I’m born in a spark. Though I am small and weak, I am hungry. The heat nurtures me, the bush cradles me. My mother is Nature and my father is Man. But I wasn’t always this way.
At first I crackle through the dry grass like a snake. Almost silently. I smoke the buds of the bush pea and puff on the stems of a yam daisy. My bouche is amused.
Some seasoning is added to my plate. A little eucalyptus oil. The shod feet that pad around this forest often remark upon it. “What is that? Such a beautiful scent…”. Sweetness turned acrid is just to my taste, stirring my appetite for more. And more. I grow and I roar. Silver trees burst. Not into flame, they burst in my heat. Every piece of kindling makes me ravenous, for a branch, for a tree, for a forest, and for anything that lives in it. Anything that lives, really. Small and large, warm and cold blooded. Tendons twisted, sinew contorted, eyes baked. Everything served well done.
Roads melt before me. White paint blisters and black tarmac bubbles. It’s no toil, really. No trouble. I even dance across water as I grow too ferocious. The balance of elements is turning, spinning, burning. Burning away earth and water with the wind at my back.
I leave a wasteland of black behind me. April may be a time for renewal in your land. But in Tasmania, January is the cruellest month. Though, as I say, I wasn’t always this way.
A cousin on the mainland told me a story. Once upon a time, my mother was Nature and my father was men. For a long time, I was the jealously guarded secret of Gandji who would fly across the sky each day with a burning stick and bring light and warmth to the land, but always returned to his nest at night to hide my flame until morning. One day, some local men followed Gandji and stole the burning stick as he slept.
He woke in a fury and the thieves blundered. They set me free in their haste to flee! Gandji used his wings to spread my flames across the land. In horror, the men pleaded with the god to stop me from turning their home into ashes. Gandji agreed, but only if they shared me with their brothers and sisters, teaching them how to control me for the betterment of life itself.
Locals carried me with them in a hot coal fungus and, like an elemental touchstone, burnt back a galloping rainforest, here and there, for good old fashioned green pick hunting. Good hunting, of roos, possum and little pademelon. The locals kept the trade routes open on those cinder roads through the island. They knew me like they knew north was north. They just knew.
Tall ships on the horizon were like a lightning strike. With no beacon to light, the local men stoked the whole coast for miles into a wall of flame against the sea. The Bay of Fires is what they call it, the men who live here now. Well, they spread across the wilds like I do on a summer day baked in the sun. Unseen at first, then seen too late. They burned uncontrollably, across mountains and forests, through hallowed places and sleepy villages, clearing a hunting ground of men, women and little children. The trade routes were overgrown as the world opened up. They thought they knew me like they knew west was west.
I’m dying as clouds gather. My hunger is finally sated and my ardour cools. The wind that fanned my flames now chills my embers. The roar that shook the forest fades to a whisper. Rain fizzles in the air like animal fat, then turns my smoke from black to white. As if a wise decision has been made.
The wasteland looks black and dead. But the ashen dust the rain makes mud is that of earth and loam. It is rich and fertile. More rains come and seem to wash away the scars on the land. The silver trees are still blackened to the waist, but around their ankles, improbable green shoots appear one morning. They needed me as I needed them. Eucalyptus and wattle, tea tree and banksia all return, as do wildflowers, beasts of the land and birds in the trees. The men who live here return too.
Sometimes I smell the warm familiar meaty waft of his slept-in skin. He wouldn’t mind that at all. Proud fastidiousness he happily and confidently boundaried with the outer limits of his person. Whatever emanated from there on, was no longer his, or his responsibility. Mr Fastidious, Mr Punctilious, Mr Officious, Mr Scrupulous, Mr Meticulous. He could so lazily and uncarefully foul the air, soil a toilet. And deny his ownership of such ‘til the cows came home. Rosie and I, or should I now say ‘Ro’, had argued angrily about replacing the pillows. She tells me that keeping his died-on pillow, was creepy and evidence of my denial of his death, me comforted by the dent from his head and years old yellowing. And the smell. Good morning, I whisper. Good morning to the person for whom I, with all my faults, was the most important person in the world. And for those moments every day after his death, I was, still, somebody’s most important person in the world.
How appalled Ro would be if she knew that it had been a good ten minutes between me waking to her father’s corpse and calling an ambulance. No one would know what time I woke. Even though I was faced away from him, the silent, cool, rigidity told me he had been dead for some hours. I had been slow to turn toward him. I wanted time to prepare for what would happen that day, that week, that year and for the rest of my life. When I finally turned, I held his face and gently kissed him. Oh, my darling, I said, leaning and pressing into him to search for some fading warmth. Instinctively I adjusted the quilt to his shoulders. I rested my head on him, and as I had in the worst moments of our lives, let that big round hard shoulder cradle me, like a child. There without warning came the yelling and howling of me the animal, crying more salty water than one could imagine a body could hold. There was no mistaking this for the wailing of a child. The sounds of my crying slammed hard against the walls, floors and ceilings near and far in our home. The harsh volume I didn’t know I had, shocked my ears. Oxytocin and endorphins that had surged with my early morning find were released in an episode that hurt my gut and throat, my ears and my eyes, the salt burning my skin, a painful headache seeping through my head, every heartbeat driving the pain further, harder. I was wrecked.
I was back to three days at the practice. I’d been hinted to, clued up and then outright told, that this was more trouble to management of the practice than it was worth. They hadn’t yet had the balls to sack me. The more they dropped the hint that it was time for me to leave, the more my resolve to not leave, hardened. Years of unfairness scarred me into a hard, gristly, intimidating, combat veteran. The red beret of female staff. I wouldn’t have anyone pushing me around now. Now when there was nothing at stake. Now that I didn’t need the work. How it must gall the worst of them to come and ask my opinion on complex patients. I’m a good doctor.
Today is one of the four days in the week that I must fill to make it look like I am doing alright. Otherwise, there will be my adult children, family and friends who will, after interrogation, express concern. In all their annoying ways. What are your plans now? Forthwith analysed and followed by unsolicited advice or discussed with the blunter of family and friends who deliver their unsolicited advice. Ro says I’ve developed an aggressive habit of smiling and nodding while she tries to talk to me about such things. The things that seemed to be approved of are my practice and advisory positions, walking, errands and help in the households of my adult children, volunteering, cooking (but not too much because ‘remember it’s only you mum’). Has Con’s death left me so inept. Has his death taken him and with it me, leaving only this useless aimless shell?
Con’s words whisper from his grave, from his ashes tipped carefully below our lemon tree, from years of love, from the smell of that old pillow. Catherine Eleanor Dawes, the most important person in my life, you are not dead yet.
Standing behind Fred Chen once, we noticed a tiny bulge on his back, under the grey polo shirt that hugged his bulk too tight. “Is that a mole?” I whispered to Chez. “It looks like a button.”
Chez giggled. “It could be his self-destruct button.”
We couldn’t stop seeing it after that.
“What are you two buffoons laughing at?” Fred would ask, looking over his shoulder from his favourite bar stool.
We never told him. We didn’t dare.
Fred drank too much and was a heavy smoker. He was often morose, and if you said the wrong thing about his science fiction obsessions or, worst of all, his background, it could spark a red-faced tirade. So it felt like he really did have a self-destruct button sometimes.
But there was another side to his character. If someone brought a dog into the pub, he’d talk to them in a soft voice and smile, and they’d respond like he was an old friend.
“You should think about a career change,” I said.
Fred’s dad was a popular local doctor, originally from Hong Kong. He had to work hard to be popular, according to his son. When he joined the town clinic, some patients asked to see an ‘English’ doctor. “He decided he had to get to know people,” Fred told me. So Dr Chen joined local sports teams, hobby groups and, much to his son’s embarrassment, a drama club.
“It was excruciating,” Fred said, “seeing him in the local paper, always with a silly hat on at Christmas. They’d call the roles problematic now. All part of his plan to fit in, of course.”
Fred made a point of not fitting in, and refused his dad’s advice growing up. “He wanted me to join the Scouts! And an archery club! Fortunately, Mum let me get on with my own things.”
Mum was a nurse from Bolton, and the “things” she let him get on with were: playing with computers, watching TV and reading comics.
Fred worked in IT at the internet bank where I worked in sales. We frequented the same pub near our office, and bonded over beer and a shared interest in 70s TV – mainly old science fiction shows. I never told him I thought they were amusing rubbish, because of his self-destruct button. When he discovered I was a frustrated writer, he smiled, and the next time I saw him in the pub, he handed over the first chapter of an unfinished novel.
It was called: ‘Attack of the Space Bastards’.
“Funny title,” I said.
“What do you mean ‘funny’?” Fred asked.
“What I meant to say,” I said quickly, “was that it’s funny as in it’s very different.”
He was always in demand to resolve some IT crisis at work, and that, plus the booze, eventually took its toll. His face turned grey, he became even more morose and began to chain-smoke. One night, Chez criticised his smoking habit.
“Those ciggies will kill you,” he said
Fred drained his glass and sighed. “Good,” he said.
I left town shortly after that for a new job and didn’t see Fred or anyone from the pub for nearly a year. Then I bumped into him one day. I’d come back to see a friend and was walking through the park. It was a lovely spring day, and he was the last person I expected to see. I didn’t recognise him initially: he’d lost weight and looked fit.
“Hello, old pal,” he said.
It was warm and his face was pink – partly because of the heat and partly because of the four dogs he was attempting to hold onto.
“I listened to your advice,” he said, nodding at the dogs, “and get paid to walk these terrors now. I still do a bit of IT consultancy, but only work when I want to. Stopped smoking and boozing too, can you believe it?”
I was speechless – I couldn’t believe it.
“I feel renewed these days,” he said, smiling at the sun. “Regenerated, even.” He laughed and we chatted about old times briefly before he had to go.
I watched him as the dogs dragged him away. I couldn’t help staring at his back. He was wearing a tight-fitting orange gym top, but there was no sign of the self-destruct ‘button’ now, and I was really glad about that.
Note: I originally wrote this as a rough character study and shared it here. Had a go at rewriting it as a story!
Looking through the taxi window Sarah followed the West End lights as they slipped past like coloured streamers. The journey from East Finchley hadn't been that bad, just the usual lunchtime traffic. She recognized landmarks, the Palace Theatre showing Les Misérables, the wrought iron awning of the Lyric Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue, and red and gold lanterns of China Town down a side street further on. In Piccadilly Circus models with too-white teeth stared out from giant billboards, and high up the sloping script of Coca-Cola vied with SANYO and McDonald's big red letters. Piccadilly looked the same. Working there in her early twenties had shown her Soho’s Janus faces. By day it was a buzzing TV, advertising, and music business mecca. Italian restaurants and delis were all the rage back in the eighties, sandwiched between exotic Eastern restaurants and pubs like the French House and the Coach and Horses. Creamy homemade pasta or smoked ham and Panettone were on offer, while next door Rasa Siang had spicy mee goreng which would blow your head off. The lunchtime cure for hangovers. Berwick Street Market which supplied them was round the corner, a bustling smorgasbord of people, sounds, and smells. Shouts from hawkers selling fresh fruit and veg, vinyl records, and vintage clothes. Smells of fish and a variety of cheeses. Flower stalls in vibrant colors scents of stock and roses, freesias, and sweet peas beneath their green and white striped awnings. Soho was a dynamic village of creative industry.
But by night, the industry was something else completely. While one slept, the other woke. Daylight doorbells saying 'models' stayed discreetly in the background – you had to look for them – but as dark descended neon signs and red lights in upstairs windows throbbed against the night sky.
SEX.
Groups of drunken men wandered down Frith, Greek, and Dean Streets, some swigging from cans of beer, all shouting jeering comments up Wardour Street and Brewer Street. Neon lights proclaimed exotic entertainment at the Windmill Theatre, home of striptease and burlesque, while outside burly bouncers tempted passers-by.
