LEMON SHERBET

LEMON SHERBET

Rose Casey

PRE-SHOW:

“True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air, and more inconsistent than the wind…”

-you know.

Real time is ticking, stealthily.

So, pay attention.

This is my life review.

1. THE BEGINNING IS THE END

Today is the last day.

I know this because I control the narrative.

This new morning promises to provide the perfect meteorological backdrop, in front of which, I can finally look forward to tying things up. Or finishing things off. Depends how you look at it.

I’m glad I waited, and yet can’t help feeling this final chapter might have contained more symbolism… if the dawn sky had evolved as bruised and heavy.

“Come on. Hands up… who understands pathetic fallacy?”

There’s a delicious irony to savour here: this momentary peach melba swirl of dawn will soon give way to a clear, cornflower blue sky. I can tell. Later, wispy candy floss clouds will catch on a fabric softener breeze and drift softly overhead.

Such charming imagery. Don’t you think?

Dust motes twinkle, suspended in lemony sunlight which glances across my half-closed eyelids. The warmth is gentle, graceful. Dawn is re-birth.

This is why today is the last day.

She’s gone now. A final reversal of roles means it’s her turn to leave.

I touch my abdomen and imagine the small white tablets clustering under my fingertips. I know they will melt into my bloodstream and fast-track conclusion. I’m in good hands.

Already sleepy, I glance at the photograph stuck to the bedside cabinet. Be happy.

I allow my eyes to close and prepare to drift. The painkillers are slowly releasing their chemical goodness, and in my mind’s eye they trace a pattern as they get to work, like a map of the London Underground. We need to get to Ealing Broadway. We are currently at Bank. Mind the gap.

I did try. To mind it. To avoid it. To fill it.

It’s complicated, actually, because these little helpers will struggle to know which part to soothe first. But I trust them to deliver.

Don’t judge, but I’ve swallowed a little something extra. Non-prescription, I admit. A party favour smuggled home after a sordid hotel encounter -some time ago. Can’t remember which. There have been many: faceless strangers, city types, no-name lovers. Lubrication in the form of cocktails x3 on that occasion, I think. I won’t have paid. I rarely do. Did.

So. A gift from a professional, recreational, and therefore socially acceptable drug user. I agreed readily. He thought we were both high, but I tucked it inside my bra.

Long hidden, I recently discovered it had smuggled itself in here. The others I’ve surreptitiously collected, and patiently, they have waited.

The slow release is taking hold. I’m floating. Prescription or non-prescription?

Who knows.

Who cares.

Maybe both?

A fizzy lightness blooms under my skin and I’m reminded of that popping candy we had as kids. I used to steal packets from the Post Office when we were allowed into the town. Such a little thief. Yeah, you were. I know.

I permit a secret smile.

Come on baby, let’s go… vaguely remember saying that to the city type.

“X?”

Interruption.

What????

Fuck off.

A beat.

“Are you awake?”

I keep my eyes shut and feign sleep. A successful actor must learn to command life’s stage, and I have become a ‘virtuoso of deceit.’ Not my words. Merci, Madame de Merteuil.

Silence. Breathing. A shuffle of footsteps retreating in sensible footwear: tacktacktack on the sticky floor. Checking in before he clocks off night shift. Ah, he cares about me. Not enough to remember to do a room check, though. God bless him, he’s been distracted. Advantage Miss X.

I’m free to make my exit undisturbed… and this… this is just how I want it.

The beginning of this final reverie is very familiar:

I’m lying on my back and the white ceiling is abnormally high, but I’m unable to interpret colour yet.

There’s an ugly yowling in this room -in stereo. Mewling. Whimpering. An overwhelming stench of neglect in the form of too-full nappies.

I can see myself. Perfectly formed, but tiny. Superfluous to requirements and quite…quite unwanted.

The dream is a manipulator of perspective. Sometimes I experience this nightmarish place as my newborn self, sometimes as my adult self. I find myself used to these alternate viewpoints now and am grateful for them.

A preemie hand presses against the side of the transparent crib like a little pink starfish.

Bless me.

Little fingers reaching out. For what exactly? In retrospect, there are perhaps too many things to mention. I place a grown-up digit on top of the starfish.

