Just Watch Me

A dull yellow stain was spreading through the cloud over the hill. Birds trilled their matins into damp air and their music hung in the vapour, exhorting the expanse, laudate. Dew seeped through the webbing of her trainers.

Heartbeat in time with her feet, the ground gave way to each footfall like sponge. She was heavy; she felt her weight in each stride yet she didn't slow. She was a force, a power. Her weight was behind her, not against - this wasn't about diminution, this was about strength.

The constant grey was breaking into slivers above and the trees were pulling themselves upright. Skyward was the aim of each living thing pushing out of the earth and she wouldn't look down, wouldn't give her detractors the satisfaction.

They might not understand the complexity of it, the duality. That it is possible both to accept and to improve; to be and to do things considered mutually exclusive.

Her breath came sharp as the hill rose to meet her, demanding a tribute of pain which she gave gladly, and laughing inside she hit the crest and made herself its conqueror. She planted her feet and her flag.

I can do this. Just watch me.

June

A little something I wrote a few years back (yes I am cheating on the whole writing-up-to-date-blog-entries front). 

***

It began on a railway station platform, as so many things do. She had long given up on finding Narnia (the last foray into a wardrobe had been purely a space-efficiency experiment) and instead had her mind on shoes, piña colada lollipops, and the graffiti on the opposite wall. It didn’t say anything intelligible, so she wondered why the person responsible had bothered. 

An unstable evening breeze was making its way down the track, navigating suitcases and transporting pockets of leftover aftershave from the sweaty necks of tight-collared commuters. It would keep its course, more or less, until upset by an oncoming train, when in order to escape it would rush up the platform sides and spill itself over the fence. 

Summer had got tired early and was uneasy in the evening light, backing away behind clouds. Jane noticed it lingering in hanging baskets whose tendrils the breeze could only just reach as it swayed and swerved. She noticed it in the eyes of the man on the platform opposite, who couldn’t quite make up his mind whether he needed the sunglasses he was fingering. She noticed it most of all in the blackened buddleia heads, hanging limply over the rails. A season delighted by children running to their mothers with chubby fistfuls of pretty weeds had let the side down on the romanticising-the-ordinary front. Of course, it could have just been the fumes.

The Adventures of Scarlet Ferwin, Episode One

Dedicated to and written for the amusement of Jane

EPISODE ONE - IN WHICH SCARLET DISCOVERS HER TRUE HAIR COLOUR

Dear Diary,

strange things have been happening. Last night I dreamt about Barbie, and woke up disgusted at the neon pinkness of it all. Imagine my horror when, while washing my hair in the shower, the water began running exactly the same pink! Nothing can account for it, not even all the raspberry jelly I'd eaten at Felicity's 'Low Calorie Indulgence Party' the day before. Or the large slice of strawberry gateau I rewarded myself with when I got back. I think perhaps I should call the plumber. I mean, people don't leak food colouring, do they?!

*****

Dear Diary,

today the cat has really been getting under my feet. I know we called him Sir Marmaduke the Third, but really, there is a limit to the imperiousness I will put up with, even from a cat. I decided some hands-on contact was the only cure and grabbed the little furball to give him a bath. No one told me cats don't like water. I ended up soaked head to toe; there was so much water dripping off my face that I couldn't see properly to rescue the poor thing! Still, four kitty treats later and he seems to have recovered, though I swear he's a pinker shade of white than he used to be...

*****

Dear Diary,

fashion disaster! Today was lunching with the girls (Valerie is finally back from her Paris photo exhibition and we managed to drag Miranda away from that Spaniard she's been shacked up with), so of course I wore my signature red dress for maximum 'Scarlet' impact. And what do you think Miranda had the temerity to call me? Dame Edna! Well of course I was furious, but the girls dragged me off to the ladies', and there I was confronted with the candyfloss I call my hair - WHAT a clash. How can I not have noticed? And what does it mean?! My hair has always been red until now, I simply don't understand. I will hide in my house until I can mend it.

*****

Dear Diary,

so it turns out that Daddy has been hiring Borrowers to dye my hair while I sleep since my childhood. He'd been so set on calling me Scarlet that when I turned out a Different Colour he just took matters into his own hands. What a sensible man! Although I do wish he'd thought to mention it before I moved away. Now I'm going to have to find my own, and they're notoriously hard to come by - always hiding in teapots on rivers and that sort of thing.

To be honest, the shock of discovering that my red hair isn't really red, was nowhere near as bad as finding out my true hair colour. No one, and I mean no one, must know that I am actually - wait for it - blonde. The shame! Can you imagine how I would have turned out if it weren't for Daddy's intervention? A blonde Scarlet should just never happen. It would be like calling someone with freckles Diana.

I think I will buy Daddy that Louis Vuitton bag after all. I can probably get it online while I wait for Waitrose to deliver my hair dye.

*****

Stay posted for the upcoming Episode Two: In Which Scarlet Attempts to be Alternative.

Watermelon

Jada bites into the soft cold flesh and water runs sticky down her face and flecks her clothes. A seed lodges in her hair. Her fingernails dig into the skin and cut the green open; it breathes, it bleeds. Mouthful after mouthful she devours, hungry as the morning, impatient - the pink disappears between her teeth and dissipates, a sweet refreshing mess. Her face and neck are awash in its juices and it trickles down her arms, off her elbows, dripping silent into the sand, a sugar trap for insects.

