First Prize: 'Suffolk' Short Story Competition 2006
Knowing my Place, by Dave Pescod
I carried the tea tray along Mill Lane very carefully. I was a little frightened, what with their strange accents, and them being art students. We had quite a few visitors in the village in those days, but not so many from London. I could smell those boys some way off, wine and sweat with turps mixed in. I knew that was what my Mother called Bohemian. I had said to my Father in a lapsed moment, a few weeks earlier, that I should like to go to art school. With four brothers and three sisters it was hard to be heard in our house. Someone at school had been talking about it in a secretive way, and it sounded exciting and dangerous. He scorned me as he pulled on his muddy boots, ‘Know your place girl, know your place.’
I watched him leave the house and stagger across the misty fields, his body merging with the clay. I’d watched him through the cracked glass of my bedroom window a million times, taking the tractor through the broken gate and across the meadow. I wasn’t sure what he meant by knowing my place, but I knew he didn’t approve of my thoughts. He said I must start work in the chicken factory after that long summer.
Mother looked after Mill Cottage for the owner, a man from Kensington. He had let it to the students for a painting week, sketching on the marshes, and they were decorating it, to pay the rent. I knocked on the door and crept in, my face to the floor. They looked at me as if I was rare. There was more paint on them than was on the walls. It was a terracotta colour, the likes of which I had not seen before, certainly not on a wall. It looked warm and earthy, like old blood I’d seen at the abattoir. I stared at them. One of them said something, I didn’t understand, and he flicked my hair. I blushed and looked for somewhere steady to put the tray.
‘So, what do you do, Daisy?’ he asked.
‘I’m going to work in the chicken factory and I’m not Daisy, I’m Amber.’
‘Amber, that’s a nice colour,’ he said. They laughed loudly, at me I thought.
I grabbed courage. ‘And what are you going to be when you grow up?’
He looked over his glasses and smiled. ‘An artist, Amber, a famous artist.’
‘Then you’d better do me a drawing,’ I teased.
He grabbed an old cardboard box and tore off one of the flaps. With a black
marker pen he drew a face, a clear definite face without any doubts. He added hair and features, those of his own face. I saw a pile of drawings on the table, watercolours I think, very soft and sensitive, they had the feel of the desolate marshes with the early morning dew. He finished the drawing and signed it with his name, big in the corner.
He handed it to me, smiling.
‘Here you are Amber, you’d better look after it.’
He knew where he was going. I grabbed the empty mugs and scurried back across the road, the drawing stuffed into my jeans. Cheeky blighter I thought. When I got to my room I put the drawing away under my bed.
I kept it for years. More, it kept me. Some things never leave you, they just seem to belong. I often came across it and wondered what would it have been like at art school. I imagined a den of vice, orgies and oil paint. But I was pregnant pretty soon, and married to Archie Leverett to please my Dad. Sure enough, as Saffron came into the world so Dad left it. A heart attack at the wheel of a combine. He drew a line through the wheat half way to Eye before he hit an oak and stopped. I have often wondered where he might have ended up if he hadn’t hit that tree. I never travelled, I hardly left the village. When we got a car my Father refused to take me out in it, after I threw up over the back seat on the first outing. He never forgave me. I didn’t mind, I didn’t want to go anywhere. I used to watch planes from the American bases out of my bedroom window, leaving a white trail across the big sky. Flying would be a nightmare for me. Everybody seems to be going somewhere now, no one stands still. My brothers and sisters went in all directions.
I left the village eventually, for a little bungalow in Linstead. The ‘wild west’ some people call it, or ‘the Bermuda triangle.’ Get lost round here and you’ll need more than God to save you. You can see for miles in every direction from my bungalow. I know the countryside as well as anyone. I can tell the time by it, read the weather by it and see anyone coming a good half hour before they arrive. I’ve got a job in the turkey factory, six to two shift, they pick me up down the end of the drive at five-thirty sharp every morning. After work I watch daytime television and I’m a microwave cooking expert. I’m never lonely. I play bingo on Tuesdays, and there’s dominoes on Thursday. Saffron pops over most weeks. But, I’d be lost without the telly, it’s a godsend. That’s what started it all really. I was watching one of those auction type programmes, where people bring in all sorts of things for experts to value, and this old chap from Lincoln had a roller blind with a colourful design on it. The expert started getting quite excited and said there were only a few produced in the Sixties and they never really caught on, but seeing as it was done by a very famous artist, it was worth quite a bit. I saw the Lincoln chap starting to smile, more and more, looking a bit smug, but when the expert mentioned the artists name was David Hockney, I sat up straight and was in the back room, quick as a flash.
I found it at the bottom of my clothes drawer as good as the day he gave it to me. I looked at that big bold face, and I don’t know why, but I thought of my Dad stuck in that combine carving a line through the harvest. Everybody, and everything has a time to go. I took down the name of the auctioneers, and sent them a photocopy of the drawing, with a letter of how I came by it. I didn’t sleep properly for days wondering how fame found that smiling face and partly regretting that I’d never got to art school.
My neighbour Clara was in for coffee badgering me to join her quiz team
again. ‘You’d do ever so well, Amber, with your knowledge of the soaps and television. There’s always questions about the telly.’
As I put the kettle on I heard the post hit the hall floor, two loan leaflets, a bill and an envelope from the auctioneers. It had their name on the frank mark.
‘That nice Mr Daniels is our team captain, he’s always asking after you.’
I opened the envelope slowly and couldn’t understand the letter at first but noticed ‘in the region of 3 – 4 thousand pounds’. I sat down slowly.
‘Are you all right love? You look a bit pale, is it the change? Anyway, he lost his Rosemary last August and he’s a fit man if you get my meaning.’
Four thousand pounds, I was speechless.
‘Well, can I count you in Amber?’
‘Yes, yes, I suppose so.’
‘That’s very good of you dear, to volunteer. You look a bit peaky. What you need’s a holiday, love.’
I saw Clara out, then read the letter three times, and went for a lie down.
She was probably right I’d never had a proper holiday, but for someone who hates travelling it’s not easy. I lay on the bed and thought about the places I might want to see, none of them very far away. It suddenly came to me. If I can’t go to them, they’ll have to come to me. I’ll invite them all in. It’ll be like taking the house on a holiday. I’ll use the four grand to redecorate, I’ve hardly done a thing to the house since I moved in.
I thought of those boys covered in paint and I started laughing. I’m going to use all the colours I can from the landscape, like he does. What’s it matter what anybody else thinks? Look what he’s done with his life, I’d like a bit of that.
Clara’s brother is a decorator, and he’s agreed to do it all. The bathroom will be linseed blue, with a splash of white tiles and a Suffolk pink ceiling. In the toilet, I’ll have some fun with coloured stripes like the beach huts in Southwold. I’ve chosen terracotta for the living room, a burning brown like when the sun hits the earth in the spring. The kitchen will be the bright yellow of the rape fields they plant in the next farm. My bedroom will be a dream room with some of Mr. Hockney’s rich Los Angeles colours. I’ve still got to choose something for the spare bedroom. I might make it a tribute to the Suffolk skies, after all, they’ve been watching over me all my life.
© Dave Pescod 2006top : second prize : home