Now It Was

It was twenty-one miles between the station and the house, so I had to forewarn them. I had attempted the journey once with a delightful ignorance, however my Smart Phone could now explained a lot as to why that heedless quest had been so testing. I also hadn’t made things any easier for myself by wearing flip flops, in October, during a rainstorm. I couldn’t blame only my choice of footwear, most of my time and energy was consumed by the rucksack I made from old sherbet coloured pillowcases, amateurly bound together with hemp thread. After a mile or so it had become more of a shoulder bag, by mile eight it had demoted itself to a clutch. Cotton supposedly becomes stronger when wet, but a sixteen year olds loose hemp stitching does not. Hairy strands unravelled leaving gaping holes for the heavy jars of homemade marmalade to escape, so I had to stop every ten minutes or so to push one of the glassy bottoms back inside. There were no casualties. The marmalade was stolen out of necessity, and also vengeance. At the time I didn’t know it had been made from the fruit born on a tree that flourished in the decomposing corpse of the house Grandmother. I was just getting into the swing of being a spiteful sixteen year old and poaching the still warm jars of fresh marmalade my mother had cooked up especially for that evening made the distorted view of an adolescent feel as though she were restoring balance in the universe; even if it was by the unwitting consumption of cadaver fruit. I knew it would bring disappointment to the residence of the house because that weekend was a ritual that was held every October at the end of British summer time. A vital object for the ceremony was marmalade on toast, the importance of which was only explained to me once I’d left the house. Everyone would sit in the conservatory, thick green smoke stifling the spider plants and succulents, deep red root chakra crystals placed as close to ones genitals as possible while they stuffed their faces with buttery toast slathered in the marmalade my mother was so skilled at stewing. They would then discuss in great detail their new affirmation that Grandmother had gifted them with for this winter. I was too young to attend, until the year I decided to peace out.

Olaf had just started taking place in the ritual because he was three years older than me. A looming insect of a teenager with cystic acne and elbows so sharp they could cut glass. After each ritual Olaf would emerge from the conservatory with rosy cheeks, burps bubbling in his throat like he belonged in a pond. Ahhh, Olaf would sigh contently with a grin, patting at his belly like an ogre. What was going on in there? I had no idea what any of this meant and I didn’t want to find out. I was now an adult so I was obliged to begin attending myself, the very night that I decided to flee, in fact. 

When I got to London my Aunty Patty picked me up from the police station, paid my ticket fine and then showed me what real shoes felt like. Patty introduced me to the ‘real world’ as she liked to call it. Delighted to have me there she showed me what daily showers felt like, which was probably my number one ‘real world’ customary. Patty also showed me how to make showers especially refreshing by sucking on an Imperial Mint at the same time. Mind and airwaves blown. Patty had moved to the minty fresh ‘real world’ after Grandmother passed away peacefully in her sleep and Patty couldn’t agree with the house on what to do with the body. She married a rich old man who hadn’t illegally decomposed a ninety two year old woman for fertiliser (that she knew of). A feminist move, she said, was manipulating men for their money - an untold feminist weapon, apparently. This all happened before I was born, of course, so Patty filled in the colourful details about the meaning behind the rituals and also the reason why she made me throw out the marmalade gift I had brought her. After my dear Aunty’s death my snivelling cousins who’d remained silent the whole 10 years I had lived with Patty, appeared with their dentistry career white teeth and decided to ‘sell-up’. It didn’t matter, though, because by that point I myself, an ex-hippy-commune girl thriving in the real world, had found me a rich man to manipulate, I mean marry. In all honesty, manipulation was too hard work for me; it was easier to simply fall in love. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a nymphomaniac who cheated on me, a lot. His count was seven hundred and fifty two. I was thoroughly impressed by his veracious count, albeit unimpressed by the chlamydia.

So, it turned out London wasn’t a friendly place for a jobless woman with a bogus degree, no home, no husband and a hook nose. After contemplating finding a pimp, I decided to spend my last fifty pounds on a chicken and avocado panini and a train ticket.

‘Hi, Dad.’ I strained a chipper note, wheeling my Louis Vuitton suitcase along the platform to a man in a brown leather jacket and flares. A few side glances from commuters confirmed in my mind that he looked like the ghost of Charles Manson. My Dad was far from a murderous cult leader though, the only thing he had lead in his life was a drum circle, and that was only because Clare was on her period and her menstrual flow rhythm would contaminate the drumming rhythm for the men.

‘Clem!’ I was downwind from his beard. It smelled like sheds and cauliflower. I still gave him a hug though because he was my father after all. ‘You’re so fat!’

