Author: Ali

Alihttps://aliabbasali.wordpress.comWriter, Photographer, Carpenter
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DP: A Bird, a Plane, You! Speaking without words

Speaking Without Words

“…thought it a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.”

Khalil Gibran

This may be the oddest superpower for a writer to wish for. Surely words are the cornerstone of consciousness, civilisation, thought, good pizza, everything you can imagine, which in turn need words to articulate them.

Right there we have the crux of the problem: on the path between the images in my head and the words that emerge from my mouth there is a skid pan, a vortex which spins and mangles and distorts my meaning. And then there is the secret tunnel, known only to the snide and snarky parts of my brain, a closely guarded secret for the flippant and the dismissive, which can avoid all cortex quality control and emerge like bullets to shoot myself in the foot.

Worse yet are those that need me to listen to their chatter. I so rarely care, and yet it is such an important part of our social dynamics for people to share. So intent are they in speaking they can’t pierce the gauzy veil of my politeness and see the blank eyes of “I don’t give a shit.”

Once, briefly, I had the perfect friendship. We never needed to speak. A look, a smile, a hand brushed over the shoulder conveyed all the worlds of meaning that others could spew world killing tons of carbon dioxide over. Perhaps the beauty of that friendship condemned it to such a short half life, for it trumped and trampled over every other human interaction. There is no trace of it now.

Give me that power: to communicate without words. To pass my thoughts to others and to take theirs; as they are intended, without the faulty packaging of words, and the contaminating intervention of language. And give me silence.

If you are interested in more of my writing please check out my book:Image and Other Stories

DP Perspective – The History Rant (Hajj diary extract)

Today’s prompt was to consider how something that drives you crazy and something that makes you happy may make you change your perspective.

I started with good intentions then wandered off topic a bit. Another snippet from the Hajj diary.

–>

The balance between preserving historical monuments and providing living architecture for modern use divides opinion. The Masjid al Nabawi (Mosque of The Prophet) in Medina is a case in point.

The Saudi approach is firmly in the present, the past is razed as much from an ideological perspective as practicality. Millennia of history and archaeological evidence have been bulldozed and concreted over and then sealed below marble. The result is a beautiful, awe inspiring space that swallows up two million people. And there is the trade-off: allowing the annual movement of so many people and accommodating their ease, comfort and visual pleasure; or retaining a sense of history and connection to the past.

We gain great architecture at the cost of our roots. The practicality is evident in the Masjid al Nabawi itself, and the ideological underpinning in the graveyard beside it. Graves dating back to the very first days of The Prophet in Medina, and perhaps even earlier have been allowed to decay, pre-existing shrines and tombs have been demolished, and there is nothing to identify where the specific graves of key individuals in Islamic history lie.

I’ve travelled much of the world. Every other country I have seen venerates, protects, or at least acknowledges the existence of its forbears and makes some attempt to protect its history. Not so in the holy city of Medina. There the past is an inconvenience and a burden against the needs of the present.

Nowhere is perfect, sometime soon I’ll be blogging about Hutchison Wampoa’s dastardly plans for Deptford, and the consequences for the historic shipyard, but I digress.

Putting aside the loss of history, the experience of the Masjid al Nabawi is exquisite. In the heat of the day huge pillars open up like flowers casting acres of shade. The marble is always cool underfoot, and aside from the very congested areas near the tomb and the pulpit of The Prophet there is always room to find a quiet spot for personal prayer and reflection. That is a remarkable feat.

Of course the trade-off is not so black and white, I was trying to begin with a sense of balance, but that is as lost as the Arabian historical record. Kerbala manages five times as many people and yet is a shrine and a city all at once, and it does this with a fraction of the wealth at the disposal of Saudi Arabia. St Mark’s Square and St Peter’s Square manage large flows of people, and yet retain their deep historical foundations.

It makes you wonder what evidence the past holds that makes them fear it so much.

END

Image

More about my Hajj experiences and about my Hajj book here

If you are interested in more of my writing please check out my book:Image and Other Stories

DP: Confusion / Surreal – Morning Prayer at Mina (Hajj diary extract)

This is an extract from the my Hajj diary, which is finally out with my beta readers. The DP kicked off the recollection of the event below; and it was worth a re-run when the prompt was surreal.

–>

As we packed up in Arafat I felt hollow, the epic high of the afternoon had emptied me. Salvation was an excoriating wrench.

I was also feeling a bit grumpy. Mum wouldn’t let any of the ladies in our group handle the wheelchair, and so I had to ask Sheikh Shomali for permission to stay with the elderly men and the women, and not join the other men on the overnight march to Mina. There were rules permitting this which he showed me in his Hajj rule book. He didn’t pick up on any of my hints that I really didn’t want him to find the appropriate ruling.

So it was that I was packed into the coach like a reluctant schoolboy who has been cut from the sports team and watched my comrades prepare for what I would later learn was an exciting and uplifting experience. In contrast I had one of the most disturbing experiences of my Hajj.

The coach journey gave me a chance to chat to Sheikh Arif, who like all of our organisers and facilitators was a fascinating and unusual character. I’ll not colour your perceptions too far, but I do recommend you take the chance to hear him speak. He’s one of the new generation of clerics that has a natural facility with English, combined with a spiritual and inclusive world view.

We talked about the role of verbal repetition in calming the chatter of the mind, and so allowing the brain to access the functions which have a greater inclination to opening themselves to the divine. When I suggested that our repeated prayers while circumambulating the Kaaba, or while reading the tasbeeh (rosary) were similar to dharmic repitition disciplines he didn’t launch me bodily from the coach for heresy. We got on well after that.

Mum was right as usual. The coach dropped us a couple of kilometres from our camp in Mina and the route was crowded. It would have been a huge imposition on the girls in the group to ask them to weave the recalcitrant wheelchair, dodgy wheels and all, between the milling hordes, up and over kerbs, round what we all hoped was water, and finally down the long, steep stairs that lead to the camp.

