The Making of Memories ~ Through the Blue Door

The sleepy Roman village of Fenny St. Ratford basks beneath a full and generous moon. Lanes from the small township lead to abandoned earthworks built in ancient times by Roman legions. Surrounded by fertile farmland and flat, low-lying marshlands, Fenny boasts with moderate pride its inclusion in the Domesday Book. Access by banked and mounted paths, leads to an area of flood plain crossed by creeks and is, regrettably, especially dangerous to strangers not familiar with them. The village claims as neighbours such oddly named communities as Moulesoe, Tattenhoe and Stukely.

Fenny is a small land-locked place in the royal county of Buckinghamshire. Too big to be a village, but not yet a town – it stands on a Roman road [Watling Street], the river Ouzel, the Grand Union Canal, and the Cambridge and Bletchley railway. Nearby adjoins the site of the Roman township of Magiovinium, which was ravaged by the plague in 1665 and is partly in Bletchley parish – best known for cracking the Enigma Code during WW2. Fenny itself consists of two streets and few roads, carries on the manufacture of straw-plait and lace and has a post-office as well as a tiny Victorian railway station. St. Martin’s [Anglican] Church, which stands in the High Street, was rebuilt in 1724 and enlarged in 1866. In the parish there are Baptist and Wesleyan [Methodist] chapels, a cemetery dating from 1864, besides a literary institute, a weekly corn-market on Mondays as well as livestock fairs in April, July, October and November. The nearest municipality of any reasonable size is the market town of Dunstable, infamous for its role in the first divorce of Henry VIII and his consequent split from the Catholic Church.

~oOo~

I lean back against the old stone sink closing my eyes and stroking the spot on my swollen belly where I feel a tiny foot. Smiling, I say again the chant my late aunt and godmother taught me, "Kick, baby, kick!"

Humming a little tune, I stretch awkwardly and go in search of last year's preserved cherries, thinking as I do about the man I love, outside in his garden devotedly tending the tomatoes and green beans. Before returning to the task of cooking dinner – one of our favourites, spaghetti squash – I can’t help but scribble a few lines on the back of the water bill...

‘A thousand ways I have loved you,
a thousand ways you do not know burning hot
with the love of you
in the garden where we first met.
And a storm blew in epiphany unfolding,
opening to your lips bee-stung and hot…
and the rain fell in a deluge.
You asked permission
before pushing back the silk
and exposing me, milky and nuzzled.
I waited, danced at your arrival
and we took to each other as if born to it,
too long awaited constellations
and Ursa Major tattooed on my flank.
How satisfied we seem,
knowing what it means to be loved.
I could write of the fifth,
the sixth, the thousand and first.
Each different,
bearing your mark in an unbroken chain.
I remember everything. Always.
Always it was you...’

~oOo~

Later that evening, I feel the coolness emanating from the redbrick cottage wall behind me as I sit in front of my computer, cataloguing my paintings and ordering art supplies. Trying to concentrate, I am acutely aware of my lover sitting on the old lumpy couch talking softly to me as he writes his poems.

The wall is hung with a single full-length watercolour of a naked man, in repose. Warm in reflected firelight, his pale skin is the creamy gold-pink of thick clover honey. His hair is rumpled and damp with sweat after (and this would be patently clear to even the most blasé viewer) prolonged and exhaustive love-making. His beard is threaded with silver strands. His eyes are closed, but were he to suddenly open them, you would see that they are of an uncertain sea green - somewhere between gold and jade - and filled with love. He has an infinitely sweet face. This painting both tortures and consoles me, and I would walk the streets hungry and penniless, or shiver in a lonely garret, before I would sell it. This image represents Indian summer as it should be. As, in my mind, it always will be...

~oOo~

My recently acquired cottage perches on a south-facing slope above the River Ouzel. No country girl or artist could ask for more. For the last week I have watched the bracken unfurl under a most vibrantly benevolent sun. The first fat buds glisten seductively in the bramble hedge around my garden and the tiny apples on the tree down by the river are small, roundly green, and sour as vinegar wine.

I recall now that other spring day. I had arranged my gear on the oblong oak table underneath the living room window, so I could use the mellow light that stole in during the middle of the day. A pile of folded rejects lie scattered between the Aubusson carpet and stout table legs. Over the drunkenly slanted windowsill, which was in fact two feet deep, lay strewn a box of pencils, pastels, charcoal, crayons, sable-tipped brushes and rags; and I had painted nothing.

