December Flower

By Judy Allen

Etta’s husband George died, and if George could die anything could happen. Etta is overwhelmed with feelings of panic – unable to breathe, to think, to move. Wanting to run home, but there is no home any more, only a house. That’s when Etta decides to visit her last surviving relation, a woman she has never met. But Aunt M is bedridden and silent, cared for by a large, colourless housekeeper who treats the old woman as if she’s already dead. But Aunt M isn’t dead – and Etta is about to learn a new way to live.

December Flower was dramatized as a one-off television play, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Jean Simmons, Mona Washbourne and Bryan Forbes. Broadcast by Granada in the UK, it went out on PBS in the USA and won the Christopher Award, given to, among other categories, television specials that "affirm the highest values of the human spirit”.

“She [Allen] is marvellously fluent and unforced, she weaves an unseamed garment. Her story flows and it flows irresistibly. Her craftsmanship is unobtrusive, and impeccable.” Sunday Telegraph

“...the clarity and charity of December Flower is an island of quiet hard-won certainties.” The Guardian

• Language: English
• Publisher: Acorn Independent Press Ltd.
• Release date: Sep 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781909121829

Judy Allen

Judy Allen is the author of "Our Millie and other random musings. She lives in Central Ohio with her semi-retired husband, deaf Dalmatian and one-eyed cat. She has two grown daughters who live nearby. She liberally uses her extremely patient family's willingness to listen, read and critique the ideas that jump from her head and appear on paper. The Dalmatian can't hear the stories but is a comfort as he lies at her feet, and the Cat doesn't care as long as she gets petted and fed on schedule. Judy grew up an only child, on a farm in Southern Ohio. She learned to appreciate the love of the land and the beauty of nature. Chores had to be done and animals and crops attended in order to grow and thrive. The land could be hard and times could be lean but there was always the joy of life and the resiliency of her family, friends and neighbors. She is eternally thankful to Ohio University, Athen, Ohio for affording her opportunities in education and carrer that otherwise would not have been hers. They truly opened doors. She graduated with her BS ed, cum laude and taught special education classes on the elementary level before marrying her wonderful husband and raising her two lovely daughters. Judy has many interest including family, sports - Go Buckeyes and Bobcats - photography, animals, travel and observing life around her. She enjoys being the voice of Our Millie and bringing her to life for the amusement and entertainment of her readers. She would be happy to hear from you and can be reached through her links and by email at [e-mail].

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Reviews for December Flower

She [Allen] is marvellously fluent and unforced, she weaves an unseamed garment. Her story flows and it flows irresistibly. Her craftsmanship is unobtrusive, and impeccable.

Sunday Telegraph?

…the clarity and charity of December Flower is an island of quiet hard-won certainties.

The Guardian

Other Titles by Judy Allen

For younger readers

Eight titles in the Up The Garden Path Series (UK) Backyard Books (US) – Ladybird, Snail, Ant, Bee, Grasshopper, Dragonfly, Butterfly, Spider. Illustrated by Tudor Humphries

Picture Book: - The Catnapping Cat. Illustrated by Philip Giordano

Novels:- The Most Brilliant Trick Ever. Auntie Billie’s Greatest Adventure. Seven Weird Days at No 31. Five Weird Days at Aunt Carly’s. Three Weird Days and a Meteorite.

Non-fiction:- Dinosaurs. Whales and Dolphins. Frogs and Toads. Fantasy Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. What is a Wall, After All?

For Older Readers

Awaiting Developments*. Between the Moon and The Rock. Lord of the Dance*. Something Rare and Special. The Burning*. The Dream Thing. The Spring on the Mountain*. The Stones of the Moon*. Storm-Voice*. Watching.

For Adult Readers

Bag and Baggage. (December Flower*.) The Book of the Dragon (non-fiction.)

(* Indicates available as eBooks.)

Copyright ©Judy Allen, 1982

Frist published by Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd in 1982

Published by Acorn Independent Press Ltd, 2014.

The right of Judy Allen to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is sold subject to the condition it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise be circulated in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise without the publisher’s prior consent.

