julia 2

The train has stopped and I have only just noticed. We are at Portsmouth and Southsea. The man opposite checks his watch and huffs.  He does a lot of that.  I pity his wife. I know intuitively he has a boring wife as opposed to a lively partner because of the paper he reads, the clothes he wears and the way he looked at me as only a frustrated heterosexual man could do.  His hidden lust barely buried, and betrayed by the focus of his eyes that even when scolding me fell briefly upon my breasts. He is mid sixties, with the face of a wizened cherub. His hair is short and has that crinkly coiffured look. He wears a blue blazer with gold buttons and the inevitable grey trousers and black patent leather shoes.  He could be a shop assistant in an old fashioned clothing store except he has a worn briefcase, no doubt presented to him by his doting father on his eighteenth birthday half a century ago.  The briefcase suggests an office job of some sort.  He has never been to an orgy I have no doubt of that.  Oh my god, my mind, why does it do this?  I shudder at the thought of where it has led me, and to divert myself check my ticket. 

When we finally arrive at Portsmouth Harbour the train is late.  A guard shouts ‘Hurry on down the platform for the Isle of Wight ferry!’  Everyone makes an attempt at running. Most of the passengers it seems lead sedentary lives, giving the impression of wounded Impala fleeing a pack of fit lions.  I have this instant image of them desperate to cross the Solent as though it were a croc infested river in Africa.  The coiffured man tries to retain his dignity by maintaining a stiff back and ends up mincing down the platform.  It doesn’t work.   

The ferry journey is uneventful.  To the children on board it is exiting, to regular the commuter it is blatantly boring and to the elderly it is a mixture of a dangerous balancing act and an assault course.   The highlight of the journey for a number of passengers is the huge American aircraft carrier moored outside the harbour apparently unable to travel up the estuary due to its immense draft.  The USS George Washington is the size of a small town and painted battleship grey has all the presence of the death bringer that it is.  It is a floating ‘Death Star’ and I feel a sense of outrage that it should be allowed to moor in UK waters carrying as it does nuclear and other strategic weapons which will be aimed and possibly fired at defenceless human beings.  I realize I am in a minority, and that the city of Portsmouth will not feel the same as I do as it will no doubt be the recipient of hundreds of thousands of US dollars during the ship’s stay. My opinion is confirmed in a very basic way when I hear a young man behind me say to his friend in a not so quiet voice ‘there will be a lot of happy whores during the next week or two.’  Whores and happiness do not go together in my book but I understand what he means.  To the clicking of cameras and the scanning of I phones we pass by at a safe distance.  When I was younger I would have been protesting on the quayside with placards saying ‘Warmongers not welcome’ ‘Go Home Yanks’ or similar. Now I am older I just think it.  I have learned to accept that this is what happens.  There is a dreadful realization that nothing can change the establishment. The energetic optimism of youth gives way to protesting via social media, where we all say a lot but do nothing.  The violent arrest has turned into the pathetic click of the send button. I look away and try to come to terms with who I have become, with my acceptance of a world with which I still seem to be out of kilter.  I am too tired to protest nowadays, and too savvy to think that I can change anything. Or at least that is the current mantra I use to excuse myself.   

My mother lives on the edge of a rocky outcrop at the bottom of the Island. The house is perched above a bay facing South.  It is old, tired and its roof tiles flake off in the winter winds, never to be replaced.  The chimney stacks are tall and slightly bowed, their elegant brickwork having been pushed by a century or more of sea wind and like the trees and bushes of the garden below submit to its prevailing direction. Beneath the uncertain roof the body of the house fares no better.  Mimicking sunburned skin the layered paintwork peels and reveals an ancient undercoat of naked pink hopelessly pretending to protect the original wood. In places this too has gone and the aged timber has a blackened texture where rot has crept in. The walls are a mix of wood framing and pebbledash and the sash windows are draughty and their balance weights have dropped, the ropes in the sash boxes have decayed making it almost impossible to lift or drop them satisfactorily.  As a result they rattle in the slightest breeze as if they are in league with the wind whose aim it seems is to unnerve the visitor.  They ask why you are staying, what is your business, and how long you are going to be around. Cove House was once an elegant Georgian summer residence but the last time I was there it had turned into a piece of the landscape, wind blown, gnarled and twisted much like it’s owner. 

