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bethtoad · 1 year

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Blog: March 2023. (Not Waving but Drowning)

Hi All!

I’m afraid during the 2022 Season of The Witch, I was hospitalised in October with Covid and pneumonia, and Halloween’s feature of ‘The Druidess’ was thus put on the back-burner.

I still have pneumonia, and warned I could be re-admitted I’ve to wear a mask, that might pose a problem were it not that I like lookin’ like the Phantom of the Opera. Up and about more and more, (ergo I’m off to the Opera in a few days to see the production of ‘Carmen’) I’ve not been idle. Whiling my time with an outline of an Anthology of Stories, Poetry & Prose, that I’m about to submit to publishers.

I lost my beloved little pensioner-pup Hadrian (Emperor of Home) the day before I was taken into the R.V.I., I would not have left him otherwise and we may have simply winged our way up together, to the Dog Star in the sky. And having lost our beloved Brucy the Poosy some Christmases back who was a victim of the local pet poisoner, aspects of them both are in the sea mammals in one of the stories.

Not sure when I’ll be back, so in the interim (albeit I’ve not spell-checked the errata yet) I shall leave you with the ‘Contents List’ for said anthology, and two of the chapters, plus a preview of the full {synopsis} for ‘Where The Dancer Is The Sand’, thus to lend a gist of where I’m at right now, and say farewell to my two little boys.

Credits: to poet Stevie Smith for blog’s heading, and the following song by Pat Benatar.

Keep your eyes and fingers crossed for moi if you will, and keep yourselves safe happy and smiling!

TOAD x

HADRI

He used to be somebody’s baby

Someone used to hold him close, and rock him gently

He used to be the light in someone’s eyes

He used to matter, He used to matter …

BRUCY

Someone cared if he lived or died

Someone held him in their arms when he cried

And when he hurt, someone kept the world away

Somebody loved him, Somebody loved him …

(Synopsis: WHERE THE DANCER IS THE SAND)

The story references, an imaginary island in Northumberland, an Irish theme, an unrequited love for ballet, and a haunting, thus is a ghost story.

Its title, is ditto to the poem that inspired it.

I’d started outlining said anthology, and too childish to include in the collection of more adult themed poems, I wrote this story around one of them. Which I threaded into the narrative lending an ethereal voice to the words of a missing thirteen year old child, Mariah Daniels. By way of her reveries, or eulogy.

There’s an island cottage called Coquillage

A mirage upon the land

Where Halcyon sings the melody

And the dancer is the sand

The empathy and provenance is authentic, as I wrote the verses when only a year older than Mariah, tweaking this word and that up to my nineteens, like a painting I couldn’t set my brush down on. It was in memory of my Sand-Dancer daddy and an imaginary happy home we shared, before I was witness to his suicide at nine. Lines such as the following ..

The garden has turned to wildness where my father once whiled his hours

And my swing no longer swings there amongst the dewy flowers

.. have been altered to fit Mariah’s scenario. Her name comes from an old song, ‘Mariah, they call the wind, Mariah’; the name of the cottage, from a song by Marianne Faithfull.

Set on Wynd Island, that’s a diminution of Childy Wynd, the heir to the throne of Bamburgh in Medieval times and sibling of the Laidley Worm-Dragon. The island can be reached by a narrow causeway from the mainland. Abandoned, it houses only the ruins of an old church converted from a much older monastery, foundations of a bygone lighthouse, a tumbled down abode once called ‘Cockleshell Cottage’, a petroglyph of a dragon in its cave, and the ghosts of its past said to haunt the island.

The central characters are Feargal O’Finnigan, populary known as Fin. And his wife, Mary O’Finnigan, nee Souvestre.

On securing the deeds to the island, Fin sets about rebuilding the old cottage from the ruins.

Caption: Fin’s concerns about the hauntings.