I really don't want to imply that I am the kind of dinagling who sits around with my brush poised, waiting for inspiration to drop from above. I could have picked up a pencil and drawn any one of a hundred different things - but there was nothing asking to be drawn. Not by me, anyway. Until I glanced up and saw him...

Visualise, if you will, a large, intelligent spectacled bear. For no reason that I could see, he is staring down at the river’s cold crystal water, which lapped around his heavy laced boots. He appears bemused – childlike – as if the water were a matter new to him. He wears a misshapen hat, which appears incongruous on his beautiful ursine head. His baggy blue sweater must have stripped three angora goats in its making. In one huge paw he holds a small packet and I swear, even at this distance, it is a packet of gumdrops or rather a packet that once held gumdrops...

Drawing his hand from some perplexingly deep pocket of his trousers, he has clumsily torn open the cellophane. The rainbow-bright sweeties have showered into the river and that is why he is studying, puzzled and sorrowful, first the empty packet and then the tell-tale interlocking rings of ripples round his legs. In my head, I dub him ‘Mister Bear’. This is what I saw by that mildly coursing river on a green and saffron morning in late May two years past — a morning that changed my life forever.

I am still not sure what attracted me to him. I like big men, but most do not move me. And yet there was something in this particular scene which fascinated me. Once I had stopped laughing, I reached for my pencils. I was itching to sketch what I was seeing. Outside, the sun was getting ready to slot into the horizon like a fat gold sovereign . But as I emerged into the warm afternoon, I saw that the bank below was empty. Not a ripple crossed the glassy surface of the water. Where was Mister Bear?

It seemed impossible that one such as he could vanish so suddenly and completely. Then I saw him; hidden from me by a precariously tumbledown fence, walking progressively away from me.

"Wait" I called. "Please don't go..."

He paused and looked around anxiously as I clambered down the shallow bank towards him.

Mister Bear shrugged amiably and began to walk back towards me.

Seeing my pencil and pad in hand, he spoke...

"What have you got there?" he asked.

The voice was all wrong. He should have communicated in a gravelly West Coast accent. This voice had the vowels and musical resonance of an archangel, with a paradoxical blend of assurance and not-at-all-British diffidence. My bear was an American!

Despite the braces on my teeth, I smiled as winningly as I could. Something I would be reminded of again and again in times to come. And then I studied him. He was younger than I had first thought and certainly younger than me. But he fitted this landscape as naturally as if he had been born here. His thatch of hair was dark, and crinkled like old hay. His bearded face had a calm serenity that is sometimes seen in Franciscan monks and looked rose-gilded in the dying sun.

I am entranced by the human body. I don't just mean naked ones or at least not in this instance (that would come later) but simply the way people move and hold themselves. The way they sit or stand can tell me more than what they actually say.

Instinctively, I cast my woolly-clad Goliath as ‘ebullient’. And I awarded him peace of mind as well as true fulfillment; a contented countryman at ease with his environment. But as I really looked at him, it occurred to me with a sense of distress, that I could be completely wrong. The distant expression, the slump of the shaggy shoulders, the slight downward tilt of his mouth, did not at all advertise relaxation and happiness. What I saw in my spirit-bear was intense, spiritual sadness. Just at that moment I slipped, bounced on the grass and fell into the water, swearing viciously. Mister Bear looked up, evidently startled by my bad language.

Blushing a deep crimson, and with eyes cast down, I muttered "Sorry," - not sorry at all really. He smiled as he offered his soft bear-paw to help me up, which he did before waving goodbye. I wanted him to stay. I had this overwhelming and somewhat irrational desire to keep him here talking to me, but before I could utter a word, as if almost anxious to escape, he was gone...”

~oOo~

The sweet utter silence of the fens, apart from the white noise of far distant traffic and the odd cry of magpies, is extraordinary after the unceasing buzz of even the smallest city. Here, the lane outside was fit only for carts, horses, and tractors. (I would have to think seriously about getting a car. My fingers were twitching at the lack of a gearstick.) The lane itself turned out to be a shortcut into the village - four meandering miles over the hill brow, past the ‘Flying Fox’ and then back down again. To walk to the village over the fields was barely a mile. I was a little disappointed to be so near other human habitation, but I did wonder why the road had never been surfaced properly. Later that day I got my answer.

Francis - the milkman - looked at me dolefully, especially as I was not interested in a daily milk delivery.

