Sometimes your character is ready for another sort of life: a second chance, a new autobiography.
So Edith Cull goes to the cinema.
Edith rubbed her neck now as she sat in her cinema seat feeling that cold draught running down her spine. How delicious not to be there, and how absolutely terrific it was to have the whole cinema practically to herself. Only one or two heads at the front, but no one in her way. Edith was thrilled, and she began to concentrate and absorb the screen in a way she hadn’t done before. She knew the plot, she knew the characters. It was one of those old-fashioned films about someone marrying or not marrying the man who spoke with a twangy accent. He was American, she was English. She had the large deep-sunken eyes and the fine nose, not a small nose, but well-shaped and a large mouth, soft and sensitive, and hair modestly coiffured, wide cheek bones -- a face full of feeling -- but it was the eyes Edith watched so concertedly. They were so wide and so far set back they were almost another continent to cross over: and the camera did. Spent most of its time hovering over the continent and then sliding down her nose, along her cheekbones, following the light.
She didn’t pay much attention to him; he was less interesting. Really it was her that made the film, the woman with the sensitive eyes who was holding the whole show together; the family, the maiden aunts, the younger brother absconding from the army, the vain and wounded sister returned from London from her own tawdry tragedy --- it was the sister who held all the tragedy, but she was often so tight she fell over flat upon the floor. That happened more than part way through, and the camera slid over her wide forehead, her high hair, down her nose, and then thud! Suddenly she was on the floor and Edith gasped slightly because she must have hurt herself falling all that way down; and the camera abandoned her after that fall and really the family did too. Everyone called her a drunk, to her face, but mainly behind her back.
The maiden aunts didn’t approve, at least one threatened to leave the next morning and then was cajoled out of it, while the other tried to smooth things over. While – because there is always a while, a long while in between one action and the next --- while Edith held her breath, while the father and the son had a set-to over the TRUTH. No one speaks truth in this house yells the son in a less than mild manner. No one can hear the truth, least of all you. And the father, who is a committed parson looks startled and shocked because the word TRUTH means a lot to him, perhaps more than the average citizen, trained as he has been to search for the truth, to speak it form the pulpit week to week, day to day. In fact he does two sermons a day sometimes, especially on Sundays and has more than a thousand sermons lying around in his drawer.
His daughter has found them all and laid them out for him in piles, inside his notebooks. She believes one day they maybe important, for posterity, for other people to know what her father thought. At least she hopes so, she sincerely hopes so: that her father’s difficult and rather parsimonious life will not be wasted by sitting in a drawer and then set on fire after someone – not her, she would never do that – after someone clears out his stuff in a mindless sort of way. Someone who doesn’t know her father, who is not as loyal to him as she has been. Someone like her sister drunk on the floor or her brother who has no doubt would think the whole set to a complete waste of time: hot air, nothing more than hot air and carbon. And so the burning of her father’s sermons, his whole life of meaning, of trying to tell the truth of what it is to believe in God, to have a spiritual life, to choose to live as he has done for decades, so apart from the world and yet in it in this small village in the middle of --- where are we, Yorkshire? Edith can’t quite recall, she believes so.
Over hill, over dale. She believes it is some small village in Yorkshire beginning with ‘W’, but she’s never bothered to get out the map and why would you? This is just a film, this is just a story, she relies on that fact: that a place can be partly made up. You don’t want to have to go and check facts. No one wishes for that as they sit at 11.30 on Tuesday morning sometime in – well, Edith will tell you, but sometime after the war. And it might be that this film is set some time just before the war, or some time just after. It isn’t clear, and that is why Edith likes it: she likes the fact that time and place aren’t quite sure.
Everything is a little blurry around the edges, including London, including this village where everyone has traipsed, meaning the members of this family, for Christmas. To spend their time around an old fashioned hearth: to watch the logs crackle and their father, or the head of the house, the parson, hand around the port and whisky, which some help themselves to too generously, especially the sister who arrives late already tight, or ready to become tight very quickly, because she can’t stand coming home, because family reminds her of what she has lost on more than one occasion: the opportunity to start again and have her own family, her own child, her own small spot in the world. And this is why Edith likes this old film so well, because it reminds her of her longing to fall down upon the floor like this sister and blank out everything she has known so far: to black out and start again in a new place, a new town, with a new beau, or any beau at all. New friends, new sights and sounds, new routes to the chemist and the cinema and the church. New places to be and people to see on different days of the week, which is why Edith must go to the cinema so often: to reset herself. To restore herself to some sort of new order.
The truth is she’d like to be killed off, or she’d like to kill someone else off, but perhaps in the end it is easier to consider yourself before others. It is harder once someone else becomes involved, but it is possible to kill yourself off. The sister did; she disappeared for years into London, and everyone imagined she was having such a good time going to parties and buying new stockings every week, a new hat, a new frock, and paying her way by working for an advertising agency. A bright young thing who held court at cocktail hour and had her choice of pretty beaux. They were all lining up for her, to take her out, to ask for her hand, although she wasn’t the sort to say yes. She rarely said yes, she only wanted to have a cocktail atcocktail hour, and swing about a bit on the dance floor – she was that sort of girl – and why shouldn’t she be? Swing about her dress and smile and smile and fling back her head and show off her pretty neat teeth and her long swan neck – she had a terribly long neck Edith noticed, it was part of her charm – why shouldn’t she show it off whenever she could and wear pearls that caught the light off her long neck so she looked like a twirling marble swan -- why shouldn’t she? Why not? You only have one chance at your swan song.
And Edith decided she liked the drunken sister for that. She liked her more in the end than the sister who remained at home and cooked for father. What a bore she was. How uninteresting taking off her apron like that so neatly and folding it over the oven door and running across the kitchen to pick up her bag to go to church on Christmas morning so neatly. Everything she did was so very neat. Edith preferred the one who sprawled across the hallway floor. Showing her knickers no doubt although the camera wouldn’t glance upon that: it would be too risky, cause too much offence. But Edith could imagine it – and she did – she imagined her lacy knickers creating layer upon layer of ruffled intrigue. She would wear lace and garters and she would know how to snip them off like flower heads and put them in clear glass of water – her legs – just like frilly flowers drooping their heads and wanting some attention -- because women’s legs do beg for attention and if you have nice legs why not? Show them off in a nice vase with a pretty shape and let them sit there for long enough that someone will notice you twisting and twirling on your bar stool before you drop to the floor; or drop into bed. Why not? It makes for a more interesting life. You can always plot your way out the next day when morning comes up and you realise where you are and what you have done. You can find a convenient excuse and trip your way out of there like Holly Golightly or some such creature with your shoes dangling from your hand.
And Edith imagined it, she imagined all this and more, because really her imagination was quite frivolous and sometimes quite dark and she could even imagine doing something quite bad to the lover – although lover might not be quite the right term yet, it was too early for that at 11.40 in the morning. Not the right time to be calling anyone LOVER. Not the right time to be telling anyone the truth, least of all herself. No, she would just sit here until the truth went away because no one wants that biting at your heels at this time of day, and Edith kicked off her shoes because there was plenty of space to do so and lent back because there was no one behind her – and stretched out her legs which were longer than you might imagine – and left the cinema story behind, because really you only go to the pictures to start another kind of story inside your head - another sort of life -- and Edith was ready for that.
(FROM POND LIFE, a work in progress)