[He had heard-it-all about Ghosties, Changelings, Goblins, Little People and Leprachauns back in Ireland. And with a granny stirring herbs in a cauldron hanging over the open-range peat fire, a suspicious looking straw fairy with horns on top of the Christmas tree (and he never bought the line in was Rudolph’s mammy), a broom and shillelagh under her bed and a seance every week after bingo, wee-folkgood-folk whattiva-folk were second nature to him. Fin was happy to live and let live even if the living’re dead, so long as no Clurichaun pilfered his malt tipples.]

On completion of their new home Mary named the cottage, ‘Cobwebs’. Fin went out on his fishing boat to sea, and Mary stayed home tutoring in French literature on the Open University forum. One day Mary rescued an injured seal cub trapped in a fissure on the rocks, and ‘Rocky’ was adopted by the O’Finnigan‘s. A short time later a young walrus scenting Fin’s haul, waddled up onto the garden, and bumped his head on the trompe l’oeil fish basket on the shed. And dazed and confused, earned his name ‘Wally’ and another place in the family . Both cubs thence absorbed most of the O’Finnigan’s time, and received their land mama and dadda’s unconditional love.

Caption:

[When Wally couldn’t access Rocky’s dog-flap in the back door, he simply took the whole door off its hinges, one day. That was hung with tarpaulin, until Big Dadda put his BIG CU CHULAINN foot down. And installed a new door with a Wally sized flap.]

Caption: Mary’s view on hearing about the dreaded Waterbairns, said to haunt the island. Whose giggling Singing Hinny voices are heard echoing across the surf by many a trembling mainlander; whom Mary, living on the island herself has never seen hide nor hair or tail of. Or ever heard one titter from.

[‘Is one to infer from that, the community is somehow suffering from a kind of mass hysteria, from reading too much Kingsley?’]

Caption: Response at Hermon’s loud rude remark about the tea at the Lit & Phil.

[.. dust rose, eyebrows rose, feathers from Hermon’s Vivian Westwood hat rose, and Mary could swear the ears on the taxidermic dog rose.

Hermon’s smile rose to the size of half a saucer.

And Mary felt she might have made a friend on these shores in Hermoine Binx, preferably known as, Hermon.]

Caption: Cobwebs.

[The cubs contentedly full bellied and fast asleep on the rocks just outside the back door. Fin stood behind Mary with his arms wrapped about her waist and head tucked on her shoulder, as they looked out of the window onto the sunset. Their faces a crystalline kaleidoscope of Amber, Amethyst, Peridot, and Turquoise from the stained-glass spiralled cobweb, leaded across the pane.]

Never knowing an Irishman personally, the concept of Fin’s gregariously loud and quietly literate character took shape on watching a programme hosted by Imelda May (the title of which eludes me). The show didn’t so much give birth to Fin, but exuded an infectious childish wonder and awe at the poetic beauty of the Island of Ireland, that mirrored my own views on the piece of the Sceptred Isle, that’s Northumberland. Having ‘Ulysses’ and the complete works of Joyce and W.B. Yeats on my shelves already, the maxim of know thyself may have been a little at play re’ Fin …. were it that is,

I drank like a fish, fought like a fisticuffs , and tied my hair back like a pirate.

Albeit tie it back like, Dick Turpin.

Those who’re familiar with St. Mary’s Lighthouse & Island, across the causeway from Whitley Bay. And have watched its seal population (from a considerate and imperative distance), shan’t fail to see the allusion.

For stripped of its existing structures the island and locale presented the blank canvas for: the Isle of Childy Wynd.

***

(January Journal, 2023. Monday, 6th)

Got up this morning at 8-30, the air outside the window was so blazing white I thought I was looking at the Northern Lights. Until I opened the back door, and the yard carpeted white, the air was filled with tumbling snow so prolific in its descent it was almost opaque. Which I stuck my nose out into (as yerdo), then thought better of it with long-covid-pneumonia and closed the door; showing I was thinking laterally today, or I’d have been out in the yard barefoot on it. And after an annus horribilis 2022, in tandem with the first snowdrops shooting up in the garden yesterday, I recalled Prevert’s lines:

There’ll always be a chink

In the Winter wall

To give us a glimpse of Summer

It’s only that it’s a long Winter, that’s all.

