Special Things

Special Things is a text I have been working on recently; it has grown out of a research paper I have been writing: Paths To Knowing & Knowledge, Memory, Mindfulness, Neuroscience & The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Special Things tells the story of Will, a young man who is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

SPECIAL THINGS

You don’t know me.  I don’t know me.  I’m a stranger to myself.  I have no history.  Am I real or am I

not?

      Everything is mixed up. 

Who am I?  Where am I?  Where have I come from?  Am I lost?  Why are my clothes dirty

and torn?  And why am I carrying a wooden box?   

      I can’t remember. 

Do I want to remember?  I think so.  I’m not sure.  I can’t be sure of anything.  Nothing makes sense. 

      And yet. 

                   

Something happened to me recently, although it may have happened to me a long time ago. 

                   Something so big, it blew up my world.        

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the kind nurses

And All the kind men

Couldn’t put Humpty

Together again...

My   self    shattered    into    smithereens   mosaic    fragments. 

     

 I want to put my self together.  I want to see the whole picture.  I want to see me.  But I can’t.  I

am blind.  Let me strike a match.  I want to see in the dark.  But reality disappears.

E  v  e  r  y  t  h  i  n  g   f  a  l  l  s a  p  a  r  t

I suspect there is so much more to the world than I can see.

Maybe there is another me? 

A moonbeam

‘How to describe the world without a self.’

Who said that?

‘Deprived of the fictional self, all is dark.’

Each evening I walk the city streets, gazing through the windows of people’s homes, searching for

another I that is me.  Who is he?

      Where does this story start?

I think it starts with the wooden box.  When I shake it, things rattle inside.  I’m scared.  Will I open

it?  If I do, will it be like going to that part of my mind, I thought I’d never visit again. 

      Once upon a time, there was a box.  And when it was opened, out flew disease despair pain

suffering, last of all, a tiny bird bearing a message of hope.

      ‘Nothing is meaningful until it fits into a story.’  Someone said that to me once.

‘Tell me a story, a small boy said to the woman who was tucking him in bed.

She kissed him on the forehead, swish of soft hair as she leaned over him, the scent of corn

flowers and poppies warmed in the sun and cool cotton sheets.  There was an eyelash on her

cheek.  He blew it away and made a wish.   She gave him a smile that was strange and sad.  May  

be that was because of what happened later.  She walked across the room, took a big book

from a shelf, Peter Pan.

   ‘Tell me a different story tonight,’ he said, snuggling under the duvet.

   She left the room and returned carrying a wooden box.  ‘Close your eyes,’ she said. 

And he did.

   ‘Put your hand in the box, pick something and I will tell its story.’

And the small boy put his hand in the box of special things..

SEA SHELL

“Once upon a time, it was summer.  Madeleine was in Corfu with her husband.  Like her late

father, he was an English man.  She watched him sleeping from where she was sitting  on a

balcony soaked in colours.  It was the last day of their honeymoon.  Tomorrow they were going to

make their new life together in England.

      There was the sound of cicadas and crickets and bees buzzing in hives on the rocky mountain

side and the splash of the turquoise sea on the shore.  Swallows dipped and dived in the

impossibly blue sky.  A donkey brayed.  Madeleine ate an orange and watched an old lady

in the garden below, dressed in black; she was snapping  beans into a pan. 

      Madeleine heard the sea music, flutes and violins and harps of waves.  The sun was hot on her

eye lids.  She walked through the lemon groves, scattering lizards.  The eucalyptus trees glittered. 

Finches chattered.  The gentle breeze tucked and folded around her, carrying the scent of the sea

and wild thyme. 

The beach was deserted.    The sand was soft between her toes.  The pebbles were smooth. 

The tide was rushing in at astonishing speed.  Arms outstretched, the waves rolled white and

lacey, sucking holes beneath her feet, lapping at her shins, thighs, waist, making her gasp when

she plunged into the deep water : embracing, inhaling, exhaling, recoiling, pulling her down. 