“Come on mate, lovely ladies plenty of sexy flesh, luscious totty’s waiting for you.”
“Lots of tits, writhing lovelies dancing naked, come and see!”
And then as dawn began to turn the sky a chilly shade of grey it changed again. Shutters were drawn, red lights went off and the last remaining drunks slunk back to bed.
When you hide your emotions from those around you, then you cease to behave as the real you. Instead, you become the version of yourself that can survive, within the projection of bullshit that you’ve spun. People will tolerate you, but they won’t like it. They will sense that there is something, at the very least, that is unsaid. They may be happy to skirt around that for the sake of peace, but they know it’s lurking there. It will silently annoy them. Sometimes it’s staring out of your eyes when you haven’t got the wherewithal to guard against it with your usual vacant pretence. They will spot that look and realise that you’ve let your veil slip and that there is a sadness, no, much more, a truth there, that they hadn’t seen. The good news is they’re unlikely to mention it because it’s easier.
You may become very adept at self-managing and look very busy getting on with things, and you will complain about setbacks and make a great deal of small successes, and these are all parts of the same act. It takes effort to perform at this constant, sub-mediocre level. To call it a lie is problematic. It’s not blatant enough for that, it comes under the heading of a lie which is unspoken, or hard to explain at all, living in a way which seems bearable, but emotionally, it isn’t. You’re not saying it because of your fear of speaking at all, so you’re just living it, quietly, which is essentially the same and not so easily exposed as a blatant untruth.
I know that sometimes, even you allow a few moments of indulgence. You might close your eyes swiftly, and admit a daydream at the very back of your perception, or as you drift off at night, you allow a secret stiletto of true feeling to pass across your mind which is almost orgasmic because it will hover there until you wake, stirring you to force a brief smile, before you slip back on the mask and go back to the half-life. The tragedy is that you’re hiding those feelings until it becomes a habit. You get into a ludicrous routine where you almost convince yourself that the façade is in fact, the truth. That works until it hits you. When you have no warning you hear a song, watch something, hear a story on the radio, hear a string of utterances from someone, said in a familiar order, and in seconds you are transported back to a time where you lived within the raw fear of total truth. Part of you doesn’t want to remember because if you do then it means it must have been real. That admission would make carrying on all the harder. You should be grateful for those memories. Things you said and did with total conviction. That showed you who you really were. But any concept of honesty, within the context of something very dishonest, was never an option for you. You weren’t brave by any means, but you were certainly a little more courageous. More than now.
You will carry on with your performance. Until when? Most likely when the decision is made for you by someone who realises and is shocked by another, perhaps final, falsehood. Thankfully, that will never happen, so just lower yourself into the new role and shrug off the chance. You’ll enjoy letting the detachment game become the new reality, that’s not so hard, is it? Time is the useful healer, each second or minute onward, sealing more of the wound. It’s also the paid-for whore, used in the way you choose, so you can lie to time whenever it suits. I think you can stand it because it’s not so bad to live well in the meantime, albeit in pain.
The renewal of our lives was once going to be ours. I understand that outcome would have been so much worse for you, than this. Instead, the renewal is solely yours, and as long as you can remember to keep hidden that dying look behind your eyes, then you can have that clean new life for as long as you want. One day, seventeen years from now, beyond any concept of knowing, we will both look up at a far horizon as the sun sledges away, and wonder if our eyes ever again, expressed true happiness.
She had the face of a Cherokee, and the general look of a girl who spends the summer under the Greek sun. When I saw her walking down the narrow path, she had her arms stretched and carrying the peacock on her back. This was the summer that we dreaded, for it was to be one of memories and grief. Watching Ageliki play in the water was soothing. It brought me back to that age, before puberty, when nothing has really happened. Yet. No self-doubt, no boys, no loss, just pure happiness.
She descended to the beach, every day with her grandparents and her dog, Marla, in tow. They brought their own yellow folded chairs, and Marla dug a hole in the sand under one of them, to keep cool.
The kids were mad about Ageliki, my own son included. She was sweet, she was fun and had a giant peacock. What more could one ask for? I sat there taking in the sheer joy they felt, climbing on and off the colourful bird. Ageliki being so caring, helping the boy come out of the water and back in. I started chatting with grandpa. “Don’t worry”, he said, “I have a rope tied to the peacock”. The year before, a four year old girl got carried away by the current on her floating unicorn. She just stayed still as a sculpture, frozen from fear, until she was rescued by the coast guard.
Ageliki and the peacock became the highlight of our day. Sometimes we would call for her, when we passed her house. “Ageliki! Ageliki!”, my son would shout outside the gate. She slowly strode through the tall vegetation of the estate, a sort of paradiso perduto, with her as a contemporary Estella. Other than the beach, she wore cotton shorts and cropped tops. Her shy look, with her hands behind her back and head slightly bend downwards, made her look wise. The place had a magical quality, with its miniature sculptures of terriers, ancient olive trees, and old furniture scattered around the garden. It was certainly a place to explore, but she never let us through the gates.
One evening we saw her and her grandfather pushing an old boat in the sea, which was soft and still like olive oil. “We’re going fishing”, she said. Grandpa knew so many words for the wind, and he gladly explained them to us, “Maistros, Sirokos, they’re all different!”. “The Maistros is a north-western wind, pleasant and warm, that rises in the afternoon and dies at sunset. Contrary to the Sirokos, which comes from North Africa and can cause hurricanes, as well as bad moods”. In his youth he used to command large ships, now he rested in his small boat with the girl for company. There was no one else around, and the pink colour of the dusk made the vision of Ageliki on the boat, with her namesake, seem timeless.
Days turned to weeks, and the time came for Ageliki to leave. She would spend the rest of the summer at a holiday camp. I worried for her, will she be disappointed? Will she be heartbroken? Will she lose her smile? Could she stay like this forever? It was impossible to keep her from growing up, to protect her. On the day of her departure, I avoided saying goodbye. Eventually they came and found us, her in her cotton shorts and top, all timid and quiet. She hugged me, and I cried. Wondering why I felt so sad, to be separated from this little girl, whom I had met only a while ago. I didn’t want to let her go, I didn’t want to let me go.
After she left, the peacock stood lonely under the olive trees of the estate. I passed each day, on my way to the beach and looked at it from the corner of my eye. It slowly deflated, and one day, it was gone. We asked about Ageliki, “Is she having a good time? Will she come again next year?” The beach was empty without her and the peacock, but she occupied and distracted our minds from everything bad. The following years we would go back to the island and shout her name behind the gate, “Ageliki! Ageliki!”. We never saw her or the peacock again.
Mick always used the same bad joke as he walked through Jim's front door, aping the film version of Mary Poppins and using Dick Van Dyke's appallingly bad cockney accent.
"Jim Jimminy, Jim Jimminy, Jim Jim Chooroo. What will I find when I come through to you?"
The bungalow was deliberate. No stairs meant no accidents. And anyway Jim's state meant that long ago he couldn't handle stairs.
Mick entered the old boy's sleeping pit at 6.02am this Tuesday morning in February 1992.
Jim was slumped up, hip cocked to one side, avoided whatever it was he was avoiding.
The smell was not to be avoided.
"Ok Jimbo so what have we ...?" asked Mick, peeling back the duvet to reveal an inch thick of his faeces from the night previous.
"What the fuck happened here?"
"Problems. Last night." Jim slurred in the Glencoe accent Mick had now become used to deciphering.
He grimaced the way his Nan had taught him to in situations like this.
"When?"
"About 15 minutes after you left."
--
Cleaning up in this way was an expected/unexpected pain. Jim had been allocated 45 minutes to be gotten out of bed, washed, breakfasted and made comfortable.
Ordinarily doable.
But not today.
After lifting Jim out of bed via his hoist (he was not calling the agency for another aux nurse FUCK THAT) he lowered him into his wheelchair, stripped the bed, disinfected all hard surfaces and hosed him to a squeaky cleanliness. The only addendum being a thorough maintenance of his internal catheter that had been recently fitted, without which he would inevitably end up sitting in a trouser load of his own piss, which is what always happened with the external condom ones that the agency provided.
The breaking of Jim's fast beckoned.
--
They called him 'Wellington Jim' at the agency, on account of the square in which he lived off the King's Road in Chelsea.
A 'cantankerous old bugger' was the politest version of how he had been described to Mick before his first visit. Jim was old but clearly regarded. Handsome in his day and full of stories about his previous career 'working for the government', about which he would give only scant detail. A military decoration adorned the mantle shelf; something to do with the order of Saint Michael and George or some shit like that. It was clearly very important to him. As was the framed photo of himself as a young Commander in the navy.
"The RNR." He again reminded Mick. "Volunteer services."
At first Mick thought Jim had never married as he did not appear to have any immediate family or children but he soon found this was incorrect.
--
One evening whilst Mick was tidying up Jim had popped a whole pack of Benzadrine and gotten drunk on a combination of Riga vodka, Pouilly-Fuissé, Enzian schnaps, Marsala wine and a 1953 Château Mouton Rothschild claret. Enter stage left Jim in rambling mode. One moment he was talking about his murdered son whom he had never met and next to the lack of emotion he had about the Mexican he once killed whilst working for the agency.
To the observer it wasn't that Jim drank heavily. It was that he never stopped drinking.
As the old man lit up another of his hand made Morland cigarettes Mick found an aged photo of what appeared to be a film star from the 1940's buried underneath some old paperwork with the writing:
'To my Hoagy. Love V x'.
Feeling bold he asked him if it was from his wife.
"No. Lost my wife."
That was the last he ever spoke of her to Mick.
--
The care in the community nurse served Jim his favourite breakfast of scrambled eggs, washed up, made sure he was well stocked with Morland's, Babycham (an old favourite) and plonking this particular 'cantankerous old bugger' in front of the telly, bid him farewell.
"Tonight!" he proclaimed, "And don't get smelly again ya'bastard!" slamming the Georgian townhouse front door behind him.
--
It was just after lunch when Mick received the call. The agency were very matter of fact. There was no need to go to 'Wellington Jim' this evening as he'd gone that morning.
Somewhat naively Mick replied that of course he'd be going to him! There was nothing wrong. He'd been with him only this morning.
No the lady at the agency replied. He wouldn't be.
--
The coroner recorded the death as 'indeterminate'.
No obvious sign of a struggle, although the police said Jim had clearly opened the door to someone, but it was not certain if that person had anything to do with his subsequent demise.
His ashes were scattered at the Grotte du Ranconet in the Cap d'Ail, the easternmost point of the Riviera in Monaco's sovereign territory. According to Rachel, his former secretary who attended, it had been his life's wish to remain there.
She appeared to be in such a bad shape, I wasn’t sure I could save her. That day I had to present the house to the landlord and the future renting party. On the brink of panic, I had never experienced such a cold sweat. Dripping wet, the confused dog on the leash, stammering incoherent word constructions directed at the landlord. In the emptied house I tried to focus on the problem at hand, still convinced she must be fighting an entity, that took her over. Her being in and out of a seemingly tormented state, one moment herself, the next possibly some wild unknown creature. Unable to rid myself of my interpretation I tried to come up with a scenario where she would not be hospitalized, this being the worst possible outcome, but exactly what the people I asked for help, wanted me to choose. I wasn’t willing. This couldn’t go wrong. I wouldn’t lose her. If she went to the clinic, she would never trust me again and I would be on the outside, unable to help. I announced I would leave the house. The landlord, irritated, but accepting and since I seemed to be not myself entirely, relieved. Outside I tried to call a cab, shaking, almost unable to start the app. The battery died. I went back inside, recharging the phone, frightening the future tenant and the owner. Still shaking, sweating like mad, I had an epiphany, that this is what happens if you give in to fear. One moment of clarity. Unable to think straight, I finally ordered a cab or maybe I went by bus, I cannot remember clearly. I somehow managed to get in the direction of home at last.
