At the bench I smiled sheepishly. “Hey there yourself, you’re in my spot.” I teased.
“Plenty of room for two.” She patted the space beside her but didn’t bother to remove the gold box of Marlboro Lights that stored weightless nicotine lungs. The ducks argued amongst themselves. I sat down, undid a few buttons of my coat to allow myself to breathe. I took in her side profile and realised then Mrs Harris had once been a looker with her emerald eyes, charming gap-toothed, wonky smile and high cheekbones. With white hair that was reminiscent of snow, hers was a sly beauty, which made it even more attractive in my eyes.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Taking a break from something?”
“Aren’t we all usually trying to take a break in some way my dear? From routine, the cards we’ve been dealt. I was talking to the water.” She took another draw from her cigarette, blew smoke that curled into a root before disappearing.
I laughed. “You’re crazy.”
“It’s true,” she exclaimed wisely. “The water never lies. How do you think I knew you were in trouble that day? It was the water that alerted me, not just dropping my ring. The pipes had been clanging and hissing in a really odd, persistent way. I stopped by to hear if you were having the same problem and of course Buddy going missing gave me the perfect excuse.”
“That’s unnerving,” I said.
“Maybe, but it did happen that way. When you didn’t answer that second time, I let myself in with your spare key. I found you and the bath water was still running.”
I thought of her discovering me on the cold, chessboard linoleum floor. One Queen Piece in a limp heap, watering roots the eye couldn’t see, staining her forever with my blood, strange how you could inexplicably bond with someone by trying to slip away.
She threw another piece of bread at the ducks. “How are you doing?”
I shook my head, wanting to cry on her shoulder. “Oh you know, trying to breathe. Do you think becoming increasingly isolated can make someone see things in a distorted way?” I turned to face her fully, edging my body closer. She pinned me with an intense, luminous gaze. As though she could see what I meant behind the question.
“You mean like some people who for whatever reason don’t connect to others, lose their moral compass and become serial killers?”
“Well, not exactly, I’m not struggling with a lack of moral compass. I’m-”
“You meant losing touch with reality?” she interjected.
I blew out a tense breath. “Something’s shifted; I can feel it in the air. I’m anxious about being alone in my own flat. Once or twice I’ve woken up in the middle of the night thinking I’m having a fucking heart attack.”
“It’s not the flat, wherever you were, you’d have this issue. You see the grooves in that?” She pointed at the nearest tree, hand trembling. “What do you see?”
I studied the fat trunk, already leaning against a harsh wind to come, the pattern of swirls. “I see a sad girl with legs that don’t feel like her own.”
“Really? I see a resurrection and it’s not Jesus.” She smiled thinly, laugh lines deepening. “So who do you think is right?” she asked.
“I don’t know, both of us. Neither of us?”
She took my arm gently, held my gaze. “People like you and I sometimes find ourselves embracing different realities. There’s a beauty in it. It’s like having a key.”
Her eyes glowed and I felt their pull. For a moment she wasn’t a sweet, older woman. She looked feral and other worldly. Then the flames in her pupils shrank and she let go of my arm, flicking her cigarette butt away coolly. The noise of traffic grew louder, threatening to break into our green oasis.
“It doesn’t seem fair; you know this big thing about me. I don’t know enough about you. Pretend we’re strangers, tell me something true.” I instructed.
“I used to be an escape artist.”
“Tell me a lie.”
“I used to be an escape artist,” she sputtered, biting her amusement down.
“Come on!” I whined. “Play along.”
“Okay. My father was a Scotsman, tall and arrogant, a Doctor. My mother was Romany, a free spirit, what they call a gypsy. They were as different as two people could be but my father fell in love. His family were horrified; he married her anyway. He said it had been like something came over him.”
“What happened?”
“It turns out she wasn’t the marrying or motherly kind. Oh she was beautiful and had this mysterious quality that drew people. She could be kind but she was selfish, self-possessed. She took what she wanted from people without an afterthought. I’m not sure what world she was from.”
“What did you want from her?” I asked.
“What any child would want I suppose. To know her more, be loved by her, it became increasingly difficult, my parents… they had terrible arguments. At times it felt like the whole house shook.” She paused, reaching for things long buried then continued. “My mother liked the company of men very much you see and that caused even more quarrels. Over a certain period of time, she started coming home with strange cuts and bruises.” Mrs Harris shook, touched by a memory. “There were woods near where we lived and sometimes she’d arrive home from there covered in bruises, chanting bizarre things nobody knew the meaning of. One night when I was twelve, she left while we were asleep. Not even a note, I never saw her again.”
She ignored what must have been pity on my face, patted my thigh reassuringly. “In the years to come, I felt like I’d dreamt her. In a way you’re luckier than me, you can make your mother indelible.”
The silence shrouded us in a deepening vacuum. There was no more bread left; Mrs Harris crumpled a white plastic bag before shoving it in her pocket. The ducks had begun to gnaw at shadows of passers by and pond water lapped at the curved lines of their bodies. The trail of white crumbs scattered into nothing. Maybe my mother was indelible, in the crackle of coppery gold autumnal leaves, in the slipstream bearing the ripples of a familiar looking back, in my one winged arm as I held the edge of a dark sky by mouth.
“Also, I’m celebrating.” Mrs Harris remarked, breaking the silence. “It’s the anniversary.”
“Congratulations. What’s the anniversary?”
“It’s the date I was discharged from Bedlam.” This was revealed casually, in the same way a person would say, “Pass the salt.”
“You mean Bedlam the psychiatric hospital?”
“The very same. I even wrote a poem on that day:
Once I had a spell in Bedlam,
Dancing beneath a hat,
They came for me goggle eyed,
Wearing the whites of angels.
This was followed by a bitter chuckle. I was stunned into silence. Mad butterflies, I thought. Now that the water knew secrets, it wore the glint of daggers. Bathed in another silence and connected by the mottled umbilical chord of lost mothers we stared at the water, lulled by its gentle, deceptive motion.
Talking Heads
Windswept and ashen, Mrs Harris stood on my doorstep flickering like the flame on the candle I held. Blanketed by night, her white hair shone even more ferociously. She’d thrown on a black hooded jacket over green pinstriped pyjamas. Glancing at windows of the other houses it was clear the power cut had affected the whole street, I saw the dim glow of candlelight silently breathing against glass in many of them.
“Are you okay?” I asked, ushering her in. “You look sick.”
“It’s these terrible headaches I get occasionally. God! They’re worse than migraines, as though someone’s sawing my head in two.” She shrugged her jacket off, trailing behind me and slung it over the sofa. “I don’t have any candles you see, it’s horrible lying in the dark alone like that with an ice pack on your head.” Her voice was croaky and sleep lined, as if she’d just woken up. It was after 11pm. I’d lit the sitting room using fat candles that burned the scent of orange blossoms into the air. Some of my mother’s old photographs were strewn on the small, wooden side table in a weird time line. The TV sulked quietly and half a glass of green ginger wine promised warmth, sweetness and spice.