by Carmel Bird
‘Stupid,’ said Ginger.
Owing to the Inefficiency of the Postal Service this Letter was Never Delivered
Oasis Caravan Park, February 1965
Dear Mother and Father,
This letter is very difficult for me to write. I know that it will come as a great shock to you to learn that I have decided to begin a new life here.
A number of extremely sad things have happened to me in the past few weeks, and I find it would be impossible for me to return home, in view of these things.
I hope that you will both forgive me, and will come to understand my position and my feelings.
I must reassure you that I am well and safe, and I am applying for the job of assistant caretaker at the caravan park, which is quite busy at this time of the year.
I will write to you again when I am more settled, and in the meantime I hope to hear from you.
I am your devoted and loving son, Arthur Plum
P. S. The photograph of Caroline and me that was taken at the Prism Studios must be destroyed. Please do not ask me why, but I am quite firm about this.
Father’s Memories of Arthur
January 1987
I was out walking today when I passed the Oasis Caravan Park, and I recalled a dream I once had about poor Arthur. He had taken a job at a place of that name. Seeing it like that brought back all the sadness and longing for the boy, brought back the feeling of emptiness I experienced for so many years after his disappearance. I think the greatest disappointment in my life was that I never had a grandchild, that when Iris and Muriel pass away there will be no more Plums. If only Arthur and that dear girl Caroline had lived and had a little family. And Arthur was doing so well.
Muriel Remembers Her Father’s Funeral
January 1987
I keep trying to write a letter to Iris, to tell her what happened to the rug, but the words will not come any more. Pieces of the day Father was buried come back to me, and I think I should tell Iris more about the funeral, but the words float away, dissolving before they get onto the paper. There were lots of people there, I want to say, and it was raining. They came hurrying up the path through the fields, dark mushrooms of umbrellas bobbing between the stone fences. Was it the rain or was I weeping all the time? Something was ticking in my head, and all the brasses and the coloured glass in the church were blurred, uneven, shifting and shimmering in the smell of old hymn books and mould. I love that smell. We had a very old aunt who smelt like that. Great-aunt really. It was far far away from the sound of the sea. There was no sound inside the church. The thick stone walls stopped sound.
Outside, the rain, the wind in the pine trees. Inside, the closed granite silence filled with giant puffs of white and pink chrysanthemums and suddenly the scarlet orange wail of the woman at the organ. Was it ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’ in my blurred and rainbow ears? A rustling and thumping of people and umbrellas. Oh, the wet world bloomed with the chrysanthemums of human voices. And Father lying quietly, shut in the small dark silence of his coffin lined with silk. He was dressed up in his handsome uniform, and then I covered him with the rug, just like putting him to bed, the sailor in the little brown bed in the dolls’ house lined with silk. He was as quiet as a mouse, as good as gold, and they all praised the Lord with songs. And flags and dust. In the doorway of the church, standing in the porch, there was a piper. His legs were like trees, knobbed with knuckled knees and his kilt was misty with the dyes of ancient battles, green and scarlet, his face like an inflated plum sending the air of blessing, the breath of god and the brightest red of all the reds was the tassel swinging on the pipes. I stood right next to him and people stared at me, so out of place, and I traced with the fingers of my eye yet blurred with spray the arabesques carved into the silver rings on the pipes. Then he seemed to stand forever at the graveside in the rain under the pine trees, piping at the graveside, piping Father out out out across the water, bobbing in his coffin on the waves, nice and cosy in his rug and lined with silk.
I stared at the crack in the wall of the church, high up like a spider getting bigger every year.
The Vicar shook my hand and said again that Father was a good man and would be missed. All over the floor of the church there were puddles from the umbrellas. And then we had hot scones and tea at the vicarage with Mrs Blake-Showers, the Vicar’s wife, with a new pink carpet since the Vicar is new. Mr William Blake-Showers and his wife. She kissed me on the cheek and he shook me by the hand. The piper was sitting in the corner of the room, his face and his pipes quite silent and deflated. I fancied that he had fallen asleep. The grey sky wet between the curtains fitted into the window like a tile. Oh, I was unhappy then.
