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
Showing posts with label Prospect Cottage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prospect Cottage. Show all posts
Monday, March 2, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Breathe In, Breathe Out
A sea fog like gunsmoke rolls in over sleeping Greyling Bay. Five AM and the only sound is the clank of bottles in a distant milk float: the fog has choked the dawn chorus. In Prospect Cottage, Sam awakes. There was a dream but it has dissipated before he has time to remember any of it. He gets out of bed and pokes his head out through the curtains, wrapping the ends around him to keep the cold out. Somewhere out there the sun is trying to rise, but it’s going to take all day for it to force its way through.
Sam goes for a leak. His head is thick with unfocussed thoughts. Steam rises from the pan. He staggers back into bed and curls up against Melissa. A brief grunt passes through her snores, then she settles down again. Sam, though, remains awake. For him, breathing seems to take too much effort, and his body is afraid of surrendering to the auto-pilot of sleep. His heart pounds out a strange, alien rhythm—a dull irregular thudding against the dead air.
Yesterday he and Melissa argued again. Why are we staying in this damp, overpriced little cottage with fake beams and a broken-down boiler, she had shouted. What are we even doing in this one-eyed town? If he were truly honest he was wondering the same thing himself. Because we’re broke and it’s all we can afford. Because. Because. The silence between them persisted for several hours before they surrendered to desperate, unsatisfactory sex.
Sometimes Sam wakes up and imagines that Melissa is dead. She is breathing so softly that he can’t detect a single movement. So he imitates her by lying still himself, straining his ears for the slightest sound. A raging silence envelops him. Nothing. She is dead, then. It is over. And then a sudden snort and twitch and she is back to life.
But now Sam worries that it is he is the one who is dead. Perhaps this bedroom is just some after-life simulacrum, a cheap copy thrown together to ease his passage into the beyond. That would explain the fog. The universe that Sam is in right now could stop at the end of the road.
Sam places his hand on Melissa’s buttock. It is warm. It is firm. She mutters something in her sleep, and he takes his hand away. She is alive. He is alive. Breathe in, breathe out.
Jonathan Pinnock
Sam goes for a leak. His head is thick with unfocussed thoughts. Steam rises from the pan. He staggers back into bed and curls up against Melissa. A brief grunt passes through her snores, then she settles down again. Sam, though, remains awake. For him, breathing seems to take too much effort, and his body is afraid of surrendering to the auto-pilot of sleep. His heart pounds out a strange, alien rhythm—a dull irregular thudding against the dead air.
Yesterday he and Melissa argued again. Why are we staying in this damp, overpriced little cottage with fake beams and a broken-down boiler, she had shouted. What are we even doing in this one-eyed town? If he were truly honest he was wondering the same thing himself. Because we’re broke and it’s all we can afford. Because. Because. The silence between them persisted for several hours before they surrendered to desperate, unsatisfactory sex.
Sometimes Sam wakes up and imagines that Melissa is dead. She is breathing so softly that he can’t detect a single movement. So he imitates her by lying still himself, straining his ears for the slightest sound. A raging silence envelops him. Nothing. She is dead, then. It is over. And then a sudden snort and twitch and she is back to life.
But now Sam worries that it is he is the one who is dead. Perhaps this bedroom is just some after-life simulacrum, a cheap copy thrown together to ease his passage into the beyond. That would explain the fog. The universe that Sam is in right now could stop at the end of the road.
Sam places his hand on Melissa’s buttock. It is warm. It is firm. She mutters something in her sleep, and he takes his hand away. She is alive. He is alive. Breathe in, breathe out.
Jonathan Pinnock
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Owen and Glyn
When his mother died, he was all for selling Prospect Cottage. Ann stopped him. She said they should tart it up and rent it out in the summer season. He told her she was mad. Gwiddon needed new lifting gear and her engine was a bugger to start. And without his boat how would he earn a living? But she’s right. Visitors pay silly money. It’s fully booked from Easter to October. They love the beams that were hidden under wallpaper until Ann got at them with a steam machine; they marvel at the stone bench carved into the side of the hearth. But they can’t see his mother there like he can, sitting stiff-backed, a pile of darning untouched at her feet, night after night, her ears stretched towards the booming sea and the wind howling in the rafters, praying, like every other wife and mother, sister and aunt and afraid to sleep in case they let go of the invisible rope that tethers the men to their hearts.
They weren’t there fifteen years ago when he and Glyn had to tell her that her husband of forty years had been dragged off the deck of the Merlin when he caught his foot in a tangle of rope. How they had watched helplessly as his skull smashed repeatedly against the hull like an egg, until the sea took pity and dragged him down. Owen can see him still, that look of disbelief and resignation as he went under, once in fact, again and again and again in his dreams. These strangers can’t know that his mother didn’t cry. She opened her arms as wide as the bay and folded her sons to her like a hen does her chicks although they were both grizzled men twice her height and girth. They had wept like babbies until she looked at them and said, “He wasn’t the first. He won’t be the last.”
Sally Zigmond
They weren’t there fifteen years ago when he and Glyn had to tell her that her husband of forty years had been dragged off the deck of the Merlin when he caught his foot in a tangle of rope. How they had watched helplessly as his skull smashed repeatedly against the hull like an egg, until the sea took pity and dragged him down. Owen can see him still, that look of disbelief and resignation as he went under, once in fact, again and again and again in his dreams. These strangers can’t know that his mother didn’t cry. She opened her arms as wide as the bay and folded her sons to her like a hen does her chicks although they were both grizzled men twice her height and girth. They had wept like babbies until she looked at them and said, “He wasn’t the first. He won’t be the last.”
Sally Zigmond
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