The dream and the dawn would not be parted. The feint echoes from deep inside had sent me a message in a dream. I knew the message was of great import and must be kept at all cost, though its meaning was not yet clear. I had not been released from the dream state and it was my subconscious that controlled my sleep-walking body as I wandered through the house in my nightgown, like a white ghost, in search of pen and paper. The drawing room was dark grey with black shapes for furniture. I sat the black shape that was the writing desk and I turned the key. I drew a sheet of white paper from a pile, dipped a pen in ink and began to write. My hand and mind flowed with the vision but in the gloom my eyes were blind to the words I had written.
Sunday, 25 October 2015
STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Four Part four
My wedding day was a cold, cruel winter's day following the hot summer of my engagement. I wore my pearls. I had put away his mother's mad, sick words likening the pearls to tears. They were beautiful and I was blissfully happy. My wedding day was the day my father and I walked beneath an archway of dead, graveyard trees that stood to attention in two, proud lines and frowned down on my meekness and the whiteness of my silk and lace. The bleak sky tried to persuade me by spreading its greyness to each horizon and a bitter wind tried to dislodge my veil and its blindness. But I entered the church willingly and gladly. A heavy oaken door closed me in and I walked the aisle. I openly humbly confessed my love for a man, before a witnessing congregation and before God. I was pronounced a wife, the ring slipped easily over my knuckle and tightened on the soft flesh of my finger.
The reception bubbled and babbled with guests and champagne. Sleek, brilliantined, penguined men stood with their chins in and their beaks and tails out. Ladies' satin gloved hands tipped crystal glasses to painted lips.
I felt myself receding. There were no thoughts in my head, no words in my mind for my tongue to find, so my tongue was still, I stood quietly, emptied like a china doll that might break and show the dark hollow inside. But no tear were painted on my cheek, so nobody could know, least of all myself. Only my family looked back at me with the same dark cavity in their eyes, as they watched me fade. It was the last thing we shared. My mother, my father, my two brothers and myself were all empty with a blackness where our instincts shouted their fears but were crushed with disbelief and the blackness was quiet and blank and ignorant, left wide and gullible, waiting to be filled and easily convinced by my new husband's fussing and clucking and self assured, overflowing generosity. So my family smiled, believing their hollowed insides to be filled with relief and joy at the sheer perfection of my future. And I believed my hollowness to be the dazed and crazed euphoria of love, so I smiled too and stayed close to the man I loved. And still I found no words from my head for my tongue, so I stood quietly next to him, never wanting to be so far away that I could not reach out to touch him if I needed to, because suddenly I was afraid of the world and I knew that he would protect me.
How could I know that it was then that the tears began to fall inside the dark hollow of the china doll. They trickled and echoed down to the bottom of the black well. The china doll was my own making, I made her when I chose to love him and sad, slow years would have to pass before the water rose to become heavy in her chest, choke at her throat and spill from her eyes where she would see the tears and they would tell her that her fear of the world began with the man she tried to love. She would see that it was not her, but the fear that he had placed in her that he had gone to such lengths to protect. She would see that with great care he had planned every wall he built around her and had devoted much time to assessing and preventing breaches in the stonework and unlocked gates through which her fear might escape. Me and my mindless, impotent, incapable life were fortressed in and the drawbridge was up. And my husband laid himself around me like the thick, green unmoving water of a stagnant moat I never dared to cross.
We honeymooned in Paris. Snow fell like slow feathers and lay down like soft pillows over roads and high slate rooves. We took a ride in a carriage. The horse's misty breath danced around its nose at it stomped and snorted impatiently while we wrapped ourselves in fur muffs and hats and spread a heavy blanket over our knees. The driver took our silver coins and the horse pulled away. Its hooves were silenced by the snow and we floated noiselessly through the city in the drift of a dream that was white and grey, snow white and stone grey, pure white and Parisian grey. We were drawn through streets wide and narrow where every wall and railing was topped with a soft white ridge and every iron streetlamp wore a solid, white crown. We went up an avenue of marching trees, carrying snow on the upper edges of each pruned and nobbled branch and over the Seine where we watched the slow, grey river flow beneath its many bridges.
