Ripples in the Lake Chapter One

Ripples in the lake

Chapter one

 ‘Budge up Vi, my arse needs more space than this these days’

There wasn’t much room with the three of them in the van’s cab. They’d all thickened out through the years, and Audrey wasn’t one to be uncomfortable if there was any choice in the matter.

‘you should try things from where I am,  I’d forgotten I had the places that gear lever just got to’

The journey would take most people no more than 6 hours, but with Wilf driving, avoiding motorways and refusing to turn right unless he had to, they were looking at a road trip of at least a week.

The van was packed with boxes, suitcases and various items to furnish the three bed stone cottage they were heading to. Nestling on the edge of a wooded hill with a steep track leading up from the lake it had become the holy grail of a shared late-life crisis, and the three friends had made a decided to cash in the equity and leave the children mourning their inheritance. A little further down the valley was a pretty, touristy village, with a population apparently consisting of a strange hybrid of ex-forces, white witches and builders with a fetish for Kevin McCloud.

‘I still like ‘Elsinor’  Wilf said, the women jeered him.  

‘fool. You liked Dunroamin too though didn’t you. Any way it’s got a name, just you don’t like it’

‘well, ‘ he protested  ‘life in a country idyll shouldn’t be lived somewhere called Waterloo, not unless you’re a gay old sailor anyway.’

‘well, you never know your luck, you might nab yourself a distinguished rear-admiral from down the hill’

Still cheerful at the outset of the journey they laughed gently and settled into an amiable silence.  Naming the house could wait though they occasionally punctuated the journey with other  suggestions  they definitely wouldn’t use.  They were overtaken by everything else on the road, and the early autumn daylight started to fade.  They had decided to only venture out to a hotel they had been to with the over 60s, which had a lovely landscaping by capability brown and a tea room looking out over the formal gardens, even though the fountains made Wilf need to use the toilet. It also had been the backdrop to the first glimmer of the plan they were now realising. It held a very tender place in their hearts. It also had a one way drive and a large car park, which meant Wilf didn’t have to reverse on the first day.  

Having negotiated the parking, and extracted their overnight bags they established themselves in the empty lounge bar, ordered dinner and started on the drinks and  journey planning.

‘right Vi, you’re driving tomorrow, and I think we can get up to Exeter.’

‘I’m not driving in Exeter’

‘ you don’t have to drive in Exeter,’

‘well why did you say we had to drive in Exeter

‘I didn’t say we had to drive in Exeter -‘

‘he did didn’t he aud?'

‘he did yes Vi’

‘no I didn’t,  this is going to be a very long week if you keep this up’ Wilf raised his hand to prevent further interruption. ‘we have to get to Norma’s before it gets dark, she’s this side of Exeter, that’s where we need to get to. I’ve put her address in the sat nav –‘

‘I’m not using it if its that woman’

‘I like that man’s voice, who is it? That tall man…you know. The one with the moustache and the silly walk’

‘Hitler? Have they put his voice on Sat Nav? I don’t think I want to follow instructions from Hitler.’

‘Not Hitler, that man, you know, oh god what is his name’ Audrey scratched her head

‘My first was a tall man with a moustache. Ginger he was.’ Vi  breathed out heavily with a wistful look

‘Hitler wasn’t ginger’

‘Not Hitler, Derek.’

‘Derek who? How can you tell he’s ginger just from his voice?’

Wilf and Vi both looked at Audrey without being able to think of a response.  Wilf tried to get them on track again

‘I’ve put  their address into the sat nav, yes it’s the man, and it should take us an hour and a half in, Norma said she’d do us some lunch , and Geoff will be home in the afternoon, and he’ll have a look at the exhaust and we can start out on Thursday morning nice and early for Tom.’

Vi’s golden son. He always visited and phoned, always around at Christmas since Dad died, and as happy for Vi and her friends as any son could decently be, but he was the most boring man in the world, with the most boring wife and the most boring house and the most boring cat in the world.

The bonhomie was dulled slightly round the table as they contemplated that overnight stay.

