Love Letters #17

I have a little secret. But shhhh. Don’t tell anybody.

Is it a glamorous secret? Dripping with intrigue and diamonds?

No, more like a sombre, deadly secret. One you might divulge by accident, and the other party laughs after a moment of hesitation because they think you are joking, and you just go along with it.

Oooh. Sounds juicy, darling. Do tell me more, I am dying to hear it.

I bet you are.

Don’t hold out on me!

Well, and I do really mean it when I say keep absolutely mum about what I’m about to tell you – well– it turns out, I am actually, erhhm, well, WELL…

Oh for goodness sake out with it. I’m half off my face anyway so it’s not like I will remember any of this tomorrow.

Okay, you know Peter Grimstone?

Yes of course I do. He is my cousin’s husband.

Oh, well in that case –

But my cousin and I are positively enemies. She’s so catty, I couldn’t-

No, sorry, this is ridiculous. I don’t know why I even –

Please, John, you can’t – you have to finish what you started – 

WELL – it turns out old Pete is a dark horse and a half, you know.

What sort of filthy secret is he hiding, then?

Not filthy so much as – well, make up your own mind when I tell you –

Come on, you’re killing me.

Alright, I’m getting to it. Jeez, Lorna, you’re so impatient –

I –

Anyway, like I was saying, he is the darkest horse of the lot. Back in the days when I used to hang around with Drake’s crew, we knew this guy who we all called Red. I say we knew him but we didn’t really, none of us had ever seen him. He would pass our goods on to us wearing a hooded cape and his face was covered like an assassin – but his eyes were always there and they were not the sort of eyes you’d forget, really. Striking blue and really electric.

Mhmm – so why did you call him Red?

I’m getting to that. He told us he was Red and nothing else, and we were all wondering why he was a Red and not a Blue or a Black – maybe red is more dangerous, who knows – anyway one day we were coming back to Drake’s flat where we used to hang out most nights, and half of us had just got off work so we were really looking forward to a night of just unwinding –

Oh, you naughty boys.

We were young, Lorna, young and free.

I’ll bet you were.

And we were coming home and Drake tells us Red is dropping some things by, and one of the boys, Dodge, we called him, says, ‘how abouts we pull that Red’s mask off to see what is lurking under that cape’ and we all jeer at him because it’s never occurred to any of us to do that, although we’d all been wondering for so long who the heck this guy was. ‘Nah, it’s too dangerous’ Drake says, and we laugh him out of the ballpark for that because there were seven of us and one of him – I don’t know, though, it seemed dangerous and none of us knew why. As far as we knew he was a one man show.

Go on.

Well, Dodge told us he would do it since none of the others wanted to. And sure enough, in the alley by Drake’s flat there was Red, leaning against the wall, and he reached his gloved hand into his cape and brought out the goods, and Dodge went for it, and as he reached out his hand to take them, he jerked quickly and grabbed at Red’s hood, seizing the guy’s head because – would you believe it – the hood wouldn’t come off! And the guy was just standing there and none of us said anything because we’re not confrontational like that, and Dodge stood back, kind of bewildered because his plan failed and what to do next?

What did you do next?

Nothing. Red took off his mask and there was no face under there, then he slowly put the goods back in his cape and his face was staring at us and it was like this cave of darkness under his hood and he spoke, he said, ‘Goodbye, fellas.’ and then walked away and we never heard from him again.

That is odd. What’s that got to do with Peter?

Well the other night, I was at Peter’s place –

I didn’t know you were all pally with Peter!

We haven’t been together long, Lorna.

But he is my cousin’s husband!

So you said.

I just thought you might have told me.

Peter and I met at your brother’s wedding.

Humph.

Anyway – I was at Peter’s and we were watching the news because of all the tension lately and he wanted to prove a point about something, so we were watching and then the phone rang, and he glanced at me and asked if I minded and I said no, so he got up and went into a room next to the TV room, not a bedroom, like a tiny study or something, and he speaks in a suspiciously low voice and I saw him look out at me once or twice, and then he closed the door but it bounced a bit open and I saw him take a black cape with a hood out of his wardrobe –

-Gasp-

And he shoved it in a tiny backpack and then he came out to me and told me he was going out really quickly to get milk and did I want anything. I said no I better get going anyway – and we walked out together and he saw me off but when I turned the corner I waited for a few seconds and tried to follow him.

And?

He vanished.

That’s weird.

I know, right?

Do you think he is Red?

I don’t know what to think.

Shifty. But, he didn’t recognise you then from the time your friend tried to take his hood off? Also, he has brown eyes.

Apparently not. And I know! Right?

Unless he did recognise you, and is biding his time?

He’s your cousin’s husband!

I don’t like my cousin.

Good point. Good point. Say, Lorna?

Yes?

Will you marry me?

 

 

 

 

 

Little Things

When I come home to my mother’s house, it is the simple things that remind me of home.

She doesn’t live in my childhood home anymore. I don’t have my own ‘room’ here; me and the kids sleep in my sister’s room whenever we come and stay. There is a lot of unspoken tension, and lots of standard-family issues, but there are also things that remind me of being little again.

Things that make my senses spark, my tastebuds come alive with the remembrance of something that made them what they are today.

