Finding Miss Cull

 

‘If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid with another squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just one heavenly moment, if there could be two moments you might see the surf and the mermaids singing.’ (Peter Pan  by J.M. Barrie)

                                       

Sometimes you read something, and you know immediately the way the words are pointing; towards the images that will soon appear, and the people too, they will appear – and they do -- and you are grateful.  Those people, see, see!  People jumping from the lagoon taking you hostage – ow, ow, pirates you say, I have been captured by pirates! Pirates they maybe, but still you are grateful you are no longer alone as you were as a child in the dark with all those images coming your way. That shapeless pool of fear, how it breeds in the dark, your mystery.

And now I am thinking of Miss Cull, my spinster. Miss Cull I have left you lying in your twelfth floor flat in that small seaside town; I have left you all alone in the dark. Because we are all children in the end no matter how we try to cover it with rites and rituals and modes of manner -- we are all children crying in the dark -- and Miss Cull, I have abandoned you to my pool of fear.  I have let you go. Miss Cull who reminds me of my music teacher from all those years ago. Miss Cull, you have already made your cameo, and soon you will appear again in print, and I wonder what you think of that, the beginning of your biography, your character.

Edith Cull who lies awake these early mornings in June too afraid to rise in case she catches her early morning shadow, the remnants of her dream lying on her bedroom floor. Dark grey, the colour of her nightie which has been washed too often now, soon she will rise. I will rise soon, she says. I will make my morning pilgrimage to the shops and stand beneath the stone hood of the arcade, a dark shutter that will cover me like a grave. But do no mistake, Miss Cull is an ordinary woman, she does not indulge in poetry. Edith plain and simple, short and sharp with her wicker basket over her arm. Rather tatty now, so you cover it with a gingham cloth because you don’t want to be seen for what you are: spare, still being made, Miss Cull, are you there? With a basket on your arm you can be jaunty.

‘I was on the way to the post office; it was an ordinary sort of day.  I had a letter to post, a book to return, I was thinking of Meg. The sun was out, and I remember thinking it was nine o’ clock in the morning and it was already hot. I had to stop to wipe my brow. Where was I? No further than the corner of Maltravers Drive, and already hot.’

Miss Cull is stuttering, she is hot, she cannot find her words. Now she is fumbling in her bag, for she carries a bag inside her basket slipped on top like a small pet. Miss Cull is not an elegant bag or basket wearer. She doesn’t manage it well, the bearing of bags, perhaps because she is not tall. Miss Cull sniffs slightly; she can smell damp leaves as she crosses through the small green triangle of trees that passes for a wood on this side of town. Was there rain last night? She does not trust herself on the weather. Meteorologists can mislead her, for she will believe anything she is told. She dabs her nose lightly. Why is she standing like this on the corner of the road? The post office will be open and there will be no queue, not at this time in the morning. Come on Edie, Come on!  

For Miss Cull must send a letter to her sister, Meg; Meg who remains stoical in the face of every family saga.

‘Easy for you to say, Meg,’  Edith says to her sister. ‘Easy for you,’ says Meg to her sister, although they never say such things out loud but grit their teeth instead and say, ‘Yes Meg, I understand, it must be very trying to manage Father all alone. I will come up as soon as I can [pause] You know the train fare is very steep this time of year,’

 And then she listens and waits for her sister’s response, but there is only silence, always silence; so Edith feigns an excuse and says she must go and practise her hymns for the morning assembly.

‘I’m not familiar with the tunes, Meg,’ which isn’t true, but Edith likes to sound busy, especially with her sister. ‘I must go Meg’, and Meg grits her teeth and put down the phone.

While Miss Cull turns her face to the wall. Oh Meg!  she sighs. Miss Cull sighs more than the average but when you live alone you can make any sort of sound you like day or night. Sometimes she snores; usually nights when she comes back from the cinema late and is overtired and her limbs restless. Nights when the reel inside her head won’t stop turning. When her mind turns into a cinema. As the music soars and carries her away to the rainy streets and the gloomy underpass wrapped around the station. Clickety-clack. To the railway bridge and the dark shadows flitting across the metal tracks. To the man with the moon face and the light shining through his eyes. Laura, Laura he says. Mrs. Jesson. Then Miss Cull begins to say her prayers hoping he will hear her. But the train is hurtling and screaming, so who, Miss Cull, will hear you? The train is roaring and drowning out your cries and the man has disappeared beneath the railway bridge and is moving up the stairs.

                                                *

I wonder when we start to care for someone; how long is it after the first nudge before you are set off along your way looking for -- because we are all looking for something or someone; it is what life is this looking: ‘I’m just looking for my fountain pen darling, have you seen it?’ -- and writing is a process of looking for, looking for your character, the one you care for more even than the people you live with (sometimes this is true). Care measured out in teaspoons. Care for nothing else for without them you cannot live.