"Milk is for baby cows," I told him, grinning at his puzzled look.

To which he answered cryptically, "Old Corpse Road." Apparently, a lot of these old grassy lanes were built for no better reason than transporting coffins. Nothing but a hearse was ever likely to pass along them.

"But sometimes I hear sounds. Strange noises,” I said. "You'll be telling me next that a ghostly hearse trundles along at midnight."

"No ghost here except that of Old Jack Stone slipping down the back way to visit his fancy woman," said Francis with vicarious pleasure just as an old tractor could be seen dragging behind it one of those fearsomely spiked instruments of earth-torture you only ever see rusting in farmyards.

~oOo~

The following day, I loathingly did some domestic chores and looked for further excuses not to confront the accusing assortment of paper, pencils and brushes. Instead, I decided to go for a walk. After about a mile of tramping, I came to a pathetically dried up stream where once had been a little ford bisected neatly with a wobbly line of mossy stepping stones. I wondered once more how I would survive without a car.

I gathered leaves and flowers as I walked gathering dried grass and even a lump of fleece left by a careless sheep on the wire fence. Back home, I cut headlines from old newspapers, examined old postcards and scattered my harvest across the table - all old tricks for triggering inspiration. I waited.

Zilch.

Nada.

Naught.

I ended up reading the local news. And then I had this strange feeling tingling down my spine that caused me to glance up. My visitor stooped low to pass under the stone lintel of the kitchen door. He took off his hat as he did so, and stuffed it in his pocket. The kitchen, like all the rooms except the bathroom, had an ancient sash window overlooking the stream. The furnishings were sparse and painted a soft sky blue, as was the Dutch front door. There was a blessedly large fridge, however. I offered him tea and taking his slight nod as a ‘yes’, busied myself with the makings - chamomile, vanilla and wild honey. Mister Bear was playing my game. He turned to me and smiled. I handed him a steaming mug and watched with interest as he stirred the tea.

"I see you like gumdrops," I said as he blushed endearingly.

"You were watching me yesterday," he said in that delightful sing-song voice.

"Only in pursuit of art. You looked so bemused, standing helplessly as they hit the water." I was trying hard not to laugh.

He sighed. "I usually go for chocolate," he admitted, grinning, and for a moment eyed me uncertainly as though unused to being laughed at. "In fact, I am disastrously prone to all the sins of the flesh."

In the tiny cottage, he was even bigger than I had first thought. In his socks - and he was literally in his socks because he had discarded the heavy boots beside the step - he stood six feet or more (I guessed). My head barely reached his shoulder. I wondered too, if my arms would meet behind his back were I to embrace him. I would not have minded finding out. At that moment, for no apparent reason, he reached for my hand. His was warm and dry and engulfed my own, which I noticed too late, was black with newsprint.

"I had been told the cottage belonged to an artist from the Midlands," he remarked.

"I was born in Cambridge, yes."

"And," he continued, his forehead creasing with concentration, “you don't drink milk, you have a Nationwide Bank account, and you are looking for a kitten – if possible male and preferably black. Oh, and you are partial to the odd tomato."

"Do you know my bra size too?" I asked pointedly and was rather touched because he blushed vividly once more.

I turned away, smiling. "Shall we go outside and catch the last of the sun?" I asked lightly.

Behind the cottage ran a broad stone-flagged terrace. A peeling green garden bench sunned itself between the two windows, and there was a wide, low wall marking the outer edge. Below, the river was already in shadows, but the terrace was still warm. Two straggly geraniums in my favourite shade of red, sprung from terracotta pots on the wall where I perched between them.

My guest, treading carefully across the flagstones sans boots, lowered himself onto the bench, leaned back gratefully against the warmth of the cottage wall, and closed his eyes. Automatically I reached for my sketch book. Like an addict with syringes, I carried the necessary hardware everywhere I went. The evening light, slanting across the shallow valley, was clear and gold as the tea in my mug. For a while we did not speak, and there was only the soft murmuring of the windchimes as I sketched. I felt a companionable peacefulness reigning between the recumbent bear and me. I could not tell whether he was aware of what I was doing or not.

"I love the light at this time of year," I observed after a while. "You never get light like this in July."

He nodded without opening his eyes. "Yes," he said. "A day like today makes you feel anything is possible."

"Anything is possible,” I declared, more flippantly than grandiosely. "If only you set your mind to it."

