Carmelle.
She was everybody’s dream girl. Greyling never had anything like her before. She embodied the charm of the foreigner, the exoticness of well rounded language, the fullness of youth. The assurance of her painted toenails gleamed red and inviting against the grey, squally skies and weather beaten rock surfaces of Greyling Bay.
Slim.
Despite her penchant for potatoes. Oh, they had noticed all that was about her. How she gorged on creamed potatoes. And potato fritters deep fried in oil. And hot potato buttons split open, covered with butter. She would flick a page of her book with the end of a filed nail, then pitch a mean fork into the soft potato, open her plump lips wide so that her lipstick remained intact, and roll the taste in her mouth. She often let out a deep sigh when she did this.
Lonely.
Despite her books and her smiles, her reading and writing, her hair and her body, despite all that she had, the loneliness leaked from the sides of her eyes. It just added to her flavour. The loneliness that drew you towards her like a magnet, hoping that you were the topping to her succulence, the silencer of her sighs.
Clare, sitting on another table, watched her with eyes filled with scorn, loathing and wanting. Carmelle just did not know the smart, thin and pretty girl that Clare held captive within her own fat exterior. Clare could, if she unleashed the woman within, give her a good run for her money. She concentrated on her plate, but her eyes kept flicking to Carmelle.
Darius also watched Carmelle as he walked in. “Hello,” he said, and Carmelle looked up, her cheeks warming to the feel of his voice.
Clare looked up too. Her lips twitched. Carmelle would soon wish she had never left the city sidewalks. A village was not all about romance.
Darius slid into a seat next to Carmelle. He speared a potato on her plate with the fork and held it up in the sunlight. “Ready?” he grinned.
She was.
Abha Iyengar
Showing posts with label Carmelle Jones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carmelle Jones. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
The Quality Of Mercy
Welcome sunshine glitters on the furrowed sea. A gentle, salty breeze ruffles the dark plumage of a cormorant drying its angular wings as it stands on a barnacle-clad post.
“What poise,” thinks Carmelle. She is sure she can incorporate some reference to the statuesque quality of this motionless seabird into her latest piece of writing, which she has entitled “The Soulful Sea”. She will discuss her latest ideas with Darius when she meets him in The Ship. She enjoys their verbal entanglement and is keenly anticipating the delicious frisson generated between them. She is ready, eager, for more than that now, and Darius cannot help but have noticed, surely? She has put clean sheets on the bed and flowers in the room.
Carmelle has stayed on at Greyling Bay longer than she intended, having found the sympathetic eye and ear of Darius, whose particular interest, fortuitously, she has discovered, is the written word (when Laura, a slim, long-limbed student from the university had made his acquaintance at a fund-raising barn dance last summer, his particular interest then, usefully, had been political history. Greyling Bay has a veritable polymath in its midst).
Enjoying the unexpected warmth and stillness of the day sit Frances and Mercy on a bench at the edge of the sand. They watch Carmelle walk past, antelope-like in her fluid gait, hips swaying and arms gently swinging. Oh, how they wish they could regain their youth. That bloody war took their husbands and now all they have to contemplate is a fortnightly visit from the chiropodist and a chip supper with entertainment in the community hall on the first Tuesday of every month. Failing joints, false teeth and thinning hair. Loneliness. That is the reward life bestows for hard work, loyalty and stoicism. But still, they can laugh and feel the warmth on their paper-thin skin, grateful for their friendship.
They could have been something, Frances and Mercy.
Faith Bretherick
“What poise,” thinks Carmelle. She is sure she can incorporate some reference to the statuesque quality of this motionless seabird into her latest piece of writing, which she has entitled “The Soulful Sea”. She will discuss her latest ideas with Darius when she meets him in The Ship. She enjoys their verbal entanglement and is keenly anticipating the delicious frisson generated between them. She is ready, eager, for more than that now, and Darius cannot help but have noticed, surely? She has put clean sheets on the bed and flowers in the room.
Carmelle has stayed on at Greyling Bay longer than she intended, having found the sympathetic eye and ear of Darius, whose particular interest, fortuitously, she has discovered, is the written word (when Laura, a slim, long-limbed student from the university had made his acquaintance at a fund-raising barn dance last summer, his particular interest then, usefully, had been political history. Greyling Bay has a veritable polymath in its midst).
Enjoying the unexpected warmth and stillness of the day sit Frances and Mercy on a bench at the edge of the sand. They watch Carmelle walk past, antelope-like in her fluid gait, hips swaying and arms gently swinging. Oh, how they wish they could regain their youth. That bloody war took their husbands and now all they have to contemplate is a fortnightly visit from the chiropodist and a chip supper with entertainment in the community hall on the first Tuesday of every month. Failing joints, false teeth and thinning hair. Loneliness. That is the reward life bestows for hard work, loyalty and stoicism. But still, they can laugh and feel the warmth on their paper-thin skin, grateful for their friendship.
