strayingart1

straying from the path

work by liz tolan

She found a table covered with a red a cloth and on it a furry lion and five brown mugs - one large mug and four diminutive ones with names of girls on them. Doors stood open in all directions leading onto stone-flagged passages and carpeted drawing-rooms. She could see from one room to the next to the next. In the far room, framed by a bare wood doorway, stood a circular table dressed in a linen cloth that pointed in a vee to the floor, its edges patterned with openwork of crochet.

Walls of rendered stone bulged and receded. A stone mantel surrounding the iron grate was topped with a wooden shelf that was riddled with worm holes and tacked with nails. On it were a pair of brass candlesticks, a pair of seated pottery dogs and one of the room’s several clocks. The clock was a carriage clock with the sun on its face peeping through the hands that ticked towards twelve. An opposite clock had roses on its face. A third one was brass with unmoving hands at eight minutes past ten.

Light entered through windows high and low. She heard bluebottles fussing around the far end of the room, and the hum of a computer. Cars rattled past outside. Objects in the room kept still and gathered dust: books piled beneath a bench, blue and white plates with depictions of churches on a dresser shelf, some pottery sheep, logs in a basket, a fan on a worktop, monitor and keyboard in a cardboard box. The wood of stool, fire screen and cupboard was matt and scratched. A seized-up bicycle leant against an unused door. A horse and rider passed the window.

The stone-flagged floors and the damp excrescences on the knobbly beams made the air cool. She found a cooking pot patterned with apricots and plums on a small pedestal table; nearby a bunch of plastic floribunda roses. Standing near the window, she could see people in the world outside entering and leaving the village store, leaving with items they could carry in one hand.

This is the garden that is gradually becoming more and more enclosed by hedges and trees. There are rowan berries and rosehips, apples and hawthorn berries, pink and orange autumn flowers, beanstalks tangling above their canes and still flowering red and pink and purple. Green and beetroot-veined leaves, spindly stalks of salsify, rue and borage and bergamot grow. A pumpkin swells steadily like a little green apple. Toadstools sprout overnight in the grass. A ginger cat walks through. There’s a fence of green stakes. Bluetits and magpies and pigeons in threes. Blackbirds and crows and robins. Snails and froglets. Baby rat. A tree stump is slowly eaten by shelves of fungus. Sweet peas flower. Poisonous seeds hang from a tree, their pods snapping in the dry afternoon.

Roots come up through the grass. A red flower arches over. A curly-headed child blocks off the path, his arms outstretched. The gate is fastened. The pond is overgrown with tiny weeds; frogs’ snouts poke through, lily leaves tumble over the edge. The fir tree reaches up and beneath it the ground is dry and dark. Apples lie on the ground part-eaten by wasps.

Little Emily comes along with her see-through umbrella, her pink shoes, her fair hair. She skips and sings in the rain. A boy is waiting to be born – a little prince. In his room is a ruby red carpet and a mirror on a stand. Every night the curtains are drawn and every morning the curtains are drawn back. The little prince isn’t here yet. In his house plants are neglected, flowers wither and die, leaves go pale then brown.

All the prince’s belongings are gathered in a room waiting for him – his beautiful princely clothes and his handsome princely bed. His parents are pale and tired, circles round their eyes. How long have they been waiting for him? And still they are not ready. They need to paint his walls in red and cream and clear the pathway to the house that’s overgrown with weeds and piled with rubbish.

Yorkshire fog
Hazy sky
Silent grasses
Broken wall
Lichen spots
Tea stand
Red cyclist
Hovering bird
Dark hills

Distant plane
Black rifts
Worn path
Cotton grass
Passing vans
Blue cloud
Radio mast
Lonely hill
All the greens

Down in the grandmother’s kitchen, two dogs sleep beneath the table. A pan sits on the stove, bubbling. Plants trail from a high-up shelf. The garden is dark with the vine that grows over it.

On the table: poppies in a jug, a kettle, a teapot.

On the table: a clock

On the table: an apple in a bowl, a vase of dead flowers, a heavy red cloth

On the table: stuffed animals in a row and a doll in a peasant outfit – black skirt and red pinafore and laced bodice

Under the table: the curly-headed child, sleeping

On a stool: a multi-coloured cushion

Under the table: darkness, the twisted wooden legs, the unpolished underside of the table, small blocks of wood, hinges, a secret world.

