Rewinding by Kate Twitchin, Earl Grey tea

After sitting together in the front pew, not touching, not talking, not comforting. After hosting the drinks and sandwiches in the Function Room at The Crown. After our aunts, uncles, and Mum’s friends had murmured their condolences and left. After all of that, it was just the two of us, our wine glasses empty, not looking at each other, not wanting to talk. But we had to talk. There were things that needed to be done.

‘I’m happy to do it. If you want to get back,’ I said.

‘Happy? Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone describe clearing out their recently deceased mother’s home as a happy event.’

‘You know what I mean. Don’t be difficult.’

‘These are difficult times,’ she said.

‘I’ll go over and make a start on Sunday, OK?’ I said.

‘No, we’ll do it together. We should do it together,’ she said.

 

So, here we are: me in the kitchen, going through the cupboards, and Jenny upstairs in the spare room. Mum thought one of us would take that room when we moved into this house as young teenagers but we’d grown up sharing a bedroom and didn’t want to be parted. Inevitably, that room became a dumping ground for broken toys, bent tennis rackets, obsolete radios and cassette players and wobbly furniture. I’m finding it really hard handling Mum’s collection of battered old pots and pans, struggling to even think of throwing them away. I wonder how Jenny is getting on upstairs and which, of the two us, has got the easier task. I could take her a cup of tea but I’m not sure of the reception I’d get. She’s been at best businesslike, at worst cold, ever since I rang to tell her Mum had passed away. I reach for the kettle; it’s worth a try.

‘Sally, come and look at this.’ I hear her shout.

‘What?’ I yell back, and thirty-five years melt away. We could be teenagers again, bellowing up and down the stairs, too lazy to walk up or down to ask a question. I hear Mum’s voice in my head telling me, ‘It’s not what, it’s pardon.' I so desperately want my Mum back. And I want my sister back too.

‘Coming,’ I call, as I climb the stairs.

She’s sitting on the floor of the spare room in front of an ancient TV/VCR set I remember from the eighties.

‘Watch this,’ she says, reaching to press the rewind button. The tape whines and the screen flickers, scenes rushing backwards.

‘What? What have you found?’

‘Shush, it’s around here somewhere.’ She’s leaning forwards, concentrating on the skittering action, her finger poised.

‘There!’ she shouts and presses Stop, then Play. ‘There. Look, it’s you with…’

‘Where?’

‘There, in the red coat, over by the wall.’

I sit on the floor beside her, just like we did as girls watching Blue Peter after school.

‘That’s not me, that’s you,’ I tell her as we watch a woman in a scarlet coat and man with dark hair, clasped together in a passionate embrace.

‘It’s definitely you,’ she says.

‘So who’s the bloke?’

‘It’s Roger, of course.’

We watch in silence for a few moments.

‘I loved that coat,’ she says.

‘Me too,’ I say.

‘I loved Roger as well,’ she sighs.

‘Me too,’ I sigh. Then she starts to laugh.

‘It’s not funny,’ I tell her.

‘It is so,’ she says. ‘It’s absurd and ridiculous, and it’s all been such a bloody stupid waste of time.’

The tape continues to play and we watch, spellbound, as the couple pulls apart. Her face is clearly visible but he still has his back to the camera.

‘You were beautiful,’ my sister says.

‘Yes, you were,’ I tell her.

‘That’s not me, it’s you,’ she says.

We were so close growing up. We were best friends as much as we were sisters. Until Roger.

Fast-forward two decades and here we are: two fifty-year-old divorcees, arguing over who was snogging whose husband, or lover, in a churchyard at a long forgotten family wedding.

‘Do you think we still look alike?’ I ask.

‘What sort of question is that? We’re still identical twins aren’t we?’

‘And are we still friends?’ I ask, even though I’m afraid of her answer.

‘Still friends,’ she smiles. ‘Always friends.’

About the author 

Retired Administrator Kate is enjoying sitting around and making things up. She’s trying a bit of everything and is delighted with her success so far: poems published by The People’s Friend; Flash Fiction in Secret Attic, Early Works Press and Briefly Write; and short stories shortlisted in various competitions.

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We Came for the Violets by K.T. Jayne, black Earl Grey tea - dark but aromatic

When you get bad news - I mean the type of news that feels like a body blow - it has a colour and a shape. For me the colour was white, brilliant white, a lightning arc. The shape was a gloved fist that took my breath; an uppercut to my diaphragm. But the oddest thing was that it had a smell too. Now that I come to think of it, the smell came first, before the colour and the shape. It smelt a little bit fruity, but in a way that suggested something was on-the-turn. And slightly faecal. It made me feel sick.