Switching on the T.V. to watch the morning news, I came face-to-face with a walrus. Named ‘Thor’, he was basking his ton-plus frame lazily or dozily before agog Northumbrians on the shores of Blyth, (when he ought to have been in the Arctic.) Maybe methoughts he’d read on the wind of a quarter-ton little brother?

Fancifully of course.

Yet it transpires I wasn’t so far off the mark after all: About the incongruous non-indigenous arrival (out of the blue), of Wally on Wynd Island.

The programme continued, asking the public to look out for and report sightings of whales, dolphins, and further sightings of walruses. (You just couldn’t make it up!)

Soon it’ll be reported locals have heard the mermaids singing through Bed & Breakfast bathroom windows in Whitley Bay!

Time and tide waits for no one (not even the Toad) and wasn’t sure that I’d make it to this year, but whatta HOOT that I did!

Come, dear children, let us away;

Down and away bellow!

Now my brothers call from the bay,

Now the great winds shoreward blow,

Now the salt tides seaward flow …

(Arnold)

Thorsday’s Child signing off for now.

THE REMARKABLE ROCKET II

(Jude The Absent)

In (A Stream) throughout juniors, Suza failed the Grading Exam (11 Plus) having failed to attend and sit it. Resulting in allocation to the (D Form for dunces) at Ralph Gardner Secondary Modern School For Girls.

And now thirteen, she is in Third Year.

Albeit unsurprisingly not at school today, and having bypassed the school homework on Thomas Hardy with a look of prolonged disdain, she is diligently writing in her journal. That she has religiously kept up since writing her Memoirs at four.

Hopes of a Happy New Year dashed, compliments of that piece of maudlin’ misery by (Hard-up for a cheery word Hardy) that’s been polluting my school-bag for days. And if that’s not enough my bike, whose break thinks it’s a Luftwaffe ejection seat (and whatta Hoot to break then fly, hence I get covered in more puncture repair plasters than the bike does). Anyways it went and chucked itself in the air this morning, and has got a buckled wheel. Roddy next door says he’ll find a new wheel, and technically being’s it’s his bike, too right that he oughtta.

Which I guess makes this bag of misery only three-quarters full.

Note:

Better hide this new Five Year Diary that I got off Santa for Christmas (filling up already with passive-resistance nonconformist anarchy and subterfuge), because what’s giveth can be taketh away, and if Mum finds and reads it she’ll kill Meadowell’s answer to Biggles.

***

(These Little Boots Are Made For Walking)

Third Year soon going into Fourth Year.

After morning assembly, and the collective singing of the School Song:

Valiant guardian boldly standing

On a barren windswept land …

The following finds Suza suitably windswept in the classroom, pensively musing on the view of the Barren Windswept Land stretched out into infinity before her.

I’m 13 going on 14.

And my bogus Grammar School scarf is tightening round my neck like the hands Caligula said he wanted to strangle all Rome with, in this dunce-dustbin called School. Sat here in front of a desk with my king-learia-posteria glued to the seat and head en route to the empyrean, to distance myself from this torture.

In short if the school board take Mum to court for my absenteeism again, Mum’s gonna take my head off and chop up my bike. (Now I understand why these’re called, salad days.)

It’s morning in English class, and Miss has just asked us to write an essay on where we live. (Shoulda been about where we are as I’ve a copy of Dante’s Inferno burning a hole in my school-bag.)

Sally at the next desk’s reeling out a yarn about the days when she lived by Haggie’s Rope Works. Celia on the other side’s floridly writing about Northumberland Park where the swans from the lake fly over her facing Victorian townhouse. I live on the Meadowell council estate, and have just run out of margins in my exercise book to continue my games of solo noughts n crosses.

Northeast of Eden

In the ninth century A.D. prior to the Danish conquest, this Sceptred Isle was known as Angel Cynn, race of Angles. And Venerable Bede of the Tyne, wrote in the gens Anglorum scripts about an incident in ancient Rome. On appraisal of two golden haired slaves said to be barbarian Angles, Pope Gregory exclaimed ‘They look like angels!’. Henceforth Papal orders were decreed to convert the pagan angels to Christianity, in their isle of Briton far away, reputed by the staunchest Roman tribune to be the End Of The World Where There Be Dragons. From thence arose the ecclesiastical identity of the the Angles & Saxons into English.

