Lament

by Stewart, Lynsey M.

  3

  Nat

  My grandmother is a hugger. A woman full of warmth and light, despite suffering the unexpected trauma of losing a daughter and a granddaughter far too soon. She often said the order of life shouldn’t work that way but accepted it to be God’s plan. I couldn’t get on board with that theory. I’d always wondered what kind of God planned on cutting lives short.

  ‘Your hair! Oh my goodness, it’s perfect on you!’ She discarded her walking stick by propping it against the wall and I tried to ignore the tug of guilt that I hadn’t realised how much she was struggling with the onset of arthritis, a common complaint from prima ballerinas as they reached a certain age. Even I was starting to feel the twinge of pain in the joints of my hips and knees.

  She enveloped me in a hug so big and tight that I wondered how much she needed me here. Not just to take over On Pointe, but for her. She’d lived alone for the last twelve years and loneliness was a cruel symptom of grief.

  ‘When I was packing my things, I decided to donate my hair straighteners to the charity shop,’ I said, running a hand through my hair. ‘I felt empowered. I’m no longer a slave to my awkward curls!’

  ‘Good for you! Heaven knows you’ll have less time for yourself now that you’re the owner of a dance school. Get up and go, no faffing, that’s what I say!’ She held on to me, reaching for her stick as she took two strides forward. She was unsteady, but I chose not to address her failing mobility and instead face the reality that I would be stepping back inside the home I had left without a second glance. The home I couldn’t bear to live in. The home that chased me away.

  ‘Grandma,’ I whispered, stopping at the porch. She nodded a few times and came back to stand at my side.

  ‘I know,’ she said simply. ‘I know.’ Because she did. She always knew how I felt, whether it was through watching me dance, listening to my doubts over phone calls or seeing my choice of a calorie-filled muffin for breakfast rather than a healthy piece of fruit.

  She put her arm through mine and walked us into my childhood home together.

  Just the two of us.

  The woman who was my only family now.

  ‘Your things came from the removal company,’ she said, glancing at me, waiting for the tears.

  I’d left a lot of my furniture at the flat I’d shared in London with Kaci, a fellow dancer. Sentimental items like the dressing table I splurged on with my first pay cheque had been sent over in advance. I didn’t want anything from my childhood bedroom when I arrived. The room needed to be a blank canvas, something I could make my own until I was in the right frame of mind to consider buying my own place.

  ‘I’d better start unpacking then,’ I said as I looked around the hallway. It seemed smaller than what I remembered, in fact I couldn’t place anything at all. I wondered if my grandmother had done the same as me. Remove and replace. I couldn’t blame her if she had. She’d lived here a long time. She would want to make the house her own.

  ‘Let’s have a cup of tea first,’ she said. ‘Catch up on how you’re feeling.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ I said, suddenly noticing a slow-moving ball of sandy fur. ‘Hey, Rex! Oh my goodness, are you slowing down too?’ I stroked our old family pet as I looked at my grandmother. She smiled at my words but didn’t respond to them. Rex was in the final stages of life. He’d grown old, was only a puppy when my mum first brought him home for us. A handsome Labrador with bouncy energy. His fur was greying now, and his eyes looked tired. I wondered what the impact of losing my mum and sister, and then me, had been on him. I wanted to hug him, throw my arms around his thick waist and say sorry for abandoning him, but I’d have to do that to my grandmother too and I wasn’t sure I was ready.

  ‘He’s missed you,’ my grandmother said as I sat down at the kitchen table. Another room that was unrecognisable. A new cottage-style kitchen was in place of the worn Formica and battered old hinges of the previous one.

  ‘So have I,’ I replied, shocked at how quickly I remembered the importance of Rex in my life and sad that I hadn’t acknowledged it before. ‘I’ve missed you too.’

  ‘My lovely girl. Let’s be honest with each other, shall we?’ My grandmother put down a steaming mug of tea on the table and joined me.

  ‘Aren’t we always?’ I replied, thinking back to our late-night talks when she joined me in London and listened to my tearful monologues about how I wasn’t good enough, never would be. She would say, ‘There’s always a solution,’ when I cried about not knowing how to do anything else but dance.