More on the wheelchair, which had a personality all its own, later.

We’d been warned about the mosquitoes in Mina. In truth there were fewer than the sun obscuring clouds I had expected, but there were still plenty and they were persistent. It made for a cold and uncomfortable night curled in the two sheets of my ehram, hoping I hadn’t left any holes for the little bloodsuckers to get in.

When the call to prayer sounded from the nearby Masjid al Khayf, I leapt at the excuse to get out of the tent. It was darker than I expected for dawn prayers, although the ubiquitous fluorescent light made it impossible to truly assess time between dusk and dawn.

Praying in Masjid al Khayf is highly recommended, so I was surprised none of the older men wanted to go as well, but I chalked it up to age and the demands of the last few days. I skipped off to wash, and feeling righteous made my way to join what I expected to be a long queue of pilgrims lining up to pray.

There was a single armed guard on duty, and only a few other ghostly souls wandering about. The guard watched me curiously as I navigated the unnecessarily perilous steps. No one else seemed to be coming in, all the stalls outside were closed, my holy buzz began to evaporate.

It looked like a morgue. Across the acres of floor space were littered bodies in shrouds. Anonymous and still. It was the aftermath of a natural disaster, an act of God. As I picked my way between the carelessly strewn shapes, a few faces peered out between the folds of cloth. To a man they were heavily bearded, most had the ruddy strong featured faces of the Pashtun.

I made two startling realisations at once. Those who were here without the benefit of a well organised caravan from a wealthy nation had to stay somewhere, and the masjid was at least marginally warmer and more comfortable than the asphalt outside. The other was that it was not time for Fajr at all, the dawn prayer was hours off, I’d woken to the call to the optional non communal night prayer.

The holy buzz had not drained out completely, so I figured some prayer and contemplation amongst my fellow pilgrims would be better than returning to the tent.

Thus began an unnerving couple of hours. I chose a quiet spot away from where people would need to pass by expecting to immerse myself in my books until the actual prayer time. The first few minutes were OK, but then things started to get weird.

I ignored the first couple of people to pass by unnecessarily close, thinking they may have friends on that side of the vast prayer hall. It was after the next few that I noticed a pattern. Everyone coming down the stairs to the main level would swerve hard left, and walk one pillar width away from the wall towards me. I was seated between the wall and the first row of pillars, but quite a long way from where the eventual front rank of prayer would be.

At each pillar was a small bookshelf with copies of the Qur’an. Everyone stopped at the bookshelf nearest me, picked up exactly the same copy of the Qur’an from the several on the shelf, flicked a couple of pages, looked at me, and then went on their way. Everyone. At first I dismissed it as an odd ritual, and I had by chance chosen the particular “pillar of blessing” to sit by. Then a more alarming thought intruded.

After what had happened in Medina we were all dialled into the sectarian divisions between ourselves and our Saudi hosts. Even in the supposed anonymity of ehram you can get a pretty fair idea of someone’s religious outlook, if not their precise sect, nation of origin, and choice of full English or continental breakfast.

The faces stopping by me all had the moustache-less scraggily unwholesome beard of every Al Qaeda wannabe the media have spent the years since 9\11 demonizing. I cursed and berated myself for falling into the trap of prejudice and tried to concentrate on my prayer. But the procession continued and the stares grew longer and more pointed, the flicks through the pages of the Qur’an more cursory. And it was everyone.

I have spent a very tedious part of my life as a statistician, I know a valid sample and a level of correlation when it stares at me from a heavily bearded face. Everyone came down off the stairs, paused, turned left, walked between the pillars to the one near me, picked up a Qur’an, flicked through the pages without reading them, looked at me then went on their way.

I checked my ehram over and over, costume malfunction is very possible when you are wrapped in two pieces of cloth, but everything was modestly covered.

I could think of no other reason for it than some latent hostility. It may have been some essence of westerner that clung to me, or my very obviously newly grown beard. Somehow in the middle of the unifying event for all Muslims there was a palpable sense of difference. I had not felt it anywhere else, but here I was the other and alone.

I wasn’t going to move. I sat through their distaste, their distrust, until the Fajr call to prayer. Even then my unease continued. Around me everyone crossed their arms to pray, my arms were open. They were content to rest their heads in supplication on the man made carpet, I put mine on a rough piece of clay. I was utterly alone, but I was not going to move.

It didn’t help that I had still not mastered the art of managing the top half of my ehram, or the bag which held my shoes. The cloth slipped from one shoulder, was tugged back only to slip off the other. I balled some of it in my fist to stop it flapping around. In the meantime whenever I went from sitting to prostrating myself my bag would slide forward on my back and my shoes would whack me on the back of the head.

Far from being the brave and dignified in the midst of hard eyes and cold hearts I was reducing the solemnity of prayer to slapstick. Each time my shoes hit me I imagined it was Allah, slapping me on the back of the head, shaking his own head in disbelief and saying with a resigned sigh, “You Muppet.”*

For what it was worth I finished my prayers, although I may not have attained the proximity to the divine the experience was supposed to achieve. I had some bumps on the back of my head though.

In the lifelong game of Kerplunk that is the quest for wisdom the penny dropped a couple of levels for me a while later. All the hale and hearty pilgrims were still walking to Mina. I was unusual: a young man in pilgrim garb but miles away from where he should be. It didn’t explain it all, but it held up a mirror to my own fear and prejudice. My spiritual growth still had a long way to go.

END

More about my Hajj experiences and about my Hajj book here

 

If you are interested in more of my writing please check out my book: Image and Other Stories

* I am aware of God being incorporeal, omniscient and omnipresent, however in my head the following moment of beauty from Kazantzakis is as good a description of God as I have ever read:

“I’m not joking boss. I think of God as being exactly like me. Only bigger, stronger, crazier. And immortal too, into the bargain. He’s sitting on a pile of soft sheep-skins, and his hut’s in the sky. It isn’t made out of old petrol-cans, like ours is, but clouds. In his right hand he is holding not a knife or a pair of scales – those damned instruments are meant for butchers and grocers – no, he’s holding a large sponge full of water, like a rain cloud. On his right is Paradise, on his left Hell. Here comes a soul; poor little thing’s quite naked because it’s lost its cloak – it’s body I mean – and it’s shivering. God looks at it, laughing up his sleeve, but he plays the bogy man: “Come here,” he roars, “come here you miserable wretch!”

