Oh Dear Silvia (7 page)

He looks down at the two hands. Adam and Eve. Yin and Yang. Black and white. They melt together the way mercury would on corrugated iron. The oppositeness makes it a bit
erotic and heightens the aesthetic kick. It’s a small but unforgettable vignette of how to be male and female. Together. He can’t get over how marbled and sculptured her long fingers appear clasped in his.

‘Your hands, Silv, they’re lovely still. Very … Junoesque. No, I won’t shut up, it’s liberating to be able to say it out loud, and you can’t stop me. The way your fingers lay against each other and the perfect ovalness of your utterly unbitten nails is … bloody thrilling. I always liked them, but the difference now Silv, is that I’ve learned to look up close. To notice. Imagine that! So, with that in mind Silvia Shute, pin yer lug ’oles back, take my hand and come with me to Foy Wood. I hope you can remember it a bit, to help you get there.

‘It’s at the far end of a huge pasture meadow so you see it from some distance. The field is on the flat whereas the wood is on a ridged incline, so it looks like a great army of huge old trees advancing towards you, a bit alarming. What’s unusual, and you don’t really notice at first, is that the huge warlike tribe is almost exclusively beech.
Fagus sylvatica
. It’s very rare to see that. There’s usually a few oak or sycamore or ash in there somewhere. The Romans usually planted them all together, to nourish and protect each other, but Silv, I have had some pollen dating conducted on my oldest ladies and it’s possible they first came to life in the Iron Age, isn’t that bloody amazing?
So
, this mammoth stand of beeches looms up from the distance, and dares you to approach them. As
you get closer, the magnificence of them can start to overwhelm you.

‘There’s something about trees that’s too much bigger and older than all of us. We’ve all felt it one time or another. We have an instinctive reluctance to feeling so small and insignificant, so pathetically young. We all want to count, don’t we?’

Ed is loving this rare freedom to elegize and is on a roll.

‘We need to be making our mark and whilst near these old veterans, it’s easy to feel pointless. But we mustn’t feel that, because it’s all about spans and lifetimes, and our relevance to that. A tree may live for hundreds of years but what if the tree, for instance, compared its lifespan to that of a stone? Compared to the thousands and millions of years it takes for a stone to erode and change and move, a tree’s lifetime is a flash. It’s important to just remember that we certainly belong in it somewhere, that’s all, and if we constantly belittle ourselves in comparison with the trees, we’re missing the point. I spend each day amongst them gradually learning to be happy to live in the same air, at the same time. Parallel lives. That’s my satisfaction.

‘OK. So there it is, Foy Wood, a hangar of beeches, beckoning you in. You are probably a little bit wary, you can see the wood is dense, you think it will be dark in there, and not easy to move about. But just now, seconds before spring, the branches are virtually bare. Some of the younger, shorter trees will be hanging on for dear life to a few last leaves, but mostly
the wood will be a crowd of clean, denuded grey trunks and branches, the late winter skeletons. At least there will be light in there. In summer, the huge graceful giants show off their voluminous hairdos, and the thick dense canopy of leaves high up prevents most of the sunlight from reaching the forest floor, so there’s very little chance for wild flowers to grow in the shade.

‘BUT, SILVIA, now, today, at the onset of spring, walk towards the towering grey battalion and as you get slowly closer, you will be aware of a hazy low-lying mist gathered around the roots and bottoms of the trunks of these grand dames. The mist is a colour. It’s bright bluey-purple. Can you see what it is, Silv? Bluebells. A proper dense forest carpet of them. Thousands and thousands. More than you could ever count.

‘As you enter the wood, everything changes. The light dims, the mossy smells intensify and the ground alters beneath your feet. You pass through the portal, out of open air and into the umbrage. As soon as you enter, you stop still to drink it in. The smell of the bluebells; do they have a scent? Or are you, in actuality, smelling the colour? There’s a faint aroma of honey, is that them? Bluehoney. How fantastic. Old crêpey winter leaves are around your feet in crinkly heaps, with broken twigs and husks of the mast the beeches produced back in the autumn. The deer and squirrels and mice have eaten the nutritious meat of the nuts, but the little containers remain, brittle
and spent. All these tree droppings gather on the forest floor and make a shushing noise underfoot as you wade through.