  Who knew that not only would she offer me a guiding hand, she would also save me?

  ‘I know this is hard for you, despite the smiles and image overhauls,’ she said as she stroked my hair. ‘I’ve changed a lot in the house since you were last here. I hope you’re comfortable with that.’

  ‘I think I needed you to,’ I replied softly, taking her hand. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘My Nat.’ She smiled but wiped a tear away at the same time. ‘I’m ecstatic that you’re here.’

  I looked over at her stick, the handrails on the walls, the modifications to help her move around the house more easily. Everything she had kept to herself.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve been fighting it,’ she said, wafting her hands like it was nothing. ‘What dancer wants to admit their body is failing them?’

  Her hair was still immaculately curled, held back by a brightly printed headscarf. She always wore a tight, black roll-neck top, joking that it was to hide a multitude of…chins. She was stylish and willowy, and despite the decline of her body I had no doubt that she could still hold a beautiful shape if you dared her to.

  ‘Are you in pain?’

  ‘No. I’ve been working with doctors, making sure my pain medication is right.’

  It was a blessing to know she wasn’t suffering physically, but I knew that giving up her teaching was tearing her apart emotionally.

  ‘Are you happy, Grandma?’ I asked. ‘Happy that your classes can continue?’

  ‘I’m overjoyed that I’m handing the school over to someone who knows what these wonderful children are feeling when they dance,’ she replied, squeezing my hand. ‘A younger dancer, you, Nat, can connect with them in a whole different way than I can now.’

  ‘You’ll guide me?’ I’d trained in dance instruction and led some sessions in the dance studios I’d learned in myself. It daunted me at first, but I soon started to enjoy it. My grandmother encouraged the different string to my bow and when she asked if I would like to take over On Pointe, I began to understand why.

  ‘I’ll support you,’ she replied. ‘You have a natural affinity with children. They warm to you instantly. That’s what you need to bring out the best in them. Their trust.’

  ‘It’s strange. This is a fresh start, a new venture, yet I’m back in the place I wanted to escape from.’

  ‘You needed to,’ she replied simply, and I wanted to tell her how much I valued her saying that. How thankful I was that she didn’t hold a grudge or feel disappointment. She understood that if I’d stayed here, my grief would have suffocated me.

  ‘I’m going to make you proud,’ I said. ‘And Mum and Bec.’

  ‘No doubt about it.’ She smiled.

  ‘I just need to reacquaint myself with ghosts.’

  ‘Nat,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Leaving here saved you but coming home doesn’t have to unravel that. It can help heal the parts that still feel raw.’

  ‘First step taken.’ I nodded, agreeing. ‘Coming back to the house without breaking down. Tick.’

  I laughed to hide the vibration of sorrow in my voice that I wished wouldn’t always call me out.

  ‘And the next step?’ she asked.

  ‘Go upstairs to my room.’

  ‘Why don’t you go now, get it over with?’

  ‘That’s a fine idea,’ I said, smiling as she looked at me with adoration.

  I pushe
d my chair back, the scrape of metal against wood making Rex jump awake. Grandma chuckled as I tiptoed out of the kitchen and started making my way upstairs. Memories flooded through as I took the first steps. Bec and me sliding down the stairs on our pillows. My mum carrying me to my bedroom when I fell ill at school.

  Reaching the top, I took a steady breath. I could do this. I was prepared. Was I? Mum’s voice called to me from her bedroom. Bec’s giggles, the result of bath time spillages, echoed through the walls. I closed my eyes, focused on breathing and held onto the bannister. Two steps forward, my hand slid across the wood, smooth and cold until my finger found a deep scratch. I opened my eyes, found the cross that I’d carved with a bread knife when my mother stopped me from going to ballet class because I had a cold. I was angry and her freshly painted bannister got the brunt. Stupid really. She grounded me for a week. No more ballet, no more anything.

  ‘Nat, honey. Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes. Fine. Almost there,’ I laughed to my grandmother who was at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘You don’t need to worry, honestly. Go for it.’

