by Freya North
Oh, yes! Remember that first week at University? How timid I was! Every one seemed so worldly and bright, they all seemed to play so hard and work so hard too! Look here!
15 October: I bet I don’t make any friends. I went to the Freshers’ Fair and joined nearly all the clubs, even the Winnie the Pooh Club, whatever that might be. No one seems quite my type but I’m willing to talk to anyone really, at this stage. We were given our timetable. Not very full, really, lots of free time in which we are to read, because we are ‘reading’ for our degrees, as Professor Wratchett said, rolling his ‘r’s. I’ve got three years ahead of me and Bristol seems pleasant enough. Haven’t spied any talent yet but I’m not looking for love of course. The Rambling Society are going on a weekend to North Devon, I wonder if I should go? I’m a paid-up member after all.
You did go, remember? And twisted your ankle but were too embarrassed to mention it so you grimaced your way through the rambles and tried to blot it out with a good sup of ale, which tasted foul but was the thing to do in the evenings.
Flipping in and out of the years, Sally dips in and out of the events in her life, as if she is chattering with someone she knows well and has not seen for years. She reminisces about drunken weekends in Devon, she rereads about hectic holidays on Greek islands, she remembers flatmates she would rather forget, she ponders on the whereabouts of friends not seen for years. The memories are fond and fun. Fun until one word assaults her eyes: Jamie.
Shuddering involuntarily, Sally has snapped shut the book and sits very still, eating chocolate distractedly. Come, come, Sally, the past is safe, the past has passed. Open the book, face the pages, face the past. Read out loud if it helps. A small voice filters through the room, reading flatly from pages written three years previously.
‘“I have to get out of this relationship, if you can call it that. Jamie frightens me but what frightens me more is my inability to say: ‘Stop. Go away.’ He hit me again and I apologized. I actually apologized. Why on earth did I do that? He accepted my apology – ungraciously of course – and sulked all evening. Predictably, we had sex later. Or at least he did. I didn’t want to but I didn’t dare say so. And my arm hurt throughout; it’s still bruised today. When he climaxes he’s like an animal, really base and vulgar. I can’t wait to get to the loo; we use condoms but I have to pee him away.
‘“He broke my little teapot, the one James bought for me before my finals. I said to him, ‘Be careful.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because it’s precious to me.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I told him and he slowly lifted it above his head and let it topple. It fell at my feet. The spout scuttled across the floor, a chip of china from the lid fell through the side of my shoe. I felt sure I was about to cry but I bit it back. Jamie laughed at me. I hated him for it. I hate him. Then he went all soft and said that it shouldn’t mean anything to me now, I am with him now. I wish I wasn’t. How do I get out of it? Where’s my strength?”’
I got out of it when he broke my nose. I covered him with blood. I was unconscious and woke and was sick and he thought I was seriously damaged so he called an ambulance and told them I’d fallen down the stairs even though I was living in a ground-floor flat.
It was that lovely nurse … what was her name?
‘Sister Watts. I’ll never forget.
She sat on your bed. He had visited with flowers and charm: there had not been a peep from you.
Sister Watts sat with me and just said, ‘You owe him nothing. You don’t have to stay. You’re far too precious. You owe it to yourself. Leave him.’
So you left! Brave girl!’
I severed all contact. I moved to Highgate. I have no idea where he is. It’s been a good three years. I don’t live in fear. It’s as if it happened to someone else. I rarely think of him.
Time has softened his blows, healed the wounds and faded the scars.
They are still there, you know.
We know.
I want Richard.
Call him.
‘Richie?’
‘My dotty spotty angel! My darling dalmatian! How are you?’
‘Don’t ask. I’m very contagious. I can’t go to school for two weeks. Oh, and I fainted too and wound up in hospital. But I think you know that.’
‘Do you have any calamine?’
‘No. But I’m not very itchy.’
‘Yet – that is. You will be. And you MUSTN’T SCRATCH.’
‘I know, I know, or I WILL SCAR.’
‘What say you that I pop to an all-night chemist and buy you some calamine?’
‘But I’m CON-TA-GIOUS.’
‘You are certainly that! I caught the Sally bug long ago and I just can’t shake it off.’
The definitive pregnant pause filled the room and broke the flow.