"Ah no," said Mister Bear softly. "Some things must not be possible..." I heard - or thought I heard - an undercurrent of wariness.

"I’m sorry?" I said. At which point he sat up abruptly.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "I'm talking nonsense. And what on earth are you doing?"

"Only sketching you. Do you mind?"

He gazed at me in alarm. "I suppose not," he said, but his voice was unsure.

"You can tear it up if you don't like it."

I always find it is perfectly safe to say that to people. I have never yet met anyone with the courage to tear up an image of themselves, however much they may not like it.

"Go back to sleep," I said soothingly.

"I wasn't asleep."

Under his beard, his chin was set at a straight angle. His scent, I decided, would be of some exotic eastern spice with a tang of earth and oranges -- No expensive colognes. Relaxed like this, his mouth was tilted downwards. Resignation? I was standing over him with my pencil poised.

"Why are you so sad?"

"You terrify me," he said simply. And then almost at once, "How long have you lived here, at the cottage?"

Diverting attention from himself. I wasn't fooled, but I told him anyway. "I don't mind living here all alone. I don't quite think the area is regularly combed by mass murderers and sex maniacs."

Mister Bear looked shocked... and disapproving. Had I upset him? "I ought to be going," he said uncertainly. But he did not move.

"Shame,” I said, as I studied my sketch.

He was leaning against the wall. "I should like to see something you have painted." he said rising to his feet, "Some day. And you must forgive me for keeping you talking out here. The sun has gone and you are obviously freezing half to death."

"No, I'm not..." I protested. Sweet tea and excitement are effective central heating. "Really, I'm not cold..."

"Yes you are," he said, and blushed again, looking away. I glanced down and saw that my nipples were sticking through my thin tee shirt like small hard hazelnuts. He thrust out his paw again. Even when embarrassed, Mister Bear did not forget his manners.

"See you again?" I said a bit too quickly and added wistfully, “I hope..."

~oOo~

The following morning I rose to speckled sunlight and birdsong. I had woken with the glow of well-being that one feels on Christmas mornings or used to feel when such days promised infinity of delights. At least partly responsible for my high spirits was the fact that for the first time in countless months, I had managed more than five hours sleep. And those precious hours had been nightmare-free. Mostly my restless nights are haunted by dreams akin to those of a sailor in which he goes to sea to suddenly discover he has a fear of drowning and doesn’t know how to swim.

Such primordial dreams hold terrors only a hairsbreadth short of real life. In the same way that white spaces, blank paper and empty canvases have always possessed the capacity to petrify me; not being able to conquer that space or impose my will upon it. On good days, the whole process can be invigorating. On bad days, the fear is paralyzing -- thus the collages. Sticking together the bounty of the hedgerows, pebbles, seashells, bus tickets, pictures from magazines... the list was endless. And a single black headline snipped from the Mail on Sunday. I felt, not unpleasantly, like a white witch as I cut and glued and mumbled over one of my motley creations. It felt like I was weaving a magic spell - toying with patterns and colours - red, gold, green, azure- feathery fronds of grass, a twig gnarled like a salamander's foot, the fat clump of fleece. Green ink splashed pleasingly over silver paper. As I held a few thin strands of silver thread in my hand, they seemed to have some strange affect on me, almost like Déjà Vu. I found myself shaking, and failed to find the reason why.

Mostly, I reached a point where my collages began to mean something. This one, however, was failing so far to say anything at all. I glanced around and picked up my drawing of my bear as he gazed with such intensity downstream. There is something very intimate in the act of cutting out a human figure at 7.30 in the morning. It felt almost indecent. Just then, a clink of bottles alerted me to Francis. I walked out onto the terrace to meet him. He was shortish, well-built, and tow-haired with faded blue eyes. I recalled someone telling me that the hair and eye combination was held to be suspiciously common among children in the village and neighbouring townships. And he did have seven children at home...

He handed me a carton of soya milk as if it might bite him. I quickly covered my monstrous stick-up job with the remains of the Sunday Spews. This did not go unnoticed. I tried steering the conversation to more mundane things. I wondered, without being too obvious, how I could introduce the subject of my bear into this morning's conversation. I decided the weather was a safe topic. We discussed the lack of rain and the lowness of the river. I mentioned the lone wanderer as he had stood in the stream.

"Aaah now," said Francis, rich meaning colouring his tone. "In my opinion, Missy, what we have 'ere is a man looking for spiritual baaalm."