The Reverend William Blake-Showers
Speaks to Dr de Saxe, the G. P.
March 1987
I have been very worried about Miss Plum ever since her father passed away. She has always been a bit eccentric but I became really alarmed when I called on her one afternoon, not long after the funeral, and found her sticking plastic poppies into the flowerbed along the fence. It is not good for her to be there in that big house all by herself. Her only companion in the evenings is the television, and I believe that it over-stimulates her.
She came round to the vicarage yesterday, practically in ecstasy, and told me that her father had made a special guest appearance on her television in the middle of the weather. She said that he told her he had written a letter asking her to send him his camera, which was in the wardrobe. Her problem was that she sold the wardrobe to Brigadier MacArthur from the Den of Antiquity and didn’t clear it out properly before she let him take it.
Well, I rang the Brigadier there and then, just to humour her, and he said that all he found in the wardrobe was an old parcel containing a baby’s bonnet and two little knitted dresses, which he put on a doll and a teddy bear in the window of the shop. Miss Plum said he was welcome to the baby clothes, but I do believe that she suspected him of having stolen the camera.
It is only natural for a single woman of her years, I suppose, suffering as she is from the recent loss of the father who meant the world to her, to have episodes of paranoia. Not to mention the hallucination during the weather.
I know that you have attended the family for some years, Robert, and wondered whether there was some way you could have a word with her, and perhaps form an opinion. I strongly suspect that she will require a course of treatment from a specialist. But I leave such decisions in your capable hands.
The G.P. Replies
March 1987
Well, I was passing the Cherry Plums’ at lunchtime, and there was Muriel out the front, weeding the flowerbed by the fence.
I admired the poppies and so forth, and was regaled with the information that the best blooms were Rhode Island Reds, and the more fragile ones were Silver Campines or Golden Pencilled Hamburg Hens. I think perhaps her condition is harmless enough. She doesn’t appear to be at all depressed, and spoke very warmly of the Brigadier. I’ll keep the notion of psychiatric intervention up my sleeve for the time being, but I honestly don’t believe that now is the time to uproot her from her home.
Thank you for bringing the matter to my attention, however, and I shall keep an eye on her and see that she doesn’t get any worse. Incidentally, she’s not really as old as she seems. Perhaps April could drop in on her occasionally during the course of her parish rounds. It would seem quite natural for the Vicar’s wife to call, and you might tell April that Muriel makes a very acceptable egg-and-bacon pie. Or used to.
Father Writes to Muriel
Part and Parcel Hotel, March 1987
Dear Muriel,
It was a great pleasure to be able to speak to you. I chose to do it during the weather because I knew you wouldn’t want me interrupting your programmes. I thought you were looking a little pale. No sign of the camera here as yet. The post in this area is apparently notorious for being unreliable. George says he has written dozens of letters to Alice, and sent her boxes of Turkis
h Delight every birthday, but he has never heard a word from her. He thinks this means the post is tampered with. Of course, I generally take what he says with more or less a grain of salt. The poor fellow seems to be raving most of the time.
I meant to tell you I have located your mother. She is staying at the Chook and Cherry, which is the epitome of old-world luxury at the fashionable end of the main street. It reminded me of Brown’s in London. Remember when we all stayed at Brown’s and you lost your tam-o’-shanter. Or was that Iris? Anyway, your mother suggested that I move into the Chook and Cherry, but I am really quite settled here at the Part and Parcel. They do a very nice pumpkin soup. You realise this place is all hotels. It seems that Ann is actually running one of them, the Ali Baba next door to the Mermaid Tavern. I still haven’t got into that part of town. Mother sends her love, by the way.
Someone I did see though—and I know this will interest you—was Nell and Ernie Blue’s baby, the one who died in his sleep. He has apparently become a Roman Catholic of all things, and lives (also in great luxury) at the Prague. There is a group of nuns living there, and they do very elaborate embroidery and dressmaking. Boy Blue’s mother would be astounded to see the kind of get-ups they’ve had him in. I’ve seen him in the park feeding the ducks while wearing a long brocade dress like an oriental prince. He seems quite happy. I made a little yacht for him from a walnut shell and he was tickled pink. You might pass that on to Nell and Ernie if you happen to run across them.