‘Sal?’ Richard enquired quietly.
‘I’m sorry I called,’ she faltered. ‘I shouldn’t’ve – called, that is. I … er. You see, I haven’t really thought about, you know, It,’ she mumbled.
‘Hush! Of course you haven’t,’ Richard chided gently.
‘You’ve hardly been compos mentis! Listen to me, Sal, I’m offering calamine. No strings attached – promise. I’ll just slip it through the letter box. You can even pay me, if it makes you feel easier.’
Half an hour later Sally hovers by the letter box. She is starting to itch. Itchy feet, itchy everything. She hears the purr of the Alfa Romeo, Richard’s assertive footsteps. Should she hide, open the door, peep through the curtain – what? The adrenalin is churning and her heart is heavy. She watches as the lid of the letter box flips up. She can hear Richard clearing his throat.
‘Richie?’ she whispers quickly. Crouching down, they can look eye to eye. They are shadows and the encounter has a dreamlike quality. They are latter-day Pyramus and Thisbe and the letter box serves as the chink in the wall. However, this is no midwinter night’s dream, this is the here and now. Sally has chicken pox and Richard is sitting on his heels outside her front door, trying to keep his balance.
‘You don’t look too bad at all!’ His voice is as lovely as the cool night air whispering through to her. ‘Not too bad at all.’
So Sally puts the light on and crouches down again. Richard now has spots before his eyes. Desperate to think of something diplomatic to say, he decides on, ‘Oh.’
Sally hastily switches the light off, buttons her spots away and slips back into the safe shadows. A bulky paper bag is jostled through the letter box. Richard’s knees ache like mad, cramp threatens in his calves but he daren’t tell her. Spots and all, he just wants to be near for as long as he can.
‘Thank you,’ she whispers.
‘Don’t worry about anything, Sal. Just get yourself better.’
In the ease of his voice, the kindness of his words, she can see his smile and it fills her head with a delicious lightness.
‘Thank you,’ she says again.
There is silence among the shadows. Neither he nor she wants to go, yet they do not know how best to stay. Richard pokes his index finger through the letter box as far as he can, grazing his knuckles though he neither feels it nor cares. Tentatively, Sally meets his finger with the very tip of one of hers.
For a sweet but all too short moment, they touch.
THIRTY-ONE
The itching set in and took hold with such force as to render Sally utterly at its mercy. She had never known anything like it. It was infuriating, it was excruciating, it frequently took her to the verge of tears. It was unbearable. In her exasperation, expletives spewed forth and she spat with venom words she had spent her adult life trying to avoid. Calamine soothed but only in the cool cloud of the initial application. Once dry, and it dried all too quickly, its flakiness merely added to the overall itchiness. Sally’s bed-linen and clothes were peppered with salmon pink blotches, and great clods of the dried lotion were welded to her hair. During the day, only enormous self-discipline and sheer determination, coupled with viciously clenched teeth and unbridled execration,
prevented her scratching for England. Night, however, was different; even going to bed wearing mittens was little guard against the dreaded sleep-scratching. Though she detested the itching and hated the spots, she loathed herself more for having scratched – albeit in her sleep. Her chest and arms suffered the most, the tops of the pocks scratched off and a stinging pus released which dried a hundred times more itchy.
I’m going to scar, I’m going to scar, Sally thought wearily. Short of tying her hands behind her back on going to bed, there seemed to be no solution.
Sally was in a foul mood. Well-wishers would phone throughout the day to say there, there and to warn DON’T SCRATCH or YOU WILL SCAR. Lacking the humour to accept such advice graciously, she decided to leave the phone off the hook. Even a batch of another thirty cards from Class Five failed to lift her spirits. The children had found prodigious artistic outlet in Miss Lomax’s predicament and by the end of the week, red crayons were a rare commodity in the art room. The figure of Miss Lomax was treated to a liberal and energetic dousing of red dots. The noise of thirty crayons rapping down to create them caused Mr Bernard, who was trying to teach Maths next door, to pull Miss Lewis to one side, begging her to change to collage instead. Ultimately, the cards were of little comfort; even Marcus’s card, with another classic rhyme and signed Marcus (xx), could not coax a smile from Miss Lomax.
