The Pen to Print Awards 2023.

Winner

Treading on Freckled Speckled Eggshells
by
Linda Hibbin 

It is familiar,

or is it?

With narrowed eyes, Bill focuses on the meandering river in the broad green valley below. Hundreds of geese congregate on the dry, drab mudflats, as crevassed as Bill’s whiskered cheeks.

The length, breadth, height, the overwhelming weight of the sky, is frightening.

The old man clenches his toes within his scuffed brogues. He’s gripping the earth to prevent himself from falling into the cerulean where he fears he’ll become snaggled in silver clouds snaking across the azure alongside the contrails of … of … whatchamacallits?

Itsy, bitsy, itchy, words escape him. He understands most of what he sees but often can’t put names to things, and deep within his consciousness, something helplessly claws to escape a drifting puddle of confusion. He wipes sweat from his brow.

Hot long summers

we lay here on this grass.

Joan threading daisy chains.

waving buttercups under my chin

I love butter sweetheart but I love you more.

Sandwiches filled with ah, with what are they called?

Leaving morsels in the grass the blackbird’s ringing song of thanks

drifts   after   us   on   an   undulating   wave   of   air    like   ahhh… Bisto

Bill’s blood-speckled, tired eyes wrench free and return to the calming verdant river valley and the gaggle of geese, where ‘now’ is the right time and inherited hormones, in a nanosecond, trigger the urge to travel. Their minds connect, and they rise honking and barking, as one, flying without hesitation in a red arrow formation, following an invisible dotted line northward.

Shrill voices and yaps drag Bill’s gaze back to the recreation ground. Around him, dogs scamper, children skip, and the seesaw thumps and swings squeak. A vibrant picture.

A micro-universe of fragile fluid floating filaments,

teasing him with memories of paint squeezing from tubes,

brushing across rough canvas, oily fingers, sweet aroma in his nostrils.

An ethereal colour chart of hues floods his mind there, then gone and forgotten.

A blackbird’s song snuffed out the memories.

Bill stares blankly at the young couple and little girl standing nearby.

He hears, but her words mean nothing as the woman speaks to the man. ‘I worry about her portrait. He’s rubbed his fingers over her face so often the paint’s beginning to flake. Then, when he picks up his paints, he just messes with them and sits staring at the splodges. He was so talented …’ she chews her lip to stop it from trembling.

‘Come ON, Grandad.’ A small hand slips into Bill’s. A pretty child, her freckled face flushed, smiles uncertainly. ‘We’re going to see Nana.’

‘For pity’s sake,’ the man snaps and the woman holds her finger to her lips and says gently, ‘Beth. Shush.’

‘But we are, Mummy.’

Bill looks around with a puzzled expression. ‘Where’s …?’

The thought drifts away.

The woman approaches. ‘C’mon, Dad,’ and she and the child walk on either side of him, holding his hands, cloaking him in a momentary calm. The child chatters and skips, but Bill is listening to church bells.

They enter an avenue of tall trees that reach across, creating a canopy through which the sun shoots narrow beams onto the pathway. The gravel ripples like water beneath dappled, speckled hues of grey, green-grey, blue-grey and slithers of lavender shadows.

There is a church at the end of the path. The bells ring louder. LOUDER. FASTER. An urgent, angry, burning red spike of anxiety forces Bill to quicken his pace, snatching his hands from the woman and child.

‘Late … late … am I late?’

For what?

A blackbird hops along the top of an ancient knobbly wall of chalky rocks from the nearby quarry. Bill pushes open a tall wrought iron gate. It squeaks and grinds a welcome.

Damp confetti, candy pink, marshmallow white, is wedged between the flagstones. ‘Am I late?’ Bill asks the woman feebly, picking at his clothes, eyes wide. ‘Where’s … Joan?’ Disorientated and distressed, he calls, ‘Joan,’ shrugging off comforting hands, deaf to the kind voices.

Something is wrong … wrong … something is … not right.

Through the open church door, coloured diamonds of sunlight dance on empty pews.

The organ thumps out the wedding march,

a photographer cajoles laughing friends and relatives,

funereal chords weeping people hover like distraught crows,

his soul mate throws a floral tribute, in loving memory, beloved wife.

Lifting his bride, swinging her around, infectious giggles shyly caressing him.

Kissing her pale breast, creamy parachute silk slippy sliding down to slender ankles

‘Where’s …?’

Who?

The woman gently embraces Bill and turns him so that he looks into her eyes, as blue and consuming as the sky. ‘Mum’s not with us anymore, Daddy. Joan’s … she’s gone.’

The words have no meaning there’s nothing, nothing, nothingness.

A blackbird flutters before the church door, calling and singing, startling Bill.

Suddenly he laughs. ‘Well, I never, look at that, Jill.’ He playfully nudges his daughter. ‘A blackbird singing its heart out. Your mother has a soft spot for blackbirds. Where is she? She’s a right one … late as usual.’

