by Lucy Ellmann
Dot’s nerves were SHOT. John heard one day that some friends of theirs had had a baby. He and Dot went straight out to buy something celebratory for dinner. They got lamb chops. These reduced in the cooking, giving off a large amount of GREASE. Dot picked at what looked like two little kidneys on her chop. They made her think of the NEW BABY’S KIDNEYS. She began to feel like she was EATING THE BABY. She told John they were eating the baby and they both looked disgustedly at their plates. Dot’s chop still lay there but John’s was GONE, he’d EATEN it already. Dot made do with apple pie for supper that night.
Now, if Dot had been a heroic housewife in an American TV movie (a saxophone playing incessantly in the background), she would have rehabilitated herself through GOOD WORKS, befriended the boy, later SAVED HIS LIFE somehow, and become BOSOM PALS with his mother (who wasn’t angry after all, just needed a FRIEND). Dot would later have spearheaded the national campaign against traffic-cone derangement, ending up on Capitol Hill tearfully recalling how she had fought her own addiction to the accursed things: ‘Traffic cones were my undoing, especially those nice yellow ones …’
But Dot WASN’T in a movie (she just thought she was sometimes). In the absence of a clear and noble MISSION, she cleaned cabinets with a dubious sponge, attempted NONCHALANCE, and longed quite often for easeful death.
Thoughts of interior decoration were her only consolation — decor, like matter, can never really be created or destroyed. But there is an element of MEGALOMANIA in knowing exactly how a place should look. Dot wanted “Oceania” to look more like the house in which she’d grown up. To achieve this, she needed a PALE-YELLOW BATHROOM. But Belinda Lurcher was always warning people that yellow is a difficult colour to get right. This threw Dot into DECOR DOUBT.
Another problem arose concerning a wallpapering table. On hearing that Dot was redecorating, some friends offered her their wallpapering table. Dot thought they were GIVING it to her. Later, the husband called up and complained to John about the NON-RETURN of the table. Dot called back and got the wife. Dot said she would be HAPPY to return the wallpapering table. The wife said, ‘What would WE do with it?’ So Dot kept the table.
Some time later the couple called again to say they wanted their wallpapering table BACK, or else they wanted Dot to PAY for it. Dot did then offer to buy the fucking table. The hubby’s response was to ask Dot what she wanted for CHRISTMAS. Dot said what she wanted was to be allowed to BUY THE TABLE. It was all a big misunderstanding (I STILL don’t understand it).
To make up for it all, the couple asked Dot and John out to see their new country cottage, so off Dot and John went into unknown reaches of Essex. When they arrived, the wifey was on the PHONE, and REMAINED on the phone for half an hour. Then she said she had to MOW THE LAWN (gardening’s another form of megalomania). When you finally FIND somebody’s country cottage you expect to be greeted, if not amply FED. FUCK THE LAWN, Dot was HUNGRY. When they did sit down to eat, they were SURROUNDED by the smell of newly mown grass. This is actually a MASSACRE-ALERT smell. It is the smell given off by injured blades of grass in an attempt to WARN OTHERS. It is the smell of grass in a PANIC — there’s nothing NICE about it.
Dumping the Body
Pears hang heavy in October. Leaves were moving along the ground in a way they have that seems to MEAN something.
Dot’s hands were cold. They were ALWAYS cold in Jaywick. She was sick of it. She was sick of the SEA, its ceaseless MOVEMENT. What do FISH make of it? How can they BEAR it? You get TIRED of that sort of thing after a while.
Dot was loading the last of the stuff she needed to take to the dump. To a casual observer it might have looked like she was having a big Spring Clean! But Dot was expelling her whole EXISTENCE. As she drove out of Jaywick past fat-assed women on sofas watching Julia Roberts movies in the afternoon, the sky was a deep bright blue.
Tiny despots in a universe that may be equally despicable. Meaningless, ourselves and all about us. And running the whole show, something just as random, accident-prone and undesirable, with uncertainty built into its FOUNDATIONS. The universe! Unlikely but possible that we and it could disappear at any time.