‘John Cleese!’ Audrey shouted triumphantly

Everything hurt. I had to peel my cheek from the dried vomit sticking me to the rough utilitarian bath mat. Whilst levering myself up onto one elbow I brushed across my face with the back of my hand. Hair tangled over my eyes and mouth,  catching on the rough skin made raw and broken by however many hours against the floor . It was another grey dawn, but I could see and feel the mucus blood and undigested pills in the sick all around me all over the room and covering the sink and the sides of the bath and the  toilet bowl. The smell hit me and I started again, though I had nothing left to expel.  

Then a bell rang. And rang twice and twice again. I looked over to the bed and shuffled to pick up the phone. Myles. There was only a moment of signal then he was gone. He said no signal. More lies. Enough to taunt me but no help at all.

I realised my face was wet. Still everything hurt and I had nothing to hold, I cried and cried. No sound, just tears. The signal clicked on again, and text message flashed up ‘you have 17 new messages’.

In a foetal curl I carried on weeping silently. How can I be here? A year ago, less, we had everything, I loved the way you’d watch me walk across the room, and ask me where I’d been who I’d spoken to. It made me feel alive knowing that you,  tall handsome strong, wanted me, every part of me. That was so good, felt so good. We talked about a family. You wanted children. I wasn’t sure, but you made me feel so -  whole again. The way you talked, it would be wonderful. So wonderful. But it isn’t. it never will be, I never will be.

Horatio climbed onto the bed and started to lick my face. His breath smelled sweeter than the room. I pushed him away. Sitting up on the edge of the bed I reached for the table lamp. The switch made no difference. I moved to the window and drew back the curtains. The day was still grey, and barely made any difference to the light in the room.

When I put my fingers to the back of my throat I’d made a decision. I never thought I’d come back from that, but here I was. Not sure that was the end of it. But here I was now.

The old casement windows wouldn’t dislodge to allow any fresh air in, the paint on the frames was cracked and peeling but thick and clearly had not been shifted for some time. I suddenly felt I had to get out. I looked down at my dress, it was caked with bile, but I reasoned my coat would cover the worst, and wrapped it about me.

Horatio looked expectantly at me, I had no idea how long we’d been there, it might have been days though in amongst the rancid human odour there was no foul faecal smell of dog shit. Not much to say about a life, but we couldn’t’ have been in there for that long.

I reached for the door and turned the handle. No movement. I pulled again and still nothing. Oh yes, I can’t kill myself properly and now I’ve lost the key. I looked around there was no sign of a key, nor of a key hole.

That couldn’t be right surely, I pulled the handle again, but nothing moved. A sudden sense of panic hit me and I started to bang on the door and found my voice. ‘Hey. Hello. Hello can anyone hear me?

‘Yes’

I froze, The voice had come from behind me, inside the room.

‘I can hear you. And see you. You can’t see me though can you,  you dirty whore. Look at you disgusting bitch, dressed in your own filth, you’re not going anywhere’

Chapter Five

I can barely open the envelope. My fingers refuse to co-operate as if they can’t bring themselves to witness the contents. The handwriting is mine, but someone else has borrowed it. The floor disappears beneath me; acid rises in my throat. I read…

Dear Myles,

I know you will never get this, but something inside compels me to write it anyway. You deserve to know that I loved you once. We may have disagreed on literature, but you helped me rewrite my story and filled the pages with hope. But it was all fantasy. I began to feel as if I existed only through your eyes. Perhaps I was always a phantom. When I met you I was so lost. Still reeling from my diagnosis; confused and bewildered by the implications. You made me believe my condition was just a label. Dissociative identity disorder – meaningless words you said. I was so grateful I clung onto you for dear life. But fear and gratitude are no basis for a relationship. They sour into bitterness and resentment. There are days, Myles, when I don’t know who I am. Not in a pretentious way. I don’t mean like that. Existential angst would provide light relief, believe me. I can’t even count on the fundaments. Who am I? I am many and I am none. There are parts of me so menacing, I fear them. They lurk as if… I literally haunt my own mind, scurrying down corridors and past doors I dare not open. But you prised open the worst one of all, Myles. And we must both live with the consequences. I shouldn’t have pushed you away. You looked so furious when you grabbed my arm… I had seen those eyes before. A dizzying rage possessed me. It was as if the reflex had been there all along; a spring-loaded trap just waiting to bite. No. I will never go back there. I yearn to be marooned; an island no one can invade. Somewhere she will never find me. See, even now she… you… frighten me. As if it wasn’t enough that you violated my body, you are now invading it from within. A benign tumour that swims in a sea of hatred and disgust and threatens to eat me from the inside out. As I write, the cells are dividing. It grows; I shrink. I thrashed your skull until there was more of its contents on the lamp than there was in your head. I watched the guts literally spill from your body… and yet you live on. There is no escape for any of us it seems.