If you are thinking of sending a tuckbox in the near future, could I ask you to pack a Dolly Varden and one of your egg-and-bacon pies. I really miss them, and you will be pleased to know that I have a very good appetite at the moment.
I’ll try to come and see you again soon during the weather, although it isn’t always possible to get through, and sometimes there is a very long queue.
Your loving Father
Muriel Rambles On
April 1987
Jennifer Lilley came again, with grey curly hair and twinkly spectacles, carrying a basket of scones she had made. They tasted like shoe-polish, and her shoes were dirty. I know in my silent self that I have never liked Jennifer, never liked her at all. She always had fat legs and a mean mouth and I think she has never stopped talking in her whole life. Her husband ran off and left her. I didn’t know that before. The wonder is that he ever married her in the first place. But people do. Mrs Blake-Showers suggested Jennifer was lonely, suggested we might be friends, suggested I was lonely. I am not lonely enough to have Jennifer Lilley around here all the time, trampling over my flowerbeds in her large and dirty shoes, plonking her handbag on the sofa. I am sorry now that I asked her to look at the photograph albums. She sat at the dining-room table running her index finger across the photos. When her finger came to Brian, it did not even hesitate, just went sailing across him, sliding on, flicking to the next page. ‘And you and Iris as alike as two peas. You always had such beautiful smocked frocks. I envied your smocked frocks.’ Her marcasite watch going twinkle twinkle tick tick tock, with a little silver chain dangling from it, tickling her fat wrist. ‘And you used to tell us stories about all the fairies you had seen. You had a wonderful imagination. Looking under damp leaves to find little processions. You described a wedding and how the orchestra was playing very softly under the chestnut tree. I half believed you.’
I remember that wedding and the sweetness of the perfume that filled the garden, and the delicate notes of the fairy flutes and violins.
And then, when we were twenty-one, Iris went to London and never ever came back. I don’t think Iris is ever going to come back now. I think she is living in Portugal with a Roman Catholic priest. That’s what I think has happened. I think she went to art school in London, thousands of miles from Woodpecker Point, and went to Paris and had an exhibition, and went to Portugal. In the light and the music and the flowers by the sea with the fishing boats, Iris fell in love with an aristocratic Portuguese priest dressed in black, with holy hands and shining pirate’s teeth.
Oh, Iris is happy in Portugal.
One day the gardener from Mrs Morning Glory’s came to the gate with a box of acorns.
‘These are for the pigs,’ he said. And I said, ‘But we haven’t got any pigs.’ He insisted. ‘My name is Peacock,’ he said, ‘and these are for your pigs. Mrs Glory told me to bring them down here for the pigs.’
I walked away from him but he followed me. He followed me across the garden and we went into the shed. He put the box of acorns on the bench and we were standing by the window looking out and looking in, when he took my face in his hands and kissed me the way gardeners kiss and undid all the buttons of my dress.
‘Hang this dress on the door,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to get it dirty.’
And like the empty skin of a disappearing snake, my grey and yellow-bellied dress hung from a rusty nail. We did things standing up. I didn’t know you could do that. He left the box of acorns behind, and I hoped he would come back to get them another time, but he never did.
Father keeps telling me he has written to me, but I haven’t had any mail. He says to pack him a tuckbox at least, even if I can’t find the camera. I wondered how best to send the tuckbox, and then it came to me of course. So I went down to the well to see how big the parcel ought to be. It is a big well, isn’t it.
It is a silent blowhole, still and black and sweet with slime and mystery. There is a wonderful country down there with tree after tree of apple tree, scarlet with fruit and Brian after Brian silently swinging from a branch of every tree. His socks brush the feathers of the golden wheat. A breeze ruffles by. A pigeon, broken-hearted, is sobbing faintly, faintly sobbing in the hedge.
I packed the Dolly Varden, all chocolate icing and layers of yellow and brown cake with currants dotted in the sand and mud. And a very special egg-and-bacon pie just the way Father likes it. I lined the box with dried figs and dates, and wrapped everything in vine-leaves and oilcloth. It was a wonderful parcel. I tied a rope around it and lowered it into the well.
