A GENTLE MESSAGE

by Celia Micklefield 

 

My mother was the first child born to Florence and Michael O’Driscoll. They’d already chosen a name for her but a visiting nurse said the baby’s eyes reminded her of when she was a child on her father’s farm and had a pet calf with large, soft eyes like that. So my mother was nicknamed Molly and that’s how she was known from that day on. I must have been about ten years old before I learned Molly wasn’t her real name. I once asked her whether or not she minded being named after a heifer and she said,

“I’ve grown into Molly, don’t you think? Anyway, nobody knows my real name. They wouldn’t know who you were talking about. What’s the point in changing now?”

Molly inherited the O’Driscoll love of travel. News-bearers is the old meaning for the Irish name Ó hEidersceoil. In those days they must have had to travel on horseback or on foot to spread the news but Molly loved to travel just to find out what was there. From her early years she saved every penny in order to discover what was beyond that range of hills and what the town at the end of the train line looked like. She loved music, too and by the time I was old enough to travel with her we’d be off to see touring companies, especially when they might feature any of the performers who lodged with us when I was a girl. I have such happy memories of my childhood. Our house was always full of travel plans, music and Molly’s friends.

I never knew my Irish grandfather. He died when I was still a baby but I inherited the O’Driscoll preferences too. I grew to love opera and musical theatre. As for travel, to me, the journey is more exciting than the arrival. Like my mother, I love going to places just to see what’s there. If that journey coincides with a music festival I’m in seventh heaven. It’s strange how these preferences pass on through the generations but I don’t believe scientists have yet discovered how it happens. We know there’s a gene for blue eyes, for example, but is there one for the love of toe-tapping music?

When I was eleven Mum and I boarded a coach from West Yorkshire to London to go to the Palladium Theatre where my favourite pop star was performing. Mum queued with me afterwards at the stage door waiting for autographs and I remember that was the first time I’d ever felt gawky and embarrassed about wearing short, white ankle socks when all the other fans were proper teenagers who had on stiletto heels as high as their backcombed hair. There was a large crowd of them, all boisterous and excited at seeing their idol close up, face to face. I remember how Mum shielded me from their pushing and shoving to get past us to the front of the queue. She threw her arms around me and shouted at the other fans to behave themselves. I still miss those strong, protective arms. When she died she left a huge emptiness in my life.

💄

Forty years after that trip to London I’m sitting with a friend on another coach travelling to see a matinée musical show at The Palladium. My love of music has travelled with me through the years. I’ve seen all the West End shows. This revival of an old favourite is a must-see. If they needed an understudy I could probably march right up onto the stage and take over.

It’s a beautiful spring day. Everything looks fresh and green and May sunshine feels warm on the coach window. There’s all the promise of summer in the air and I’m feeling happy and excited. I’m looking forward to hearing some of my favourite musical theatre songs.

“Have you been to The Palladium before?” my friend Jan asks.

“Not for donkey’s years,” I say. I tell her about queuing for autographs when I was eleven. We reminisce a little about teenage years, pop stars of the time, the fashions we wore and the way we did our hair. We talk about Saturday jobs and first loves and I turn to look outside, my head full of images of that first visit, squashed in the queue at the stage door, my mother protecting me from those bigger, rowdier girls.

I wish you were still here, Mum.

I’m shocked at the thought. The words have shaped themselves in my mind. It’s as if I haven’t thought them. The sentiment simply arrives fully formed and I’ve had no say in it.

And the rest just follows.

So, show me where you’ve travelled to now, Mum. What’s it like at the end of the line? Is everything all right? Let me know. Send me a message. Today.

I’m sitting there, staring out the coach window, having a one-sided conversation with a ghost as the M1 rumbles past beneath me but I am passionately serious. I really mean it. I want a message from my mother who’s been dead for more than ten years. But I’m uncomfortable, too. To be honest, my solemnity is making me feel edgy. I’ve never done anything like this before. Never voiced my feelings about needing a message from beyond. I’ve always been sceptical about those things. But my thoughts are rushing on ahead of me.

Nothing too weird, Mum, I’m telling her. You know I’ll freak out if I see anything spooky. I’d like your message to be something more gentle, but something so obviously personal to us that it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.

My friend, Jan brings out the chocolate eclairs and taps me on the shoulder. I stop staring outside and take one. After the rattling of sweetie papers and exaggerated sighs of chocolatey pleasure, there’s a conversation about favourite musical shows but my thoughts keep slipping back to memories of my mother.

💄

The first thing Jan wants to do when we arrive in London is go into Liberty’s and treat herself. I’ve never been inside the store.

“Oh, you’ll love it,” Jan tells me and I follow on after her as she leads the way through the entrance and into the cosmetics department on the ground floor. The aroma is deliciously powdery. Very girly. Jan leads on through another doorway. I follow, catching her excitement at all the goodies on display.

