Jill Rees: Welcome Press

My Daddy is as tall as a tree and the neighbours say he is as strong as an ox. I was always proud to be his little girl, and even after my two sisters Emma and Janey were born, he told me I was still his precious treasure. He used to sit me on his knee and tell bedtime stories, after my sisters had been put to bed. His stories are amazing. Teddy bears come to life and do daredevil feats, swinging from the lights and saving little girls from panthers with prowling eyes and giant bats that fly in through the open windows.

We always had the windows open at night, even when the snow almost came over the window sills in the middle of winter and the temperature was below freezing. We weren’t cold, because the house walls were warm from the embers of the fire in the living room, and we snuggled under our quilts made of duck feathers! Sometimes I imagined my mother running after the ducks as they skidded across the ice, trying to trap them with her broom to stuff our duvets! My mother could do anything. She told me off when I was naughty, or didn’t help look after my sisters, but she always smiled at me secretly from the kitchen. When I remember her I imagine she winks at me, but I can’t remember her really doing that. The morning we woke and Daddy told us she had left was the worst day of my life. Why would she leave us?

Soon though, Margit came to live with us, and she was just as kind, although quieter than Mother. My brother Thomas came along soon after, and gave us more work. He was so funny, I would do anything for him. He is the one I miss the most, because I used to tell him the stories Daddy had told me, and he laughed and screamed in all the right places.

We live on a hill, and in the winter we would ski to school. Daddy picked us up in the afternoon, so we didn’t have to lug the skis back up the hill again. Even when I was lonely, the mountains arched over like great white angels, keeping me company. With the thaw in February, the tiny white petals of the Edelweiss peeping through the melting snow made your heart sing out with joy. After trudging through ever darkening snow in your heavy boots all winter, to be able to skip along the tinkling pavements in the spring was wonderful, and all the women cleaning their steps would cry out,

‘Good morning, Julie! How is the baby?’ they were always asking how is the baby, because Thomas had asthma, which means he found it troublesome to breathe and so, if he wasn’t with me, it meant he was ill again and had to stay at home.

I knew everyone at school, they were mostly my cousins. Apart from Mr Fenester, the retired piano tuner with the long beard who was very strange and we had to avoid him, no-one ever left the town nor came to live from elsewhere. Except Mother of course, who ran off for no good reason.  Although I sometimes overheard people say my Daddy was a cuckold, Daddy said that the one thing he was not, was that. I imagine it means he shouted at Mother and drove her away, but nothing could be further from the truth. Mother never did anything to upset him or spoke against him. Margit argues with him more than Mother ever did, and he doesn’t even shout at her. He just walks outside and gets on with his project in the shed.

The whole town laughs about Daddy’s project. There is a lot of banging, and a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with wheelbarrows full of dirt, but Daddy always said it would a wonderful workshop when it was finished. Sometimes Daddy gets the lodger, Harry, to help him with it. I never used to know Harry very well. He is a tall bent over man, younger than Daddy but somehow weak. He never smiles, which is why I never liked him. He also always gave me funny looks, as if he didn’t like me, especially when Daddy cuddled me on his knee. I think he was jealous. But Daddy said he was an OK bloke and they had the same ideas, and he was happy to do the dirty work. Margit used to say he wasn’t all there, and we should pity him, and anyway at least he paid the rent on time, unlike some of them.

While sometimes the lodgers didn’t pay all they owed us, Daddy never insisted they paid or got the police, despite Margit trying to make him. He didn’t want them snooping around. Another thing Daddy hates as well as the police is the taxman, and he says things used to be better when the parasitic scum weren’t in the country.

A strange thing happened. I would have gone to Margit straight away if I’d known what it was, but I thought I was dying and a bat had bitten me on the leg - I was half asleep! I woke up suddenly with my legs covered in blood. Daddy was quite calm, which helped. He hesitated for a moment then called Margit. It was she who cleaned me up and said I am a woman now. Then she cried.

The other time she cries is on Sunday when she has come back from the Church. Margit goes every week. Daddy won’t go or let her take us as he says they are hypocritical scum. Margit told me she goes there to pray to God. When I asked her what she prayed for, she glanced at the door and said almost inaudibly,

‘I pray to live’, which I thought was kind of cool, to pray for your whole life.