A kaleidoscope of shifting patterns and colours, teeming with life and mystery, turning end

over end.  The sea swung up to the sky, weighted by nothing but quivering light.  Madeleine swam

the boundaries of unconsciousness, a fine line between drowning and dreaming, safe and yet

terrifying, swirling and turning with all the grace of a ballerina, down to the end of the world, an

intensely private world, in nature and part of it.  There was an immense silence.  Then whale song

carrying for miles, for centuries, singing  the origins of life.

      Bubbles bloomed in her mouth, eyes and ears, filling her throat.  And she felt it, a butterfly

flapping its wings deep in her belly.

   ‘I know you,’ she said.  ‘My heart beat recognises yours.  There is a bond between us which will

never be broken.

A wave rushed, water cascading, sucking her down, lungs bursting, feet kicking, thrown

upwards, spluttering and gasping, spewing a tide of sea and pebbles and brightly coloured fish

and crabs and star fish and a white, whorled sea shell, exquisite as an infant’s ear, which she

caught in her hand. 

   ‘A gift.  A special thing from the sea.’

 And so she kept it in a wooden box...”

The hours I spend dreaming and waiting and there is my fear of the night.  A complex poetry of

anxiety seenheardfelt  through a fish eye lens.  And a blackness, so huge, it threatens to swallow me.

You are back in my dreams, but I don’t know who you are, even though I know I want you.  I

have always been wanting you, looking for you, in my dreams, trying to connect fragments of me,

fragments of you.  But I wake into a nightmare, tasting the sadness and fear in my mouth.  I am lost.

A machine without a ghost.  I am so lonely.  Do I live in a world that exists only in my mind?  Am I

creating the world with my thoughts?   It wasn’t always like this.  I exist.   And it spills over into this...

The woman was in the small boy’s room holding a wooden box sitting on the edge of his bed.

   ‘Can I choose something from the wooden box?’ he said.

   ‘You like my special things?’

   ‘Why do you call them special?’

   She thought for a moment. And when she spoke, there was a smile in her voice. ‘They remind

me of people I have loved and journeys I have made.  They are bits of my life.’

   ‘The special bits?’

   ‘Yes, that’s why I’ve collected them.  They are my memories.  Memories like bits of a mosaic. 

When they are put together, there is a story.  Nothing is meaningful until it fits into a story.  She

kissed him on the forehead.  Her hair was a halo of gold with threads of silver in the moonlight.    

   ‘Make a fist.’

He did.  

   ‘This is how big your heart is,’ she said. 

She put her hand in the box and withdrew it.  Then she opened her fist and showed him this...

THE NOTEBOOK

“Once upon a time, there was a note book; it was iridescent blue and green like a dragonfly’s wing

and shapes of gold and scarlet decorated it, a silky green ribbon hung from its spine.  Madeleine

opened the notebook.

   ‘I’m going to read you a poem,’ she said.

And she did:

LA PAPERIE

This is the place

I come

To be healed

I enter an old

Wood smoke world

Become

A stone

In the

Low slung sun

Warmed wall

Hidden from

Hoar frost

I gulp

Gold green blue

Pulse

Earth dream

Grow fat

On being

Cocooned into

Myself

Eyes drink

Empty space, so much

It knocks me

Sideways

Into a giddy daze

Of sleep solace

Followed by

Cool rinse

Of no noise

Waking pure as

Night snow

In valleys

Deeper

Than

Cream bowls

I gorge

On this place

Find peace.”

I feel myself fall into the poem.  I am losing myself.  Something is happening.   A puzzle of light blinds

me for an instant and it is as if my shoulder blades are sprouting wings. 

      Time moves very slowly. 

I am flying in an impossibly blue sky, the wind breathing in my face.  The sun is sliced open, juice

splashing.  I can taste it.  I am flying over green meadows and valleys deeper than cream bowls. 

There is no noise. 

Gold green blue.  I am dazzled by the colours.  The scent of roses and wood smoke rises in my

nostrils.  I see a stone cottage.  Far out on the edge of my awareness, I hear it.  A blackbird singing. 

There is a garden.  And a woman, hair dappled in light and shade, standing next to an old fashioned

wheelbarrow, and a small boy, kicking up autumn leaves, shrieks of laughter.   Peace, for a moment,

but the image is faltering...