My jaw drops. There’s a whole room dedicated to lipsticks. I’ve never seen so many. There are brand names I’ve never heard of and a fashionable throng of women inspecting testers and trying them out.

“You must be able to find something you want in here,” Jan says.

“Well, I suppose I could do with a new summer lipstick,” I agree.

Jan has a store shopping basket in her hand and is already dropping glossy packages into it. I make my way through the crowds over to the far wall and begin my search.

A nice, browny-pink for summer, I’m thinking. Nothing too loud. I play around with some testers but nothing hits the spot. I can’t find a texture I like. Some are too dry with a matte finish. It might be the fashion to have lips that look as if they’ve been painted with emulsion but it’s not for me. I can’t find the colour I want either. I move to another display and repeat the process. No luck. I move on again.

In this whole room full of lipsticks are you telling me there’s not one browny-pink?

There’s a display of lipsticks by another company whose name is unfamiliar to me but I like the gun metal colour of the packaging. I try one on my hand.

This is the one.

I can only just make out the product number. My reading glasses are at the bottom of my bag and I try scrabbling for them. I’ve brought my big bag and I’ve been meaning to give it a sort out but it’s full of stuff all in a muddle and my glasses have done a disappearing act. I can’t find them. Instead I screw up my eyes and look on the shelf above the testers to find the matching number. I find the right one and take it to the cash desk to pay. Jan is still shopping. She’s over the other side looking at lip gloss. I’m feeling pleased with my small purchase. Lipstick from Liberty’s. Very swish.

I might as well put some on.

The chocolate eclairs have put paid to the lipstick I started out with. Now I really need my glasses to see what I’m doing. My mother didn’t need to look in a mirror to put on her lipstick, I recall.

I know where my mouth is, she’d say and I’d watch as she drew on a perfect outline - top lip first, bottom lip afterwards. Then she’d press her lips together and come up looking like Hollywood. Try as I might, I never learned how to do it. I need a mirror and here in Liberty’s I need my glasses too. Miraculously, they’re the first things my fingers find, tucked in a corner of my bag almost hidden in the lining.

I slide the package from its paper bag. I take out the lipstick from its little box and turn it over to read the label on the bottom to see what the colour is called.

The back of my neck goes cold. There’s a shivering feeling running through my hair. My knees want to buckle. I put out my arm to steady myself against the cash counter. The room is spinning. My mouth has gone dry.

“Is everything all right, Madam?” a voice says. “Are you feeling ill?”

I can’t answer. I lean against the cash counter to stop myself from falling. There’s a small commotion around me. People are jostling. Their shapes are blurred and their voices are like white noise, not making any sense. Jan appears and takes my arm.

“Come on,” she says. “Hold on to me.”

I’m in a daze. It’s an effort to walk in a straight line. We go outside into the fresh air.

“You’ve gone ever so pale,” Jan says.

💄

There’s an Italian restaurant on Great Marlborough street and we go inside. I sink into a booth. My legs are still wobbly. We order strong coffee and a bottle of water. The water tastes sweet and cool. Jan hands me a tissue and I blow my nose. She waits a moment.

“Are you feeling better now?” she asks. “Your colour’s coming back a bit.”

“Thank you, yes.” I stir some sugar into my coffee and take a sip.

“What happened? Did you go faint? Is everything all right?”

“I’ve had a bit of a shock,” I say. My heart has stopped hammering so fast now and I can breathe properly. I tell Jan what I was thinking during the coach journey.

“You got a message from your mother?” she says. “How?”

I delve into my handbag and bring out the lipstick.

“She led you to a lipstick? I don’t understand.”

I show Jan the label on the bottom. She reads it but looks puzzled.

💄

Something must have got into my eyes inside the shop. Now I can see that the shade of lipstick I’ve just paid for isn’t anywhere near a colour I would normally choose. Instead of the browny-pink I’d set out to find I’ve bought a bluey lilac colour, one which doesn't suit me at all.

“I don’t get it,” Jan says. “The colour is called Iris.”

Iris.

My eyes are welling. I can feel my mouth stretch into a lopsided grin. This lipstick is the message I asked for. It is no coincidence. Iris is my mother’s real name. The one nobody else knows. It’s the gentlest message Molly could lead me to, soft and warm as a kiss.

***

A message from the author:

"A Gentle Message is one of the short stories in my second collection of shorter reads, Queer as Folk, available for Kindle and in paperback on Amazon. Although I haven’t explained to readers of the book, I feel I can share with Autumn Chickens that it is a true story. You might want to call it creative non-fiction but this really happened."

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Click on the book cover for a link to Celia's second collection of shorter reads

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