I don’t understand why Daddy wanted me to stop going to school, but he told Margit that he was going to send me off to join Mother. I wish he had! I didn’t even know he knew where Mother was, but I wish she would come and see me sometimes. Margit gave him a suspicious kind of look when he said that. Maybe she thought he was still in love with Mother and might change them round again, but I don’t think that will ever happen. Daddy never says anything nice about Mother, even though she was really the most lovely person.

On the Saturday, Daddy said his workshop was finished more or less, and he would be putting in some tools and a few odds and ends. The van came last Sunday morning, driven by Harry of course, who looked at me in an even weirder way than normal, and all day stuff got taken into the shed. It was truly amazing that so much stuff could fit in there. I didn’t see what it all was, because we were banned from watching, but I’m sure I caught sight of a sofa hidden under a sort of carpet! Finally Daddy collapsed in his chair and called for a beer for him and Harry. Harry kept laughing and looking at me, until Daddy gave me a kiss and told me to go off to bed now.

It was Sunday when Margit was in Church that Daddy said we had to go now and to pack some things. I thought we are going to see Mother and was delirious with anticipation to see her again. But it was not to be. Imagine my surprise when, instead of going to the car, Daddy took me out to his workshop and opened a huge iron door that just looked like wooden slats on the outside. It was amazing inside the door! There were stairs leading down down, a long long way down, then another iron door which rung out from the outside but on the inside was lined with thick cloth so that it made no noise when you bang it. I know, because I have spent a lot of time since trying to bang it and make noise so Mrs Hersel can hear me.  But you can’t make any noise. Inside this door, which Daddy opened with lots of keys he carried on a big bunch that hung from his pocket, was a thin corridor with one electric light, and then it opened onto three rooms. One was a miniature bathroom and toilet, all made up and decorated, and even with a towel and soap. The second was a tiny padded cupboard which Daddy said would be where he would shut me in if I were naughty and didn’t co-operate. The third room opened up into a lounge and the sofa was like a bed.

Daddy said I have to live here now and that I won’t get to see Thomas again. There is a TV and when it shows the skiing I can see my beloved mountains, and there is a channel dedicated to beautiful Austria for tourists, so I can even look at the mountains and fields in summer when there is no snow. There is a lake that I think I have been to with Mother. The children’s programmes are fun, but I feel lonely on my own. Although i can see the mountains it isn’t the same as being outside with my friends breathing the crisp air that tastes like vanilla ice-cream on my lips.

After a couple of days when I’d got used to it a bit, Daddy said I had to do something for him because of the blood thing. He had something bothering him and I had to lick it better. There was a drink in it and it didn’t taste nice but Daddy made me drink it anyway. The worse thing was when Harry came through the corridor and he had the same thing going on between his legs and I had to help him as well. It was bad because he smelled disgusting and also because I didn’t like him and he wasn’t my Daddy, but Daddy said we had to help him because he had done a lot of work on the new apartments. That means he built this place where I live now. Daddy calls it the apartments, but it’s more like a cave in a way. Daddy goes away and only comes back when he has his trouble.

This morning something really bad happened. Daddy said the thing was really bothering him and I had to help him out some more. He really hurt me this time and I thought I was going to die. Since then I have been on my own and there I almost wish I could die. And it strikes me that maybe mother didn’t run off, because she never went against him. And when I think like this I think there is only one way to see Mother again, but I wish I could be sure.

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Tags: Amstetten, child abuse, short story.

Janet Jardine lived alone in a two-bedroomed flat in Jardine Drive, which was her joke: the coincidence was such that the drive hadn’t been called that when she moved in, but the council had changed all the street names to celebrate the Cricket centenary when the new houses nearby were built. Although the bedrooms were small, Janet kept the box room as a spare room in case she had visitors, and kept her possessions down to a minimum so there was no clutter.

Janet worked hard these days. She left the house early in the morning and came back at the end of the rush hour, when the seats became empty.  Her boss Steven Kershaw thought she had become indispensable.

‘You’re part of the furniture, Janet’ he would say.  Instead of making her feel gratified, however, although she realised that was his intention, she felt life was passing her by.

Sometimes the thought crossed her mind that she might be depressed, but in fact she had been relieved when Mark had owned up to the affair and offered her a beneficial settlement.  The marriage had been dead for years, with Mark continually on his computer doing stuff he said was important, as opposed to being with her, which she surmised was unimportant to him.

When he spent time away, she was pleased to be on her own at last. Even so, the mass of alien objects he brought with him and which scattered the house and garage made her feel unwelcome. They were man things, metal, darkly coloured, and unworkable to her. She had asked him to take the digital TV with its appliances and all the CD equipment she couldn’t work, and had bought herself a simple cheap telly and a small digital radio for the kitchen. Simplicity in the gadget field comforted her.