Susan

Beneath these insane ramblings, are scrawled the words:

Blue Anchor. 7pm. David.

I have no idea who he is or what it means. As for Myles, it is all nonsense. He had got up and gone to work as usual, his grey suit… No wait. He came back. The document he forgot… then he saw my bags and… The realisation of what she has done, what I have done hits me so hard I fall to the ground clutching my stomach. Myles. We had grown apart, or rather so close the relationship threatened to engulf me, but… I grab the single pill from my bedside and place it on my tongue. How could I create a life? I who does not even exist. I, a murderess who has destroyed the only love and mercy ever shown to me? But before I swallow, I am consumed with self pity. The pill catches in my throat and I gag, ejecting it across the floor. What if this life within me is who I am? What if I have created myself… I can become the mother I never… 

The room lurches from side to side as the vertigo strikes. As she strikes me again and again; the vein in her temple pulsating, saliva spewing forth as she spits the words over and over that I am worthless and hateful. She knocks me to the ground and thrashes me with the birthday gift my father has given me that very morning. I watch as my seven-year-old-self switches off inside, oblivious to the beatings; she plays with her dolls and has tea with Mrs Poole. If she concentrates really hard on Mrs Poole’s words then the screams become more distant, the pain just a faint crackle of electricity. Mrs Poole tells her she is the brightest sweetest girl in her class and she wishes she had a daughter just like her… But the screams won’t be muffled any longer. 

I retch up hot green bile, my body convulsing as if in labour. Labour. The reality hits me harder than the memory of my mother’s blows. I pick up the familiar pot of pills from my wash bag. Enough for 13 days. How hopeful. What was she planning to do after that, I wonder. Or was this the plan all along? I crunch them between my teeth and gag as the chalky mulch clags in my throat. I swallow and swallow and swallow. The way I have been doing all my life. Swallowing down the agony until it swallows me. Me: a matryoshka of self-hatred and pain. So much pain. I swallow one last time. And wait for liberation.

                                                                                              (by Beth) 

Chapter Four

I must have stood there for a full five minutes, lost in a reverie, flicking through memories as though paging through a photograph album. Some were good, but most less so. And there were gaps that I couldn’t explain. Brief periods where neither Myles’ nor my life seemed to have been recorded. What happened to the summer of 2008? There were no associations, no images, no memories of scent or mood or place. Nothing good or bad, just a blank space. Disconcerting that there were so many of these.

I did recall some happy times though. Pictures of laughing faces flickered and shimmered as though seen through a very old telescope. Silent movie frame grabs that each stirred tentative sentiment and suggested a forgotten narrative, and that made me move quickly on.

The bell was no longer ringing. I looked down at Horatio who lay perfectly still, with his eyes upturned, watching me as though looking for cues as to how to be. I held his gaze. A silent moment, devoid of thought but rich in the sensation of quietly existing. My mind’s eye rose up high above and looked down, and saw me standing there in a small, shabby room, in a small shabby Victorian mansion that stood alone surrounded by fields, on a small island surrounded by sea. And not a person to be seen anywhere.

A noise from outside distracted me and I turned to the window. Lifting the sticking sash with some difficulty, I lent out and looked down on the gravel driveway just in time to see a taxi driving away. There couldn’t have been many vehicles on the island and once the sound of the taxi’s engine had faded, all was silent save the plaintive call of a gull somewhere overhead. The air was sweet and clean and smelled of the sea. A sense of adventure washed over me and I felt, in that moment, on the cusp of something new. A change for the better. The possibility of a new start and a new life. But the feeling was soon tainted by rising angst. Ill defined fears raising their smirking heads. In truth I had no idea what I was going to do.