First I walked around the well three times at sunset as we always used to do. Down down down it went into the shining darkness of the watery earth. I took care not to bump the sides of the well. I heard the parcel hit the water and felt it glide down until it was swiftly pulled by swiftly pulling forces. Fingers untied the rope from the parcel. Oh, Father will be pleased.
A Word from Father
April 1987
Muriel came good with the tuckbox. Just what I needed. I even shared the cake with George. That should show him that the cake shops are in good shape. He still complained that there weren’t enough currants. The thing that pleased me most of all was that the parcel actually got through. There’s hope for the camera and binoculars yet. Muriel certainly knows how to pack a parcel.
The Vicar Speaks Again to the G.P. April 1987
Well, Robert, it is always possible, after the event, to see how a tragedy could have been averted. I suppose somebody should have realised that the Plums’ old well had never been sealed off in any way. It is hardly my place or yours to go poking around people’s gardens to see what’s safe and what isn’t. However, I shall certainly bring the matter up at the next Council Meeting, and would appreciate your support.
It seems that Muriel was dangling a pair of binoculars down the well in the semi-darkness when Jennifer Lilley discovered her and attempted to intervene. Before Muriel knew what had happened, Jennifer had toppled over into the well. Muriel ran for help and, as luck would have it, the Brigadier was passing on his evening walk. But of course it was too late. The poor woman had drowned. Miss Plum will certainly be needing medical attention at this stage. It is so terrible that this should have happened in her garden so soon after her own father’s passing. Sometimes people’s lives seem to be filled with sadness and trouble.
Mrs Morning Glory Has the Last Word
April 1987
A fresh flock of green and topaz spirits came flying up from the well when that w
oman drowned in it. They spread out across the sky above the cliff top, streaming into the sunset-yellow clouds. Buttercups were blooming in the clouds above the cliff, washed with the brightest shining light which shines under the chins of children, do you like butter? Let me see now, do you like butter? And you held the yellow flower under the child’s chin, and the sweet butter-yellow light shone up and the child was laughing in the sun. He likes butter.
I suppose that now the interfering Council will come with rumbling cartloads of cement and pour it down the well, the dangerous yawning drowning ringing singing buttercup shining well. Oh, where will they nest then, the spirits of the air? Where will they nest and rest and whisper to the dead, whisper the secrets of the living and the dead?
I waved to them as they went by that evening. I was standing in the garden, breathing deeply of the sea air as the shadows of the evening were about to fall. From the corner of my eye, I could see as through a prism the world in waves of splashing split light spilling. And at times like that, the sadness of it all, the drowning and the coroner and the sadness of it all, comes rolling back to me and tolls like bells across the water, and drums with drums beneath the sea.
One man, my George Glory in his uniform of glory, goes to glory in the desert and his throat is parched with thirst. But this woman in her tweed skirt with her wood-and-leather buttons topples headlong into the water down down down she hits the water, dreams her life away, and drowns. Shuts her eyes in astonishment as her glasses are whisked off by the well-water, opens her mouth, takes a deep draught through mouth and nose and, suddenly, there is insufficient oxygen in her blood, and brain and heart stop working. The end. The green wet slimy swirling glugging end. Oh, Jennifer Lilley has drowned now in Muriel Cherry Plum’s dangerous garden well. The water of it all! If there had been some moderation, give and take and moderation, she could have shared some of that water. Could have had some desert; given George some of the water. He gets cooler; she gets warmer. He gets some peace; she gets some war. Baby Georgy Porgy Pudding and Glory gets into the water-supply and rides off on his hobby-horse around the ruins of the deer park. He looks so absolutely gorgeous in his red-velvet suit with his golden curls and laughing hyacinth eyes. What a beautiful child, laughing in the sunlight, riding through the imposing gateway of the park, empty park where the wild gorse blooms yellow and prickly, where the ghosts of peacocks, the feathers of pheasants, the cries of the long-lost deer mourn the dead, the dear parched dead. And Jennifer Lilley sinks like a dreadful rock in water, too much water.