The Chrysalid Conspiracy (2 page)

Moving over to the bed Amelia looked down at her mother’s slight figure; her light brown matted hair framing a face wet with perspiration, murmuring as her head moved from side to side and Amelia could see her eyes moving under her eyelids as she struggled through her own nightmare. Returning from the bathroom with a damp flannel and a dry towel, she folded the flannel and laid it across her mother’s forehead. Taking her hand, she gave it a gentle squeeze and the murmuring stopped. Her mother opened her eyes, dazed and confused. She reached up, felt the cool dampness on her forehead and gently wiped her own face.

“Hello,” she said as her eyes focused on her daughter. “Where did you come from?”

“Really mother, weren’t you paying attention during biology classes?” Amelia laughed.

Lucille Jaxson gave her daughter a long look. “What would you prefer for your birthday next week? You can choose between adoption and a DIY euthanasia kit?” They both laughed and Lucy assured her daughter that she was fine and had no memory of any nightmare.

“That’s a bad storm we’re having,” Amelia remarked with an anxious look.

“That’s okay, love. This old house has stood here for a long time. I expect it’s seen worse than this,” said Lucy.

“Well, Mum,” Amelia argued. “This building and that old stone bridge next door has stood here for almost two hundred and fifty years. They’ve got to go sometime.”

“It’s not done too badly really,” countered her mother. “Although I don’t suppose they could have imagined the volume of traffic it would have to take. Still, it seems to be coping well,”

“It was probably the thought of forty-ton, Eighteen-wheelers belting over it that drove poor old King George Mad.” replied her daughter.

“You have a point I suppose,” said Lucy. “Would you change my top pillow please, love? It’s damp.” Amelia did as she was asked, then settled her mother down.

“Do you want me to turn you?”

“No thanks, I’m fine. It’s nearly time to get up anyway. Go and get some more sleep, that’s if you can in this”. Lucy gestured towards the window, which was defending them gallantly against the elements.

Back in her room Amelia’s clock told her it was 3.06 a.m., and picking up her ‘dead’ duvet she climbed into bed and lay there thinking about the night’s events. It wasn’t really surprising that these dreams, or rather nightmares, always occurred during violent thunderstorms, but hers was almost always the same one; not that she could tell at the time, the same unheard voice urging her on, a predator, the same sword and that terrifying fall.

She knew it was her mother calling to her, begging the question; was it her own dream or her mother’s?

Amelia was reminded of one particular night when, after that final fall, she’d landed right next to her mother’s bed, just in time too as her mother had been thrashing around in her sleep and was about to fall out of bed, not so good if you’re paralysed from the waist down. How could they both be in the same dream? Even more worrying was how she had managed to get out of bed and downstairs before she’d woken up?

She always recognised the tree she was in; there was one in her mum’s workshop, or ‘lab’ as she called it. A Bonsai, a specially-cultured miniature, one of several different types her mother owned and it was this hobby, profession and special skill that had made her one of the foremost tree experts in the county.

As a young child Amelia had gazed at the ‘Monkey Pod’ tree imagining tiny people living in its branches. She had no idea where ‘Yucatan’ was, but she’d vowed to go there someday and find a real one, with long sweeping lower branches that she knew could grow wider than it was tall. She’d spent a long time visualising a tree over eighty feet tall. Most of all, she wanted to meet a tree that could close its leaves to let the rain pour through.

Mother,
she thought,
if you’re messing with my head, could you please cut out the nightmares? That fall is dead scary, not to mention painful
and her last thought before she fell asleep was
Why a sword?

***

I hate Fridays,” Amelia was saying even before she was awake. She lay in bed listening to the rain hammering at the window as if demanding access. The inflated river sounded like a demented wild animal as it tumbled down through the High Lakes gorges, passed under Amelia’s bedroom window and gave a thunderous roar as it dived for freedom under the old stone bridge.

Sometimes she imagined how nice it would be if the house lost its grip on the river bank and they could all float away together. She loved that river. Particularly at this point, where it squeezed itself under the bridge then slowed to conceal its power like some resting beast.