“And he begins his questioning. The naked soul throws itself at God’s feet. “Mercy,” it cries. “I have sinned.” And away it goes reciting it’s sins. It recites a whole rigmarole and there’s no end to it. God thinks this is too much of a good thing. He yawns. “For heaven’s sake stop!” he shouts. “I’ve heard enough of all that!” Flap! Slap! A wipe of the sponge, and he washes out all the sins. “Away with you, clear out, run off to Paradise!” he says to the soul. “Peterkin, let this poor creature in, too!”

“Because God, you know, is a great lord, and that’s what being a lord is all about: to forgive!”

from Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

A Family Affair

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/weekly-writing-challenge-traces/

A Family Affair

The plaster smelled of wet plastic. The initial delicious coolness against my skin was losing its charm as Amy worked her way around my body. It was heavy and cold and I couldn’t feel my feet any more. She was less than halfway done, I figured by the time she was finished hypothermia would have set in.

Amy was muttering weights and times under her breath almost constantly, and from time to time she would stop to spray water on the parts she had already covered to keep them moist. It made the process of being plaster moulded by my twin an agony of stillness. The cold was doing nothing for my ego either.

I winced as she slapped plaster -there- a little less gently than necessary. “You realise your future nieces and nephews are in there?” I asked as her fingers roamed around with rough thoroughness.

“Shut up, concentrating,” was all I got in reply.

“It’s just, in the circumstances, that’s not really reflective of, you know…” I stuttered to a halt. Finally her head of frizzy hair lifted and her grinning face was revealed. Her eyes were twinkling with supressed laughter. She winked at me. “Don’t worry Dave, I’ll make you proud.” Her head dropped out of sight again, “Now be quiet, I’ve never done a full body before and I need to keep an eye on the drying times.” There were a few moments of laboured breathing as she adjusted the rack I was lying on to begin filling in around my arms, which were stretched over my head. She took me by surprise when she went on, “Of course the other guys I’ve cast didn’t seem to have any problems.”

I was about to twist my head to look at her in shock when a plaster covered hand grabbed me by the chin. “Don’t move you idiot.”

I let it drop, art was her business and I let her get on with it. I had designed the rack she was using, which spun around on three axes giving a range of manoeuvrability for her work. She had been working on me for over half an hour, merging legs and torso and neck, letting it all part dry, and then spinning me round and moving onto my back. The really tricky bit was yet to come.

I was numb from chin to heel when she whirled me about to face her. “Are you ready?” I tried to nod, but my head was rigidly caught in plaster. I managed to squeak out a “Yes”.

Earplugs went in first, then she put clingfilm over my mouth, smoothing it carefully. She pierced it with a straw that she left in place. More clingfilm went over my nostrils, and two more straws went in just before I began to struggle for breath through my mouth. She put clear little plastic caps over my eyes and Vaseline in my eyebrows and hair. When the plaster came the world went dark, and very very cold.

I lost track of time, afloat in a noiseless, motionless world. A level of terror at being trapped in a void crept in, and was building into a scream I would never be able to release when I felt a faint vibration. It completely filled the emptiness.

Amy had taped a fine wire up my sides and left the ends poking out above my head. Very slowly she was using it to saw away the plaster into to perfectly matched halves. The sensation went down both sides and then stopped at my ankles. Through the plaster and earplugs I heard cursing. Loud, vitriolic cursing. I couldn’t make out all the words, but I could guess, and I wasn’t sure I knew what all of them meant.

Her voice was suddenly close by my ear. “Dave, I forgot to wire up the insides of your legs and thighs.” There was a pause. “I’m going to have to cut you out. Sorry. This could take a while.”

It took me a moment to process what she had said. The wires were there to separate the two halves of the cast with the least possible damage and create a perfect replica of me. They ran from my head, up and down my over stretched arms and then to my ankles. I could remember her laughing as she had taped them to me. I couldn’t remember her running the wires up the inside of my legs. A very cold and very unpleasant sweat pushed through my numb skin. I wanted to thrash around but I was still under a weight of plaster that was only partially separated.

She must have sensed my panic. “Dave, you have to stay very still,” she said. “I have a hacksaw and I will be very careful, but it will take some time, I can’t risk using any power tools.”

No she couldn’t. I would get her for this. I began plotting my revenge through little spasms of panic every time the saw blade scraped my skin. She left the very worst til last. I felt the vibrations radiating from the centre of my body outwards. Suddenly I really needed to pee. It took an age as she gently cut her way through the plaster.

If I could have moved I would have sagged into the mould when she finally stopped. I could feel her strapping the upper half of the cast onto the rack. With a rattling of chain she winched it away. And then there was light and breath and noise. I was out. She ripped away the cling film and cut off the cable ties holding my hands in place above my head. I tried to use my own hands to haul myself out of the lower part of the cast but my arms flailed around bloodless and useless.

Then the pins and needles kicked in all over my body and I screamed.

I don’t remember much about what happened next. It was all a blur until I was looking into the deep brown eyes of Cousin Kate. Beautiful, intelligent, calm Cousin Kate. She was talking at me but the precise words weren’t piercing the fog. If I had control of my body I would have leaned forward to kiss her. It was OK, I had worked it all out; we were third cousins, kissing cousins.

Cousin Kate. Also known as Dr Kate Rovero, of the clan of doctors Rovero, and its various matrilineal lines. The doctors Rovero et al. of whom in my generation there were twenty in various fields of medicine, all alumni of the medical college founded by our shared three times great grandfather Dr Miles Rovero.

And then of course there was Amy the artist and me, the engineer. The two misshapen pears in the barrel of perfect medical apples.

