10: Doors
In perfect alignment with the wooden mantle and the mirror's silvering glass, it just hung there. Taunting me.
You can catch up on Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9
RECAP: We buried my dad and Filby explained that I have been left everything. Jocasta’s temper has not improved in my absence. She erupted.
January 3rd 1993
Doors were heavily involved in all communication in the days following Filby’s visit - Netty pleaded through them, Eve listened at them, Lyle guarded them, Jocasta slammed them and screamed “PARASITES!” at them. It was as if the doors were to blame for everything.
Monday became Sunday and nothing changed. I started the week trying to unravel the events that brought me home - the news of my dad’s demise, his death, Jocasta’s explosion, the will, the inheritance, but it was me that unravelled. I drank at The Case, wrapping myself in its cheap comfort - noise for a blanket, booze for a dummy. Charlie’s girl. Drunk again. She’s grieving. Give her time. Back again. Happy New Year. Happy 1993. Wipe it up. Wipe her up. Get her home.
I should be the sum of her beauty and his wit. So why do I embody the worst of them both? Maybe if I sink deep enough into the shadows I’ll disappear.
Yesterday’s hungover was so bad that my only option was to drink. Thankfully, a few days ago, I had found some old wine in the pantry and secreted it in my room for times such as these. When I say old, I mean hand-written labels and thick dust. The first swig tasted like vinegar, the third less so. I got drunk quickly and went in search of food to soak up the fizzing sensation, but at the kitchen door I heard her. I loitered in the great hall, staying in the warmth of furniture wax and wood smoke, while Jocasta announced her plan to challenge the will by claiming that Richard Filby and Steven Parker-Riesling are in fact paedophiles and therefore not fit to oversee legal proceedings. I stifled a snort.
Lyle said, “That is a terrible, terrible idea Jocasta and will do you no good.”
“Well, this is a terrible, terrible situation, Lyle, and as usual I am the only one doing anything about it.”
I tried to tiptoe away, but my toes had no tip, only skid, and I knocked into a coffer, toppling a candlestick. Jocasta pulled the door open.
“YOU.”
I turned unsteadily to see her filling the doorway. She wore a towelling housecoat, her hair was lank, and desiccated mascara clumped under her eyes. She had turned herself into a stone, dragging everyone down into the depths of her despair. The ‘High Priestess’ was gone. Here was, ‘woman, wronged’.
“You’ll have me out, won’t you. D’you think I don’t know that?” she said, gliding slowly towards me. “Well, let me tell you that I will slit my throat before I leave here. Do you understand that? I will. Slit. My. Throat.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say to that.”
Netty was creeping behind Jocasta like the ballast she is - constantly moving about to maintain stability, always looking for the next wave that will capsize us all. Lyle watched me from the kitchen step.
Netty moved forward, her red haze quivering.
“Away you come now, Jocasta. Leave ‘er be.”
But Jocasta kept coming, kept talking.
“And what will a little addict like you do with all this? Hmmmm? Invite all your friends to squat here? If you knew the truth you wouldn’t even consider ….”
She went on and on and I felt the vinegar splashing around in my empty stomach.
“….Sowen Harbour is not what you think. You know nothing of this place. Of The Florin. Of the collection. How do you plan to manage things? Tell me that. Where would you even begin?”
Roose and Troy trotted in, easy and careless. Their white fur bounced as if we were all heading out for a walk together. Troy licked my fingers and I placed my hand on his head, leaning my weight on his solid frame, which he obediently took. I had no answers for Jocasta but I really needed to leave and quickly. So with slurred consonants and too much volume, I said,
“I will seek advice.”
Troy sat down and I overbalanced, stumbling into him. Instinctively, I said sorry, and Jocasta threw her head back in a cackle.
“My god you are utterly pathetic. Look at you. You need a lot more than advice, darling. Where will you be seeking this advice from? The Case? A bottle of whiskey? Or maybe you could ask one of your drug addict friends. How do you run a thousand-acre estate ... while drunk? Hmmm? Good idea. Get advice. Do let me know what they say. I’m intrigued.”
She swept past me with her housecoat flapping and I vomited on the floor.
I awoke this morning to the sound of the radiator ticking loudly. The aged central heating ached with the effort of bringing itself up to temperature. It is in a losing battle with The Florin.
I looked at my room. Winter is closing in around The Florin and in the dimness everything appears monochrome – shades of fog. I sat up and noticed that somehow, sometime between me going to The Case last night and returning too drunk to notice in the early hours, Netty and Eve had all but erased my existence from the room. No clothes, no bottles, no ashtrays, no plates, no bags, no Converse, no me. It now smells of rose and disinfectant.