It was quite out of character that she started going to the Italian cafe at lunchtime. She sat next to the window or actually outside, where they had put some tables and chairs, and ate a snack and one of their various coffees. In the heat of summer, when London could be quite stifling, she would drink a frescato coffee, and in winter a cappuccino or a mocha. She pretended she was on holiday, or even was living in Italy for a while. What had started her on this Italian thing?  She had never gone out to Italian restaurants with Mark, or been at all interested in things Italian. Maybe that was what it was. It wasn’t hers and Mark’s, but hers alone.

The Italian footballers on the telly had had an effect on her, with their long dark hair and black eyelashes framing perfect mountain eyes. Or perhaps it was the film with Katherine Hepburn, another aging abandoned woman. Because although she felt happy, and really grateful for the way things had turned out, she felt she had had her cake and also eaten it, in actual fact that’s what she was, an abandoned woman. She thought of Mark, with his younger woman who would now be starting to age with him, watching TV with her and her children, or tormenting her by being on the computer all night. She felt sure this other woman would be getting fed up with him by now. Domestic bliss, she knew, was not bliss at all, but a kind of purgatory.

And if that had been purgatory, she was now either in Heaven or Hell, and it didn’t feel like Heaven. For Dante was another recent Italian discovery;   she longed to go to Bologna or Padua, and walk in the footsteps of the great men who had formed the seedlings of our democracies and cultures.  Just as she longed to order ‘un cappuccino’ for real in an Italian cafe. Or maybe two.

Sitting alone, eating her pancetta and sipping on the cold iced coffee, she watched the pavements, as she imagined a real Italian woman would, all the people passing by, self-absorbed. Was she an adventurer, or was she Shirley Valentine?   Janet imagined the histories and the stories of the other cafe regulars too, and found herself in particular wondering why the ‘man in black’ came each day as she did. Could men find themselves alone too?

Although dressed inevitably in dark colours, he seemed more designer than depressive, and his eyelashes too seemed black as coal, framing his blue eyes that made her think of vast open skies, perhaps from a plane. When he caught her looking, he had smiled enigmatically, and she felt a faint stirring that made her suddenly feel bereft, and cover her pearled neckline with her hand self-consciously.

She began to realise he was definitely going to approach her at some point, and began to prepare for it. Sometimes after work she went window shopping, and on the late night Thursdays, when the shops were crowded, would dare to try things on. In this way, and with the help of some women’s magazines, she managed to concoct some reasonably attractive outfits.

He had noticed, she was sure, and began to smile when he saw that she was there. Slowly the smiling progressed to nodding, and finally one day, when the cafe was crowded, the cool of autumn having brought all the customers indoors, even the smokers, he came towards her and asked if he might join her. She nodded, speechless. In spite of having expected just such an event for several months, it felt like a surprise. He held out his hand, politely,

‘John’, he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind. There’s nowhere else to sit, and I have noticed you are a regular too, like me.’

Something in common, she thought, he’s deliberately mentioned something we have in common. She remembered reading about this somewhere, what had it been?

‘I had a sense of foreboding,’ she told her friends, ‘Even then.’ But she didn’t. She thought he was marvellous. He did indeed have bright blue eyes and black lashes, like the footballers, and spoke of ancient Irish heritages, and passionate nature that kept him a wanderer. He had travelled, even been married once, to a Thailander, and had come home reluctantly when his luck ran out. And herself?

‘Me?’ asked Janet Jardine, ‘Oh, I’m nobody.’

‘Oh I dare say you’re an adventurer in your own way,’ teased John, with a laughing look. And indeed she was.

Some adventures make you feel exhausted and at your wits’ end. They sap your strength, your vitality and you youth, and leave you a mere shadow of your former self. But some adventures make you stronger and force your character to develop like a hero, especially if you weren’t particularly anybody to begin with.  This is the story of how Janet went from being a lonely divorcee, to playing the title role in her own fictional adventure.

‘He made me feel like I was somebody,’ Janet would explain.

‘Yes,’ said her friends, ‘But somebody else!’

Oh she knew he was a player, and she knew she couldn’t love him. she had already loved Mark. She was one of these women who gives their heart only once, and whom men consistently fail to understand, men who are unable to believe that they are loved or to realise the value and rarity of being truly loved. And these women walk around alone, bearing up, being brave, being kind or being easily irritable. They are the broken hearted, so go easy on them. Janet was one of the broken hearted, and she was fully aware of this fact.