It was a clear day in June. We’d been sitting in the once-green chairs in our garden, chit-chatting over cups of tepid tea, having the kind of lazy, pointless afternoon that you feel entitled to have when the sun is shining. And then out of this blue sky came the message.

‘She’s had a severe stroke.’

It came with the lightning. And the rotten fruit.

‘Just hang in there, Jess, it’ll be OK,’ my husband Nick said, folding his hand over mine. He sounded distant, or maybe it was me who was distant, drifting inwards. I could smell the lack of conviction leaking from his forehead and upper lip; boiled parsnips, sweet with a bitter edge. I always knew when he was lying. But I lapped it up anyway; drew it in and held on to it. I used to press my nose to his armpit and sniff his sweat; it made me feel heady. Until the time I smelled betrayal; tuberose and spice, with honey and amber notes. Her musky perfume wasn’t my style, but the only way to mask it was to wear it. And I wore it well, until the scent gradually faded, and he smelt true again.

I was in no state to drive, so Nick took the wheel. It felt good to be in motion, it felt calming. I was desperate to get to her in time, to be with Mum. I wanted to hold her, to bury my face in her neck and breathe in her violets; her candied talcum. But at the same time I just wanted to keep moving and never get to that destination. I let my gaze wander and watched the world hurry by, then I started to feel queasy. So I closed my eyes, closed my mouth, and slowly took in air.

It reeked of stale urine and unwashed undies; Mum’s cushion on the sofa - the one that she lounged on to watch TV. It had taken her shape and it had taken her colour; tinged with straw and pungent with asparagus. After Dad died she didn’t wash very often. I guess she didn’t notice too much with a glass of whiskey under her nose from the minute she opened her eyes in the morning until she closed them at night. I don’t blame her. She needed to blot out the day, to numb herself to the prospect of it. If the thought of it stretching out in front of her left a bad smell under her nose, she would have a good cry and toss back the spirits. I wish I’d been there to open the window more often. To let in some fresh air; some fresh hope.

She got so drunk once that she stumbled into the Christmas tree and took it down. Nick and I struggled to keep our faces straight. It was the embarrassment of it; the tragi-comedy. The slaughter with a silent ‘s’. We stopped sniggering when she tried to scramble to her feet, crushing the baubles and crunching over them like a glass-walker. The butt of a sick joke. One that stank of Scotch and stomach acid.

‘Just hang in there, Jess.’

Even two miles can feel like a long way when you’re racing towards the end. Let alone two hundred. Why had I taken myself so far from home? Why hadn’t I kept myself within sniffing distance? I knew why, of course. Because I couldn’t stand the miasma of despair, that heart-sinking odour of decomposing food whenever I opened her fridge. It hummed of helplessness.

She used to be so capable, my mum.

Her kitchen was once brimming with comforting savouries and sweets; syrup and rolled oats, stewing plums, apple and blackberry pie-filling bubbling on the hob, the sunshine tang of lemon custard. Cooking laced with nutmeg and cloves, with cocoa and cinnamon. And the best one of all, the one that made home smell like sweet home, the buttery, vanilla essence of a sponge cake fresh from the oven.

Latterly she’d leave canned soup to boil dry on the stove, or incinerate a potato in the microwave. The ghosts of charred leftovers lingering in the air. The aftertaste of indifference. It wasn’t her fault. The whiskey took her hunger as well as her will, and its woody earthiness must have smelt so wholesome compared to singed toast. Like kicking through damp leaves on an autumnal stroll.

I wondered what I’d find when I reached her, whether the bite of medical bleach and body fluids passing under my nostrils would bring me back to the moment. To the realness of what was to be; the smelling salts of finality.

‘It’ll be OK, Jess.’

I turned around to ask Nick, ‘How long until we get there?’

The sun, streaming through the window, was a brilliant white that made my eyes water and I had to close them. When I opened them again, he wasn’t there. Or rather, I wasn’t. I wasn’t moving anymore. I took a moment to adjust to the light, which was warm and welcoming and filled an entire wall. I was in front of the French windows in my parents’ living room, overlooking the garden, and I tried to fathom why I would be there and not at the hospital. Why would I be wasting precious time?

