What happens to us when we tell a lie? It has become so fashionable, so easy, there are so many ways these days.

Aftermath of a Lie

The next morning Edith consulted her red and white chequered tablecloth, meaning she sat and stared waiting for the squares to move, draughts on a draughts board. How long would it take until she knew it had gone? The lie. But nothing moved and the brown teapot she relied upon to warm her hands and take off the morning chill stood still and silent as a tombstone. Edith rubbed her cold hands and mist rose from them, her cool breath; she opened up her hands and the mist passed through --- where oh where are you going with your lie. Edith? She could not say the word aloud, but she heard it whisper at her from underneath the cloth, and it rose, because every lie has a body and a pair of legs, and every lie has a face although you cover it with cloth and colour in the squares. White and red, the colours of lies, Snow white and Snow red. Blanched and then filling with blood as you blush, as the lie spreads; but for Edith, it spread across her hands which were still cold and trembling although she rubbed them together back and forth trying to reduce the pallor. It frightened her to see blue veins running across bumpy white hills, skin and bone; until she lifted up her tablecloth and snuck her hands beneath. Because she could not afford to put on her gas fire that month: she had spent too much on the cinema. Spendthrift, spendthrift, she could chastise herself for that, but not for the other, which rumbled on and on until Edith dragged the teapot towards her across the table. Smoothed down the cloth and poured her first cup of tea. Blew across the steam, clung to her teacup with her frozen hands, lifted the saucer to block her view. For she did not wish to see the monster running back and forth, steady ripples of fear. So Edith turned herself away and got up and went back to the stove to fill her kettle and enjoyed the sound of water hitting the steel bottom until the water began to bounce out and hit the floor. And Edith leant down with her dish cloth as the blood rushed to her head and felt her hands begin to warm although the cloth was cold.

She could not afford to put on the boiler except on bath days which came whenever Edith felt the time was right to wash away some of those accretions. But not today, the bath would be a difficult place today - too much time to think -- the lie would follow her there. Slink underneath the door; sit on the sink and glower; open the taps, hot and cold, cold and hot; pull the light on and off until Edith began to blink and blink; pain at the back of her eye stabbing, stabbing, the knives out. Recriminations, accusations, her bathroom trial. Edith would not take a bath today; it would be fatal.

Which left only Mary; pompous, vainglorious Mary who hovered above us all, and far above Edith, above even the law – because the law is a crooked thing and comes to those who can pay and Mary believed she owned everything, especially the news, which in a small town can be quite indecent and bring anyone down. A night of rolling out the presses in someone’s clammy basement and bob’s your uncle: a centre page, a headline, a declamation of infamy, your calumny at a bargain rate -- Mary always got a good deal on c-a-l-u-m-n-y. Edith knew the word and it stuck to her heart like a clam or a chill; she couldn’t pick if off, the smear, the dirt, the sweep of bad thoughts all with the same predictable names. Liar, cheat, or something closely related –criminal, degenerate, pervert --- roll them out, the insults, the judgments, the stabs in the back with sharp and blunt blades. It is best to get them down on film or paper: the cheap shots.

Mary had the resources, she had the contacts, she knew people without knowing them. How to find them, the important ones, the ones that count. It all began at church with prayers which ran like business meetings, a smooth itinerary, the order of things. Mary’s will, Mary’s desire, Mary’s mind made up and yet still Edith’s last resort because power clumps together: a ring of trees heralding something significant; a past known and declared; a history only a few suspect is still being made. (Think of all those printing presses below stairs; famous writers and politicians owned them and marked them with portentous insignia and imprints; curious manuscripts and pamphlets churned out all decreeing something ancient but not forgotten being pedalled in the dark). Old recriminations, new accusations, the daily news:  Mary had plenty to tell and most of it not Good, for it is easier to cast aspersions than make your own amends. Every good Christian knows that, and Edith too, it is how the church works. Every sinner must be punished and dragged through the mud. Conscience is a private matter, a bulb germinating in the dark; shoots may take but only if the conditions are right: privacy, propriety, seemliness, a discreet nod, before a timid green fibre appears. Conscience wilts under the gaze of others; it is rarely strong enough to stand an audience, that is Joan of Arc. Shy, introverted, lonely but true, conscience is a flower growing in the shade but not a bluebell or a hyacinth, nor a rose. Certainly not a rose. Conscience grows in between the weeds, snagged and snared and tangled; no one notices or thinks much about them until some bright spark decides to mow them down, the dandelions, the celandine, the anemones. All sorts of private expressions fall into tall grass. Edith’s instinct was that whatever was good worked shyly and quietly without a brag. Without Mary.

But alas, beggars can’t be choosers and Edith was already tipping well into a cliché -- and Mary? But a cipher, a mark on the wall, Edith would like to rub her out.

But there she is.

Standing in the church hall with the sun shining down upon her through the serge curtains. Mary was as apparent as a brassy herald printed upon a Christmas card – full of hark --- Edith could hear her trumpeting as she crept through the door.  And there she was again, her bulky outline, fingers pointing and waving, supervising the folding of linen and tables, the shooing away of stragglers clinging onto the last dregs of biscuits and grey tea. Come, come, enough is enough. Mary was in charge of beginnings and endings; this morning’s burst of coffee time beneficence must not drag on, it was closing time! By the time Edith arrived she’d had enough and was looking for new game.

‘Oh Edith, there you are, we could have done with an extra pair of hands.’ Which Edith knew was not true because there were hands all around flapping and flying their way into neat order around her. Tables pinned up against the wall, tidy traybake squares tied with ribbons and string, there was a method to everything.

‘What is it, Edith? Now come on, help fold this along the seam.’ And she handed Edith a lacey length and walked briskly towards her with her half. Edith trembled; it was time to deliver her part.

‘Mary, I have something to say.’ The fatal words, because Edith had not learned how to say it yet– the scandal, the intrigue, all of her own making.

Say what, Edith Cull, say what?

(From POND LIFE: A STORY OF BIOGRAPHICAL EXTINCTION)