Fading, fadin, fadi, fad, fa, f...

A mercuric light.

And I am left wondering: who the small boy is... 

     

Poetry can detonate the same parts of the brain that react when a child is separated from its

mother.  A longing.  A loss.  I read that once.   And I’ve been told there are different kinds of

memories.  But I can’t remember who told me.  I want to remember and I want to forget.  My

memories are like leaves blown from a tree, scattered at my feet, incomplete, impressionistic. 

Whenever I bend to pick them up, they blow away.    

      I am looking for clues to my life.

Tiny, tiny flashes of memory...

The musical box was lined with midnight-blue velvet.  Strings of pearls, gold bangles, silver earrings

shaped like stars.  In the lid, a mirror.  And in the centre, on a platform, a ballerina wearing a white,

gauze tutu, sprinkled with glitter.  And net wings.  She turned the key.  Tinkling music.  The ballerina

spun round and round.  And I fell asleep every night listening to the music.  Until she was gone.

There is a memory I can half-see in the shadow of my mind.  There is a shaft of sun-light and I follow

it, into a room, where there is this...

A LOCK OF HAIR

“Once upon a time, a long time ago, Madeleine rocked a baby in the crook of her arms, soothing

him to sleep, laying him gently in a Moses basket, stroking his thistledown hair, feeling his blood

pulse beneath her fingers.  His skin was white as snowdrops.  She stoked the fire.  Red sparks shot

up the chimney.  Shadows flickered over the walls and wooden beams.  Madeleine took a small

pair of scissors from her sewing basket, and leaning over the sleeping infant, she snipped off a lock

of hair.”

I try to hold onto the story but it quivers in a breath of air and disappears. 

       Something remembered?  Something forgotten? 

Images-disconnected-snap-shots-of-sound-and-colour-touch-and-taste. 

       All mixed up. 

      All confused. 

      So little known for sure. 

Who am I? 

‘All that you go through in life will just be a memory one day,’ I heard her say.  My mouth is dry as a

desert.   My heart.  As big as a fist.  My mind hides things from me, but sometimes I find them...

Will was running.  Why were birds still singing?  Why were people walking to work as if nothing had

happened?  On that day Will grew up.  But he didn’t.

The world fell away from Will.  An icy wind blew through him.  He was falling apart, shattering

into smithereens, mosaic fragments.  And he said:

   ‘Where is that person who used to be me?’

That event, in a single instant, broke his life in two

BEFORE     

AND          There is nothing but fragments between the two

AFTER     

BEFORE  The room smelled like corn flowers and poppies warmed in the sun and cool cotton sheets.

The musical box was lined with midnight –blue velvet.  Strings of pearls, gold bangles, silver earrings

shaped like stars.  In the lid a mirror.  And in the centre, on a platform, a ballerina wearing a white,

gauze tutu, sprinkled with glitter.  And net wings.  She turned the key.  Tinkling music.  The ballerina

spun round and round.  And he fell asleep every night listening to the music. 

      Until she was gone.

AFTER gas seeped under his bedroom door at night, swirled around his room, settled on his face

with a stench of rotten eggs.  He was stiff with terror.  The gas squeezed his throat, crept up his

nose.  He shot up in bed, soaking wet, his head full of stars.

A door had SLAMMED between

PAST

AND          They are mixed up

PRESENT

AFTER Will lay limp on the bed, motionless, he wanted to sleep and sleep and sleep.  This was what

it was like day after day after day.  The anxiety never left him.  His heart, big as a fist, beat in his

hands and feet.  He heard blood pump round his body.  But, Will wanted to disappear.

ABSENCE

AND          There is not a complete image         

PRESCENCE

Lying on his bed, Will longed for the impossible to be possible, to have the presence of the absence,

but it was as if the clocks had stopped.

Years passed.  And then Dad brought her to live with them.

One night, Will had a dream in which he woke up and thought there was someone he wanted to

find.  He packed his rucksack, a change of clothes, blankets and a wooden box, and went

downstairs, slipped out of the back door, left without looking back.  He was looking forward. 