Myn entrance into the world was at the House of Cardinal Air, under the morning star of The Light Bearer, on the day of Saint Michael. He whom with blazing sword flashing didst cast the fallen angel asunder from heaven, to slither evermore across the world of man as a worm-dragon.

And there be many forms, shades and guises that the angels present themselves in. Be they the seven holiest, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Chamuel, Zadkiel, Uriel, Jophiel. The numerous eyed, seventy winged Almighty Metatron. The fiery-red three-faced six winged Seraphim. The shimmering four winged Kerubim, whose lightning flashing extretions begats further multitudes of angels. The tallest one Sandalphon, whose height spans the universe. The nine heavenly Choirs. The twenty thousand Charioteers of God. The Orphanium wheel angels. And amongst God’s infinite legions, Auhabiel and Bahaliel the Angels of Love and Terror. Azrael the Angel of Death. Notwithstanding, Satanael-Iblis-Samael the Fallen Angel, once reputed to be the most beauteous and beguiling angel of them all.

And whilst there be more roads that lead to Calvary, Purgatory and Hell than to Paradise, the maxim sayeth that All Roads Leadeth To Rome. Thus I begin myn pilgrimage on the road to, Pons Aelius.

At the borderline south-east of the Land of the Free, wherein she who wed the noble Scythian Celt in the Biblical times of the drowning of the Egyptian Army and the Exodus is ever remembered by name, Scota the Pharaoh’s daughter.

At the first stepping stones into olde England, whose patron saint is George the Dragonslayer. I venture due south from the castle of Berwick, past the castle and abbey ruins of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, consecrated by saints and immortalised by gospels: Whose sacking by Viking marauders was reported by the native Votadini, as the coming of queer winds from the ocean horizon, lightning flashes and fiery dragons across the the sky, (namely the longboat fleet masts).

And onto Bamburgh, where Boreus blows the wind beneath the wings of gulls across the waves rocks and sand dunes, and whispers through the hill heather still cloaked in royal-purple hues upon the land, that true as red and white roses once did battle here, here once upon a faery legended time stood a Kingdom, renowned and revered for knights of valour throughout all Christendom: Its castle bearing the legend of Childy Wynd heir to the throne of Bamburgh, whose sister the once lovely Princess Margaret was accursed by their wicked stepmother into the Laidley Worm-Dragon.

In the now Dukedom of Northumberland, I venture on and anon due south to the Priory and castle ruins of Tynemouth. Burial ground of Malcolm Canmore of Scotland, King Osred, and the Sainted King Oswin of Northumberland; and sacked by the scurrilous Viking, Halfdan. Also entered into the annals of Northumbrian legend is the Wizard’s Cave in the cliff beneath, or the latterday colloquial ‘Jingle Geordie’s Cave’. From whence the knight Walter the Bold, harried by demons, hobgoblins and dragons guarding the legendary treasure therein, didst steal away thus bounty with sword shorn from the jaws of hellfire and damnation. Traversing past the Black Middens of North Shield’s Fishquay sands, following the river bank. Until I enter into the Meadow Of The Well, and stand before the house of myn father.

Miss slapped a star on my essay, Miss from R.I. came in and banged on another, then Miss from history whacked one on, and Miss from dram ..

Well, there’s enough spit’nd bacterial-sputim on that pile of junk in my school-bag to overflow a pitri dish, and paper stars to make a constellation.

Think I’ll make a paper rocket to zoooom up through those stars, right outta here ..

‘I HOPE you’ve been to school today and that’s homework you are writing there, young miss.’

.. and must take a book as it’s gonna be a looooooooooooong journey.

***

I’m nearly 15.

Careers Miss wants me to go to art school (Impressed)

Headmiss wants me to go to teachers college (TRAUMATISED!)

