Saturday, 2 August 2014
Stone 2
How far had he travelled?
The open umbrella stands in the far corner of his loft apartment, always unfurled to remind him.
Will he ever go back home? This intrigued others more than him. Stone liked to keep his own counsel and he knew the enigma drew the women to him. For this he often endured a slap in the face.
Will he ever go back home? Where is home anyway, the place where you can retreat to lick your wounds, where the kiss of betrayal can be washed away like silvered cobwebs from hornbeam trees.
Will he ever go back home? Stone turns the ring on his finger and opens up the secret compartment. The sand is still there, tiny grains of Palestine. A memory of a fishing village, now all but destroyed; thoughts of swimming in cool waters at the end of long hot days.
Will he ever go back home? The upheaval the letter brought all those years ago, the tang of lemonade on his tongue, memories, memories, further back, further back. The miles of running, of escaping, of fleeing with pockets full of coins, all of unknown denominations, the currency as foreign to him as the chorus of voices.
Will he ever go back home? Home now to Stone is like a baby hidden in a field, abandoned and unknown bringing freedom and respite. His red front door is like a gateway on fire: full of entrances and exits, excitement and disappointment linger there.
The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule
Stone 1
Two of a kind, the birds fluttered in the tamarind tree, disturbing the sultry afternoon. The sky, low and filled with tattoos of clouds, hung like a vale of cumulus cloth, jewelled and almost ominous.
The dandelion clocks shimmered in the field like feathers, puffy and silver, their parts dispersing like rockets, disentangling, disengaging.
Soon the storm would shatter the quiet brooding of the late afternoon. Stone would find himself sheltering under a tree no doubt, as he had lingered on the heath too long. His mask of indifference to the weather could never slip, his resilience to such vagaries of climate a cause of much teasing with his fellow migrant workers.
The joy of lying undisturbed amidst the rosebay willow herbs, with kind birds singing to him was as an aphrodisiac. His weary musculature eased like a baby’s bottom, and his frantic mind calmed as the blowing dandelion mountain flowed past his prone body.
This vale, like a partner to his brain, brings him respite and joy.
The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule
Thursday, 31 July 2014
To Be or Not?
Stirring the air,
to make them fizz,
broken tiles forming mosaics
rooms with saloon doors,
windows with no glass,
slack jawed men gaping
sloping over the edge
better than before.
Not stirring the air
to not make them fizz
broken tiles not forming mosaics
not rooms with saloon doors
windows with no not glass
slack-jawed not men gaping
sloping over the edge not
not better than before.
The copyright of these posts belongs to Moira Cormack
to make them fizz,
broken tiles forming mosaics
rooms with saloon doors,
windows with no glass,
slack jawed men gaping
sloping over the edge
better than before.
Not stirring the air
to not make them fizz
broken tiles not forming mosaics
not rooms with saloon doors
windows with no not glass
slack-jawed not men gaping
sloping over the edge not
not better than before.
The copyright of these posts belongs to Moira Cormack
Silver Linings
Silver Linings.
The paper crossword lay incomplete on the table. Edward sighed, lifting his glass to his lips with melancholy pleasure. The crossword had defeated him, tonight. Reluctantly, he gave it up, pushing it away from him, disgusted. Now there was another two hours to ill before he could conceivably give up on another day and go to bed. This was now his monochrome life. Fooling himself with activities, dividing his day into manageable time slots.
It was Jane who had got him into crosswords, when she first retired. She loved to play with words, loved the challenge of hidden patterns, things fitting together as they never did in life. Even in those last days in the hospice, she still loved to help him with one. She would lie back, a smile on her grey, shrunken face.
He considered it a certain achievement when he got to the end of another day without her. But the truth was, the night was the beginning of another long day. He lay on top of hard sleep, unable to sink into it, hour after hour exhuming buried memories, stretching his thoughts out on a rack. A slow execution.
He thought there was nothing to be done. He looked for silver linings - one of her sayings - lifting up every dark cloud of Jane’s absence and looking underneath, gazing from all angles, but finding none.
He closed his eyes, remembering their wedding day. Illuminated in the oxy acetylene light of memory, his shy treasure in her Sunday best, silk impossible to come by in those early post-war years. Her eyes were full of secrets, her skin flushed and soft to his touch. He looked at her and knew he didn’t deserve her. He stood beside her, whispering a silent prayer to an invisible confessional. All the shame, the mistakes, the horrors of his life before her fell away from him as he held her small, warm hand in his.
With her, he was the good man he could have been, should have been, if it hadn’t been for the war. Her life lay open before him, ready for the full story they would write together. His was a book already written from cover to cover, in blood. Her secrets waited for his unravelling, her riddles teased him, said to him: Solve me! He already knew that his own questions had no answers. His secrets must stay secret.
Reaching for a tissue, he rubbed away the tears that had begun to spill from his tired eyes.
“I know, Jane. I know.” He whispered. “I’ve got to count my blessings.” Another of her sayings.
She had said it when the boiler broke, when he lost his job, when it rained the whole week of
their long awaited holiday in Scarborough. She had murmured it with a shaky smile and a sad lift of her eyes, when their beautiful boy died after a few hours.