The evenings were spent at the opera or the theatre where we sat in the dark and watched the players walking the stage in lighted circles, their voices singing or calling out unnaturally to the darkness where many invisible people sat abreast in many invisible seats, until the curtain fell and the light moved outwards over the orchestra and then the audience who rose to meet it, applauding.
After the performance we would have dinner in a fine restaurant where pianists sat at a
grand piano and filled the air with their gentle playing. A crystal chandelier hung from the high ceiling like a massive jewel. The carpet was deep red and the heavy velvet curtains were looped and draped from ceiling to floor with gold braid and gold cords. The upholstered chairs were round backed and bow legged, ornately carved and painted with gold leaf and the table was set with silver. It was fit for a princess and the princess was me. She sat with her prince at a table for two and the flame of a slender candle danced between them.
While we ate, the princess sipped at her deep, purple wine and listened to her prince speak of his kingdom and its rules. It was a fairy tale land of gentility, comfort and generosity, and her prince would love and care for her and grant her every wish. Then one night he talked of the other kingdom, a lesser world he had defeated and rescued her from. He spoke of her family's kingdom with contempt and he told her she must discard it to be the princess he knew she wanted to be. She would learn anew, he was willing to be her teacher, because she deserved no less, because she was very beautiful.
I looked across the table and my husband's face was an ugly face. His eyes were high and haughty, the lids were half closed with disdain and a vile taste drew his mouth downwards at one corner. He leered at me and I was frightened. An anger shone deep inside his eyes. The same anger I had seen in the garden when my hair was loose and tangled and my hands full of brown soil. In the restaurant my hair was clean, pinned up and beautifully curled and my hands were dainty and manicured, but his anger was still alive. I felt shame and guilt for causing his ugliness, for being so bad as to twist his face with a disgust that pained him so. The moment passed and he smiled again, as though he had been smiling all the while with no wish or thought to do otherwise. I smiled too, but I was awash with panic and the tears were building. My childhood raced around my memory. My mother, my father, my two brothers, everything had been free and unfearing, there had been wild laughter and unashamed crying. Now it was all wrong and wasted. Eighteen years had been wrong. My whole life had to be relearnt. My husband saw my panic and his smile, already wide, broadened. He put a finger to my cheek and caught a tear. He told me that I was beautiful and that no other man would tell me so the way he told me. He spoke as though it was he who had bestowed my beauty upon me. Once again my soul wept and tried to break me from him. I remembered my father when I stood before him in my wedding dress before we left for the church, I remembered my older brother one time when he came home from school and I met him at the station to surprise him and I remembered the man in the woods, George, his silence and his blue eyes told me. All these men had told me I was beautiful and their words and their eyes had filled my heart ad yet my husband's words were directed at my face and they did not go beyond, I recoiled from them. I was a girl, too young to understand, poor china doll, poor princess. How could I tell those words were real, how could I tell a spurious smile. Any fear and distaste that I felt on my husband's part, simply made me feel guilty for feeling it. My soul drew away from him while I drew closer. My confusion was a whirlpool and in it I lost myself. I lost my powers of thought, I lost my reason, I lost my powers of speech, I was struck dumb. I tried to speak across the table, I tried to speak to my husband and then I cried because the words would not come. The more I cried the more he smiled. He took me back to our grand, palatial hotel and there he praised my soft, silly sentimentality and he comforted me as a grandfather would comfort a grandchild that had grazed its knee. Then we made love on a soft, feather bed. I needed him to comfort the tears he had caused. And so it was to be time and time again through our marriage. Afterwards we lay in each others arms and I held him so close and so tight that I left no doubt in my mind that he was my prince and I would follow him to the ends of the earth. I was a china doll, I was a hollowed out princess. I pushed my tears and my past to the bottom of the well and stored them there, leaving my head empty, a blank space for my prince to fill as he saw fit.
