For the past month, I have been unable to write or create anything. I have sadly come to the conclusion I am no longer a viable caregiver. I get too embroiled in the physical and mental well-being of the person I am trying to help. I had become overwhelmed to a disastrous state. I feel guilty for not being able to work with a person, knowing they couldn’t control how they act, and angry that the person is also compounding their situation by their actions.
I had so much I needed to do at home: gather all my produce from the garden and preserve it in some form. Freezing the fruit and peppers, bagging cucumbers, sorting tomatoes to ripen naturally, making chutney with the green tomatoes, except for about half a dozen, which the latest frost ruined. I’ve been on constant patrol dealing with the torment of the moles and squirrels in my garden. Their continual digging and burying are the bane of my life.
Then, there was my writing; I was depressed by my lack of creativity. I wrote nothing new for The Blue Bottles Writing Studio or any new chapters for my second memoir. I managed only to watch TV in the evenings, read books late into the night and fall asleep. It was a sad state of affairs. But last night, as I trolled through volume III of short stories by Somerset Maugham, inspiration hit me.
I remembered a poem I had written while living in London in 1986 and found an old diary with notes about going back to college at thirty-five years and a neighbor from that year. The result is the story that follows. Our prompt for this week was a photo of a bottle of Irish whiskey called Writers’ Tears.
PETER A story by Elizabeth Jane Pryce
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Ireland was known for its whiskey and its famous novelists, poets and playwrights. W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and James Joyce, to name a few. It is likely that those writers gathered together in a Dublin public house to draw inspiration, shed their tears, celebrate their victories, and drink their favourite whisky: Writer’s Tears was created during this fabled and golden age of Ireland.
***
Sitting at the table placed in front of the window overlooking the garden, Sarah struggled with writing an essay on W. B. Yeats; he wasn’t a straightforward poet for her to understand. Tears welled in her eyes as she struggled to interpret the many critical opinions of his diverse and complex life and poetry. Sarah loved the research but needed to spend more hours in the library.
“I had a happy childhood, but I never learnt about the great poets and playwrights of Ireland,” she sighed.
Sarah wore a white wrap-a-round skirt and pink blouse and silver clips in her hair as reminders of her dear friend. She smiled, stopped writing, or at least trying to make sense of her scribbled notes, and stared out of the open window. The fragrance from the blossom of the apple tree in her garden wafted up to her nose. “Blissful,” she thought. “This room is my ivory tower.”
***
In the garden next door, Sarah sees her neighbour, Peter. He was originally from Latvia. Peter is holding a bottle and dancing barefoot, crushing the dandelions and daisies underfoot. “He must have been quite a distinguished man in his younger days. How life has worn him down.” Sarah thinks.
Sarah smiles as she looks down at Peter and sees what he is wearing: a spotless white shirt, baggy, stained trousers hanging loose and no shoes. “What a sight,” she thinks. “Peter is such a mixture of life. A juxtaposition! I love that word,” Sarah said aloud.
***
Peter is a man of middle height, middle-aged plus a few years, broad-shouldered, and with a ruddy complexion, not all to do with his drinking. His untidy hair is thick, dark, and greying at the temples.
At the outset of World War II, he was a boy in his teenage years. He had seen his mother, father and brothers murdered by the Russians, they were considered revolutionaries. He had been rescued by the Germans(fooled by the gift of coffee) and then sent to a labour camp. When he finally managed to escape, he made his way across Europe, arriving in England sometime in the late fall of 1945, starving and with only the tattered clothes on his back and no shoes. Within a few years, he had done well for himself. He had finished school and got a well-paying job and a home. He met the love of his life at a dance hall in Hastings and felt his cup was overflowing with happiness.
“I believed in God then,” Peter had said. “I courted Velga for a year before she agreed to marry me. We were happy for a while until she miscarried our first baby. Velga lost the second child as well, but our third, a daughter, lived. Sadly, my beautiful Velga was never the same again. She had died on the inside. I stayed with her and tried to love her, but it was never enough.”
***
Sarah had met Peter for the first time shortly after she had moved into the house in 1984 with her husband and children. Although she had not fully realized it at the time, Sarah had felt an edge of disaster, a dark shadow surrounding her when they moved. Three years later, she was dealing with a pending divorce and her mother’s death. The shadow lifted in the form of a dream—a flight of fancy. She was sinking into the ground with sorrow, when suddenly she became a big white bird, which soared straight up into the sky, where her wings opened, and she flew further. Sarah saw the dream as being a time for change. She remembered Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, which she’d watched in a small theatre in Camden with her friend Mark and loved the story. Its finale had shocked and left a lasting impression on her mind. The slamming shut of the wooden door. It was one life ending and another beginning.
Mark had encouraged her to return to school. He told her that his own mother was going back to school in Seattle and was loving the knowledge and academic life. Sarah embraced the idea. She bought a shiny red scooter at the local bike shop, along with a purple helmet, which she wore over an old black silk balaclava.
She exchanged her sensible middle-class clothes for a thick army parka, which she wore over her long, white wrap-around skirt, and her Italian leather stilettos for heavy-duty boots. She took the chance and enrolled in a program that gave her entrance to a London college for further education. Her friend was no longer around, but his energy had lit her soul, and she was determined to live her dream of studying and writing.
***
Putting her essay aside, Sarah calls down to Peter, “What are you doing? Where are your shoes?”
“Velga has hidden them from me. She is crazy today.”
Shaking her head sadly, Sarah asks, “How many today?”
Peter grins and almost falls over. “Three Jack Daniels and a bottle of rum!”
Sarah hears his wife screaming at him from inside the house. “What can I do to help?”
“Come down and talk to me. Tell me all will be well.”
***
Peter wanted her to meet his daughter and granddaughter. He took Sarah and her children to Hastings one day, where they had a picnic on the beach. But he never invited her into his home to meet Velga.
After the divorce, Sarah moved away to another part of town, and the connection between Peter and her was broken. Sarah became very involved in school. But she wrote a poem about that day. Her sufferings were the writers’ tears from working on an essay about Yeats and the golden age of Ireland. But Peter’s tears were of loneliness and Jack Daniels Whiskey.
PETER
Three floors up in an old London house
She watches from her window.
She wears white
Her hair was braided back with silver tiebacks,
The fragrant garden smells interrupt her work.
She is writing in the afternoon light.
Peter is alone in his garden.
He is dancing; alcohol his loving friend.
His wife is alone inside the house
She is suffering, too.
The young woman looks down and smiles,
“Peter, where are your shoes?”
He holds his hand in the air,
“She has taken them away.”
“Come down and be with me,
it is mad inside the house.”
The writer shakes her head sadly,
“How many today?”
He smiles,
Three Jack Daniels and a bottle of Brandy,”
Peter’s feet barely touch the ground,
He wears a spotless white shirt and stained pants.
A confusion of weeds and flowers
Are bent around his feet.
He picks a rose.
“For you, the angel in the window.”
From inside the house, a voice;
loud and raucous shouts,
“Leave that bitch alone. Get back inside.”
Peter laughs sadly.
The writer shrugs her head,
“What do you want me to do?”
“Come down and be with me,
It’s crazy inside.”
She appears at the garden fence,
Whispering, “Where are you?”
There is no answer.
Peter is asleep.
Sweet, drunken repose.