I don’t know what had possessed Amy to call on Kate when there was a platoon of doctors in her phonebook. She knew very well Kate specialised in neuroscience, we had been given the drill of all the cousins and their specialities by our disappointed mother often enough. She also knew I had the most terrible crush on Cousin Kate; ever since I had worked out that not all girl things were the same as this odd appendage called Amy.

Yet here she was, and here I was, half out of my senses, wholly naked, tactically covered in Vaseline, shivering with cold, worse than that: shrunken with cold, and if I didn’t mistake the smell, I think I had wet myself somewhere along the line. I could only hope that had happened before Kate arrived.

Kate was rubbing me down with what looked suspiciously like the mouldy old tartan blanket from the back of Amy’s Volvo. Amy was in the corner sobbing over a kettle that was just at that moment coming to the boil. The babble of voices that had first broken through my stupor started to make sense.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Kate’s was exasperated and seemed to only have the echo of the fire I knew she was capable of. She had probably asked the question several times over.

Amy didn’t seem to be in any fit state to answer, so I thought I had better pitch in. “It’s a dental amalgam we adapted,” I said between my still chattering teeth. “Should have been perfectly safe. Amy uses it for casts all the time.”

“And just how long were you in it?” She asked sternly.

I shrugged, although whether she could tell over the shivering was uncertain. Amy returned with a cup of green tea. “It was about an hour and half in the full cast,” she said

“How long was the process?”

“Two hours, maybe just over. You have to work quickly or it…” Amy’s explanation tailed off under Kate’s glare.

“It didn’t occur to either of you geniuses to just break the damn thing apart?”

“But that would ruin it,” we said in unison. Kate looked from one to the other and then closed her eyes and shook her head. She checked me over with brisk professionalism while I sipped the tea, making me follow her finger with my eyes, jabbing my fingers and toes with some of Amy’s sharp tools.

Eventually she stood up, dusted off her knees and took off the doctor face. Worry and tiredness warred across her features. “You got lucky,” she said to me, then turned to Amy, “You both did. Now get him dressed and home and into bed.” Amy nodded, so Kate followed up with, “And no more of these experimental shenanigans.”

I shot Amy a guilty look, which she shot back. Kate was a sharp one and she caught us. “What’s this?”

“Well, Dave was first so we could test the technique, then he’s going to use it on me for the next one.” Amy explained, a hopeful smile attempting to break out across her lips as she spoke. Kate was a couple of years older than us, and while I fancied her, Amy had always looked up to her. Kate’s approval meant something to Amy’s otherwise independent spirit.

“No you bloody well are not. This stops here.”

“But the project’s not nearly complete,” I protested, now slightly more in control of my mouth and limbs. “We need the Amy casts to make the whole thing work.”

“Are you kidding me? Dave, that was really dangerous.” Kate pointed at the rack, “Neither one of you is getting back into that death trap again.”

“Death trap?” She had stung my pride in my work. “That’s a piece of precision engineering. It worked perfectly.”

Amy followed up on my lead, “we know exactly what went wrong, I forgot one part of the process, that’s what made the whole thing take so long. We’ll be much better at it when it’s my turn.”

“You are both completely nuts.” She stamped over to the cast, looking for more reasons to stop us, or perhaps just a hammer. “What the hell is it that you’re working on anyway? What are you willing to go to such lengths for?” She stopped. Realisation dawned on her face. It softened away her anger and I fell in love all over again. “It’s for next week, isn’t it?”

We both nodded. She looked from me, to Amy, and back again. “OK, but Amy’s the one that knows the process and how to work the materials.” She looked from one to the other again, “So I’ll be your model.”

I was stunned, with a simple sentence she had left herself to our skill, just like that. And I’d just landed the prospect of seeing Kate naked. It must have shown on my face, she pointed at my own obvious lack of clothes and said, “but I’ll do it in a bikini.”

*                                   *                            *

Amy flapped around me like a mother hen until I snapped at her to leave me alone. She fled back to her studio to make me into a statue. A life sized Dave reaching up over his head. When Amy phoned through with the weight of metal used to make my statue I was able to run some calculations  on the weight of resin that would make Kate. Actually that would make five Kates leaning forward like figureheads on a ship, and reaching back with their hands, which would join to form a circle.

I didn’t feel up to hitting the workshop, so I spent the afternoon curled on the sofa with a notebook making amendments to the final design, and deciding how I would need to arrange the weights and gears to make the whole project come together.

When Kate stopped by to check up on me I was busily sketching what I imagined her naked body would look like. I flapped the notebook closed when the bell rang, and gulped like a schoolboy when I saw who it was.

The apartment that Amy and I shared was on the edge of the university district, easy enough for us to get in to run classes, but far out enough that we could rent a nearby warehouse and split it into her studio and my workshop. It also put us a comfortable distance away from the College and Mum and the campus of family that were concentrated close to it.

Despite my protests Kate made coffee and then checked my eyes and pulse, she took my blood pressure and asked some general questions about how I was feeling. It was about half an hour before she got to the point of her visit.

“What’s really going on here Dave? You guys have always been off doing your own thing, and now this,” she waved her hands roughly in the direction of our studio cum workshop.

“It’s Mum, she’s so into this clan thing, how everyone is a doctor of medicine, and marries other doctors and begets more doctors, and the whole Rovero legacy. We just wanted to show her that what we do has some value too.” It sounded weak when I said it out loud.

“Everyone knows Auntie Jen can be,” she hunted for a diplomatic word, “Difficult.” She took a sip of coffee, “She does take the whole Rovero thing pretty seriously.”

“And the funny thing is that she is two steps down the maternal line. I think it is just the fact that grandma never did it, and it would ridiculous, that stops her double-barrelling Rovero into her name.” I stopped there, it was all sounding a bit childish and bitter. Amy did needle and spite much better than I did, she could really lay on the acid, while I just sounded whiney.