Abjectly terrified of death, Dot had decided to CONTROL it — by committing suicide. But she wanted to do it RIGHT, make all the necessary PREPARATIONS. So she had cooked up several gourmet meals and stuck them in the freezer for John to heat up after her demise. She had also made enough raspberry jam to last him a YEAR.2
She had tidied the house until it SPARKLED, even the kitchen DRAWER. Before Dot tidied it the drawer had: two fruit-inlaid lollipops from long ago (one lime, one pineapple), half a packet of cut-flower food, an old library card, the stamp book, an address stamp (“Oceania”, 11 Abalone Avenue, Jaywick Sands, Nr. Clacton, ESSEX CO4 3BQ) and accompanying ink-pad, pens, pencils, scissors, a key-ring, a tape measure, beads, Band-Aids, vitamins, masking tape, a Chinese take-away menu, paperclips, batteries (old and new), fuses (ditto), an egg-timer, rubber bands, a tiny miniature bottle of Tabasco Sauce (half-empty), Swan matches, a free sample packet of cough lozenges, chewing-gum, a small knitted COW, a faulty pocket-watch Dot had given John on their tenth anniversary, shells, sand, raffle tickets, playing cards, chess pieces, cocktail umbrellas, three chopsticks, a tiny wooden doll’s house TELEPHONE, a paper poppy from Remembrance Day, a toy Easter chick with real feathers dyed bright yellow and plastic feet, out-of-date coupons and a dry shrivelled apple core. AFTER she cleaned it, the drawer contained: two pens, two pencils, a pair of scissors, the stamp book, the address stamp and ink-pad, and the masking tape. She’d tidied all the LIFE out of it!
Having phoned several craft museums, Dot gave up hope of finding an appreciative home for her tea-cosy collection. She had never realised before just how indifferent to tea cosies the nation was! Unable herself to throw them away, this was one task she would have to leave to John.
She had thought of donating some money to charity before she died. You couldn’t walk down Clacton High Street without someone yelling ‘BRAIN-DEAD CHILDREN’ at you, or ‘BEDSORES’. But she had been unable to find a charity specifically devoted to the MIDDLE-AGED (unless you count the National Trust). She gave her best duds to Oxfam and left it at that.
She had written John a GOODBYE CARD. Her clean-lined, clean-living hubby — every angle of him was straight, if you saw him from the back or the side or the front! His thin lips and closely clipped hair and somewhat stern manner: he was unbending, unwrinkled, IRONED-OUT, and surprisingly resistant to the weather at sea. In her note, Dot said she was sorry to miss out on time with him but it was for the best and she loved him LOADS. (Look, it was a SUICIDE NOTE, it was bound to be inadequate.)
Dot’s effects seemed to have little effect on the dump. There was a peculiar LIFE to the place that Dot didn’t like. People throw a lot of things away, not just TRASH but nice hat boxes and frilled dressing tables, velvet curtains and upholstered furniture, suitcases, clothing, crockery. It all sits at the dump and rots, and it’s COLOURFUL. Dot noticed an empty jar of Enchilada Sauce, half a cardboard jewellery box, the lid from a take-away coffee. A delicate pink plastic carrier bag was drifting along in the wind.
Places left to rot become THEMSELVES. Like a body, some bits untended — the cheesy belly button, cracked heels, dirty ass. There is beauty in decay.
On her return home from the dump, Dot propped her suicide note up on the mantelpiece in the living room, fashioned a noose out of her imitation-basket tea cosy and, slipping the handle of it round her neck, kicked away the kitchen chair and started to die.
To die in Jaywick!
But the rattiness of Dot’s tea cosies was her SALVATION. Despite all the engineering know-how that had gone into its making, the criss-cross basketry pattern and all the superfluous leaves and pansies on the top (or perhaps BECAUSE of them), the basket tea cosy had been OVER-USED, and though frail, petite, slight, feminine, perfect (almost) and an EMBLEM OF HER ERA, Dot was too heavy for her own tea cosy! It began to tragically unravel and t
hen to SPLIT in fibrous ways. Dot fell, unconscious, to the floor.
When John strolled in on this scene, his wife like SNOW WHITE beside what appeared to be the woolly remains of some savage RODENT, he called the police. They came, inspected Dot, called in a GP to certify her dead, and took her off to the morgue (serving Clacton and surrounding area). People are ALWAYS DOING THIS. They are always declaring middle-aged women dead when they’re NOT!
Dot was tucked neatly into a drawer for the night, all cosy-like, and was about to be rolled into OBLIVION, when the policeman who’d brought her in noticed her big TOE was moving. He gingerly prodded her shoulder. Dot sat up and started tugging at the name-tag on her toe, which itched. The policeman gave her a cup of tea, and himself one too — he’d had quite a shock.
