by R. L. Holmes
I watch with fascination by her change of character. Something is unsettling her. I peer behind the counter thinking I might see someone or something bothering her, but there is nothing. I look behind us at the queue of people all staring at this poor lady’s display of fluster.
‘It’s called the Garden Witch.’ I suddenly say hoping to help Ms Anderson calm her nerves. ‘But its real name is Spanish Lover.’
She drops another parcel and apologises again. Finally in her clumsy fluster, she finishes weighing and processing and takes our money in much haste. I think she is pleased to see us go.
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July 1999: Stranger
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Damn! I have been caught off guard. What is happening here? I feel like I am losing control. First that strange, blackly dressed witch from The Spice House weakening my spirit and delaying my plans. Then Pope turns back up and it couldn’t be at the worst moment. I could smell the roses, the fragrance so strong I began to feel faint.
They spoke about the Spanish Lover. My, I have not heard that name for a while, not for twenty years. My lungs were still sore and I was finding it difficult to breathe from the powerful aroma of sickly sweet roses.
He was trying hard to overthrow me, I’ll give him that. I lost my cool, clumsily dropping parcels, desperately trying to pull myself together. The people stared. They’re not used to me behaving this way.
Worse of all, I think Mary suspects something. I sense she will want to see me, to ask questions. I could see the suspicion in her eyes. But Saracen, my dear Saracen. It won’t be long before I will take you away from here, away from all of this drama and bloodshed. I will teach you what I know and you too will be as dangerous a force as me. Not long now, September child. Your thirteenth birthday: a special number, a special age - the coming of an apprentice.
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August 1999: Saracen
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I arrive home from school soaking wet. It has rained all day and I forgot to take my raincoat. Actually I couldn’t find it. I swear it was hanging in my wardrobe, but when I went in there it had vanished into thin air. In my soppy state I’m surprised to find Gran sitting at the dining table hovering over a coffee and several hard covered books.
She is transfixed on them, so much so she barely hears me throw myself through the door. As I draw closer and repeat several times that I got really soaked and accused everyone of stealing my raincoat, I realise the hard covered books are Mrs Rennie’s diaries.
‘She let me borrow them,’ she says as if I was about to accuse her of something.
‘Aren’t they private?’
‘Well yes. But she came over when you were at school and offered them to me. She had actually gone through the years 1976 and 1975 and blotted out her private stuff with pieces of paper. It must’ve taken her days to do this.’
‘I wouldn’t let anyone read my diaries.’
‘I guess she feels guilty. Besides I may have solved something.’
‘What?’
‘Go and dry yourself off Sara. Here, let me get you a clean towel and some clothes.’
I notice the stereo had been changed to an oldies station. The Eagles are playing, Hotel California. I disappear into my room and wonder as I dress what exactly has been solved. ‘Do you know where my raincoat has gone?’ I yell out down the hall.
Silence.
I return back out into the lounge, warm and dry, Leo Slayer is now on, You Make Me Feel like Dancing; his voice so high, his rhythm so catchy.
It’s another typical winter’s day. Cold. No, icy and bitter and unforgiving. I wish like nature, I could hibernate in the colder seasons, waking up only in the early September to reap the spring harvest. I would be like a grizzly bear in Canada, rising up from my deep slumber, just in time for the salmon season. My mind immediately switches to Daniel Parker and his trout fishing. Still his murder goes unsolved.
Gran has disappeared outside. I can see her greying blonde head bobbing up and down by the shed. She’s at it again. She’s having another go at the Garden Witch.
I race outside in the awful weather just in time to see her pull out a small tin box wrapped in a plastic bag from the roots of the thorny rose.
‘Get inside,’ she yells. ‘You’ll catch your death Sara. You’ve already been wet once today.’
She brushes the winter spray off and carries the small tin box over to the table where the diaries lie. She sits down and takes a deep breath. I sit next to her and ask what it is.