I lay back and stared up at the gathered silk on the four-poster canopy. There was a tap at the door. Nails not knuckles. Jocasta entered before I could respond. Her face was covered in thick white cream, her hair scraped under an Alice band and separated into two long red plaits. She looked mental. I sat up and focused on the blackened back of the fireplace.
“This,” began Jocasta, looking around the spotless room, “is how I wish it to be kept. Is that okay with you?”
“Where’s my stuff? I need my bag.”
“Your cigarettes are in your dressing table. And your clothes are put away. Please hang them back up when you have worn them and that way they will stay presentable. It’s very simple, Cassiopeia. Unless you like looking like a tramp.”
I did not rise to it. She was here for a reason.
“I wondered…” she said, stepping into the room, “if you have decided what you would like to do about our… situation.”
I clenched my molars together and swallowed hard.
“Not yet.”
“You think it’s fair then?” she said, narrowing her eyes and coming further into the room.
“What?”
“What do you mean ‘what’? This. You being left everything and me with nothing. You think that’s fair?”
“I didn’t say that. I just want time to think.”
“You need time? To think about whether it is fair that a mother who has given her whole life to her family should be impoverished, made destitute. You need time to think about that?”
“No.”
“Just explain it to me then. Tell me why. Why has he done this to me? What did I do to him? When I suffered, I gave. When I was scared, I gave. When the world was falling down around my ears, I never complained. And I protected you from all of it.”
She stopped by the corner bedpost and straightened the heavy drapes.
I tilted my head.
“I… I don’t remember you protecting me from anything.”
Jocasta came closer.
“Oh, I see. This is revenge.”
“What? No, I’m just saying I …”
“You don’t remember me peeling that drunk arsehole up off the floor and carrying on as if everything was okay. You don’t remember that?”
“I’m not saying he was an angel.”
“An angel?”
“I said he wasn’t an angel.”
I shifted back on the bed, looking up at her gruesome clown face.
“After everything I have done for you, most people would expect you to own up to the mistake and make sure the right thing was done. The right thing. Not the thing that suits you, while I am on the street, with nothing.”
“You’re not on the street.”
“I will be.”
“Who says?”
“You will. Once you sober up …”
“I am sober.”
“… and you figure out just how lucky you are and what has landed in your lap, then you’ll want me out on the street. Do you think that’s fair?”
“Oh my god. When did I say I would do that?”
I braced myself but Jocasta turned on her bare feet and stomped from the room, shouting as she went, “This is a living nightmare!”
I stared at the slammed door and wondered how I was going to stop myself from imploding, how I would contain it. I had to get out of The Florin but The Case would be closed. I wanted to be in London, stoned on the sofa with Snarf and Flossy. Listening to some happy hardcore, coming down from something - something that had taken us on a journey without ever leaving the squat. I took a deep breath and held it. My shoulders dropped, I exhaled and for a moment something like calm suggested itself.
Then I saw it.
Three wooden elephants sit on the mantlepiece. One large, one medium, one small. They have always been there, standing in height order. As I exhaled and the calm feeling grew, I saw, reflected in the overmantel gilt mirror, the baby elephant, hovering six inches above the surface. It did not drift or shake. It did not go any higher than that. In perfect alignment with the wooden mantle and the mirror’s silvering glass, it just hung there. Taunting me.
“Stop it!” I shouted.
It lowered and rested.
I threw myself back into my pillow.
“Give me a fucking break.”
Lying there would present no solutions and I knew that if I waited long enough Jocasta would be back with more riddles. I got up.
In front of the tall leaded windows is a Victorian dressing table with a skirt made of the same material as the bed drapes and curtains - all of it heavy blue damask. I slumped on the stool and regarded my wan reflection. Bones stuck out of my shoulders and my lips were the same colour as my pale face. I ruffled my short hair and let my hands flop to my lap. Dull eyes stared back at me. I looked away. I can’t even make eye contact with myself.
In search of my fags I dragged open the drawer and saw the will beneath lighters, cotton buds, rings, and lip balm. I slid the document out and hunched over it, inspecting it for the tenth time.
The inventory means very little to me. Names of places on The Florin Estate: Pipit’s Shack, the Seal Spit, Harrier Fen. And books, like the relatives I’ve met but don’t remember – The Storium, Malleus Maleficarum, the Hanover collection, Black Leech. Legal terms mean even less to me but on the third page, beyond the aforementioned this and hitherto that, one name rang a damp bell - someone I should have gone to days ago. Steven Parker Riesling - the executor of the will, my dad’s best friend, local history bore, and collector of fine wine. I knew where I had to go next, if I could find my clothes.
Thrust into wealth everyone's dream everyone's nightmare