Later, he told reporters from The Clacton Wanderer, ‘It’s your worst nightmare: instead of being dead you’re alive!’
Dot on Trial
When her Reckless Driving case came to court, Dot wore: a nice grey suit (tight skirt and fitted jacket), taupe shoes and a matching handbag. She did not see how she could be CONVICTED in such a smart outfit, and she was RIGHT: everyone in the room was CHARMED by Dot’s outfit.
Having sat through many TV courtroom dramas, Dot knew it would be futile and tedious not to tell the truth. She even volunteered information about the CONES.
‘So, you did not knowingly leave the scene of the accident. You were unaware of there having BEEN an accident, is that correct?’ asked the solicitor acting for the little boy.
‘Yes,’ said Dot, a glory in grey.
‘You did not see the boy?’
‘No.’
‘Did you not notice that you had hit something?’
‘Oh, yes, but I thought it was a traffic cone,’ said Dot, smoothing her skirt.
‘A traffic cone!?’
‘Yes. I thought I’d hit a traffic cone.’
‘So what did you do then?’
‘I looked for more traffic cones to hit!’
Laughter and cheers from the public benches.
‘I hope you are not trying to be FUNNY, Mrs Butser.’
‘No, m’lord.’
‘Because that would be a much more serious offence.’
Despite a bit of kerfuffle from the boy’s mother, who ran at Dot and tried to pull her hair after the acquittal, everyone else seemed to understand that Dot had suffered enough. Accidents happen. And she had that nice grey SUIT. They understood that her mind had been on other things (suicide and Sea Bass) and they forgave her!
Fortified by this success, as well as a coquettish flirtation with her solicitor, Dot went on to take action against the GP who had certified her dead when she was NOT dead. The policeman who’d saved her came and testified on her behalf in a pale-blue suit that matched his eyes. Dot got £38,000 COMPENSATION! John hadn’t expected her to get ANYTHING. No one knows exactly what value to put on human life.
Full of a newfound optimism, Dot went straight to her favourite junk shop and bought a FRENCH BENCH. (She had long envied her neighbour’s garden seat.)
A Taste for Blood
Dot had been infuriating other women all her life, she was so PERFECT. But she WASN’T that great really. Another repercussion of the car crash I forgot to mention was that Dot developed a taste for BLOOD. Ever since she’d crashed into that kid she had had fantasies about crashing into MORE people. She knew it was pretty unlikely she’d get away with more than one hit-and-run (even in that suit), so she turned her homicidal thoughts to the systematic dispatch of OLD LADIES, like the one who’d been in her way that fateful day at the corner shop.
Old ladies are ALWAYS in the way! IRRITATING OLD LADIES with their frumpish rumps, requiring deference and patience as they waddle in front of you or dither and stop dead in their tracks for NO GOOD REASON. They really take it out of you! Somehow you are always exerting yourself for old ladies, and always at the WORST TIME. Dot had been dutifully tending old ladies for years, not just the ones near by and not just NICE ones either but cranky, obstreperous, malevolent old ladies all over Jaywick and the surrounding area, UNKIND old ladies good at getting what they want and full of suspicion and CONTEMPT for Dot because she was young, pretty, blonde and (apparently) PERFECT. Dot hated them too and was sick of listening to them complain about the weather or the Royals or the price of LARD. Old ladies had already had the BEST of Dot. They’d bled her DRY. The law against murder is after all so arbitrary.
Jaywick turned out to be the ideal place to commit murder! Its rickety bungalows attracted vulnerable old ladies, husband-free, ripe for annihilation, the wind muffled their screams, and nobody gave a damn.
Long after they’d switched off their TV sets, glugged their last mouthfuls of Ovaltine (for ever), brought in their favourite gnomes from the garden and settled down for some peevish rest, Dot would creep in and set TRAPS for them. After one of Dot’s nocturnal visits, an old lady got out of bed in the middle of the night and, tripping over her own gnome, landed heavily on an aerosol deodorant can neatly glued with undetectable flour-and-water paste to an upturned nail in the floor. The impact of her rump on the can caused it to puncture and burst into FLAMES (luckily the old lady died of shock before the fire took hold). The police considered it just another OLD-LADY MISHAP. Old ladies die by the DOZEN all over the world and nobody does a thing about it.
