In My Mind Read online

  “Pain was the aspirin tablet that melted away and I know, as she used to take it regularly to take her pain away,” once again Steve speaks to Gabriella and carefully places her somewhat cool hand in his still warm hand and restarts his words.

  “The thing is this, that I had rung the bell at midnight to say that it was closing time and I had obviously stopped selling half an hour before and watched the half-sober customers leave through the dark oak wood double doors of this great family establishment of my father’s and his fathers and now it’s mine and when we have our own son, Gabriella, it will become his. Rest assured, butterfly, that’s how it always has to be.

  “Will you please look this way just once, my sweet? Her upstairs was fuming. I could tell, Gabriella, because we both closed the lights and locked the door then headed off upstairs to rest ourselves and in trotted Father, ready for bed and with a big smile, precious moments. Clearing up always the next morning after breakfast because today the day was done, in more ways than one.

  “The following morning, the sun shining brightly through the sitting room facing the south but no ray of sunshine inside. She had a very cold face to say the least and as she kept repeating, ‘where were you?’ I could see her eyes narrowing even further even though I was not looking in their direction. Bluntly, he replied that he was there most of the time. She shouted back demanding to know. He bluntly replied again that he was there most of the time except for the time when he was outside having a cigarette or two. I could tell she was sick and tired of him being with others, making excuses to go out by saying that he was going out for a fag and staying out with men and women that he was very friendly with. She didn’t have the right to be in the bar like him and yet she didn’t want to be hidden away either, so why was he making these choices for her? I could hear the blame moving from one person to the other, one denying one thing and the other denying the other thing.

  “In his words, there was no pain just avoidance. I did not understand her anger or his quietness as she pointed out that evil first finger on her left hand at me in spite of the fact that I wasn’t part of the conversation, no one truly answered her back, not him or I. I just did as I was told and with that, I left the sitting room and hid in my own haven, my bedroom. No one would see me there, no one would talk to me in there and that was a good feeling. You see, on good days I would be on my bed lying looking into the sky, well almost. Every day could not be a sunny day and today was quite cloudy, cloudy in the sky and cloudy when I looked up at my ceiling. With all the doom and gloom the cloudy thoughts started going through my head. I could sit here in my bedroom with the duvet on top of me and I could still hear the voices. I made sure that the door was tightly shut and without even getting changed into my pyjamas, I would wrap the thick, smelly duvet of mine all around me from top to bottom as if it was a sleeping bag. As I hid myself right inside, it was quite safe there, no one could harm me, no one would talk to me and no one would hear or see me and I couldn’t see them either, that was good. It wasn’t the only way of feeling safe and safety is very important for my wellbeing.

  “That’s why we never went on holidays. She said it was not safe to travel and whilst all the children from my class went to Europe and Asia, I wasn’t allowed because I like to feel safe. It kept me safe and so did this feeling of being right inside the duvet where no harm could get to me. She wouldn’t be able to grab and tear at my clothes. This was good and with my duvet closely around my body and soul and my hands tightly around my ears, no words could get in now. I wouldn’t let them in. I was not going to let her words get to my ears or evil actions get to my head.

  No, I had to protect myself, protection was very good and protection always meant that I had to look after myself first and everyone after that. I lay awake not looking at the sky above, not really, because it was just the plain Jane ceiling above me, but it was a salvation of blue with stars dotted around. The blue was our life and the stars were us three dotted around the room. My eyes were tired of watching the metal springs tightly joining others with long bits and curly bits or knotted together. She was the knot, he was curly and I was straight. You see, I believe that we are everywhere and everywhere is us. This duvet has never been washed and it is perfect just the way it is. It has lived with me as long as I can remember and it has no pain or sadness as there should only be good in our lives and in the life of this duvet and I understand we are both living proof of that.

  “I saw Father gently rubbing his left hand over his left cheek, both have felt something. We all have, without using our eyes.

