Our Lady of Everything

by Susan Finlay

  Hey Ian, hope we’re still on for tonight. Looking forward to a very BERRY time! X

  Eoin pulled his tee-shirt back down and sat up on the bed. He looked at the text message and then at the bottle of White Musk. Then he got up, turned the computer on, and logged onto his email – but nothing, bar one from one of his old army buddies who, like all of his old army buddies, he did not want to see, or hear from, ever again. Without opening it he pressed ‘delete’, and then ‘refresh’, and then ‘refresh’, and then ‘refresh’ – but nothing. Because after weeks and then months of being ignored, Kathy had finally gone away . . . He sighed, turned off the computer, and picked up his phone:

  Sure, where do you want to meet?

  And almost immediately a reply pinged back:

  Cucamaras? X

  Eoin considered the text message, which was now not only an invitation to meet, and possibly sleep with, a girl to whom he felt neither mentally nor physically attracted, but also to begin this process in a place that he had never liked. The bar the shopgirl had suggested was Nottingham’s only cocktails only bar, and what sort of man drank cocktails? Kathy, on the other hand, had always preferred a good-old-fashioned pint, and yet he was unable to ask her if she’d like to go for one . . .

  Eoin set his phone down, put the perfume back in its bag and stuffed the bag in the wastepaper basket. Then he picked up the miniature pencil and re-opened his diary. The box for Saturday was full up, as were all the ones for all the days that had preceded it, but Sunday, which hadn’t happened yet, was free. He put the pencil between his lips, and then took it out again, and under Sunday wrote: I miss you. He paused, and then once again wrote: I miss you. And then: I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. And then: Do you miss me?

  Katarzyna who is Sometimes Kasia and Sometimes Kathy but Never Katie

  KATARZYNA KWIATKOWSKA SAT IN THE Broadway Cinema café-bar. On one side of her was a cup of black coffee, and on the other was Jackson’s laptop, on which her application to a film school that was not in Nottingham was displayed in Arial Bold:

  Your supporting statement (minimum 750 words, maximum 1,000 words) should detail your reasons for applying to the programme, previous film experience and any other information that you feel will support your application.

  Before it switched to Cambria:

  I have ten GCSEs (all A*–B), which I obtained from English Martyrs, and am currently studying on the Access to Media Level Three Diploma at New College, Nottingham. The nature of the course is such that students are able to gain experience in a variety of different mediums including documentary film—

  And then to Times New Roman red:

  Firstly, don’t begin by listing your qualifications – that’s what the qualifications section is for. Secondly, remember that the statement is an opportunity to talk about you, personally. For example, there’s been a big gap between your leaving school and going back to college – why?

  Katarzyna took a sip of black coffee, which she was teaching herself to like in the same way that she was teaching herself to like wine except that wine was easier, and considered Jackson’s comments. She understood what he was saying, mainly that if she wanted to become a middle-class cosmopolitan then she needed to act like a working-class immigrant, and although on the one hand she considered this distasteful, she also really, really wanted the film school that was not in Nottingham to offer her a place – so she cracked her knuckles until they made a sound like a fourth-floor window shattering, and then began to type:

  I was born in Sneinton, Nottingham, which meant that all of our neighbours were Irish or Polish, and that for the first few years of my life I thought that everyone’s surname either began with an ‘O’ or ended in a ‘ska’ or a ‘ski’. My parents went to great lengths to make sure that I went to a Catholic secondary school, however, which meant that I attended a secondary school in another, very different part of town . . .

  Then she paused, took another sip of coffee, and typed ‘www.hotmail.com’ into the navigation bar, and then her email and then her password, and one new, unread email from Eoin with the subject header ‘Hello . . . ’ appeared on the screen. She took another sip of coffee, clicked back to her supporting statement, and typed in the following:

  I told everyone to call me Kathy because I thought that it would help me to fit in, which it probably would have done had everyone else been either Irish or old. But everyone else was middle class and young, and all the Katherines and the Kathryns and the Catherines and the Cathryns were Katies, and all of the Katies lived very different lives . . .