Song Credit

Valiant Guardian, R.G.G.S.M. School Song, written by school’s Art Teacher Mrs. Doig.

JOSIE’S TUNE

Josephine Zara Baird-Hetherington is of upper class bourgeois Russian parentage, whose father Serge had been shot by the Bolsheviks, as a dissident. Hence her mother Svetlana’s arrival on the shores of England with their tiny baby in her arms. After one war ceased, the Cold War took up the mantle of grave family risk, and with new Anglo identities they entered into the upper echelon society, of the ‘City of Dreaming Spires’. Josephine was thus educated at boarding school, finishing school, and the best colleges across the globe to the highest academic standard. Holds a doctorate in archaeology and geology (etcetera), notwithstanding has a proficiency and fluency in languages to the highest level of a polyglot.

Suzanne Eliza Llewelin is a recalcitrant unschooled teenager, educated at the Autodidact Academy whereat she surpassed the national curriculum. Whose bilingual proficiency and fluency in foreign languages is, Geordie.

Tynemouth Prior’s Haven sands was the frequent destination of Suza, racing at breakneck speed on her bike down the Priory bank, past the castle ruins embankment. En route to her own private haven of peace and quiet, where Mother of Pearl was not the sort of mutha to earbash her shell-ears incessantly, and school was shoal only for fishies, ergo it was Suza’s personal piece of heaven.

This day, chagrined at home life, school life, and boys who were her friends suddenly goin’ loony and wanting to teach her the facts of life, Suza stood pelting pebbles into the sea. When a voice from behind her said:

‘Here, let one show you how to skip them right across the waves.’

And on turning around, Suza stood face-to-face with the most beautiful androgynous boy she had ever seen, piercing ice-grey eyes, hair styled into a Beatle cut grown longer to the collar, that with the sun shining behind burnishing it to gold had the effect of a halo. An angel in a reefer jacket, asphyxiatingly tight drainpipe jeans, and wearing Chelsea boots.

And Gabriel, was a girl.

‘I saw you a week ago, sitting up there on that cliff ledge pensively looking out to sea, so resembling a mermaid with long-long hair blowing in the wind. Was it sketching that you were doing?’

No response from Suza, who smelled something fishy afoot. And it wasn’t the kippers from the quayside smokehouse blowing downwind.

‘I so hoped, to see you here again ………. Cat got our tail?’

‘It’s tongue.’

‘Aah! the siren can talk. How do you do! I’m Josephine. Josie, to one’s friends.’

Josie reached out for Suza’s hand, and shook it.

‘And, ahem, you are?’

‘Suzanne Eliza Llewelin. Suza, to my friends.’

Forgetting that she still held Suza’s hand, Josie unconsciously tightened her grip around it. Generating warmth around initially chilly fingers that was a strange sensation that perplexed Suza as she looked down at the attachment. Seeing the frown beginning to furrow between her arching eyebrows, Josie relinquished her hold and grinned sheepishly. Exposing a glimpse of front teeth that overlapped each other, that Suza observed slightly marred this vision of beauty. Then Josie widened her grin and the pristine whiteness of them made for a dazzling smile, that to Suza, was perfect beauty.

Nonplussed at such weird thoughts about, a girl. Suza put on her bogus Grammar School scarf, slung her shool-bag over her shoulder, and made to leave, when the buckle on the bag’s strap opened and her books fell out. And Josie bent down to pick them up from the sand, while Suza fastened the buckle.

‘Hmm, Herodotus, Socrates, and Nietzsche.’

‘Yeah, I couldn’t get the “Bunty.'

Josie’s eyes lit up like luminous twin moons, and she grinned ear to ear at Suza, and said:

‘Oh, I know exactly what you mean. Should one not have a regular peruse at “The Three Marys” one is positively stuffed, and have to resort to reading any banal old rot.’

To deflect the gravital pull of the strange girl’s stare, Suza turned her head away in the direction of her bike, a modicum of kudos creeping into her expression at clever-clogs understanding her language. And tossing Josie a wide eyed sideward glance, she said:

’Bye!’

