A Different Burn

By Sandy Watson

It’s lower down, a different kind of burn. Anger resides in that strange place, somewhere between your pumping heart and your gut. A bag of bile, bubbling and boiling like those kettles that whistle when they’ve had enough heat. People should have those devices fitted, festering resentment and rage could be heard and we could avoid all the furious, high-pitched whistlers.

All the pernicious emotions live there in that different, lower place. I remember that same feeling rising within me when a whole truckload of firemen saw me drop my trousers one gloriously summers afternoon when I was eleven. Even today a bilious blaze stirs in that lower down place and my cheeks redden still at the memory.

Clara and I were late back to school after our lunch time wander to Mr. Totts’ sweet shop, and had foolishly decided to take a short cut through an unkempt piece of wasteland known only as The Big Field. The waist-high grass was cool and sharp to touch, and though the hum of traffic close by wouldn’t let us forget that we were in the midst of a bustling suburb, the insects who’d squatted The Big Field and taken it over as their own, were staging their own battle for noise supremacy. The hot May sun made their purposeful buzzings seem louder, and every now and then Clara and I would nervously swat some imaginary creature making its way up our arms, as if we were on some sort of safari trek. We didn’t like nature’s whisperings and murmurings, it signified creepy-crawlyness, it meant stings and bites, nature telling us to get out, to stay away. I kept bending down to itch, stinging nettles also guarding their territory, telling us we didn’t belong. Not stinging nettles I soon realised…something moving, big and moving, stinging, biting, and buzzing—

A rather large and excessively furry bee had decided to explore my nether regions, slightly flared trousers making for easy access. Clara tried desperately to hide me behind her thin, pink, cotton, summer jacket, dancing around me, like a practising matador. The firemen on one side of The Big Field, the steady flow of traffic on the other. Which audience would she protect me from? I was hopping around now, in real pain. I had to drop my trousers, also thin, and pink, and cotton, and… down they went. Clara, suddenly taken by the comedy of the situation, fell about laughing, revealing me. Both audiences saw. Saw everything! The firemen even started clapping and whistling at our impromptu farce. They sounded just like those kettles that—

That angry puss simmers even now. Embarrassment lives in that different, lower down place too, and it’s a different kind of burn….

~

May this year, my thirty-first, and twenty years after those firemen saw my greying Charlie’s Angels knickers, isn’t hot and dry, isn’t filled, thus far, with the symphony of nature’s creatures, just the whoosh and whistle (everything whistles) of a chill wind through the conifers. It tries to get into my small, acquired piece of the planet and though I’ve no stinging nettles to warn it away, it only grumbles, annoyed, down my chimney flue. It’s freezing; I’ve had to put the central heating on. Aren’t the summers supposed to be getting better? Global warming seems only to have had effect south of the equator, where they have great summers anyway.

You see it’s raining as well, and, like being near the ocean or any expansive body of water which has the power to hypnotise or to make us dream, this April shower in May made me contemplate, made me contemplate and muse over her.

I remember hearing the phone and the sound of my own voice answering the ring. Barely awake I recall the high-pitched beep and the unfamiliar voice giving my machine its muffled message. Annoyed that I was conscious before light I puffed my pillow and sighed myself back into my peaceful dreamscape. Mum and I were sitting on a hot wall looking out at a post-card ocean, smiling contented love at one another and swinging our legs, keeping slow time with the August waves….

Later, awake, a steaming coffee mug warmed my hands as the stark whiteness of December climbed menacingly up the outside of my windows. Habitually I reached for the remote and thumbed power to the television. As it flashed out its electric world at me I remembered – someone had called earlier. I zapped my TV mute, and pressed play on the answer machine. The message was from one of the nurses at Conrad House, the hospice where Mum was being cared for. She’d asked that I call her back as soon as possible. I knew then. I knew she’d died.

It was New Year’s Eve. Nineteen-ninety-four was over, and so was my mother’s fight against cancer. Even before the tumour had been detected she was afraid of it. “The ‘C’ word” she would whisper if the subject came up in conversation. Like a child playing hide-and-seek, hoping that if she were quiet enough ‘it’ would pass her by. She seemed to know all along that it was hunting her.

Even after the operation when they’d sliced away part of her mind, there was a deep, wise sense of knowing in her eyes, a recognition that the hunt was over and she’d been caught. Mum had the kind of eyes that blinked child-like naiveté and lived-in wisdom at you in the same moment. Beautiful autumn-brown eyes, still wet and wide at sixty-five, still searching and dancing after witnessing a lifetime of pleasures and pains. Closed now – never to see mine wrinkle or my children’s smile a new generation at her. I miss her eyes. They used to tell me things that she never could. They’d speak of her quiet, unconditional love, in a way that only a mother’s eyes can. I know I’ll never be loved in quite the same way again.

She used to say things wrong my Mum, my little ‘Mrs. Malaprop’. She’d stare at me with those eyes, grinning questioningly at me as I clasped my stomach, doubled over in painful, joyous laughter. She’d join in the giggling when I’d gathered enough breath to tell her of her mispronunciation, and there we’d be, lost in our delight of each other and the silliness of words. Moments like that are precious even at the time, and on occasion, my smile would be washed over with a moment of seriousness, and the overwhelming feeling of belonging in that wonderful slice of time with her. It’s rare that we notice these tiny pockets of pleasure while we’re in them, but when we do they’re etched into our hearts and minds forever.

Her favourite Phil Collins album will, for me, always be called I Don’t Need Me Coat instead of No Jacket Required. And though we never got around to seeing it, when I do rent out the Kevin Costner movie, I shall proudly ask for Singing With The Foxes and not Dances With Wolves. Then, with a heavy heart and a wry smile, I’ll remember not to forget, I’ll carry her spirit onwards and she will have mattered – to me at least.

It’s strange the things I miss. I’ve said I miss her eyes, her saying things wrong, but I even miss the hugs she never gave. You know, those moments when two people stand photograph-still, wanting to embrace, to merge and squeeze so tight as to become one creature together. Something held us both back, something strong and complicated, something I never questioned when she was alive and even if the answer came to me now, I wouldn’t want to know its truth, its arrival too late to change anything. It remains a question I don’t ask, because those strange little moments of almost and nearly, were enough in themselves to let me know that I was loved.

She never wanted or expected much; and really, she never got much. She never got to walk on foreign soil, the desire just wasn’t there. She loved life as it was given to her, free and simple, and remained here in her hometown from birth until death, contented and safe in her hide-out. Luxury to my mother was a nice cup of coffee and a cheese sandwich (made with wholemeal bread of course) followed, if she’d been bothered, by a wedge of homemade chocolate cake. These simple pleasures were best enjoyed sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her favourite soap. I want more. I need more. I’ll go everywhere she didn’t and have her share of love and laughter. I expect it for her.

My mother has left a powerful legacy though. I’m fearful now that I’m the hunted one, the big C’s next victim. But I’ll not play its game of hide and seek, nor will I expose myself to it, waving my arms and yelling, “Here I am!” I’ll race it and if I spend my life running, then at least I’ll have arrived somewhere else first. I’ll be somewhere when it catches me. I’ll not be crouching and hiding in shadows – I’ll be living. Maybe, when I am caught, I’ll be satiated with life and the chase, and the run will have been a long invigorating one. Then I’ll slip back into my dreamscape and be glad to be finally sitting on that hot wall with her, smiling out at those waves as they splash our history back at us.

Loss and grief live in that different, lower down place too, and it’s a different kind of burn….

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