Chapter Four Part four
My wedding day was a cold, cruel winter's day following the hot summer of my engagement. I wore my pearls. I had put away his mother's mad, sick words likening the pearls to tears. They were beautiful and I was blissfully happy. My wedding day was the day my father and I walked beneath an archway of dead, graveyard trees that stood to attention in two, proud lines and frowned down on my meekness and the whiteness of my silk and lace. The bleak sky tried to persuade me by spreading its greyness to each horizon and a bitter wind tried to dislodge my veil and its blindness. But I entered the church willingly and gladly. A heavy oaken door closed me in and I walked the aisle. I openly humbly confessed my love for a man, before a witnessing congregation and before God. I was pronounced a wife, the ring slipped easily over my knuckle and tightened on the soft flesh of my finger.
The reception bubbled and babbled with guests and champagne. Sleek, brilliantined, penguined men stood with their chins in and their beaks and tails out. Ladies' satin gloved hands tipped crystal glasses to painted lips.
I felt myself receding. There were no thoughts in my head, no words in my mind for my tongue to find, so my tongue was still, I stood quietly, emptied like a china doll that might break and show the dark hollow inside. But no tear were painted on my cheek, so nobody could know, least of all myself. Only my family looked back at me with the same dark cavity in their eyes, as they watched me fade. It was the last thing we shared. My mother, my father, my two brothers and myself were all empty with a blackness where our instincts shouted their fears but were crushed with disbelief and the blackness was quiet and blank and ignorant, left wide and gullible, waiting to be filled and easily convinced by my new husband's fussing and clucking and self assured, overflowing generosity. So my family smiled, believing their hollowed insides to be filled with relief and joy at the sheer perfection of my future. And I believed my hollowness to be the dazed and crazed euphoria of love, so I smiled too and stayed close to the man I loved. And still I found no words from my head for my tongue, so I stood quietly next to him, never wanting to be so far away that I could not reach out to touch him if I needed to, because suddenly I was afraid of the world and I knew that he would protect me.
How could I know that it was then that the tears began to fall inside the dark hollow of the china doll. They trickled and echoed down to the bottom of the black well. The china doll was my own making, I made her when I chose to love him and sad, slow years would have to pass before the water rose to become heavy in her chest, choke at her throat and spill from her eyes where she would see the tears and they would tell her that her fear of the world began with the man she tried to love. She would see that it was not her, but the fear that he had placed in her that he had gone to such lengths to protect. She would see that with great care he had planned every wall he built around her and had devoted much time to assessing and preventing breaches in the stonework and unlocked gates through which her fear might escape. Me and my mindless, impotent, incapable life were fortressed in and the drawbridge was up. And my husband laid himself around me like the thick, green unmoving water of a stagnant moat I never dared to cross.
We honeymooned in Paris. Snow fell like slow feathers and lay down like soft pillows over roads and high slate rooves. We took a ride in a carriage. The horse's misty breath danced around its nose at it stomped and snorted impatiently while we wrapped ourselves in fur muffs and hats and spread a heavy blanket over our knees. The driver took our silver coins and the horse pulled away. Its hooves were silenced by the snow and we floated noiselessly through the city in the drift of a dream that was white and grey, snow white and stone grey, pure white and Parisian grey. We were drawn through streets wide and narrow where every wall and railing was topped with a soft white ridge and every iron streetlamp wore a solid, white crown. We went up an avenue of marching trees, carrying snow on the upper edges of each pruned and nobbled branch and over the Seine where we watched the slow, grey river flow beneath its many bridges.