We lay under the trees,

looking up into the branches,

watching the acrobatic squirrels,

listening to the blackbird serenading,

kissing her sun-speckled freckled cheeks,

pushing her dress aside nuzzling her shoulder,

trailing fingers along her leg higher, higher, wanting her.

‘Pack it in Romeo’, laughing, wriggling, stopping the errant hand.

Flirting through lowered lashes, whispering ‘It’s not long now my dearest.’

Bill becomes aware of crunching gravel. The child leads him as he shuffles unsteadily along a path between weathered tombstones, leaning like old men or as recumbent as war heroes. A blackbird lands on the gravel ahead of them and then launches itself skyward before sweeping down into a tree, hopping from branch to branch.

Laughing at the bird’s antics, Bill cheerfully asks the child, ‘D’you know, the blackbird sings a repertoire of notes and phrases stolen from other birds. It can mimic people as well.’

‘But it’s not black, Grandad. It’s brown.’

Bill ruffles Beth’s hair. ‘That’s because it’s a lady blackbird.’ He hesitates, grasping for words. ‘She’s a chatterbox … like you … strange … the females don’t usually sing as much as the males.’

‘Dad. We’re here.’ The woman places a hand-tied bunch of alstroemeria on a grave. Upright, so the water doesn’t leak out.

Bill cups his ear, listening to the chirps and trills from scores of birds.

‘It’s as if the birds are singing to you, Grandad,’ the little girl says in awe.

Bill leans down, his face close to his granddaughter’s. ‘Listen carefully, Beth. D’you hear that blackbird mimicking other birds. They can mimic cats, you know.’

‘Copycats, Grandad.’ The child giggles, Joan’s giggle. Her wide smile is sunshine saturating Bill with a kaleidoscope of warm, dazzling golden shards.

Mummy and Daddy told Beth Grandad goes away to a special place in his head sometimes.

Grandad is back.

Bill hugs her, then sees an egg on the limestone chippings. As lost as the words he can’t remember. A blackbird’s egg. He cushions it in the palm of his hand, delighted by the smooth blue freckled surface.

‘Speckled like Joan’s freckles,’ he murmurs and looks around ‘Where is she?’

‘Oh, Dad.’

An arm circles his waist, and Bill looks down at a speckled freckled face. ‘Joan, my darling.’ He strokes Jill’s downy, cheek. ‘Where have you been hiding?’

‘Oh, Daddy, no. I’m Jill. Look …’ Sobbing, Jill points to the headstone.

Bill watches a pair of playful squirrels helter-skelter up, down and around a tree trunk.

Jill falls into her husband’s arms, weeping. ‘I can’t do this any longer, Paul. He constantly asks for her, and I feel I’m treading on eggshells when I remind him … I wait for him to remember Mum’s gone … dread having to watch his heart break … but it doesn’t sink in. Will he ever understand?’

‘Maybe it’s better this way, darling. For him.’

The little girl skips around her grandmother’s grave. ‘Hello, Nana. Grandad’s here. I won a special pencil today ’cos I got all my spellings right. The writing bit moves in and out when I twist the end. Grandad, Grandad, look, watch me spell.’ Beth jumps in front of the headstone.

‘J…O…A…N,’ she chants as her finger traces each engraved letter.

Bill watches her touch each character, his lips silently spelling the word with his granddaughter.

He looks at the egg and gently replaces it where he found it, then stiffly lowers himself onto his knees and presses his fingers into the incised inscription on the cold stone, quietly saying each word.

‘Take Beth home, Paul. I’ll stay with Daddy.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes. Beth, say … say goodbye to Grandad.’

‘Bye, Grandad. Love you, LOTS.’ A big hug.

‘See you later, Buddy.’ A firm, friendly squeeze on his shoulder.

Bill runs his hands across the marble gently as if he were caressing living flesh. Abject sorrow racks his whole being. Arms hold him. A body trembling with unshed tears presses against his. ‘I love you, Daddy, so much.’

A blackbird hops from grave to grave and settles on Joan’s memorial.

Bill and the blackbird are motionless.

Finally, the bird cocks her head and stares at Bill with one bright eye.

‘Joan?’ Bill waits. ‘Sweetheart?’

The blackbird stretches forward and doesn’t flinch as the tip of Bill’s finger gently touches the feathers on her brown speckled breast.

A cool breath, soft lips brush his cheek.

Unknown to his daughter, Bill is singing his heart out.

Then, what remains of his fragile multiple selves, unpeel and layer by layer, dive into the deep honeyed brown liquid pools of the creature’s eye. Two souls unite and Bill’s consciousness no longer exists in the physical world.

‘Dearest Bill’,

‘Joan sweetheart’,

a familiar giggle.

‘By the way     they were egg sandwiches     you daft old sod.’

 ©Linda Hibben, 2023