If my childhood could be bottled and brewed, leather and lace would be the leaves in my tea, and the malt in my beer. If my childhood could be worn, lace and leather would be the fragrance of my finest eau de toilette. Leather and lace have the incredible ability to turn the hands of time, squeeze life’s oranges to a pulp and concentrate youth’s best bits into a glass or two of juice. Every sip is a capsule from the past - do you remember slipping on sun dried socks on washed feet, or sniffing cherry blossom shoe polish on shiny leather shoes. The taste of burnt sugar and banana flavoured medicine. I certainly do. As the years roll by, time starts to become the mind’s worst enemy. Memories burn away slowly from around the edges, until all that’s left is a camera without film; a photograph without a negative. Here I sit, writing by lamplight, as the Orient Express journeys through day and night and sunshine and showers. My journey from limbo to enlightenment will be a much harder feat than the one I am battling to overcome right now. Travel sickness and insomnia all have cures. Heartbreak doesn’t. Once the china pot is broken, no glue can fully mend the cracks from the fall. The pieces can, of course, be stuck together, but beauty is a state of the irreversible. Once it is lost, it will never return. It makes you wonder about the mercies you are spared every once in a while are really mercies at all. One day, age will bless you with a new – born wisdom, and you will realise that their reason for existing is only to inflict pain you would never have suffered if life hadn’t been so generous.
Leather and lace. They were never meant to be this complicated.
Our carriage window is open; the evening air is infused with meadowsweet and the bitter notes of burning coal. The smell is strangely therapeutic and every sharp intake of breath quells the nausea burrowing deep down in my stomach. I walk to the open window and poke my head out just enough to let the wind caress my face. Its slender fingers massage my cheeks and iron out the stress lines too many sleepless nights had scrawled underneath my eyes and forehead. Minutes are eaten away, yet the sand in the hourglass has surpassed the pull of gravity. Another of life’s short – lived mercies. A chain of pictures run past my eyes, not one identical to the other. Each one whispers a thousand different words to me. The sky is less complicated, and has only one question to ask. I however demand many answers to which the sky is forever silenced to expose. I just stand, watch and wonder, while I let the inevitable play out in front of me. I would consider this to be one of my greatest achievements if it was anyone other than Mother Nature drawing the curtains for the night. The splashes of orange in the sky begin to fade. A sea of black engulfs them. Midnight is arriving. I hail its welcome by slipping on a cardigan over my silk nightdress. Despite this extra layer, the raw winds cause a surge of goose bumps to blossom on my arms and neck. I slowly pull down the window, trying hard not to make a noise that could wake Benjamin. It would be against my last wishes to die in the presence of the living. I stare at his eyes. I can’t see his soul, but I can read his mind. Benjamin hasn’t yet said his first word. Words are worth little. His eyelids are glued together, almost as if he is making a wish. Some might call me selfish as I smother his face with my pillow. I would call it entitling my baby to what he deserves – and that is freedom. Mothers are meant to protect their children. One sip of liqueur from the goblet will only kindle a dislike towards the plentiful jug of innocence. I open the carriage door, pick my dead son up and hold him in my arms. Together. That is how we belong. Heaven. That is where.
Leather and lace. They were never meant to be this complicated.
