Story

Good morning……I know it's early but I couldn't sleep, so I got up, made some tea and wrote a note to pin on the door, for visitors who might call unexpectedly when I am otherwise engaged. It says:

"If you have called and found me not here, Don't worry and don't run away. I've only gone out for a minute. To dip my toes in cool water, Or to soar on the wind as high as the wild geese fly, To breathe again the air of some foreign country, To sing the words of songs unknown, To look for, and find, the rainbow, At the pot of gold's end. Beachcomb for the only lemon pecten left by the tide, The Venus comb with a strand of Her hair still attached, Neptune's Trident bearing his fingerprints, The key to Davy Jones's locker. Tucked in a tangle of bladderwrack, The cure for which there is No known disease, And the switch to make Those electric sheep bleat again……
I know it is a long note. It is almost a whole chord. In fact it might almost be a symphony, depending upon who played it. Sorry! I do tend to get carried away. I've been feeling a bit depressed lately, muddled and not much good at anything except moping around on my own.
If you find I am here but I ignore you, I am …... sorry again, because today, like most days of late, I find that laziness and languor becomes me. You will see that undress and don't care bathrobes cover some parts of me while jewels both precious and rare adorn what remains exposed.

If you intend to visit me later, this afternoon, tomorrow or perhaps next week, please bring plenty of chocolate and a pretty eighteen year old girl for me to undress. And while you're here don't forget to brush my cat……

If I seem somewhat distracted when you arrive its because I'm having tonight's sunset painted to my own specification and the artist is already late. I'm certain he'll come as I promised to pay him in kind. On my back I mean; I expect that's the way he'll want it. His agent told me he'd died over two hundred years ago but that doesn't matter. If I wait long enough anything could happen.

And if I seem grumpy it's because I am feeling my age this morning. Tired and if not exactly sad then at some state close enough to the borders of sadness to feel its breath on my skin. So this morning, instead of writing any more rubbish I have decided to do some gardening. We had some snow the other day as you know and now the lawns and the flowerbeds are looking rather piggy. Like pigs or some other great rodents have nested in them I mean.

Gardening with a capital G that is, though it does not mean weeding, pruning, planting out and the like, it means taking several old blankets, a couple of pillows, a book and a bottle and going out to sit in my lair under the laburnum tree.

It does not mean the putting on of wellies, leather gloves and sensible clothes. Oh no!

It means the fetching from the wardrobe and the cursory ironing of one long cotton dress with flowers on it and the putting on of same in place of my nightgown. It means retrieving my poor old Pashmina from the floor, shaking the cat hair off it and draping it around my shoulders.

Only this and nothing more.

That Pash! You know it could tell a tale or two! Yes I know it is torn and stained and nearly threadbare, but the stains are where it caught me unexpectedly, tangled me up at that time of the month, which is something else that don't happen any more……

No I won't apologise……the cats love it, as I do. They tell me I mustn't wash it. Ever. So I won't. They tell me the grass is wet, so I'll need to put on both slippers, if I can find them. If not, well then perhaps just one of them……

Now the bottle is a wooded chardonnay and the book is a book of poetry in case you are wondering, I hope you don't mind, because, though it is cold the sun is shining and it is going to be one of those days. I just know it is. One of those days when I have a couple of glasses and get all red eyed and weepy from reading my favourite poetry.

Like Walter de la Mare for instance:"

'Very old are the woods; And the buds that break Out of the brier's boughs, When March winds wake, So old with their beauty are – Oh no man knows Through what wild centuries Roves back the rose.

Very old are the brooks; And the rills that rise Where the snow sleeps cold beneath Azure skies Sing such a history Of come and gone, Their every drop is as wise As Solomon.

Very old are we women; Our dreams are the tales Told in dim Eden By Eve's nightingales; We wake and whisper awhile, But, the day gone by, Silence and sleep like fields Of amaranth lie.

"I always get all choked up when I read that, not being able to imagine anyone walking around with it in their head for more than about ten seconds without going mad.

They were right, those cats, the grass was damp, but the blankets helped. The little table sank itself into the ground but the chardonnay was deliciously sweet. Well you know, the first glass always is.

The fields of amaranth were waking up by then too, throwing long, laburnum like shadows across me. I had to adjust one pillow and rescue another but I finished the poem, as I always do, tight chested and with little tears running down.

