The Full Legacy

The Full Legacy

by

Jane Retzig

The Full Legacy

First Published on Amazon Kindle 2014

Copyright Jane Retzig 2014

The Full Legacy is based on Jane Retzig’s short novel ‘The Legacy’ (ISBN 0-9523625-1-1)

The Legacy was originally published by The Dimsdale Press in 1995

All rights currently owned by the author

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any other resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. Except for review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author.

[email protected]

Edgar Cayce Reading 2419-1 quoted by kind permission

Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993 – 2007.  The Edgar Cayce Foundation.

All Rights Reserved.

For MDMK & TBD

With Love

My darling, can you feel my love?

Each day I grow closer to you.

Each day now is nearer to the day when you will know me.

Feel me watching over you my sweet one.

Feel my love as it surrounds you.

Feel me drawing ever nearer.

Listen to my heart as it yearns for you.

Listen to your own heart as it yearns for me.

The Party

She landed on me, quite literally, at a party. It was late June 1993 and it was very hot. Thirty or so women were packed into the front room of a 1930’s terrace in Chingford. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke and a distinctive undertone of dope from the Hackney contingent by the window. The Suede CD was playing on the hi-fi. And I was standing by the kitchen doorway where it was slightly cooler, next to one of the speakers, struggling to make small talk with a woman I knew vaguely and fancied (maybe) in a mild, hardly able to be bothered kind of way. I hated parties generally, but I’d made an effort for this one. I was tired of being alone, I guess. I was wearing a new black silk shirt – a real bargain from the market at twelve quid – thin, black cotton jeans and white Reebok trainers. I had my collar turned up in an effort to look cool. It didn’t work, of course. I’d got a drink in one hand and the other in my pocket. I never knew what to do with my hands at parties. If I didn’t keep them under firm control, they tended to take on a life of their own, waving around while I was talking, knocking people’s drinks down them and all that stuff. Maybe people smoke so they can occupy both hands when they’re drinking, but I’d never succumbed to that particular habit. My mum was always much too eager to share her Kensitas with me for that. A girl has to have
something
to rebel against, after all.

The woman I was talking to was a schoolteacher in her forties. She was called Georgie. She’d found out about our group through the Kenric newsletter and she told me she’d been in love with her (straight) best friend for twenty five years. I wasn’t really clear why she’d suddenly decided to look for someone who might actually love her back. I’d just about made out that it was some situation where she’d been dumped in favour of a new boyfriend
again
, though she had quite a low voice and it wasn’t very easy to hear her with Brett Anderson’s baleful vocals about ‘Animal Nitrate’ pumping at me from the speaker.

Anyway, Georgie seemed okay. I figured that someone would snap her up in no time. I just wasn’t sure that it was going to be me. She was attractive in a fairly unremarkable sort of way with strong features and short, dark curly hair streaked with grey. There was a slight habitual downturn at the corners of her mouth that had etched deep lines there over the years. I noticed that they never quite disappeared even when she laughed... which she did when I asked her if she’d identified with George, her (almost) namesake in the Famous Five books. I think it was probably an ‘oh no, not
that
old chestnut again’ kind of a laugh. But she just reminded me really strongly of the drawings in the heavily thumbed library copy of ‘Five Go to Treasure Island’ I’d read when I was seven. Her reply was so well-polished I could tell she had to bring it out and dust it off regularly at parties when faced with social inepts like me. ‘I did when I was a kid. I even had a dog called Timmy,’ she said, patiently.

‘Hah – oh, ah hah... yes?... really?!... And
lashings
of ginger beer eh... hah hah!’

This close to making a move, I was fairly sure that I didn’t want to be bothered. It wasn’t anything personal, just the wearisome prospect of the dating thing or, even worse, the going to bed ritual – crap coffee, no toothbrush at her place, or wondering when she’d ever leave the next morning at mine. At thirty seven, my libido didn’t feel strong enough anymore to over-ride those kinds of minor discomfort, just in the faint hope of finding love.

Probably Georgie was feeling the same way. Certainly she was distracted. I turned round to trace her gaze and found myself looking through into the kitchen and up at this
gorgeous
woman – dark, maybe thirty, very cool – poured, it seemed into a black mini-dress, long legs, high heels – perched perilously close to the top of a stepladder, changing the light bulb of all things. (How many lesbians does it take to change a light bulb?... In this case, ten... one to change the bulb and nine to share the experience). It was my first glimmer of true lust in years and I was distracting myself instantly – glib jokes, internal banter, hefty put-downs: ‘Way out of your league’... ‘Probably the landlady’... Even, ‘Georgie saw her first.’

‘Good party!’

‘Uh! Oh... Yes.’ Half in a dream, I moved to let my housemate Kay past me into the kitchen, transfixed still by the woman, who was handing down the old bulb now into a sea of waiting hands.

‘I’d
kill
for a body like that,’ said Georgie wonderingly, showing a racy side I wouldn’t have suspected at all from our earlier conversation.

‘Mm.’

Somebody was handing up a new bulb. The object of our desire wobbled slightly as she reached down for it...

And then Kay knocked her off.

I’m only a bronze medallist in clumsiness compared with Kay when she fancies somebody. It isn’t even as if she isn’t capable of being graceful. As an aerobics instructor it comes with the territory. But put her within a hundred yards of an attractive woman in her time off and she goes for gold every time.

