Treasures of the Earth |
Issue 12
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Annaliese wanders in the churchyard at Saxton St Mary, picking a posy of dandelions and wild angelica, fleabane and ox-eye daisies.
Here, soon, I shall marry my prince. My grey Papa will wear a grey suit to offer me up, plucked and gift-wrapped in a pretence of purity, while Lena smirks behind me as my matron of honour. And Mutti will watch me from heaven. Annaliese kicks off her sandals. The coarse grass is dry and prickly. She laces a sprig of red campion behind her ear. I am Ophelia! She runs her hand over the top of a crusty gravestone, inscribed ‘Here lies Marjorie Arbon, Spinster of this Parish’. ‘Hello Marjorie.’ After weaving between the narrow beds of Saxton’s sleeping forefathers she traces her fingertips over the weathered letters of ‘Also Phyllis, Wife of the Above’. ‘Hello Wife of the Above.’ Annaliese presses her cheek to the south wall of the church. It’s sun-warmed and scratchy with lichen. She slips into the mellow-bricked porch, turns the handle and opens the silvered arched door into the shivery silence. She takes four, five slow paces forwards and turns to the right, marionette-stiff, the grey slabs cold to her feet. At the end of the short nave, a brass cross on the altar gleams under the arched stained-glass window. She curtseys – once, twice, thrice – holding her white muslin skirt. Then she stands in fifth position and dances three pas de chat down the aisle. I am Odette! Lying at the right of the carpeted chancel is a pair of grey effigies, one higher and longer than the other. Beside them is an Annaliese-width strip of stone floor. She tucks her hair into the back of her white t-shirt and lies down. Palms together, fingertips to her chin, she closes her eyes. ‘Our Father, who art in heaven …’ When she rises, the sprig of red campion tumbles from her hair, so she places it on the dark marble neck of the sleeping Lady Margaret, touching her unyielding cheek with her fingers and kissing her cold closed lips. At the chancel steps, she turns and genuflects, head bowed, hand to her chest. Annaliese pulls the door behind her, turning the hooped metal handle slowly so the latch makes no sound. Stepping from the porch into the sunlight, she frees her hair from her top, lifts her skirt in both hands and sprints alongside the path, beneath the big east window and around the back where the grass is rougher on her soles. Back at the porch, she steps out of her skirt and repeats her run. Perspiring and sticky, she doesn’t bother to go into the porch to tug off her other clothes, but casts them onto the grass before her third circuit, her fine hair flying behind her. I am Eve! Annaliese’s freckled shoulders gleam, and sweat streams from her armpits down to her narrow hips. She gathers her clothes and dresses in the porch, where the cleaning rota could use one more drawing pin. Still panting, she picks up her posy and goes in search of her sandals. She finds them safe beside the grave of Walter Prettyman, ‘Gone to Glory 1863’. ‘Thank you, Walter.’ Walter doesn’t answer, not even a whisper. But his headstone proclaims: Though I walk | through the valley | of the shadow of death | I will fear no evil. Annaliese waits for her breathing to slow before standing tombstone-still. She can hear nothing in her head. There is only the groan of a distant tractor and the laugh of a child in somebody’s garden. She saunters through the arch of ancient yews and the lychgate, exultant at having silenced the witch who, all week, has been whispering in her ear. ‘Is he enough?’ ‘Do you love him?’ ‘Are you sure?’ |
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. He has work published or forthcoming in 100 Word Story, Eastern Iowa Review, Flash 500, Free Flash Fiction, Leon Literary Review, NFFD NZ, NFFD UK, On The Premises, One Wild Ride, Oxford Flash Fiction, Roi Fainéant, The Hooghly Review, The Phare, and others
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Gavin pings Annaliese a link to sixty-three pages of dinner services. ‘Can you have a look through these? For the wedding list.’
‘These are bone china.’
‘So?’
‘Guess where the bone comes from. Are you forgetting you’re marrying a vegetarian?’
There’s a speck of muesli marooned on Gavin’s chin. ‘Or we could ask for the same one as my parents.’