  “The next morning, Gabriella,” Steve carries on with his conversation, “I hope you’re paying attention and not thinking about your chessboard lying in the corner somewhere, the pawns and kings and queens and the checkmates. Well, anyway, you are a good listener and please, you need to listen attentively and you know that I like to listen and speaking is not my thing but what the hell.” There is a long pause. The cold room creeks in isolation.

  Steve continues, “The next morning the woman upstairs, my mother, she was smouldering the sausages with fat and cracking open the eggs sloppily into the pan. I walked hesitantly into the lounge as he sat there in silence, his face not meeting mine. His eyes had wept a tear but I saw nothing. I could see the dribbling of the egg fat not just on the plate but around the side of the plate. He never misses breakfast and as soon as his breakfast is underneath his nose, he always tucks in and waits for no one. This wasn’t the case today. Something had changed, I hadn’t changed and she hadn’t, she looked the same.

  He silently spread his legs apart, as he rubbed his hands on his legs and then on his face and then his legs again. I could see, Gabriella, his face just didn’t seem the same then, some subtle something was up. So, I rubbed my cheek to make it feel better in the same place as he was rubbing. You know it always works, the pain spread from cheek to cheek or to the legs causes a bitter sensation as they say, pain can be quite amazing in its own way. Dull lull pain.”

  Chapter Two

  “Moments,” he cries, “turned in to minutes as he pushed his long, tall legs back and stood up. His face was red and ego bruised, his forehead and side of the right cheek seemed frail and dimpled, a perfect bruise on his clear skin. He always hid his pain well, it was an ego thing, he was a man. But, Gabriella, the man lost his struggle to stay here for us, not even for me, he never stayed for her, it was always for me. I called out to him, ‘Father, please Father, come on, please eat your breakfast. Please have your eggs, they are just the way you like them, splattered in fact, just like you, Father.’ You see, Gabriella, my father’s forehead and nose were always greasy as if he had put drippings or some animal fat on those parts.

  “The perfect moisturiser. Yes, Gabriella, he liked fat. He always groomed his face with Vaseline or any oil. He moisturised his skin with that slimy jelly always, face, hands and feet. I watched and I’ve learnt that I have to buy that big tub of that disgusting fat for myself as well, even though I don’t really like the yucky stuff. Anyway, I went to the local shop and bought the last ten tubs of it. A reminder of Father. Some of us have a need whereas others, we’ll make it a need.”

  I see him ignoring her existence but he has acknowledged the fact that she is right behind him as he watches her from the corner of his left eye. He does not look, as he is a man who would rather ignore the facts, buries his pain in his face, he continues whilst haggling with his words, gibberish nonsense. He straightens his hair by rubbing the balls of his hands over his hair and gently dabbling the Vaseline over them, tame, and then runs his fingers through the locks, smooths them over to make them stand on edge as he flicks bits up, always as if he has put gel on them.

  “Strangely you may ask me, Gabriella, why my hair is exactly like his. Well, you may ask and you would be right because I’ve never been brought up with any other style, and her upstairs, she never did do my hair.”

  Steve is rubbing
his tears away as he continues to tell Gabriella that Father took his hands off his own knees in continued silence and turned his back on his family life. He didn’t caress his son today, he didn’t finish his breakfast today, but he did throw a few things into a small bag that looked perfectly new as if that was the beginning of something old and he stood still at the front door.

  “He only took a short glance at me trying to fight the tears back and it was hard and breaking to see his weeping eyes and his final words linger within me, final words, ‘Son, don’t cry, please, for God’s sake, don’t cry, things will work out,’ and with that, he left and shut the door behind him.”

  Steve’s breaking voice carries on, “You know, Gabriella, the word son, SON has a special tender meaning and no one has ever called me that except him, my ears have rung loudly with just that one word but no one calls me that anymore. I am longing to hear that once again. It would be as sweet today as before and how I long to hear it even today years later, as late as twenty years. Her, you know her, she’s never even come close to calling me son. She says STEVIE only because I hate that.