It was all father’s fault of course or so my mother said.  He had left her for that ‘whore’ and she was left with the bills.  Not quite true.  He had left her for Nancy, a quiet domesticated, kindly woman who was no closer to a whore than the Pope is to Jesus. Mother had been given almost all they owned in the ensuing separation but she still insisted my father had walked off with everything. Perhaps she was right in a strange way for he had walked off with himself, and he was everything.  I remember the first time that entered a dead persons house and suddenly realized what she meant. What is left behind is devoid of meaning because the person who gave it that meaning has gone.  It is as if their energy energises the very fabric of the walls, the furniture, the carpets and the linen. Once that is gone, so has the home’s vicarious life. 

I'm thinking these things when my phone rings. I'm in a taxi and the drivers head turns almost imperceptably to one side. It's my sister on the line.

‘Hello, Julia?’  Her voice is its usual reticent self.  

‘Yes?’  I deliberately say nothing else.

‘Where are you?’ I don’t know why, but she always makes me goad her.

‘In a taxi’ I reply.

‘Oh….Yes, but where?’

‘On the Island, heading towards Ventnor.’  She’s going to suggest we meet up before going to mothers, I know it.  She doesn’t want to arrive alone.

‘I need to speak to you before..’ The line crackles, the signal is breaking. I catch a few disjointed words.  They sound like.

‘Brian…. Six months….living..’  It doesn’t mean anything.

‘I can’t hear you Valerie, the line isn’t any good.’

‘Can you hear me Julia?’ Her voice sounds distraught.

‘Sorry Valerie’ I say, and just in case she can hear something ‘I’ll speak to you later at the house.’    I switch the phone off.  The taxi driver who has obviously been listening to every word pipes up.

‘It’s the Undercliff. You can’t get a good signal around here. If I am listening to the radio it suddenly goes French.  Hopeless.’

‘Yes I know, I have lived here on and off for years.’ I say this in a clipped voice that I immediately regret.  The closer I get to mother the more like her I seem to become.

The rest of the journey, which isn’t long, is spent in silence.  The taxi driver’s energy is not good, having been rebuffed for a second time.  The first was when he tried to tell me that the American aircraft carrier was a splendid site to which I replied ‘not if you are from Iraq.’  I am not good at keeping my mouth shut, or as the gentle Buddhists would have it ‘keeping Noble Silence.’

The green of the Botanic Gardens soon comes into sight and at the Cricket Ground and the driver stops. 

‘This is it.’ he says.

‘Yes, thank you.’ I reply, this time in a deliberately polite voice. He has been the unfortunate recipient of my growing anxiety. 

‘£18.00 please.’  Eighteen pounds!? I can’t quite get me head around the figure. That’s as much as a meal in a decent restaurant.  I inwardly curse but say nothing. I am not up for a fight, not before seeing my mother. I hand him a £20 pound note and tell him to keep the change. I can’t be bothered to watch him deliberately search for coins. I pick up my bag and without further adieu leave the car.

The walk takes me no more than three minutes.  Alongside the Cricket Ground with its huge white screens, under some tall Macrocarpa Trees, up the slope and around a narrowing hedge lined path, and I am almost there. 

What greets me almost takes the legs from under me.  I am an artist, I live for the visual aspects of life. I remember the slightest details of my surroundings.  So when I come around the corner and am faced with a house which is my mothers but at the same time is not, I am stunned.  Everything is perfect, the roof, the paintwork, the windows, even the small garden leading to the front door.  It is as if someone has transplanted a spotless version of Cove House in place of the old one.  The overwhelming feeling I have is that my past has been wiped. Someone has painted over the old canvas, reused it, and created something totally alien to me.  This is not where I belong, it is not the family home, my mother does not live here.  I actually look around to make sure I am in the right location.  There is no mistake. I cannot help it, I mouth a loud ‘Fuck!’

The rickedy old front door with the verdegris fittings is now painted a splendid white, the brass shines warm gold and the cracked stained glass panels have been replaced. I stand on the step staring in disbelief. How has this happened?  What the hell is going on?  I raise the knocker and let it fall. It gives that familiar dull thud. Thank god for that I think. No one answers. I let it fall again.  In the distance I hear my mothers voice. She is talking to someone asking them to do something, is it Valerie?  A shadow person lurks up the corridor towards the door. As the door widens my mouth opens with it in a idiot pose as ‘he’ appears before my eyes.  It is the man with the coiffured hair from the train.  He looks at me and I at him as if we are both mad. Neither of us say anything. I hear my mother’s mouth flapping towards the door. 

‘Oh it is Julia, I thought it would be. Have you introduced yourself  Brian?’ The man squeezes a smile out of his taught face and says ‘pleased to meet you’ at the same time offering his hand. I mistake the gesture and hand him my bag. He seems surprised but takes it. He defers to my mother, seemingly pleased to hand over to her.