  Then she took another sip of black coffee, and clicked back onto the Hotmail tab again and stared at her new and unread message, but did not click onto it or onto Astro Alerts because Astro Alerts was futile. Instead she opened another window and typed ‘www.tarotgoddess.com’ into the navigation bar, and clicked on One Card Oracle. She took another sip of black coffee, and then selected the Rider Waite deck because, according to the website the Rider Waite deck was the most powerful online divination tool available, and then she clicked onto the image of the back of the Rider Waite deck that appeared.

  The image of the back of the Rider Waite deck then morphed into the image of a turning Rider Waite card, which morphed into the image of a naked woman pouring jars of water into a pool beneath a moonlit sky. The words directly below the image said ‘THE STAR’, and below that a slightly longer text:

  Success, good fortune, creativity. All is well with the world. Your highest hopes are supported by the universe. Any feelings of insecurity and unworthiness are to be banished from your thoughts. Follow your dreams without fear or censure.

  Katarzyna finished her black coffee, which she still hadn’t learnt to like, clicked back to her supporting statement and typed in the following:

  Last year a man from another country left me for another country and when he left it broke my heart. I decided to make a documentary about the experience, and the fiction and the horror and the death that I imagined all around me, but also the romance and the flowers . . .

  Stan who is also Stanisław who is also Stańko who is a Joke in English but a Hero in Gdańsk

  STANISŁAW KWIATKOWSKI WALKED UP PAST the Cathedral, past the park and towards the cemetery, which he visited every year on the anniversary of his father’s death. His father wasn’t buried there of course, but back in Gdańsk, but as Gdańsk was a place from which Stanisław had always striven to maintain a distance, geographical and otherwise, he preferred to remember him here, in Nottingham, instead.

  Stanisław entered the cemetery and wandered amongst the gravestones until he came to the memorial for those who had been killed in the First World War. He knew that his father had, in some ways, been one of the lucky ones in the sense that, although he had died from the injuries that he had received at the hands of the police, he had not died from them until some months later – all of which meant that, unlike those who fell and rotted in Flanders Fields, or even neighbouring Gdynia, where his older brother had, along with the other rioters, received a punishment that was even harsher, he’d been buried by his family, and on consecrated ground.

  Stanisław stood in front of the war memorial and inserted his fat, pink finger into the collar of his too-tight shirt, but then took it out again because he wanted to be respectful. Then he reached inside his coat, removed a bottle of vodka, unscrewed the top and took a swig. And then he poured a little onto the ground beneath the war memorial the same way that he had seen the gypsies do because what was he himself if not a Roma or a wandering, albeit Catholic Jew?

  ‘Solidarność,’ said Stanisław, raising the bottle aloft and then watching as the vodka seeped into the earth, before then raising it higher still. ‘Solidarność!’

  ‘Well really!’ said a voice behind him. ‘There ought to be a law against it.’

  ‘We’ll call the police if you don’t stop it,’ said another.

  Stanisław turned round to see two women dressed in black. One of them was c
lutching a bunch of chrysanthemums, and the other was waving a trowel.

  ‘I am remembering my father,’ said Stanisław, making a small bow and remembering the wet blood and the dried blood and the red and brown and black blood in the video, and the old blood from Poland that, together with the screaming and the crying were burned on both his eyes. ‘And it is filling me with the emotions, but please, it is not my intention to cause you the offence.’

  The woman clutching the bunch of chrysanthemums took a step forward, and then looked at the memorial, which commemorated a war that had ended forty years prior to Stanisław’s birth, and all the names on which – Allsop, Brooks and so on – had a distinctly English sound.

  ‘What the dead want most is peace and quiet,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Yes,’ said her companion, her head bobbing up and down like a crow. ‘That’s why, in England, we say rest in peace.’