I can tell the time by the shadows at this time of the year, even when it is cold. It's the damp I don't like! It does things to my bones. The time of the morning that is, as well as the time of the year which comes early on, somewhere between a second glass of wine and a 'why do I feel so tired' question, halfway between the back door and the jungley hedge at the back of the house. The fields beyond are set aside, they say. It looks like a budding rain forest to me. How long I wonder, before the pygmies move in. Perhaps they have already. Shall I lie in my hideout and pretend I am a pygmy woman, hiding in my hut awaiting my pygmy man's return……listening to the wild……animals' roar……the rattle of spears and, right on cue, in lion guise, Smokie my grey cat appears and comes to me……"

………………

Of course I fell asleep out there, in the thin morning sunshine, de la Mare half read, Tennyson untouched and my wine dusted with drifting pollen from the sheltering trees. Smokie sang, finding the pillow to his liking, a fragrant patch, no doubt, from an earlier time. He trod, clawed delightedly, lay down and was asleep in an instant. As for me it took longer, about a heartbeat and a half I should think before his purr blended with the music of a tumbling waterfall and the mutter and murmur of a broad, slow flowing stream.
High summer already, I mused, that was quick, it was early February only a few moments ago. Never mind! Perhaps it is something one gets from drinking chardonnay with laburnum pollen in it.

So I took a deeper breath, like I sometimes do, eyelashes still sticky, cat still asleep. The air was summery warm and more suited to the way I was dressed. More suited to my semi nakedness than my sombre garden had been a few moments earlier, the breeze fragrant with all the scents of a season already close to full potential.

I put down my wineglass and stood up slowly. Someone had mown the lawn while I'd been asleep. Odd……I'd never heard them……and were……were those roses……in bloom…...already?

Smokie slept on, perfectly circular and oblivious while I took a step on the pathway…… without thinking, without considering or wondering about any consequence. It was a fine day! Warm and wonderful and the scents of those roses and those trees, why had I never noticed how intoxicating they were before?

I took another step and another, the third and the fourth before I found the bridge, the half remembered gateway, a bare barked construction old with moss and supporting vines, warm wood arching a yard above a dribbling tributary where lilies floated in bud and flower, their stepping stone leaves seemingly large enough to support me.

Were they goldfish or mirror carp that flashed their scales so at me, the bee and the bobbing wren, were those my guides?
A floating leaf as broad as my hand, a bubble breaking, a tickle of breezes through my hair……

February, where was it? They said it might rain later. They forecast it and I hadn't brought a coat.

I stumbled momentary then……then, on the far side of the bridge…… a little path, no wider than a rabbit might make ……drew me round a gently curved bank, a headland overhung with lilac and laburnum trees just like my own……and a smooth bend where grasses gambolled, down the slope to kiss lovingly the frayed edges of the rippling river.

Silence except for birdsong distantly, the murmur of water and my slow, easy breaths. A fragrance thick enough to feel on my skin. Camomile! That was it. That what was in the grass to make it so fragrantly scented. Oval pale green leaves like miniature cat's ears.
Silence except for the mystery which asked why ever didn't I know my garden was this big……

A dragonfly danced and a damsel fly hovered. Is it usual to get them both in the same space, I wondered……and anyway……what is it in the water to make it that colour ……oh where is the wind to give it that rippled effect?

Sharply blue the dragonfly and a foot long it must have been, at least. And if those were neither robins, nor chaffinches they must be birds of paradise. Where is my notebook, I must write it down quickly before I forget it……no I'll never forget it; it is etched on my mind. I'd brought neither notebook nor pencil anyway; all my wordly goods were my old Pashmina and a thin, flowered dress.

On the swell of the headland stood the figure of a girl, statuesque, long hair lifting, wide eyed, waiting expectantly. I thought I knew her, thought I recognised some similarities with some other situation……

Silence in the sunshine and shadows, tree and leaf, fast fading fingerprints of the wind on the water……

Silence in the morning breeze on my skin……

The yellow smell of laburnum flowers and the purple of the lilacs insinuating their way into my head. The tiniest of sounds, an earthworm boring, eating soil, drinking peat……

Eleven separate drops of water…...no molecules I think they'd be, facetted minute jewels fallen from rainbows……dew drenched, faint fingered kisses on my cheek ……and a single ……eyelash, bisecting a feather……atop a fingernail sized leaf……

"There you are!" she said "I thought you weren't coming. Where have you been?"

I thought I knew her, thought I recognised some similarities with……oh with ……oh with, oh with……

……with what was her name?

Yes I thought I……recognised her. That hip, that thigh……that tit, that ……but I couldn't remember seeing it from quite that angle……in my own mirror before……

"The cat kept me. Delayed me. Who are you anyway?" I said.

"Oh Smokie wouldn't hinder your progress……" she laughed musically and I knew I knew her, knew those arms, those legs, the dress she wore…… and……the smell of her……that……was unmistakeable!

"He led you here, didn't he?" she asked, out of focus, unreal.

"No I…… just came along the path……on my own. Smokies is still asleep……in…...in my chair"

"Aha!" she laughed and taunted me "do you feel pretty?"

