Brightest day, brightest coin, madness, light shining through a long and narrow doorway. Pictures hung askew on the walls which were stained brown but it was not cigarette smoke. She was told something about chemicals bleeding through the paint. Too much humidity in the room. All her crying, she supposed. She was awfully emotional, prone to violent outbursts, tears and fits and a quick blow of her nose and all was calm again. Peace waves washing against a no man’s land shore.
She went to different charity shops to collect paintings she liked. Muddy watercolours of forests against a backdrop of something watery. Rivers or streams, a still lake with fir trees rippling on its surface. The stunning kaleidoscope of a cloudy sunset.
Her curtains were cream and brown, picked out by her own damn self, nobody else bothered to come.
Brown floor, cold. The cold was like a harsh creature, waiting in the drafts that blew in through the old windows and any hairline cracks it could find in the house. It seeped through two layers of socks and under the three jumpers she wore and shook a long bony finger at her which made her shiver in her chair. Nothing staved off the cold.
It was the brightest day today, though. Brightest light, cracking through her narrow front door. She was just relieved somebody had come to check on her. Her bones must be brittle by now. She had gone to so many charity shops during those freezing days, as though the warmth in the paintings she hunted down could be her blanket.
She saw the door move, slam of a boot. Loud shout. They went to get help. Silly people. Just move the blankets, it will open fine. I put them there to block out the cold.
Brightest crack of sunlight right on her face, blinding her eyes, oh if only it were closer, that sun, to warm her bones. They were so very cold.
Maybe they could make her a cup of tea. That would be fine, she had been waiting long enough. Oh. There they were again. Just push the door open, lads. It’s only me blankets.
They did.
They were shouting. One of them looked frantic. Another pushed him out again. Oh it’s only me, lads!!
One stood on the threshold, pushing the door further open, brightest of bright lights behind him sucking the saturation from his body so he was a black shape against the beam. He stood for a long time, and she couldn’t see if he looked at her, but she knew.
She knew when she saw his shoulders heave, and when he strode forward and covered her unseeing eyes with a shroud.
A candid evening. Why candid? I don’t know. Candles around the drawing room. Laura in her peach dress, flowing gently from her shoulders. Golden curls pinned up; it was the evening, she would unpin them soon. Aunt Abigail had rung the bell for supper. She would join Laura after seeing to the roses in the conservatory.
Laura gently arranged the pillows, setting the tables straight. She was purposeful in every movement, as though she wanted time to tick by slowly.
They had left in a hurry; John had a patient to see to and Mary wanted to go in the carriage so she could bundle the little puddings into their own beds. Hugs and kisses, sloppy ones from the darling angels, a sweet one from Mary, a squeeze on the arm, a murmur that she would see her soon. A hug for her brother, tall and grim, lips taut. He had a patient to get to.
Laura straightened up, sighed. There was a soft knock on the drawing room door. Supper.
‘Come in,’ she said, turning to the window to pull the drapes against the darkness outside.
She heard the door open so she turned around with a smile on her face – which then froze, lips halfway there, dimples just beginning to form. A painful drop in her heart. A throb in her chest. Tightening so she caught her breath. Then she composed herself quickly, one hand on her hair, the other to her neck. Her eyes didn’t meet his, they rested somewhere on his collar.
‘Hello, Tom.’ She smiled properly, moving towards the settee. Something else to look at.
‘Miss Smith.’
Another painful throb. She could die. In fact she would. Right there. That would show him.
‘Miss Smith? Come now!’ she smiled again, ‘How could you?’ a teasing lilt in her voice. She kept her smile, dimples dancing, and sat down, arranging her skirts around her as she did so.
‘Laura, then. I.. how are you?’
‘Oh, very well thank you. John and Mary left only moments ago. Did you not see them?’
‘I did. John was in a hurry to get to old Mrs Pettiforte.’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘And my sister frazzled, as always.’
She heard, rather than saw, the smile on his face.
‘As is Mary’s way,’ Laura agreed. ‘We were not expecting you for another year,’ she said then, abruptly. Her eyes lifted to his face. He was looking directly at her, into her soul, even. Piercing, green. His face, so familiar, so different. Older, more tired. Drawn. Something in his look compelled her to look away again.
‘I know.’ He opened his mouth to say more. She saw him swallow, hard, search her face until she flushed. She waited for him to give her more information. She didn’t know what to ask. How to ask. She could not ask. So she looked at her sleeve and picked at it.
‘Aunt Abigail and I will have a light supper here by the fire,’ she said, after a short pause. ‘Please join us.’
‘With pleasure,’ he said. She felt the settee bend as he sat down next to her.