At first, John ensured he sat by her when she was at the cafe. Finally he invited her out in the evening and she accepted. After a while, he took her home and left her on the doorstep with a kiss, gentle and unintentioned.  She wasn’t going to make the first move and he wasn’t in a hurry to be misconstrued.

One evening in October, taking her hand across the table of a moderate Italian restaurant near her flat, John suggested they go on a holiday together, to get some sun.

‘When was the last time you indulged yourself?’ he asked.

‘Never!’ Janet laughed. She felt like a teenager, planning where to go and of course getting a room together to avoid the single supplement. They would go to Istanbul on a city break, four days of warmth, exotic teas, cultural excursions and bargain shopping. Applying for her passport renewal, Janet wondered if precautions would still be necessary. She paid at the post office in cash, and took cash out to travel too, for simplicity. She didn’t see the point in traveller’s cheques, now that so many places refused them because of local fraud.  John did a double take when he saw her cash.

‘Blimey, and I’m paying for everything as well!’

‘Oh no you’re not, I’m a modern gal, and I’m not short of a bob or too. I’ve had nothing to spend it on for years.’

He was a gentle lover, and the night before the dawn departure from Gatwick merged into the morning light, as the sun rose over the plane, or the plane rose over the sun. He held her hand as they gazed out of the window, their bodies drenched in passion and dozing. Timelessness seemed to overcome her, whether the past or the future was part of this experience she couldn’t tell.  The heat of the air in Istanbul seemed to join her and him to everything that surrounded them. Perhaps, she thought, purgatory had been the world she had inhabited, and she was now entering heaven after all.

She was flattered when John suggested that they move in together, and chatting about which of their houses would be best for them both became a favourite pass-time.  Janet was happy, people told her she glowed, and ready to do it straight away, but John was more cautious, insisting they think fully about all the consequences. Although he had a nice apartment uptown, Janet loved her house, and in the end they decided that John would move in with her there. He sold his own apartment, and put the money aside for when they decided to ‘Go the whole way!’, by which he meant get married. Janet giggled; she wasn’t ready for that yet!   At first, John’s part of the bargain was to pay the bills while she continued to pay the mortgage, but finally they took halves of that too.

Their first argument came when they were on holiday in Italy. Janet couldn’t understand how her expectations, wrought by so many years of day-dreaming, could be so easily disappointed.

‘Look!’ she cried, ‘That’s a live volcano! Surely this merits a bit of romance?’

‘You were always after romance, all along, stringing me along with your fantasies. It’s just a dream, love, that’s all it is. Wake up and smell the roses.’

‘But we love each other, we’re an example of the fantasy coming true.’  He laughed, a nasty emotionless laugh she hadn’t heard from him before.

‘Love doesn’t exist. It’s a fool’s game.’

‘Then I’m the fool’, Janet asserted, gamely.

But that was the last time she had the sporting spirit, for now she felt everything had been taken from her, like a rug swept from under her, as she prepared finally to leave her beloved house. How had it come to this?

It turned out that John pleaded a separation on the grounds of mutual contribution to the household assets, even though he had been living there less than two years. In court, he made her out to be a scheming hysteric, who had ensnared him, and the jury, looking at her sorry face with its smeared make-up, agreed. They heard about her years of being alone, of moping, of drinking endless coffees alone while keeping her eyes peeled for a likely victim. How she had made him give up his flat, and sell everything he had to move in with her, and how he had spent his money on holidays for her.  She felt too betrayed to mention that she had paid for everything after the first initial trip, as he said his money was in a fixed savings account. In the end he won fifty percent of the value of her house, and she had to sell up.

‘Love,’ she told her friends over another glass of punch, ‘Is such sweet sorrow.’ If they say that about me, she thought, then why should it not be so? and out loud: ‘It’s been lovely visiting, girls, but I’d better get back to the hotel, my flight leaves early, and we’re off on the boat tomorrow.’

‘Can’t keep luvver boy waiting and worrying!’ the girls laughed as Janet almost sashayed out of the cafe.

‘She deserves happiness,’ said one of them, when Janet had gone, ‘if anyone does.’

‘And if it hadn’t been for that vile cheat whatsisname’, said the other, ‘She wouldn’t have ever plucked up the courage to go off to Italy.’

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Tags: romance, short story, women.