‘I don’t know yet.’ She pauses and plays with the plastic bag. ‘Your Grandfather killed himself in September. September 2nd. Robert died on August 12th. Here in Mrs Rennie’s diary she had written that Laurie, your Grandfather, buried something under the Spanish Lover. She said she could see him from the side lounge window digging a hole under the naked stem. She had to stand on a stool to see properly.’
‘Open it.’
‘I don’t know if I’m ready for what’s in here.’
‘But it might be money or diamonds.’
‘Well, I never thought of that.’
With feijoa’s stewing in a big pot on the stove and the sweet smell of rosemary wafting through the air, Gran pulls the tin box out of the bag and opens the lid. John Lennon’s, Woman, plays softly in the background. The wind blows ferociously, snapping small branches and throwing empty containers into the air.
Inside is a small toy, a blue plastic elephant. Under that is folded up pieces of paper, stained yellow and tatty. She carefully unfolds the paper to reveal an array of scribbled symbols and words, some making sense, some not.
‘I think it’s a letter from Laurie.’
How can she tell? It’s so erratic and messy. There’s three pieces of paper and she immediately looks at the last page and points to his name - signed.
‘I recognise his writing anywhere. He wasn’t a happy man when he wrote this I suspect.’
We carefully screen the letter, trying to decipher what was written. At some places the sentences are clear making a lot of sense, but others are angry scribbles of cats and rabbits, as if his mind was ranting persistently at him. Roberts name was written many times, seemingly guilt ridden, with sketches of skyscrapers, wild animals and cars. Mum’s name was written only once in the corner of the second page surrounded by tiny flowers, the petals falling to the ground.
The smell of the old, yellowing paper buried for many years, makes me feel a little sick. A slight pain appears in my left temple I gaze up to The Hypocrite and see her face again.
My beloved Mary,
I write to apologise for what I am about to tell you. I have been an awful husband, a deceitful partner and by now you probably know why. The following is the truth. Colours swirling, like rainbows in my eyes. Why I would disappear for days either in my mind or in my body and why I was not an attentive father. I went of course to see her. Oil paints, oil paints, the smell everywhere! I can’t get away from it! It’s embedded in my blood, my brain my soul. I am nothing but a tool to make things beautiful for others.
I met her when I young, long before you. I was travelling the world, wide eyed and bushy-tailed as they say like a rabbit, rabbit who lives in fear always and has many enemies. They want my fur, my meat my symbolism. An artist in Spain when the rabbit met the cat. I was there on an excursion from Italy where I was training in the School of Fine Arts. Her fur golden, her eyes, bright blue. But this day, the day we met she had sadness in her eyes. We spent every day together, the rabbit and the cat and became lovers and great friends. And I fell deeply in love, my first love was her.
Life went on. I met a sparrow, sweet and simple. I was very fond of you, but in my mind no one could compare to my Spanish Lover, my vicious, sharp-clawed cat. When I wrote to her that I married, she was sad and fell silent. She dropped correspondence for many years until February 1975, when she knocked on my door. You were out and she was in quite a state. She needed help and I was the only one she thought of.
The cat was running f
rom a brutal man, one who wanted to skin her alive and mount her head on his wall. Oil paints, oils paints, the smell, the torture. The colours swirl in my mind, the shadows, the lines. I cannot get this painting out of my mind. What is this? The cat turned black and crossed my path.
She came to me. She wants you gone, sparrow. Her teeth are sharp and her fight is strong. It’s cold, the cold winter, bleak and depressing. The cat was given a gift, a rose. She thought it was the rabbit. The Spanish rose, the lover was Spanish.
The wily black cat crossed my path and left. She shed her coat and became brown. She will return, sparrow. She will return for you. Oil paints everywhere! The smell, the mess. The little blue elephant trampled through the wet forest, hiding from his sister. The horses fall, the rabbit screams and the little blue elephant crashes to the ground.
Robert the Great, they call him. He was a fine leader, a fine man. His dying wish was to sentence the rabbit either to live a life of fiery hell or die now and go to a beautiful heaven. The rabbit made his decision.