He sighed, thinking that he would struggle to find any blessings to count, under all the junk. Jane would cluck impatiently, surveying the piles of newspapers, the unread mail, the abandoned Jack Higgins on the settee. Not to mention the crusty meals-on-wheels containers on the table and the socks that hadn’t made it to the washing basket. He meant to keep on top of it all, but it had quickly gained the upper hand. At first he had looked at the layers of dust on Jane’s prized oak furniture through her eyes, ashamed, determined to do something about it.
Tomorrow. After a good night’s sleep. When I’m feeling a bit better.
But those times hadn’t come and now he hardly noticed. Since there was only him, who was there to care if the sink was clogged up with limescale?
The uncompleted crossword mocked him from its place on the table. Jane would never have given up on it.
He remembered that day in the botanical gardens, a favourite place of Jane’s. It was a hot, grey day, the sullen skies oppressive. The flies buzzed in their faces as they walked. They breathed the stormy air deep into their lungs, not speaking.
Somehow he knew what she was going to sat before she said it. It was the aggressive type, apparently - already spread to the lymph nodes. Surgery no longer an option. They’d try radiation, of course, but…
He swallowed hard, staring at the wild, bright growth of roses all around him, mocking them with their vibrant life.
“How long?” He said at last.
“They’re not sure, darling…”
“Tell me, Jane.”
She lifted his hand to her dry, fevered lips. “A few months.”
And there it was. The words to transect his life, neat, clean, swift. Sitting quietly together on their favourite bench, the wound to finish him off - as no war ever could - had been inflicted by his dearest love. The one who had healed him.
It’s shocking how selfish we can be, he thought now. On hearing those words, he had been angry. Furiously, blindingly angry with her, for getting it, for not telling him, for leaving him so soon. For her crass ‘count your blessings’ mentality, which had stopped her ‘bothering’ the doctor sooner. Sitting on that park bench, she had clung to him and cried, but he had remained rigid.
And that memory was what stopped him sleeping every night.
It was still only half past eight, the summer sky outside relentlessly light. He thought about all the evening barbeques that would be going on, the lazy, contented laughter, the children still out playing, the couples walking in the softened evening air. Life going on without him.
Of course, everyone had had something to suggest. Their daughter Ruth wanted to drag him to a pottery class. He could take up origami, golf, sky-diving… Whatever it was that lonely widowers did with themselves when their reason for living had gone.
Sighing, he switched on the television, flicking through the channels. Reality T.V, sport, a depressing documentary about abuse in old people’s homes and the obligatory episode of ‘Inspector Morse’. Something unspeakable on Channel 4 - whatever happened to the nine o’clock watershed? He switched off.
He could, of course, just go to bed now. Walking into the hall, he gazed up the narrow, darkened staircase with a sense of defeat. If he started climbing those stairs, he would have to admit that it was all over. He returned to the crossword.
“Arch enemy, seven words, second letter ‘E’.” He muttered to himself. “what the hell is that?” “Nemesis.” A whisper, a soft stirring of warm breath against his cheek. He turned.
Jane was smiling at him.
He gasped, reaching for her. “Darling…”
“You are hopeless, Ed.” She pointed at his crossed out attempt at 4 across. “Tyrone? Juliet’s cousin was Tybalt.”
“Well, you always knew your Shakespeare, Jane. What about 7 down? ‘Short of cash’, second letter ‘m’, last letter ‘s’.”
She touched his hand, a glow on his cold skin that travelled to his heart. “Impercunious.” She said.
“How the hell was I supposed to know that? Who uses words like that?” He smiled into her gentle blue eyes. “Apart from you, old girl.”
Jane looked around her, shaking her head. “Look at the state of this place. Honestly, Edward - can’t you do anything without me?”
“There didn’t seem much point.” He said ruefully. “There’s only me here.” She leaned towards him, cupping his face in her small, soft hands.
“I was right to worry about you, my darling.” She said.
He sighed. “Things are a bit sticky at the moment, love. I’ll get on top of it.”
“I’m worried about you.” She repeated, her gaze burning into him. Smiling gently, she released him.
“Don’t go yet -”
He looked at her with helpless, beseeching hunger. She was fading away, a trick of the light as he tried to hold her in his gaze. He leaned back and moaned. Jane…
Everything was still. Silent.
Then warm breath against his cheek, the stirring of a whisper in his ear: “You are a brave man,
Edward. Don’t give up, my darling. Work out the clues, find the answers. Look for your life.” And then she really was gone, the air empty, clear, the smells around him familiar again. He found he was smiling.
There was only one more clue to complete the crossword. He frowned, muttering:
“‘Metallic underside of cumulus nimbus.’ Five and seven letters, first letter ‘S’. What the hell -?” He heard Jane’s voice in his head, the laughter as she said:
“Silver linings, of course!”
The copyright of this post belongs to Alison Stickings
The paper crossword lay incomplete on the table. Edward sighed, lifting his glass to his lips with melancholy pleasure. The crossword had defeated him, tonight. Reluctantly, he gave it up, pushing it away from him, disgusted. Now there was another two hours to ill before he could conceivably give up on another day and go to bed. This was now his monochrome life. Fooling himself with activities, dividing his day into manageable time slots.