Remembering how we sat on the terrace almost every evening. She, always turning to that other state, the hurt child that came into being to shield her and therefore getting harmed massively decades ago, frozen in time in a permanent state of fright. The inability to convince that young aspect of the self that I am to be trusted. Again and again, running against the walls, installed to secure the self. A panic room inside oneself.
Nobody gets to choose their parents, but that is cold comfort when you grow up with a mother like mine. Sounds mean, I know, considering what moms go through. Especially my birth, a breach baby without benefit of a C-section.
Poor woman. Seven pounds doesn’t sound like much until it’s coming out of your pussy. Maybe that’s where things went south.
Perhaps she held the pain against me, though I spent my first months in an ICU with double pneumonia. Cold feet coming into this world and getting colder by the minute it often seems.
Mom, youngest of 17, was born in the middle of a street in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. Rich with imagination, but poor in spirit, her truth was always iffy. It does make perfect sense, however, that after 16 births her own mother may have missed the dropdown menu announcing another new arrival.
Where her sisters were cocoa-skinned, she inherited the great white beauty of Italian grandmothers. Beautiful enough for the movies and not afraid to show it, especially to sisters demeaned for their coloration, not just by her, but the island caste system at large. Back then, “passing” was a good omen for your future.
Our never agreeing, always arguing and darkly disdaining each other was painful in light of my father’s family. My great-great paternal aunt invented Mother’s Day! Oh, how I envied friends who considered their mothers best friends, confidents, role models. “Friends” who took them shopping for new clothes and not just for school.
Aren’t we all afflicted by self-delusion? Working retail and in up-close-and-personal observations I’ve come to believe most mother-daughter relationships are fraught.
Abject poverty contributed to my mom’s heartlessness. That, and having the delayed-gratification skills of a 2-year-old. My mom was the one pulling her child’s hair at the grocery checkout if they paused too long at the candy rack. We sat alone in cars for hours while she casually shopped.
One Mother’s Day, when I was 8, I bought her a red Chinese lacquer candy dish. Unwrapping it, her response was “What is this piece of shit?” I was sent, humiliated, back to the store for a full refund.
Another year, we children developed an abnormal obsession with Chiclets that came sealed, like a metaphor, in a giant molar. Always a hoarder, she secretly saved every tooth we tossed. That Christmas, we ran downstairs to discover our beautiful tree ornaments replaced with colorful plastic teeth. Mom’s genius was ruining Christmas, which we were certain she started planning as soon as she stashed the old wrapping to be used again “one day.”
After 35 years, my father finally had enough when she stepped out on him with a Colombian fireman and moved to Bogota. I like to think he died on March 22, her birthday, so she’d never have another happy one. But that’s just me.
Years did not mend fences and, in fact, they were replaced with solid walls of recrimination and months of icy silence. She moved closer to her two oldest and they quickly fled to other towns. Reminded of this, she put a curse on me: “One day you will have an unkind, ungrateful daughter just like yourself!” Which only reaffirmed my decision not to have children.
Like a lot of prisoners she ultimately sought solace in religion. She especially welcomed visits from Jehovah’s Witnesses because of all the free Bibles, books and brochures. I’ll bet they were bitterly disappointed hours of effort yielded no conversion.
Mom died of dementia 15 years before being pronounced dead. Over that span, she entered into hospice seven times, each one defying the odds. In the wake of her long illness were hefty nursing bills and 40 years of detritus to clear from her home. The collateral damage was incalculable.
Last Mother’s Day, I discovered her copy of “Leaves of Gold,” a compendium of “prayers, phrases and inspirational verse.” I am sure she never cracked it open. Except once. Inside the gold leaf cover, in her handwriting, was an inscription dated March 22: “To the Best Mother in the world. Also, my best friend.” Beneath it, she signed my name.
On the final walk through my mother’s home, I rescued a beat-up amaryllis in a broken pot. Don’t ask me why. My mom was clairvoyant and she said I was too. Maybe.
All I know is it’s blooming now and in its fierce finery, it reminds me of her. That makes me smile.
Thoughts of summer fill my mind. Six weeks ago, now seems a million years. Tresco in the Scilly Isles. A greatly-needed family holiday.
For a moment I am back there on the beach squinting in the sun, smelling salty sea and seaweed, walking slowly, looking down, holding Anna's hand. We are the only family there. The stretch of sand extends towards the sea so white it could be tropical, and grains of quartz amongst it glitter in the sunlight. I can almost hear the rhythm of waves, their fizzing bubbles as they break, hissing in retreat trailing strands of jewel-like shells mirroring the tidemarks in their wake. We kneel beside these tiny coils of silver, rose, butter yellow, and hues of mauve and coral.
"They are like mermaid’s necklaces of coloured pearls." Says Anna.
"Yes, – yes, I suppose they are, we could make small holes with my old jeweller’s drill at home, threading them with cotton.”
“Mermaid’s necklaces.” Her eyes widen with excitement. “I could show my class!”
As Anna empties shells into her plastic bag, I notice that the crescent of freckles beneath her eyes and over her nose had grown denser over the summer. With her open face, the dimple on her cheek and her tom-boyish clothes, she could have stepped out of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five. Amber lights brighten her straight brown hair: at ten she is no longer a little child – but the precious childlike innocence is still there. In three years, she’ll be a teenager and time will erase it. Childhood seems so short.
Shielding my eyes against the glare, further down the beach Sam jumps up and down waving his spade.
“Look what I found!” His voice sounds so far away.
Willliam picks up Fran and walks towards him. I stare at the fawn shape of William’s retreating back, tall, and slim. So different from the kind of man I was always drawn to, fly-by-night, unreliable, just out for a good time. For thirteen years he's been a constant. He is my rock. Polishing his shoes every Sunday ready for Monday morning, clearing forgotten toys around the house and tidying the newspapers. Those ritual habits are a comfort. I feel safe with him, there are no surprises, no moodiness, or temperamental outbursts, and I could deal with his impatience.
I study the sand beneath me. How like a tableau, a depiction of our holiday it would be. Exploring, crabbing, walking with the children, cycle rides on coastal paths and windy picnics of scotch eggs and tuna sandwiches. The island's crystal beaches and its paradise of wildflowers.
“You know, it will make a good painting one day,” I smile. “Like you’re looking at the beach beneath your feet ─ a kind of beach still life ─ ‘a beachscape’.”
Anna looks down.
“Do you mean a painting photo?”
“Yes. That’s a good description. A memory, a renewal of our time here hung on the wall. Let’s take some sand and pebbles too,” I say.
We ladle handfuls into the plastic bag she has for trophies from the beach.
“Grab that piece of black seaweed, love.” I point towards an inky pile, and Anna holds it at arm’s length screwing up her nose.
“It stinks!”
She makes me laugh.
A group of noisy seagulls circle and disperse above us and I shield my eyes turning in the direction of the others glancing briefly at the sun. Its black disc repeats itself across my retinas when I blink. William and the boys are paddling in the shallows.
“Come on Anna, we should join Daddy,” I say grabbing the bulging plastic bag.
“It’s nearly lunchtime.”
“OK.” smiles Anna bouncing up, “I’m feeling hungry.”
And we set off towards them.
Afterwards, leaning against the top of the dunes, I rest my chin on my arms and look across the green and purple heathland stretching ahead. The granite outcrops which punctuate the land have a wild, prehistoric magic. In the distance stand the rubble ruins of King Charles Artillery Castle, built to defend the western harbours. Just one of the ancient monuments dotted around these isles, a testament to 4,000 years of human history, now all reduced to a shadow. It reminds me we are only visitors in this landscape. Heat rises from the exposed land in shimmering waves, cooled by an intermittent breeze. It is captivating, a gem, beauty suspended in a moment. And a million miles from here.
There was a very strong wind. We sat side by side on a large terrace and watched a chair being blown over from one end of the terrace to the other, like a tumbleweed in the desert.. it crossed furiously in front of us at odd intervals, standing upright. The wind got under our clothes, in our hair, our faces, roughed us up before going away, then back.
She made a comment and it was funny, what ever she said..
I flirted with her, the way I often do, threw myself out-there, and she caught on. That was the surprise.
There must have been a common hunger, a disquiet, an urgency. Love. She whispered one day, holding her breath.
I told our friend: I am in love. I want to see her again. Where and how? I asked for her number. She didn't give it to me that first time. But her gaze...
I Kissed her on the mouth when we said good bye.. I only do that with close friends.
And then other opportunities arose, travel, work.
We met again a year later. I was still alone. Febrile. We talked for ten hours straight.We walked all afternoon. I watched her tired profile in the fading day light, it was like reaching a harbor..How mysterious, blissful all this, for a bit.
I’m not sure of when exactly I started to notice.
She had never mentioned her condition but her skin would get very dry. She kept hand and body lotions on each side of the bed. She had tubes in her bags, in her coat pockets. Lip moisturizers. You name it. She was continuously applying layers of ointments, delicately scented. It gave her a certain glow, a sensuousness.Then as we got more cosy, it became apparent that she was in fact continuously peeling, and that It happened in cycles.. It’d be light peeling for a few weeks, intensifying into what looked like a bad sunburn, and sometimes chunks of skin would come off. Until a new cycle began.
There were flakes all over the apartment. The cleaning man complained: incredible, he said, I find dust balls all over the place, could it be climate change?
I reported his comment to her as a joke.. She forced a little laugh but I could tell she was devastated. She was always so careful about cleanliness and order.
It was an alteration in her nose that I noticed at first. Since layers had been coming off, it was not so surprising, but could it have altered its shape so drastically?
I tried to be methodical in my assessment. A piece of her chin seemed to be missing too, it was now softly receding. I didn’t say a word. She seemed more aggressive than usual. Then another round of peeling occurred and details that had become familiar and loved resurfaced...it was all so gradual, so subtle in ways. Unsettling.
Not only did she peel, periodically, face and body, but her eyes, their color shifting like moving waters, would only ever temporarily settle into a plausible tint . Her hair was continuously growing back curly or straight, it wasn't just "humidity, as she claimed. Her voice had many tonalities.
As long as I was in love- I could hang on to what I took to be the core of her. Or of me- with her. That secret strength, that anchor planted in our ribcage. Each shedding revealing the unknown but we would/ could hold each other tight.”keep sight of one another.
I grew afraid of losing her, of waking up to a stranger. Someone I wouldn’t recognize.
She screamed and shouted and cried when I brought it up, she answered in hysterics that she wasn’t changing, that it was me, who had stopped loving her.
“It s called “keratinostisis”and it is a very rare condition. Look it up!
Acronymiac peeling skin syndrome."
I d never heard of it.
I d be on the hunt for familiar patches on her body, some soft as silk, reassuring, soothing...She sometimes stared at me as if she d never seen me before.
Was her condition triggered by emotions? Would it ever settle? Was I the same man she met on that terrace? Who was she? Her gaze would turn cold and exasperated. Did it matter?
It came over her suddenly – an appetite both fierce and demanding.
Wasting no time, as though to pounce on this new and unexpected change, Alice threw off the duvet and dragged herself out of bed. She stood in the gloom of her bedroom, amongst the piles of discarded clothing and scatters of dirty mugs. Her keys had been thrown on the desk at some forgotten time, and they lay there next to a mostly empty bottle of wine that had gathered a coat of dust.
She pulled on a hooded top and a pair of jeans, stuffed her bare feet into trainers, and fled the dank darkness of her flat. The stark afternoon sunlight hit her like an explosion, and she had to test her shaky legs with tentative steps.