Kate changed the subject, “So show me the project, I got the gist of it yesterday, but I want to know what I’m getting myself into.”

I flipped open the notebook to the master drawing. “It’s basically a tulip with five petals and a central stalk. There are counter rotating gears between the one Dave and the five Amys.” I stopped, “or the Kates I should say now. In the circular base there are asymmetric weights.” I flipped over the page, “So when the Kates catch the wind the Dave spins in one direction and the Kates in the other.” I flipped over another page that showed the bearings, getting a bit geeky in my element. “The tolerances on the bearings are incredibly tight. To the uninitiated it will look like a perpetual motion machine.”

She took the notebook from me and flipped back to the first page. “It’s beautiful.” She smiled ruefully, “The funny thing is I always envied you two. Off in your own world away from the pressure and expectation of the clan. And now you come up with this…”

I sat back, surprised by the revelation. To the outward eye Kate was a true scion of the house, first in her class at everything, qualified and practising a year before she should have been, and in a technically demanding field of medicine. I tried to explain, “Mum could never accept that we just weren’t into medicine. It’s so important to her. Dad was cool with it, I think he liked having something else to talk about over dinner, even if it was Rodin and Brunel. We got a chance to try and tie it all back together, we couldn’t turn it down.”

She smiled at me and flipped idly through the pages, not really paying attention to my hard work. “I always wondered what it would be like to do something else.” There was a faraway note to her voice. “There are so many other things we all could have been, but our beloved ancestor seems to have laid down the tracks for us all.” She flipped on a few more pages, “Well not all of us.” She looked at me, “In a way I’m proud of you and Amy, you both broke the mould and made your own way. I guess that’s why I want to model for your project,” she gave me a bigger smile, “So that I can be part of your revolution.” I think the confession embarrassed her, because she looked away from me back to the notebook. Her own face looked back, accurately rendered by my hand. “Oh.” She flipped forward another page to my imagined naked Kate.

I leapt off the sofa, spilling my coffee as I grabbed the notebook. “Sorry, I was just doodling,” I said lamely, trying to ignore the hot coffee running down my leg.

She gave me the full bore smile then, like the sun coming out of the clouds on a rainy day. “I’ll see you tomorrow evening in the studio.” Then she was gone, and I was smelling her perfume and spilled coffee and grinning like a village idiot with an amusing turnip.

*                                   *                            *

I was in my workshop when Kate arrived the next day. I didn’t hear her car roll up as I was busy on the lathe with my ear defenders on. When I saw her in the doorway between Amy’s studio and my workshop I waved an apology and bent back over my equipment. For the mechanism to work it had to be very precisely balanced, and I couldn’t afford to leave a component half finished.

When I was done I walked in on Amy explaining her finishing process to Kate. She had a file in one hand, and was waving it at a full sized naked model of me, in a bright aluminium alloy.

“It’s called forgiving,” she said, “taking out all the small imperfections from the casting and pouring, and giving the whole thing a perfect finish.” She looked evilly at me, “Of course some subjects take more forgiving than others.”

I gave her a childish sneer, which thankfully Kate missed, and then we got started. It took an hour, it went without a hitch and at the end I got to lift Kate out of the cast and carry her to a corner of the room where we had set up heaters and blankets and a thermos of tea, and rub the circulation back into her. It seemed like a more than fair reward for my near death experience and I figured myself heftily in karmic debt. Some days life just throws you a break.

Of course I didn’t see her again for several days, because Amy and I were locked together, building. Kate was sworn to secrecy as part of our plot and as she now featured so heavily in it, but her part was done.

There was one other essential conspirator: Dad. He was academic director at the Rovero College, a position he had earned in spite of, rather than because of his marriage to a daughter of the clan. Family were generally kept away from influential posts in a tacit agreement with the Board. His position meant he could pull strings and make certain arrangements for us.

We were working towards a memorial service, the annual tip of the hat to Dr Miles Rovero who had established the College, brought medical training to the region, and involuntarily set up the family business. This year was special, a hundred and fifty years had passed since he had first opened the doors and every one with a hint of Rovero blood was descending on the College grounds for a gala dinner, with alumni and professors all thrown into the mix.

There would be a distinct shortage of doctors all-round the country that night, and as I had seen the champagne order, it would be unwise to get taken ill the next morning as well.

We had a few bumps along the way to the final installation. Amy got copper grease in her hair which took three visits to the hairdresser to get out, and I nearly lost a finger fitting the acrylic mounts for the turning mechanism. But we got there, on time and ready for the big reveal.

I’ll be honest; it was a pretty swanky do. All black tie and evening gowns, a string quartet in one corner, a jazz band in one of the large tents, waiters with trays of little bits of food and enough booze to float a boat.

Kate was everything Mum thought a Rovero should be which included carrying the right surname, so I think she was disappointed to find Kate hanging about with Amy and me, thick as thieves. Mum very unsubtly bustled her away to some people she simply must meet. I wondered what she would make of Kate’s contribution to our work.

When the time came for the main address Amy and I were called up to the podium, which would have annoyed Mum no end, her delinquent children on show for everyone to see.

I spotted Kate at the front of the crowd and called her up as well. She resisted at first until Amy’s indecorous insistence threatened to ruin the solemnity of the moment.  I was nervous and excited all at once. We’d planned this for months, built it in a week, and then nearly destroyed the whole thing when the crane tipped during the installation.

I felt Kate’s hand slip into mine, and realised she would be incredibly nervous as well. It would be her body spinning in front of the thousand people when the cloth went up. Amy was already gripping my other hand hard enough to crush my fingers; all that working with plaster and sculptures had given her an iron grip. It tightened further as Dr Barfield, president of the Board and MC for the night, explained how two Rovero descendants had built the monument that would commemorate the milestone of a hundred and fifty years. I missed the rest, caught in the moment and Kate’s proximity, until with a flourish several dozen yards of silk was removed to show our work.