It was Jane who had got him into crosswords, when she first retired. She loved to play with words, loved the challenge of hidden patterns, things fitting together as they never did in life. Even in those last days in the hospice, she still loved to help him with one. She would lie back, a smile on her grey, shrunken face.
He considered it a certain achievement when he got to the end of another day without her. But the truth was, the night was the beginning of another long day. He lay on top of hard sleep, unable to sink into it, hour after hour exhuming buried memories, stretching his thoughts out on a rack. A slow execution.
He thought there was nothing to be done. He looked for silver linings - one of her sayings - lifting up every dark cloud of Jane’s absence and looking underneath, gazing from all angles, but finding none.
He closed his eyes, remembering their wedding day. Illuminated in the oxy acetylene light of memory, his shy treasure in her Sunday best, silk impossible to come by in those early post-war years. Her eyes were full of secrets, her skin flushed and soft to his touch. He looked at her and knew he didn’t deserve her. He stood beside her, whispering a silent prayer to an invisible confessional. All the shame, the mistakes, the horrors of his life before her fell away from him as he held her small, warm hand in his.
With her, he was the good man he could have been, should have been, if it hadn’t been for the war. Her life lay open before him, ready for the full story they would write together. His was a book already written from cover to cover, in blood. Her secrets waited for his unravelling, her riddles teased him, said to him: Solve me! He already knew that his own questions had no answers. His secrets must stay secret.
Reaching for a tissue, he rubbed away the tears that had begun to spill from his tired eyes.
“I know, Jane. I know.” He whispered. “I’ve got to count my blessings.” Another of her sayings.
She had said it when the boiler broke, when he lost his job, when it rained the whole week of
their long awaited holiday in Scarborough. She had murmured it with a shaky smile and a sad lift of her eyes, when their beautiful boy died after a few hours.
He sighed, thinking that he would struggle to find any blessings to count, under all the junk. Jane would cluck impatiently, surveying the piles of newspapers, the unread mail, the abandoned Jack Higgins on the settee. Not to mention the crusty meals-on-wheels containers on the table and the socks that hadn’t made it to the washing basket. He meant to keep on top of it all, but it had quickly gained the upper hand. At first he had looked at the layers of dust on Jane’s prized oak furniture through her eyes, ashamed, determined to do something about it.
Tomorrow. After a good night’s sleep. When I’m feeling a bit better.
But those times hadn’t come and now he hardly noticed. Since there was only him, who was there to care if the sink was clogged up with limescale?
The uncompleted crossword mocked him from its place on the table. Jane would never have given up on it.
He remembered that day in the botanical gardens, a favourite place of Jane’s. It was a hot, grey day, the sullen skies oppressive. The flies buzzed in their faces as they walked. They breathed the stormy air deep into their lungs, not speaking.
Somehow he knew what she was going to sat before she said it. It was the aggressive type, apparently - already spread to the lymph nodes. Surgery no longer an option. They’d try radiation, of course, but…
He swallowed hard, staring at the wild, bright growth of roses all around him, mocking them with their vibrant life.
“How long?” He said at last.
“They’re not sure, darling…”
“Tell me, Jane.”
She lifted his hand to her dry, fevered lips. “A few months.”
And there it was. The words to transect his life, neat, clean, swift. Sitting quietly together on their favourite bench, the wound to finish him off - as no war ever could - had been inflicted by his dearest love. The one who had healed him.
It’s shocking how selfish we can be, he thought now. On hearing those words, he had been angry. Furiously, blindingly angry with her, for getting it, for not telling him, for leaving him so soon. For her crass ‘count your blessings’ mentality, which had stopped her ‘bothering’ the doctor sooner. Sitting on that park bench, she had clung to him and cried, but he had remained rigid.
And that memory was what stopped him sleeping every night.
It was still only half past eight, the summer sky outside relentlessly light. He thought about all the evening barbeques that would be going on, the lazy, contented laughter, the children still out playing, the couples walking in the softened evening air. Life going on without him.
Of course, everyone had had something to suggest. Their daughter Ruth wanted to drag him to a pottery class. He could take up origami, golf, sky-diving… Whatever it was that lonely widowers did with themselves when their reason for living had gone.
Sighing, he switched on the television, flicking through the channels. Reality T.V, sport, a depressing documentary about abuse in old people’s homes and the obligatory episode of ‘Inspector Morse’. Something unspeakable on Channel 4 - whatever happened to the nine o’clock watershed? He switched off.
He could, of course, just go to bed now. Walking into the hall, he gazed up the narrow, darkened staircase with a sense of defeat. If he started climbing those stairs, he would have to admit that it was all over. He returned to the crossword.
“Arch enemy, seven words, second letter ‘E’.” He muttered to himself. “what the hell is that?” “Nemesis.” A whisper, a soft stirring of warm breath against his cheek. He turned.
Jane was smiling at him.