  They turned their backs on him and went over to another, more recent-looking grave. The woman with the chrysanthemums began to arrange them in a vase attached to the headstone, and the one who had been waving the trowel now began to pull out the weeds on the patch of earth in front of it. Stanisław watched them for a moment, and then took another swig. He sat down on the grass which still bore the traces of last week’s snow, some of which soaked into the seat of his trousers, and he pressed his hands against his eyes. His whole body began to shake with what could have been laughter or could have been crying, although even he himself could not be sure. And then, when he at last removed his hands and looked out through his watery eyes, he saw that the war memorial was no longer one stable slab of stone, but a fragmented, shimmering obelisk which confirmed that yes, the whole of the world, as he knew it, was trembling.

  ‘Amen,’ said Stanisław as the stone danced and wept in front of him, and then, ‘Amen!’

  He raised the vodka bottle to his lips, and as he took his final swig he heard one of the women say, ‘Well if they don’t even know how to look after themselves . . . ’

  Stanisław turned to look at her, and then contemplated the now empty vodka bottle which also trembled in an empty, glassy shimmer, and then he threw it, as hard as he could against the war memorial, where it smashed into hundreds of pieces.

  ‘Well really!’ said one of the woman who was now waving the trowel again, and in his direction, ‘it just isn’t decent.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll get bored soon,’ said the other.

  Stanisław pressed his hands to his eyes again. He looked at them and then back at the war memorial, and everything trembled or twinkled through his tears until the revulsion and the anger, and then finally his liberation from them, began to roll across his alcoholic cheeks. He felt contempt for the two women, and for all who like them thrived on hate, and he wanted them to know how he felt and then feel ashamed.

  ‘But what you expect?’ shouted Stanisław, in a voice that was loud enough, he hoped, to wake the dead. ‘I am Jew! Gypsy! Traitor! What in the hell do you expect?’

  Meg who is also Meghu who is also Meghana who is also a Cloud in a Cave

  MEGHANA BUDANNAVAR EXAMINED THE FOUR pink sandstone pillars framed against the rest of the pink sandstone rock framed within the viewfinder, and pressed the button on the top of her camera. Then she untangled the camera strap from around her neck, turned to the Australian backpackers beside her, and said, ‘Excuse me, but would you mind taking a picture?’

  ‘Sure thing darl.’ And one of them stepped away from the rest of the group. ‘Just let me know when you’re ready.’

  Meghana handed the Australian backpacker her camera, and then positioned herself in front of the steps leading up to the temple which was also a cave (and which was situated in the north-west part of Karnataka, which was in the south-west part of India, which was still several hundred miles away from her extended family in Bangalore) and the Australian backpacker pressed the button on the top of it.

  ‘Thanks, that’s really kind of you,’ said Meghana.

  ‘No worries darl,’ said the Australian backpacker.

  Meghana watched as he untangled the camera strap from around his neck and returned to the rest of the group. Then she turned the camera over and pressed some of the other buttons on it until she found the ‘gallery’. She scrolled through the ‘gallery’ until she found the picture that she had just taken of the temple, followed by the picture that the Australian backpacker had just taken of her outside of it.

  Meghana scrutinised the picture, the majority of which consisted of the orange dress that she was wearing, and behind it the blue and cloudless sky. Only a little of the cliff into which the temple had been carved was visible, and as she contemplated the parts of herself that were orange, and the parts of the sky that were blue, she remembered that orange and blue were complementary colours, and that she must send Dave a postcard, at some point, soon . . .

  Meghana pressed the button on the side of her camera that turned it off and went back over to the Australian backpackers, thinking that it was such a relief to be with them and not her extended family. Her younger cousins called her ‘the little English missy’ and teased her, constantly, about her accent, while her grandparents fussed over her, and stuffed her with so many sweets that she now had a little potbelly, a situation that had forced her to conclude that, despite the hot and foreign setting, their home was little better than The Post ...