"Pretty!" I almost snorted "That's the last thing I feel. Half dead more like!"

"Who are you anyway?" I asked again "Why do you smell like me……and why are you wearing my dress?"

"All life is a garden, isn't it?" she replied obliquely, not answering my question, no not even hearing it, probably.

"Today life is a garden, this morning, but later, when the winds change, life might be the crash of a breaking wave upon a rocky beach…...and another tale entirely"

She turned, sat on the grass and looked across the river.

"Over there is tomorrow, over here is today"

Even her voice convinced me I knew her. Yes I knew her, knew that voice from somewhere.

Clasping her hands together around her legs she drew up her knees.

"Don't say you don't know me……"

"You are," I began cautiously "somehow familiar"

"I've tried to make it easy for you" she laughed, her mirth more of that musical sound.

"Easy?" I asked, not believing her for one minute.

But she nodded, smiled, expecting me to know anyway instead of supposing the morning to be clothed in one bright mystery. The dress she wore – my dress, or at least one identical to mine, had a small tear on the left cuff where the material of the sleeve itself had pulled away. Threads sprouted like worms, writhing worms but ……headless, headless from where I'd torn the garment on the wardrobe door that morning. I'd ironed it closed but now it'd come full circle, sneaked around until it gaped open again. Easy? Ha! I'll bet she had……

"So who are you anyway?" I enquired pointedly "Won't you tell me?"

"Listen, your story is not called 'In the beginning'" she told me. "It is called "Deleted" because that was how you felt at the time you wrote it. It's out of your system now, finished with, so you can forget it. Look out, over there, over the river towards tomorrow. When it comes, will it be any better than today do you think? How can it be when you'll be a day older, have one day less to do all those things you haven't yet done, and whether the sun is shining or the rain is falling, today is really all you'll ever have"

She said all this to me without looking up, without taking her eyes off her own personal horizon somewhere close, far away on another planet.

The familiarity of her burned me, nagged me like a loose button, like a catching fingernail which needed trimming.

I looked down at her, at the top of her head, at her shoulders and the familiar patterns of flowers on that summer dress and could taste the familiarity. It gaped open at the front in exactly the same way as mine did.

Who in all the world would you most like to meet if you had the opportunity, someone at some job interview or other once asked of me. Living or dead? I'd replied frivolously and they'd said yes. It became the most cumbersome of questions then, a toss up between Jesus Christ and Mahatma Ghandi, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, and several women too, Bess of Hardwick, Catherine Swinford, Nefertiti and half a dozen different queens. It was a trick question of course, cunning and devised deliberately to catch the unthinking. It was a test you see, and haven't we all taken them at one time or another, a ploy to gauge the level of your own self esteem. Well I'd confounded the lot of them, sent their graphs a'spinning, the needles on their dials twisting, turning off the scales, because I'd no ego, no ambition, no impetus, you see. Do you want an answer straight away? I'd asked. They'd smiled when I said I'd like to sleep on it, and I did, for three whole nights consecutively until I realised that the only person I'd really like to meet, was me.

Needless to say I didn't get the job. They wanted a minion, not someone who they thought, wrongly, was on the ultimate in ego trips. I was going though a spell of being unmarried at the time. Yes I've had some of those. Not long ones and never lonely but things were very different then. Several people who were not my kids called me mum and a lot of people who were not my lovers – though might have been, called me love. I had a girlfriend in Felixtowe and a boyfriend in France and loved them both dearly and equally. Oh hell why didn't we, why didn't we three get together? Why didn't we, why didn't we? I'll never know.

………………

"Do you see how that can be? Her words echoed even as she gazed at me.

It was a bitter question, accentuating the mystery, a bile against something on the tip of my tongue of which I could not speak.
The breeze swished like a symphony through her hair, dimpling the river as it scampered on its way, lifting this leaf and that feather, titillating……taunting me with knowledge which was the burden of knowing how much I didn't actually know, except that the artfulness of the simplest of things is in their intrinsic complexity.

Take the leaf for instance……or the feather……could you make one using only a pair of scissors and a piece of string?

"Please" I said as she sat unmoving "Will you tell me who you are. I want to know because you are so much like me"

"Have you a mirror?" she asked softly. I shook my head for I'd brought absolutely nothing with me.

"Go down and look into the water then" she suggested. "Just there where the surface is smooth so you don't confuse wrinkles with ripples"

The streambed was sandy, shallow and smooth on the inside of the bend, the water moving imperceptibly, worryingly slowly. A shoal of minnows tested the tension, their shadows multiplying their numbers across the semolina sand beneath them while blobs of liquid sunlight, like misshapen jellyfish, undulated around them eerily.