The evenings were spent at the opera or the theatre where we sat in the dark and watched the players walking the stage in lighted circles, their voices singing or calling out unnaturally to the darkness where many invisible people sat abreast in many invisible seats, until the curtain fell and the light moved outwards over the orchestra and then the audience who rose to meet it, applauding.
After the performance we would have dinner in a fine restaurant where pianists sat at a
grand piano and filled the air with their gentle playing. A crystal chandelier hung from the high ceiling like a massive jewel. The carpet was deep red and the heavy velvet curtains were looped and draped from ceiling to floor with gold braid and gold cords. The upholstered chairs were round backed and bow legged, ornately carved and painted with gold leaf and the table was set with silver. It was fit for a princess and the princess was me. She sat with her prince at a table for two and the flame of a slender candle danced between them.
While we ate, the princess sipped at her deep, purple wine and listened to her prince speak of his kingdom and its rules. It was a fairy tale land of gentility, comfort and generosity, and her prince would love and care for her and grant her every wish. Then one night he talked of the other kingdom, a lesser world he had defeated and rescued her from. He spoke of her family's kingdom with contempt and he told her she must discard it to be the princess he knew she wanted to be. She would learn anew, he was willing to be her teacher, because she deserved no less, because she was very beautiful.
I looked across the table and my husband's face was an ugly face. His eyes were high and haughty, the lids were half closed with disdain and a vile taste drew his mouth downwards at one corner. He leered at me and I was frightened. An anger shone deep inside his eyes. The same anger I had seen in the garden when my hair was loose and tangled and my hands full of brown soil. In the restaurant my hair was clean, pinned up and beautifully curled and my hands were dainty and manicured, but his anger was still alive. I felt shame and guilt for causing his ugliness, for being so bad as to twist his face with a disgust that pained him so. The moment passed and he smiled again, as though he had been smiling all the while with no wish or thought to do otherwise. I smiled too, but I was awash with panic and the tears were building. My childhood raced around my memory. My mother, my father, my two brothers, everything had been free and unfearing, there had been wild laughter and unashamed crying. Now it was all wrong and wasted. Eighteen years had been wrong. My whole life had to be relearnt. My husband saw my panic and his smile, already wide, broadened. He put a finger to my cheek and caught a tear. He told me that I was beautiful and that no other man would tell me so the way he told me. He spoke as though it was he who had bestowed my beauty upon me. Once again my soul wept and tried to break me from him. I remembered my father when I stood before him in my wedding dress before we left for the church, I remembered my older brother one time when he came home from school and I met him at the station to surprise him and I remembered the man in the woods, George, his silence and his blue eyes told me. All these men had told me I was beautiful and their words and their eyes had filled my heart ad yet my husband's words were directed at my face and they did not go beyond, I recoiled from them. I was a girl, too young to understand, poor china doll, poor princess. How could I tell those words were real, how could I tell a spurious smile. Any fear and distaste that I felt on my husband's part, simply made me feel guilty for feeling it. My soul drew away from him while I drew closer. My confusion was a whirlpool and in it I lost myself. I lost my powers of thought, I lost my reason, I lost my powers of speech, I was struck dumb. I tried to speak across the table, I tried to speak to my husband and then I cried because the words would not come. The more I cried the more he smiled. He took me back to our grand, palatial hotel and there he praised my soft, silly sentimentality and he comforted me as a grandfather would comfort a grandchild that had grazed its knee. Then we made love on a soft, feather bed. I needed him to comfort the tears he had caused. And so it was to be time and time again through our marriage. Afterwards we lay in each others arms and I held him so close and so tight that I left no doubt in my mind that he was my prince and I would follow him to the ends of the earth. I was a china doll, I was a hollowed out princess. I pushed my tears and my past to the bottom of the well and stored them there, leaving my head empty, a blank space for my prince to fill as he saw fit.
Saturday, 24 October 2015
STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN.
