Clara and Demeter

‘It’s the park in the rain with ducks…and black flowers’ added Clara as she sniffed and walked into another room. Her mother glanced at the white paper and was surprised to see curly flowers all entwined around a blotchy rectangle. The duck she asked herself?  Time was skimming over surfaces today and she found Clara’s heated ambition rather perplexing.  She was never sure of her replies. Demeter would have known what to say to the flattened duck in the flower bed. It was difficult without Demeter and easy too. He could come in and she could smile and be interested without feeling she was betraying something. Demeter had decided her mother was a lost cause with her neat rows of her placations and trips out and surprise gifts. He had more shirts than any man they knew. Rows of white and variations of white. Meetings are white occasions he would say.  Such a daring man Demeter after all. Clara handed her mother the metallically wrapped ice cream and looked meaningfully at her. I have chicken pox the look stated. I can eat what I want. And she was right: there was no opposition, just a swift chill to her fingers and there was the strawberry ice cream back in her daughter’s small hand and then she was gone. At least I don’t try to control and limit my children the woman thought and smiled brightly though no one was looking and she knew it.

John Townsend had spoken for thirty minutes to his colleagues and no one knew why. Sentences had no staying power and wound around phrases like the daisy chains on Amanda’s writing pad. Simon noted she was far too plump for that top again. But there they were being proactive and challenged and innovative and all he could do was glance at his neighbour’s large unpromising breasts and was glad he was once again the best suited human being in this part of Lancashire. The joys of a good deodorant too. He took out his veiled nibbed pen and perfectly inscribed a sentence in his diary.  He delighted in his daring. Who could read it and make a connection. No-one would because he was beyond interest. He was too polished and shiny to cast any shadow. The date was 6^th May. It was a sign of the complicity of the world that he could write this, on this day and get away with it. Ha. He underlined a word. How promising…..Mrs Terylene had something to say. He watched her pink mouth chewing through another list of Institute anchor words and hoped she would die on the way home beneath some Eastern European Lorry. But how many would come to her wake? More than him probably. He drew another line and finished with a beautifully oval dot.