It was peculiar; I felt about as tall as an ant then, creeping round a pebble in search of the edge……a way down to where the water lisped and lapped its wavelets like tissue paper across a tiny beach.

It is true to say that many of those things which remain hidden also remain a mystery. There are places which can neither be found on any ordinary maps nor seen with our everydaywearied eyes. There are places, more fable than fact, which exist nonetheless, being neither true nor false nor yet a part of accepted history. They are no less real however, despite the majority opinion which will not, or cannot, accept their existence.

"Don't look back!" she commanded, her voice bounding like a Labrador down the bank behind me.

As if I would! The wavelets seemed to be about knee high when I reached them, the sand grains as large as houses.

"I won't!" I whispered softly but she must have heard me, because:

"Look down!" she called instead.

"Alright" I murmured, more with my mind than with my lips, but still she heard me because she said:

"When you reach the water's edge, look down and you will see……"

I found the smooth part just like she'd told me, mirror like it was, a glitteringly silver oval overall, fringed with gold like a dressing table mirror but nothing save for the minnows stared back at me.

"Now what?" I thought, not daring even a whisper but still she heard and said to me:

"Lie down……lie on the grass……put your face close to the water and you……will……see……

I smelled chamomile again then. Meadowsweet and stiff stemmed water mint……and got wet immediately, all down my front but……for some reason I didn't care.

It was softer than I expected, not exactly springy but soft like an old mattress that lots of cats have lain on, with a pungency to match and the most, almost…… edible texture I have ever squeezed.

My breath smashed the mirror into leaping fragments, leaping leopards, close to ……closer to…...licking my face……

……and there, in the frailest fringes of the water a tiny elongated heart glitteringly lay - an elfin arrowhead lost, found, and ……and offered to me.

There are places where the veil between our world and theirs is so thin that the lightest of breezes oft may it reveal. So long as our minds are open and our hearts believe.

I crimpled the water's edge with my fingertips, convinced that the arrowhead would disappear the moment I closed my eyes……and opened them again.

So I did and……the arrowhead was still there.

How old was it, idly I wondered. A thousand years? A million?

Quite possibly!

A sliver of silicon so delicate and yet how deadly, as keen now as it was when it was new.

I saw my reflection then, elongated and haggard, hair straggling, trailing, thinning and grey ……and the minnows fled terrified from the monster that leaned to devour them. Even their shadows sped, in terror away from me.

For a moment all movement was stilled, all heartbeats silenced, all time stopped while the stream's water settled and shrank and became so clear it was as good as invisible. Not a ripple marked the surface, the margin between wet and dry indiscernible, the span of time twixt then and now as short, or as long, a the bit of knotted string in any schoolboy's pocket.

Moisture seeped and soft silts settled solemnly as both belly and breasts moulded their impressions. Somewhere realisation dawned, fleetingly, furtively, sneaking or so it seemed, while the river stilled and silence shrank, invisible as a cat's purr, and thrice as clean.

But I smelled the water and the sand and knew then that in its great age lay also its great knowledge and beauty……so I reached and plucked, from the place it had lain for thousands of years……that most precious jewel……twixt finger and thumb……most delicately.

How thin, how thin, the veil between our worlds. Immeasurable, a taut meniscus curve unseen!

"Now do you know who I am?" her voice enquired of me……

………………
Well the painter finally came to do my sunset. Two weeks late. On a squeaking pushbike with a satchel thing on the back of it. He made a lot of mess, Drank all my whiskey, and put a lot of greens where I thought no such colour should be.

"There's no green in the sky!" I said pettishly. To which he asked had I ever looked for it.

So I took my dress and Pashmina off, sat still and waited patiently, while my hubby grumbled and stared at me.

"Bloody waste of money" he said "Why don't you do something useful?"

And there was me thinking I already had. Fucking an artist is good for his ego and inspiration, no matter he's been dead these three hundred years.

But do you know! Would you believe it? That bloody sunset all fell down when I slammed the door. Cost me a fortune it did! Half an hour on my back and another ten minutes kneeling on the floor getting sore knees while his green hands mauled and kneaded me. He hadn't even said thank you either, when he left and his damned bike still squeaked.

Men! I hate 'em all. And love 'em too, little boys that they are!

Now I've his mess to clear up. Broken glass and broken dreams. But I have it on good authority - There is green in the sky! Lots of it, lots of green, 'cos now I've seen it.

And do you know? Would you credit it? He'd forgotten his palette. His original palette with all the greens still on it. I found it wrapped in my poor Pashmina amid that wrecked sunset, my perfect sunset, painted and paid for and all fallen into ruins in a heap on the floor.

Deleted

Aahlu

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Sat, 3rd April, 2010

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