*

The passenger side of Dad’s truck was filled to the roof with boxes of Christmas cheese. He had offered to move them but this stench needed its own seat if it wanted to compete with my fathers never-been-washed leather jacket. So I opted to sit in the open back, where oxygen roamed freely. However, it was October so I probably ate around eleven daddy-long legs during the fifteen minute drive. The town seemed familiar but like a dream, my memory of it foggier than the dirty grey film that was spreading across the purple sky. Some new shops had popped up and the place definitely looked a lot busier than I remembered. It almost appeared to be thriving. A stylist couple, decorated with Ray-bans, countryside tweed and padded gilets, sat outside a French cafe at a round plastic table sipping from porcelain thimbles. I smiled at them because they looked like my people but they gave me a look of disgust as I rolled past in the back of the pick-up truck, hair whipping around my face, lacquered with strings of my own saliva. The supermarket who we used to supply locally grown vegetables to in exchange for canned food had transformed into a Co-Op. Beyond the glassy front, green jacketed teenagers expressionlessly scanned pre-cooked packets of rice and bottles of wine to men in suits. In suits. As we rolled further out of town things started to look a lot more familiar, the Tyre shop was still there at the corner before the dirt alley that lead you down a white knuckle twisting route to the Victorian manor house, surrounded by fields and our private allotments. 

I didn’t remember the house from the outside. The front door had fallen off so we stepped over the propped up hardboard that apparently adjusted into a door at night to keep out the moths. I didn’t remember the house from the inside. The hallway was a maze of hip high boxes, stacked to the base of the stairs. This wasn’t the house I remembered. It was too quiet, for starters.

‘Your skirt!’ Mum appeared in the archway of the kitchen, her gypsy sleeves held in the crease of her elbows. ‘You’re so fat!’ Being fat was a compliment here. Having muffin-tops meant that you were consuming and resting enough, which was the epitome of a stress free life. There is that struggle (unknown to me) whereby a child is unable to live up to their parents expectations of them, and all I had to do was show up as a representative for gluttony and apathy to win parental approval. A model hippy child. I didn’t need to explain that my weight was actually down to me comforting eating Cheesy Doritos in front of Sex and the City re-runs.

‘Where is everyone?’ I asked through her wild bun, a crown of grey that tumbled soft spirals over my face. I could only hear Dad huffing and puffing as he unloaded another box on top of the last. 

‘What do you mean?’ Mum pulled back and started licking her fingers, no doubt having smeared whatever it was down the back of my All Saints jacket.

‘The gang.’ I made a peace sign and immediately regretted it.

‘By gang’ She made her peace signs derisive with bunny-ears ‘do you mean Clare and Don?’ I followed her into the kitchen so I could hear the end of that sentence.

‘Are they the only ones in?’

‘They’re in the conservatory painting.’ The kitchen had been painted Sky blue, everything was blue, even the kettle. Some of the cabinet doors were swinging from their hinges, others were threatened to behave by blocks of wood hammered to the side of them. However used the kitchen was, it looked loved. Mum was standing at the central counter that was covered in beech boards and the mucky snouts of various vegetables. She scattered a mixture of seeds in to the huge wooden bowl of salad, and then brushed her hands together to free the linseeds from her palms, sticky with whatever was on my jacket.

‘And Olaf?’ I asked, routinely but thick with curiosity nevertheless.

‘Who’s Olaf?’ Her confused expression was diluted with mild amusement.

‘I’m sure that was his name. Why are you being so strange? Whats happened to everyone?’ Here it comes. ‘Did everyone leave for the real world?’

‘There is no real world.’ I saw her rich hazel eyes reflect more of the sunset, she blinked it away. ‘Your father and I were very lonely without you.’ She jumped up backwards onto the deep set window sill and I noticed how petite my mother actually was, sat there swinging her tan legs like a child peering out at the purple sky. It had started to rain.

‘How could you have been lonely?’

‘What is wrong with you, Clem?’ Her nose, that was my nose, had gone red.

‘Nothing!’ I was too frustrated to keep a lid on things like I usually could. She winced and Dad appeared, red faced but for another reason. His look of concern was healed by a single slow blink from Mum and he obediently disappeared. The silence thickened until I heard some scuttling in the hall and two people manifested in the kitchen arch, differing in height but both wearing the same sized overalls; dashed head to toe in Sky blue paint. The man was like a balding hedgehog and the woman a dirty blonde warrior in leopard print leggings.

‘Is this Clem?’ The warrior whispered loudly, a smile battling her wrinkles. Mum replied with another slow blink, was she suddenly telepathic or something? The woman gave me a hug, the smell of rose and patchouli failing to cover her natural warriors musk and I knew it was Clare. She pulled back and scanned my face in great detail, afternoon-nip whiskey breath crept out her yellow grin.