Stepping along the High Street, ravenous, she passed a carousel of offerings in shop windows: a lamb gyro, rotating slowly, elegantly, glistening in its sheen of grease; a small pyramid of macarons arranged in multicoloured pastel hues like a Russian ballroom; slabs of fish precisely laid out on their deathbed of shaved ice, their silvery skins luminescent in the sun.
She bought a sandwich from a delicatessen, smoked salmon, cream cheese and cucumber, and ate it while walking, the salty fish sending shoots of feeling through her veins. Now she had started, she felt she could not be stopped. Finishing the sandwich, she passed a fish and chip shop plumed in a miasma of vinegar and cooking oil. She bought a bag of chips and ate them with a small wooden fork, eyes glazed and searching.
After the dormant weeks spent mostly in bed, Alice’s legs felt soft and uncooperative, and they soon joined the needs of her stomach. She sought a place to sit.
Fortune, still smiling upon her in this new elated state, delivered her an Italian restaurant, the white facade gleaming like a mirage. 'Mama Rosa’s', written in red cursive, announced itself over a darkened doorway. Alice imagined China plates with patterned borders, the clink of cutlery, chilled sky-gold champagne and strands of floury pasta.
A waiter approached her from the shadowy entrance, dressed, thrillingly to Alice, in a white dress shirt, black trousers and a buttoned black waistcoat.
“Would you care for some lunch, mam?”. He spoke with a light Italian accent.
“That’s exactly what I’d care for. A table for two please.”
The waiter moved towards the entrance, but Alice stopped him and pointed towards a table set outside.
“I’m going alfresco today”, she said, and the waiter smiled and led her to a table under a white and red striped parasol. He handed her a menu and disappeared back into the gloom of 'Mama Rosa’s', but not before Alice had ordered a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and two glasses.
Seated, Alice glanced at the empty chair next to her and considered what she was craving, as well as food and drink. It was not sex, not yet. Nothing so complex and fraught. No, what she wanted was company, conversation, a moment shared without any demands. She thought of messaging someone, a friend, or her sister Lucy, but shied away from the idea. What she needed, she realised, was an interaction with a stranger, isolated and free of context.
The waiter returned with the wine and glasses and set them down. Alice poured a glass and, without pausing, drank it down in one go. She refilled the glass and smiled at the waiter, who seemed unfazed by her appetite.
“I’m Alice. What’s your name?”
“I am Luca.”
“Hello Luca. And how long have you been doing this?“
“At this restaurant?” He thought for a moment. “Around five months.”
“Do you enjoy it?” She took a large gulp of wine.
“Enjoy it? Perhaps. But I do it for the money.”
“Ah, you’re a student?”
“I am”
“And what are you studying?”
“Biochemical engineering.”
Alice puffed her cheeks out.
“Impressive”, she said, taking another quick sip. She wondered if she was getting drunk, but the question seemed meaningless. What difference did it make, drunk or sober, famished or full, despairing or electric with joy? The only question that mattered - did she feel?
“And you, what do you do?” Luca was looking at her with his head slightly tilted, squinting against the sunlight.
“Me?” Alice paused to consider. “Right now, I eat. And I drink”
He could not believe his eyes. But he was also in a deep pickle.
Mira had texted him. Actually texted him. He was very attracted to her, no doubt. But he was also attracted to many girls, ladies, what was the right term? Anyway, suffice to say, he hadn’t had much luck in this department. In fact, zero, zilch.
She was fair, pretty, studied in a high school in Malaysia and was now living in Melbourne. She was perhaps five years younger than him, maybe thirty five or thirty six. And available. How rare was that? She was a very direct person and didn’t care for formalities or niceties. Raj found the insouciance erotic. And, god forbid, she had asked him on a date. Tonight. Before leaving tomorrow for her three month sojourn to Finland where she would be attached to a university studying something about precious stones.
But tonight was also the evening of his best friend’s fortieth birthday in which he was to give the main speech. There was no way he could let Girish down. Girish would permanently end their friendship.
But there was also no way he could refuse the offer from Mira. She was three quarters Indian, one quarter portugese, and so fresh and radical in her ways. All his life he had yearned for a woman who was non-conformist, a chick who didn’t give a fuck, a girl of mixed heritage who broke all boundaries.
But why did there need to be this clash of events? Why did he, at the age forty, need to be in this pickle?
He decided he would call Girish and explain the bind he was in. Girish, being a true mate, would completely understand, and give Raj room to make the right decision. Which of course would be to go on the date. But what if Mira pulled out at the last minute because a better offer had come her way? That would leave Raj with egg on his face, but then again, Girish would understand. Or rather, should understand, because you couldn’t take anything for granted in life. Not even the understanding of a best mate of thirty-five years.
Raj pressed ‘call’ on his mobile phone. The ringing tone continued but there was no response. Raj did not leave a voice message, it would have been too complicated to explain the situation. He tried again every ten minutes for the next half hour. Still no reply. Girish was probably busy with last minute prep, it was a huge bash after all, at The Hilton no less.
Raj knew he needed to make a decision pronto. He could not keep Mira waiting any longer, lest she cancel the whole arrangement. He decided to prioritise his own needs for once and meet with Mira.
It turned out to be an excellent decision. Mira and Raj truly connected. They had a shared love for world cinema and even exchanged a passionate kiss at the end.
The following day Raj sent Mira off at the airport. There was a small part of him that hoped Mira would cancel her travel. But he knew that she was too determined and ambitious a person to make a spur of the moment emotional decision.
Mira’s parents and sister were at the airport as well. To his disappointment, Mira sort of ignored him, and didn’t even offer him a hug as she bid farewell. He found it all rather confusing. He was almost certain he hadn’t done anything wrong to invite this derision. It was probably more that Mira saw him simply as a momentary passenger in her life. He was still grateful for the kiss though, all the time and effort spent was worth it if only for this one pleasure.
On the drive back home, Raj’s thoughts turned to Girish. It was surprising that neither Girish nor his family had made contact. After all, Raj was a key part of the fortieth celebration, and he had been absent without notice. Weren’t they worried something had happened to him? Surely there would have been a frantic effort to reach him.
Raj tried Girish’s number several times more but still without luck. He decided it was best to physically go to Girish’s house, maybe his friend was in a deep sleep after last night’s party. Soon, Raj found himself standing in front of the bright red door of 76, Rosamund Street, a house he had been to countless times. He was desperately hoping Girish was at home so that he could share the travails of what had happened with Mira. He knocked several times. Finally, a white woman in her forties came to the door. She was pleasant looking and seemed to have just woken up. Her hair was ruffled. She seemed perplexed to see this unknown stranger arrive at the door. Raj was equally perplexed to see her, as Girish lived alone and this woman certainly wasn’t Stephanie, Girish’s girlfriend of many years.
‘I’m here to catch up with Girish. I’m his mate, Raj.’
‘Sorry, I’ve just literally got out of bed,’ the woman said. ‘Who is it you wanted to see?’
‘Girish.’
‘There is no Gi...’
‘Girish?’
‘There is no Girish here, I’m afraid.’
‘Really?’ Raj replied, astonished. ‘I’ve been to this apartment at least fifty times, probably a hundred times.’
‘That can’t be,’ the woman said, ‘we’ve been living here for nine years.’
Raj and the woman both smiled at each other in a bewildered way. The woman seemed like a reasonable person, and there was no reason to belief she was lying. There was a remote possibility Girish was hiding in the apartment and this woman was a prostitute. However, she didn’t really look like a prostitute, not that Raj was an expert in this area. It also had to be said this woman was kind. She could have easily shooed him away, or even believed him to be a lunatic off the street. And yet she respectfully participated in this bizarre situation.
As it no longer served a purpose to simply stand in front of what he thought was Girish’s house, Raj made his way to return home. On the way back, he stopped at a café and ordered a long black. He used the time to reflect on the madness of it all. He found the contact ‘Girish mobile’ on his phone but was shocked to see there was no text history between them, when in fact there should have been loads. Raj felt forlorn, as it would take a lot of effort to find a friend that matched Girish for depth and humour. Nevertheless, Raj knew it was important to try, as a life without a best friend would be shallow, possibly even pointless.
The nurse asks if I want to press the button myself, and I feel like shouting, ‘Of course I want to press it myself! I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.’ But mum and dad are in the room, so I just nod and whisper, ‘Yes, please.’ Not that they would have noticed anyway. Mum’s sitting by my bed, tablet on her lap, long fingernails tapping away on the screen. Dad’s on his phone, not even trying to be quiet, half-blocking my view of the window.
With a smile I can’t read – is she embarrassed for me? – the nurse points at the large orange circle on the machine. I reach out towards it and I need a fair bit of strength to push – the chemo has taken it out of me more than I realise – but I just about manage, and she gives me a thumbs up.
A loud beep fills the room.
“Well done,” she says. “Now relax. It’ll take around seven minutes.”
I can’t stop myself from laughing at that – just for a second. The nurse doesn’t say anything. I expect she’s used to people reacting in strange ways.
Sixteen years to get to this point, I think to myself, and everything could change in seven minutes. That’s all the time that’s needed. For total transformation.
I close my eyes and remember the meeting with the first doctor, the one mum said had an accent she couldn’t understand. “Mr and Mrs Ayers, your son will have to be in complete isolation for several weeks. Only you two will be able to see him.” And I thought – ‘No. Say nobody will be allowed to see me. Say I’ll have to be completely alone the whole time.”
“There’s a chance the cell transplant might change his blood type.” And I thought – ‘Fine. Let it change. So that I literally won’t be their flesh and blood any more.”
“I should also mention that you mustn’t worry about the procedure altering his personality in any way.” And I thought – ‘No, please, let it alter everything. Let it get into the deepest parts of me and transform every single little thing.’
I open my eyes – the bag is nearly half-empty now, the thick redness of the liquid clinging to the inside of the plastic. Mum’s still typing. Dad’s voice is getting louder, his shoes squeaking on the floor as he paces back and forth.
My glance catches the huge image of Angelina Jolie painted onto the glass door. The volunteer artist turned up on my second day here, asked me what picture I’d like, and seemed very confused when I said, “How about a wire mother?” Mum was there, but she never even heard me. “Can you do Maleficent?” I asked, with an apologetic smile. “But from the film version.” The artist gave me a long look, but didn’t say anything. They’re all probably told not to question the patients too much.
I turn my gaze back to the bag and remember Miss Chopra, in Science, wide-eyed, telling us about these mice. Scientists had found that their actual DNA showed evidence of a trauma caused by experiments that had been carried out on the grandparent mice, even though the grandchildren hadn’t gone through the trauma themselves. Their bodies were literally made up of the effects of experiences from two generations before. “Maybe this means,” Miss Chopra said, “that who we are is something that started being decided centuries before we were born.” I remember looking at the inside of my forearms, staring at all the veins.
There’s another beep and I’m pretty sure the nurse has said, “There we are,” but I’m miles away, thinking about someone I’ve never met.
Thank you, Mister 21-year-old man who lives in Belgium and weighs 76 kilos. Thank you for giving me a bag-ful of yourself. Even if all this doesn’t work, thanks for giving me the looks on the faces of my leave-voting parents when they realised their son’s body would be pumped full of stuff from you. “No, Mr and Mrs Ayers, I’m afraid you can’t choose where the donor comes from.” Thank you for giving me another past to flow inside me – somebody else’s past.
The nurse presses a few buttons on the machine and disconnects the empty bag. I turn the other way, and although I’m sure mum and dad must still be in the room, all my eyes can see is the window – and the view outside.
Please excuse my typo. This is a SPRING writing competition, not Autumn.
TASMANIAN WILDFIRE
I’m born in a spark. Though I am small and weak, I am hungry. The heat nurtures me, the bush cradles me. My mother is Nature and my father is Man. But I wasn’t always this way.