I got you, little one.

I’m proud to report that mini-me is unlike the other newborns. I am entirely silent -different from the get-go. No trouble. That comes much later.

I stroll barefoot and unnoticed among the identical cribs. Truthfully, I’m always a little reluctant to leave baby-self behind and explore. But I do.

There are thousands of them. Cribs. There can’t have been, really. But this is a dream, remember? Details are exaggerated, and perspective is skewed. Everything is micro-managed here; choreographed for my sensory pleasure. Or not. You can decide.

I move between the multiple transparent containers, and the environment unfolds like a fairground hall of mirrors; endless see-through baby boxes in all directions, each filled with a miniature no one.

It’s habit to gravitate toward the nurse’s station first. A sinister night duty, where pretty career-fresh girls snicker over sexual exploits. They sneak cheeky cigarettes and exhale lazy blue-grey plumes which drift upward and hang heavy over infant charges.

Remember when you could smoke in hospitals/cinemas/airplanes?

I lean unseen on the counter and examine their faces in the unflattering light. Make-up cakes around the odd pimple; teenage years not long left behind. Tobacco lingers on breath, masked with a faint minty-ness. Girlish features become distorted and grotesque. Bright lipstick-ed mouths frame animated chatter, occasionally punctuated by the crack of chewing gum.

Do your job, bitches.

What a great start to a movie.

Don’t flatter yourself.

Here lie teeny-tiny babies not yet born, with mottled milky flesh. Translucent pearly-pink eyelids and fingernails conjure images of seashells. This is brand new ‘life’ designed using the palest, most iridescent of colour palettes. Spidery, violet-blue blood vessels interconnect beneath the newest of skin, and delicate chest cavities flutter in unison.

Other residents are plumper, older, stockier. Skin blotched and bruised looking. I can see myself reflected in unblinking opaque eyes -the blackest of marbles. Some are naked, fat legs kicking in shit. Others wear dirty sleepsuits.

Some cribs contain babies in various states of decomposition, slowly rotting in tandem. I’ve grown immune to the putrid smell.

Once, a pile of human mush but I don’t see it today.

There’s always a door for me, but its location varies. Sometimes I spy it straight away. But mostly, there’s an expectation that I cover ground and search for it.

On this final visit, I catch sight of the exit early-doors -lurking in my peripheral vision. No pun intended. A flash of white, side eye.

Today, yes, it’s a chalky white with peel-y paint. Dull grey metal peeking through. I know this door. Is it from school? Was it the entrance to the boiler room?

Sometimes the exit is wooden and Tudor-ish. Like in Hever Castle, remember? Yes!

By far my favourite, however, is when it presents as an entrance to a secret garden. Mossy, ivy strewn, with little wildflowers woven through. There was a door just like this in the grounds of the children’s home. I’ve extracted it from my memory and recreated it here.

In order to exit, I must solve a puzzle. I look forward to this on my dream-travels because I enjoy the challenge.

“Before you ask me…. see if you can solve the problem yourself…”

We’re expected to promote autonomy and independent thought. Ha.

On this occasion, the door has a combination code. Fuck.

Birthday? Today’s date? No idea. Days go missing.

Last visit it was secured with a rusty old padlock. I searched hard for the key…nurse’s station, under crib mattresses…everywhere. I found it around my neck in the end, hanging on a ribbon of the palest pink. From a ballet shoe? Yes, maybe. It most definitely wasn’t there when I arrived. Games.

My eyes search the cavernous room to see if there are any clues. Nope. Nothing obvious.

The ceiling has shifted, or dissolved somehow, and looking up, it’s no longer visible. There is just… nothingness.

I stab in my birthday, minus the year, because only four digits are required. A day in a month which has mostly gone unnoticed.

Adult-self chooses to forget this date, but I’m reminded of it on each visit here. Written in hasty, twirly cursive on the infant hospital tag which sits snug around my baby wrist.

Female: No name

DOB: XXXXXX (no longer relevant).

The door does not give. Birthday too easy.

I glance around for further code cracking inspiration and spy two new additions to the mise-en-scene: the first is a solo cot, set back and far apart from all the others.