  “Then Father climbed down the stairs hesitantly. I think he wanted her to stop him but she didn’t and slowly his feet slithered down the steep black cold railing. He smothered his right hand down it whilst clinging to the black bag in his left, straight to his BMW. Yes, as far back as I can remember he always had a white BMW. What a great car for a real man!

  “I stood inside but I knew that he was fumbling through the threads in search of his key and then I heard the car door slam and the engine throttled and he sped away leaving me and us behind. You see, Gabriella, you know I’ve never seen the light of my life ever since that day. She won’t talk about Father and I don’t either and I have to stay here so he knows where I am if ever he cares to come back and I cannot go away to find him because where would I look and what if he comes back, then, then what will happen? I mean I don’t want to miss him. Gabriella, you know exactly what I’m talking about. She made me finish my breakfast that day as she cleared the dishes as normal, washed and wiped, as normal.

  “I could hear her gulping something still straight through her guilty veins. Evening had dawned again and a reminder of him as she made the lunches and I opened up the bar with the manager and we carried on with our lives without many words. This is normal, isn’t it, Gabriella? I mean, Father was normal, I am normal. Father was absolutely normal and so was I but her, well, I really don’t know.”

  Steve is weeping some strange words. There is tranquil silence in the background but of course it is normal for Steve to be in the cold store, the cold cellar with his knees on the floor. He then glances at the barrels in the corner and the full bottles of alcohol and his glasses quite empty but very shiny. He pours himself a neat drink and another and another but sips ever so quickly. The noise from the rest of this building had gone dead a long time ago and as night falls in, his bones feel the night chill. He rubs his knees to warm them up and then rubs his hands. The cold is here to stay, surely but he is still buried in his warm thoughts. His heart fluttering in pain.

  “Days have been very long, Gabriella, and I forgot about loving life or caring about people until the day when I saw you for the very first time and you just mesmerised me so much that I knew that now I had a meaning to live for and I had to stay alive and have you in my life, but you know it shouldn’t have taken two long years for me to make you mine.”

  Steve’s in tattered clothes as he listens to his own broken words move around the cold cellar and loneliness is here to stay, it is his best friend and working here is the only memory that connects him to his father. He has to stay, he has nowhere else to go and every day is pretty much the same. He doesn’t feel much like the king of the castle, but what’s the point of castle without the king? Until he met Gabriella and she awoke him and his needs were alive once more, he started to search for that happy man inside. She reminds him of happiness, something he had before, his smile as wide as can be and so was Father’s and so is Gabriella’s, wide and spread out, teeth almost snarling with a glint in his eyes and dimples on his skin, but why, oh why did she have to come into his life?

  How is it possible that there are so many things in her exactly like his father but perhaps God had sent her in place of him. She is what he was a very long time ago, but now that person is no more and pain is his best friend. She is young, he is young and Father was, but Mother was always an older woman. He laughed and enjoyed work and whistled as he spread himself around his work. Steve still remembers that Father always used Mr Sheen to polish the surface areas. Steve always lathered up the polish and watched it disappear into his cloth. Mother always said that he wasted too much spray on wiping down the place as she worked tirelessly away in the kitchen whilst wiping her withered brow. The longer her frown, the harder her dish cloth rubbed away at the suds of the fairy liquid. She always said a bit of washing up liquid was good enough, to cleanse anything, sins, spills and stains.

  Time waits for no one but some never wait for time. They seize the moment and so did he. He snorts through his dampened eyes.

  “You see, Gabriella,” he tells her, “slowly my friend pain kept wishing for happiness and my empty heart kept yearning for a someone and my smile within that had been hidden was now dying to come out and the last two years just seemed so impossible to live again. I had to accept this life but you brought hope with you which left with Father. I knew that life was not always black and white, I knew that there was grey and dark bruised purples in between. I’ve seen them on faces and scenery and I even like to cut the grass where the little ugly daisies grow to get rid of them, no interruption just smooth and fluid life where no one needs to think or be interrupted.”