I checked the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. Its gold, oscillating spheres were busy stealing seconds that should have been spent rushing to her side. Instead the hands on its face were stuck, stuttering. The shine from Mum’s wall calendar caught my eye. I’d made it for her, salvaging pictures from musty family albums that I’d found in the loft. I thought it would help to keep Dad alive, and us too, between visits. She’d hung it next to her TV where she could always see it. I imagined her sitting there nursing memories, rolling them around like brandy in a snifter, drinking in their tawny tones, watching their residues streak her glasses. I moved in closer and sniffed the glossed paper; a whisper of cucumber-melon, like a new page had been turned. This one had two photos. One of Mum flanked by myself and Nick, toasting his fortieth. The other had been taken by Dad on our annual holiday to the Lake District: Mum, with a nine-year-old me, showing off our purchases from the Hawkshead gift shop.

For all the majestic, glacial screes and barren, bracken-strewn fells haunted by the equine ghosts of windswept trees, it was that pokey souvenir shop in Hawkshead that had me in awe. It was a treasure trove of amethyst and amber, of turquoise and Tiger’s Eye. It twinkled and sparkled like glitter in a snow globe. And it tantalised my nose. Lavender and sandalwood, rose and pine, patchouli and tangerine. But there was only one scent that we came for each year. We came for the violets. It was the only place in the world that we could find them. Back then, before browsers, we couldn’t ‘search them up’, we had to seek them out. And there they were, in the gift shop in Hawkshead. Mum would buy a Parma-fragranced boxed set of bubble bath and talcum powder for herself, but for me she would always buy the Eau de Cologne. She knew it made me feel grown up. It came in a squat little orb, and the perfume inside it was a lush, deep purple. It smelt divine. The scent of nuzzling my mother’s neck.

‘Just hang in there, Jess.’

I was so lost in childhood aromas that the picture of Nick’s birthday hadn’t resonated. He was born in August. The calendar was turned to August. Two months on from the lightning strike, from that message out of the blue. It can’t have taken two months to make the journey home. She must have liked that page, flicked ahead to it. On the mantelpiece there were several framed photos of me, more than usual; and some that were loose, just propped up on the Victorian figurines. A few from years ago, many more recent. I squinted at one of the frames, noticing the greasy trace of her lips on the glass and the faintest hint of cherries and wax from her lipstick.

I’d been lingering, reminiscing when I should have been on my way. Turning to leave, I spotted a collection of greetings cards on the alcove window sill. One lay toppled on its back. And a single, swirly, silver word caught the sunlight.

Sympathy.

It was years since we had lost Dad. It didn’t make any sense that she would have exhumed the cards and messages, buried in the bureau, from so long ago.

I moved to the sofa, catching a waft of her cushion. Its threadbare velour had taken her impression. It reeked of urine and unwashed undies. I breathed in and I swallowed that stench. It was the stench of shame. Not hers, but mine. The shame of my absence. Next to it, on her occasional table, there was an empty tumbler. When I sampled its nose, I got peat and petroleum. And next to that a single card, open, as if she had been disturbed whilst looking at it. Its message read:

Dearest Irene, no one should have to live through losing their daughter. I’m so sorry.

And there it was - the white bolt; the gloved fist to the diaphragm - ‘She’ was me.

‘She’s had a severe stroke.’

The words that had come with the lightning. And the rotten fruit. And all the other odours of my mother’s grief: the Scotch and the stomach acid, the singed toast and boiled-dry soup, the bleach and body fluids.

‘Just hang in there, Jess, it’ll be OK.’

It’s one of those adages that you can only know is a truth when it happens: your life flashing before you. But it’s not quite like we are lead to believe. It floats back first to the nose, not to the eye. Smells that render in colour and in shape. The apples and blackberries, the lemon zest and buttery-vanilla, the lavender and sandalwood.

It was a kindness, that brilliant, sightless white, because it flared so bright and so hot that it blanched all else and left me with nothing but the sense of scents. And in percolating those last moments, even the sickly-sweet smell of on-the-turn fruit had fermented. I no longer had the stale smell of decay. Instead I had a rich bouquet laced with chocolate and chamomile and vanilla. And violets.

‘It’ll be OK.’

 About the author  

As a filmmaker K.T. Jayne wrote and directed several short films that screened in art house cinemas across the UK. As an author she has  published one novel Serial Dater and is currently working on her second. Born in Cheshire, she now lives in Surrey and works as a Creative Consultant.