At first I crackle through the dry grass like a snake. Almost silently. I smoke the buds of the bush pea and puff on the stems of a yam daisy. My bouche is amused.
Some seasoning is added to my plate. A little eucalyptus oil. The shod feet that pad around this forest often remark upon it. “What is that? Such a beautiful scent…”. Sweetness turned acrid is just to my taste, stirring my appetite for more. And more. I grow and I roar. Silver trees burst. Not into flame, they burst in my heat. Every piece of kindling makes me ravenous, for a branch, for a tree, for a forest, and for anything that lives in it. Anything that lives, really. Small and large, warm and cold blooded. Tendons twisted, sinew contorted, eyes baked. Everything served well done.
Roads melt before me. White paint blisters and black tarmac bubbles. It’s no toil, really. No trouble. I even dance across water as I grow too ferocious. The balance of elements is turning, spinning, burning. Burning away earth and water with the wind at my back.
I leave a wasteland of black behind me. April may be a time for renewal in your land. But in Tasmania, January is the cruellest month. Though, as I say, I wasn’t always this way.
A cousin on the mainland told me a story. Once upon a time, my mother was Nature and my father was men. For a long time, I was the jealously guarded secret of Gandji who would fly across the sky each day with a burning stick and bring light and warmth to the land, but always returned to his nest at night to hide my flame until morning. One day, some local men followed Gandji and stole the burning stick as he slept.
He woke in a fury and the thieves blundered. They set me free in their haste to flee! Gandji used his wings to spread my flames across the land. In horror, the men pleaded with the god to stop me from turning their home into ashes. Gandji agreed, but only if they shared me with their brothers and sisters, teaching them how to control me for the betterment of life itself.
Locals carried me with them in a hot coal fungus and, like an elemental touchstone, burnt back a galloping rainforest, here and there, for good old fashioned green pick hunting. Good hunting, of roos, possum and little pademelon. The locals kept the trade routes open on those cinder roads through the island. They knew me like they knew north was north. They just knew.
Tall ships on the horizon were like a lightning strike. With no beacon to light, the local men stoked the whole coast for miles into a wall of flame against the sea. The Bay of Fires is what they call it, the men who live here now. Well, they spread across the wilds like I do on a summer day baked in the sun. Unseen at first, then seen too late. They burned uncontrollably, across mountains and forests, through hallowed places and sleepy villages, clearing a hunting ground of men, women and little children. The trade routes were overgrown as the world opened up. They thought they knew me like they knew west was west.
I’m dying as clouds gather. My hunger is finally sated and my ardour cools. The wind that fanned my flames now chills my embers. The roar that shook the forest fades to a whisper. Rain fizzles in the air like animal fat, then turns my smoke from black to white. As if a wise decision has been made.
The wasteland looks black and dead. But the ashen dust the rain makes mud is that of earth and loam. It is rich and fertile. More rains come and seem to wash away the scars on the land. The silver trees are still blackened to the waist, but around their ankles, improbable green shoots appear one morning. They needed me as I needed them. Eucalyptus and wattle, tea tree and banksia all return, as do wildflowers, beasts of the land and birds in the trees. The men who live here return too.
The locals do not.
Loved this JWB
Sometimes I smell the warm familiar meaty waft of his slept-in skin. He wouldn’t mind that at all. Proud fastidiousness he happily and confidently boundaried with the outer limits of his person. Whatever emanated from there on, was no longer his, or his responsibility. Mr Fastidious, Mr Punctilious, Mr Officious, Mr Scrupulous, Mr Meticulous. He could so lazily and uncarefully foul the air, soil a toilet. And deny his ownership of such ‘til the cows came home. Rosie and I, or should I now say ‘Ro’, had argued angrily about replacing the pillows. She tells me that keeping his died-on pillow, was creepy and evidence of my denial of his death, me comforted by the dent from his head and years old yellowing. And the smell. Good morning, I whisper. Good morning to the person for whom I, with all my faults, was the most important person in the world. And for those moments every day after his death, I was, still, somebody’s most important person in the world.
How appalled Ro would be if she knew that it had been a good ten minutes between me waking to her father’s corpse and calling an ambulance. No one would know what time I woke. Even though I was faced away from him, the silent, cool, rigidity told me he had been dead for some hours. I had been slow to turn toward him. I wanted time to prepare for what would happen that day, that week, that year and for the rest of my life. When I finally turned, I held his face and gently kissed him. Oh, my darling, I said, leaning and pressing into him to search for some fading warmth. Instinctively I adjusted the quilt to his shoulders. I rested my head on him, and as I had in the worst moments of our lives, let that big round hard shoulder cradle me, like a child. There without warning came the yelling and howling of me the animal, crying more salty water than one could imagine a body could hold. There was no mistaking this for the wailing of a child. The sounds of my crying slammed hard against the walls, floors and ceilings near and far in our home. The harsh volume I didn’t know I had, shocked my ears. Oxytocin and endorphins that had surged with my early morning find were released in an episode that hurt my gut and throat, my ears and my eyes, the salt burning my skin, a painful headache seeping through my head, every heartbeat driving the pain further, harder. I was wrecked.
I was back to three days at the practice. I’d been hinted to, clued up and then outright told, that this was more trouble to management of the practice than it was worth. They hadn’t yet had the balls to sack me. The more they dropped the hint that it was time for me to leave, the more my resolve to not leave, hardened. Years of unfairness scarred me into a hard, gristly, intimidating, combat veteran. The red beret of female staff. I wouldn’t have anyone pushing me around now. Now when there was nothing at stake. Now that I didn’t need the work. How it must gall the worst of them to come and ask my opinion on complex patients. I’m a good doctor.
Today is one of the four days in the week that I must fill to make it look like I am doing alright. Otherwise, there will be my adult children, family and friends who will, after interrogation, express concern. In all their annoying ways. What are your plans now? Forthwith analysed and followed by unsolicited advice or discussed with the blunter of family and friends who deliver their unsolicited advice. Ro says I’ve developed an aggressive habit of smiling and nodding while she tries to talk to me about such things. The things that seemed to be approved of are my practice and advisory positions, walking, errands and help in the households of my adult children, volunteering, cooking (but not too much because ‘remember it’s only you mum’). Has Con’s death left me so inept. Has his death taken him and with it me, leaving only this useless aimless shell?
Con’s words whisper from his grave, from his ashes tipped carefully below our lemon tree, from years of love, from the smell of that old pillow. Catherine Eleanor Dawes, the most important person in my life, you are not dead yet.
Regenerated
Standing behind Fred Chen once, we noticed a tiny bulge on his back, under the grey polo shirt that hugged his bulk too tight. “Is that a mole?” I whispered to Chez. “It looks like a button.”
Chez giggled. “It could be his self-destruct button.”
We couldn’t stop seeing it after that.
“What are you two buffoons laughing at?” Fred would ask, looking over his shoulder from his favourite bar stool.
We never told him. We didn’t dare.
Fred drank too much and was a heavy smoker. He was often morose, and if you said the wrong thing about his science fiction obsessions or, worst of all, his background, it could spark a red-faced tirade. So it felt like he really did have a self-destruct button sometimes.
But there was another side to his character. If someone brought a dog into the pub, he’d talk to them in a soft voice and smile, and they’d respond like he was an old friend.
“You should think about a career change,” I said.
Fred’s dad was a popular local doctor, originally from Hong Kong. He had to work hard to be popular, according to his son. When he joined the town clinic, some patients asked to see an ‘English’ doctor. “He decided he had to get to know people,” Fred told me. So Dr Chen joined local sports teams, hobby groups and, much to his son’s embarrassment, a drama club.
“It was excruciating,” Fred said, “seeing him in the local paper, always with a silly hat on at Christmas. They’d call the roles problematic now. All part of his plan to fit in, of course.”
Fred made a point of not fitting in, and refused his dad’s advice growing up. “He wanted me to join the Scouts! And an archery club! Fortunately, Mum let me get on with my own things.”
Mum was a nurse from Bolton, and the “things” she let him get on with were: playing with computers, watching TV and reading comics.
Fred worked in IT at the internet bank where I worked in sales. We frequented the same pub near our office, and bonded over beer and a shared interest in 70s TV – mainly old science fiction shows. I never told him I thought they were amusing rubbish, because of his self-destruct button. When he discovered I was a frustrated writer, he smiled, and the next time I saw him in the pub, he handed over the first chapter of an unfinished novel.
It was called: ‘Attack of the Space Bastards’.
“Funny title,” I said.
“What do you mean ‘funny’?” Fred asked.
“What I meant to say,” I said quickly, “was that it’s funny as in it’s very different.”
He was always in demand to resolve some IT crisis at work, and that, plus the booze, eventually took its toll. His face turned grey, he became even more morose and began to chain-smoke. One night, Chez criticised his smoking habit.
“Those ciggies will kill you,” he said
Fred drained his glass and sighed. “Good,” he said.
I left town shortly after that for a new job and didn’t see Fred or anyone from the pub for nearly a year. Then I bumped into him one day. I’d come back to see a friend and was walking through the park. It was a lovely spring day, and he was the last person I expected to see. I didn’t recognise him initially: he’d lost weight and looked fit.
“Hello, old pal,” he said.
It was warm and his face was pink – partly because of the heat and partly because of the four dogs he was attempting to hold onto.
“I listened to your advice,” he said, nodding at the dogs, “and get paid to walk these terrors now. I still do a bit of IT consultancy, but only work when I want to. Stopped smoking and boozing too, can you believe it?”
I was speechless – I couldn’t believe it.
“I feel renewed these days,” he said, smiling at the sun. “Regenerated, even.” He laughed and we chatted about old times briefly before he had to go.
I watched him as the dogs dragged him away. I couldn’t help staring at his back. He was wearing a tight-fitting orange gym top, but there was no sign of the self-destruct ‘button’ now, and I was really glad about that.
Note: I originally wrote this as a rough character study and shared it here. Had a go at rewriting it as a story!
Looking through the taxi window Sarah followed the West End lights as they slipped past like coloured streamers. The journey from East Finchley hadn't been that bad, just the usual lunchtime traffic. She recognized landmarks, the Palace Theatre showing Les Misérables, the wrought iron awning of the Lyric Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue, and red and gold lanterns of China Town down a side street further on. In Piccadilly Circus models with too-white teeth stared out from giant billboards, and high up the sloping script of Coca-Cola vied with SANYO and McDonald's big red letters. Piccadilly looked the same. Working there in her early twenties had shown her Soho’s Janus faces. By day it was a buzzing TV, advertising, and music business mecca. Italian restaurants and delis were all the rage back in the eighties, sandwiched between exotic Eastern restaurants and pubs like the French House and the Coach and Horses. Creamy homemade pasta or smoked ham and Panettone were on offer, while next door Rasa Siang had spicy mee goreng which would blow your head off. The lunchtime cure for hangovers. Berwick Street Market which supplied them was round the corner, a bustling smorgasbord of people, sounds, and smells. Shouts from hawkers selling fresh fruit and veg, vinyl records, and vintage clothes. Smells of fish and a variety of cheeses. Flower stalls in vibrant colors scents of stock and roses, freesias, and sweet peas beneath their green and white striped awnings. Soho was a dynamic village of creative industry.
But by night, the industry was something else completely. While one slept, the other woke. Daylight doorbells saying 'models' stayed discreetly in the background – you had to look for them – but as dark descended neon signs and red lights in upstairs windows throbbed against the night sky.
SEX.
Groups of drunken men wandered down Frith, Greek, and Dean Streets, some swigging from cans of beer, all shouting jeering comments up Wardour Street and Brewer Street. Neon lights proclaimed exotic entertainment at the Windmill Theatre, home of striptease and burlesque, while outside burly bouncers tempted passers-by.
“Come on mate, lovely ladies plenty of sexy flesh, luscious totty’s waiting for you.”