Will imagined the police questioning his Dad and step mother. 

   ‘Can they think of anywhere Will might have gone?  Anyone he may be staying with?’ 

   And his Dad saying:  ‘Nowhere.  No one.’ 

The police searching in lines with dogs and looking in ditches, dredging ponds.  It was on the Internet

and on the news. 

But no one knew where Will had gone.

Will sailed across the sea and walked and walked, along a winding road, into a valley where mist

collected like cream in a deep green bowl.  There was no noise.  The scent of roses and wood smoke

rose in his nostrils. He saw a stone cottage.  Far out on the edge of Will’s awareness, he heard it.  A

blackbird singing.  And a woman, hair dappled in light and shade, standing next to an old fashioned

wheelbarrow, and a small boy kicking up autumn leaves, shrieks of laughter.  Peace, for a moment,

but the image was faltering...

Fading, fadin, fadi, fad,fa, f...

A mercuric light.

And Will was left wondering.  What was he going to do?

Will wanted to be recognised, appreciated, accepted, understood, a hero, someone she would have

 been proud of.  Will thought it would give his life meaning.  But it hadn’t.  What he thought it would

be, and what it was, were worlds apart. He had wandered into a strange theatre, one where he

didn’t understand the language or know the roles.  He was not a prop.  He was not who they wanted

him to be.  Even wearing the costume, he could not act the part.  He was an actor in the wrong play. 

He could not get into character.  He was    falling    apart    shattering    into   smithereens   mosaic

fragments.   AGAIN.    It was happening AGAIN. 

Lying on his bed, Will longed for the impossible to be possible, to have the presence of the absence,

but it was as if the clocks had stopped.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the kind nurses

And all the kind men

 Couldn’t put Humpty

Together again...

I’ve been away.  But I don’t think I’ve come back again.  I’m not part of this world, I’m not part of

that world.  I’m in no-man’s land.  But I’m not a man.  I’m not even a boy anymore.   I had a name,

once upon a time, but I lost it.  Who am I?  Where am I?  Where have I come from?  Am I lost?  Why

are my clothes dirty and torn?  And why am I carrying a wooden box?  I can’t remember.  Do I want

to remember?  I think so.  I’m not sure.  I can’t be sure of anything.  Nothing makes sense.  I slip

between the cracks of the pavement that I’m sitting on.  I am outside myself, separate, watching

myself.  I curl in a blanket, in a doorway and try to sleep, but there are shadowy faces only their eyes

visible, kohl-rimmed eyes, watching me.  A night flickering with flies, searing heat, orange dust and

men led on chains, blindfolded.  I hear the distant rumble of gunfire.  I twitch and jerk and pull a

loose thread on my blanket.  And there’s a terrible strangled sob.  I see her for a few seconds, on the

inside of my closed eyelids, her silhouette, standing next to an old fashioned wheelbarrow, I blink

once, a darkness rushes in. 

And she is gone.

Saffron, garlic, dried pepper, chilli, paprika, ginger, coriander and cardamom, all mingle with the

smell of the drains and lemons and limes on ramshackle carts, sacks of wriggling, cackling hens,

slippers of sheep hides, material in reels, knives and spades and pick axes and guns.  Where am I?

I’m freezing.  My arms and legs feel as if they’ve been amputated.  I don’t know how to deal with

this.  Have the troops got the right kit, body armour, training?  As if.  I didn’t know what to expect.  

Adventure.  Belonging.  Escape?   As if.  I led a life I shouldn’t have been living.  Ambushed by fears. 

Marched to the wild side, the dark side.  Bound.  Gagged.  Blindfolded.  You don’t know me.  Stolen

from my self.  I’m not the boy I used to be.  I carry darkness.  The violence I’ve seen.  The violence

I’ve done.  I didn’t know them.  They didn’t know me. 

      It started to feel right doing wrong.

My heart is hammering.  I put my hand to my chest, inside my jumper, expect to feel blood.