The second is a clock. It’s strangely digital and appears too modern for this austere, decades-past environment. The blue fluorescence casts a time-y glow above the now distant nurse’s station. I can’t be sure, but I don’t think it was there when I leant on the counter to eavesdrop in on the girly gossip. I would have noticed. I’m undeterred: it’s common for the set to shift and change.

The clock’s light catches on cheekbones and neon-tints cigarette smoke in filmic slo-mo.

I’ve walked some way, and yet can still read this out of place time piece. The numbers are static; only the colon steadily pulses dividing hours and minutes, marking seconds. I watch the steady two-dot rhythm. As you might expect, time has no relevance here.

02:13. Graveyard shift. Literally.

(This is it, by the way).

Punch x4, and I know I’m right before I even hit the last button.

Try harder, motherfuckers. I like a challenge.

The door swings open. Come on baby, let’s go.

Wait.

Something halts me. I hesitate.

The cot. Solo, and separate. It must be significant.

I turn back and view it from the distance. It’s no longer empty. A child dressed in white is sitting upright. It’s small and can be no more than two.

Unusual: I’m used to seeing babies here, not children. This is some sort of grotesque maternity ward, after all. My pitiful little start in life re-imagined, I’ve always assumed.

An overwhelming feeling: I need to take this child with me. Don’t leave it all alone. It’s different. I sense I know it. Am I to rescue my child self? I’ve never dream-encountered myself at this age before.

I feel suddenly anxious. If I go back to investigate the door might close and tonight’s exit opportunity will be lost. You cracked the code. Don’t mess up.

But the urge is too strong to ignore.

I head back to the cot.

Pray the door remains open.

2.THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY

1981: I had one real friend in the children’s home. We were roughly the same age, I think, I never asked. Such details don’t matter when you’re young. A pretty girl with honey coloured skin and large caramel eyes. We arrived together. Of course, I remember her name…just choose not to include it. She had a fine gold chain around her neck which I coveted. On it, dangled the tiniest star. Such possessions were almost unheard of.

Summer holidays seem endless when you’re a kid, don’t they? For some reason, I can hardly recall any inclement weather. This can’t have been the case, really. Odd though, that such a troubled childhood should replay in my mind against such a glorious backdrop.

By day, we kids endlessly explored the vast area around the children’s home. ‘Unwanteds’ discreetly tucked away in a rural setting. A mini ‘great unwashed’, so to speak. Staff left us to it back then, and it meant we could run entirely wild. Mostly, these were carefree days.

You’ll remember the drill wherever you grew up: bashing wild undergrowth, catching bugs, climbing trees. Making dens. In the days when kids could. Dirty scraped knees and scratched, sun-scorched arms. Hand-me-down dungarees. Two little tomboys trailing after the cool kids. Older boys. Mid-teens or there about; the girls were boring.

There were happy times. There were.

Are you telling yourself? Yes.

However, my memory can be unreliable. Perhaps it might prove even more so on this final journey. Understandable.

I just find it hard to dig up the positives, so diluted are they by the bad shit. Suffocated. The bad shit that’s impossible to navigate as a child but eventually forces your heart to harden. Grow cold. Hard and cold.

I can pinpoint the day everything changed for good. For me. Well, her.

Ok, both.

My first real introduction to a world I had as yet, given little time to considering. The adult world. I chose to ignore it. Adults were generally not to be trusted, and I hadn’t met many I’d warmed to. I’m not sure it ever occurred me that I would eventually become one. An adult. That time was steadily, secretly, stealing forward, and that in my child’s mind these frozen hours were in fact, not frozen at all. Tick, tick:

“No. Try a triple. The power of three is stronger. So, tick, tick, tick. See?”

Humid late afternoon. Tearingthroughthewoodsjumpingbranchessneakerstoobig(not mine)onelacebroken:

Wild and free. Wild and free.

The boys, maybe eight or nine of them, were ahead and had crashed into a clearing. They’d come to a stop, bent over, catching breath. Laughing.

By the time Caramel and I bolted through the undergrowth, you couldn’t have staged the scene better. A variety of complimentary positions as if ready for camera: flat on back, bent over, sitting on fallen branch etc. etc.