He gasped, reaching for her. “Darling…”
“You are hopeless, Ed.” She pointed at his crossed out attempt at 4 across. “Tyrone? Juliet’s cousin was Tybalt.”
“Well, you always knew your Shakespeare, Jane. What about 7 down? ‘Short of cash’, second letter ‘m’, last letter ‘s’.”
She touched his hand, a glow on his cold skin that travelled to his heart. “Impercunious.” She said.
“How the hell was I supposed to know that? Who uses words like that?” He smiled into her gentle blue eyes. “Apart from you, old girl.”
Jane looked around her, shaking her head. “Look at the state of this place. Honestly, Edward - can’t you do anything without me?”
“There didn’t seem much point.” He said ruefully. “There’s only me here.” She leaned towards him, cupping his face in her small, soft hands.
“I was right to worry about you, my darling.” She said.
He sighed. “Things are a bit sticky at the moment, love. I’ll get on top of it.”
“I’m worried about you.” She repeated, her gaze burning into him. Smiling gently, she released him.
“Don’t go yet -”
He looked at her with helpless, beseeching hunger. She was fading away, a trick of the light as he tried to hold her in his gaze. He leaned back and moaned. Jane…
Everything was still. Silent.
Then warm breath against his cheek, the stirring of a whisper in his ear: “You are a brave man,
Edward. Don’t give up, my darling. Work out the clues, find the answers. Look for your life.” And then she really was gone, the air empty, clear, the smells around him familiar again. He found he was smiling.
There was only one more clue to complete the crossword. He frowned, muttering:
“‘Metallic underside of cumulus nimbus.’ Five and seven letters, first letter ‘S’. What the hell -?” He heard Jane’s voice in his head, the laughter as she said:
“Silver linings, of course!”
The copyright of this post belongs to Alison Stickings
Friday, 13 June 2014
The Paper
The Paper
That's all I was yesterday. Newspaper
lining the recycling box in the vestry. Insignificant. Discarded.
Buried beneath an empty tea bag box, a toilet roll core and several
ignored claims that you too could be a lucky winner. I was waiting.
Waiting for my new beginning, for someone to see my rich potential.
My chances were flimsy, I knew that, but hope was bubbling in me.
I could help in so many ways. There are
so many possibilities.
I could be stuffed inside a wet welly
boot to soak up the fun of puddle jumping days, twisted to kindle the
warmth at the heart of your home, torn into shopping lists, made into
seedling pots, placed on the floor to soak up the damp patch that
always seems to fan out from the umbrella stand.
Make me a new creation of Origami.
With love, patience and glue, paper
mâché could give me new life.
Couldn't I be allowed a stay of
execution from the recycling plant?
But that was yesterday.
Now you notice me and with a sudden
gleam of inspiration there is clarity and vision and purpose in
you,like an oxyacetylene burst. The lime scale crust that had dulled
your imagination has crumbled away.
I am stripped and torn and placed layer
upon layer with thought and care
and as I am formed in your hands I
imagine the journey and the destination.
Not only have you given me form but you
have made me more than I was, adding hessian plumage and a lacy crown
(I love my lacy crown).I can no longer fly up like newspaper,
insubstantial as tissue, as activity goes on around me. There is more
to me now, I am enriched. And as I gain substance I know you will
love me in the same way as the creator of heaven loves such things as
the sky has made, because they are born of love.
Finally I am whole, complete. You
honour me by carrying me through the transept and up the secret
staircase passed the jewel-like window so that I can look out through
the clear glass panel and see the earth spread out in patterns below,
the spring wild flowers on the ragged moors, the trees all at once
pushing down and reaching skyward, the rich soil and the promise of
new life all around and I know that I am blessed.
And then you bestow your final gift to
me. A sense of such purpose and value.
You tell me that I can be an
inspiration to all men because I prove what can be achieved with only
simple materials and a little love care and imagination.
So welcome and share the celebration of
my birth.
The copyright of this post belongs to
Holly Khan
Jo Stripped White
Jo stripped white
(An extract from my novel 'Unmasked')
Circuitous sounds, noises of the past return. The tentacles of dreams shoved, hoarded in a dark recess, reaching out.
Though I don't regret it.
The moment I 'flipped', the shrinks say, was my superid manipulating my ego. Did I hear right? Over the noise?
Though I don't regret it.
A crystallizing of loss, they say together, nodding and smirking at each other. Chiming. Charming!
They write something on a piece of paper, push it over, black spider on white. I make out only one word 'Others'. I eat the paper.
I remember doing that.
I am standing. The table between us has been tipped over.
Did I do that?
I am standing. They are sitting. I am standing and screaming 'the others, the others? The others are not my fault'.
I am lying on the floor, 'are they?' I whisper.
'Yes' they chime in unison, white coat expressions.
'Your behaviour crystallized in a moment of loss,' says the woman, eyebrows contracting.
'A clear case of displacement leading to dissent,' nods the man's glasses.
'Total loss of any loci of external satisfaction which produced the inevitable fall from grace'
'Inevitable?' The man glances towards her
'Inevitable!' Her pony tail sways in emphasis.
'Inevitable' he echoes, looking down at me.
Did I do that?