Supper arrived, as did Aunt Abigail. Larger than life, sailing into the room and immediately taking command. Fawning over Tom as though he were her own nephew, she took control of the conversation. She enquired after his studies and his work abroad. She lamented on the Medical profession, in turns berating it for taking Tom away from them all for such a long time, and praising him for his medical feats, saving lives and relieving discomfort. She mentioned Rosaline. Once. Twice. Thrice. Each time prodding further and further, and appearing nonchalant when Tom was not so forthcoming about his fiancé. Laura was quiet through supper. She kept her eyes on the bread; thick slices with a beautiful golden crust. The butter spread generously on top. Beautifully cut slices of cheese, rich and deliciously fresh tomatoes from the vegetable garden. Her tea was milky and sweet. A nice meal.
It tasted like cardboard in her mouth though. There was a pain in her chest, a lump in her throat. Her eyes glittered brightly in the firelight, her cheeks flushed from the heat of the flames. She took her tea in gulps, but the lump in her throat would not budge. It grew larger as the evening lengthened, as she watched Tom become more comfortable, as she felt his eyes look her way a few times, questioning her silence.
Finally he stood up to leave.
‘A wonderful meal,’ he said, as he bid them goodnight.
‘Laura, see the boy out,’ her aunt said.
She dragged her feet. Smiled at him, followed him out the room and down the hall. He opened the front door and stepped out into the moonlight. A gust of cold air around her, and she shivered.
‘You’d best close that door,’ he warned, ‘no use getting a chill.’
‘It was good of you to come by,’ she told him. She still did not know what he was doing home a year early.
He didn’t say anything, forcing her to look up at him. Tall, dark with the light of the moon behind him. Crisp wintry air, stars alight in the heavens. She couldn’t see his eyes, nor the expression on his face. Yet she knew he was about to say something, for there was dread in his stance. His shoulders sank with heaviness, the joy he had displayed that evening around Aunt Abigail had left him completely.
‘Laura I…’ he began.
He cleared his throat. Then, abrupt, ‘Goodnight. Be warm.’
He turned and walked down the path. She felt as though a pack of wolves ought to have been chasing him, he should race away from her, she should throw her fury at him and shock the calmness out of him. Oh she could scream! His walk was a meander. He even paused to look at the sky, then back at her. Then he raised an arm in salute.
Fingers trembling, she shut the door upon his wave and stalked upstairs to bed. Not a word to her aunt, who Laura heard humming to herself as she marched past the drawing room.
Sometimes when she opened her mouth to speak she felt a hypocrite. Not one born of necessity, but one with such deep self loathing that she quite often made herself sick. Shutting herself away in her room for days at a time; she had that luxury.
There was her perspective, you see, saving face, hiding her truth to project those glowing rays of white lies. Then there was his. What was his perspective? The succulent flesh of mangoes, piled in a box, in a faded photograph taken of him on the Indian subcontinent? The enjoyment of life? Slaving away at the rotting flesh of others? Restoring ill-health to wellbeing? Catching frogs and watching them slip away from his fingers and scatter away on the rippling waters of Thomas Pond, like skipping stones.
She never knew. Never would know.
Seasons would spin her head this way and that until she was quite dizzy with the falling of leaves on new green grass under a blanket of the softest, pinkest blossom she ever set her eyes on.
And so the years passed by, and each one was a ticking sound on the old grandfather clock in the great hall, and with each passing click of a second she was more and more of a hypocrite and a liar, her beaming smile wider and wider, her eyes increasingly lifeless as her life appeared to ebb away from her grasp.
‘Come for a walk with me,’ he would say, approaching her in the twilight evenings when he was home, as though he expected nobody else to solicit her attention, as though he knew she was waiting for him, as though she would wait forever until her skin was wizened and her hair was in fluffy white piles by her gnarled old feet. She never, ever replied. She would simply follow. Quiet at first, and then their chatter would flow as it always did, up towards the stars; they were witness to the truth.
Never a question, always an expectation. Year on year. Six years through his tumultuous studies. Three years after, in between his travels around the globe, whispers of his ‘interests’ flitting through the wind. Others. Lovers. In letters to family members, a sentence thrown carelessly in a word to her, a sentence she would read and read and read over until it was seared in her mind, re-living itself in a myriad of devastating scenarios, all meaning and context stripped from its being, taking the form of barbed wire and raging storm.
She said no to several suitors, and when they breathlessly, falteringly, woundedly enquired of the existence of someone else she would lie. Blatant and brazen, stars twinkling above their heads. No. Certainly not. Hypocrisy sounds harsh in the cold night air. It stings. It reverberates. It snatches joy and comes right back at you and gives you a sharp slap on the cheek.
