Notes On Leaving and Arriving by Elodie Barnes
I
October woodsmoke hangs in the air. It’s fragile, misted with sunshine and sharp on her nose, clinging to the trees and chimney pots of the square. She sits on the wooden bench and breathes. Everything is familiar. Everything is the same. Everything outside says that she is home, but everything inside whispers of exile. She writes down all the words she can find so that they, at least, might not feel so adrift.
II
Her father takes her to Lyons in Coventry Street. Proper English tea and cake, a treat for her homecoming. No French coffee or pastries here. From their table by the window, her own eyes place her reflection on a jumbled canvas of passers-by, teapots, double-decker buses and silver trays. Her outline is fragmented and faint, drawn in pencil and then badly erased. Her father asks if she is all right and she nods. The heaviness of the cake gives her a stomach ache.
III
Her mother worries that she will be lonely and so organises afternoon teas, dinners, introductions and re-introductions. But loneliness, she thinks, gives the world a harsh, vibrant kind of beauty. In Paris everyone was lonely; it’s why there were so many artists there, so many poets, so many lost lovers. She’s one of them now. Her mother suggests that a courtship might cheer her up, a nice young man, and she nods. In every suitor’s face, all she sees is a woman’s smile.
IV
Her brother teases her, just as he always did. This time it’s for spending so many hours in the square gazing into space. He doesn’t know that she is rolling the name around on her tongue, letting it loose into the leaves that dance about the gravel paths, watching the shadows that whisper in between the syllables. Sometimes the breeze tosses them too far, too high, and coppers and golds and bronzes all blur together. The shadows get tangled among them, and she can no longer tell which is which.
V
The little boy toddles up to her bench, smiling and proffering a conker in his chubby fingers. His mother is a few paces behind, eyes full of apologies and lips dripping admonishment at the little boy’s boldness, but she reaches out. The conker drops smooth and cool onto her palm, reflecting the flare of the sun like a marble. Solid. Real. The little boy waves goodbye. Everything is real. Perhaps it is she who has come from a dream. But the conker in her hand echoes with the little boy’s laughter, and when she looks down at it, it’s so shiny that she can see her reflection in it. Whole. Clear. Glinting in the sunlight.
……………….
Elodie Rose Barnes is an author and photographer with a serious case of wanderlust. She is based in Paris and the UK, and her love of travel and seeing new places has inspired a fascination with the ideas of time and space, which seeps into most of her writing. Her work has most recently been accepted in Reflex Press, Tiny Molecules, and Nymphs, among others. Current projects include a chapbook of poetry & photography inspired by Paris, and a novel based on the life of modernist writer Djuna Barnes.
Twitter: @BarnesElodie
www.elodiebarnes.weebly.com