Heartsong

How many drops of happiness do you contain? Don't doubt that there are lost treasures waiting to be found within the chambers of your heart. Will you keep them a living secret like memories locked in a box? Do not be the ghost of a bride you once were, confined and defined by your past. Be whole again, explore all that you are. Let me drive the travellers from the heath. I will bring them in from the cold and set them up in the comfort and warmth of a Bedouin tent. They have a drunken three legged dog and a bear that plays the banjo and I defy you not to laugh. They will not scorn you, they will welcome your mirth and share in it with you. Come, bring me my locket in payment I have no need of that silver pebble at my throat and they will not uproot themselves for nothing.
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Come now. Head towards the weeping willow at the crook of the river and you will see their fires blazing orange against the twilight, the air spiced with woodsmoke and something altogether more mysterious. I know your mother warned you never talk to the gypsies in the wood but she lived her life in fear of shadow demons, do not be hampered by those narrow lines. Go. Live your chameleon dreams, travel through meadows honeyed with dew, through valleys filled with the song of streams, dance naked under the moon doused in perfume and be true always to yourself for you are peerless and priceless and you will become whole again.

Breathe

Monique was desperate to escape the cosseted closeness and confinement of her life at home, her prim Aunt, stiff as her stays,constantly fussing over the neatness of her doilies, the plates and cups lined up just so, the regimented folds of laundry. A place for everything and everything in its place. She couldn't breathe. She gazed at the willow arching low outside the window, swaying freely in the breeze, it's branches sweeping sunlit dust motes through the air, so many fairies, here one minute, gone the next. There were secrets hidden here, something untrue at the heart of it but hidden just out of view. Did this confinement offer protection,security? Or was it a hiding place from the riches of the world beyond the chateau walls.
As a younger child she had ducked between the branches of the willow and truly believed she had entered a different world. Here she had guarded her treasures, a nest lined with feathers,  her mother's Wedgwood
 brooch, the tiny silver bell from her teething rattle. Her greatest treasure was the tooled pocket watch. It had once belonged to Father but it had been damaged somehow, in the accident maybe, and now nobody wanted it but her. She could see life in it still, she made it her own, dismantled the clock face with its intricate cogs and levers and set it into the bark of the tree as a sundial for her own universe to spin on. She had waited, a whole childhood it seemed, for the sun to come from the South and tell her all she needed to understand but it stubbornly stayed on its course through France, East to West and would not light up her dials.
Beyond the willow, the garden was a parade ground. Neatly trimmed yew and box sat at precise right angles and the grass was rolled to striped carpet perfection, not a weed in sight. This was not a garden where billowy dandelion clocks fluffed their Pom-poms or little girls skipped about collecting daisy chain flowers or searching for four leafed clovers in the sunshine. Rows and rows of white speckled plants stood to attention. Misbehaviour was not tolerated in any form by Aunt Sylvie and the flowers were instantly beheaded if they bloomed out of turn.
Monique curled a wisp of hair  from the braid at her shoulder round and round her finger and wondered if she should take the chance of doing something spontaneous, something frivolous, something just to please Aunt Sylvie. She could make cinnamon bread and place it at her Aunts kitchen table. It would still be warm when she returned from town and would make the kitchen smell so inviting. She wondered through to the cavernous kitchen with its enormous pine table , scrubbed and scarred from years of use and began to rummage about. She collected a large bowl from the dresser cupboard then brought flour, yeast, cinnamon, a little brown sugar and eggs from the pantry, some butter from the cold shelf, and quietly stirred the ancestral aromas clockwise. As she became engrossed in the task she found that she was calmed by it and she stirred in love and wanderlust in equal measures with the cinnamon which in turn allowed her mind to wander to the spice trails she thought she would like to follow.
   The door rattled sparking her from her reverie as leaves scampered down the corridors away from an unseen gust. The house drew its breath in anticipation of restriction. Aunt Sylvie was home. There would be not time to let imagination flow now, there was work to be done, a schedule to keep and the restrictions loosed just moments before were re asserted once more.