Ocean Greyhound by Sheelagh Aston,

Scrunching up the scrappy paper in his fist, Jonathan pushed back the fallen strands of unruly locks from his forehead and lobbed the paper missile into the wicker basket by the door a few feet away. It landed in the middle of a pile of discarded odd shaped paper balls.

He stared in dismay at the essay title. ‘Give an account of a real historical event from the point of view of an eye witness.’

Unable to conjure up any sensible suggestion as to what on earth he could write about, he got up from the tower of books piled high on the oval dining table.  With a dejected sigh, he ambled across the living room to the shelving unit crammed with his father’s maritime books. Perhaps he would find inspiration there? Fingers trailed along the middle shelf until they came to a slim tatty leather book.  With care, he opened the front cover and read the inside page.  ‘Journal of J Moss 1897.’

With an inspired smile, Jonathan settled down on the nearby sofa and started to read.

**

“Look lively lad.”

Jack rubbed his sore, tired eyes and scanned the marshmallow horizon ahead. To his left, out of the wispy June mist, steamed a bulky cargo ship towards the single-funnelled vessel he sailed aboard. A cargo ship’s hull cut across the smaller ship’s knife-edged bow.  The little turbine engine ship named Turbinia, rolled like a twig as the choppy waves slapped against her shallow hull.

“I said look lively.”  A man stuck his head out from the wheelhouse window below. His black waxed moustache twitched as his eyes blazed up at Jack. “Call yourself a look-out. Way ya could nee see a warship, guns a firing.”

“Sorry capt’n.”

 Jack swayed in tune with the ship as it rocked from side to side.  From his lookout platform, a foot or so back from on top of the wheelhouse, he surveyed the watery landscape ahead. He gripped the steel rails that surrounded him and scouted for traffic coming into their path. From his elevated position, the River Tyne’s murky surface appeared uninviting and cold.

“Aye, so you should be laddie.” Captain Leyland’s thick norther blur shouted out as his hands gripped the ship’s wooden wheel steady.  “We need sharp eyes if we’re going to show what this lassie can do at the Queen’s Regatta. Mr Parson’s relying on us. All of us, Jack lad. All.”

Jack swallowed. Talk on the shipyard hinted that the inventor had plans for his little turbine at a naval event in honour of the Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee at Spithead. Jack reckoned he would need a good night’s sleep if he was to be eagle-eyed the next day, Saturday, June 26^th, 1897.  The day the world would see their ocean greyhound fly.

With that thought in mind, fourteen-year-old Jackie Moss stared at the rain-filled clouds.  He flipped up the threadbare collar of his worn coat and tucked his curls of tawny hair under his cloth cap. The cold whip of the wind he could cope with the pellets of rain made it harder to see. Wet droplets formed on his eyelashes as he resumed his watch over the calm river’s waterway.

Bobbling gently in the water, the ship and crew waited on deck until the Royal procession of vessels had slipped majestically past them.

Jack gazed opened mouthed at all the men in colourful uniforms with their shiny buttons and the ladies in floppy hats that peered down as they floated by.  

Against the yachts and naval ships whose masts appeared to touch the overcast sky, their ocean greyhound seemed nothing more than a toy boat, like the ones he played with in the park pond as a child.

Once left alone, engine purring, the little ship stirred from her slumbers.

“Eyes peeled ahead, Jack, We on!” said Captain Leyland, as he emerged from the wheel house and headed to the ship’s bow. Jackie scrambled to his post.  Under his feet, Jack knew, the captain would drive them to glory.

When the surge of power came from the turbine engine’s thrust, Jack grinned and eyed the red pennant flag bearing the greyhound’s name, Turbinia, It fluttered in the blustery wind from the ship’s mast. The narrow 103-foot 9-inch vessel shreaked through the sea like a rocket cannoned out of a battleship’s side. Smoky grey hulls melted into one on either side of him, as the ship sliced through the waves in between the ranks of dwarfing naval vessels and royal ships.

Careful not to take his eyes off the sea ahead, Jack held on to the rails and ignored the violent shudders as Turbinia, raced on.  Horns blared in their wake as the picket and petrol boats, caught napping, gave chase.  Water lashed the deck.  Jack glanced back and saw amber flames from the smoky funnel of the closet boat to them. They leaped up in the air like fallen autumn leaves caught in a breeze.  Their dance told him the Turbinia, had reached its maximum speed of 34 knots, leaving the huffing petrol boat behind them, stranded in the backwash of the little greyhound’s wake. 