The moment was perfect. The sun was setting, catching the enormous flower of Amy’s imagination. In the centre rose a silvery Dave stamen, highlighted golden in the sunset, and shooting shafts of reflected sunlight through the translucent deep lavender Kate petals, which joined at the finger tips and heels to make a cupped flower. The slight breeze caught the whole thing and made it spin gently, drawing oohs and aahs from the crowd.

“What made you think of it,” asked Kate, her voice filled with wonder. My drawing hadn’t done it justice.

“It was Mum’s idea actually. She said everyone else could lay their medical certificates at the feet of Miles Rovero, but we may as well just come and throw a bouquet of flowers,” Amy said, “So we did.”

Kate laughed.  Amy was led away by Dr Barfield to show the monument to eager admirers. We watched her bask in their adulation.

“You know what they are really impressed by don’t you?” Kate said, nudging me in the ribs.

“You mean apart from the five spinning naked women?”

Her jab in the ribs was sharper this time, Amy had filed away the bikini lines and Kate was presented to the world as nude, her chest pushed out, her arms thrown back. It would have been beautiful even on a spoil heap.

“At least mine is accurate,” she replied, “Your twin was quite generous in how she interpreted certain bits of you.” A slow flush rose up behind my wing collars and onto my cheeks. Kate slipped her arm in mine, and lead me off to the buffet. “Don’t worry Dave, your secret is safe with me.”

End

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The Street Sweeper of between – In Progress, Extract 2

This is a relatively self contained flashback chapter, currently about 12k words in, but it can pretty much be lifted and dropped anywhere. As ever likely to be re-written several times before it finally emerges:

 

–>

 

The phrase “Mr Arris is such a kind man to take you in,” was one that echoed through the happy years Cecilia stayed in his household. They were the favourite words of Missus Greene, the housekeeper, who was as fat and ruddy cheeked and busy as the very best housekeepers should be. She was every bit as kind a lady as merited by her generous and thoughtful employer. What had become of Mister Greene, or indeed if there had ever been one, was a mystery Cecilia never did get around to resolving.

 

Mr Arris kept three homes, being well to do in the legal profession and an inheritor of mercantile wealth from his mother’s side. In town there were rooms above his offices, where he stayed when dining late at his club, or seeing to particularly pressing client matters. Ordinarily he stayed in the tall town house, whose gardens sloped into the tributary of the river. There Cecilia had a room all of her own, and a place at the table for breakfast and supper when Mr Arris was at home.

 

When he was away, travelling on business, or in his rooms in the city, Cecilia ate with the staff. Alongside Mrs Greene there was Davis the cook, and Claire the maid, and there were also Big John and Little John, the gardener and his boy, who also did odd jobs around the house and for the neighbours. Maxwell was Mr Arris’ manservant and tended to stay with him at all times.

 

This was the entirety of Cecilia’s social circle, but for her governess Miss Bridges. Unusually Miss Bridges did not live with the family, but came in every day on the penny tram for three hours to conduct Cecilia’s lessons. She spoke little, taught much and as far as Cecilia could tell Mr Arris had never actually met her. She had been recommended by a client to Mr Arris, and every month she left him a written report on Cecilia’s progress, which he would read carefully when he came home.

 

Cecilia knew he read them carefully because he would call her into his study and question her. Except for the warmest days of summer there would be a cheery fire in the grate and Mr Arris would be seated in his large armchair with a glass of sherry, and the report held a little way from him, being examined through his spectacles. He was still a young man, of lithe build and neat black hair, but years of study had taken their toll on his eyesight.

 

Cecilia enjoyed those evenings because she was a eager student and Mr Arris was always pleased. He would quiz her on her arithmetic and geography, and ask her to tell him about the books she was reading. He was particularly interested in her reactions to characters, whom she liked and disliked, whether she felt empathy or disdain for their sufferings. Miss Bridges’ tastes fell to the gloomy and the romantic, Scott and the Brontes, and this seemed to suit Mr Arris very well. And if he did not ask whether Cecilia was a little young, or precocious perhaps for such material, Cecilia did not mind.

 

On rare occasions, at the height of summer, or for Christmas, Mr Arris would close up the town house and take everyone to the country house in Edale which looked out onto Kinder Ridge. It was a remote and lonely place, with forbidding stone walls and old ivy that crept up the corners. In winter the wind would whistle round it, and the rain would pelt down with a thunder all of its own. Spartan fells stretched away in every direction, broken only by the odd stand of trees and the strange piles of rock upon the crags.

 

Cecilia loved it. Beneath the smell of mothballs and old dust was the faint scent of home. Sometimes, in the very dead of night, when the entire household slumbered, she would lie awake in the large, sparse room that was hers in this grand house, and listen to it as it settled. Floorboards would creak, and drafts would whisper, and yet none of this was frightening to the little girl. In every sound she heard the echo of her own breath and the beating heart that said “Welcome.”

 

Miss Bridges never came to stay at the house and Cecilia’s days were free of lessons. She would explore the cold, empty rooms or sit in the library with her feet tucked underneath her, immersed in a book, or dreaming over the large leather bound atlas.

 

It was during one such visit at the age of eleven, in high summer when the stench in London was unbearable, that Cecilia would unknowingly change everything.

 

Mr Arris had returned to London following an urgent message from one of his clients. Without their master to cater for the household went back to its homely mode. Meals were served in the kitchen, with bustle and noise and little decorum. Missus Greene held court over the staff, which was swelled by the elderly groundskeeper and his wife.

 

Cecilia had been feeling out of sorts since her guardian had left. The messenger had ridden up on a lathered horse, and swung off his saddle in a cloud of dust, his wide riding cloak sweeping dramatically out behind him. He had glanced up to the window where Cecilia watched, and nodded gravely at her before hammering on the door. She had not seen his face under the shadow of his broad hat, but a shiver had run down her spine and she had been restless ever since. She ate little, and made her excuses early. In the midst of the noise and laughter it was easy for Cecilia to pick an apple from the bowl and with a wave to Missus Greene slip quietly out of the kitchen.