But it’s sweat.  And my trousers are drenched.  Have I wet myself?  I’m in bits.  My heart is a fist.  As

big as a fist.  Explosions fill my mind.  Am I dreaming?  Splinters of memory?  They catch me

unaware, reminding me of things that I’ve buried in the dust, orange dust, everywhere.  Dreams and

memories all mixed up?  Touch the cold metal of a gun.  Smell burning oil and smoke.  Hear the

thrum of a helicopter, chopping up the sky.  Dull booms.  Flashes of yellow across the sky.  Bullets

and rockets.  Burning vehicles.  Taste concrete and dust.  See ruined buildings.  Hallucinations?

Paranoia seeps from every pore.  Am I dreaming?  The constant fear.  The constant fatigue.  

Prayer Friday.  Plan attack Saturday.  Carry them out Sunday.  Holy Shit Sundays.  The darkest day of

the week.  But I am back.  It is dusk.  Who am I?  Where am I?  Where have I come from? 

Then.  Somewhere in the distance I hear it.  Tinkling music.  The ballerina dances in my dreams. 

And I sing to her song.  Freeze-frame!  The world goes black.  But heard I it.  I saw her.  And I am

carrying a wooden box.  I feel around inside.  What is this?  It is hard and sharp in my fingers.  I pull it

out.  Flip it over.  It is a shape.  A number 5.  But what does it signify?

5

“Once upon a time, Madeleine was baking a cake.  She was wearing a flowery apron.  Her hair was

tied back from her face, wisps escaping.  The small boy liked to sit in the kitchen, watching her

beat the sugar and butter with a wooden spoon until the mixture was pale yellow, then slowly she

added the eggs.  She let him lick the wooden spoon while she folded in the flour with a metal one.  

And poured in melted chocolate, dark chocolate, his favourite.

   ‘It is a very special cake,’ she told him, ‘because you are a very special boy.

Madeleine put the mixture in two tins and popped them in the heated oven.  They sat in the

warm kitchen, running their fingers round the baking bowl, licking the raw mixture, smelling the

cake cooking, listening to the rain pattering on the window.

      Later, the cake cooled on a wire tray.  And when it was cool, they iced it and placed a figure

5  in the middle, surrounded by five candles.  Then she opened her arms and said:

   ‘Give me a cuddle, my small boy, because tomorrow you’ll be a big boy, too old for

kisses and cuddles.’

   And he said:  ‘I’ll never be too old for kisses and cuddles.  I’ll always be your small boy.’

Madeleine smiled.”

A man walks past and prods me with his foot as if I am a heap of old rags.  May be I am.  Things are

never what they seem.  Maybe I have conjured myself up?  But he prods me again.

      I don’t really like people.  They’re hard and cold and their words stick in me like knives.

   ‘Coward!  Malingerer!’

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words won’t ever hurt you.

Not true.  Words leaves scars.

You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done, the things that have been done to

me.

 ‘Alert!  Don’t panic!  Be vigilant at all times.  Improvised Explosive Device.  Live off boil-in-the-

bag-rice.’

I hear voices.  I want them to stop.

I only want to be a small boy in a kitchen, a birthday cake, rain pattering on the window, a woman,

a kiss and a cuddle.  But I don’t know who I am.  I pull my blanket round me and try to sleep, but

there are street lights and nodding poppy heads.  The sound of a car and the blades of a helicopter

slicing the air.  And I wonder what am doing here as the moon rises behind the tower block and

lights up the mountains and fear creeps over my scalp.  And the words fall from my mouth:

I miss her

I miss her

I miss her

I’m Will.  And you don’t know me.

          Who said that?

Shadows were falling over Will, indigo-violet colours of twilight fading, and he was finding it hard to

breathe.  He wanted to be with someone, but as soon as he was, he became fearful and wanted to

retreat.  Will walked the streets trying to escape the insomnia which dogged him and the images.

They stalked him as he wandered into the underworld, passing down low passage ways, the

labyrinths of his mind.   A nightmarish, never-ending world, cut through with narratives:  a cloud of

drifting smoke, a forest of black minarets, a mountain range hazy in the distance, snow capped, blue-

white ridges, a bird with a crimson eye. 