  She lies there so peacefully now and within these four walls you cannot tell the time anymore or who is doing what, it was so very still. Steve is sitting beside Gabriella’s body. She is rid of any knowledge of him but he appears to have no knowledge of himself. Who with Stephen or Stevie or even Steve but he knows that Gaby is surely still here.

  He sits with his head bowed down straight looking into that thin trapped air that never travels anywhere, so it seems, it is a permanent fixture of this stale walled cellar. His words have dried up within his rotted tongue, there is no notion of who he is, who is in here, but he knows that there is no noise from upstairs anymore, no talk, no chattering of strange voices or of the nagging woman and yes, she must’ve gone home even though it was only upstairs. That part of life so separate, blissful at times. The front door is separated, almost as if life has always been lived by another person there. He does not want to relate to it or get to know much of it. There are no whispers from the outside world in here or out there, everyone’s resting as the night has drawn the curtains to those still alive. Steve knows two people who are still very much alive and breathing, but why the silence. You would be able to hear a pin drop if there were any pins around.

  Steve yawns away as the night’s sleep has caught up with him but his ears awaken to some stirring in the darkness. Upstairs has finally woken up, the sound of the milkman carefully slotting his glass bottles into the holder as he places them next to the front door, his nimble cold fingers slot themselves carefully into the empties as he places those into the bottle carrier. He whistles away on the half charged battery of his vehicle whilst coming face-to-face with the early risers who have left home early again to earn a pound.

  Rain splattering the ruffled raincoats as the headlights of the car blindingly thrashing against the wind and rain pattern, steady and slow footsteps of stairs mingling with that treading of the outside life being lived here once more upstairs and all around. The beautiful world has risen and given birth to a brand-new beautiful day.

  The door is flung open and there in front of Steve and Gabriella stands her, the mother of this man, the root of all evil, so he believes. He snarls at her as she stands silent and still, her s
ize 5 woolly slippers curled at the front as they have seen many great years of her feet cradled in them, her sizzled mousy hair that desperately needs some loving attention open, wild and limp and still on her shoulders. Her long warm, pink gown, very practical from top to bottom. She rubs her yellow cheek with her short stubby hard-working right hand. She stands alone and yet with so much baggage, yawning, half-eyed and with her mouth wide open. She has brushed her teeth or so it seems, sparkling. She utters no words because she knows that he does not really like her words and he is a man with very few chosen words for her, if ever. It is as if she doesn’t move her gaze from one place or one person and yet she has seen it all.

  She is a very wise woman deep down inside, the kind of woman that nothing gets past, unless she wants to ignore it all or let it go. She is a silenced woman but what in life had silenced her up?

  She knows he does not want her to breathe a word but this time at least, he doesn’t tell her to get lost, as normal he ignores her. Silently, she steps up a step and holds the white round doorknob that has felt many women’s warm hands. She circles her hand all the way around it and then from the middle of her eyes, she looks at her hand, it’s clean. She takes her eyes off him and onto the door, as she bangs it shut behind her.

  “Stupid woman, always disturbs everyone, everything. Nosey cow never knocks, just interrupts, anyone could be doing something quite important. I mean, I could be here doing something of great importance like, like getting the drink bottles, changing the beer barrels or getting the cans from here or even entertaining my guests, having my business meeting.

  Yes, my mates and I have often come down here to get away from the noise and me and my mates would spend many hours here talking, drinking or laughing, you name it. Yes, there’s always been lots of laughing, I mean you can’t cry all of the time! Sometimes people say that crying is for women only but her upstairs never cried, even when my father left. She showed no remorse or compassion or even sympathy. No, he cried many a times when she beat him, I always heard it but never saw it.