The spare bedroom in Granny’s old house. The wardrobe door creaks treacherously when eight year old Simon slowly opens it. An old coat of faded tartan with nostril-wrinkling odours. The mustiness of long dead moth larvae drying the back of his throat. Simon winces and pushes the coat back onto the metal rail, into the dark recess of the wardrobe. With an exasperating tinny clatter, the wire hanger drops to the floor, the coat spilling its shape into a flopped mockery of itself.
Simon lets out a little curse. Not a very bad word, but close enough to warrant a clip around the ear if heard by a grown-up.
Granny, lying cold and still in the parlour next door, will be buried tomorrow. He’d never really known her apart from whenever he was brought in to hospital to see the spindly, yellow-faced old woman. She’d always smiled kindly but whenever her mottled eyes swivelled to settle on him, Simon had always suspected she didn’t know who he even was. She’d had an enormous dark birthmark clawing its way malevolently across the left side of her face, threatening to devour her insipid eye which always frightened him. He used to climb onto his father’s lap so he could turn away and not look at her. Those haggard, gasping features had always made him so uncomfortable that he’d hoped he’d never be brought in to see her again. But every Thursday evening he’d be brought back in, wilting under the hideous smile of her distorted features.
Earlier today, there had been lots of tears. Now there is lots of laughter, song… and frequent silences. Now, he can hear the muffled voices of the grownups talking through the flower-papered walls of his grandmother’s spare bedroom. The dark spare bedroom, with its pervading air of sinister timelessness. Stained oak floorboards warped in their Victorian coldness, surrounding a thick carpet, suffocating in its own stagnant quilt of dust.
Simon is not afraid of this semi-darkness, which cannot be quenched by the woollen fringed lamp hanging from the stained ceiling.
No. It’s the loud sullen tick tock from the large clock on the mantlepiece, permeating his thoughts. Simple, naïve thoughts, like, why do old people have a mantlepiece in a bedroom?
But that clock… ticking, ticking. Louder and louder. Counting the seconds, the minutes, the hours to time’s impending death. Death is impending, but in this room, only in relation to the funereal heartbeat of the clock. Simon shudders inwardly, his sense of childhood being smothered by the foreboding tick… tock… tick… tock.
He lifts out the coat, studying the tartan design on what must have once been a gaily coloured tweed. Simon realises it was a little girl’s coat. Who could it have been? Surprised at a sudden rush of emotion, he holds it carefully, like a pup or kitten, and hugs it protectively to his young chest. He closes his eyes and wishes happiness and peace for the little girl who once wore this now moth-eaten old coat. He imagines her laughing excitedly, wearing her pretty little coat, buttoned up against the chill of Spring sunshine.
As he clutches the old coat, he becomes aware of a stiffness in the lining of a pocket. His fingers find a hole in the material and he carefully withdraws an old, sepia photograph.
A beautiful little girl, just as he’d imagined, smiling brightly for the camera, shining in what was clearly her new tartan coat. Even in this sepia photo, devoid of colour, he can see a rainbow in her presence.
The girl looks vaguely familiar, but in a way beyond his comprehension. She is reaching out to him, connecting on a level familiar but distant. Simon feels nurtured by her presence, warmed by her existence, however many decades ago the photo may have been taken. He closes his eyes. He feels safe and protected, knowing she will always be watching over him. He opens his eyes to look again at the photo, maybe find out who she is… or was. This little Spring flower whose shining eyes and smile light up the whole of this dark room in this dark house on what is such a dark day for the grownups.
But no. There is no similarity to anyone he knows. He pauses… and looks even closer. Still the beautiful face has no familiarity. Apart, that is, from the hint of a birthmark peeping out behind a dainty curl.
Holding the old coat, Simon walks into the parlour room full of adults, feeling the heat of cigarette smoke and whiskey fumes on his cheeks. Through gathering silence and surprised stares, he approaches the scrawny cadaver laid out on the parlour table. He takes hold of a skeletal wrist and places a gentle kiss on the cold forehead. After a minute of stunned silence around the room, Simon’s father gently asks, “Who owns the coat, Simon?’
Simon looks down at the coat he is clutching, blushes, and smiles affectionately.
‘I do… now.’