Poor Miss Lomax is not well
Itchy spots are making life hell.
Get well soon, for our fave teacher you are––
But DO NOT SCRATCH or YOU WILL SCAR.
By the end of the week, the itching had abated but those spots Sally had unwittingly scratched were sore and scabby. Her mood was made even more foul after a phone call to Mr Tomlin. Sally used her brightest voice and breezed on about feeling ‘one hundred per cent’ even if she did not look it. She begged, she pleaded, she even flirted to be allowed to return on Monday morning. Mr Tomlin, however, who liked to do things by the book – as is the wont of a headmaster – would hear none of it.
‘I believe the doctor suggested two weeks?’
‘Well …’ started Sally.
‘Well then!’ he declared in his most headmasterful voice. ‘And, Miss Lomax,’ he warned, ‘considering that the chicken pox did not take hold first thing on Monday morning, we won’t be counting this as a full week. We shall look forward to seeing you bright and early a fortnight on Monday – not a moment before.’
‘But that’ll be nigh on three weeks!’ Sally squealed.
With his most qualified stern-but-fair voice, Mr Tomlin delivered his coup de grâce: ‘Miss Lomax,’ he said, ‘I’ve had calls from anxious parents. Anxious parents,’ he reiterated gravely. ‘We simply cannot afford to have you back a minute too soon. I know you understand. Bright and early, a fortnight on Monday. Take care.’
In the face of such autocracy, Sally was as helpless as any pupil. Fearing that further begging would result in a metaphorical Detention and arguing would warrant something far worse, she let it be and sulked all afternoon, occasionally sucking in her pouting lower lip to swear at nothing in particular. There was no more ‘Gracious Good Lord’ in Sally’s pock-marked vocabulary; her atypical effing and blinding now rhymed Him with banker.
For perhaps the first time in her life, Sally felt thoroughly anti-social and was quite content to do nothing about it. She did not even feel like chatting to her plants, the kettle or to anything in particular – let alone to Diana or Richard who were both keeping a wise and generous distance. Sally found comfort and relief only in chocolate and soap operas (preferably those of Antipodean origin, made in the mid-seventies and screened in the early afternoon). She had neither the manners nor the goodwill to respond even to the Woodses’ sumptuous flower arrangement.
Yet this is the girl who took such pride in her little cards of effusive thanks for even the humblest cup of tea; this is the girl or whom Ps and Qs had hitherto been the prerequisite for honourable living. This is the girl with manners and grace constituting the very essence of her being. But see her now, stomping and slouching and swearing indiscriminately. Look in the waste-paper basket and find a batch of ‘get well soon’ cards barely out of their envelopes tossed nonchalantly away. See how the Woodses’ bouquet could do with some water. Sally is feeling sorry for herself – and why shouldn’t she? She is wallowing in a formidable sulk, seething at the cruel irony that the doctor has said she is probably contagious no longer. Even the mirror holds little solace, reflecting back a glowering, bespotted creature with a clump of spiky hair above her left temple.
There must be a solution. Someone must hold the key to unlock Sally from this unbecoming petulance. Indeed there is a key. It is nearly five hundred miles north and it is lying invisible in the lap of the treasured Aunt Celia.
As Sally flounces down into her Lloyd-Loom with a mug of cocoa and a sullen sigh, Aunt Celia has just come in from her small garden, ruddy-cheeked and eyes glistening. It is a glorious day on the Isle of Mull; crisp, clear and sunny with a fortifying breeze. If truth be known, it is also a lovely day in Highgate – but sulky Sal remains defiantly unconcerned.
THIRTY-TWO
Arranging a fat bunch of daffodils from her lush crop in an old earthenware jug, Celia thinks of Sally. Admiring their sunny, joyous faces, she decides if Sally were to be a flower, she would most certainly be a daffodil.
And if I were to be a flower, I would be heather. Tough, not much to look at, but clinging on, year after year after year!
Celia Lomax, sister-in-law to Sally’s late father, is now seventy but looks a good decade younger, a blessing she accredits to Mull’s vitalizing air. She loves her western isle passionately. It has been her home for almost fifty years and every day she is thankful that she has the good fortune to live in such a wonderful place. The first twenty years of her life were spent, anaemic and entrenched, in Glasgow. Now every morning Celia still races to her doorstep to take greedy gulps of the clean, incomparable air, and she sleeps with the window open throughout the year.