                  CLICK

TO

                                                                 EXPLOSION

Bright white hot LIGHT

A mist of RED                                 When earth and dust and bits of bodies had settled and the

screaming stopped. 

He drifted along a blood-soaked landscape

littered with bodies

severed hands and feet       shredded limbs

                                                                                                    lost eyes staring

into the impossibly blue sky. 

Gangs of scrawny children, dressed in rainbow-coloured rags, harvested hearts and kidneys.  

Will saw himself lying next to his mate; Rob’s arms and legs had GONE

                                     A place beyond pain

And he held him

Felt his body jerk heard his teeth chatter saw white bone where fingers had been smelt skin peeled

back smouldering tasted it

 and when he woke

                                it was not Rob he was holding in his arms.

                                it was  a corpse. 

And the young man with a corpse in his arms was a stranger

and Will had gone.                                                                          His shadow had moved away. 

The young man lay there for a night and a day. 

Then he flew away. 

                                  He became a star in the sky. 

But the stranger on the ground crawled around on all fours, retching, wanting his heart, as big as a

fist, to spew out of his mouth.

But it did not.

     

Gunfire rumbled in the distance.   

And, although the young man didn’t move, the stranger leapt to his feet.  He scrambled through

charred houses and shops, clenching his gun, trembling like a dog, whimpering, wetting himself.  He

half-ran, half-stumbled until he fell in a heap, trembling and quivering and foaming at the mouth,

crouching in a smaller and smaller corner of his mind, trying to protect himself from the images and

memories and dreams,  but they had him surrounded and were closing in, a circle of guns all 

pointing at him.  

                                    AND HE EXPLODED

SHATTERED   INTO   SMITHEREENS

He saw a ghost of himself

The boy he’d been fifteen years ago

He was there, at her

graveside, looking at

him.

                                                                    Then it was autumn and he was living on the streets, lying on park benches, gazing at

the stars. 

      According to the Afghans each star represents a victim of war.

I am lonely, so lonely.  The loneliness is killing me.  But I don’t want to die.

   ‘I wandered lonely...’

William turned his head towards the window, looked at the daffodils.  He will die centuries before

Will is born.  Will is not him.  Is it a flash of memory?  A spring day, Will sitting behind a desk at

school as Miss Nixon’s voice read:

   ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud...’

And there was a girl sitting next to him.  He could smell her scent.  She smiled at him.  And they

became friends.  Wendy liked to dance.  He watched her once turning and turning, dressed in satin

slippers and a white tutu.  She put images in his head.  And he heard music, a tinkling sound.  Maybe

this was a new beginning.  He almost felt like the other kids.  He almost felt safe.  But the friendship

dwindled to a small dot, a single point of light, that went out, because Wendy wasn’t her.

I am not William Wordsworth.  I am Will.  You don’t know me.  I don’t know me.  Who am I?

Where have I come from?  Am I lost?  Why are my clothes dirty and torn?  And why am I carrying a

 wooden box?  WHO AM I?

STARLING CARVING

    “Once upon a time, Grand-papa lived in a freight carriage, in a field.  He left the stone cottage

after Grand-mama died.  The field was at the end of a lane, half-hidden by hawthorn hedges and

chest nuts trees, covered with spiky pods, spilling conkers, shiny as polished boots.  The carriage

was propped up on sleepers; it had a metal frame, curved roof and a window he put in himself by

sawing a square out of the wooden slats, slotting in a frame and pane of glass.  The rain pitter-

pattered against the window, as the old man raised the blind with fraying string and watched it

coming down in sheets over the field and woods in the distance.  He turned the heavy, brass knob

and pushed open the carriage door.  The scent of roses, wet with rain, wafted in.  And the sound

of a fox barking came from the woods.  Grand-papa stepped down the breeze blocks, placed just

outside the door.

      There was a whiff of autumn in the air and a tang of wood smoke.  He drew the silence to him. 

The Earth span.  He absorbed its energy, imagined the bulbs growing deep in the ground, pushing

their green shoots to the surface:

   ‘In spring there will be a glorious display of snowdrops and crocus and daffodils,’ he said.

