And the feeling of meconium, pushing through, the filling of my fragile wings until they’re strong.
Until they carry me up and out and over and away, watching the flowers beneath me, the breeze, lifting me. Sunlight turning up my colours till they sing.
And on the leaves below, the photons warm through the residue of who I used to be.
And if you look up, you can see me, can hear the soft beating of my wings.
See me, hear me.
There is no shame.
All I really need is the approaching night turning to undried ink in my rain. I need the splinters of headlights, tail lights dancing in the puddles and nestling down in red fleece I’ll rush. I won’t be long.
And I’m not.
And next door to the pharmacy I blur around under fluorescence for a while, conscious of my pocket once again. It rubs up against my thigh, reminding me and later all I really need are the wooden stairs, the rustling and even later still, all I really need is to sit quiet and sparkle.
And I did and I do and I will.
I suppose it was me and the clock, me and the concerned faces, me breathing and counting and getting nowhere. I suppose I don’t like being told that I can’t do something, so I try even harder for a while. A sense that to give up would be to fail.
Now I can feel it’s me talking from exhaustion (much like this morning, in this world now.) A sense of the pressure I put on myself, but then as now, sooner or later, I gave in, gave myself up to it all.
I remember the nurse or maybe he was a consultant? (It wasn’t Johnny V, we never saw him again, with his slicked back black hair and pristine striped shirt) but someone apologised to me and my determination broke free from my eyes, rolled in spheres down my hot flushed cheeks.
I guess the rest of the evening was spent in the theatre, but no aisle seat for me that time. I was centre stage, I was the whole ensemble, I was the diva under their lights and clamps and curtains. My abdomen sang wide, glorious and while they hurried, tinkered and sewed the gash, I loved him in my bloodied arms.
Home.
Seconds tick down at crossings, marking time and if you take the time to look after a stranger’s baby while their mother collects some food, then take a moment, the only moment that you have, to hold the infant in your eyes, to wish him love and health.
Take a breath amongst the hubbub and the clamouring to pray his life goes well, that circumstances hold him and that years from now he’s not spotted sitting in a doorway with a tin can of cash by his cold feet, irrelevant to passersby who jostle for position, who want the next Must Have.
And while seconds tick down at crossings you try not to fall into the cracks between the paving stones, the concrete where your mother’s feet brushed years ago, her cashmere cardi fluttering in quieter streets. And if you fell would some hand reach down to pull you up, would someone come to save you? Would a stranger wipe smeared blood and debris from your cheeks? Would they hold you?
And your mother’s feet blur into your own. You don’t fall down while the seconds tick to nothing and as diesel fumes mingle with chips and grease, the baby waggles his feet in the pushchair, sucking on the saccharin of a sweet Fruit-Shoot. His mother returns and thanks you. His life is good. You pray it always will be.
Under the trees where you shield from rain, a raggle-taggle group set up their tables, you leave before their purpose becomes clear. Your chips are warm in the cold, a fleeting comfort while your mother echoes around you, her pearls glinting from a younger sun that tries to push through now, that tries to warm you.
Following myself along is sometimes confusing. I do get lost at times. I start out down by the river by the ancient bridge. I wonder how I’m connected to the woman in the photo from 1905, with her skirt brushing the pavements. I jump-cut, I fly.
But I know how I’m connected to the woman in 1962, sipping strong tea, exhausted and her brand new warm pink baby has a heavy head, it makes her arm ache, her thin arms that would entangle mine on-top of Pendle Hill, years later. You know the hill? That hill, her arms, that baby, this life.
You know how it goes. So I keep following myself. The river flows over rocks, timeless. There are words in the river. I wander by waters. Fluid.
Sometimes it’s the smell of lilies and the look of them boxed on her kitchen floor. Sometimes it’s the fluster of silk on her wooden stairs, how people busy themselves around her as she sits.
Now and again it’s the smell of nail varnish, sharp and clean, almost fruity, cutting through her day. Quite often it’s the thought of her mug of tea to her right, going cold as women fuss. One kneels down and laces her boots while the other stands behind her and sticks clips into her hair.
She notes how the moments jump haphazard, back and forth. The barefoot giggling, the squealing down the phone line, the faces waiting as she rustles down the stairs and then the door.
Sometimes it’s the front door open wide, the look of April grass, sap-full of promise in the sunlight but always it’s the crisp smell of taffeta, the feel of it, the weight of it, the look of it around her form. And then the leaving.
Most times it’s the leaving and her ivory heels on the mat in the foot-well of the car. And everyone who wakes up on that morning, who passes them as they drive by, will notice her, will smile and wave and she will know that decades later, that she’ll recall their faces even though they’ll have forgotten her.