Dot was still visiting many old ladies for afternoon tea. She dealt with their toenails while they told her things. They were happy to tell her the SAME things each time, it didn’t matter to THEM. But instead of being bored, Dot had a new purpose in life. She would cheerfully carry the tea tray back to the kitchen (‘So helpful!’), steal the tea cosy, leave the gas on unlit, or fill the sugar bowl with carpet cleaner (a typical old-lady mistake), and smilingly depart. Within a week, another little obituary in The Clacton Wanderer and a FOR SALE sign rattling in the wind.
Dot was GOOD at this! She began to feel she had divine powers over life and death. They were dying like FLIES, the old ladies of Jaywick Sands.
Dot’s next-door neighbour had long been a handful, always complaining about things and getting Dot to do her shopping or check the electricity meter to make sure the electricity company wasn’t cheating her, or phone the council to find out when the next rubbish collection would be (she never believed the dustmen would stick to their appointed day). She also had a FROG PHOBIA. Dot was supposed to inspect the old bat’s back garden frequently for frogs and REMOVE them if necessary. This was a big mistake, for it gave Dot an idea.
The next time Dot came across a frog migration point on the road to Wivenhoe, she disgustedly collected about thirty of them in a carrier bag. That night she set them free, emptying the bag into her neighbour’s garden. When the old lady trundled outside the next day to water her marigolds, she noticed an odd-shaped stone. Bending over to get a closer look, she caught sight of TWO EYES staring back at her. Already overbalanced, she lost her footing, hit her head against the far end of the fish pond, yelped ‘HELP!’, and drowned.
It was like the anguished yelps of ANIMALS IN THE NIGHT. Animals too suffer from fear of death. They too must wonder, is this all my life is going to BE? Is this IT?
Dot thought old ladies were better off dead (MOST people think this), rather than dealing with the corner shop or the SEA, that terrible sea, full of creatures you want nothing to do with! They slept so deafly, so blindly, as Dot crept by their beds (their SEA BEDS), their bodies already FESTOONED with decay.
WHAT ABOUT THE BODY JUNK? The scars, the wrinkles, the stretchmarks, liver spots, polyps, the hopeless meaningless flab, the wonky tortoiseshell toenails and bags under the eyes like SCROTAL SACS, the weird bruises old ladies get, the furrowed brow and no sign of a neck at all? And that was just on the OUTSIDE, where you put the stuff that can be left out in the rain. The more delicate antiques were INSIDE, piled HIGH, all higgledy-piggledy, a slapdash mishmash of organ failure, embolism, dyspepsia, diplopia and clogged synapses. THESE were the true junk shops
of Jaywick Sands.
Time for the old HEAVE-HO!
Dot Reborn
We’re held so tightly to the earth. It would have changed everything if humans could fly. You’d get some perspective. Pollution? Pah! Slaughterhouses? Fie! War? Too tiring. Dishonesty? NOT POSSIBLE.
If you looked at John’s life from a distance, you’d see the wreckage all around him, how he’d sacrificed everything, wife, career, ideals, all sense of SECURITY, to sex, let everything go to POT for sex, like a foaming CAMEL or a crab. If you didn’t KNOW about the affairs you’d still see signs of neglect all around the guy. He’d once had a SPARK. He always told himself he had affairs because his wife was dull, but in fact he’d failed to keep her INTERESTING, because it was so much easier having AFFAIRS.
Nor was he brave: Dot’s suicidal weirdness had unnerved him. Like his mother after she had HIM, John felt inclined to desert a sinking ship.
John was hoping DOT would get some perspective if they drove all the way to Padstow to eat fish at Rick Stein’s restaurant. They had wanted to eat fish at Rick Stein’s restaurant for many years. They were even perhaps a little OVER-PREPARED for the experience of eating fish at Rick Stein’s restaurant.
In the car, they gobbled huge bon-bons: Mint Humbugs. John always furnished the car with travel sweets for long journeys — he was a FUN KIND OF GUY. Unable to SPEAK because of all the humbugs, they played tapes of bluegrass music, John demonstrating his banjo-plucking technique on Dot’s knee. His more complex plucking motions helped to distract Dot from his DRIVING, which otherwise made her nervous. A passing truck flicked a rock into the windshield, causing a small CRACK and making the trip feel ILL-OMENED, but it didn’t stop them going to Padstow.
They spent a night in Lyme Regis on the way. The hotel had seen better days, as had the town, but they felt serene there, promenading on precipitous paths. The Channel looked much BLUER than the North Sea.