Chapter Four Part Four
I felt the first hints of evening in the long shadows and the deep, low gold of the sun as I climbed the last hill to the garden wall. I reached the gate that broke the line of piled, dry stones. I was breathless but not weary. My pretty clothes were dirty, my hair was loose and wild and I glowed with a quiet, happy madness that had forgotten time and place and right from wrong.
The party was over , the guests had disappeared and all that remained was the debris. A long trestle table stood on the lawn, bankrupt, with only the pale, water-colour stains of spilt drinks, toppled glasses and the willow patterned punch bowl left in its possession. The edges of its white table cloth stirred slightly in the breeze.
I walked over to the table and took the punch bowl and its china ladle and carried it to the flower bed of mauve and yellow black-eyed pansies where I emptied out the sour dregs and the sodden mush of sliced citrus fruits. Then I ladled rich brown earth into the blue and white bowl. There was neither sight nor sound or sign of another living soul. Maybe it was simply that I did not look or hear or heed any other living soul but my own. There was only me, closed in with my own sightless and soundless presence, in its own heavy cocoon of excitement, like madness and magic as I planted the dark almond seed in the very centre of the cool, moist earth, in the very centre of the willow pattern punch bowl.
Then the magic was gone. I felt it draining from me and being taken away by a shadow that stood over me, stern and fierce and correcting. I turned to my fiancé, I saw his anger shining from his eyes and I turned my eyes to the ground in shame, not realising that his expression of rage was also his expression of victory, while my shame and my destruction were one and the same.
He was smaller than his shadow and darker. His green grey eyes bored into me and his face that I had thought kindly though not handsome was now leering and ugly with disdain. I fought my mind and instincts in order to find him beautiful and to know that his anger and his hatred of me were justified. Guilt flooded me with thoughts of my childish excitement over the man in the woods, his blue eyes and the apricot seed, while my fiancé spoke of appearance, humiliation, correctness, femininity and common sense. His voice was quiet with contempt, his words escaped and rasped through his tight, thin lips. He asked if my hair and dress would be so at our wedding and if I would then too disappear when the fancy took me. All my guilt mounted and confused until my senses were heavy and numb but for the hot tears that fell from my eyes. Then he took me in his arms and smiled as to a child who is lost and ignorant to the world and the ways of adults. He comforted me and clucked over me like a silly mother hen. I pressed close to him and so exchanged his humiliation for my own. I believed that my meekness was my love for him and that his clucking was his love for me. This desperate interpretation made my tears fall still harder but I misunderstood their message and their warning went unheeded.
The tears still fell as I sat alone at a dressing table, seeing a smeared face, tangled hair and all my thoughtless, unforgiveable cruelty reflected. The face broke again and cried, convinced that its sadness had been brought upon it by itself and none other.
I washed my face, brushed my hair and I wiped away my weeping with new resolve of selflessness and obedience. I pinned up my brushed and shiny auburn hair and saw a new face in the mirror. The mouth and the eyes were stern, their smiles had been stolen. The face was alert, ready to correct any folly it might commit before it was committed. I can see the face still in my mind's eye and its a frightened face, too lost to see its own fear. All that had been soft and round was now hard and thin with anxiety and the deep brown eyes were quick and nervous like the eyes of a mouse that senses the wing beats and waits for the talons to strike. And behind the new face all that had been free was now under lock and key. I had discarded all that had been me and I was so full of pain that I was numb and unable to sense or recognise it as pain, instead I believed that I was happy. This unclear, unadulterated, undeniable held belief of happiness began in front of the mirror and was witnessed and misled by my own reflection.