“Lots of tits, writhing lovelies dancing naked, come and see!”
And then as dawn began to turn the sky a chilly shade of grey it changed again. Shutters were drawn, red lights went off and the last remaining drunks slunk back to bed.
Then it all began again.
It’s Spring!
Renewal
When you hide your emotions from those around you, then you cease to behave as the real you. Instead, you become the version of yourself that can survive, within the projection of bullshit that you’ve spun. People will tolerate you, but they won’t like it. They will sense that there is something, at the very least, that is unsaid. They may be happy to skirt around that for the sake of peace, but they know it’s lurking there. It will silently annoy them. Sometimes it’s staring out of your eyes when you haven’t got the wherewithal to guard against it with your usual vacant pretence. They will spot that look and realise that you’ve let your veil slip and that there is a sadness, no, much more, a truth there, that they hadn’t seen. The good news is they’re unlikely to mention it because it’s easier.
You may become very adept at self-managing and look very busy getting on with things, and you will complain about setbacks and make a great deal of small successes, and these are all parts of the same act. It takes effort to perform at this constant, sub-mediocre level. To call it a lie is problematic. It’s not blatant enough for that, it comes under the heading of a lie which is unspoken, or hard to explain at all, living in a way which seems bearable, but emotionally, it isn’t. You’re not saying it because of your fear of speaking at all, so you’re just living it, quietly, which is essentially the same and not so easily exposed as a blatant untruth.
I know that sometimes, even you allow a few moments of indulgence. You might close your eyes swiftly, and admit a daydream at the very back of your perception, or as you drift off at night, you allow a secret stiletto of true feeling to pass across your mind which is almost orgasmic because it will hover there until you wake, stirring you to force a brief smile, before you slip back on the mask and go back to the half-life. The tragedy is that you’re hiding those feelings until it becomes a habit. You get into a ludicrous routine where you almost convince yourself that the façade is in fact, the truth. That works until it hits you. When you have no warning you hear a song, watch something, hear a story on the radio, hear a string of utterances from someone, said in a familiar order, and in seconds you are transported back to a time where you lived within the raw fear of total truth. Part of you doesn’t want to remember because if you do then it means it must have been real. That admission would make carrying on all the harder. You should be grateful for those memories. Things you said and did with total conviction. That showed you who you really were. But any concept of honesty, within the context of something very dishonest, was never an option for you. You weren’t brave by any means, but you were certainly a little more courageous. More than now.
You will carry on with your performance. Until when? Most likely when the decision is made for you by someone who realises and is shocked by another, perhaps final, falsehood. Thankfully, that will never happen, so just lower yourself into the new role and shrug off the chance. You’ll enjoy letting the detachment game become the new reality, that’s not so hard, is it? Time is the useful healer, each second or minute onward, sealing more of the wound. It’s also the paid-for whore, used in the way you choose, so you can lie to time whenever it suits. I think you can stand it because it’s not so bad to live well in the meantime, albeit in pain.
The renewal of our lives was once going to be ours. I understand that outcome would have been so much worse for you, than this. Instead, the renewal is solely yours, and as long as you can remember to keep hidden that dying look behind your eyes, then you can have that clean new life for as long as you want. One day, seventeen years from now, beyond any concept of knowing, we will both look up at a far horizon as the sun sledges away, and wonder if our eyes ever again, expressed true happiness.
Ageliki and the Peacock
She had the face of a Cherokee, and the general look of a girl who spends the summer under the Greek sun. When I saw her walking down the narrow path, she had her arms stretched and carrying the peacock on her back. This was the summer that we dreaded, for it was to be one of memories and grief. Watching Ageliki play in the water was soothing. It brought me back to that age, before puberty, when nothing has really happened. Yet. No self-doubt, no boys, no loss, just pure happiness.
She descended to the beach, every day with her grandparents and her dog, Marla, in tow. They brought their own yellow folded chairs, and Marla dug a hole in the sand under one of them, to keep cool.
The kids were mad about Ageliki, my own son included. She was sweet, she was fun and had a giant peacock. What more could one ask for? I sat there taking in the sheer joy they felt, climbing on and off the colourful bird. Ageliki being so caring, helping the boy come out of the water and back in. I started chatting with grandpa. “Don’t worry”, he said, “I have a rope tied to the peacock”. The year before, a four year old girl got carried away by the current on her floating unicorn. She just stayed still as a sculpture, frozen from fear, until she was rescued by the coast guard.
Ageliki and the peacock became the highlight of our day. Sometimes we would call for her, when we passed her house. “Ageliki! Ageliki!”, my son would shout outside the gate. She slowly strode through the tall vegetation of the estate, a sort of paradiso perduto, with her as a contemporary Estella. Other than the beach, she wore cotton shorts and cropped tops. Her shy look, with her hands behind her back and head slightly bend downwards, made her look wise. The place had a magical quality, with its miniature sculptures of terriers, ancient olive trees, and old furniture scattered around the garden. It was certainly a place to explore, but she never let us through the gates.
One evening we saw her and her grandfather pushing an old boat in the sea, which was soft and still like olive oil. “We’re going fishing”, she said. Grandpa knew so many words for the wind, and he gladly explained them to us, “Maistros, Sirokos, they’re all different!”. “The Maistros is a north-western wind, pleasant and warm, that rises in the afternoon and dies at sunset. Contrary to the Sirokos, which comes from North Africa and can cause hurricanes, as well as bad moods”. In his youth he used to command large ships, now he rested in his small boat with the girl for company. There was no one else around, and the pink colour of the dusk made the vision of Ageliki on the boat, with her namesake, seem timeless.
Days turned to weeks, and the time came for Ageliki to leave. She would spend the rest of the summer at a holiday camp. I worried for her, will she be disappointed? Will she be heartbroken? Will she lose her smile? Could she stay like this forever? It was impossible to keep her from growing up, to protect her. On the day of her departure, I avoided saying goodbye. Eventually they came and found us, her in her cotton shorts and top, all timid and quiet. She hugged me, and I cried. Wondering why I felt so sad, to be separated from this little girl, whom I had met only a while ago. I didn’t want to let her go, I didn’t want to let me go.
After she left, the peacock stood lonely under the olive trees of the estate. I passed each day, on my way to the beach and looked at it from the corner of my eye. It slowly deflated, and one day, it was gone. We asked about Ageliki, “Is she having a good time? Will she come again next year?” The beach was empty without her and the peacock, but she occupied and distracted our minds from everything bad. The following years we would go back to the island and shout her name behind the gate, “Ageliki! Ageliki!”. We never saw her or the peacock again.
Wellington Jim
By Tristan Maguire
--
Mick always used the same bad joke as he walked through Jim's front door, aping the film version of Mary Poppins and using Dick Van Dyke's appallingly bad cockney accent.
"Jim Jimminy, Jim Jimminy, Jim Jim Chooroo. What will I find when I come through to you?"
The bungalow was deliberate. No stairs meant no accidents. And anyway Jim's state meant that long ago he couldn't handle stairs.
Mick entered the old boy's sleeping pit at 6.02am this Tuesday morning in February 1992.
Jim was slumped up, hip cocked to one side, avoided whatever it was he was avoiding.
The smell was not to be avoided.
"Ok Jimbo so what have we ...?" asked Mick, peeling back the duvet to reveal an inch thick of his faeces from the night previous.
"What the fuck happened here?"
"Problems. Last night." Jim slurred in the Glencoe accent Mick had now become used to deciphering.
He grimaced the way his Nan had taught him to in situations like this.
"When?"
"About 15 minutes after you left."
--
Cleaning up in this way was an expected/unexpected pain. Jim had been allocated 45 minutes to be gotten out of bed, washed, breakfasted and made comfortable.
Ordinarily doable.
But not today.
After lifting Jim out of bed via his hoist (he was not calling the agency for another aux nurse FUCK THAT) he lowered him into his wheelchair, stripped the bed, disinfected all hard surfaces and hosed him to a squeaky cleanliness. The only addendum being a thorough maintenance of his internal catheter that had been recently fitted, without which he would inevitably end up sitting in a trouser load of his own piss, which is what always happened with the external condom ones that the agency provided.
The breaking of Jim's fast beckoned.
--
They called him 'Wellington Jim' at the agency, on account of the square in which he lived off the King's Road in Chelsea.
A 'cantankerous old bugger' was the politest version of how he had been described to Mick before his first visit. Jim was old but clearly regarded. Handsome in his day and full of stories about his previous career 'working for the government', about which he would give only scant detail. A military decoration adorned the mantle shelf; something to do with the order of Saint Michael and George or some shit like that. It was clearly very important to him. As was the framed photo of himself as a young Commander in the navy.
"The RNR." He again reminded Mick. "Volunteer services."
At first Mick thought Jim had never married as he did not appear to have any immediate family or children but he soon found this was incorrect.
--
One evening whilst Mick was tidying up Jim had popped a whole pack of Benzadrine and gotten drunk on a combination of Riga vodka, Pouilly-Fuissé, Enzian schnaps, Marsala wine and a 1953 Château Mouton Rothschild claret. Enter stage left Jim in rambling mode. One moment he was talking about his murdered son whom he had never met and next to the lack of emotion he had about the Mexican he once killed whilst working for the agency.
To the observer it wasn't that Jim drank heavily. It was that he never stopped drinking.
As the old man lit up another of his hand made Morland cigarettes Mick found an aged photo of what appeared to be a film star from the 1940's buried underneath some old paperwork with the writing:
'To my Hoagy. Love V x'.
Feeling bold he asked him if it was from his wife.
"No. Lost my wife."
That was the last he ever spoke of her to Mick.
--
The care in the community nurse served Jim his favourite breakfast of scrambled eggs, washed up, made sure he was well stocked with Morland's, Babycham (an old favourite) and plonking this particular 'cantankerous old bugger' in front of the telly, bid him farewell.
"Tonight!" he proclaimed, "And don't get smelly again ya'bastard!" slamming the Georgian townhouse front door behind him.
--
It was just after lunch when Mick received the call. The agency were very matter of fact. There was no need to go to 'Wellington Jim' this evening as he'd gone that morning.
Somewhat naively Mick replied that of course he'd be going to him! There was nothing wrong. He'd been with him only this morning.
No the lady at the agency replied. He wouldn't be.
--
The coroner recorded the death as 'indeterminate'.
No obvious sign of a struggle, although the police said Jim had clearly opened the door to someone, but it was not certain if that person had anything to do with his subsequent demise.
His ashes were scattered at the Grotte du Ranconet in the Cap d'Ail, the easternmost point of the Riviera in Monaco's sovereign territory. According to Rachel, his former secretary who attended, it had been his life's wish to remain there.
--
She appeared to be in such a bad shape, I wasn’t sure I could save her. That day I had to present the house to the landlord and the future renting party. On the brink of panic, I had never experienced such a cold sweat. Dripping wet, the confused dog on the leash, stammering incoherent word constructions directed at the landlord. In the emptied house I tried to focus on the problem at hand, still convinced she must be fighting an entity, that took her over. Her being in and out of a seemingly tormented state, one moment herself, the next possibly some wild unknown creature. Unable to rid myself of my interpretation I tried to come up with a scenario where she would not be hospitalized, this being the worst possible outcome, but exactly what the people I asked for help, wanted me to choose. I wasn’t willing. This couldn’t go wrong. I wouldn’t lose her. If she went to the clinic, she would never trust me again and I would be on the outside, unable to help. I announced I would leave the house. The landlord, irritated, but accepting and since I seemed to be not myself entirely, relieved. Outside I tried to call a cab, shaking, almost unable to start the app. The battery died. I went back inside, recharging the phone, frightening the future tenant and the owner. Still shaking, sweating like mad, I had an epiphany, that this is what happens if you give in to fear. One moment of clarity. Unable to think straight, I finally ordered a cab or maybe I went by bus, I cannot remember clearly. I somehow managed to get in the direction of home at last.