And then, the afternoon took an unexpected turn because of a simple, scrappy piece of paper.

I was handed it by one of the more dominant boys in the group amid much snickering. Forever courting acceptance, I laughed along, and unfolded the tatty square.

It was a piece torn out of a magazine; the gloss worn from too much-thumbing.

The figure was headless. Was her head superfluous to requirements or perhaps it was the result of a hasty tear? I didn’t know. A body, legs splayed, framing a dark triangle of something I was yet to fully grow.

An uncertain watery smile: try to look cool.

Sensing something new and unexpected in the air, I glanced sideways at my shadow. Slowly, she met my eyes.

Yes, I was aware of sex, but first inklings

realisations

were shelved tidily away, as if my subconscious knew the topic wasn’t fully relevant.

Yet. No need to dwell.

My companion snatched the paper from my hand with a sharp swipe: “Give it.” She very rarely spoke. Sometimes I forgot that she could. She was economic with words.

I feel entirely responsible for what happened next, although I never actually witnessed it. Just knew it was bad.

My fault? Yes, your fault.

We found ourselves in the centre of an impromptu circle. The site-specific staging had shifted, and we were surrounded by boy-faces which up to this point had paid us little mind. Prior to this terrible July afternoon we’d simply been taggers-on, mostly ignored. Tolerated to ‘play’ at a distance providing we caused no hinderance. We were practiced at knowing our place, always on the periphery of the action for fear of being excluded.

I knew these faces well. I’d studied them as part of my wild and unconventional education: in the rec room, in the canteen, at play. I had watched them, over time, evolve from soft and cheeky into the harder lines of male adolescence. Eyes which rarely made contact, crinkled at the edges from too much sun or from being squeezed shut in hysterical laughter. Private jokes, not for girls. Never threatening. Until now.

Eyes that were fully focused on the both of us. Her?

I shiftily looked from expression to expression. This was what? I squinted at her sideways for reassurance, hoping a cheerful cackle of boy-laughter would slice through the uncomfortable feeling newly hanging in the oppressive summer air. I have no idea if what happened next was pre-planned or organic.

I remember, I think, a distant rumble of thunder. A summer storm lying in wait, crouched feline-style, ready to break the humidity.

“Raise your hand if you can explain the technique of foreshadowing.”

I held my breath and stepped backwards. Snap. A dry twig provided aural punctuation. Maybe there was no twig, but I like it in this rare and final replay. It adds tension, no?

Silence. My boy-chest rising and falling. Random:

It’s my birthday soon.

Gazes were fixed, half smirks contrasted with the odd more serious expression. From somewhere in the circle bubble gum popped.

Caramel mirrored my step back, closing proximity. I understood this was for my protection, I think. Then, softly, without eye contact: “Go.”

I hesitated, then tried to catch her sweaty hand: “GO.” Louder this time. An imperative.

I turned.

“Not yet.” This from the self-appointed leader, a tall, scrawny boy with a broken front tooth. He wouldn’t have known my name.

“Fuck, she’s just a bairn, Stevie.” Blonde, earring. Scottish, I now realise.

Steve. Stevie. Leader. Yes, I remember. I will share his name because he was a c**t.

No. I shall remove the asterisks and change the tense. He is a cunt.

“She’s not a bairn.” He knew. Lemon sherbet.

Stevie looked me dead in the eye. The first time he ‘saw’ me, I expect. He tilted his head, and I watched him weigh up how to play it. I was sporting cropped blonde hair as I’d recently had another round of nits. They didn’t always treat it back then; just cut your hair off. Caramel seemed to have a knack for avoiding headlice and kept her hair long. My appearance, at this point, was very much in contrast with my given (by who?) and very feminine name. The name he did not know.

The short hair might have saved me. Too much like a little boy?

Speaks mounds about you, Fisher.

Topboy spat sideways through his broken front tooth. He leered and moved a matchstick from one side of his mouth to the other. Time stopped for a second, and then with a sharp jerk of his head he motioned me to get lost. He’s letting you go.

Did that happen?

Dilemma. Right now, she was needed, it seemed, but not me. You’ll be leaving her entirely alone. Another rumble; closer now.

A beat.

I fled.