  My eyes focused on my old bedroom door. I pushed it open tentatively and walked inside. My bed from London was pushed against the wall, my grey velvet ottoman at the foot of it. The mirrored dressing table was in one corner, a vase of flowers sitting on top. Boxes of clothes filled the floor space; my curtains had been hung at the window, the matching duvet spread over the bed. The walls were painted white, the pink from my teenage years long covered over.

  Not a trace of my childhood remained, but all the familiar home comforts from London embraced me. Should I feel angry? Disappointed that my memories would be harder to place? I didn’t feel any of those things. I only felt a huge sense of relief. I’d been released from my anxieties about returning to the house I thought would be a shrine. It wasn’t. It was my grandmother’s home. Mine for now – and I felt utterly grateful.

  My grandmother, the woman who sacrificed so much for me, who knew what I needed before I’d figured it out for myself – had saved me again.

  4

  Nat

  I spent the rest of the day setting up my room, packing away clothes and making the space feel like mine again. A new kind of mine. My grandmother left me to it, choosing to watch the television in the front room. I heard a soft chuckle from her every so often and smiled when I realised she was watching reruns of Friends.

  ‘Could you be any more adorable?’ I said in my best Chandler Bing voice before sitting on the arm of her chair. She had a box of biscuits on the floor beside her and a flask of tea balancing on a flowered cushion.

  ‘He’s a funny one, isn’t he?’ she laughed, tapping her hand on my shoulder before turning down the volume. ‘All settled?’

  ‘Just about.’

  All afternoon I’d had a nagging thought that I couldn’t seem to brush away. My sister and I used to love taking Rex for walks in the forest that ran at the back of our house. We had a gate at the bottom of the garden, which opened up to a fairy world, or so it appeared when we were younger. The gate was still there, hidden beneath overgrown shrubs that my grandmother had long given up on taming. I’d looked at it through my window and got an urge to explore.

  ‘Can I take Rex for a walk?’

  She smiled. ‘Of course. He’ll love that.’

  ‘I’m just going to go out through the old gate, along the forest track.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me,’ she said. ‘I know exactly where you’re going.’

  ‘Is this how it’s going to be?’ I asked. ‘You’ll read my thoughts and we’ll have this weird telepathic conversation?’

  ‘I guess it is,’ she laughed, taking my hand as she turned serious. ‘Until, that is, I know when you’re ready to talk.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, kissing her head. ‘For giving me this opportunity.’

  ‘I’m a selfish woman,’ she replied. ‘I need you here more than you needed to come back.’

  ‘Then we’ll need each other,’ I replied. ‘I’m fine with that.’

  Rex was napping in his dog bed in the kitchen. I lifted his lead off the hook on the wall and shook it. He raised his head, curled around himself and promptly fell back to sleep.

  ‘Oh, no, Rexy. It’s time to reacquaint ourselves. Come on. Walkies.’ I bent down and clipped the lead to his collar. The big ball of fur still didn’t move. ‘Up. Come on. Time to go.’ I could hear my grandma’s familiar chuckle. She knew this would happen. I wondered how long it had been since Rex last went on a walk. I took his head in my hands and tried to encourage him to stand up. A slow blink was the best he could muster. ‘Don’t you want to go outside?’ I asked, and finally, after offering him a dog treat and opening the door to give him more of a clue, he got up and stalked over to me.

  Taking his lead, we walked down to the bottom of the garden. It was overgrown and untidy, another casualty of my grandmother’s failing health. The garden had been Mum’s pride and joy. It gave her a sense of peace, a way to relax, and hours would pass where Bec and I played on the grass where Mum had been in her element planting and weeding. I pulled away the shrubs and opened the stiff, rusty bolt on the gate. It leant slightly as I opened it, failing under the pressure, no longer able to fulfil its duty as the top hinge broke off.

  ‘Shall we fix it, Rexy? Bring the garden back to its former glory?’ He blinked as we started walking.

  Although the garden had become dishevelled and untidy, the forest we explored as children was still as wonderful as ever. The thick blanket of bluebells created a purple carpet through the trees, a clear path to walk through winding between them. The canopy of leaves caused shadows from cracks of sunlight slipping through, illuminating the colour even more.