My Love
Laurie.
‘You know she never leaves the house,’ gran says after a long uncomfortable pause.
‘Who?’
‘Mrs Rennie. So I guess she lived through us, poor lady. She’s almost like a hermit.’
Silence.
My mouth is dry and the pain continues to pulsate out of my left temple. ‘What was that all about?’
Gran shrugs.
‘The cat and the rabbit?’
‘This makes no sense. Why would he bury this letter under the rose?’ Gran gazes up at The Hypocrite. The swirls of blues and purples, entrance and suck you in. ‘What if I did not find it? It may still be there even after I died, disintegrating into the earth. This makes no sense.’ Mary pulls her eyes away from the painting and smiles. ‘This is all rather confusing isn’t it?’
‘You said he was a bit mental.’ I pause for a moment, pondering on what she just said. ‘Maybe, he knew Mrs Rennie was watching. She seems to always watch us.’
Bob Seger’s, Night Moves comes on the radio. The wind whistles and whirls rattling the gutters and swaying the trees, weakening their limbs. ‘Turn that damn radio off, Sara.’
‘We had very little to do with her, to be honest. She lived with her mother then. She died a couple years before you were born. It devastated her. Her mother was her world, her everything.’
‘But she had children you told me, twins.’
‘She did, but the mystery lies in who her husband was. I never saw anyone.’
‘Besides, this has nothing to do with this letter though does it?’ I say raising my voice sounding like my own mother.
I don’t really know what to do with all these unearthed secrets from the past and for the most part I don’t feel it’s overly relevant to me anyway. They are ghosts from the past; I cannot make a connection to my uncle Robert, my grandfather and his girlfriend. To me, this is all over a long time ago and doesn’t need to be brought to the surface. But the words he used - Spanish lover, little blue elephant and, what did it say? - wily black cat. Where have I heard that before?
Gran folds up the letters and slots them back into the tin box. I reach over and pick up the plastic, blue elephant and turn it around in my fingers. ‘Is this Robert’s toy?’
‘Yes. Your Grandfather brought him a large set of plastic jungle animals - giraffes, zebras, lions, rhinos. I was so annoyed when he came home with these.’
‘Why?’
‘Robert was far too young for this type of toy. Kids his age would’ve swallowed them whole. But that was typical of your Grandfather. He was so out of touch, so impractical. He could paint a replica of a Monet and make it look just like the original, or sketch the most difficult of monuments, but it would have never crossed his mind to check the age group of a toy, or consider anyone’s feelings before he made a rather big decision like invite an old girlfriend into the house.’
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Early September 1999: Saracen
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The winds blow fiercely. Branches creak and snap. The fence between us and our neighbour buckles, and the tin roof on the shed rattles violently. Then as if a button is pressed, breath exhales, the wind dies down almost instantly. The icy, vicious winds of winter have come to an end on this day in 1999.
Tomorrow is a new day, the smell of spring in the air. Bulb flowers; sunny daffodils, creamy jonquils and sky blue hyacinth poke their heads above the surface of the damp earth. The wind changed direction, coming now from a warmer source sending fire and energy into nature, stimulating growth and procreation. But the southern winds have not gone for good. Their memory remains. They have torn and ripped through our world, breaking limbs, engulfing greenery and littering the entire backyard. Nothing is where we left it. Nothing is ever going to be the same.
As we trample through the mess, retying vines, clean cutting snapped twigs, raking leaves and mending damage to the fruit trees, I feel a weight rise off me, and a breath of a breeze sail into my mind whispering secrets of a winter gone and triggering a memory. The Spanish Lover, Seth, Daniel Parker, Moley and........
‘Did you know Ms Anderson lived in Spain?’
Mary has her back to me. She’s bent over gathering old, dead leaves and throwing them into the wheel barrow.
‘She used to live with a French man who worked for the Secret Service or something like that. But then he didn’t come home, so she moved to Spain where she lived with artists.’