The door opened behind me, his mother came into the room. I saw her in the mirror, a stranger in her own house. She stood behind me in her cloud of eau de cologne, edged with the bitter scent of gin. Her pale eyes were glazed and watery. They were directed at me in the mirror, but they looked nowhere. She moved her mouth silently, trying to find words and when she found them they fell from her mouth all jumbled and scattered,
" Run....I thought you had run, run away......run, run, run, run away, run, run ......" she repeated the word over and over, her voice shuddered, she was commanding me to run, she was begging me to run. But I misunderstood her madness, it repulsed me. Her drinking had shamed her entire family and caused my future husband much suffering. He hated and despised her, and therefore so did I. I did not doubt that her gin soaked mind had turned topsy-turvy and was stuck at the wrong end of reason over the incident of my leaving the party to go for a walk. I tried to turn it back round for her. I politely explained that she need never worry, I loved her son more than I loved myself and I would be at his side until death parted us. The wateriness of her eyes began to trickle, she said
" Then let death come soon. If you love one such as he, love for yourself will be forbidden and then forgotten. I was young once like you and I was full. His father emptied me. And when at last he died it was too late, I was too empty".
I did not understand her words, I did not even try. I would be older and wiser before I would understand that her drunkenness was not blind but clear sighted. She unclasped a single strand of pearls from around her neck and gave them to me. She said,
" If you won't run , then take these as a gift. I wanted to give you such much more but I have failed. "
I took the pearls, I thanked her, I thought them very beautiful and I told her so. She looked at me sadly, then she stiffened as if I were her enemy and said,
" Then keep them and wear them. My mother in law to be gave them to me when I was engaged to her son. They held no beauty for her when she gave them to me and they hold no beauty for me now. The pearls are tears. They were hers, they were mine and now they are yours. "
Her bitter words and the beauty of he gift confused me. She turned away from me, the door opened and closed and she was gone. And I was left with a string of solidified, immortal tears cupped in my hand.
I wore the pearls from that day on. They were the most beautiful and the most precious of my possessions, I treasured them. Every night as I unclasped them from around my neck, I would hold them in my hand and look at them a while and a soft, creamy light would shine from them and move over my palm. And in the day I would often put my hands up to my throat where I could touch them and feel their smooth, rounded elegance.
Chapter Four Part Four
I felt the first hints of evening in the long shadows and the deep, low gold of the sun as I climbed the last hill to the garden wall. I reached the gate that broke the line of piled, dry stones. I was breathless but not weary. My pretty clothes were dirty, my hair was loose and wild and I glowed with a quiet, happy madness that had forgotten time and place and right from wrong.
The party was over , the guests had disappeared and all that remained was the debris. A long trestle table stood on the lawn, bankrupt, with only the pale, water-colour stains of spilt drinks, toppled glasses and the willow patterned punch bowl left in its possession. The edges of its white table cloth stirred slightly in the breeze.
I walked over to the table and took the punch bowl and its china ladle and carried it to the flower bed of mauve and yellow black-eyed pansies where I emptied out the sour dregs and the sodden mush of sliced citrus fruits. Then I ladled rich brown earth into the blue and white bowl. There was neither sight nor sound or sign of another living soul. Maybe it was simply that I did not look or hear or heed any other living soul but my own. There was only me, closed in with my own sightless and soundless presence, in its own heavy cocoon of excitement, like madness and magic as I planted the dark almond seed in the very centre of the cool, moist earth, in the very centre of the willow pattern punch bowl.
Then the magic was gone. I felt it draining from me and being taken away by a shadow that stood over me, stern and fierce and correcting. I turned to my fiancé, I saw his anger shining from his eyes and I turned my eyes to the ground in shame, not realising that his expression of rage was also his expression of victory, while my shame and my destruction were one and the same.