Put Yourself in Cinderella's shoes

        Autumn curls her toes in the murderous morning's frost and decay, her leaves embroidered with Jack Frost's needlepoint. I set out along the path remembering the feel of shale and shell beneath my feet from that first Summer when we had crunched hand in hand along the sand but it all seems so distant now. Now as I walk the path I feel the emptiness by my side, the ice cracking beneath the heal of my boot, the crust on a creme brûlée. As a child I remember the joy of puddle jumping on these ice-glass surfaces, the innocent destruction that brought a sense of power: to crush the sheet to tiny glass-like shards and watch the splinters spin off across the slippery surface. Now all I see is how brittle things are, the ice veneer a mirror on our own reality, so thin, so easily broken.
         It is a while since I have taken this path through the woods and I do not remember where it leads but I know I must follow it, put some distance between us and our latest dispute. I find I can forgive more easily as the miles extend between us and time serves to bandage my heart.  I must lose myself to find myself, talking sternly all the way. Time to stand on your own two feet Cinderella. Why was that not the moral of the fairytale I want to scream? Can I not make a happy ending of my own? But having never been taught to believe in myself, to be enough,  I was bound by fairytale law to rely on you to bring my happy ever after. I am a glass slipper girl: I can dance the first dance and cast my enchantment but I have no staying power without your desire. What lies between us is ethereal, we both need to believe in it to make it real. It is hard to believe in magic when surrounded by the utilitarian, day after endless day of chores that stifle spontaneity, one must have hope to make it possible, or a fairy godmother . But I would be lost without you. If I hobble home to you now on lotus feet will you hold my hand, kiss my toes and mend the rift? Make love glitter between us again? I may have one last dance left to share, a last warp and weft of enchantment.

A Concubines Curse

A life of endless intrigue, sniping and bitching, there beauty turned to paint, their kindness brittle with suspicion. They were doomed to live the rest of their days as pampered shadows of the once beloved, constantly in earshot of their many replicas.  Their families had willingly given them up as flowers to decorate the Emperors garden. They had once blossomed as generously as cherry trees and been plucked for their beauty. The lucky ones bore him fruit and at least had concerns beyond their fading favour and beauty to consider, but for most, their season in the sun had been fleeting and they were left with no purpose but to fight for their place in a hierarchy of cats, clawing and hissing at each other and constantly licking their wounds with salt. The Sun's glow that once bathed them in golden light turned away and left them cold and dissatisfied. There was more bitterness here than in an orchard of lemons.

A Grand Union Morning

        A heron stands sentry at the side of the canal, half hidden in morning misted reeds. His head cocked slightly, he holds his glassy eye trained on the camouflage reflections of overhanging branches on the water, watching for the shadowy movement from those that dwell beneath her surface. They are there, I have seen the eternity rings spread from a fly-catching fish's bubble pop, the tiny ripples expanding outwards, making the reflections shimmer, a watery mirage, a rippled funhouse mirror.
      There is bucolic beauty in every direction, air honeyed with hay, tall heavy seed heads woven with spider silks nod at the bank with horsetails and damp thistledown. Golden fields, cut to stubble are spotted with wheels of straw and hedgerows show a promise of Autumn fruitfulness. The white noise of the river's journey underpins lowing cows and the bleating of sheep. Birds sing out from hidden places within tree and hedge announcing the new day. Ted circles at my feet, impatient for adventure. Time to walk the plank. Let the gentle snores of fellow river dwellers recede and find out what secrets the river has to whisper as she tumbles to the sea.