 

Cecilia knew all the rooms in the house but one. She had been through the entire attic, where the whitewashed walls of the small servants’ quarters were marked in rectangles where the sunlight streamed through the small windows, tracing a yellowed path until the sun rose over the building. She knew the family chambers, which echoed without carpets on their hard wooden floors. With Little John she had been through all the lower rooms and cellars and store rooms.

 

Between the large family chambers and the servants in the attic was the nursery floor. There were three small rooms, which Cecilia knew well. Mr Arris and his late sister Emily had occupied two of them as children, and there were still some signs of their childhood to be found in the cupboards and toy chests. Cecilia sometimes played with Miss Emily’s dolls, but she was always careful to put them back exactly as she found them. There was a third room which had not been used for a generation, dating to a time when there are had been a larger family in residence, and more children to accommodate.

 

The nursery level of the house was dominated by the nursery itself. Double doors off the main staircase that wound up the east side of the house opened into this large square room, and the other rooms led off it.

 

Over the years, as her arithmetic and drawing improved, Cecilia had determined the dimensions of the level, of the main stairwell on the east side and the small servants’ stairs on the north east corner of the building. With her ruler she had mapped out the room Mr Arris had used as a boy, in the south west corner, and the room Miss Emily had used in the south east corner. The rooms had a connecting door which was unlocked, as well as their own doors into the nursery. She had even walked all the way round the building noting where the chimneys rose and how many windows faced out of each wall.

 

The smaller unused room was to the north west, and the mysterious room she had not explored was tucked into the north east corner beside the servants stairs. She knew it was there because none of the other measurements made sense without it. When her calculations were completed she even managed to work out where the door would have been in the nursery, but it seemed to have been bricked and plastered over many years ago.

 

The room beside it, in which there was a rocking chair and a tall chest of drawers, should have had another door; an adjoining door into the mystery room. She had paced and stared and she knew there was a door there, but she could not see it in the gloom of disuse and the shrouding dust sheets.

 

That evening, with Mr Arris away and the staff merrily at dinner Cecilia opened up the small unused room, sat down in the dust and looked at the wall that should have had a door. She rolled the bright green apple in her hands, almost forgetting she held it. When she closed her eyes there was a moment as the grey walls faded into eyelid red that she could see it. An outline half hidden behind the chest of drawers. She had a piece of chalk in her pocket, and she went to stand by the chest. She put the apple on it, unmindful of the drifts of dust caught in the coverings. She closed her eyes again, and this time she traced onto the wall standing on her tip toes to outline the lintel.

 

The chest did not cover the whole of the hidden doorway, but whether it was hidden by boards or plaster or was entirely bricked up Cecilia could not tell. She sat back down and tapped the chalk on her chin, thinking.

 

There was a croquet set in the nursery, neatly boxed with worn and chipped hoops and brightly coloured balls. There were also two mallets. Cecilia had always been a sedate child. Not one given to tantrums, nor one that played roughly with her toys or broke them. She had never swung a mallet before, much less intended to break something. In her mind’s eye she pictured Big John in his little workshop at the foot of the garden in London, hammering a bent hinge straight. She swung the mallet and it sank with a dull, unsatisfying thunk into thick plaster. She swung it again and this time large chunks of the plaster fell away. She got to her knees and pulled away more plaster with her hands, and felt underneath them. No rough, split laths but the smooth solid wood of a door.

 

She didn’t laugh, or crow in delight. This was merely a job half done, if well done so far. She had applied the logic Miss Bridges had taught her, and the careful arts of measurement and deduction, and here was her reward. She knocked away more plaster to reveal that she was on the lock side of the door, and the hinge side was covered by the chest of drawers. Further hits with the mallet revealed that the door opened away from her.

 

She worked her way up swing by swing to where the handle should have been. There was nothing. When she peered through the hole for the handle there was only darkness, nor could she see anything through the keyhole.

 

She looked at the door for some time, thinking of how to open the lock without either key or handle. She did smile briefly when she found a solution, but the determination to complete her enquiries was greater than her pleasure. She went back into the nursery trailing the mallet, which she put away before going into the childhood room of Mr Arris. The door into Miss Emily’s room was in exactly the same place on his wall as the one she was trying to open in the rooms opposite. All the brass handles on the nursery floor were the same, round, small enough to fit a child’s hand and held in place with a single screw.

 

She undid the screw with her pocket knife and removed the handle and the stem it was attached to. She took these back to the locked door and fitted them. The door gave slightly when she turned the handle, but then stopped after a fraction of an inch. It was locked.

 

The lock was old, and only intended to provide a little privacy rather than keep out anyone truly intent on getting past it. Cecilia jammed her pocket knife into the lock and felt around. The key was still in it from the other side.

 

She sat back down, this time tapping the haft of the pocket knife softly against her lips, deep in thought. If the door was locked from the inside, then surely someone must have left by the other door before it was bricked over. Something about that train of thought didn’t ring quite true, and she teased at it for a while before setting it aside.

 

She fetched a large piece of slate from the nursery, still dusty with chalk from her calculations and slid it under the door. With a deep breath and she pushed the key through the lock. It dropped with a clink onto the slate. She pulled it back through the gap below the door and turned it in the lock.

 

It took a few shoves to free the wood from the thick skin of plaster. The door resisted and then opened suddenly. Cecilia stumbled through into falling dust and the still funk of space in which the air has not moved for a very long time. Her first sharp intake of breath made her gag, she scrambled back out of the room and threw open a window in the nursery, sucking in fresh lungfuls of air. 

 

She was on her way back to her room, hoping to avoid anyone so that she could bring more candles when Missus Greene appeared on the stairs. She gave Cecilia a wide smile, her face flushed with the effects of a little of Davis’ cooking wine. “Time for bed now child,” she said, shooing Cecilia in front of her.