He was smaller than his shadow and darker. His green grey eyes bored into me and his face that I had thought kindly though not handsome was now leering and ugly with disdain. I fought my mind and instincts in order to find him beautiful and to know that his anger and his hatred of me were justified. Guilt flooded me with thoughts of my childish excitement over the man in the woods, his blue eyes and the apricot seed, while my fiancé spoke of appearance, humiliation, correctness, femininity and common sense. His voice was quiet with contempt, his words escaped and rasped through his tight, thin lips. He asked if my hair and dress would be so at our wedding and if I would then too disappear when the fancy took me. All my guilt mounted and confused until my senses were heavy and numb but for the hot tears that fell from my eyes. Then he took me in his arms and smiled as to a child who is lost and ignorant to the world and the ways of adults. He comforted me and clucked over me like a silly mother hen. I pressed close to him and so exchanged his humiliation for my own. I believed that my meekness was my love for him and that his clucking was his love for me. This desperate interpretation made my tears fall still harder but I misunderstood their message and their warning went unheeded.
The tears still fell as I sat alone at a dressing table, seeing a smeared face, tangled hair and all my thoughtless, unforgiveable cruelty reflected. The face broke again and cried, convinced that its sadness had been brought upon it by itself and none other.
I washed my face, brushed my hair and I wiped away my weeping with new resolve of selflessness and obedience. I pinned up my brushed and shiny auburn hair and saw a new face in the mirror. The mouth and the eyes were stern, their smiles had been stolen. The face was alert, ready to correct any folly it might commit before it was committed. I can see the face still in my mind's eye and its a frightened face, too lost to see its own fear. All that had been soft and round was now hard and thin with anxiety and the deep brown eyes were quick and nervous like the eyes of a mouse that senses the wing beats and waits for the talons to strike. And behind the new face all that had been free was now under lock and key. I had discarded all that had been me and I was so full of pain that I was numb and unable to sense or recognise it as pain, instead I believed that I was happy. This unclear, unadulterated, undeniable held belief of happiness began in front of the mirror and was witnessed and misled by my own reflection.
The door opened behind me, his mother came into the room. I saw her in the mirror, a stranger in her own house. She stood behind me in her cloud of eau de cologne, edged with the bitter scent of gin. Her pale eyes were glazed and watery. They were directed at me in the mirror, but they looked nowhere. She moved her mouth silently, trying to find words and when she found them they fell from her mouth all jumbled and scattered,
" Run....I thought you had run, run away......run, run, run, run away, run, run ......" she repeated the word over and over, her voice shuddered, she was commanding me to run, she was begging me to run. But I misunderstood her madness, it repulsed me. Her drinking had shamed her entire family and caused my future husband much suffering. He hated and despised her, and therefore so did I. I did not doubt that her gin soaked mind had turned topsy-turvy and was stuck at the wrong end of reason over the incident of my leaving the party to go for a walk. I tried to turn it back round for her. I politely explained that she need never worry, I loved her son more than I loved myself and I would be at his side until death parted us. The wateriness of her eyes began to trickle, she said
" Then let death come soon. If you love one such as he, love for yourself will be forbidden and then forgotten. I was young once like you and I was full. His father emptied me. And when at last he died it was too late, I was too empty".
I did not understand her words, I did not even try. I would be older and wiser before I would understand that her drunkenness was not blind but clear sighted. She unclasped a single strand of pearls from around her neck and gave them to me. She said,
" If you won't run , then take these as a gift. I wanted to give you such much more but I have failed. "
I took the pearls, I thanked her, I thought them very beautiful and I told her so. She looked at me sadly, then she stiffened as if I were her enemy and said,
" Then keep them and wear them. My mother in law to be gave them to me when I was engaged to her son. They held no beauty for her when she gave them to me and they hold no beauty for me now. The pearls are tears. They were hers, they were mine and now they are yours. "
Her bitter words and the beauty of he gift confused me. She turned away from me, the door opened and closed and she was gone. And I was left with a string of solidified, immortal tears cupped in my hand.
I wore the pearls from that day on. They were the most beautiful and the most precious of my possessions, I treasured them. Every night as I unclasped them from around my neck, I would hold them in my hand and look at them a while and a soft, creamy light would shine from them and move over my palm. And in the day I would often put my hands up to my throat where I could touch them and feel their smooth, rounded elegance.
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