‘How careless you have become, Edith, her mother said -- sugar spilling all over the table, you really ought to be more careful’ -- but Edith does not see the sugar; she is staring through the gloom of the arcade thinking of the man running underneath the railway bridge to catch the last train home to Moreton or Durley or Fairleigh or Whitchurch; the names slip into the shadows with the man in the trilby hat who lifts it high to greet her. Such a nice smile, and Edith smiles in return. She sees him coming through the arcade gloom and he is carrying flowers in his arms. Fresh cornflowers, for they are in season, and he seems so pleased to see her – the tilt of his hat betrays him -- because we are all looking for someone.

So there is Edith with her basket, and there is the arcade, and there is the man with his hat and smile and there are flowers in his arms. But those are a moveable feast, and so there is also Edith carrying home her own flowers, cornflowers, which Mr. Thompson the greengrocer says are at the end of their bloom so Edith can have them for sixpence. Another day at least, thinks Edith as she hurries home to put them in water. A blue bouquet for a day or two. I shall put them on the kitchen table and at night I will move them to my bedside table. At night my flowers will sleep with me. Blue petals, I will press them to my ear.

Miss Cull is a strange lot. Watch her as she climbs the stairs to the twelfth floor clutching her flowers to her breast: the petals shrink back: and Miss Cull does not notice one falls to the ground, a dry blue tear.

At the top of the stairs she stops to look through the window. Rubs her finger on the pane and tuts. Filthy! Lays her basket upon the floor and her blue flowers on top as Miss Cull climbs the stairs; and as she does, she thinks. She will find the Denby vase Peg gave her, sage green with ferns running off to the sides, to where, Miss Cull often wondered, to where: back to Derbyshire, to Yorkshire? And then the same thought. The chip on the base. Oh, how it bothered her!

                                                *

Can you make a story from a single character, a whole biography, a life with missing parts --- others, children, lovers – Miss Cull does not have much, but I think so. Miss Cull you are made of lace, so delicate I must hold you carefully ‘though my grip is weak. I drop things, whole parts, do you see them falling through the bannisters? Chipped porcelain, my precious vase lying upon the ground. I will put you back together, Miss Cull, my character.

 I see you when I wake with my first cup of tea; you are there. I hear you in the song of the birds, or the narrowness of my own life, for we all sing only one or two songs well; Miss Cull handling her Denby vase trying to put the past behind her; but you can never replace the past as you replace your flowers, and Miss Cull cannot afford to do either. You see she has taken a sudden fancy and can no longer see straight. I blame the cinema, the silver screen. Miss Cull worships a pagan god, shiny and memorialised. Still, she is grateful, and perhaps we should be too, for life seems rosier now she has taken on another life, and in that life anything can happen. Think of the Wizard of Oz. Nobody knows who the wizard is because no-one sees him. Anyone can be a wizard if you in believe them; we can all hide behind a velvet curtain. Miss Cull has begun to believe in wizards; and a wizard is just an ordinary man made silvery.

          You see light is the plot; it is that Miss Cull wants to catch, to bring some down upon herself as a silvery fish, a mackerel, brings light to the fisherman who caught him and then to the fishmonger who will cut him into pieces for the elegant lady standing at the counter waiting for the crochety woman ahead to finish her fussing. The lady in the large hat resembling a bowl. The lady in the way.

‘There you are Mary says the polite fishmonger. Four fillets.’

          ‘Not four, two, two! Mr. Fogg, really, what’s come over you? I never take four fillets of anything!’

And the patient fishmonger retrieves the package he had carefully made and with a low growl begins to unpack it while the elegant lady stands and looks out the window at the passersby pretending to be engrossed while the camera sweeps over her face.  

It is the lighting Edith wants, and the terribly nice face. Miss Cull goes to the cinema at least once a week to see a pleasant face for she has nothing to look at. Her kitchen window is too high to offer much relief; the view, the view, where is the view, Miss Cull laments; she is too short to see much above her kitchen sink. To see, to see, oh, if only to see, sings Miss Cull in a lamentable tone. Tall enough to do the washing up but the ledge behind the sink is too far. Miss Cull leans over but she cannot lean out because the window does not open easily. It has been left to rust and Miss Cull shakes her head; the latch is too high above her head so she must get a stool or a chair to reach the back. I cannot reach the back of anything, and most days it is too much of a fag to carry the stool she keeps in the hallway cupboard into the kitchen. Too much of a fag, and I cannot reach the back and pull out the stool.

Miss Cull wouldn’t say ‘fag’ exactly, but she would feel it because most days her hands and arms don’t find the strength to lift it. It, even the word is too heavy and so full of implications Miss Cull cannot carry it: it  is too much. And Miss Cull sighs and leans over her sink and tiptoes to grant herself some extra height. ‘But it’s never enough, never enough, never enough, I never seem to have quite enough lift in me to reach the window.’

Some days when the mood hits her, she climbs up onto the draining board; folds her legs and twists herself around; cranes her neck seawards, skywards, seawards. Miss Cull is always imagining sea and sky; it is what you must do if you live in small flat without a view knowing full well the sea is only a few hundred yards away. I don’t know how far exactly, Miss Cull says, but some days the sea seems very far.  So Miss Cull must go out. Nobody knows she goes, and why would they care? Nobody knows Miss Cull, not even her sister, what makes her heart sing.

(POND LIFE, pending publication — Autumn 2025)