***

Suza’s thoughts throughout the following days, often drifted back to the strange girl on the sands, ‘Stranger On The Shore’ coming intermittently on the radio didn’t help, for like the incoming swell and surge of the tide, the memory of Josephine kept flooding back again.

A week later, around the same time as before, Suza breeeeeezed down the Priory bank on her bike. And parking it on the rocks, raised her hand above her eyes to shield out the sun. And peered across the sands, at the jaunty coloured little boats peppered across the bay and amongst the dunes, and across the pebbles to the frothing surf of the shore. No one was around.

And walking across the sand and the pebbles, she stood for a long while looking across the waves. Feeling inexplicably disappointed, though she wasn’t sure why.

Then two hands coved her eyes .

And she turned around, and there was Josie.

‘Gosh! I am so glad that you came back, did you miss me?’

By the toothy knowing grin on Josie’s face Suza deemed the question rhetorical, and reciprocated the smile but said nothing.

They walked across the bay to the dunes, whereon finding a little green boat named “Bombs Away” they sat down inside it. And face to face talked at length in getting to know one another.

‘Where is it that you are from, Suza? You don’t speak with the Geordie dialect.’

‘With parents from both sides of the river, I’m a fiercely proud Geordie. I live with Mum in a downstairs council flat on Meadowell estate, just along the road in North Shields.’

’Oh! Poor you.’

‘Poor me?’

‘One only meant that, even I a stranger here have heard negative stories about Meadowell, and you somehow don’t fit in there.’

‘You’re listening to the wrong stories, I love it there.’

‘Name two things that you love.’

‘I can name more.’

‘Please do.’

‘I love that every street and avenue on the estate is named after a tree: Hawthorn Gardens, Blackthorn Grove, Laburnum Avenue, Cedarwood Crescent, etcetera. I love love that the local park has a clock-face flowerbed that each year for all the flowers’re interchangeable, points to three o clock in summertime for always. When our neighbours hung their walls with Hal and Da Vinci portraits, and cross swords and shields hang above each doorway; and didn’t care that the quasi nobility all comes from Woolworths. For I love the obligatory bowls of plastic fruit polished to shining with Pledge on the sideboards. I love the vases overspilling with plastic red and yellow roses in pride of place on the windowsills, (1 Free With A Box Of Daz) generating stockpiles of soap powder in cupboards, before those roses were no longer there for the picking. And the florid floribunda flocked wallpaper and faded ex-shop-window-display Toile de Jouy curtained, purchased on Provi’ tickets at the end line sales at Binns and D. Hill Carters. And moreover I love my neighbours, who work hard every hour God gives to furnish their little palaces, who have never been anything but kind to me.’

‘Gosh! That is a thought provoking picture you paint and a rather beautiful one too, Suza.’

‘Consider it as one I painted earlier, as I’ve just quoted the beginnings of a school essay I started a year ago.’

Josie laughed, and said:

‘You little cheat, you had one quite going there. Did you finish the essay? I should love to read it.’

‘No, but the subject we’d to write about was “Working Class Values”, a tad too provincial for your delicate sensitivities anyways.’

‘One shall pretend not to have heard the skit in that remark, minx. You have a decidedly Welsh musicality in your stanza and delivery, do you have Welsh blood, Suza?’

‘Not a drop but I’ve been surrounded by it all my life.’

‘Cryptic. Define, surrounded by?’

‘Not when you sound like a teacher.’

‘ …. We, ahem don’t like teachers?’

‘We, me, one, myself, I and moi, do not. Anyways Jos, what was your first impression of Tyneside? Of which there’s much-much more to, than Meadowell. ’

‘Warts removed or Warts and All?’

‘The full Cromwell.’

‘Hmm, we don’t happen to have an essay conveniently tucked in the pocket of one’s mind, so let one see …………………………………………….’

‘Spill.’

‘Do keep it in mind that one’s views have somewhat changed since ..’

Suza fixed Josie with a look.

