‘Yes, yes Ms. Snelgar there’s nothing more devastating than an overgrown bush is there dear? – No, she’s not selling and if you must give water to tales like that they will abound to become bigger.’ Ms. Snelgar huffs and I think about Russell lying in the field up the hill in the pouring rain by
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himself and have to wonder why anyone would just thinkit was a heart attack. People don’t just fall down and die. I open the shed door.
‘So, she’s not dead yet?’ Snelgar rasps. Urgh! Does she ever stop?
‘No Elizabeth, there’s fight in her bones yet but I’ll let you know when she pops off so you get first dibs on her out of date prescriptions and the sex toys going to the good help’.
Snelgar murmurs, I push through. ‘I’LL BE SURE TO PASS YOUR BEST WISHES TO SYLVIA’ and I step into the shed closing the door behind me. This shed was once Russell’s working space, one that was very much lovedafter they gave up their fortune and settled here. His studynow covered by times dust. A blind covered window overlooks the garden and the house.
I put the phone back to my ear ‘FUCK ME she’s hard work that Snelgar, she could make even you swear.’
‘Nothing pushes me that far.’ Anna says.
I put the phone on speaker putting it down amongst the dust to wipe the cobwebs from my brow. The old natural glamour photo of Sylvia on the side. ‘I’ve got the picture. You know this picture Russell kept of her is beautiful.’
The picture feels weighted and I turn it to find a key pushed into the back of the frame.
‘He loved Sylvia very much.’ Anna says.
‘Awww I need me one of those’ I say, looking for a key hole to fit the key.
‘You’ll find yours.’
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Amongst the furniture is a set of drawers with a tiny lock, which I try the key in.
‘I did, he left.’
‘There’s always one RiRi’ ‘Yeah, a needle in a gaystack’
I wedge the drawer and it comes open. I thought it was made up! There it is,the bloody book that sent Russell mad, the book that convinced him to lay down hisempire.
‘ANNA?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’ve found it, I’ve found that book.’ ‘What? THE book? Russell’s book ???’
‘The Triangle Walk.’
‘You gotta be fucking kidding me.’
I pick up the book, leather bound, beautiful. ‘The Triangle Walk’ – By Russell Mason. He wrote it? As my brain tries to makes sense of this, I see what lies underneath its hardbound cover. I don’t understand and open the blind for better light.
RUSSEL
I’m scared, he’s coming for me. I push into the shed, lightning flashes across the sky, illuminating Sylvias picture. What is this tested proven reality that I’m polarized from? To be one with everything and now I am a threat tofriends
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to those who wish to keep their truth concealed. I must hide the book, can I hide it here without it being noticed? I have no other choice. I shove the book into the drawer,lock and slide the key into Sylvia’s photo frame and give it a kiss. You are, my star, the one who has been there and acceptedme – thank you for taking the time to get to know me. My darling, always. Lightening glows the lawn and that’s when I see the figure in the house. I duck and pull the blind shut.
MARIA
I lift the blind up.
‘Maria’ Anna calls through the speakerphone. ‘I’ve got to go, I’m at the hospital. Are you there?’
‘Yes Anna, I’m sorry. See you soon.’ ‘Catch you later.’ Click.
I shake my head, big brother is not watching anymore. The cameras are on, no one is home.Silence.
Within the pages of ‘The Triangle Walk’a photo of Anna rests as a bookmark, a photo from before Russell and Anna would have met. Looking into the drawer reveals not one, not two but a vast collection of Anna’s photographic image bordering on obsession. It is obsessive, tasteful though the photos maybe. What were you doing Russell? Sylvia looks down at me from her frame. I turn the bookmarked photo of Anna and written on its back ‘Sacrifice breeds new life’ is
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written.
ANNA
It’s like being inside a respirator here at the hospital, difficult to breath, fake air, and mechanical. I’ve arrived at the hospital, the faint smell of iodine and bleach stuffing into my nose without invitation. I wish Evan would come to see his mother. The first thing Sylvia will ask is where he is. I enter the door to her private ward, afforded for by her son.
‘Where's Evan?’ Sylvia asks ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Valerie, where is Evan?’