  Meghana followed the Australian backpackers towards the first cave. She had already read about the complex in English, which meant that she already knew that UNESCO had filed it under ‘Evolution of Temple Architecture’ – which sounded a bit like something that Kathy, or another bona fide arty type, might have chosen as the subject of a documentary. She ran her hands across the carvings that marked the entrance, but then, as soon as she went inside, she pushed them back into her pockets, where they remained, because there was too much to see and to touch and to pretend not to touch that she daren’t commit to any one thing in particular.

  ‘Hey darl, you wanna move a little faster? We’ve still got three more of these buggers to get through!’ shouted another Australian backpacker, or maybe the same Australian backpacker as before.

  ‘Don’t worry I’ll catch you up!’

  ‘Sure thing darl.’

  The Australian backpackers began to file out of the cave, leaving Meghana behind them. As soon as the last one of them had departed she began to turn around, very slowly. At first she stood so that she was looking back outside where the baked red earth rose and then fell into the azure water, but then as she rotated she saw the sandstone colonnade that led to a cross-legged Vishnu. She stopped, and gazed at it for a long, long time, and then she began to walk towards it, her footsteps simultaneously scrunching and echoing across the rocky ground. All around her were sculptures of gods and goddesses with sculptures of animals and flowers and birds all around them, with sculptures of serpents and supernatural beings all around them, each of which appeared to seep into and thus embrace the other . . .

  Meghana stopped again, and listened to the sound of her own breathing filling up her empty ears. A few seconds before, each footfall had marked her presence as a stranger within the temple, but now each breath seemed to whistle through her as though she herself were a part of it. She breathed in and out, feeling her rib-cage expanding and deflating, and with each breath she became conscious of something that she could not have experienced in England, because she would not have been able either to describe or analyse it within the context of the university – which she now reminded herself was a European invention, and therefore not an invention that she needed. She felt privy to a new, subterranean world in which the rock and the heavens were being filtered through a giant piece of rose quartz crystal, and that she was floating through this crystal world and dancing and merging with it – and then she became conscious, above all, of love.

  Dr Goldstein who is also Dave who is also David the Second King of Israel and Judah Twinned with West Bridgfor
d and Forest Fields in Nottingham

  DR DAVID GOLDSTEIN CLICKED ON the words ‘log in’ in the top right-hand corner of the webpage, and then entered his email and password and clicked on the words ‘update blog’. Then he uploaded the file that Paul had just sent him, and then he cut and pasted a link to forestfieldsholistic.tumblr.com below it and said to the screen:

  ‘I am not spiritual and I am not religious but I do enjoy finding out about other cultures on the Internet.’ And the young woman from the flat downstairs and his former colleague Paul, who were standing behind him looking at the screen over his shoulder, said the same thing back to him.

  David took off the kippah that he had accidently stolen from the synagogue, and looked for his nicotine gum, which he had misplaced during the ritual. He failed to find it, shut his laptop and said, ‘Well thanks guys that’s been an, err, massive help.’ And then stood up and went over to the door.

  ‘Yes it was certainly an um, interesting experience,’ said Paul, taking David’s seat.

  ‘Yes, but you you mustn’t let me take up any more of your, err, time,’ said David, going to the door and holding it open. ‘I’m sure that you’ve got lots to do.’

  ‘Um, not really,’ said Paul.

  ‘Well, let me know if you need anything else,’ said the young woman from the flat downstairs, while packing up her crystals.

  ‘Oh yes thanks again, and, err, bye,’ said David.

  He continued to hold the door open as the young woman and her bags of quartz wafted through it.

  ‘Nice, um, place you’ve got here,’ said Paul, now also looking round.

  ‘Thanks. It’s just the right size for one person.’

  David continued to hold the door open while Paul leaned back in his chair and looked round. He could see that the world outside the window above Paul’s head was cold and white and covered in snow, whereas the image of Meg, despite the traces of congealed egg that now clung to the bottom of it, still shone with a marigold light; and then he realised that Paul, who was still leaning back in his chair, was looking increasingly at home . . .