I want to curl my finger around a knife, something sharp at least and plunge into the heart of their cruelty but the drugs have deleted that thought before it happens.
Had they?
The table, the chairs are gone. When did that happen? The snowflakes of awareness are melting. The white coats have merged into the white walls.
They did, did they?
I am lying in triumph on the velvet floor. My head in a pool of red. Sticky velvet red. Comforting warm noises reach out from somewhere. A radio off beam. Along the padded wall, near where it meets the door, empty eyes stare back at me from the floor. Black rimmed, one is cracked.
They did.
Wait, don't go, the radio is tuning in...
'Christ, Rourke, we are dead meat'
'Not our fault if the shrinks put themselves in danger Mallory.'
'But she was under our care Rourke, and look what happened, fuck...'
'Shut up, listen Jenkins and his mob will be here at any moment, we need...bugger, too late'
Is it?
'Gentlemen, I think we all know each other, now what mess have you created this time, the officer reporting the incident tells me we have two of our best psychiatrists laid down in the basement with their throats cut. Care to explain how Miss nutcase in there got loose....'
I don't regret it.
Copyright Gabrielle Goldsmith 2014
(An extract from my novel 'Unmasked')
Circuitous sounds, noises of the past return. The tentacles of dreams shoved, hoarded in a dark recess, reaching out.
Though I don't regret it.
The moment I 'flipped', the shrinks say, was my superid manipulating my ego. Did I hear right? Over the noise?
Though I don't regret it.
A crystallizing of loss, they say together, nodding and smirking at each other. Chiming. Charming!
They write something on a piece of paper, push it over, black spider on white. I make out only one word 'Others'. I eat the paper.
I remember doing that.
I am standing. The table between us has been tipped over.
Did I do that?
I am standing. They are sitting. I am standing and screaming 'the others, the others? The others are not my fault'.
I am lying on the floor, 'are they?' I whisper.
'Yes' they chime in unison, white coat expressions.
'Your behaviour crystallized in a moment of loss,' says the woman, eyebrows contracting.
'A clear case of displacement leading to dissent,' nods the man's glasses.
'Total loss of any loci of external satisfaction which produced the inevitable fall from grace'
'Inevitable?' The man glances towards her
'Inevitable!' Her pony tail sways in emphasis.
'Inevitable' he echoes, looking down at me.
Did I do that?
I want to curl my finger around a knife, something sharp at least and plunge into the heart of their cruelty but the drugs have deleted that thought before it happens.
Had they?
The table, the chairs are gone. When did that happen? The snowflakes of awareness are melting. The white coats have merged into the white walls.
They did, did they?
I am lying in triumph on the velvet floor. My head in a pool of red. Sticky velvet red. Comforting warm noises reach out from somewhere. A radio off beam. Along the padded wall, near where it meets the door, empty eyes stare back at me from the floor. Black rimmed, one is cracked.
They did.
Wait, don't go, the radio is tuning in...
'Christ, Rourke, we are dead meat'
'Not our fault if the shrinks put themselves in danger Mallory.'
'But she was under our care Rourke, and look what happened, fuck...'
'Shut up, listen Jenkins and his mob will be here at any moment, we need...bugger, too late'
Is it?
'Gentlemen, I think we all know each other, now what mess have you created this time, the officer reporting the incident tells me we have two of our best psychiatrists laid down in the basement with their throats cut. Care to explain how Miss nutcase in there got loose....'
I don't regret it.
Copyright Gabrielle Goldsmith 2014
Tuesday, 3 June 2014
Train
She thought about him now, sitting on the train passing through the
increasingly bleak and time-haunted landscape on his journey to the
alien North. He was a Southern man, used to oceans and warmer climes.
She pictured him smiling, satisfied, anticipating. He loved an
adventure. And it was that wild, adventuring heart that she loved in
him, the restless pulse that drove her swashbuckling hero on and
sometimes took him away from her. She had learned to let him go. There
was always more for him to see, questions to get answers to, experiences
to be had. He was chasing purpose, running hard from the mundane horror
of a life like so many other lives that, in the final analysis, would
count for nothing. That was not to be his life. His world was a stage
and he was being watched.
“Do you know what you’re like?” She told him once.
He had smiled indulgently, stroking her hair. “What am I like?”
“You’re a high speed train. Every day, you have a different destination - figuratively speaking, obviously. I mean, some days it’s a work day, some a tidy-up day, others a - well, you know. Wherever it is, you’re going there fast. I have to read that destination - it’s always written somewhere - and jump on board. If I don’t read it in time, or if I try to get you to go somewhere else, I miss the train.”
His face fell. “Oh, dear. That makes me sound really selfish.”
“Not selfish. Just needing to get to your destination. To achieve what you need to achieve. It’s my choice whether or not I board the train.”
“I’m glad you do.” He said, gazing at her with fierce, focused tenderness. He pulled her into a close, solid embrace, breathing his warmth into her neck. She sighed.