‘The set they used at Christmas?’
‘Yep, the blue stuff.’
‘More turquoise really.’ Turquoise and horrible.
‘Then when, in the fullness of time, they pass on–’
‘I’ll keep looking.’
‘These are bone china.’
‘So?’
‘Guess where the bone comes from. Are you forgetting you’re marrying a vegetarian?’
There’s a speck of muesli marooned on Gavin’s chin. ‘Or we could ask for the same one as my parents.’
‘The set they used at Christmas?’
‘Yep, the blue stuff.’
‘More turquoise really.’ Turquoise and horrible.
‘Then when, in the fullness of time, they pass on–’
‘I’ll keep looking.’
~
Annaliese dreams Gavin’s mother is coming to dinner. It’s a test: pass and you may marry our firstborn and take his surname in place of your unsuitable one with its awkward umlaut. You may split yourself to deliver our grandchildren, preferably thrice, and must ensure they speak with accents so English that no one need ever know.
In her dream, she sweats all day over pumpkin soup, vegetarian wellington, and a lemon tart with a raspberry coulis. While she bathes in the milk of a thousand asses, the soup morphs into a mouse-borne carriage, the wellington adopts the texture of its namesake footwear, and the coulis coagulates into a brittle scab.
When Gavin takes the pumpkin carriage to meet the train, she places twelve turquoise dinner plates in the centre of the round mahogany table, before adding a dozen dessert plates and a dozen soup bowls. The three vegetable dishes fit nicely, one above the other, each with its lid upside down. She fetches the stepladder to add the side plates and cereal bowls. Finally she balances the pair of oval platters, topped by the tureen and a teapot which almost touches the ceiling. On the table she surrounds the edifice with a holy circle of twelve apostle spoons.
As Gavin’s nightmare mother steps through the door, Annaliese leans over the table, puts both hands to the base of her turquoise Tower of Babel, and pushes hard.
In her dream, she sweats all day over pumpkin soup, vegetarian wellington, and a lemon tart with a raspberry coulis. While she bathes in the milk of a thousand asses, the soup morphs into a mouse-borne carriage, the wellington adopts the texture of its namesake footwear, and the coulis coagulates into a brittle scab.
When Gavin takes the pumpkin carriage to meet the train, she places twelve turquoise dinner plates in the centre of the round mahogany table, before adding a dozen dessert plates and a dozen soup bowls. The three vegetable dishes fit nicely, one above the other, each with its lid upside down. She fetches the stepladder to add the side plates and cereal bowls. Finally she balances the pair of oval platters, topped by the tureen and a teapot which almost touches the ceiling. On the table she surrounds the edifice with a holy circle of twelve apostle spoons.
As Gavin’s nightmare mother steps through the door, Annaliese leans over the table, puts both hands to the base of her turquoise Tower of Babel, and pushes hard.
~
Annaliese rakes the flowerbed with the three-pronged hoe that’s like a grotesque chicken’s foot.
‘You’re not going to win this battle,’ she says aloud to the couch grass, mimicking her fearsome geography teacher, Frau Holzer.
An Eiger-shaped shard of pottery pokes from the soil. She wipes it on her dungarees and pops it on the lawn, where a robin waits for grubs. The Suffolk soil is always offering up its treasures: the curve of a teacup, the ridge of a saucer, the handle of a dainty jug. There’s a lot of cracked white porcelain which had probably been a chamber pot.
‘It’s like I’m connecting with all the people who lived here before us,’ she tells Daisy over the fence.
‘You could make the pieces into a mosaic. On the path by the door there.’
‘Hmm, not really Gavin’s sort of thing.’
‘Why not?’
‘Everything has to be useful.’
‘He’ll want to strength-test it, will he? Just an idea.’
‘It’s a lovely idea, thank you. I’ll talk to him about it.’
When it’s time to go in, Annaliese rinses her finds in the garden sieve and adds them to her collection in a flowerpot by the back door. Glazed or grainy, jagged or smooth, with nothing wider than a couple of centimeters, her hoard is a kaleidoscope of pinks and siennas, seafoam greens and willow pattern blues.