On the final day he came in the twilight to where she sat on the bottom step, cheeks in her palms, observing the way the sky changed from explosive red to faded, gentle pink, she looked up at him. Tall, silhouetted, devilishly handsome, eerie, sad eyes, which were brilliantly green in the darkening world, and to which she could never, would never, say no.
‘Come for a walk with me,’ he murmured, turning to look at the spectacle before them.
‘Not tonight.’ was her response.
She felt, rather than saw, him turn sharply to her.
‘Alright, I shall sit here with you then,’
‘No, Tom. Not today. Today I would like to be left alone.’
To pine, she thought. To pine.
He didn’t say anything. She looked at him then, caught herself in the full brilliant path of his gaze. Almost faltered, almost stood up, almost gave him her hand. He looked at her, really looked. She felt stripped to her bone. She felt her brain hung between them, her heart dangling from it by a single, pulsing artery. Her soul laid bare.
He can’t. He could never. He doesn’t know! She reassured herself. He was the first to look down, lost for words.
‘Tomorrow, then.’ he said, finally, and smiled.
Her shoulders dropped. Relief poured from her fingertips.
‘Tomorrow,’ she agreed. Smiled back. Brilliantly. Saw his response to it, smiled more. Some power there. Hypocrite. Smiled wide. Beautiful.
She was a jellyfish, floating under a wave. Bobbing gently with the ebbing current. Her translucent hair swaying silently around her still face, eyes tightly shut, sealed like death merged with life.
She was the calm in a strong wind. The centre of a storm. The silence as the raging destruction hurled life over a precipice and into the unknown. The deep breath, pregnant with dread.
She was the shadows when you slept, the coat behind the door, the woman silently watching as you tried to coax yourself to sleep. She was there, even though you convinced yourself she was just the dressing gown. Everything looks frightening in the dark.
She was surreal reality, dread behind a closed door. She was the exhibit they ignored, because it made them feel uncomfortable. She was the haunting in Connecticut, the dried eyelids in a box. She was the soft breeze that blew out the candles when the windows were closed. She was the buzzing sound of a wasp when there was none to be seen.
She held her breath for as long as she could, and when she surfaced, life flooded into her in the gasps she took of the air which hummed with oxygen. Her eyes flew open, and reflected the vivid blue stretched over her head. The waves crashed on the distant shore, and her muscles ached with the struggle for life. She kicked, hard, and glanced back. Silhouettes stood on the beach, children’s laughter carried off by the wind.
She was alive, not dead. Death hadn’t captured her yet. The current was far from her curled toes, and she pushed her chest forward with strong strokes of her slender, young arms. Back to the shore.
Back.
To life.
‘Darling, you were away for so long!’, Mam said, as she meandered with long, swaying strides towards the blanket which lay slightly rumpled in the hot sand. She bent over and towelled her hair dry.
‘I was drinking the sea,’ she murmured.
‘Do you want a sarnie? Before Chris eats them all. We’ve got egg mayo and tuna.’
‘I nearly died, mam.’
‘Don’t be silly, we were watching you the entire time.’ her mother said, cheerfully, handing her a sandwich out of a fat orange Sainsbury’s bag next to her foldable beach chair.
She took it, a fat rectangle stuffed with filling and molded like a pillow in saran wrap. She looked at the sea, crashing gently on the shore. Swimmers splashed as the sun beamed down beautifully.
Today I felt like just picking up my pen and writing something. By pen I mean, of course, my figurative pen. Does anybody write their writings with real pens nowadays?
Since I took up typing as the default means to save my thoughts down, my handwriting has become atrocious. I do keep a journal and sometimes, reading back, I can barely read what I’ve written! Do you reckon proper handwriting is a dying art?
Back when I was a mite or a tot or a youngling, I used to write with pens a plenty. I hated the keyboard because it took so long to find all the letters and by the time I had, the words had vamoosed from my mind.
Sometimes you just gotta get those words down before they go, and keyboards back then just didn’t cut it – mostly because I was inexperienced and we got our first family PC (a large bottomed affair) when I was 10. Now I can type quicker than I can write, and writing gives me wrist-ache!
Not to mention, of course, the tediousness of having to type up everything you have written, meaning you’re spending double the amount of time writing the same thing.
Apparently they now have these new technological pens that literally scan handwriting into text. So you just run it over what you’ve written, like a highlighter, and it scans the sentences into text format on a screen for you. How marvellous is that?! It’s relatively new and you can only get it in the US for about 80$ but look how the world is changing.
Do you prefer to type your writings, or pen them down as the great writers of yore would have done?
There was a strange, still emptiness in the room. Something amiss. Shrouded in darkness, wrapped in the cocoon of her duvet. A small light filtered in through the gap in the curtains, it appeared to twinkle. Oddly comforting, like a lighthouse. A beacon in the dark.