‘We missed you Clemmy!’ The hedgehog, who must have been Don, gave me a pat on the small of my back because he was a miniature man with T-Red arms: he wasn’t made for hugging. ‘Lovely!’ He looked at my jacket, showing me he had enough teeth to get by. If Don knew who All Saints were I would eat the sleeves right off my jacket, but he was probably commenting more on how I contrasted their earthy tones with my grey city tones.

‘My daughter is a lawyer.’ Dad had finished unloading the car and joined us. The size of the kitchen seemed a lot smaller, I backed up a little towards the window where Mum sat although not really wanting to get too close like she were a cornered hissing cat. Everyone else blocked the exit, gazing over me like a rare bird in the wild. I began to feel my chest tighten, plus the smell of the weed on Dad’s breath was triggering what my Therapist called Paranoia PTSD. I never smoked any drugs when I lived with my parents, but apparently you can still get the effects from passive smoking. Which was very easy to do as a child in this house.

‘I’m not a lawyer. I’m a receptionist for a firm.’ I step back a little more, towards the mug cabinet. ‘And I got fired.’ I had told Dad most of this on the trip over but by the smell of him he had clearly muddled some of the facts with the recent tokes he’d just had. Mum hopped off the window sill and landed lightly. She walked over to me and stretched past my face into the cabinet behind me. In her hands was a mug that she held as though it were a relic. Well, it kind of was. It was my Miss Piggy mug. Miss Piggy had been my idol growing up. Miss Piggy was a multi-dimensional titan, who come to think of it didn’t look far off Clare. Sometimes she was a hippy, sometimes she was a lawyer, she showed me what it was like to be anything and everything in the same body.

‘Welcome home, baby.’ Mum’s tone had transformed, which wasn’t unusual for her. She handed me the mug, a chip on the rim by the handle from the time it took a tumble down two flights of stairs at the exact time of a crash of thunder because an eight year old had better use for her hands as ear muffs. I remember being low-key impressed by it’s durability, taking it upon myself to aspire to also remain unscathed through dramatic experiences. This was the first time I had held the mug since I had placed it on the shelf after my last cup of hickory and soya milk. I followed the sharp divot down to a blackening hairline fracture that channeled between Miss Piggy who was dressed as a 1920s flapper and Kermit who held binoculars over his joyful expression, for some obscure reason. I realised I hadn’t even noticed that Kermit had been on the mug.

‘Where’s Olaf? And everyone else?’ I asked Clare this time, maybe she’d know where her son reigned.

‘What do you mean, dear?’ Clare pulled the same face Mum had twisted at me, apart from her nose was more the shape of a cabbage. I tightened my grip around the mug, feeling my hands becoming warmer, wetter. At that point Clare exclaimed: ‘Oh Oscar!’ with a brightness behind her eyes. ‘He works for the council in town now. He’s on his way over for the ritual, actually.’ And then from the corner of her mouth, ‘He’s paying to fix this place up!’

‘We don’t even need to use the generator anymore!’ Dad threw fists of celebration above him and knocked blue buds out a bunch of parched lavender that hung weightlessly from the bulb-less chandelier.

‘We’re going into business!’ Mum smiled and took Dad’s hand, kissed it. ‘A B&B!’

‘So everyone’s left then?’

‘I think perhaps our Clementine needs a sweet tea.’ Clare began to busy herself in a cupboard that was overflowing with boxes of open teabags and jars of loose herbs, she sniffed a couple and coughed.

‘No one left apart from you and Oscar.’ Mum made a chain by taking my hand now. ‘This is everyone.’

‘Hellooooo!’ A deep voice booms down the hallway, the kind of voice that belongs to a superhero.

‘Oh no, this is everyone!’ Clare sang backwards down the hallway, ‘In here Os.’

A man with dark lashes and an army haircut slipped an olive green jacketed arm around Clare’s shoulders and bent in to give her a kiss on her ruddy cheek. He was taller than Clare which I didn’t think was possible for the human species.

‘Wow, is this Clemmy?’ He blinds me with his teeth, a contrast to his melting chocolate eyes.

I looked back to Mum hoping to receive reassurance this creation before me was not an illusion, but she had her back to the kitchen, slightly humped over the counter and struggling with something. A sudden pop and she turned, holding out a thick glass jar filled to the brim with chunks of glistening amber. The grassy sweetness of orange danced in to the air playfully, the warmth of ginger tugging at my nose hairs; pleading me to let the curtain drop.

The kitchen was now humming with voices and bustled with lunchtime preparations. Oscar leaned in towards me and whispered, ‘It’s good to see you again,’ peppermint on his breath.   

The End.