‘Look at the trunks of the beautiful big beeches, Silv. The bark is smooth and thin and a delicate pale silvery grey. The boles are tall and elegant. Like you. And like you, they are so … completely … female. They command you to look up and along their sleek lines: “Look at my pendulous boughs, notice my distinctive lineaments, I demand that you respect my impressive stature. Look up, up just as you would to admire the highest heights in a hushed cathedral. See my beauty. Worship me, I am a shade giver, and shade bearer, I am moody and shape-shifting and from my soft timber you can make bentwood chairs and high heels and toys and parquet floors. My bark is well toned and mossy lichen defines my outline from root to top like a furry glove. The bright green lichen is dry to the touch, but soft. Velvety downy hair covering my entire lanky spire of flesh. Irresistible to touch. You want to stroke it and you want to embrace me. Me and all the other queens here, and all our nurse and maiden trees. You especially want to meet our old and scarred grandmother beeches with their phenomenal genetic intelligence, where sometimes their trunks contain tissue from four hundred years or so. All her experiences are engrained in there, her wood is an ever-accumulating memory bank. You want to know her.”

‘It’s true Silvia, when you are amongst these timber Amazons, you start to be curious about how they behave and what
they can teach you. You hear them. These trees have … sustained me through such difficult stuff. And by staying still, and listening, I have changed. So can you, love, I hope. We can visit this wood many times Silv, and we can understand some of its lessons but for now, let’s lie down, among the bluebells, and just look up. The bright
bright
blue
blue
bells, all around you, soft beneath you, supporting your whole tired body, just sink into them – and keep looking up. Just float Silv, let yourself float … let the trees take the pain and do the worrying. It’s lovely, isn’t it?’

Ed and Silvia lie side by side, eyes shut, hand in hand on the forest floor …

Saturday noon

‘There Mrs Shit! Now you got tasty food to
look
at, even if no eating. You get more goodness in you to look at this photos than all the bum juice you get given in here called food. I don’t think so, miss nursy nursy. Get it away from her.’

Tia is Sellotaping a menu to the wall. It is from her friends’ Indonesian restaurant and has photographs of the different dishes next to their names.

‘They telling me no food in here, but nobody say no pictures of food! Ha ha, fool you, suckers! You got to go to bed early to catch out Tia. That for sure. Look at this one. Asinan Bogor. Sweet and sour vegetables. One mouth of that make you come awake rise and shine. The peppers put firework in the blood and whoosh, you not sleepin then.
Then
you one awake mingehead, you sittin up, lookin around, here, there. Hello
everybody! Eyes doin open lookin and mouth doin open talking. And sayin sorry to Tia for no pay for two weeks so far.

‘I been there, at your flat, usual days, two times now. I go in, Tuesday Thursday, normal. Same as twenty years. First in the big house, now in the little flat. Much tidier when Mrs Shit asleep in hospital, no dirty pant everywhere with poppin socks all over. But whole flat covered in dirt from dust and old ugly cooking, so I clean
all
, top in bottom. When you not there, I can use the Mr Jiffy what poison the world but is best cleaner. Gets a lemon smell in and gets grease out. Even if it killin trees and children, it still good. I got it in a hiding place where you don’t know, where I got white sugar and instant coffee kept too! Things from evil, all in shush box in big clothes cupboard. Secret. I make water on all plants and let the new air in window for little time, and make the bed open to have air in. I also do the bad thing I not like and make the taps on, running the water away for no reason like Mrs Shit say to do, five minutes. In my home, no water wasting like this, water very expensive and important, and nobody making taps on for no reason. BUT that what Mrs Shit say, so that what Tia do.

‘So, I doing everything you ask for even when you not there to tell me. So, I thinking for yourself like you say. And one of the have an ideas is happening like this, OK? Let’s say Tia is not getting pay even though the work is done, then it is stealing really, innit? Mrs Shit is stealin from Tia. Tia is doing the
cleaning and jizz, but Mrs Shit not paying. Is OK really cos Tia know Mrs Shit is having a sleeping accident, but still, Tia got two boys, well three really with the sitting down husband in a chair, so is not OK for no money.

‘SO Tia is have a brainthunder and thinking of what way to make it so Mrs Shit not stealin work from Tia. Then, Mrs Shit wouldn’t have to be a criminal no more. Cos all this bad enough with the head thump and everything, without Mrs Shit get called thief and stealer. SO, what Tia do … is Tia take one very small old phone Mrs Shit never using any more for more than two years, and do selling on the eBay … that phone just in the drawer making a clutter … Mrs Shit hates a clutter, it very ‘volga’. No clutter thank you. So Tia take away the clutter, and the phone sell on eBay spit-spot, and Tia have her pay.