Under the table: a rag rug in many colours, its borders black

On the table: a knife and a spoon, a green bowl, a handful of runner beans, plants with highly scented leaves in pots, metal mats with pictures of castles on them

On the table: artificial roses

Which will be the little prince’s good godmother? Will he receive a task, a gift a curse?

At the bottom of the prince’s garden is a tangle of brambles, rhubarb and nettles. Behind them is a wall, and behind the wall, a fence. Wild children climb up the wall and run along the top throwing sticks and berries. The gypsies play their stringed instruments and sing into the darkness of the night, long after the sun has gone down. Their dark little children are outside in prams behind an overgrown hedge. Little Emily dances along all the paths with her see-through umbrella in her hand. Her father keeps calling her. Little Emily never wants to go. She likes to capture the dogs and cats, even the fierce and scary dog, so that she can talk to them and tell them her plans. And she wants to tell them about the grownups and what they do and say. She wants to act out all the parts.

The ancient grandmother grows smaller day by day. Her burly sons with their whiskers come along in bright neckerchiefs and braces and cook strong meat in her kitchen. She bakes tarts every week on a Monday.

The Cursed Boy searches everywhere for his path, accompanied by his young dog. He travels far and wide. He cannot meet the same person twice, but must always find new people. Old women pick arguments with him, trying to set him on the right path, but he knows they are wrong. He looks for signs in the woods and on the lake, on the hillsides and in the clouds. His dog speaks to him but sometimes tells lies and sometimes disobeys him. The dog’s lead extends and retracts but sometimes he runs free on the hillside. Some old men give the cursed boy small clues, but others are wicked. He thinks he can tell which they are, but not always. Occasionally he has to readjust his view. He gathers food in the open air: berries and toadstools and wild fruit, dead animals that he comes across – partridge or hedgehog. There are places he’s not allowed to go on certain days. He worries about people having accidents – maybe he has caused it.

In a misty morning when everyone else around was snoozing, the gypsy grandfather was cutting the grass in front of his house with a small hover mower that buzzed like a little aeroplane. Some of the gypsy children ran around his legs.

The Robber Maid lay injured, but she was planning a new set of clothes for the time when she could walk again. She was going to wear long black leather boots, swirling skirts, a red jersey and black or ruby red beads, a band around her hair, her knife in her pocket, a wide leather belt round her waist.

Later she went into the woods to pick toadstools that she would cook into a stew for the good people that she knew. It would make them better in any way they needed. She had to use a crutch to hop about until her leg was mended and she could manage the level paths of the wood but not the steep banks or stiles or the narrow, rocky paths. Her own little bird went with her everywhere, a bluetit baby that she’d rescued. It nestled inside her wool jacket next to her breast, clinging with its claws.

She joined the campaign for more darkness. Then the voices on the radio started to speak in Chinese, and through the walls she could hear the whiskery sons booming to each other, talking about meat or playing card games. One day she came face to face with one of them – his nose was growing into a purple fruit with orange-peel skin. Everything about him was fruity and overripe – his booming voice and his fingers like sausages about to burst their skins. He was wearing red braces and trousers of thick material, suitable for poaching in.

The first brooch she found had a square purple stone and drips of diamonds hanging down. She found it amongst the autumn leaves on a path between the trees. Squirrels were scurrying and a courting couple was passing in the other direction, the boy’s arm round the girl’s shoulder. She pinned the brooch to her scarf.

The next brooch was in the shape of a butterfly and made of silver metal studded with diamonds. She fastened it to her sleeve to look as if it had landed there just for a minute. That one she found on an urban path between cars and derelict buildings. She was walking there with the girl from another land who wore clothes for a different weather.

The whiskery brothers grew burlier and burlier and started wearing big flowing coats in bright red and green. They walked along together slapping each other on the back, carrying sacks of meat and vegetables and dog food. When they got into their car, it sank around its wheels with their weight.

The gypsy men were forever trying to fix their vehicle. Day after day and into the dark of the evening they were there with the bonnet raised, one sitting inside, one tinkering with the engine. Sometimes two of them sat in the car talking to ach other and to it – trying to make it go. Sometimes men from different families came in the evening in their own dirty, beaten-up cars, and shone torches down into the oily depths of its workings. Occasionally the engine would run, but they still just sat there and the car never moved.

