by Tim Willocks
Carla reached down for her valise but her bulge got in the way. She pushed her chair back and stood up and squatted. Inside the valise she found a bottle of perfume and wrapped it in a silk scarf the colour of the sky. She had bought the scarf because its blue was the same shade as Mattias’s eyes. As she stood up a pang took her. She put the bundle on the table and leaned her hands on her knees. She breathed as deeply as she could and mustered her pride to stop her crying out. She felt Alice’s eyes taking her measure. The old woman said nothing and Carla was not sorry. Her previous midwife had belaboured her with such a torrent of needless instructions she had had to tell her to be quiet. The pang passed.
She straightened and managed a smile, which Alice returned.
‘That’s another you won’t have to go through again.’
‘I wonder how many more.’
‘Best not to, love. There’ll be more than you dare imagine. Forget each one until the next comes along, and you’ll sail through this like Cleopatra’s barge on a river of ass’s milk.’
‘I sometimes fear I’ll lack the strength.’
‘There’s naught stronger in Creation than a woman in labour. If Our Mother hadn’t made us that way, none of us would be here. If a grand to-do is called for, we’ll have one, don’t you worry. In the meanwhile, why not enjoy? At least as best we can?’
Alice’s faith in their respective powers anointed Carla like a balm. She felt a great weight lift from her spirit. The very strength of her reaction prompted her to doubt if it was wise. She had no good reason at all to place her trust – her life, her child – in the hands of this strange old woman. No reason except her instinct; and the old woman’s strength. The latter could not be in doubt, for Alice was here, alive, in Cockaigne. She’d endured. Carla reminded herself that she, too, had endured. She cast out the doubt. Doubt was fear in its most treacherous form and her worst enemy. She smiled.
‘What a marvellous plan. Yes. Why not enjoy?’
She retrieved the bundle and offered it.
‘What’s this?’
‘For you, madame. A token.’
Alice wiped her hands on her skirt and took the bundle and unwrapped it. She caressed the scarf against her cheek, and its quality was not lost on her. She studied the bottle and removed the glass stopper and wafted it beneath her chin.
‘Oh my.’ She dabbed the stopper under each ear. ‘This is much too fine for this old girl. They’ll mistake me for the Queen of Sheba.’
‘Nonsense. This is the sweetest smelling house in Paris. It’s the first time I’ve felt able to breathe. Please accept it.’
‘Nonsense, is it? Very well. Thank you. But you must keep the scarf.’
‘The scarf is yours, too.’
‘No, no, enough is more than enough. It will serve to wipe your paps when you’re feeding the babe. Isn’t that why you brought it with you?’
Carla nodded. She took the scarf and draped it round her neck.
‘You might have picked a darker colour for the job – one could say the same for that fine frock – but no one here will care. Sit back down and tell me what you wanted to say.’
‘You said time was a fairy tale, but is time not a condition of our mortal existence?’
‘No, it is not. Our Mother Nature takes no heed of time, though the spheres themselves fall like apples, as, mark my words, one day they will.’
Carla took a sip of rosehip tea. She thought of Mattias and his mystical notions.
‘I’m not unsympathetic to such ideas. Yet the seasons turn.’
‘Aye, they turn. As do the stars, like a wheel without cease. They know nor month nor year, nor beginning nor end, because there is no end. There’s only what comes next. How much time is in a dream? Or a memory? Or an embrace? And if we can’t answer that, how shall we say how much time there is in a life? Let alone in Life Her-own-self?’
‘The Bible attests that God made the universe in six days.’
‘And who writ the Bible? Fools. For what need would God have of days?’
Alice scoffed. Carla suppressed a smile.
‘You make a strong point.’
‘Then allow this old heathen to make a stronger one: God did not make us, either. Our Mother the Earth made us, just as she makes the leaves on the trees and the birds of the air. As she makes all living things, and always did. A rib, they tell us? Hellfire. Did God make a sow from the rib of a boar? And dare we even ask which part of the cock He used to make a hen?’ She made an obscene gesture with her fist. ‘No wonder He needed six days.’
Carla was laughing and Alice joined in, rapping the tabletop with swollen knuckles.
‘That book’s stuffed my son’s head with all manner of bloodshed and crime, and in those trades his head needed no help at all. Not that he’s a scholar, mind, he just has a taste for tall tales and peculiar ideas. If we must speak of time, the Bible was written yesterday, and on some tomorrow not so very distant, all the bibles ever struck will be swallowed by the dirt from which they came, aye, and their churches and their palaces too, be they ever so mighty. Now, let the buggers come and burn me.’
Again they laughed.
‘Since I surely cannot refute you, they’ll have to burn us both.’
Carla clapped both hands to a twinge in her belly, but it wasn’t a true pang.
‘Your pardon,’ said Alice. ‘This old woman is short of decent company. But anything she says is yours to take or leave, as you will.’
‘I’ll happily take it. I’m short of good company, too.’
‘Perhaps not so.’ Alice leaned her head back and squinted. ‘Who’s your angel?’
Carla answered without thought, even though she wasn’t sure what was meant.
‘Amparo is my angel.’