From his crouched seat by the bow, Captain Leyland roared with laughter. Under his thick moustache his teeth gleamed as he glanced back up in the direction of the lookout.  Jack raised his hands in triumph. They had shown them.

They had beaten the navy.  Heat flamed Jack’s face, burning his cheeks.

From the shore lady’s bonnets, helmets and shock stares followed them, and the fleet of ships dotted on either side of their little ocean greyhound.  

“Hold on, Jack, lad, “Leyland’s voice sounded like a whisper over the sloshing of the waves.

Turbinia spun round and dashed back down the lines, the Admiralty’s own petrol boat in their sights. For a heart stopping moment, Jack’s throat shrivelled as he watched its bow come in line with theirs. The words he needed to shout lodged in his dry throat.  Leyland ignored his frantic arm waves. Remembering that he could not swim, Jack shut his eyes tight and prayed. They were going to be crushed to smithereens, and it was all his fault. Too excited by the thrill of showing off, he had missed sight of the Admiralty boat, and now Turbinia, would forever be remembered as the ship that sunk.

Wind whipped across his cheek.  Aware that he was very much alive, Jack opened his eyes to spy the petrol boat’s captain unbuckle his sword. Over his shoulder, Jack saw the punctured stern of the boat, slide into the icy sea and the flagstaff snap in two as the crew rushed to its sides to jump ship. Would they have to stop and rescue to crew? That was the protocol.  To his relief they threw the lift boats out and the crew got into them.

 Turbinia, cruised past the sinking boat’s stern.  Full of pride for the little ship he stood on, Jack laughed.  From behind a neighbouring battleship’s bow, a sleek French yacht sailed into view.  A crude blast of a horn from it, startled Jack, making him stagger back and topple off the roof of the wheelhouse look-out post, onto the deck. A violent shudder sent him reeling to the side as Turbinia spurted forward out of harm. Jack shut his eyes and waited for the sea to swallow him whole.

A strong pair of hands hauled him back to safety.

“You alright, lad?” the captain asked, keeping a tight hold of Jack’s upper arm with one hand and clinging to the side rope with his other.

“Sorry, cap’tn.”

“Nay, laddie. You did grand.”

The greyhound slowed down. There were no flames dancing. Cold splashes of water wet his face.

“And so, did our ocean greyhound,” smiled Leyland.

When Jack stood up, he could see all the shocked faces. Some even waved. Horns blared from the other competitors in admiration; for the dare, the courage and the amazing speed of small their little ship. Pride swelled Jack’s heart to the size of a pumpkin.

When Jack went to climb back to his post, Leyland rested a hand on his shoulder and shook hi head.

“Please sir,” Jack asked looking up at the look-out.

For the first time in the four years Jack had worked as a cabin boy, he saw something other than a roaring fire in the captain’s eyes.

Standing on the tiny ship’s wheelhouse roof, Jack surveyed the body of his sea faring mistress and felt his heart balloon. This time with something other than pride. It would be years, he recalled, before he understood what others might called the feeling.   That day, it did not matter to Jack Moss as he surveyed deck of the prettiest, fastest lady of the seas. The North Sea’s ocean greyhound; Turbinia.

* * *

She rested in her cradle, warm and dry inside the museum’s light airy foyer, every bit as lovely as Jonathan had imagined.  The ship’s hull’s shiny black, the deck clean, the cabin and wheelhouse painted a shade of halo white and the funnel clean of soot.

With a quick step, Jonathan bounced up the stairs behind the display of pictures and memorabilia surrounding Turbinia to the spectators viewing bay of the museum. 

Heart pounding, he stopped dead when he reached the top of the stairs. Across the bay, a thick steel bar separated him from the object of his desire.

He leaned on the bar and looked longingly at the narrow deck.

“Quite something isn’t she?” The mark of admiration was unmistakable in the familiar voice of the attendant who drew alongside him.

“It’s a good replica,” Jonathan observed.

“Replica?” his father said with a grin.  “That’s no replica son. that’s George Parson’s very own ocean greyhound.”

Jonathan tried to picture the galloping waves tossing her fragile frame in the vast northern sea surrounded by the giants ships of her day. Salty smells filled his senses.

“Dad?”

The bar lifted. With one long leap, Jonathan jumped over the two-inch gap between him and the past.

With his feet firmly on the deck, fourteen-year-old Jonathan Moss pushed his unruly strains of hair from the eyes, stared at the jutting roof of the engine room in front of him and traced the footsteps of his ancestor, Jack.

 

 

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