This time she’d managed to trip over the bottom of the ladder, taking all the glasses on the draining board with her as she landed practically in the kitchen sink. Meanwhile, the woman we’d all been admiring came flying through the doorway towards me in a sprawl of flailing arms and legs.

It’s funny how in times of crisis we fall back on old ways. Georgie dived for cover, but not me. As a kid I’d spent hours hurling balls against the garages at the back of our house and catching them. All speeds, all angles. Come rain, come shine. Back then, I was a girl on a mission. I was desperate to be selected for the school rounders team. Sadly, I hadn’t noticed that you had to be friends with the team captain for that to happen, so my talents went unnoticed and I never did get picked. But I’m still a great fielder and I’m senseless in the face of danger. Whenever I see things hurtling towards me I just hold out my hands and pray. It never fails. The woman knocked every last gasp of air out of me, but I held her, crashing to the floor with her safe and secure in my arms.

My first thought on landing was that I was going to die. The thought had a strangely comforting feel to it. But then I croaked in about a yard of smoke and heavily recycled air and started to cough myself back into life. I was shocked, for sure. I’d twisted my wrist and I suspected that I might have given myself a minor concussion. But I still had a beautiful woman clutched to my bosom and she seemed inclined to be friendly.

‘My God,’ she said. ‘Have I broken you?’ Her voice was rich as velvet and faintly to the ‘Upstairs’ end of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’. It was also so close I could feel the moisture of her breath on my right earlobe.

I wiggled my fingers and toes a bit half heartedly. Maybe I was getting my priorities wrong but I wasn’t especially eager to move. 

‘Everything seems to be working,’ I said contentedly.

Around us, a sea of faces gazed down. They all looked weirdly out of focus.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever fallen for anyone quite so blatantly before,’ she said. ‘You smell gorgeous by the way, what is it?’

It was ‘Aphrodisiac’ massage oil actually. Kay had bought it at some New Age stall down Covent Garden. It was heavy on Jasmine and Patchouli and I’d dabbed a hefty dollop behind each ear on my way out of the house.

How can you admit to something as embarrassing as massage oil behind your ears?

‘Just something that was lying around in the bathroom cabinet.’ I said vaguely.

‘Well, it’s lovely! I could stay here all night.’

Eureka! The stuff was magic!

‘On the other hand,’ she said. ‘I think I’m showing everything I’ve got. I’d better just stand up and make myself decent.’

She wriggled out of my arms and stood up gingerly, pulling her dress back down over her knickers. A sea of lesbians pretended they hadn’t been looking.

She turned and reached out her hand to help me up.

‘The light should be working now,’ she called to our hostess, Ros. She didn’t let go of me though. I felt her fingers interlocking with mine, her thumb tracing a faint erotic path over my palm.

‘Hey, let there be light!’ said Ros, flicking the switch to great applause. If I’d felt like eating any more mushroom vol-au-vents I could have seen the remains of the cold buffet now, spread out in all its glory.

‘Thanks Turner,’ called Ros. ‘I won’t need to move now until the next light bulb blows.’

‘My pleasure.’ She really was gorgeous, even close up. She held onto my hand.

‘Turner?’
I asked.

‘Yes... I’ll get you another drink.’

Here it was, time for her to make her excuses and move on. Still, it had been nice while it lasted. And she
was
picking up my glass from the floor where I’d dropped it. I flopped back into the vacant armchair behind me, noticing that Georgie had been whisked away to the other side of the room by the small ginger haired woman in a check shirt who had been sitting there. Slightly relieved, I waved to her and allowed myself to register all the places I was likely to be bruised in the morning. I felt myself beginning to shake.

When Kay made her appearance, she had the ingratiating look that always comes after one of her accidents. ‘Oops!’ she said, hovering close and trying to look cute. She had a paper napkin wrapped round her hand where she’d cut it trying to pick broken glass out of the sink. A faint red stain was already oozing through the paper. I think I was supposed to feel sorry for her. And I did... slightly. I was also so grateful, I could have kissed her, but I hoped she wasn’t going to hang around.

‘It’s okay,’ I said, flexing my wrists cautiously in case of broken bones. ‘I reckon you just gave me the biggest thrill I’m likely to get all year.’

‘Oh... okay! That’s good.’

‘Hope you didn’t cut yourself too badly?’ I asked.

‘Nah... just a surface cut....’

‘Good.’

I wasn’t really concentrating. I’d discovered that if I peered slightly to the left of Kay, I could just about see Turner in the kitchen. She seemed to be fending off an inordinate number of well-wishers as she tried to get to the drinks table.

‘Kay... I’ve found the plasters!’
This was Ros, triumphantly waving a pack of ‘Elastoplast’ from the kitchen doorway. She’d obviously dug them out of a drawer somewhere the minute she got the light back on.

‘Cheers!’
... Kay glanced doubtfully at me.... ‘Sure you’re okay?’

‘Absolutely!’

Dragging my eyes away from Turner for a moment, I noticed that Ros was actually putting the plaster on Kay’s hand. She seemed to linger for a while as she smoothed it with her thumb, making sure it was stuck down properly. I wondered for a brief, whimsical moment if she was going to offer to kiss it better too.