The first time she saw him, walking across the school playground holding his little girl’s hand on her first day at school, the only thing she had really noticed - with a certain relief - was that he was a man. She was surrounded by school gate mums, permanently set in their cliques from playgroup onward, insecure, gossiping, moaning mums. Their husbands were useless, their kids ran them ragged, the weather was crap and they had to go to bloody Tesco, again. Then followed a conversation about why some of them preferred Morrisons, or even Aldi. Out of sheer loneliness, she sometimes joined in. Not that they ever let her be part of the club; she didn’t have a husband to moan about. She didn’t have anyone.
Then he appeared. His daughter was transferring from another school half way through the term. She was the new girl and her dad was the new boy. The other mums eyed him with amused suspicion as he said a friendly hello, casting glances at his patchwork hippy trousers and then returning to their whispering groups. He seemed undeterred.
And there he was every morning, strolling in, crumpled tee-shirt half untucked, oblivious smile on his face. The other mums continued to ignore him, closing ranks, suspicious of this full-blooded, sanguine personality. So she dredged up courage as a fellow outsider and struck up a
conversation. She couldn’t remember what she said. Probably something dumb. After years of being stuck inside four walls with the ‘Teletubbies’, she didn’t have much to say for herself. She found herself looking into a rounded, gentle, almost bland face, apple cheeks like a happy child, a full smile lifting his tender mouth. Just a nice guy.
But then she looked up and into his eyes. They were a curious sludgy brown - like the colour her daughter made when she mixed all her paints together - but so full of a dancing light, a vibrant intelligence, that she couldn’t draw her gaze away. She glimpsed a different kind of life, like the sun through swaying branches. Even his computer geek glasses twinkled at her. He laughed readily, an endearing chuckle. He didn’t feel the need to discuss the virtues of different supermarkets. And as he walked away, strolling in the sun that seemed to shine especially on him and chatting on his phone, her first thought was: There’s a man without a care in the world.
Her second thought was far more shocking: I think I’m in love with him.
Her first thought was wrong.
Slowly, slowly, as the years slipped past, both their girls growing, she saw just how wrong. He was not the man she thought she had seen, strolling through life without a care in the world. Just as she was not the self-possessed woman she appeared to be, single mother always in control. So, they let each other in, found each other out.
Chatting outside the school gate until long after the other parents had gone home, lead to coffees at his house. Then lunch, days out, evenings out (when babysitters could be found), declarations and the tentative first kiss. The impossible joy of discovering that he loved her as she loved him. By the time their daughters were in their final year at junior school, they were a couple. The other mums looked vaguely disapproving and ignored them both.
For the first time in her life, she discovered what it was to be in a truly symbiotic relationship. She had been used to being the one who did all the giving, but in him she found someone who gave as much back.They flowed into each other’s empty places, borrowed one another’s strength. Each of their naked selves were safe in the other’s adoring gaze.
He let her see that he was a man in constant conflict, pulled one way by that adventurous spirit - the need to be more than what he was - and relentlessly the other way by his many, many doubts. There were days when he collapsed under the weight of his guilt-blighted obligations, dragged into inertia and ultimately back under the duvet by his inner mantra of failure. His I.T work piled up as he lay in bed or zoned out on with a computer game, his client’s messages ignored. His mum’s calls weren’t returned. Then he would open the door to her with a relieved smile.
On these occasions she sat with him as he forced himself back in front of his computer. She massaged his tense shoulders, kissed his neck, made him cups of tea. With the reassurance of her touch, he could face the terror of those obligations. He could make the phone calls, untangle the coding knots, meet the deadlines; begin to see himself again as the brilliant, gifted man he was. She lent him her vision of himself.
And he let her be weak. He gave her permission to stop pretending, to drop the official party line: I’m fine, it’s all good, no worries… Everything she had pushed down for so long, kept tightly packaged and under control, began to seep out. All the disappointments and failures of the years, the angry protest against circumstances she had been powerless to prevent and that had left her here, a single mum on benefits at thirty-one; all the emotions that terrified her, found a safe outlet in his embrace. And he made her feel beautiful again - a woman, not just a mum.
She remembered the interesting, fun, spontaneous person she used to be, lost for so long in the shadows of regret and duty. She realized now, as he drew out this forgotten self, that she had been bored almost to death.
Where she had been flatlining, he restarted her heart. He e.c.t-ed her fatally dulled brain and pulsed his love through her constricted veins. Her vision, narrowed by years of isolating motherhood, sleepless nights, baby-sick and C.Beebies, was forced wide, made panoramic by his adventurous, questioning mind; the many conversational topics of his supple intellect. He talked to her about the nature of dark matter, provoked her to question or defend long-held, unquestioned habits and beliefs and listened attentively to her responses. They discussed God and death, science and politics, love, ethics and their favourite Monty Python sketches. (He was a die-hard ‘Holy Grail’ man, where she held that ‘The Spanish Inquisition’ couldn’t be bettered.) They lustfully explored the depths of one another’s very different minds, never quite getting enough. He spoke to her as an equal, an adult. He made her laugh, as she hadn’t laughed for years.
And when she saw him with his little girl, patiently calming her many anxieties and holding her close when she cried, her heart twisted with painful pride.