I touch my head. Since Russell’s death Sylvia has been bed ridden, some say she couldn’t live withoutRussell. For a while she was trying to find his book but couldn’t and now she is living in 1987 and thinks I’m her daughter Valerie.
‘It's Anna, Sylvia, I've got to tell you something darling Maria found Russell’s book.’
‘What book?’
‘The one that went missing before he died’
‘There is no book.’ She growls, she looks panicked and starts to move about her bed ‘I want to get up, Valerie, I need fresh air.’
‘Be calm Sylvia.’ I ask but it comes across beggingly. ‘I can't do it.’
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‘Be calm.’
Be calm, the instructions in the title, be calm. If I say ‘don’t panic’ the instruction panic is still there. Like if I said ‘don’t think of a massive penis’ you will still think of a penis. Be Calm, that’s a better thing to say to Sylvia, be calm ahhh now with the association in my mind of a massive erect penis, very calming.
‘Aww Valerie, I just wanted to see out the window.’ Pretending to be Valerie is the only thing that calms her
down.
‘It's okay Mum’ I say ‘everything's okay, I'll tell you.’ I stand looking out of the window
‘The park is gorgeous out there; it’s such a beautiful day. Sunlight bathing the lake outside, a wee white dog's playing fetch with a boy, the boy has thrown a stick and the little terrier is bringing it back.’
‘Awww’ Sylvia coos, calmingly. You’re an actress Anna, I repeat to myself. Act!
‘A father and son are on the lake ina paddle boat.’ I can hear Sylvia snuggling into her bed.
‘You’re a good girl Valerie.’
Tears are forming in my eyes, I’m happier staring out the window even though all I’m looking onto is a wall outside. This wall seems to symbolize a lot of my life as late. A wall that I project my imagination on, stopping me from seeing the truth, that we are all walls. We all wear masks, we are all actors in one big show. Somewhere out there a fat lady must be singing.
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∆
I’m numb, I don’t remember going home. I wake up and Evan’s not home, a message wishes me a goodnight from him and there’s a strange message from Maria.
You. Me. Tomorrow.
∆
Maria is wide eyed staring across to me as I walk in. She’s chosen this obscure coffee shop the other side of town. Cohida Coffee. She looks like a newborn babe, stars in her eyes, fresh faced, taking in the world without judgment or preconceived ideas. It looks weird and totally creepy.
‘It feels like its been years.’ Maria says.
She stands and opens her arms for an embrace; we hug her skin feeling slightly warm to touch, kinesthetic, the affection makes her glow more, she sits down again. I sit down.
‘Is everything okay?’ I ask.
‘Yes. Yes’ She says with jubilance. ‘Something extra ordinary has happened, this book.’ She holds out the leather bound book with ‘The Triangle Walk’ inscribed. I’ve never seen her like this in the 15 years I’ve known her.
‘This is no ordinary book.’ She says. ‘It spoke to me.’
‘Is it a self help book?’ I chuckle. But Maria doesn’t seem
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to see the humour, very unlike her, Maria will make a joke out of everything. Who are you are what have you done with Maria Mauro?
A waiter comes over with appropriately inappropriate timing and asks if we would like anything. As strange as Maria is being I realize that I’m viewing her like a strange entity, just as she is with her surroundings, she gazes wistfully to the waiter as if in some kind of trance. I want to ask her if she would like to hug a tree.
‘Would you like anything?’ She says cocking her head to me.
I feel dazed, ‘A coffee?’
Maria puts her hands upon mine. ‘Perhaps’ she says ‘you’d prefer a juice.’
I feel confused. The waiter looks curiously. ‘Would you like a juice?’
‘Err, okay.’
I look to Maria and back to the waiter confused. ‘A juice’ I say. The waiter looks at me, I catch his eye and we both acknowledge the weirdness of the situation. I turn to Maria who is smiling widely. ‘A juice, Orange.’
‘Okayyy’ The waiter nods as if to say good luck and leaves me alone with her. We sit in silence.
‘Did you know the universe can be looked at like a jigsaw?’ She says, jolting me into a conversation I didn’t know I was having. ‘It all fits together and it’s not until you have all the pieces that you see its image, you see?’Maria’s
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eyes like moons.
‘Do you mean like a scene of the country or a spilt tin of beans?’