‘Her essence glows, just behind you. Pale as dawn. And as fearless.’
‘That’s Amparo, yes.’
Carla felt tears rise. She blinked them back. She turned. She saw nothing. Part of her mind wanted to disbelieve Alice, but in her heart she did believe her, completely. She turned back and Alice saw that she believed.
‘You’re lucky to have such a guardian, especially for this work.’
‘She was my dearest friend. She –’
‘Amparo knows all that and so do you. This old girl doesn’t need to. It’s just good that we’re mindful she’s here.’
‘Thank you for making me so. And it is good, so very good.’
Alice shifted in her chair to ease some stiffness. She clasped her hands.
‘Let’s hold our peace a while, so Amparo knows we cherish her presence.’
Carla closed her eyes and let Amparo’s spirit fill her. She remembered the golden days they had spent together. A more unlikely pair could hardly be imagined, yet what music they two had made. Strange roads, as Mattias had once put it, strange roads had brought her and Amparo together; her and Mattias, too; just as strange roads had brought her to this table. In the usual course she would have questioned what was happening here; and the questions in their asking would have locked out all the answers worth having. She felt at home. She didn’t know why. She had never known that feeling for a place before; not for the dark mausoleum in which her parents had raised her; not in the house she had lived in for almost twenty years. She had known it only in moments: when transported into music’s realm; on horseback; amid the suffering and chaos of the Hospital in Malta. In Mattias’s arms. Yet she felt at home in this squalid hovel.
Sorrow pierced her. Salt tears slid down her face.
‘I’m sorry, madame.’
‘Let the tears fall, love.’
‘I am all in confusion.’
Alice reached a hand across the table. Carla took it. The hand was cool, yet the warmth of an immense love flowed into her, and with that flowing, the love became yet larger.
‘Mattias is missing, Orlandu is missing. The children I kissed goodnight were butchered while I listened to their screams – and while I did nothing to help them. Everywhere is fren
zy, cruelty, hatred, greed –’
‘Not here, love, not here.’
Carla couldn’t help glancing towards the door and the revels beyond.
‘Leave them to their sport,’ said Alice.
‘They sport with trophies cut from a man’s skin.’
‘And one day my son’s head will decorate a spike on the city walls.’
‘No number of wrongs can make a right.’
‘This woman didn’t say they do. She was simply pointing out, in agreement with you, that barbarity and corruption are but the faces on the coin of man’s kingdom.’
‘But why so? There’s more than enough for all.’
‘Set no store in politic, love. Don’t seek answers where you’ll never find them.’
‘Are we helpless then?’
‘Not at all and to the very contrary. We can’t stop their wrongs, much less should we avenge them. They’re busy enough with all that as it is. There’ll never be any shortage of heads and spikes. But they’re the helpless ones. They’re the ones who’ve mortgaged their souls to idols of their own invention. But we needn’t catch their madness. We can invite their horrors in here, or we can not. We can live as our Mother intended, right here where we are, wherever we are, because we are here, and here is us: you and your child, and Amparo, and what’s left of this old devil’s dam.’
‘My shoes are filled with the blood they spilled. It’s not easy to ignore them.’
‘This lowborn lass didn’t tell you to ignore them either, still less that anything was easy. But we can pay attention to the things that will make us more, rather than less.’
‘It was your son who –’ Carla bit her tongue.
‘My son has broken this old heart times without number. That’s what sons do, and we mothers can only count the ways. They are men. They are monsters, even those who are reckoned – and especially those who reckon themselves – the glory of their race. But we can’t hold that against them, no more than we can blame the rain for being wet. They fear life, even when they don’t fear death, because they know in their bones they can never bring Life Her-own-self to heel, much as they’re bent on trying to. So they make up their wondrous tales – for that talent, at least, let’s give them credit – and they say, “This is the world as it should be”, and they set out to dominate the worlds-that-should-be, instead of living in the world-without-flaw that already is. And thus they are always at war, with each other, and with themselves, and with Life Her-own-self. They call their doomed fancy “civilisation”. Paris is its centre, so they tell us, and that makes the point far better than this old witch can.’
‘I have a son.’
Alice said nothing to this. Carla looked at the table, into nowhere. Orlandu, in the moment of his purest innocence, and without any choice in the matter, had broken her heart before he had known that she possessed one. And he’d broken it again when he’d left her to go to Paris; and when he’d talked Mattias into teaching him how to fight with a knife, and when . . .
‘And I am carrying a son.’
‘The chances are always fair. We’ll see. How much does it matter to you?’
‘It matters not at all, of course not. Boy or girl, it’s my child.’
‘It matters a good deal to some. Women are drawn into the fairy tales, too.’
Alice squeezed Carla’s hand and withdrew it and Carla felt an enormous sense of loss. Alice put her palms on the table and leaned forward to hoist herself up to her feet.
‘The water in the kettle’s still hot. We’ll wash that blood off in a twinkling.’
‘No, don’t go, madame, please, stay. I’ve waded in blood before, I don’t care about that. You’re right, I know you’re right. Truly I do. Please, let me have your hand again.’