“Well done for trying, Sweetie.” He would whisper into her frustration, as she failed again to get to the top bar of the climbing frame. “You’re a brave girl.” Then he would cuddle her until she said:
“Can I try again, Daddy?”
And when she succeeded, laughing with pleasure as she clung on to the top bar, he stood up from the bench and shouted: “Yay! Well done, darling!” And she gazed at her Daddy as if she was in the presence of a god.
She made a mental promise to be more patient with her little girl.
Of course, they had their moments; days when their bad moods coincided, misunderstandings clogged up the air between them and the man/woman divide seemed unbreachable. Those days when they felt the huge distance between Mars and Venus. But every wound they inflicted on one another, they also healed. They talked, until all their words had run out. Then they continued their understanding with touch, the slow worship of kisses, the soporific delight of skin on skin, limbs entwined, drifting together into sleep. Tenderness, like a dreamy opiate, pulsed through their shared bloodstream.
He was her cure for the every day with all its frustrations, its perversity, its disappointments and boredom. And she was his. Companions on the uneven path of what they were pleased to call single parent life.
Not that he was some paragon of shining human perfection. But he was warm and real in his flaws and those aggravating, puzzling habits, the strange ways his mind worked; all the things that made up the whole man she loved. And she knew he had plenty to forgive in her over-sensitivity, her high maintenance moods and insecurities. But, amazed, she saw that something in her constant and adoring company flowed into his damaged self-esteem, reminding him who he really was and how large was the world around him. Sometimes she would be talking to him and realize that he was no longer with her. A dreamy, distant look had come into her eyes as he gazed at what she couldn’t see. He was looking into a future that might not have room for her. As his confidence in her love grew, he went to places in his dreams she couldn’t follow - missing that high speed train - and she knew she had to let him go there. It was the whole man
she loved and she must let him be that whole man.
One who needed her less.
So, when the interview for his ideal job came up in Scarborough, she was ready to be glad for him. Almost. She pictured him again, sitting on the train through the changing landscape. She thought about his restless heart, thrilling to new adventures and allowed herself a smile. After all, he would be coming back. This time.
The copyright of this post belongs to Alison Stickings 12.5.14.
“Do you know what you’re like?” She told him once.
He had smiled indulgently, stroking her hair. “What am I like?”
“You’re a high speed train. Every day, you have a different destination - figuratively speaking, obviously. I mean, some days it’s a work day, some a tidy-up day, others a - well, you know. Wherever it is, you’re going there fast. I have to read that destination - it’s always written somewhere - and jump on board. If I don’t read it in time, or if I try to get you to go somewhere else, I miss the train.”
His face fell. “Oh, dear. That makes me sound really selfish.”
“Not selfish. Just needing to get to your destination. To achieve what you need to achieve. It’s my choice whether or not I board the train.”
“I’m glad you do.” He said, gazing at her with fierce, focused tenderness. He pulled her into a close, solid embrace, breathing his warmth into her neck. She sighed.
The first time she saw him, walking across the school playground holding his little girl’s hand on her first day at school, the only thing she had really noticed - with a certain relief - was that he was a man. She was surrounded by school gate mums, permanently set in their cliques from playgroup onward, insecure, gossiping, moaning mums. Their husbands were useless, their kids ran them ragged, the weather was crap and they had to go to bloody Tesco, again. Then followed a conversation about why some of them preferred Morrisons, or even Aldi. Out of sheer loneliness, she sometimes joined in. Not that they ever let her be part of the club; she didn’t have a husband to moan about. She didn’t have anyone.
Then he appeared. His daughter was transferring from another school half way through the term. She was the new girl and her dad was the new boy. The other mums eyed him with amused suspicion as he said a friendly hello, casting glances at his patchwork hippy trousers and then returning to their whispering groups. He seemed undeterred.
And there he was every morning, strolling in, crumpled tee-shirt half untucked, oblivious smile on his face. The other mums continued to ignore him, closing ranks, suspicious of this full-blooded, sanguine personality. So she dredged up courage as a fellow outsider and struck up a
conversation. She couldn’t remember what she said. Probably something dumb. After years of being stuck inside four walls with the ‘Teletubbies’, she didn’t have much to say for herself. She found herself looking into a rounded, gentle, almost bland face, apple cheeks like a happy child, a full smile lifting his tender mouth. Just a nice guy.
But then she looked up and into his eyes. They were a curious sludgy brown - like the colour her daughter made when she mixed all her paints together - but so full of a dancing light, a vibrant intelligence, that she couldn’t draw her gaze away. She glimpsed a different kind of life, like the sun through swaying branches. Even his computer geek glasses twinkled at her. He laughed readily, an endearing chuckle. He didn’t feel the need to discuss the virtues of different supermarkets. And as he walked away, strolling in the sun that seemed to shine especially on him and chatting on his phone, her first thought was: There’s a man without a care in the world.
Her second thought was far more shocking: I think I’m in love with him.
Her first thought was wrong.
Slowly, slowly, as the years slipped past, both their girls growing, she saw just how wrong. He was not the man she thought she had seen, strolling through life without a care in the world. Just as she was not the self-possessed woman she appeared to be, single mother always in control. So, they let each other in, found each other out.