‘Yesss.’ She says largely missing my point. ‘It’s like a multi dimensional jigsaw!! One that breaks down the physical world to the fabric underneath; this book contains the answers man has forgotten. The world is in trouble Ann and we must do everything to put it to rights. This is all so much bigger than us. You've had that thought that something's not quite right, haven’t you? That you are shut down. It's your blood line Anna, Russell knew! You and the Masons blood lines are connected.’
‘He is my husband.’ I feel that at any second she’ll lean over the table and start shaking me.
‘Oh yes you got married’ Maria asks as if possibly it’s a question.
‘You were at the wedding.’
‘I was…’ she asks as if possibly another question. ‘It’s funny the more you know, the more other facts become so… so mundane.’
‘A mundane marriage.’
‘Haha, Anna you are so funny.’ Now it’s my time I fail to see the funny side. ‘Marriage is so… so possible but just you know, paper.’ She sighs and turns back to me curiously ‘Can I ask did we work here in this very café?’
‘No, is this a joke?’
‘No, oh Anna, how different things can be. Read the book, it was written by Russell after you and he met, he
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remembered, connected with memory, age old in our history, you are connected, we all are. The old world is speaking to us, we all just stopped listening. We've been trained to stop acknowledging it. Religion is not benign, Science has to catch up.’ Breathe Maria, just breathe but she continues. ‘Did you know Magic used to be spelt Magick, now it's changed, things change don’t they and things get forgotten but they don't disappear. It's happening to all of us but it will start with you. Follow your intuition.’ She grabs my hands and the whole of the café seems to disappear around me. I hear a cracking noise. I look down and notice an orange juice on the table, has the waiter come and gone already?
‘Read the book. Tap into it. Communicate with it.When your body breaks and heals itself you do not ask yourself to heal, the body knows, you know all this, you will remember, it is your nature, all of our nature.’
I can’t speak. Maria’s doe eyes bring something out of me, her certainty is alarming.
‘You were born, you are born, trace back to your birth and into your mother and father before you, like Russian dolls. Trace the blood back to the cells and the cells to the atoms, to the center of the spark that started this all. The big boom, pre-‐geometry.
‘Pre-‐geometry? I say. ‘Preometry?’
‘Close your eyes.’ Maria says. I decide to put trust in my good friend and close my eyes. ‘Breathe in, sense all this world around you and expand it, breathe in. Deep. Deeper
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than you think you can, feel your lungs open and with your body open up to all the lives of the one ancestor. If we are the answer, what is the question? All lives, all lifetimes, all organic form comes before awareness. Trace your cells back to the spark and beyond, the cells remember they are alive and not confined to the day today, trace this forward not just on your blood line but everyone's, you are one with everything Anna, this is all one. We have know each other before you and I.’
She lets go of my hands. It’s as if the café has disappeared and a soft piano and violin as begun to play.
‘Do you hear that?’ I ask.
‘Yes, it’s like the first time you hear Greensleeves, it’s like you always knew it, the cells remember. Music transcends speech. Remember Anna, before all of this. I met you before Anna, before those 15 years, remember…’
I can’t close my eyes, Maria looks different to me some how and the name Selina is on the tip of mytongue.
‘S..e..lina?’
Maria smiles opens the book and reads.‘The ingredients that make up this our interpercieved reality will someday establish that all objects are of one basic substance on the universe and its ingredients viewed as evolved properties of that one substance. It’s yours’ She passes me the book. ‘The best of our species must survive, evolve beyond prehensile paws.’
I look down at the book, holding it in mypuppeted hands, the veins in the backs of them run like branching rivers,
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blood streams flowing like the veiny roots of a tree, and still the music plays in the air, a violin, softly plucked playing sadly. I stroke the book, holding it close, nurtured as if a child.
‘Good journey sister’ Maria says, she leans forward kissing my head. I close my eyes and not really sure what’s happening to me feel the backdrop of the world fallthrough.
When I open my eyes, I see the book and open it onto a folded page to see the words underlined ‘Sacrifice breeds new life.’ The glass of orange on the table bares a crackhalf way down around its circumference, I lift the glass and pull the top half clean off; in a thunderous slow motion rush the liquid pours down towards the table.
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