  I took a deep breath and smiled as I remembered Bec and me climbing trees and making dens with large branches and Mum’s old bedsheets.

  We followed the path, Rex increasing his speed. He’d put on weight and I vowed to make this a regular part of our day to help him lose a few doggy pounds. He was a pampered pooch. Earlier, I’d seen Grandma feeding him a strip of bacon. She denied it, but I could see the drip of fat clinging to the fur around his mouth.

  Rex pulled me towards a clearing in the woods. A bigger tree loomed over to the far side with what looked like a long pipe sticking out the side of the trunk. I followed Rex and found myself walking along a path of wooden circles towards the tree. Inside the natural markings of the bark was a wooden door with a handle. Steps led up to it and the pipe I’d seen from a distance was actually a little chimney. Vivid greens stood out from ferns and moss growing up the side. Rocks surrounded it and a tree stump to the left had a small axe sticking out of it.

  It looked like a house.

  Something from The Hobbit.

  Bilbo Baggins’s woodland home.

  A mystical fairy house.

  Hiding within the ferns was a cuddly fox and a smaller version of an old-fashioned postbox with the words, The Grieving Tree, written in curly gold writing.

  ‘What is this, Rex?’ I said, crouching down to pat him but also to take in more of this magical sight. I turned when I heard a child’s laughter from behind us. A little girl with bouncy curls was skipping down the clearing; a woman was a way behind her but following her all the same.

  ‘Come on,’ she was shouting, fleetingly perplexed that her companion wasn’t moving quickly enough. As she came closer, I smiled, ready to say hello, but she whooshed past me, produced an envelope covered in purple kisses from her pocket, kissed it again and posted it through the letterbox.

  ‘Hey,’ she said finally. ‘Can I stroke your dog?’ the gorgeous girl, with deep brown eyes and bouncy curls that moved before she did, asked.

  ‘Of course, you can,’ I replied, smiling as she threw her arms around Rex.

  ‘I love him!’ she squealed before finding a pout. ‘Daddy won’t let me have a dog.’

  ‘For good reasons,’ the lady said behind me, finally catching up.
‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi.’ I smiled.

  ‘I don’t hear good reasons, just I’m not here enough to look after a dog, blah, blah, blah,’ the little girl replied, snapping her hands.

  ‘That’s definitely a good reason,’ I laughed. ‘Dogs need a lot of looking after.’

  ‘Don’t take his side,’ she gasped, still hugging Rex.

  ‘She’s…spirited,’ I laughed, looking back to the lady.

  ‘Isn’t she just,’ she replied, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m Nadia and this is–’

  ‘Eli.’ Eli held out her hand and smiled as I shook it. This girl had confidence.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Eli.’

  ‘Elise,’ Nadia corrected, turning to the little girl. ‘You know Daddy doesn’t like you using nicknames.’

  Eli’s face fell.

  ‘Eli and Elise are both beautiful names,’ I replied, unsure how to respond.

  ‘Are you here to post a letter to the fairy too?’ Eli asked, pointing to the postbox.

  ‘Elise, that’s really none of our business,’ Nadia said. ‘Sorry. Her filter hasn’t fully developed yet. I’m not sure it ever will.’

  I laughed as I stood up. ‘I knew a girl about your age who was also waiting for her filter to kick in.’

  I thought back to Bec innocently pointing out to our grandmother that she had a long wiry hair growing from her chin.

  ‘How old do you think I am?’ Eli asked, hands on hips, an inquisitive look dripping across her face.

  I thought for a minute, knowing that my answer would be extremely important to her, and I needed to get it just right.

  ‘Oh, goodness. Let me think. I need a good look at you.’ Eli proceeded to ballet dance her way around the forest, twirling and jumping, even executing a pretty good pirouette. ‘I think you must be at least eleven years old,’ I replied as Eli squealed.

  ‘Do you think so, really?’

  I nodded, knowing this was important stuff. She twirled again. Perfect poise.