 

She waited while Cecilia changed into her night dress and crawled into bed before she swayed into the bedroom and tucked her in. Unusually she gave Cecilia a little kiss on the forehead. “Our Mr Arris is a good man to take you in, but you’re as good back to him child, I swear it.” She looked at Cecilia a little sadly, perhaps made maudlin by the wine; her eyes were wet with tears. “Such a pretty, precious child.” She kissed Cecilia again and then swayed out, leaving a stub of lit candle on the wash stand as a night light.

 

Silence fell on the house after Cecilia had counted the staff off to bed. Missus Greene’s heavy steps were followed by Claire, who skipped up lightly. The groundskeeper and his wife had left for their little cottage, and the Johns went to the potting shed where they slept in the summer. Cecilia heard them talking as they made their way through the kitchen garden. Finally Davis finished tidying her kitchen, locked the pantry, and made her slow way up the stairs, turning down the lamps as she went.

 

Cecilia let the house slumber for a while before she slipped back out of bed and lit a larger candle. She padded up the stairs on bare, silent feet. The window in the nursery was still open, as no one would have looked in to check. There was a faint breeze that carried the scent of the hills, grass and heather and cool freshness. For a moment she thought of giving the venture up. It could wait til morning, she could ask Big John to clear the doorway for her properly. With another breath of the night air she was resolved and ready to go back to bed, when there was a faint whisper against the back of her neck. Her hair moved minutely, her eyes were drawn back to the pair of open doors. One into the unused room, one still half covered with plaster and half hidden behind a chest of drawers, and the well of darkness beyond.

 

Cecilia left the window and lit the oil lamps in the nursery and then placed candles in the unused room, lighting her way back to the nursery. She had read enough ghost tales to know the foolishness of entering a strange room in the dark, so she took what precautions she could.

 

She stooped through the hole in the plaster and the open door and held up her candle. The room was bare. There was no cradle, no toys, no rocking horse in the corner, or any of the things Cecilia had imagined; just floorboards, dust and some empty shelves. The windows had been boarded up, and she knew now exactly which ones they were. She lifted the candle higher chasing the shadows out of corners. The light fell unevenly on the topmost shelf. She put the candle down on a little pool of wax, and went on tiptoes to reach up. Her fingers scrambled around for a while before a slim wooden object came into her hands.

 

It was a box, a little bigger than her palm, and very light. Thin pieces of hardwood slotted together and then carved with a random array of little circles. She ran her hands over the pattern, feeling the grain beneath her fingers. It grew warmer with her touch. Bringing it close to the candle she could see initials engraved and then gilded on it: EJH.

 

She opened the lid. Inside was a lock of brown hair and a miniature, painted on a locket the size of her thumb and suspended from a thin golden chain. She looked at the picture and felt the floor fall away from her feet. She was being sucked lovingly, gently into the eyes of the beautiful woman in the picture. Her head felt loose upon her shoulders, and her shoulders rolled as she readied herself to fall into an endless promise.

 

It was like sinking into a warm bath after a walk over the cold moors. It was the swell of pride when her work was praised by the fireside. It was arms to hold and comfort her.

 

A large hand closed over hers. Tenderly it plucked the locket from her hands and closed the box in her palms, and then lifted it away. The intoxicating magnetism of the box pulled her towards it as it was lifted over her head.

 

And then it was gone, all she could sense was sweat and horses and the heavy breathing of the man behind her. She could feel his hand hovering over her shoulder. She wanted to grow up into it, she wanted it to drop on her like an anchor that would tether her to this world, and give her a sense of place and belonging. She wanted the hand to close over her in a gesture of unity. It hovered, trembling; her awakened, alerted senses could see the lines of force pushing it up, and the gravity of affection drawing it down. Between his skin and hers was a layer of ache, a yearning for solidarity.  And then it too was gone.

 

“Off to bed now child, I think that is enough for one night.” Mr Arris was weary. Weary beyond the wild race from London, and the miles and fear that had borne down on him. “John, if you could ask Davis please for a little warm milk. I think my ward may need a little help sleeping.”

 

The lanterns were still on the floor. The light glowed up through Big John’s beard making him look fearsome and bear like, but Cecilia barely noticed as he lead her away.

 

When she was gone Maxwell picked up one of the candles and brought it into the room beside his motionless master, he set it on the lowest shelf. In his other hand he held the apple, a single bite had been taken from it by jaws much wider, and teeth much sharper than Cecilia’s.

 

“We knew this day would come.” Maxwell said gently, his tone pitying and sorrowful and far removed from his usual cool, professional demeanour.

 

“We did, and it seems like all our care has come to naught.” Mr Arris held the box as though he held a live snake, a viper that would coil and bite without a moment of hesitation. “You’d best see to the care of this.” He gave the box to Maxwell. In the peculiar light his manservant’s features looked sharper, more angular, almost alien. Maxwell nodded and left.

 

Mr Arris stood in the room alone for some time, despite the fatigue that threatened to drop him then and there, he let the room, and all its pent up anger and frustrations wash over him. There was plaster all over the floor where he had burst into the room, with Cecilia too deeply entranced to notice. Beneath it he could see the signs in the dust where she had fallen, where her bare feet had stepped, and where other, light feet had passed outward. His gaze fell on the other door, bricked over from the nursery side, but plainly visible here. The key was in the lock from the inside as well. When he left he whispered, “I’m sorry,” and “Lord have mercy on us all.”

 

When Cecilia next awoke it was a bright and cheerful summer morning. The church bells tolled in the distance. She frowned, Sunday had come sooner than expected, but she shrugged and hopped out of her bed. A wave of dizziness swept over her, the room swam in front of her eyes. She held on to a bed post, feeling her stomach churn, and then the room snapped back into focus, and the feeling passed.

 

Later that day, after lunch, she went to play with the late Miss Emily’s dolls in the nursery. And there, as they had always been, were the four rooms: Mr Arris’ room and Miss Emily’s room, the unused one, and the one that had once been hers when Mr Arris had first taken her in. Inside she knew she would find her old cradle, some toys and a short brightly painted rocking horse. She didn’t really give the matter any thought; after all she knew well all the rooms of this house.