Mull cannot cease to enthrall her. She finds she still stops in her tracks to listen and look about her in awe. She never tires of the sounds of the island – it might be an uncomfortable silence to a city-dweller, but for Celia there is a veritable din and her head is filled and thankful for it. Beneath it all, she tunes into the eternal sound of the ocean. Whistling in from the sea, she can listen to the dance of the thin wind slipping its way between the hills and shaking the Scots pine with regular rattles. Under the wind, she can pick out the shimmy of the heather and the rustle of the bracken; above it, the plaintive mew of buzzards, the caw-cawing of hooded crows, the calling of the gulls. Every day, for half a century, Celia Lomax has taken grateful stock of all that is on her doorstep. She can look about her panoramically, for no tenement buildings and no grimy haze deny her a horizon. There is so much sky for the gazing! Under it, the majestic hills are swathed in hues of blue and brown from the tracts of heather and cloaks of bracken. The single-track road winds out of sight, linking the humble white cottages that pepper its way. Pattern and colour, shape and light – the beauty of Mull is a revelation to Celia each day of her life.
Angus Lomax had brought his young Glaswegian wife to Mull soon after their honeymoon in the Cairngorms. Having worked for ten years as doctor in his childhood town of Oban, he leapt at the chance to take over the General Practice for North Mull. He had never wondered or worried whether his city-bred wife would adapt and be happy out on the isle. From the moment he met her, he knew at once that her eyes were those of Mull; they were the colour of heather and as glassy, private and deep as Loch na Keal. His intuition was proved right and Celia adapted to rural life with passion and with pleasure.
While Angus busied himself with the practice and the patients, Celia made home. She limewashed the exterior of the old cottage and painted the interior. She treated the wood, she cleared the chimney, she smoothed down and buffed up the old stone floors. She made curtains for the deep windows and cushions
for every chair; the kitchen she filled with local pottery. Handmade shawls adorned the furniture and a painstakingly pieced quilt bedecked their great iron bed.
If her house was her castle, her small garden was her kingdom. She furrowed and she dug and she turned the land. The native peat was a godsend, the Gulf Stream a blessing. Tomatoes, marrow, potatoes, cabbage, beans, thyme, rosemary, alpine strawberries and fat blackberries – they all grew sweet and plentiful. Bulbs and shrubs vied for space amongst the liberally strewn wild flowers, and small alpines grew bravely in the picturesque rockery. Through every season, Celia’s garden sang with colour.
At the moment, it is carpeted in yellow and blue as daffodils and crocuses run amok. The daffodils have called Sally, her favourite niece, to mind. A treasured rapport exists between them. Their bond is certainly stronger than that enforced between Sally and her mother and, secretly, they both glean a somewhat perverse satisfaction from it.
Mildred Lomax never liked Celia. (‘Your strange aunt up North.’) Mildred Lomax was not in tune with the sky, the wind or the sea; she found little to wax lyrical about in heather, and growing your own vegetables seemed a downright tedious pastime. (‘Rather unnecessary and affected in this day and age, don’t you think?’) Mildred Lomax was a Home Counties, Women’s Institute, Bridge Club and afternoon tea sort of woman. Her 1930s semi had been delectably interior designed and she had a cleaner (‘my daily’) to administer its upkeep. A gardener tended a very neat garden where the lawn did not look real and hybrid roses were pruned to perfection. She had never had the inclination to bake bread nor to lift a needle and thread – after all, there was a most useful little lady down the road for all of that.
What really set Mildred against Celia was her late husband’s fondness for the woman and her daughter’s devotion to her. Family holidays on Mull, an annual occurrence until Sally was fifteen and her father dead, had been the bane of Mildred’s life. She found Mull a forsaken and bleak place, invariably swamped by mist and midges. She did not like trudging across hillocky heather wearing wellington boots, and found all that sea air rather tiring. There was nothing for her to do on Mull, and Mildred Lomax was not very good at doing nothing. Of course, there were walks to go on, wild flowers to seek out and wildlife to watch, but such pursuits left her cold in every sense of the word.