‘Who is he?’ I ask in a voice too loud to be polite.

‘Are you talking about Brian?’  knowing that I must be, as there are no other men present.

‘I’ll tell you all about Brian when you are settled in’ she replies.  I notice that Brian is wearing slippers, that he is not a casual visitor.

‘Oh, I see’ I reply.  Not really seeing at all.

‘I’ve put you in the guest bedroom’ she says nonchalantly.  The guest bedroom?  I am in a state of shock.  What is happening?  Where am I, on another planet, in a parallel universe?  Nothing is making sense anymore.  This is the family home. I have my room, I have always had the same one.  Through thick and thin, lies and deception, war and peace I have always had my room. And now I am in the guest bedroom? What does that mean?  This spotlessly clean and newly decorated house is only recognizable because it retains the dimensions of the old one.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask. My mother looks at me with a face that I recognize from long ago.  It says, You are a child and I am the adult, I will not answer your pointless questions.

‘We'll have dinner at seven.  Valerie will be here by then and we can all catch up.’         

From the window of ‘the guest bedroom’ the sea looks familiar.  You can’t change the sea, although if it were possible I am sure she would have done so.  It remains a wild grey-blue streaked with white tops and covered with cloud shadows that chase one another. The shock of this new house has left me ungrounded.  I am a visitor, it no longer fits my memory and neither does she. For along with the house, she has subtly changed. As soon as she appeared at the front door I noticed her restyled hair and that she was wearing makeup. She hasn’t worn makeup for years, not unless she was going out for a meal or to the theatre.  I realize I need to speak to someone.  I have to express my dismay at what has happened.  I pick up my phone and start to dial before remembering that there is no signal at Cove House. Damn! I will have to wait until Valerie appears.  My mothers voice calls up the stairs,  ‘we are in the conservatory when you are ready!’

‘When I’m ready for what?’ I think.  For further revelations, shocks and confusion?

Before going down I freshen up.  The mirror on the dressing table shows me a version of myself that is slightly older than I care to remember. I like to convince myself that for a fifty year old woman I have still managed to retain my looks.  Blessed with a good bone structure my face used to be referred to as Elfin and this has filled out slightly so that I do not look dissimilar to Marie Helvin as she has aged. I have always had a conflict with my looks, for whilst in my youth it seemed a good thing to be reasonably attractive, as time went on there came the realization that men seemed to see me as fair game, as if the penalty for being who I was, was the constant need to rebuff their unwanted attention.  I was never under any illusion that it had anything to do with them wanting ‘all’ of me and was only to do with the parts they wanted to rifle. I believe they have Wasp DNA, and are attracted to anything they consider edible.  I wear light makeup, not always, but when I travel and when I work, and I like long dangling earrings or hoops.  Today I have beaded Ethiopian ones that are the deep rusty colour of dessert dust.  They go with the autumn Maple colours of my top that shout over my plain black jeans. Years ago I would have worn swirling skirts and cheesecloth tops, that I now see are back in fashion but I’ve been there before and don’t feel the need to go back.  My plan is to grow old gracefully and within the next year I have decided I shall stop dyeing my hair I will turn from deep brown to silver. From Marie Helvin to Emmylou Harris. The thought of such a transformation gives me a tingling feeling for I love a challenge and that will be one.           

Five minutes later I'm walking downstairs on the deep pile carpet that has replaced the old tatty one in an eerie silence that new carpet provides.  Even my footsteps are being written out of the place.  No wooden thump through the thin old floor coverings so familiar with that staircase.  I am becoming a ghost in this house and I don’t like the feeling. 

The conservatory faces the cove and the sea.  As with everything else it is now spotless, and is furnished with golden oatmeal woven cane furniture, safe and bland.  The plants which once lined the windows with their crusty desiccated leaves and cobwebs have long since gone and in their place are locally made hand thrown pots in duck egg blue which I know from experience are expensive. As if in homage to the dead, a vibrant plant of unknown origin stands in the corner filling the room with a tropical scent.

‘Come in Julia’ commands my mother in her headmistress voice. So it hasn’t all changed.  He hasn’t changed that. In my mind I can only form one scenario and that is that he is responsible for what is going on. Brian has to be the reason that it is all different.  He smiles at me but his eyes remain distant.  If you are going to fool someone you have to make your eyes smile too, he obviously doesn’t know this.

‘Sit over there’ she instructs.