The gypsy folk were gathered round their television. The men had loud voices and sounded as if they were arguing all the time, but they were just talking. They had a big keyboard and a guitar. A Christmas tree stood in a corner. The abandoned prams were in the garden next to the high privet, wet and soaked. In the street the dogs and the fox were patrolling and the cats were watching from porch roofs, puffed up in ginger fur. A moon shone faint through the blanket cloud.

She was the princess in storytime, Princess Rosebud. She had many attendants. She had beautiful clothes and jewels, a sumptuous bedchamber with rich hangings. She ate the best foods from plates of precious metal. She was pampered and groomed by her ladies. Princes wanted to win her hand. She chose the wrong suitor. She forgot that she was a commodity; she thought she was a woman with a heart to bestow. She didn’t understand the game. She went into the forest and her head was turned. She expected kisses and declarations, poetry and embraces. Along came men on horseback, men with leather belts studded with metal, and swords and daggers, dark hair and beards, and merciless eyes.

Where is the pink and rosy flesh, the plump thighs and creamy arms, the neck, the cheeks, the gorgeous hair, the shapely calves, the delicate feet in slippers for the ball, rings on fingers, bells on toes, flowers falling all around, the scent of roses, the warmth of curtains, cushions, velvet wraps and sheets of satin, silk, pink and purple, music from the troop of players, gentle signs, whispering, secrets, a fountain playing, advances, games, trinkets, messages, posies, puzzles, gloves, cloaks, horses, forests with deer, huge old oaks, deep leaf layers, thickets of brambles, eyes of squirrels, jays calling, celandine, woodruff, wild garlic, anemones, tiny violets, springs, streams, brown stones, a rough path two feet wide leading around and through the trees at sunset, the sunlight glancing on just one trunk and the path leading through nettles, briars, into a scene of waste and desolation, some water just ahead, some voices over the water, the splash of oars, women rowing and calling and a kingfisher darting past, a heron on the bank waiting, a man alone carrying something in both arms?

In a garden: myrtle, comfrey, currants, beans, asparagus and lettuce, borage and cranesbill, bees hurtling towards purple flowers, frogs under leaves. She catches sight of a red baby dress, red/pink, part shimmery, part velvety, rounding a bend in the path. The path crazy-paved, with chamomile and lamb’s lettuce in the cracks. An underskirt of red. The dress tips forward. A solid baby leg and bare foot, all the toes intact. Very high above, swallows are skimming. Mid-air is full of insect hum. There must be a house with an open door and furniture inside, quiet and warm, waiting in the sunshine, smelling of beeswax. A musty carpet with threadbare pattern. Silent cushions.

She watches the baby dress trip along the path with little rosebuds at the waist, tiny pleats on its bodice and sleeves right down to the baby hands, full and veinless, pearly fingernails, four dimples. It trips round the herb beds to the water butt, the wooden shed, the fence of greening wood. Something glints on a branch. There is no breeze. A tiny circular mirror spins slowly on a thread. The sun is humming and wood smoke smells and lemon balm. There are rough leaves, sharp leaves, furry ones and leaves that bristle. And deep dark shadows underneath. Bugs hurry along. Aphids munch stems. The baby dress takes the baby, her solid legs and arms, her miniature nails and clear features, rosily round the garden. But the house is empty.

How can she know that she’s ever been a baby? There is no remnant – no baby dress or mitten, no photograph, no diary note or hospital record. All there was was the red shoe.

Otherwise she might have arrived at three years old, her hair tied in two ribbons on top of her head, some sandals on her feet, afraid of everyone.

The objects around her: black and white lino, a brass hearth shovel with twisted handle, a cat, a privet, a paraffin stove, coffee grounds, a gas mask, Brussels sprouts, a table with twisty legs of wood, a rug, a wireless with a dusty fabric front, a tricycle, blankets to wrap legs in, high ceilings, butcher, grocer, the big hill, aniseed drops, potatoes, farmyard animals made of lead, pins, needles, a huge magnet, the billy goat, the hen run, liberty bodices with rubber buttons, some rubber hose and a bulb, Father Christmas, snow, a bonfire, Little Grey Rabbit, a coronation spoon, a plastic ukulele from Blackpool mended with Christmas sellotape (holly leaves), a metal teapot, round with a raised design of dots and lines – the earth’s circumference.

photographs by liz tolan, dianne darby, kath jones & sarah murphy