Salmon had once fought their way up to their breeding grounds, but the lakes were now officially a ‘Government Research Station;’ in reality a fish farm making a lot of money for somebody who already had a lot of money

She smiled as she remembered winning the primary school competition with her ‘River’ poem, and receiving a beautiful pencil case as first prize.

A few days later someone had stolen it.

Her alarm clock intruded violently into her gentle meanderings, as was its way. Sitting up, she turned it off and flicked on her bedside lamp. It flickered and died and she sat in the dark, staring at the green numbers of her clock, which was silently screaming at her to get out of bed.
Why let clocks run our entire lives?
She thought.
Allowing them to tell us what to do and when to do it? Hurry-up, catch the bus, and get to school.
Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit popped into her mind, pushing away the mood, which was in danger of settling in.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world with no clocks?
She thought.
No need to measure time in tiny inconsequential bits. To do things when you wanted to, or when they needed to be done. Free from the rigid structure of a controlled environment.
“Vote for cosmic anarchy! That’s what I say.” She said to the little digital clock, raising a fist to the heavens.

Putting on the main light, she looked around her room. Cat-swinging wasn’t an option, but it was okay as she didn’t have a cat. If she tried to exercise, which she did a lot, she found if she wasn’t very careful she’d scrape her knuckles on the old cracked and uneven ceiling. The floor wasn’t much better and would one day probably collapse into the living room below. The whole building was well past its sell-by date. The outside front and shop was a picture postcard country village florist, but behind the facade it had been badly treated as it had lurched from owner to owner over the last two and a half centuries.

When Amelia had asked to move upstairs this had been the only usable room. She had planned to redecorate, but for some reason her mother had refused point blank to spend any money on anything except the shop and her own disabled needs. This was fair enough, but Lucy hadn’t reckoned with her daughter’s expert nagging and well-rehearsed ‘spontaneous’ tantrums.

It had been her mother who’d won the day really. The astute woman had realised she wasn’t going to win and changed tack in that endemic parental way by pretending it was her idea, pointing out that as she couldn’t manage the stairs in her wheelchair, no one would be able to interfere with Amelia’s ‘lifestyle,’ as she’d called it. Amelia had taken up the offer and moved upstairs very quickly and quietly, determined to show that she was a responsible, reliable and very tidy person in a very unreasonable and untidy world.

Her eyes took in the chaos of her room, her original intentions laughing at her. The mud-spattered tracksuit and trainers, which were much used, lay behind the bedroom door looking as if they’d crawled there to die.

Her battered old chest of drawers was open to various levels with clothes spilling out like a multi-coloured frozen waterfall onto the floor. Other clothes and bits of ‘lifestyle’ littered the room in what, she had decided, was her ‘Exotic Medieval’ mode. Her computer table would be a future archaeologist’s dream and the room stared back at her with contempt.

“Well, I tried,” she said to the room, realising she was only into the first few minutes of a bad day.

Scooping up an armful of washing from the floor she headed downstairs, showered and dressed in her tracksuit (the only thing she could find to wear), and then put the kettle on.

She’d spent much longer in the shower than planned. The bathroom was the only ‘civilised’ room in the house in her opinion. It was large, fully tiled and warm; with the added luxury of a wide walk-in shower with a drop-down seat and constant really hot water, plus an inexhaustible supply of large fluffy bath towels. She’d long got used to the low-level disabled toilet with its safety bar.

“Tea in five minutes Mum,” she called as she entered the bedroom.

“And good morning to you, too,” her mother replied with a smile.

“The good is optional this morning, Mum. Listen to that weather,” she said. They could hear the river even from this end of the large, solidly-built house. “At least the storm’s eased up.”

Lucy gave a deep yawn. “You really don’t have to knock, you know,” she said. “I keep telling you.”

“Oh yes I do, mother. As I’ve explained many times, I need to respect your privacy and your dignity. I knock on your door for my benefit as much as for yours,” she finished as she left the room, pleased with that last sentence,

Lucy adjusted her electric bed in order to sit up. Easing her head back she sighed, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before she had to win this regular little skirmish.
How can I tell her?
She thought.
Will there ever be a right time?