Remembering how we sat on the terrace almost every evening. She, always turning to that other state, the hurt child that came into being to shield her and therefore getting harmed massively decades ago, frozen in time in a permanent state of fright. The inability to convince that young aspect of the self that I am to be trusted. Again and again, running against the walls, installed to secure the self. A panic room inside oneself.
“What Goes Around, Comes Around”
Nobody gets to choose their parents, but that is cold comfort when you grow up with a mother like mine. Sounds mean, I know, considering what moms go through. Especially my birth, a breach baby without benefit of a C-section.
Poor woman. Seven pounds doesn’t sound like much until it’s coming out of your pussy. Maybe that’s where things went south.
Perhaps she held the pain against me, though I spent my first months in an ICU with double pneumonia. Cold feet coming into this world and getting colder by the minute it often seems.
Mom, youngest of 17, was born in the middle of a street in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. Rich with imagination, but poor in spirit, her truth was always iffy. It does make perfect sense, however, that after 16 births her own mother may have missed the dropdown menu announcing another new arrival.
Where her sisters were cocoa-skinned, she inherited the great white beauty of Italian grandmothers. Beautiful enough for the movies and not afraid to show it, especially to sisters demeaned for their coloration, not just by her, but the island caste system at large. Back then, “passing” was a good omen for your future.
Our never agreeing, always arguing and darkly disdaining each other was painful in light of my father’s family. My great-great paternal aunt invented Mother’s Day! Oh, how I envied friends who considered their mothers best friends, confidents, role models. “Friends” who took them shopping for new clothes and not just for school.
Aren’t we all afflicted by self-delusion? Working retail and in up-close-and-personal observations I’ve come to believe most mother-daughter relationships are fraught.
Abject poverty contributed to my mom’s heartlessness. That, and having the delayed-gratification skills of a 2-year-old. My mom was the one pulling her child’s hair at the grocery checkout if they paused too long at the candy rack. We sat alone in cars for hours while she casually shopped.
One Mother’s Day, when I was 8, I bought her a red Chinese lacquer candy dish. Unwrapping it, her response was “What is this piece of shit?” I was sent, humiliated, back to the store for a full refund.
Another year, we children developed an abnormal obsession with Chiclets that came sealed, like a metaphor, in a giant molar. Always a hoarder, she secretly saved every tooth we tossed. That Christmas, we ran downstairs to discover our beautiful tree ornaments replaced with colorful plastic teeth. Mom’s genius was ruining Christmas, which we were certain she started planning as soon as she stashed the old wrapping to be used again “one day.”
After 35 years, my father finally had enough when she stepped out on him with a Colombian fireman and moved to Bogota. I like to think he died on March 22, her birthday, so she’d never have another happy one. But that’s just me.
Years did not mend fences and, in fact, they were replaced with solid walls of recrimination and months of icy silence. She moved closer to her two oldest and they quickly fled to other towns. Reminded of this, she put a curse on me: “One day you will have an unkind, ungrateful daughter just like yourself!” Which only reaffirmed my decision not to have children.
Like a lot of prisoners she ultimately sought solace in religion. She especially welcomed visits from Jehovah’s Witnesses because of all the free Bibles, books and brochures. I’ll bet they were bitterly disappointed hours of effort yielded no conversion.
Mom died of dementia 15 years before being pronounced dead. Over that span, she entered into hospice seven times, each one defying the odds. In the wake of her long illness were hefty nursing bills and 40 years of detritus to clear from her home. The collateral damage was incalculable.
Last Mother’s Day, I discovered her copy of “Leaves of Gold,” a compendium of “prayers, phrases and inspirational verse.” I am sure she never cracked it open. Except once. Inside the gold leaf cover, in her handwriting, was an inscription dated March 22: “To the Best Mother in the world. Also, my best friend.” Beneath it, she signed my name.
On the final walk through my mother’s home, I rescued a beat-up amaryllis in a broken pot. Don’t ask me why. My mom was clairvoyant and she said I was too. Maybe.
All I know is it’s blooming now and in its fierce finery, it reminds me of her. That makes me smile.
Love you, too, Mom.
THE BEACHSCAPE
Thoughts of summer fill my mind. Six weeks ago, now seems a million years. Tresco in the Scilly Isles. A greatly-needed family holiday.
For a moment I am back there on the beach squinting in the sun, smelling salty sea and seaweed, walking slowly, looking down, holding Anna's hand. We are the only family there. The stretch of sand extends towards the sea so white it could be tropical, and grains of quartz amongst it glitter in the sunlight. I can almost hear the rhythm of waves, their fizzing bubbles as they break, hissing in retreat trailing strands of jewel-like shells mirroring the tidemarks in their wake. We kneel beside these tiny coils of silver, rose, butter yellow, and hues of mauve and coral.
"They are like mermaid’s necklaces of coloured pearls." Says Anna.
"Yes, – yes, I suppose they are, we could make small holes with my old jeweller’s drill at home, threading them with cotton.”
“Mermaid’s necklaces.” Her eyes widen with excitement. “I could show my class!”
As Anna empties shells into her plastic bag, I notice that the crescent of freckles beneath her eyes and over her nose had grown denser over the summer. With her open face, the dimple on her cheek and her tom-boyish clothes, she could have stepped out of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five. Amber lights brighten her straight brown hair: at ten she is no longer a little child – but the precious childlike innocence is still there. In three years, she’ll be a teenager and time will erase it. Childhood seems so short.
Shielding my eyes against the glare, further down the beach Sam jumps up and down waving his spade.
“Look what I found!” His voice sounds so far away.
Willliam picks up Fran and walks towards him. I stare at the fawn shape of William’s retreating back, tall, and slim. So different from the kind of man I was always drawn to, fly-by-night, unreliable, just out for a good time. For thirteen years he's been a constant. He is my rock. Polishing his shoes every Sunday ready for Monday morning, clearing forgotten toys around the house and tidying the newspapers. Those ritual habits are a comfort. I feel safe with him, there are no surprises, no moodiness, or temperamental outbursts, and I could deal with his impatience.
I study the sand beneath me. How like a tableau, a depiction of our holiday it would be. Exploring, crabbing, walking with the children, cycle rides on coastal paths and windy picnics of scotch eggs and tuna sandwiches. The island's crystal beaches and its paradise of wildflowers.
“You know, it will make a good painting one day,” I smile. “Like you’re looking at the beach beneath your feet ─ a kind of beach still life ─ ‘a beachscape’.”
Anna looks down.
“Do you mean a painting photo?”
“Yes. That’s a good description. A memory, a renewal of our time here hung on the wall. Let’s take some sand and pebbles too,” I say.
We ladle handfuls into the plastic bag she has for trophies from the beach.
“Grab that piece of black seaweed, love.” I point towards an inky pile, and Anna holds it at arm’s length screwing up her nose.
“It stinks!”
She makes me laugh.
A group of noisy seagulls circle and disperse above us and I shield my eyes turning in the direction of the others glancing briefly at the sun. Its black disc repeats itself across my retinas when I blink. William and the boys are paddling in the shallows.
“Come on Anna, we should join Daddy,” I say grabbing the bulging plastic bag.
“It’s nearly lunchtime.”
“OK.” smiles Anna bouncing up, “I’m feeling hungry.”
And we set off towards them.
Afterwards, leaning against the top of the dunes, I rest my chin on my arms and look across the green and purple heathland stretching ahead. The granite outcrops which punctuate the land have a wild, prehistoric magic. In the distance stand the rubble ruins of King Charles Artillery Castle, built to defend the western harbours. Just one of the ancient monuments dotted around these isles, a testament to 4,000 years of human history, now all reduced to a shadow. It reminds me we are only visitors in this landscape. Heat rises from the exposed land in shimmering waves, cooled by an intermittent breeze. It is captivating, a gem, beauty suspended in a moment. And a million miles from here.
She didn't mention it at first.
We met through a common friend.
On a hot summer day, in the late afternoon.
There was a very strong wind. We sat side by side on a large terrace and watched a chair being blown over from one end of the terrace to the other, like a tumbleweed in the desert.. it crossed furiously in front of us at odd intervals, standing upright. The wind got under our clothes, in our hair, our faces, roughed us up before going away, then back.
She made a comment and it was funny, what ever she said..
I flirted with her, the way I often do, threw myself out-there, and she caught on. That was the surprise.
There must have been a common hunger, a disquiet, an urgency. Love. She whispered one day, holding her breath.
I told our friend: I am in love. I want to see her again. Where and how? I asked for her number. She didn't give it to me that first time. But her gaze...
I Kissed her on the mouth when we said good bye.. I only do that with close friends.
And then other opportunities arose, travel, work.
We met again a year later. I was still alone. Febrile. We talked for ten hours straight.We walked all afternoon. I watched her tired profile in the fading day light, it was like reaching a harbor..How mysterious, blissful all this, for a bit.
I’m not sure of when exactly I started to notice.
She had never mentioned her condition but her skin would get very dry. She kept hand and body lotions on each side of the bed. She had tubes in her bags, in her coat pockets. Lip moisturizers. You name it. She was continuously applying layers of ointments, delicately scented. It gave her a certain glow, a sensuousness.Then as we got more cosy, it became apparent that she was in fact continuously peeling, and that It happened in cycles.. It’d be light peeling for a few weeks, intensifying into what looked like a bad sunburn, and sometimes chunks of skin would come off. Until a new cycle began.
There were flakes all over the apartment. The cleaning man complained: incredible, he said, I find dust balls all over the place, could it be climate change?
I reported his comment to her as a joke.. She forced a little laugh but I could tell she was devastated. She was always so careful about cleanliness and order.
It was an alteration in her nose that I noticed at first. Since layers had been coming off, it was not so surprising, but could it have altered its shape so drastically?
I tried to be methodical in my assessment. A piece of her chin seemed to be missing too, it was now softly receding. I didn’t say a word. She seemed more aggressive than usual. Then another round of peeling occurred and details that had become familiar and loved resurfaced...it was all so gradual, so subtle in ways. Unsettling.
Not only did she peel, periodically, face and body, but her eyes, their color shifting like moving waters, would only ever temporarily settle into a plausible tint . Her hair was continuously growing back curly or straight, it wasn't just "humidity, as she claimed. Her voice had many tonalities.
As long as I was in love- I could hang on to what I took to be the core of her. Or of me- with her. That secret strength, that anchor planted in our ribcage. Each shedding revealing the unknown but we would/ could hold each other tight.”keep sight of one another.
I grew afraid of losing her, of waking up to a stranger. Someone I wouldn’t recognize.
She screamed and shouted and cried when I brought it up, she answered in hysterics that she wasn’t changing, that it was me, who had stopped loving her.
“It s called “keratinostisis”and it is a very rare condition. Look it up!
Acronymiac peeling skin syndrome."
I d never heard of it.
I d be on the hunt for familiar patches on her body, some soft as silk, reassuring, soothing...She sometimes stared at me as if she d never seen me before.
Was her condition triggered by emotions? Would it ever settle? Was I the same man she met on that terrace? Who was she? Her gaze would turn cold and exasperated. Did it matter?
ALFRESCO
It came over her suddenly – an appetite both fierce and demanding.
Wasting no time, as though to pounce on this new and unexpected change, Alice threw off the duvet and dragged herself out of bed. She stood in the gloom of her bedroom, amongst the piles of discarded clothing and scatters of dirty mugs. Her keys had been thrown on the desk at some forgotten time, and they lay there next to a mostly empty bottle of wine that had gathered a coat of dust.
She pulled on a hooded top and a pair of jeans, stuffed her bare feet into trainers, and fled the dank darkness of her flat. The stark afternoon sunlight hit her like an explosion, and she had to test her shaky legs with tentative steps.