‘Ok, as you insist. One’s first impression on driving through Tyneside, was of backlanes strung end-to-end with washing lines hung with laundry, grubby unkempt snot-nosed children running uncontrollably through the streets shrieking, packs of barking shitting mongrel dogs. And jabbering women pouring out of factory gates wearing headscarfs and hair-culers in clouds of Woodbine smoke, one had to close the car window against. One was not, to say the least impressed, and wondered what on earth mother was thinking of in moving up here.’

‘Well, three or so years ago I was one of those snot nosed children dancing round washing lines, and our Butch one of those barking sh….ng dogs. Still is, actually.’

‘Good golly gosh! One meant no offence in that, and the inference was not that you lack culture and class, Suza. On the contra ..’

‘No offence taken. However I do not, or have ever subscribed to the nonsensical concept of the British class system. Believing unequivocally that all mankind’s created equal. With the exception of the Ruling Classes ergo the Hunting Classes, who’re monstrously unevolved.’

Josie, who was blooded at the ripe old age of three, and had riding and hunting in her D.N.A., felt suddenly dry mouthed, and with bated breath asked:

‘Ew! Why sew?’

Conscious that her voice had shot up a number of octaves and if it shot up any higher, Butch and his pack of merry shitters would hear her.

And as she’d quickly come to expect, Suza answered candidly sew:

Suza observed in Josie a classic raging southern snob, but a likeable and immensely interesting one. So she put off her idea to get on her bike for a little while, amused at watching clever-clogs making one faux pa after another, and enjoying the sound of dropping clangers.

Girls to Josie, were as prolific and easy for the pickings as the pebbles on the beach, and she’d picked them on every beach across the world from Ipanema to Saint Tropez. Her charm offensive never failed, her intellect never failed to impress, and her beauty never failed to stun. Sooner or later she’d discard them and brush her hands clean of guilt like sand-grains through her fingers, leaving none to hold her heart. And the girl up on the cliffs, on that chilly little bay overshadowed by ruins and rocks, in the far frozen North; was to be merely another conquest to warm and pass away some time, whilst her mother recuperated from an illness, having moved to Monkseaton on leaving her stepfather.

Until the day she’d got up close and Suza turned around, on the shore.

Having tossed and turned and barely slept those following days from a strange pining, the feeling was alien to her.

And as love up to then had been naught but another bloodsport, Josie was was loathe (and unaccountably afraid) to lose this love.

‘I bet that you have a horse, Jose.’

‘I most certainly do, his name is Charley, on account that he has a penchant for ..’

‘Barley, yeah I wasn’t born yesterday clever-clogs.’

Having been foiled, Josie pulled a gurn at Suza, that she reciprocated. And the two Quasimodos pulling their eyes down with fingers and lolling their tongues, on looking at the infantile spectacle of one another howled with laughter.

Then the mood mellowed, and Josie romantically spoke of an innate notion she felt the instant they met, that she’d known Suza all her life. From another life.

Suza’s idea of fine romance, was to tell the boy next door she’d known since seven: To stop buying soppy lockets and cards for Valentine’s Day, and mortifying her with a record called ‘Rag Doll’ for her fourteenth birthday. And to next time (if he must), bring her a nice spanner wrapped up in a great big bow or a puncture repair kit.

And doing exactly as he was bid, last Christmas he turned up at her door with a spanner in a bow, plus a puncture repair kit, and an even bigger hallmarked-locket.

Suza concluding that there’s some who just can’t be taught, continued to put up with her friend (two years older than she) in spite of his silly-self only because he was, Roddy.

And in Suza’s book that was mighty fine of her.

‘You’ve been quietly digging up the dirt under every tree where I live, whilst keeping shtum about that City of Gleaming Tires you’re from. So spill.’

Josie rolled her eyes skyward and lowered them back to Suza grinning, then with a raised eyebrow said:

‘Tut Tut!’

‘That isn’t an answer.’

‘There is plenty of time to talk of oneself, right now all I want to talk about and hear about, is you.’

‘Compared to what you’ll have obviously done in your life, that must make for one boring listen.’