‘You’re not going to win this battle,’ she says aloud to the couch grass, mimicking her fearsome geography teacher, Frau Holzer.
An Eiger-shaped shard of pottery pokes from the soil. She wipes it on her dungarees and pops it on the lawn, where a robin waits for grubs. The Suffolk soil is always offering up its treasures: the curve of a teacup, the ridge of a saucer, the handle of a dainty jug. There’s a lot of cracked white porcelain which had probably been a chamber pot.
‘It’s like I’m connecting with all the people who lived here before us,’ she tells Daisy over the fence.
‘You could make the pieces into a mosaic. On the path by the door there.’
‘Hmm, not really Gavin’s sort of thing.’
‘Why not?’
‘Everything has to be useful.’
‘He’ll want to strength-test it, will he? Just an idea.’
‘It’s a lovely idea, thank you. I’ll talk to him about it.’
When it’s time to go in, Annaliese rinses her finds in the garden sieve and adds them to her collection in a flowerpot by the back door. Glazed or grainy, jagged or smooth, with nothing wider than a couple of centimeters, her hoard is a kaleidoscope of pinks and siennas, seafoam greens and willow pattern blues.
~
After her shift at Café Hannah, Annaliese crosses the High Street to Partridges, the former home of a 15th century wool merchant which is now a shop with a warren of sleepy rooms and snug recesses. On the ground floor, every cranny is crammed, every wall jammed floor-to-ceiling with mousetraps and mothballs, dusters and brushes. Coiled ropes and hoses hang from ancient beams alongside fly swatters and bird feeders. Every speck of floor offers something, from ironing boards to sledgehammers.
She climbs a wide staircase to the tableware department, stuffy under the red-tiled roof in the afternoon heat. A shaft of sunlight slants from a small window, holding a glitter of dust in its embrace before forming a rhomboid on the wooden floor. Every surface is piled with china: Dartington and Denby, Cornishware and Le Creuset, Pyrex and Portmeirion. A bead of sweat trickles unchecked from Annaliese’s temple to her neck.
There is no one about.
Annaliese reaches into her bag and pulls out a jewel at random, as if she’s playing Scrabble. It’s a near-rectangle from what was probably a plate. It’s partly gold and sits nicely in a sunflower-yellow fruit bowl. She steps back to admire the effect, before reaching in again to reposition it slightly off-centre.
A piece with a pink rose looks perfect peeping from a Peter Rabbit eggcup.
Her final fragment is a fuss of forget-me-nots with a jagged tip. She teases it along the back of her forearm, testing herself before pushing it in to draw a fine line of thrilling crimson beauty from elbow to wrist. As someone clomps up the stairs towards her, she bows her head before placing her offering on a gleaming platter, anointing its snow-pure surface with a single drop of bridal blood.
She climbs a wide staircase to the tableware department, stuffy under the red-tiled roof in the afternoon heat. A shaft of sunlight slants from a small window, holding a glitter of dust in its embrace before forming a rhomboid on the wooden floor. Every surface is piled with china: Dartington and Denby, Cornishware and Le Creuset, Pyrex and Portmeirion. A bead of sweat trickles unchecked from Annaliese’s temple to her neck.
There is no one about.
Annaliese reaches into her bag and pulls out a jewel at random, as if she’s playing Scrabble. It’s a near-rectangle from what was probably a plate. It’s partly gold and sits nicely in a sunflower-yellow fruit bowl. She steps back to admire the effect, before reaching in again to reposition it slightly off-centre.
A piece with a pink rose looks perfect peeping from a Peter Rabbit eggcup.
Her final fragment is a fuss of forget-me-nots with a jagged tip. She teases it along the back of her forearm, testing herself before pushing it in to draw a fine line of thrilling crimson beauty from elbow to wrist. As someone clomps up the stairs towards her, she bows her head before placing her offering on a gleaming platter, anointing its snow-pure surface with a single drop of bridal blood.