Carla held Alice’s hand and looked into the long, hard winter of her eyes.
‘You have so little, yet you give so much.’
‘We’ll have no talk of that kind, thank you very much. We’re not running a stall on the market, though we could. The house is stuffed with rubbish.’
‘I didn’t mean to offend you. I only intended –’
‘We know what you intended, love, and none is taken.’ Alice rolled the ache from one shoulder. ‘As regards what you at least seem to mean by “having”, you “have” rather less than a little yourself. For a certainty the things you’ve left behind aren’t here, and may never be “there” again, so why lean on them?’
‘I do not lean on them. If I did, I don’t think I would be alive to be here.’
‘Well said, girl. Whatever a person can’t carry in their own arms isn’t worth having. That’s my book.’
Carla smiled and felt the tightness of the dried tear stains on her cheeks. In her mind’s eye she saw Orlandu as ragged as he’d first appeared to her. She saw Mattias watching his life’s work burn from the deck of a midnight galley. She saw herself, not in one place or moment but in many – perhaps those were the only moments when she was herself – with nothing of value but whatever lay within her. That was never more true than here and now.
‘So, you’re not hearing anything you don’t already know.’ Alice smiled, too. ‘Mayhap you’re a bit of a witch yourself.’
‘Mayhap.’
‘Grand. Grand. Now we can talk plain.’
Carla revisited her visions and found an error.
‘I couldn’t carry a horse, and I would have had little indeed without their companionship. But then, one never possesses a horse. At best, one is with it.’
‘A delight these old bones have never known, so it’s a joy to see it in you. And there we are: as far as “giving” goes, and by no means as regards only horses, we meet upon the level. And there I trust we’ll stay, in confusion or otherwise.’
‘You flatter me.’ Carla saw Alice raise one brow in warning. ‘Yes. I accept. On the level, there we meet and there we’ll stay.’ The brow fell. ‘May I ask an odd question?’
‘They tend to be the best kind.’
‘You call me “love”.’
‘It fits well enough. But if it bothers you, I’ll call you anything you want.’
‘No, no, it’s wonderful.’
Again Carla found herself smiling. Alice’s smile was altogether more wry.
‘Then your odd question has its answer.’
‘And another? I may be mistaken, but I don’t believe I’ve heard you say “I”.’
‘You’re not mistaken. On the whole, this woman would rather not be fooled into thinking she’s at the centre of much that matters, a fancy which saying “I” fosters, and which same fancy she sees everywhere about her, and which is prime among the many tales that fill our shoes with blood. It gives her a clearer view of the way things are, which is that she is but a thread, and not the tapestry.’
Carla took this in. Her reason hopped from toe to toe in consternation. Her soul understood in an instant: at this of all moments, she wasn’t ‘I’, she was ‘we’.
‘She might also point out,’ added Alice, ‘that this is not a matter of false humility.’
‘We had already gathered that much. A golden thread, then.’
Alice took this edged compliment with an inclination of her head.
‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I have my angels, too.’
Carla studied her hunched, lumpy figure, so graceless yet so full of grace.
‘I wish I could see them. They must be glorious.’
‘No more than yours nor anyone else’s. And when you open your eyes, you will.’
‘May I call you “Alice”?’
‘Hellfire, it would surely be an improvement on “madame”.’
Carla felt another contraction arise. She stood up and leaned forward on the table. This time she groaned without inhibition and felt the better for it. As the pang in her belly waned, the pain in her back became so intense she feared she had done some injury to her spine. She pushed the heels of her hands into the agony, but couldn’t push hard enough.
Alice lumbere
d to her feet. Her stoicism could not mask the effort it cost.
‘Don’t get up, Alice. It’s passing now.’
Carla craned her neck and straightened and masked her discomfort. Alice shuffled around the table. Carla saw that her ankles and feet were so swollen they overlapped the edges of her slippers. Alice rubbed her hands together and stood behind her.
‘No wonder. Drop your shoulders, and widen your feet and push your hips out, you’re not here for an audience with the Queen.’
Carla did as she was told and felt some improvement.
‘Now, let’s see if these angels won’t give us a bit of help.’
Carla didn’t feel Alice touch her, and was sure she hadn’t, yet a deep heat crept through her loins. Within moments the pain had subsided to a gentle ache.
‘How did you do that?’
‘We all have healing hands if we would use them.’
Alice limped to a dresser, favouring one hip, and into a wide, deep bowl stacked two smaller bowls, two spoons, all of wood, and a knife. She set them on the table.
‘Let me help you.’
‘Don’t fuss. It’s done.’
Alice returned to the dresser. From a cupboard she took an earthen jar and brought it to the table. A worn grass-green cushion lay on her chair. She adjusted the cushion and sat down with a groan of relief. The purple patches on her cheeks were darker. She breathed with strain, propped up by her reddened elbows, and it took her several breaths to recover. Carla was worried. She didn’t want the effort of attending her labour to overtax Alice. Couldn’t they recruit some extra help? Alice saw Carla’s expression.
‘You were told not to fuss.’
Alice cleared her throat into her fist and swallowed with a florid grimace.