7.30am and already the light over the water is hazed by heat, and the tarmac stretches and braces for the pressure of the day. In hours it will burn through people's shoes and make them curse the sun they came seeking, and they won't notice their own contradiction but will head for the shade so they can sit down to moan. 

Jada doesn't wait for the scorching time; she'll be long gone. These are her hours, the early ones when the world is still awaking and the sea glimmer is uninterrupted by boats or swimmers. Briny waves prick her ankles, calves, cool as she wades deeper, makes a path with her arms and mixes sweet with salt as the juice she has allowed to coat her skin is washed away.

Nigella Damascena, or Love in the Mist

Nigella is nestled in the dampest corner of the plot, far from the white heat of sun-soaked walls, out of sight of the quiet girl behind the lilac shades. In the depths of night she breathes the balm of jasmine and in summer days she catches scent of roses down the alley and sweet-peas by the gate. Nigella resides between the wilted heads of geraniums who saw their best days in spring, and upstart poppies whose petticoats are dropping, leaving seed pods to ripen til they burst. Shaded by cypress and screened by dew-heavy lawn, she bobs her pale blue head and watches the world from within her hazy fronds.

The summer is a dream of mottled light and expectations. Wet feet, muddy ankles and lace-fringed skirts fly past her vision, laughter and shouts crowd the air and then disperse ringing into nearby gardens. The fruit flies gather heavy on hastily-netted bushes by the bleached brick wall. Nigella's blue is matched by the sky some days, and by rain on others, but only in the evenings when it falls like a gentle cloud, trickles down the path and drops from the cypress branches. On these evenings the quiet girl peeps from her shutters and if the wind blows the right way Nigella's head is raised to see her, solemn dark brow and deep eyes, gazing out. Nigella only knows the garden but the girl has her sight set on something else entirely, something only she can see.

 Days run into one another and the heat extends them. On the eve of every morning there is a fragile stillness which swells the trees, and the garden breathes carefully, preparing itself for the break and the light that will suffuse it. In quiet glory branches bearing blossom bend their boughs, thick with fragrance. Shadows dance over Nigella, a pair in perfect time, parting and converging like two streams in flood, lovers in a ritual of mirth. The blue head bobs and the shadows blend into one, overseen from behind lilac blinds.

Character Sketches #2

She had watched him for weeks, months. He was beautiful - perfectly imperfect, infuriatingly inconsistent, delightfully impetuous, dangerously possessive. His anger burned like a slow cooker boiling into incandescent rage, and though he claimed to love no one he was fiercely protective, absorbingly passionate. He at once cared not at all and cared entirely, drove a filthy old car and wore Dior, forgot to shave and smelled like cedars cut at dawn. His calloused hands held a lifetime of knowledge, moving over what he touched with expert familiarity. When he walked into a room he was trusted by men who didn’t know his name, and enchanted women whom he wouldn’t remember; the latter was a confused enchantment, as his charm was far from smooth. He carried with him the marks of everything said done to by him, but he carried them like trophies not scars.

What, she wondered, do you make of such a man? What does he let you make of him? Does he know what he is, what he feels, what she reads on his face and in his look? Blunt and rude and blind and deaf, just and sweet and shrewd and quick, all of this and more in a second and still she was watching. She couldn’t look away.  

Character Sketch Series - #1

A brief introduction: I'm developing some character sketches for short story work, so will be posting several of these over the coming days/weeks. Really they're just experiments in creating (hopefully) believable and interesting characters in a relatively short section of prose, and seeing how they could be developed along with their suggested storyline. Your thoughts and comments are desired and welcome!

#1

Mrs Lesley Broomfield was out watering her tomatoes as the grey silent dawn lifted out of the sea, and stealthily crept over the shore. Its watery light sprinkled the dappled leaves of the apple tree before daring to shed precious drops along the lawn, coming to rest on Mrs Broomfield’s blue-clad shoulders. Her husband was still asleep, she thought, deadheading a few roses with rough fingers. 

Yes, he was asleep, and that was comforting. She might take him coffee, might watch him for a moment and trace the lines of youth yet found in his face, might remember a day years ago and find a smile. And yet, she fretted, as she boiled the kettle, perhaps she shouldn’t disturb him. She unscrewed the coffee jar.

By the time Lesley Broomfield mounted the stairs, trepidatious, green mug in hand, the bed upstairs was empty. She saw the smoothed cover, the dented pillow, the book’s curled pages, the lampshade’s dust.

‘Will?’

Her voice was tentative, strained. The wardrobe was open, the briefcase missing.

‘Will?’

She clasped the mug handle tighter, fingered her cardigan button, stared into the empty bedroom. She would have to live with her sister. ‘He had a will of his own,’ they would pun cruelly at The Lion. The woman at the post office would stare when she went in. She would be a nameless tragedy, wandering the streets in her blue anorak, no one to carry her shopping for her.

The bathroom door creaked, and a man in a towel tapped her on the shoulder.

‘Is that coffee for me?’

She handed it to him wordlessly, received a mumbled thanks, gazed with silent relief at his retreating figure. She wouldn’t move to the valley. She would stay here, and still be Mrs Broomfield, watering tomatoes at dawn.