papersquare 006: Death and flowers

Everyone who'd met Angela would have described her as a hard woman.  Whether they meant hard to like, or hard in attitude was a moot point, but hard was definitely the right adjective for her.  Occasionally, a kindly colleague said, "Oh, Angela, poor thing, she's had a hard life," without being clear of the details.  Angela didn't share details with the other librarians, she spent her breaks reading the newspaper while others gossiped.

Angela blamed her parents.  An only child to Lorna and David, it was their fault, she supposed.  Whether the issue was nature or nurture, it was still down to them.  Her dad's prominent jawline and her mothers receding forehead gave her face the impression of obstinacy, so much of an impression that Angela felt she had no choice but to become obstinate after growing up. 

They were a vague couple too, and Angela was a largely bewildered child, not knowing how to live up to expectations that weren't ever expressed. Dad saying that perhaps she should try to go and play outside, spend more time with the other kids, and Mum counteracting, telling her she must get her homework done before she could consider just playing.  But then Mum would smile dreamily when Angela came in from playing in the dens at the edge of the woods, and Dad would tell her to change into a nice dress when Grandpa came around, his little girl should be a princess and not a hoyden.

When Angela sulkily squeezed into her teenage years, she had the feeling she was better behaved and more adult than either of her parents.  Rows were common then, one or the other was away from home for several nights on end, flouncing or sneaking out depending on what statement each wanted to make at the time.  Banged doors and loudly hissing "I'm leaving" generally meant Mum drama-queening, wanting Dad to persuade her to stay.  Dad was more distant, gone, sometimes a phone call to explain, but sometimes not; and when he came home he smiled that smug smile where his top lip disappeared and wanted to be asked about where he had been.  Angela made her meals, and did her homework, and read books in her room.  She didn't have friends around too often, but then she didn't have too many friends.

The lowest point for Angela was when she left to go to university.  With a great deal of relief and almost glee, Mum and Dad sat her down and told her they would be divorcing, that at one point they had loved each other very much, but that was in the past.  But of course, that they had stayed together for her sake. Now that she was considered done, completed , they could finally skitter off in their separate ways. 

After shouting that they should have divorced years ago, that being a bloody parent to them had ruined her childhood, Angela hardly spoke to either of them.  Dad made an effort to phone her every month or so, and Mum would breeze down to university digs with a new beau in tow each term.  Things settled down from acrimony to civility over time, but Angela remained hard.

One break time in the library, reading the newspaper a couple of weeks after her Mum's funeral, Angela smiled, having discovered the perfect revenge.   Sorting out the paperwork didn't take too long, and when it arrived, she called Tony, her Mum's last boyfriend. And really, it was pathetic for a sixty five year old pensioner to call himself a BOYfriend.  He was suitably horrified when told him what she'd done.
"I've just been granted an exhumation licence, Tony," she said.  "Dad is going to be dug up from Bradlenown church, and reburied next to Lorna.  They'll have to spend all eternity together now."

Quietude

A small small English town, barely even a village, peaceful in the early morning sunshine. I got off the ferry and drove here, in the opposite direction to all the lorries bursting to offload their produce from the continent. I notice how I think of it as Mainland now, more central to the world than the country I grew up in. Ich bin auf der Insel. Friends excuse me, when I do something 'odd', like not wearing a jacket first thing in the fresh morning when I know I will be inside all day, watching the sunshine warm up the tarmac and concrete around the office, they say, 'Oh she is from the Island,' as if my peripheral position is in itself enough to explain strangeness.

The small English town has a long shingle and sand beach, spiked with dark wooden groynes to prevent the coast from taking a Sunday stroll down to the next village, and from there, maybe even across the Channel to the old enemy, France. This morning though, there are very few people around, it is early, for England, around 7am. I would already have been in the office back home, but here, a couple of joggers, and a couple of sprightly pensioners out for a morning walk are the only people I see. The road along the beach is also mostly undisturbed by cars.

I would not have driven here, even for the beauty of the beach, if I had not been here before as a destination, and if I had not had 10 hours before my next 'appointment'. The beach huts are a couple of miles up the promenade from the faded hotel and guest houses. A couple of miles away from where my great-aunt had lived, and the house where my mother was born. There is a photograph of me here in the swimming pool car park at the age of sixteen, all bleached curls, towering over my brother who at fourteen had yet to put on his growth spurt to reach his six-foot-plus adult height. The huts back on to the swimming pool.

Even so, the town is not really familiar to me, in those days it was a good six hours drive from the parental home, longer if we had the caravan on the back, and after sixteen I begged to be left at home, for what teenage girl wants to spend time cooped up in a caravan with parents and brothers? I remembered that as a young child, we had come here and I had slept in my great-aunts house. I remembered the garden, and the path that led behind a tiny sports club, with corrugated tin fences. It took less than three minutes to get to the beach from her house. She left it though, towards the end of her life, moved to sheltered accommodation around the corner together with her husband, they were in a familiar place even if the rooms were not.

She had cool paper tissue skin, and a particular scent or perfume, I don't know which one it was, perhaps the smell of her face powder, but together it gave her a subtle beauty, a distinctiveness that seemed all her. Quiet and almost elegant, not breathtaking but peaceful, something calming. Whether it was her age or just her I don't really know. The small town has the same qualities, neat but not ostentatious, pretty but not eye-catching. Seeing it in repose, quietude.



For Muriel
more pictures here (scroll down)