‘In fact, too
much
pay, cos that phone get one hundred forty quids and Mrs Shit only stole one hundred quids of work off Tia, so Tia put the forty quids in Mrs Shit special money tin box with the picture on of a girl in Christmas. There is no money for a long time in ’til this, so new startings. OK, Mrs Shit, that all the home news BUT now Tia tells you the big news …’

Tia puts her Boots reading glasses on with the flashy rhinestones around the edge, and retrieves an impressive pile of chatty magazines from her bag.

‘You not going to believe this, Mrs Shit, after all that hard work and time, “Nicola Roberts from Girls Aloud is struggling
to find her look”. Well. We was all thinking thankfuck, because “she has embraced her natural pale colouring at last”, and now this. So what is it? She like the white skin, ooo look at me, I’m all pinky white make-up with my face on, for sale? OR ooo don’t look at me I’m a ghostie face scary kids off ? And now she got huge new lips off a fishface as well. What she thinking? What we suppose to thinking? She do like white skin or she don’t? Hurry up Nicola, we want answer! Now!
And
she decided to do the head extensions. Like we need more hair from her. No thank you Nicola. Stop it now with hair and lips and skin.

‘And aw, look Mrs Shit, lady send in a photo of dog and cat and rat and ugly baby together in basket with big bow on. Like the world should be. All together lovin, no fightin. Strange, cos babies and rats always fightin … Want to know your stars Mrs Shit? The gypsy lady here
always
right, here’s yours, the Goat, “Juggling work and home is harder than you thought, and travel is costly for you this week. Be aware of everything you say and do, and wear your best outfit on Friday, you’ll be dressing to impress …” OOO, sounds exciting Mrs Shit … what’s goin to happen on Friday … ?’

Silvia keeps on breathing.

And nothing else.

So Tia fills the silence with more and more and more ‘news’.

‘This is good, Mrs Shit, can you see? “A knork, eliminates the need for a knife”. I want that, shall I send off for you too, Mrs Shit? Yes …’

Saturday 2pm

Jo is not relaxed. Decidedly unrelaxed, in fact. She is not a good enough actress to hide her anxiety, so the nurses at the station are on alert. None of them trust Jo completely. They know she is on a mission to revive her sister, and that she will stop at nothing. All the staff have tried to be understanding and helpful, but most have had a gutful of Jo’s New Age ideas. When Jo told them she was going to burn a wreath of white sage and rosemary over a brazier, American-Indian style, so that she might smudge Silvia’s body with the ash, the nurses unanimously rejected the idea. When Jo proceeded to round on them, accusing them of preventing her from protecting her sister against malevolent spirits, they withdrew the metaphorical drawbridge of goodwill.

Today, then, they have their eye on her, especially Winnie who is, after all, Silvia’s key nurse and therefore her chief
protector. Unfortunately, Winnie is very busy today and can’t keep as much of an eye on Jo as she would wish.

This is one of the reasons Jo is tense. She can’t block the view the nurses have into the room through the internal window, so she tries to keep her back to the glass in a vain attempt to hide today’s theme for Silvia’s awakening.

Jo has read somewhere that animals have inherent powerful healing powers and, especially in America, they are often used to comfort and inspire the afflicted and infirm. Dogs, apparently, are the most widely used creatures. If an ill person can rest their hand on a dog’s fur for even fifteen minutes, they can absorb up to forty doggiewatts of canine healing energy, supposedly. Jo isn’t
entirely
sure exactly how much that is, but she feels confident it can only help. She’s not heard of anyone being harmed by overdosing on animal energy, so she has made the decision to go ahead today with a session of animal healing therapy.

Jo doesn’t own a dog. Jo doesn’t really even like dogs very much, but her neighbour Betty, a seventy-year-old bingo freak who owns the only house on the terrace that hasn’t changed at all in fifty years, has an ancient chihuahua called Lady who is presently cowering in Jo’s handbag. Jo is wishing she had chosen a different handbag. This one is an old but still valuable Biba original, and was the only one she owned big enough to fit the dog in with a bit of breathing space. There is a regrettable wet patch forming on the bottom of the tan leather bag. How
can such a spookily small dog contain so much liquid? She walked it about in the car park before bringing it in, to try and empty it out, but it obviously prefers Biba leather to prickly yellow grass. Never mind, Jo thinks, however leaky it is, it’s still a dog, with potentially massive healing power, but how is she going to get it on to Silvia’s bed without the nurses noticing?