The Sky's the Limit

Wednesday was the worst day. It should have heralded the middle of the week, a peak from which she could slide back down into the weekend and her longed for day of rest. Instead it had become the pinnacle of dread. The Nursery gave out at mid day and the well-shod of Finchley descended on 'The Sky's the Limit' for lunch, their chocolate-smearing, nose-picking, sneeze-swiping, sugar-sprinkling children in tow. The 'Terribles' we're not limited to the twos in her experience, the three, four and five year olds that visited her cafe seemed equally capable of rising to the label, as did some of the Mothers. How was it possible to get cappuccino foam on the lamp shades for goodness sake? And yet there it was, mocking  Sky's belief in the propriety of a certain class. But they were reliable customers at least. When many of the other traders on the road had gone under she still managed to keep going and she knew it was these regulars she had to thank. She tried to forget that they were the stone in her shoe and smoothed her pinny, ironed on her smile and braced for impact.
     The day did not disappoint: two glasses of spilt juice, four returned (half eaten) shortbread squares with smarties missing ( after all that is what happened when the children ate them) -"Smile"- and a near emergency when little Amelia had to be taken to the kitchen with her Mother to empty the tea pot of its scalding liquid before the child's finger could be removed from the spout. The arrival of the raucous Barnston twins who brought with them their Harmonica and a toy kettle drum and proceeded to 'entertain' their unduly appreciative captive audience was the last straw.  What were these Mother's thinking Sky wondered, other than perhaps " Make it stop!"
      When she had opened the tea shop Sky had envisaged a  delicate clinking of tea cups on saucers, a genteel kettle whistling in the background of an aromatically  steaming kitchen, clouds of pink frosted cupcakes and handpied delicacies. These wild wanderers swishing in and the constant competition between the smell of bleach, floor wax, coffee and gentleman's relish ( don't ask!) was somewhat at odds with her dream. Now by the end of each day she was desperate to escape the marigold handcuffs and slip into a world of her own creation. The church bells would chime their evensong melody and under their spell she would lock up one life and enter another, forger the marmalade stickiness on the backs of the chairs and suck instead the sweet nectar of life; stroke her cat from whiskers nose to the tip of its tail, run her hands through the bowl of frozen peas, sink into a sloe gin at sunset and wait for her haddock to poach. After dinner she would submerge her skin beneath bath water, rainbow-slicked with fragrant oil and let her cares melt away. She would remember the ripples on the lake surface that she had enjoyed in the weekend's sunshine and imagine her silken skin to be that of an iridescent mermaid with magical powers, one who has never heard of marigolds.

Fantasia

         Sky lay on the carpet of moss feeling the damp ground soak through the softened fibres of her much loved cotton dress, languidly sucking the honey dew from a clover cup. It was one of Summer's treasures, finding the space and time to lie here by the shore of the lake, watching the iridescent crystal shine of the sun flash from the ripples on its surface, alone with her imagination.  Some days the lake was a pure flat mirror reflecting the cosmos inverted in liquid form. She would sink into its hidden world and imagine her life in opposites. That had it's own secret beauty, but this sparkling glinting light, peered at from beneath the hair of her fringe allowed her to lose the focus in her everyday thoughts and drift into a glittering world of Maharajas, of Sultans and Bedouin beauty. She had always been a Princess at heart and was ever searching for her courtiers. It is inevitable that a girl who serves others will dream of being served, that a girl who lives parochial life will spread her wings and take flight in her mind, and Sky's reality was undeniably mundane.
           A tea shop on the Finchley Road, endless rounds of washing up, crumbly jay cloths and sweeping. Wealthy Mothers drank their tea while ignoring their little darlings as Sky's table cloths were scribbled on with Sharpies. (Who'd give a permanent marker to a 3 year old?) The Mothers all payed good money for a civilised cup of tea  with juice and an iced bun for little Johnny, if it meant that the mess was here and not at home. Somebody else's responsibility to tidy it away.  If they could get away with leaving the children in the cafe alone Sky was sure they would.
           But when her face had been steamed for the last time by the industrial size dishwasher, the teacups carefully stowed on their hooks, clinking their last clink of the day and the cloths cleaned and hanging to dry, she would escape her marigold handcuffs and climb into a world of wonder. There was no pudendan promise to her fairytale, but maybe it was better that way.  Less messy anyway.