But what was missing?
It was chilly. Drafts wafted under the gaps in the door and through cracks in the floorboards. She was not used to this, of-course, but the hot bricks by her feet and the layers of blanket snug around her body kept the warmth on her; only the tip of her nose was icy.
That was not it, though.
She closed her eyes. Sleep evaded her that night. Her first night. A shiver ran down her spine, of excitement, anticipation.
A long voyage over seas and land, through changing climates, meeting wonderfully odd folk. Folk from forest and desert, rich folk and poor folk, scroungers and generous benefactors. Chums, and motherly matrons. She thought of all the personal cards she had stacked so carefully in the writing desk they had put in her room, what a pretty desk, such ornate inscriptions, and what a lovely set of paper and pens left for her to use.
She was simply exhausted. Her bones felt leaden, her neck ached from months of travel, and yet, that evasive slumber!
WHAT, oh, what was missing?!
She thought of home. Of her mother laughing, her singing loud and warbled, in tune but not in tone, but her song much loved, much adored, and so, oh so taken for granted. She thought of her father, hammering away at the cracks in his home, restoring and fixing in his free time. He adored his children, and worked so hard for them. His beard was speckled with white, and wrinkles formed intricate webs around his kind eyes. She thought of what she had left, and a lump grew sturdy and strong in her throat, stubborn against her swallows. Her house on the little hill, the beach just a few metres down, and always the sound of waves crashing against the shore.
The sound of waves lulling her to sleep like a soothing lullaby.
Angry waves in the storm, gentle waves lapping against the sand, up and down the shore, sunrise and sunset and vigorous, tropical rain. Incessant, rhythmic, comforting. The one constant in life’s ever growing, ever changing flow.
The waves.
Slumber finally crept around the door, seeping into her room, her mind filled with the sound of the sea.
It is the tricky light; where the sky is clear as day, but earth is filled with shapes and shadows, which move when they shouldn’t.
They slink behind trees, and peer from the pale walls of white houses.
They watch, silently, as you go about your business.
Maybe they hide in the backseat of your car, so you turn around quickly when you get in, but they always vanish just in time.
Maybe you hear their cackle echo as they shoot round the corner, like a vanishing puff, and you aren’t sure if you saw something, or if the not-quite-darkness played a trick on your eyes.
The best weapon for this time of night is a warm jacket. Make sure the inside lining is soft, and make sure you drown in your jacket. It’s the only way to keep you safe from the Twilight Terrors.
The small boys were in the field. Their naked backs glistening in the sunlight, panting. The sun was climbing in the sky, the haze of noon accentuated here and there by the buzz of insects and the mournful calls of tired birdsong. Still, they worked, rivulets pouring down their backs, scrabbling hungrily into the earth. The sun rose ever higher, and their bodies sunk deeper into the ground, grunts emanating from the caverns they created, feverishly digging, fingers turning into claws, breath shooting from dripping nostrils until, finally, one of them rose with a strangled shout.
Looking up through sweat soaked eyebrows and blinking roughly against the salty stinging in his eyes. The heat hazed in the distance, the trees rustled, or seemed to, because they didn’t move and from where he stood, the sun scorching his scalp, they looked like a painting. Lined up at the top of the fields in the distance, the sky a lazy blue, not quite burgeoning into the deep colour of summer, almost as though the sun was so bright that the sky paled in comparison. So still. Was the world even real?
Midday. A bird chirped quietly somewhere nearby, too tired to break into song. A pickup truck trundled slowly down the dusty road just outside his garden. A face, browned and hardened from heat, stared at him, turning as the truck drove past. He stared back.
The truck slowed, it seemed, creeping along now. He gripped his shovel tighter, aware his fingers were slick with sweat under his gloves.
‘Hey,’ he said to the man. The truck was level with his now, and the man’s eyes were piercing. They reflected the light like a pair of sapphire beacons under the shadow of the truck.
The man said nothing, and the truck slowed to a halt.
‘Can I help you?’ he tried again, shifting to his other foot. He was aware of his own pulse in his neck. The world was so still around them, even the solitary bird nearby ceased to chirp.
Nothing.
Then the wheels spun viciously in the dusty road, and a brown cloud rose behind the car and it roared into being and started off, engine rattling loud enough that birds flew up into the sky in alarm. He watched as it sped off along the road, growing smaller in the distance.
As the dust settled, and the birds swooped back into the cool shadows once more, the heat of the day took over again, blanketing the world in hot, tired silence.
The trees in the distance didn’t move a branch. The summer haze lay languidly over the earth. The silence was vast, universal.
Ocean Bream 