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Last year I asked for up to 500 words on something new. This year it occurs to me that this is also the time of year when we look back. The topic is “something old”. Up to 500 of your finest however you wish.
‘Mirror, Mirror …
When I say my bathroom mirror is old you shouldn’t imagine some gilt-framed, spidery-silvered antique, for it is a bevelled-edged two-foot square of glass, bought in ~1969 and screwed at each corner onto the wall above the sink and opposite a window twelve inches larger in each direction.
In daylight, my image backlit and my glasses removed, it is my friend; each glance tells me I could pass for at least ten years younger. Only once, more than fifty years ago did it let me down: in our previous house, at right angles to the window and opposite the bath, two weeks after giving birth to my daughter, as I climbed out the bath, it presented me with a naked, malformed stranger.
Mirrors — or at least the mirrored version of oneself, have been much in my mind since reading Laura Cumming’s ‘A Face to the World: on Self-portraits’, which I bought after reading ‘Thunderclap’ her investigation into the life and times of seventeenth century Dutch artist Carel Fabritius, whose painting of a goldfinch, is, courtesy of Donna Tartt’s novel, better known than his name, for whom very little documentary evidence survives but who did leave two self-portraits (one wrongly ascribed for some time.) From there Cummings discussed Rembrandt’s often brutally honest self-portraits, recording the gradual changes inflicted by Life and the passing of years.
‘A Face to the World’ is prompted by the knowledge painters necessarily spent hours looking at themselves in mirrors. With insight, and her knowledge and experience of painting, Cummings examines and discusses themes such as ‘Secrets’, ‘Motive, means, and opportunity,’ along with ‘Stage fright’, Egotists’, Victims’ and ‘Falling apart’ as they relate to such as Velazquez, Seurat, Gentileschi and Tracey Emin.
I can’t lay claim to a life hard enough to have wrought much damage to my face, but I do admit, when facing another mirror in the house — infelicitously placed in the downstairs loo, too close to ignore — I have spent time manipulating my cheeks upwards, so as to lift the creases either side of my nose which render my expression bad-tempered, but I cease as soon as I remember the queasy, and possibly apocryphal tale, told by a lunch companion of watching Sellotape unpeel fromBarbara Cartland’s face and drop into her soup.)
[379 words]
Bathsheba
I strummed my guitar in the basement, Ol’ Man River by Bing Crosby cooed from the gramophone.
My wife heaped a mound of crimson pigment on the palette. “You need to lock the doors and latch the windows before you head to bed.”
If I got stuck locking the doors like at our crummy old place, it would take an hour of locking and re-locking, such were the tortures of suffering with OCD.
“No need to lock the doors,” I said. “Living in Bathsheba is like the good, old days.”
“Anything to justify the ton of money we dropped on this house, huh?”
“It’s not about the money, the realtor said out here is peace and tranquility. It’s like the good old days.”
“The realtor, that beacon of objectivity.” My wife rolled her eyes.
My fingers danced across my guitar’s nylon strings, and finally hit the rhythm of the Bing Crosby song. It would be ready for band practice the next night. At last.
My wife squeezed oil from a cloth onto the crimson pigment, mashed it with a spatula. “You need to toss some of your old books.”
“I’m not dumping my books.”
“You don’t read them anymore. Plus, we don’t have space. Almost a million dollars on this house and it can’t even hold a couple books.”
“We’re paying for the location, not the square footage.”
“And don’t I know it.”
If I was a lesser man, I would remind her that we agreed this basement was to be my sacred space. I would also remind her the scent of linseed oil she used in her paint agitated me.
“If you insist on not locking up the whole place, at least lock the back door. There’s no light out there,” said my wife.
There was a light, but it needed a new filament, no need to dump a good light bulb. I would fix it the next day.
She dusted her hands on her apron, a sign she would be heading to bed, and I would be left in peace with my Bing Crosby, my guitar, and my thoughts.
She said, “I’m sure there was a robbery around here.”
“No, that was Suttle Street. Out here is like those days when a village raised a child, when everybody knew your name, and locking a house was silly.”
“You need to learn to let go.”
And she needed to go to bed.
# #
The next day, I would explain to the police why my house, which had been broken into, was left unlocked. At least, the thieves left my Bing Crosby records.
Word Count: 430 words
An Old Face
“What became of Pinkbelt?”
“Oh God, do you remember him? Lurking in the dark places projecting his murky thoughts into the world. Wasn’t he the guy who wrote grisly scenes with hudreds of f-bombs?”
“Yes, that’s the guy. I heard he got signed and the fame we to his head.”
“No, my mate said he got a few rejections and gave up.”
“Sounds about right. Happens a lot.”
“Someone said he pops in here from time to time, just to check on old acquaintances.”
“Wow, stalker.”
“No, nothing like that. Just nostalgia.”
“Do you think he’ll ever write again?”
“Dunno. Maybe. What would you do after so long away? Gotta be tough to get back into it after all this time?”
“Ask him.”
“What?”
“Ask him. He’s right there.”
“Shut up. Where?”
“Over there. Surprise, surprise. Lurking in the corner.”
“Hey, Pinkbelt.”
The dark figure in the corner stands up and walks tentatively toward two familiar faces. A viper pit writhing in his belly. He stops before them and smiles.
“So, are you back then?”
He blinks, but says nothing. Old memories flood back in. He remembers the heartwarming stories. The weird and wonderful words portrayed by strangers who became friends and smiles again.
Less than 500 words
Cheers Pinks
Hi Pinks. Good to hear from you. Hope you stick around a bit longer, cease lurking and share a few words.
Well, what do you know? Three totally different old things.
Sandra, you brought a bit of Rembrandt’s brutal honesty in your piece. I’m not sure whether I was meant to but I chuckled along as I read this. It reminded me of the moment when I realised that my hands now resemble my own father’s as I remember them from years ago. It was an honest piece, and not too brutal in the end.
Alex, this had a wonderful inevitability to it. The atmosphere of his confident indolence contrasting with her sceptical resignation, is deliciously drawn.
Pinkbelt, this is a near perfect description of returning to an old place that was once important. That’s why you are my choice this month. I hope you stick around long enough to set and judge the February comp.
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