Chatting outside the school gate until long after the other parents had gone home, lead to coffees at his house. Then lunch, days out, evenings out (when babysitters could be found), declarations and the tentative first kiss. The impossible joy of discovering that he loved her as she loved him. By the time their daughters were in their final year at junior school, they were a couple. The other mums looked vaguely disapproving and ignored them both.
For the first time in her life, she discovered what it was to be in a truly symbiotic relationship. She had been used to being the one who did all the giving, but in him she found someone who gave as much back.They flowed into each other’s empty places, borrowed one another’s strength. Each of their naked selves were safe in the other’s adoring gaze.
He let her see that he was a man in constant conflict, pulled one way by that adventurous spirit - the need to be more than what he was - and relentlessly the other way by his many, many doubts. There were days when he collapsed under the weight of his guilt-blighted obligations, dragged into inertia and ultimately back under the duvet by his inner mantra of failure. His I.T work piled up as he lay in bed or zoned out on with a computer game, his client’s messages ignored. His mum’s calls weren’t returned. Then he would open the door to her with a relieved smile.
On these occasions she sat with him as he forced himself back in front of his computer. She massaged his tense shoulders, kissed his neck, made him cups of tea. With the reassurance of her touch, he could face the terror of those obligations. He could make the phone calls, untangle the coding knots, meet the deadlines; begin to see himself again as the brilliant, gifted man he was. She lent him her vision of himself.
And he let her be weak. He gave her permission to stop pretending, to drop the official party line: I’m fine, it’s all good, no worries… Everything she had pushed down for so long, kept tightly packaged and under control, began to seep out. All the disappointments and failures of the years, the angry protest against circumstances she had been powerless to prevent and that had left her here, a single mum on benefits at thirty-one; all the emotions that terrified her, found a safe outlet in his embrace. And he made her feel beautiful again - a woman, not just a mum.
She remembered the interesting, fun, spontaneous person she used to be, lost for so long in the shadows of regret and duty. She realized now, as he drew out this forgotten self, that she had been bored almost to death.
Where she had been flatlining, he restarted her heart. He e.c.t-ed her fatally dulled brain and pulsed his love through her constricted veins. Her vision, narrowed by years of isolating motherhood, sleepless nights, baby-sick and C.Beebies, was forced wide, made panoramic by his adventurous, questioning mind; the many conversational topics of his supple intellect. He talked to her about the nature of dark matter, provoked her to question or defend long-held, unquestioned habits and beliefs and listened attentively to her responses. They discussed God and death, science and politics, love, ethics and their favourite Monty Python sketches. (He was a die-hard ‘Holy Grail’ man, where she held that ‘The Spanish Inquisition’ couldn’t be bettered.) They lustfully explored the depths of one another’s very different minds, never quite getting enough. He spoke to her as an equal, an adult. He made her laugh, as she hadn’t laughed for years.
And when she saw him with his little girl, patiently calming her many anxieties and holding her close when she cried, her heart twisted with painful pride.
“Well done for trying, Sweetie.” He would whisper into her frustration, as she failed again to get to the top bar of the climbing frame. “You’re a brave girl.” Then he would cuddle her until she said:
“Can I try again, Daddy?”
And when she succeeded, laughing with pleasure as she clung on to the top bar, he stood up from the bench and shouted: “Yay! Well done, darling!” And she gazed at her Daddy as if she was in the presence of a god.
She made a mental promise to be more patient with her little girl.
Of course, they had their moments; days when their bad moods coincided, misunderstandings clogged up the air between them and the man/woman divide seemed unbreachable. Those days when they felt the huge distance between Mars and Venus. But every wound they inflicted on one another, they also healed. They talked, until all their words had run out. Then they continued their understanding with touch, the slow worship of kisses, the soporific delight of skin on skin, limbs entwined, drifting together into sleep. Tenderness, like a dreamy opiate, pulsed through their shared bloodstream.
He was her cure for the every day with all its frustrations, its perversity, its disappointments and boredom. And she was his. Companions on the uneven path of what they were pleased to call single parent life.
Not that he was some paragon of shining human perfection. But he was warm and real in his flaws and those aggravating, puzzling habits, the strange ways his mind worked; all the things that made up the whole man she loved. And she knew he had plenty to forgive in her over-sensitivity, her high maintenance moods and insecurities. But, amazed, she saw that something in her constant and adoring company flowed into his damaged self-esteem, reminding him who he really was and how large was the world around him. Sometimes she would be talking to him and realize that he was no longer with her. A dreamy, distant look had come into her eyes as he gazed at what she couldn’t see. He was looking into a future that might not have room for her. As his confidence in her love grew, he went to places in his dreams she couldn’t follow - missing that high speed train - and she knew she had to let him go there. It was the whole man
she loved and she must let him be that whole man.
One who needed her less.
So, when the interview for his ideal job came up in Scarborough, she was ready to be glad for him. Almost. She pictured him again, sitting on the train through the changing landscape. She thought about his restless heart, thrilling to new adventures and allowed herself a smile. After all, he would be coming back. This time.
The copyright of this post belongs to Alison Stickings 12.5.14.
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