Djuna Barnes may have been able to discard her moral compass, although I somehow doubted it, but I had an unborn child to consider, who was reliant upon me. Whose very existence depended upon the swing of my moral compass. And there was Myles to consider. Did I have the right to ignore his paternal role? The love he may feel for his child? Djuna was wrong. All we can hope for is a future that’s as thawed as possible. An optimised future that suffers minimal interference from detrimental past influences. And the only real tool available to us that could help us to find that is our morality and our sense of justice and kindness.

Horatio had lifted his head and was watching me with his tongue lolling out. How could Djuna Barnes see only ‘instinctual choices’ in a creature that offered such loyalty and an obvious, intuitive awareness of my mood?

I decided to take a bath and was pleasantly surprised to find copious amounts of steaming hot water on tap, although the bath itself was an enamelled antique that wobbled slightly on four little curved, cast iron legs. Twenty minutes later, having dried myself with heavy, crisp and slightly abrasive towels that left me feeling invigorated and refreshed, I dressed, gathered up Horatio, and set off to explore the hotel and the grounds, slamming the room door behind me.

The passageway was dark and musty, with tatty Persian rugs that were probably splendid in their day, overlapping one another along its length. Looking down on the stairwell was a tall, arched window with a stained glass panel that cast a luminous pool of colour on bleached and faded wallpaper. With Horatio walking patiently beside me, I ran my hand down the broad dark banister and descended four floors down to the hotel reception.

Eric was there. Unmoving in such silence that I could make out a wheeze as he breathed. He looked up as I approached and in one seamless, unsmiling movement, reached behind the reception desk and presented me with a letter. I recognised it immediately. I’d written it myself. It was for Myles and I’d concocted it in a moment of emotional panic whilst on the ferry. I took it from him, smiled and thanked him.

‘Some bloke in a taxi just dropped it off for you. Said you wouldn’t know ‘im but he saw you drop it on the boat.’

The envelope felt damp in my hand, and it was creased. I turned it over. It had been opened and my letter was visible, my handwriting there like a guilty secret. But secret no more it would seem.

                                                                                                                           (by David)

Chapter Three

The bell rings incessantly, a distinct and piercing sound which reminds me of a child screaming. Horatio glances up at me, confusion and fear percolating his simple, animal mind. What is he thinking, I wonder? Does he sense that everything is no longer in place? Does he sense that my life is tumbling through a labyrinthine maze of confusion and choices and vacuous spaces? Djuna Barnes once wrote a book called  "Nightwood". She wrote about the instinctual choices of animals in an admiring and desiring way. To be truly free she wrote, you need to have no moral compass. No sense of obligation, no conscience, no obsession with the past that freezes your future.

I suppose I have just physically done that to Myles. I have fled, I have discarded my moral compass of obligation and consequence, and left them in that discarded waste can with my wallet, keys and phone. I have physically removed myself from his familiar, stale stench, from the feeling of his stubble on my shoulder, from the familiar sensation of his lip's against mine. Yet his face is stalking the shadows of my mind, the vision of his tired and confused face searching the room for me is dissipating through my borrowed sense of freedom.

He will miss me, but he will miss me like a tired, crumpled sofa misses a pillow. He will search for me in the rust of the pipes, in the rot of the wood, in the aching and spent morning's rays. He will search for me, but will he find me? Where am I to be found? Where should I go?

The bell continues to ring, mellowing now as it seeps back into the morning's horizon. Horatio returns his head to his paws, confused yet content as he lies beside me. All my choices have lead me up to this moment, the decision to love a man who could not love, the decision to stifle the boredom and sense of entrapment in my heart. The decision to leave all my mundane existence knew. The fragile balance of life's choices, the inescapable consequence of decisions hang before me.Whose story do I seek now? Do i return to the tired, grey and neglected corridor and uncover what has painted the misery on Eric's face? Do I find David, do I seek the stories that lie beneath his happy and exuberant facade?

Do I take the pill that will end the beating life within my stomach?

My hand curls around my abdomen and strokes it gently, as the bells surrender into the approaching anticipation of my decisions.




                                                                                                                        (by Rosie)