Things like, a steaming bowl of harira, which is like a Moroccan minestrone soup. It has a tomatoey base, with celery, parsley, onions, ginger. Chickpeas and soft pieces of boiled lamb float in the rich soup, and thin vermicelli pasta pieces with some brown lentils make it a complete meal on its own. Of course, in my family, we have to serve it with parisian, which is what Moroccans call ‘french bread’ – something leftover from the French colonisation of the land. Fresh warm crusty french loaf slathered with a generous layer of salted butter to dip into your bowl of tasty soup. Makes my tummy feel like it’s home.

Things like, although my parents don’t get on anymore, the sound of my parents talking from their bedroom. My dad’s voice low, my mum’s soft, up and down in tone, lulling me to sleep. Then in the middle of the night, the sound of my father snoring rumbling through the entire house, all three floors of it. That too, is the sound of comfort.

Or today for lunch when my mother and three year old son sat together having what she calls ‘dipping egg’, but what is more commonly known as a half boiled egg. Tapping the top, dipping buttered ‘soldiers’ into the thick, golden yolk. My son loved his lunch, he has never had ‘dipping egg’ before, for I have never eaten it since I grew out of childhood. I had an egg of my own, and the taste of the warm yolk on buttered brown toast instantly took me back to my childhood kitchen.

Small things.

Small little things you never know you missed until they come back into your life again.

Bowl of fresh harira, food for the soul.

Ice Cream

What is your favourite ice cream flavour?

Mine is cookies and cream.

Image Credit: Xenia Kuznetsova

I Don’t Relate to You

I recently came across a song that made my blood run cold.

It’s by this famous singer called Billie Eilish. I hadn’t heard of her before. Mainly because I don’t like music much, unless it stirs something in the murky depths of my personality. Mainly because I get put off very easily by ‘famous’ pop singers. Call it snobbiness, call it depression, I like soft melody, classic songs, sung from the heart. I don’t like the ‘beat’, it sucks you away on a train of nothingness into a chasm of darkness.

Anyway.

This song is called ‘Happier than Ever’ and I listened to it one day as it popped up in my Youtube ‘recommended’ list.

It’s a slow song, in the beginning. Half whispered lyrics, deep yet soft voice. Talking about how she was happier than ever to be away from someone. It’s sad and almost mournful. And then the tempest rises. The voice becomes stronger. Some anger creeps in. Then it is fury. Fury and pain and loss and a primal roar that makes me think exclusively of a tragic loss of innocence.

The last line in the song is ‘Just fucking leave me alone‘ and it is sung with such passion, that all the hollow empty caves within my being surged to life.

This whole song, this whole damn song, is exactly how I feel, felt, am feeling, always feel… about a terrible and tragic time in my life. Something that still haunts me today.

And I am just so shocked that someone so young can articulate it so well and write something that means something to such a lot of people.

The Bear

There is a bear.

He stands tall on his hind legs like a two-legged creature, his head is turned upwards and to the right. By his side is a little thing. Big ears, elephant-like, but smaller than a mouse. They are walking into the sunset.

I like to think there is an ocean before them, frothing and foaming and if they were to take one step further they would float down into its murky depths. Poor quality imagery, no details, fine lines taken away stroke by stroke, muddy waters brushed over the image until it is as lucid as the ocean in which they should fall.

Sadness is a heavy, dull emotion. You can’t always contain it. It seeps like octopus ink, making marks on everything I touch. Large questioning eyes. Tears when one should be laughing.

Accusation everywhere, deep insecurity, and overwhelmed burnout.

See I don’t know what that bear and elephant-mouse are looking at. I see them everyday in the shower, when I brush my teeth, when I cream my face. Same motions, autopilot, but I always find my eyes drifting to meet that bear, tall, six foot, seven, eight, even. I like to think he is looking off at the answer. And that he might know what it is.

There are several of him, you see. Identical bears, their backs to me, better places, better sights, better feelings.

Each bear is a muddied, marbled grey abstract on a large rectangular wall-tile in my bathroom.

Image Credit

Favourite song

What is your favourite song?

And why?

My thing to do when I am cleaning is to sing. I sing very loudly and probably very warbly, but I love to sing. I like to pretend I am an opera singer, or just a regular singer. I like to sing low down to the floor and high high high as a kite. Deep as a ravine, roaring in an echoey bathroom.

When I was a teenager my cousins recorded me singing loudly while I cleaned the bathroom, when I caught them they fell over themselves giggling as they tried to run away from my furiously brandished sponge. Was I embarrassed, then? Oh, terribly so. They mocked me for weeks afterwards, but then I realised I enjoy singing for the fun and the good mood more than I am embarrassed!

My mum sings when she is happy. When I was a child, hearing her sing made me feel relieved, it meant she was in a good mood.

Singing while she washed dishes, singing while she changed nappies, singing as she blew raspberries into my baby brother’s chubby little tummy. She used to sing ‘Video killed the radio kill’ which I later learned was ‘Video killed the radio star‘, and ‘Kookobara lived in the old plain tree‘ which was actually ‘Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree‘.

So that is something my sister and I inherited from our mother.

I think my kids may have inherited it too. They both sing with great gusto, in public and at home, feeding off each other, instigating each other, louder and louder, opera style, until people turn to look at them and I try to shush them because they might ‘disturb other shoppers’ even though I myself do not mind their singing.

It’s a zeal, I think, for life, when you can sing. Loudly and freely.