The rain was easing off now, just a mizzle, but the wet grass drenched his slippers as he trundled

along.  He past the bird table and wheel barrow, the shed where he whittled his wooden carvings

and stored his gardening tools, spade and rake, secateurs and string, trellis and bamboo canes.  He

headed towards the tall nettles and brambles, heavy with juicy blackberries, pausing to admire his

full-blown rose bushes, sniffing a bud.  Then he ambled over to his allotment: neat rows of carrots

and cabbage.  He checked his wigwam of runner beans and peas. 

      Then he heard it.

      Loud and soft, all at the same time.  So strange.  It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand

on end.  He looked up.  The sky was alive, shivering and writhing, heaving and plunging, rippling

and rolling like a stormy sea.  It was as if he was there and he was not, on the ground, in the sky, a

part of them.  He breathed out heavily and watched.  A flock of starlings, hundreds of them,

no thousands, a huge cloud.  A kaleidoscope of colours from blue to green, to black, shift-shaping,

swooping, filling the air with a cacophony of shrieking and twittering and ceaseless movement,

and  Grand-papa was filled with the wonder and magic of it.  Then, in the bat of an eye, they

disappeared.  Just like that. 

      And Grand-papa shuffled towards his shed to whittle some wood into a carving.”

   ‘I like that story,’ the small boy said.

Memories are floating through my head, but it’s like watching a flickering TV with the volume turned

down.   I am empty.  And yet.  I lie on my back like a star fish collecting dust.  And the emptiness fills

with a voice.

   ‘I am your friend.’ 

A girl is leaning over me.  Do I know her?  Does she know me?

   ‘I was your girlfriend, but then you got sick and didn’t want me.’

I ignore her.  She’s making it up.

   ‘Will?’

   ‘Who are you calling Will?’

   ‘You, it’s your name, don’t you remember?’

   ‘I don’t remember myself.  I’ve got no one.’

   ‘You had me once.’

   ‘I’ve got my wooden box.’

   ‘Don’t you remember?’

   ‘Who are you?’

   ‘I’m Wendy.’

I think I was dreaming...

But I see it glittering in the palm of a small boy’s hand...

A Broach

   “Once upon a time, when Madeleine was a little girl, she stayed with Grand-papa and Grand-

mama in a stone cottage at week ends.  They had baguette for tea, toasted over the fire, served

with butter and strawberry jam.  Then Grand-mama brought in the tin bath and put it in front of

the wood burner.   Madeleine splish-splashed, and when she’d finished, the water tipped away,

smelling of  lily-of-the-valley soap, dressed in clean nightie and dressing gown, Madeleine’s Tante

and cousin Miriam arrived.  She always came with roses for Grand-mama, a bottle of Cote de

Rhone for Grand-papa and an éclair for Madeleine.  Her treat, she called it.

   ‘You shouldn’t,’ said Grand-mama , turning from the mirror where she was powdering her nose,

giving Tante a kiss on the cheek.

   ‘It gives me pleasure,’ said Tante, taking off her dove-grey coat and hat, putting them on the

stand in the cuisine, adjusting her stockings so that the seams were straight at the back,

smoothing the pleats of her skirt.  Then she kissed Madeleine, scenting the air with a flowery

perfume and peppermints.  Madeleine stared at Tante’s glittery broach; a cluster of tiny stars.

   ‘Do you like it, cherie?’

   ‘Mais, oui.’

   And she unfastened it, ‘then it’s yours.’  And she clipped it on Madeleine’s dressing gown.

   ‘Aw, merci.’

 Then Tante rolled up her sleeves and helped Grand-papa  push back the chairs and table, while

Grand-mama, in her lilac suede shoes with satin bows and best frock, lavender-blue, clinched in at

the waist, flaring silkily over her hips, falling in soft folds to her knees,  put a record on the

gramophone.

      As the music crackled faintly, Grand-papa, equally elegant, dressed in black trousers and white

shirt, black hair gleaming with oil, swept back from his forehead, placed his hand lightly on Grand-

mama’s waist and she laid her hand upon his shoulder.