Gran’s body stiffens, her body language changing.
‘It just made me think of that when you read out Granddad’s letter.’
Silence.
Mrs Rennie arrives over to collect her diaries. She felt uncomfortable having lent them out and wants them back to put back in order with the other years. Mary had extracted all she needed from them anyway, so graciously thanks her. She lingers for a few moments looking over the dishevelled garden, our livelihood. I can tell she wants to know what’s in the letter, she probably watched Gran dig it up. But Gran just smiles warmly and hands her the garden rake and silently she helps us to bring order back into our winter chaos.
¥
Mum came home for the weekend and brought my sister Lu with her. Lu and Austin are like distant cousins to me. We’re perfectly polite with one another and pretend to be interested in each other’s lives, but really we’re worlds apart. We don’t even look alike. Lucy has just turned 16, a winter baby and is looking more and more like my dad. As she drags her feet though our front door behind mum, wearing a Live tee shirt and a black scowl; I mistake her for a clone of Rachel from the dairy. But no, she is my sister and a pretty unapproachable one at that. Gran welcomes her with open arms and asks what brings her here. She just curls her top lip and grunts something about having no choice.
She was raised mostly in a large City up north with my dad’s parents, so she was used to spending her days in shopping centres and hanging out with her mates, talking about boys and stuff. Lu and Austin look like twins, with their porky midribs and curly brown hair, whereas I have completely different colouring; fair hair and rather lean, but not bony, like mum. I have problems digesting food and digesting life - they seem to eat and drink their way through life in a laid back fashion, without ambition and without a care. She is a sloppy looking creature, a late bloomer like me, I suspect.
‘So what are you doing next year when you finish school?’ Mary asks my sister.
She shrugs and plays with that bacteria ridden ring in her nose.
‘She’s thinking about going to Polytech to study Fine Arts,’ mum answers for her.
‘Do you paint?’ I ask.
‘Yep,’ she answers lazily, without an interest in the conversation, as if she’s too tired to speak. Her eyes fix themselves onto The Hypocrite. I wonder if she can see the secret hidden within each paint stroke, within each swirl of blues and purple, the woman’s face. She quickly loses interest in the painting and starts searching the cupboards for something to ea
t. I know at this moment that she can’t see what we can, the history and the lies. She’s too ordinary to notice anything. But an artist? That’s one for the books. I can’t imagine anything remotely interesting or beautiful coming out of this creature.
‘She’s got the talent like dad,’ mum answers again for her.
I doubt it.
Mum has come home to take some more samples back up north of our jams, chutneys, marmalades and skincare. But she thought that it would be nice if my sister and I got to spend some time together.
I cringe.
I watch my City sister like a zoo animal with fascination - her sausage fingers helping themselves to our blackberry jam, virtually pouring it onto a brick of homemade bread and then layering a thick slice of cheese on top. She then wanders over to the stereo and mumbles about it being ‘ancient’ and presses the large on button. It had been on the oldies station for days, but she’s very quick to flick it back over to the modern music. An upbeat tune by Blink 182 plays and she cranks the volume up. She annoys me instantly.
Mary suggests to mum that she should take us sister’s into the City for lunch - ‘that would be nice,’ she says.
I’m not keen. But going out for lunch in the City is a novelty to me, so I’m in just for the food alone.
¥
The lunch in the mall is pretty painful. I didn’t realise what a great cook Gran is until cafe food passes my taste buds. The camembert and chicken Panini I ordered is toasted, quite nice, but nothing on Gran’s wholemeal and sesame seed bread. The sauces inside are too sweet and my stomach reacts instantly, by bloating and cramping up.
My sister is about as interesting as my bloated stomach with her continuous clucking and squawking about some boy, some girl and some car. To my delight I notice a deep red smear on her white Live tee shirt. The greedy guts didn’t even notice she dropped our jam on her image. Imagine how funny would that be - if some girl and some boy, saw her now?