Stepping along the High Street, ravenous, she passed a carousel of offerings in shop windows: a lamb gyro, rotating slowly, elegantly, glistening in its sheen of grease; a small pyramid of macarons arranged in multicoloured pastel hues like a Russian ballroom; slabs of fish precisely laid out on their deathbed of shaved ice, their silvery skins luminescent in the sun.
She bought a sandwich from a delicatessen, smoked salmon, cream cheese and cucumber, and ate it while walking, the salty fish sending shoots of feeling through her veins. Now she had started, she felt she could not be stopped. Finishing the sandwich, she passed a fish and chip shop plumed in a miasma of vinegar and cooking oil. She bought a bag of chips and ate them with a small wooden fork, eyes glazed and searching.
After the dormant weeks spent mostly in bed, Alice’s legs felt soft and uncooperative, and they soon joined the needs of her stomach. She sought a place to sit.
Fortune, still smiling upon her in this new elated state, delivered her an Italian restaurant, the white facade gleaming like a mirage. 'Mama Rosa’s', written in red cursive, announced itself over a darkened doorway. Alice imagined China plates with patterned borders, the clink of cutlery, chilled sky-gold champagne and strands of floury pasta.
A waiter approached her from the shadowy entrance, dressed, thrillingly to Alice, in a white dress shirt, black trousers and a buttoned black waistcoat.
“Would you care for some lunch, mam?”. He spoke with a light Italian accent.
“That’s exactly what I’d care for. A table for two please.”
The waiter moved towards the entrance, but Alice stopped him and pointed towards a table set outside.
“I’m going alfresco today”, she said, and the waiter smiled and led her to a table under a white and red striped parasol. He handed her a menu and disappeared back into the gloom of 'Mama Rosa’s', but not before Alice had ordered a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and two glasses.
Seated, Alice glanced at the empty chair next to her and considered what she was craving, as well as food and drink. It was not sex, not yet. Nothing so complex and fraught. No, what she wanted was company, conversation, a moment shared without any demands. She thought of messaging someone, a friend, or her sister Lucy, but shied away from the idea. What she needed, she realised, was an interaction with a stranger, isolated and free of context.
The waiter returned with the wine and glasses and set them down. Alice poured a glass and, without pausing, drank it down in one go. She refilled the glass and smiled at the waiter, who seemed unfazed by her appetite.
“I’m Alice. What’s your name?”
“I am Luca.”
“Hello Luca. And how long have you been doing this?“
“At this restaurant?” He thought for a moment. “Around five months.”
“Do you enjoy it?” She took a large gulp of wine.
“Enjoy it? Perhaps. But I do it for the money.”
“Ah, you’re a student?”
“I am”
“And what are you studying?”
“Biochemical engineering.”
Alice puffed her cheeks out.
“Impressive”, she said, taking another quick sip. She wondered if she was getting drunk, but the question seemed meaningless. What difference did it make, drunk or sober, famished or full, despairing or electric with joy? The only question that mattered - did she feel?
“And you, what do you do?” Luca was looking at her with his head slightly tilted, squinting against the sunlight.
“Me?” Alice paused to consider. “Right now, I eat. And I drink”
He laughed
“Perfect! So, what will it be?”
Alice looked over the menu.
“Now, where to start?”
PICKLE
He could not believe his eyes. But he was also in a deep pickle.
Mira had texted him. Actually texted him. He was very attracted to her, no doubt. But he was also attracted to many girls, ladies, what was the right term? Anyway, suffice to say, he hadn’t had much luck in this department. In fact, zero, zilch.
She was fair, pretty, studied in a high school in Malaysia and was now living in Melbourne. She was perhaps five years younger than him, maybe thirty five or thirty six. And available. How rare was that? She was a very direct person and didn’t care for formalities or niceties. Raj found the insouciance erotic. And, god forbid, she had asked him on a date. Tonight. Before leaving tomorrow for her three month sojourn to Finland where she would be attached to a university studying something about precious stones.
But tonight was also the evening of his best friend’s fortieth birthday in which he was to give the main speech. There was no way he could let Girish down. Girish would permanently end their friendship.
But there was also no way he could refuse the offer from Mira. She was three quarters Indian, one quarter portugese, and so fresh and radical in her ways. All his life he had yearned for a woman who was non-conformist, a chick who didn’t give a fuck, a girl of mixed heritage who broke all boundaries.
But why did there need to be this clash of events? Why did he, at the age forty, need to be in this pickle?
He decided he would call Girish and explain the bind he was in. Girish, being a true mate, would completely understand, and give Raj room to make the right decision. Which of course would be to go on the date. But what if Mira pulled out at the last minute because a better offer had come her way? That would leave Raj with egg on his face, but then again, Girish would understand. Or rather, should understand, because you couldn’t take anything for granted in life. Not even the understanding of a best mate of thirty-five years.
Raj pressed ‘call’ on his mobile phone. The ringing tone continued but there was no response. Raj did not leave a voice message, it would have been too complicated to explain the situation. He tried again every ten minutes for the next half hour. Still no reply. Girish was probably busy with last minute prep, it was a huge bash after all, at The Hilton no less.
Raj knew he needed to make a decision pronto. He could not keep Mira waiting any longer, lest she cancel the whole arrangement. He decided to prioritise his own needs for once and meet with Mira.
It turned out to be an excellent decision. Mira and Raj truly connected. They had a shared love for world cinema and even exchanged a passionate kiss at the end.
The following day Raj sent Mira off at the airport. There was a small part of him that hoped Mira would cancel her travel. But he knew that she was too determined and ambitious a person to make a spur of the moment emotional decision.
Mira’s parents and sister were at the airport as well. To his disappointment, Mira sort of ignored him, and didn’t even offer him a hug as she bid farewell. He found it all rather confusing. He was almost certain he hadn’t done anything wrong to invite this derision. It was probably more that Mira saw him simply as a momentary passenger in her life. He was still grateful for the kiss though, all the time and effort spent was worth it if only for this one pleasure.
On the drive back home, Raj’s thoughts turned to Girish. It was surprising that neither Girish nor his family had made contact. After all, Raj was a key part of the fortieth celebration, and he had been absent without notice. Weren’t they worried something had happened to him? Surely there would have been a frantic effort to reach him.
Raj tried Girish’s number several times more but still without luck. He decided it was best to physically go to Girish’s house, maybe his friend was in a deep sleep after last night’s party. Soon, Raj found himself standing in front of the bright red door of 76, Rosamund Street, a house he had been to countless times. He was desperately hoping Girish was at home so that he could share the travails of what had happened with Mira. He knocked several times. Finally, a white woman in her forties came to the door. She was pleasant looking and seemed to have just woken up. Her hair was ruffled. She seemed perplexed to see this unknown stranger arrive at the door. Raj was equally perplexed to see her, as Girish lived alone and this woman certainly wasn’t Stephanie, Girish’s girlfriend of many years.
‘I’m here to catch up with Girish. I’m his mate, Raj.’
‘Sorry, I’ve just literally got out of bed,’ the woman said. ‘Who is it you wanted to see?’
‘Girish.’
‘There is no Gi...’
‘Girish?’
‘There is no Girish here, I’m afraid.’
‘Really?’ Raj replied, astonished. ‘I’ve been to this apartment at least fifty times, probably a hundred times.’
‘That can’t be,’ the woman said, ‘we’ve been living here for nine years.’
Raj and the woman both smiled at each other in a bewildered way. The woman seemed like a reasonable person, and there was no reason to belief she was lying. There was a remote possibility Girish was hiding in the apartment and this woman was a prostitute. However, she didn’t really look like a prostitute, not that Raj was an expert in this area. It also had to be said this woman was kind. She could have easily shooed him away, or even believed him to be a lunatic off the street. And yet she respectfully participated in this bizarre situation.
As it no longer served a purpose to simply stand in front of what he thought was Girish’s house, Raj made his way to return home. On the way back, he stopped at a café and ordered a long black. He used the time to reflect on the madness of it all. He found the contact ‘Girish mobile’ on his phone but was shocked to see there was no text history between them, when in fact there should have been loads. Raj felt forlorn, as it would take a lot of effort to find a friend that matched Girish for depth and humour. Nevertheless, Raj knew it was important to try, as a life without a best friend would be shallow, possibly even pointless.
Stemming
The nurse asks if I want to press the button myself, and I feel like shouting, ‘Of course I want to press it myself! I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.’ But mum and dad are in the room, so I just nod and whisper, ‘Yes, please.’ Not that they would have noticed anyway. Mum’s sitting by my bed, tablet on her lap, long fingernails tapping away on the screen. Dad’s on his phone, not even trying to be quiet, half-blocking my view of the window.
With a smile I can’t read – is she embarrassed for me? – the nurse points at the large orange circle on the machine. I reach out towards it and I need a fair bit of strength to push – the chemo has taken it out of me more than I realise – but I just about manage, and she gives me a thumbs up.
A loud beep fills the room.
“Well done,” she says. “Now relax. It’ll take around seven minutes.”
I can’t stop myself from laughing at that – just for a second. The nurse doesn’t say anything. I expect she’s used to people reacting in strange ways.
Sixteen years to get to this point, I think to myself, and everything could change in seven minutes. That’s all the time that’s needed. For total transformation.
I close my eyes and remember the meeting with the first doctor, the one mum said had an accent she couldn’t understand. “Mr and Mrs Ayers, your son will have to be in complete isolation for several weeks. Only you two will be able to see him.” And I thought – ‘No. Say nobody will be allowed to see me. Say I’ll have to be completely alone the whole time.”
“There’s a chance the cell transplant might change his blood type.” And I thought – ‘Fine. Let it change. So that I literally won’t be their flesh and blood any more.”
“I should also mention that you mustn’t worry about the procedure altering his personality in any way.” And I thought – ‘No, please, let it alter everything. Let it get into the deepest parts of me and transform every single little thing.’
I open my eyes – the bag is nearly half-empty now, the thick redness of the liquid clinging to the inside of the plastic. Mum’s still typing. Dad’s voice is getting louder, his shoes squeaking on the floor as he paces back and forth.
My glance catches the huge image of Angelina Jolie painted onto the glass door. The volunteer artist turned up on my second day here, asked me what picture I’d like, and seemed very confused when I said, “How about a wire mother?” Mum was there, but she never even heard me. “Can you do Maleficent?” I asked, with an apologetic smile. “But from the film version.” The artist gave me a long look, but didn’t say anything. They’re all probably told not to question the patients too much.
I turn my gaze back to the bag and remember Miss Chopra, in Science, wide-eyed, telling us about these mice. Scientists had found that their actual DNA showed evidence of a trauma caused by experiments that had been carried out on the grandparent mice, even though the grandchildren hadn’t gone through the trauma themselves. Their bodies were literally made up of the effects of experiences from two generations before. “Maybe this means,” Miss Chopra said, “that who we are is something that started being decided centuries before we were born.” I remember looking at the inside of my forearms, staring at all the veins.
There’s another beep and I’m pretty sure the nurse has said, “There we are,” but I’m miles away, thinking about someone I’ve never met.
Thank you, Mister 21-year-old man who lives in Belgium and weighs 76 kilos. Thank you for giving me a bag-ful of yourself. Even if all this doesn’t work, thanks for giving me the looks on the faces of my leave-voting parents when they realised their son’s body would be pumped full of stuff from you. “No, Mr and Mrs Ayers, I’m afraid you can’t choose where the donor comes from.” Thank you for giving me another past to flow inside me – somebody else’s past.
The nurse presses a few buttons on the machine and disconnects the empty bag. I turn the other way, and although I’m sure mum and dad must still be in the room, all my eyes can see is the window – and the view outside.
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