I wanted to ask Francis why Mister Bear had looked so sad but there seemed no tactful way of doing so.

"I'll be off then, Missy. Same again on Tuesday? "

"Please." One carton of soya milk and double information, I thought with a touch of wickedness.

Finishing the collage, I planted Mister Bear somewhere near the green-silver water. Still, I could not bring myself to start painting. I toyed some more with my favourite brushes–perfectly soft and satiny already–and sharpened pencils with vigour. The day was warming up and I wished once more that I had a car.

With a sigh, I donned boots and a thick sweater and went out to survey the sadly straggling excuse for a garden where there were old vines and dead leaves aplenty, as well as dandelions, creeping buttercups and the remains of what could have been a pumpkin patch. I sighed and started pulling randomly at anything that looked as if it might once have been alive. Although I love flowers and had in the past some success with water-gardens and terracotta pots, I was no gardener.

After half an hour of back-breaking toil, I was sweating and breathing heavily. I had barely achieved anything. Swearing softly to myself, I aimed a kick at the nearest rotting orange globe, sending it with a satisfying squelch into oblivion.

Trekking into the kitchen, I shed my boots and most of my other sweaty things. Clad only in my good old tee shirt and a favourite pair of white cotton panties–the ones with cherries on them–I head for the steamy sanctuary of the bathroom; Pears soap and the lion-footed cast iron bathtub.

My wardrobe tended to veer towards schizophrenia. White smocks for painting on the one hand and, on the other, a glittering cornucopia of creations which could well have hung from the boudoir door of a whorehouse. Classic good taste and brand names were not my forté. After my bath, I pulled on jeans, a clean tee shirt, odd socks and a huge mohair sweater, soft as a kitten's tummy, which slithered off my shoulder in top-model glory. I had dressed in what I trusted was an irresistible combination of sex and demureness (despite my slightly Reubenesque proportions) to lure the strangely shy and elusive poet-bear into my lair.

I was pretending to read a book, large scary sunglasses perched on my somewhat sun-burnt and freckled nose, hoping to disguise any anxious surveillance of the path. I saw nothing but a pair of fat frolicking gray squirrels intent on some mad mating ritual. I felt foolishly forlorn, and my stomach was hurting. Then a familiar voice whispered “Hello" behind me.

I spun round to see Mister Bear, delicious and solid, rounding the corner of my little house, carrying a bottle. No boots today; brogues. He was staring at me earnestly. I stared back, wide-eyed as a cat, and just as predatory.

"You look lovely," he said suddenly. "I mean - I'm sorry... that’s a pretty sweater."

"Please. Don't apologise." I said.

He seemed nervous as he thrust a bottle of wine into my hands. "I made it myself; Elderberry. I think you might like it."

"Wonderful," I cried, leaping to my feet and running off to fetch glasses.

"It's a present," he called out to my retreating back. "You don't have to drink it now. And it’s not cold."

It wasn't warm either. If you ask me, that bottle had come straight out of a fridge. Now, people don't usually chill bottles if they are intending them purely as gifts.

“I'll stand it in some ice in the sink. That will chill it in no time." He looked scared half to death.

~oOo~

That afternoon set the pattern for several days to come. As memory serves, they tend to swim together like two Pisces fish into one long and comfortable conversation. At times, I remember my visitor sitting on the bench, at others on the wall. In one image he wears a shirt. In another, he is bare-chested. I recall that he volunteered to demonstrate to me the trick which best operated the riddle of my wood-burning stove–a messy operation which took him the best part of half an hour. Afterwards, I had had to think long and hard about some way of repaying him. After all, I did not want to offend him in case he never returned.

That bottle of homemade wine he had brought that first afternoon was very good. I did not drink just one glass, of course, and he did end up sharing the bottle with me. I also remember that, in my delight at having secured his willingness to drink with me, I babbled swiftly and energetically. And still I had not asked his name.

~oOo~

Now, here we are. I pause, turning my head to look at him, the events of the past two years flashing in my head like a death knoll -- the pain of absence, the heartache, the apprehension and finally this ecstatic happiness. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming. This man – my bear – is he real? Is he really here with me, in my little house writing poetry not five feet from where I sit? Just as the child kicks, I fold my hands over my belly and glance up at my precious painting, and smile...









The Making of Memories ~ Through the Blue Door
©crisstiena
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