‘Boring? Listening to you Suza, is almost like falling down the bl*#dy rabbit hole.’

‘You inferring I’m outta my tree in that smart remark?’

‘On the contrary you are very much in your tree, only the forest is on a parallel universe, where I have never enjoyed so much being. You confound one, Suzanne Eliza Llewelin.’

Suza looked at Josie quizzically, then digesting the concept of having a broader spectrum than Meadowell that went infinitely beyond the Blue Planet, smiled wide as a widemouth frog and playfully punched Josie’s nose, that Josie reciprocated with a kiss on her fingers.

A quiet pause ensued, when Josie with eyes downcast and hooded immersed herself into pensive thought, so deep and unfathomable to Suza her equilibrium countered by taking her own thought-waves in the opposite direction.

Josie silently anguished over what to tell Suza about her life, and what not to, fearing that should she know her wholly she’d look at her see everything she found abhorrent. The prospect made her feel like crying, having never cried over a girl in her life.

Staring up at the sky faraway in thought, Suza was oblivious that Josie’s deep gaze had risen and focused on her.

‘Penny for them?’

Suza smiled.

‘Do you know any, Betjeman?’ Josie asked.

‘Yeah, I know old “ I am dying and DONE FOR what on earth was all the FUN FOR?” ‘

‘ ….. Hmm, John Betjeman is one’s all time favourite poet.’

‘Oops!’

‘Anyway, ahem, there is one of his poems that whenever I think of it I see you, and when last I read it, which as it happens was last night, I thought of you. Not that one shall ever tell you which poem, you egalitarian rebellious little ..’

‘Phew!’

Josie stuck her nose right up-close to Suza’s and eyeballed her with an unamused glare, and Suza squinted a grimace back, and each waiting to see who could keep it up longest, they unanimously bust out laughing and rubbed their chilly noses together.

Then another quiet moment ensued, albeit a less fraught one, that was finally broken by Suza who was staring across the bay to the sea, whilst Josie contented herself with staring at Suza.

‘Y’know, Jos. Old Bede who penned some of the Lindisfarne Gospels up there in the Priory, deduced what pulls those waves out there.’

‘Pit ponies?’

‘The moon. And Caligula sent out his troops to stab them all.’

‘What, the pit ponies?’

‘Look clever clogs, you’re a fast learner but don’t kid a kidder. To stab the waves, of course.’

‘That of course, makes ahem much more sense.’

Noting the mischief in Josie’s eyes, Suza indulged her gameplay.

‘Of course what the emperor was really targeting, was Neptune.’

‘Whatever else would that batsh*t loon target.’

At which they burst out laughing again.

‘You know, it’s been a hoot, Jose. But I really must fly now, or Mum’s gonna kill me.’

‘I shall drive you home, one’s car is just parked up there.’

‘I have my bike.’

‘No problem, I shall ahem simply hoist it up on the roof-rack beside you.’

‘Ho-Ho, sore loser.’

‘And what is it, that you perceive one has lost?’

‘Hopefully, that mawkish malady of Betjemanitis you suffer from.’

‘One shall kill you for that another time, leaving you to your mother to tenderise in the interim.’

‘Nice!’

Josie reached into her pocket and took out a small penknife, and looking at Suza opened the blade purposefully.

‘My cue to go?’

‘Do hold on a tic, minx.’

And Josie bent down and carved something into the wooden boat, that getting the better of Suza’s curiosity, she lent over and read.

‘I get the “J & S”, but what does that French looking word say?’

‘Always.’

This love, this love is a strange love

A fated kind of gaoler

This love …

(Song Credits)

Josie’s Tune, recorded by Chris Rea

Stranger On The Shore, recorded by Acker Bilk

Rag Doll, recorded by The Four Seasons

This Love, recorded by Sarah Brightman

(Josie’s Poem to Suza)

Myfanwy at Oxford by John Betjeman

‘Sphinx the Minx’ illustration (after) Leonor Fini

#first love #mythology #pets #school days #mother russia #illustration #tynemouth #north east england #angels #sea mammals #ballet #dogs #staffies

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