As her daughter handed her a cup of hot sweet tea, Lucy looked into those big brown eyes.
Not yet,
she thought to herself.
She’s won’t be ready for a few more years yet, thank the stars.
Pulling herself together, she took a diversion from her thoughts.

“At least Molly won’t have to do the outside display today. The hanging baskets would end up in the river.”

“I like Molly,” Amelia responded.

“She’s not too bright,” replied her mother, “but what a cheerful, bubbly personality she has.”

Molly was the daily help. She came in after dropping her twin boys off at primary school and left in time to pick them up, in between time she ran the shop while Amelia was at school and Lucy worked in her lab. As those who knew her were well aware, Molly wasn’t the brightest flower in the shop, but the customers loved her cheerful but not overbearing approach. She had also developed a creative talent for making up bouquets and special orders.

“Molly’s wreaths are to die for”. Lucy had once said; but only the once.

“Come on Mum, let’s get you sorted,” Amelia said, taking Lucy’s empty cup and lifting her mother’s bedclothes exposing what had once been slim and attractive legs, now thin and weak from lack of use.

Amelia admired the way her mother had long ago adjusted to her disability and made the best of it with cheerful humour. Oiling her hands she went through the routine of physiotherapy, massaging her mother’s legs, stretching the tendons and working the muscles.

Although they both knew she knew she wasn’t very good at it, it was enough to get through the day until Mrs Orugo came in the evenings. She was a professional, and Lucy hated the tough, thorough workout she always gave her.

After unplugging the battery charger Amelia placed her mother’s wheelchair next to the bed helping to swing her legs over, while Lucy used her considerable upper body strength to lift herself into it. Amelia knelt on the floor, muttering to herself. “Why do they do this?” as she felt for and found the twin levers to put the chair on auto. “Who are these people? Why put the controls so out of reach?” Her mother smiled and ignoring the complaints, thanked her and trundled off to the bathroom.

“Can you…?” began Amelia.

“Yes.”

“You only have to…”

“I know, I know, thank you,” Lucy called back.
I’ll have to find the courage to tell her one day I suppose.
the thought cast a shadow in her mind.

A few minutes later they were sitting either side of a small antique table Amelia had placed in the centre of the room. This was one of her favourite times, breakfast with her mum; time spent together before the outside world was ready to intrude with its own reality.

Starting with freshly squeezed orange juice, scrambled eggs and bacon, followed by toast and marmalade it was a simple but adequate breakfast. And as Lucy had said, after Amelia’s first disastrous attempt to cook, ‘It’s the company that counts.’

“Will you be all right for tomorrow, love?” asked Lucy, “Nigel is going to be early. He has another job on afterwards.”

“Okay Mum, I’ll be waiting to help him unload, don’t worry. I expect the delivery won’t be that big.”

“No, I cut back on the order in anticipation of this awful weather.” Lucy responded. “There won’t be much passing trade, but there are quite a few orders to be made up for a wedding. We’ll need to get an early start. Will you be able to manage?”

“Mum,” her daughter answered, “If I can manage that school I’m at, I’m ready for anything.”

“Things not going so good then, I gather.”

“Oh, it’s okay, really,” replied Amelia with a sigh. “It’s not just that I’m way ahead of everyone else, including some of the teachers, and not because the other kids are all a bit dim or anything, it’s just that there’s something missing. There’s no sense of adventure, no initiative, they just follow the rules like sheep. All they’re interested in is fashion and football.”

“Isn’t that a good thing for a school that size?”

“It’s just that…oh, I don’t know. It’s as if the world they live in doesn’t matter. There’s no humour and the administration seems to be more interested in crowd control than education. It’s too stifling.” She gave her mother a helpless shrug and smiled.

“You’re not putting it very well, but I know what you mean. I’ve spent a lot of time in schools and colleges and, I agree, you have to laugh sometimes, if only to stop yourself going insane.”

“Yes, that’s exactly how it feels,” said Amelia. “They do laugh and joke, but it all seems so childish and somehow the spark is missing. I don’t really know what it is. Perhaps it’s me,”