      They waltzed, holding each other close: and-one-two-three-one-two-three, rising and falling,

Whirling round the room, as Madeleine and Tante and Miriam watched, clapping when the music

stopped.  And  Grand-mama curtsied;  Grand-papa took a bow.  All of them laughing, dizzy at the

excitement of it all.  But then Grand-mama put a hand to her chest.  And her heart, big as a fist,

stopped beating.” 

   ‘Reflecting on our memories can allay anxiety or produce feelings of contentment,’ said a voice.

   ‘It depends on what the memories are,’ said me.

A young woman teaching a small boy to swim, cradling his head as he kicked his legs in the water.

A small boy on a beach with a bucket and spade and the sea roaring in his ears.  But still he could

hear her think and she could hear him.  The small boy loved her.  With her he was him.  He knew

who he was. 

Card

Congratulations on the birth of Will

Tante and Miriam X X

“Once upon a time, Madeleine loved her baby fiercely.  She would protect him from anything.  His

belly button stuck out  and she cleaned it.  She stroked his tiny feet and fingers, tiny pale-pink

nails, half-moons, translucent.  She held him to her breast and he sucked, raising his eyes, slowly,

huge, navy-blue eyes, staring into hers and she sang to him: ‘Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.’ 

The baby loved this, sucking, smelling her warmth, drifting into dreams, threaded with perfect

skies, impossibly blue.  And they needed no one, only each other, they were one.  And she nursed

him and he stared at her with trusting eyes.  And she looked only at him.  The planet had stopped

turning.”

There are images. 

Flesh in the branches of trees.  Severed hands and feet.  And I shake the hands and step over the

feet.  And I wink at an eye staring into the impossibly blue sky.

There are images.

Coffins draped with union jacks.  A man dressed in black, top hat and cane, walks

in front of the cortege again and again.  Streets lined with people weeping.  Throwing red roses

again and again and again and again and again...

WHEN WILL IT STOP?

But then he hears it.

And takes it out of the wooden box.

The Musical Box

And Will opens it.

Inside the musical box, a photo of a young woman, sitting in front of a stone cottage, a book in

her lap, her face to the sun, behind, a garden and the view from the garden , opening on to the

valley.  A stone flagged path went by the cottage.  In the garden she had planted roses and lavender;

it was the place she went to live by the seasons, that one last year.  And he went too.  And the  

wooden box.  Her stories.  His stories.   Special Things.

Something very weird and scary and amazing is happening.  I’m falling into a black hole. 

An opening in my mind and a small boy walks through coming towards me.

   ‘Hello small boy,’ says Will.  But the small boy realises that Will isn’t talking to him, he’s talking to

me.  And he is, and I am, and the small boy and Will and I shake hands.

  

And I can taste her hair with my eyes, smell her skin in brilliant blues and reds and greens and

violets.  I turn round and I’m falling through an impossibly blue sky.  I feel sunlight.  I feel it in my gut

and I think this is peace.  I see the ground coming towards me.  The wind whistling past my ears. 

And I hear a heart beat.  It is mine.  It is hers.  I am looking into her eyes. She is hearing the same

wind.  She is flying through the same air.  A white dress spread around her like a white cloud and

then I hear the tinkling of the musical box.  And we are dancing, round and round.  Memories

unspooling like photographs in my mind: the importance of everything she has given me.  I try to

hold onto each image a shell, a lock of hair...but the moment won’t allow it... each dissolves into the

next, a mosaic of colours.  And I close my eyes, and let each image, each moment settle on me lightly

as a butterfly.  Her/My Special Things Her/My memories.  All her history.  All my history.  My

inheritance.  May be my life won’t be defined by loss?  The memory of being loved resides in me. 

She resides in me.  She does not have to be physically present to be a part of the world.  She lives on

in me.  Like burnt wood turns to smoke, ash, nothing is lost, it is changed to a different form.  I can’t

have her back.  But I will never forget her.  That is a promise. 

It’s raining. I put all my special things back into the wooden box, each special thing, a part of me;  I

am putting myself together again.  Memories and moments settle as I stare into a puddle.   And my

reflection stares back:

   ‘I’m Will.    You know me.’