And then the stone path comes into view, her clipping and shuffling into the heavy hush, dust particles hanging in the air like prayers. And most times, in fact all of the time, it’s the haze of photons, marking seconds, as if to say they’re waiting, just like he was. Waiting as she smiles towards him, knowing. And she moves through in slow-mo silence to his side.
Again and again and again. With her shield of flowers.
Sometimes later, it’s the metal sound of the hotel fire escape, as they sneak their way back in, when the guests have waved them off, when the guests think they have gone. High heels and alcohol, such a potent combination but they still make it to their room.
And then the cathedral looms up out of sequence, permanent against drunk daffodils. She tilts, she swirls against the ancient backdrop, arms outstretched with wings of chiffon, secure against the stone, pearlescent in the rays.
In the evening yards of taffeta bunch up to make a bustle and she inhabits it as though it’s intrinsic to her form. Music frays, lights and faces twirl, handshakes, hugs and tiredness falls.
And it flips back to the waiting and then the moving out towards. Always. Moving forwards, always holding flowers, a beacon to light the way.
The waiting there, this waiting here with purpose, with belief and certainty. And this is how it was, how it is.
How it will be.
The woman’s dress, it almost brushed the floor.
The cold stone in the cathedral and all I could see was the fabric to my left as she sat there. The golden swirls, maybe paisley, maybe African, I’ll never know.
And to the right of her ochre and viridian I sat quiet and tried to regain myself.
And she helped us when her language wasn’t ours, when our battered tourist phrase book didn’t work.
And I wonder if she ever thought of me years later, of the young woman who she helped, taken ill in the arms of Our Lady and did she remember the warm blanket of her words.
I did.
She sat with me in silence until the taxi came and in broken English, as we left, she blessed us with healthy children. And I was grateful for her words, her care, the sanctuary of her presence. And a year later in the healthiest of pregnancies, in my blooming, I was so thankful for her prayer.
With thanks to the woman whose face I never saw, who came to my rescue, who helped us when we needed it and I wonder what she’s doing now and I send her back a prayer.
You know how this goes. We start with the bed sheets, I’d call them plum, or maybe more of a claret, too dark for my liking either way.
Tiny windows framing fields, an old phone box that works. White cotton blouse with pintucks, sunhat with a pale blue ribbon, of course
Park up by the toilets opposite Rick Stein’s. Every shop with large buckets of netted shells, so many little brittle housings for creatures long since gone. I study them, imagine who lived inside.
The sun tears through me.
Sunday comes, leaves bike tracks on the Camel trail, not mine though. I leave a trail through the cottage and look from windows. I’m too good at that.
Monday blurs to Tuesday. Tuesday with the thump of sand beneath my trainers, parka flapping, hair wild. Blustered running with my arms wide.
The sedimentary rocks still glinting in the photons like they did, like they do, like they will long after the atoms of keratin in my hair have gone back into the atmosphere.
The bin men are a day late but it’ll still be light when I manoeuvre the residue of the week down the path.
The crows are loud today, arguing over something. The sunlight edges towards the piece of rock on my windowsill, it’ll warm it up later. Hydrogen and helium just doing their thing, a bit like me.
I don’t mind that the night is here, blowing through my letterbox or that the trees are tousled and distressed. I’m safe inside.
And deeper still, inside my mind I’m casting shadows on white concrete, with linen draping off me in the heat. Saturation turned to full, in the welcomed citrus hues outside Matisse’s house, the shuttered windows winking at me, telling me that everything will be ok.
If I lived there, I’d be up early every day, lace- trimmed skirts, bare shoulders in the sunlight. I’d buy oranges just for the scent of the juice, for the feel of the pith under my nails. I’d always smile.
But here, autumn is gearing itself up to shed. It’s fine. It’s all fine though. I spend my hours in Nice, where time frayed, where the white sand said don’t worry. And I listen in the tangerine light, I let it show me the way.
There was a fuchsia toy poodle in Cannes, in the afternoon, the owner dressed in the identical shade, both of them teetering and glittering. I didn’t see them myself, but I heard a tale about them.
If I look out beyond the may tree to some stranger’s brick wall, I cannot see the cement. I see only crowds, the tourists jostling, clamouring and if I stop resisting the leaden sky, the solid stratus that holds me down, then maybe I’ll go back there.
Maybe I’ll be in Barcelona, maybe my feet will push the pavement in the hubbub under their gaudy Gaudi ways. Maybe that’s what I’ll do, under this heavy slate of autumn, I’ll drop back, I’ll go back to the church, let the architecture ease my mind.
Yes, let’s do that then.
Janey L Foster 