They could have been something, Frances and Mercy.
Faith Bretherick
Monday, March 2, 2009
Triple Chocca-mocha Macchiato—With Whipped Cream
Carmelle Jones blew into Greyling Bay one sultry afternoon, surfing good intentions and waving doubts farewell. Armed with deliciously strokable notebooks, modest wine supplies, and chocolate for every chapter, Carmelle was ready for writing heaven. She’d spent the train journey—followed by a taxi ride with a driver who didn’t seem to hear her mention that she was A Writer—being progressively less able to contact her Facebook friends, as the signal on her dongle dwindled and died. Good people, gorgeous, whose hugs and kisses and virtual chocolate touched her on an hourly basis. Carmelle felt perfectly nurtured by them. But this week was a challenge that she (and her Creative-Life-Counsellor) had set—to come where she could not be fingered by Facebook or touched by Twitter or anything else that damaged her acclaimed alliterative ability.
Prospect Cottage had no wifi and no phone signal. Truly, Carmelle was facing her fear, but her writing group had sent her off with encouragement in her ears and Valrhona in her handbag. You’re fabulous, Carmelle. You have a gift. Ignore that editor. What does she know?
One look inside Prospect Cottage and she’d known this was the place. It had Genuine Atmosphere. Two looks and she felt the need for coffee. It wasn’t the cottage, just how the fisherman owner guy had eyed her. God, she hadn’t come here to be seduced by some bitter herring-breathed rustic with a nasty madness in his pink eyes.
Carmelle approached the café, sucked in her stomach, swung her hips like a hammock. A little pout would do no harm. They’d be watching her, clocking her pre-Raphaelite hair, jealous of her smooth city skin, skin which a boyfriend had described, so sweetly, as being like a piglet’s. Carmelle was used to people envying her. Which was why that editor’s comment had wounded her so, until her wonderful friends had poked her on Facebook and reflated her self-esteem.
Carmelle wielded a notebook and two pens: pink and turquoise. The café doors hung open in the heat and voices limped into the air like tired butterflies. She smiled at this image: she must write it under the heading, “Similes for future use”. With the turquoise pen, she thought.
God, but this lot ...
Fat girl with her rosebud mouth slightly open, waiting to pay for a cream cake that she’d already gouged with her finger. Grinning biddy in a wheel-chair. Sepia woman staring at her hands with a Jesus expression. Two tarty young women and a kid with a buttered face. A couple staring at the table as though they’d rather be anywhere else. And the men—Christ, they looked spiritless. Seaweed had more zest.
And into their midst, Carmelle.
“Triple chocca-mocha macchiato with caramel and marshmallows and a butterscotch twizzlestick. And whipped cream.”
“What?” The waitress was waxen-faced, hollow-cheeked, as though something was sucking her from inside.
“Tea. Please.”
Behind her, someone smiled.
Nicola Morgan
Prospect Cottage had no wifi and no phone signal. Truly, Carmelle was facing her fear, but her writing group had sent her off with encouragement in her ears and Valrhona in her handbag. You’re fabulous, Carmelle. You have a gift. Ignore that editor. What does she know?
One look inside Prospect Cottage and she’d known this was the place. It had Genuine Atmosphere. Two looks and she felt the need for coffee. It wasn’t the cottage, just how the fisherman owner guy had eyed her. God, she hadn’t come here to be seduced by some bitter herring-breathed rustic with a nasty madness in his pink eyes.
Carmelle approached the café, sucked in her stomach, swung her hips like a hammock. A little pout would do no harm. They’d be watching her, clocking her pre-Raphaelite hair, jealous of her smooth city skin, skin which a boyfriend had described, so sweetly, as being like a piglet’s. Carmelle was used to people envying her. Which was why that editor’s comment had wounded her so, until her wonderful friends had poked her on Facebook and reflated her self-esteem.
Carmelle wielded a notebook and two pens: pink and turquoise. The café doors hung open in the heat and voices limped into the air like tired butterflies. She smiled at this image: she must write it under the heading, “Similes for future use”. With the turquoise pen, she thought.
God, but this lot ...
Fat girl with her rosebud mouth slightly open, waiting to pay for a cream cake that she’d already gouged with her finger. Grinning biddy in a wheel-chair. Sepia woman staring at her hands with a Jesus expression. Two tarty young women and a kid with a buttered face. A couple staring at the table as though they’d rather be anywhere else. And the men—Christ, they looked spiritless. Seaweed had more zest.
And into their midst, Carmelle.
“Triple chocca-mocha macchiato with caramel and marshmallows and a butterscotch twizzlestick. And whipped cream.”
“What?” The waitress was waxen-faced, hollow-cheeked, as though something was sucking her from inside.
“Tea. Please.”
Behind her, someone smiled.
Nicola Morgan
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