ISBN 978-1-909121-82-9

CONTENTS

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1

The train was full of muggers and rapists.

Etta hadn't realised she was as anxious as all that. It was only in her moments of extreme anxiety that the world put forth such hostile progeny.

The man sitting in the corner seat opposite her opened his slim sinister briefcase to extract a disembowelling knife. He found a copy of The Financial Times and took that out to read, instead. The man in the corner seat on the opposite side of the gangway sat slumped half sideways, mouth open, thin line of saliva working its glistening passage down one side of his chin, eyelids covering his eyes and hiding the lascivious thoughts he was arranging around her person. In one way Etta did not believe for a moment that her plump, forty-five year old body was likely to inspire ungovernable lust, any more than that her worn and discreet handbag was likely to provoke ungovernable greed. Nevertheless, the train was full of muggers and rapists.

And all because George had died. He had done it quietly, unexpectedly, discreetly and with a minimum of fuss. He had felt peculiar, called the doctor, been admitted to hospital, and ceased to function, all within a space of seven and a quarter hours. It had been the tidiest and least complicated event of his life, and yet the aftermath had almost overwhelmed Etta.

Despite her surprise at his sudden departure she had been adjusting quite well, really, for several hours, until, along with his other personal effects, the hospital had returned George's teeth. A mistake anyway, as it had turned out, since teeth were generally cremated in situ. Even then, unwrapping the manic plastic grin, Etta had been all right. But the sight of the teeth had reminded her that they had been working loose lately and that George had an appointment with the dentist on the following Tuesday, for a refit. 'That's awkward,' Etta had thought. 'How can they do the fitting now?' And had gone to pieces.

That had seemed to be the right expression. 'I'm sorry,' she had said sleepily to the doctor as he withdrew the needle from her arm. I just went to pieces.'

'Quite understandable,' the doctor had said, giving her a Valium prescription and his home number.

And so it was because George had died, a few months ago now, that she was sitting in a train on the way to the South Coast and Arn Tem, and it was because George had died that she was so unreasonably nervous of the journey and of the few left-over commuters who were sharing it with her. Not so much because ordinarily George would have travelled with her, as because if George could die anything could happen.

The train stopped. It stopped gradually but completely and the engine closed down. It was not yet dusk, but the light was less useful than it had been. In this mellow but grudging light Etta could see the grassy banks where the moon daisies were just beginning to flower and, beyond them, some sort of deciduous wood that admitted sufficient light to prove that it had some depth. The train was not in a station.

This was what she had been afraid of – almost to the point of believing she had made it happen. Onward movement was soothing but stopping was unnerving. What now? Why here?

Then – I shouldn't be so far from home on my own.

Shut up, thought Etta – shut up, shut up, shut up – shouting the words in her mind to drown out that evil, insidious thought – that thought that could open the door to all the nightmare feelings.

Perhaps, after all, the front of the train was in a station. Perhaps this was one of those country stations where you have to place yourself in exactly the right carriage for the luxury of a piece of the platform. She pressed the side of her head against the glass of the window, trying to see along the train. There was no sign of anything other than moon daisies and woodland, which should have been idyllic in the evening sun but which in fact looked as alien and hostile as a desert. Her mouth began to dry out and her palms to dampen – an inconvenient redistribution of moisture which seemed to Etta to be entirely impractical.

'You don't want to worry about panics,' had said the psychiatrist, who had clearly never met one head on in his life. 'It's purely the natural fight-and-flight mechanism overreacting, or being activated at the wrong time.' All right. But how were you supposed either to fight or flee with a mouth so dry you couldn't breathe if you ran, and hands so wet that any weapon would slip free and fall to the ground?

'I expect the slow train's delayed at Haslemere,' said the man opposite, lowering his Financial Times.

'Yes probably,' said Etta, who didn't know where Haslemere was.

'If it does get delayed we can't get into the station, because there's only one track each way,' said the man, leaning forward in quite a friendly fashion and bristling at her with his nostril hairs.

'Yes indeed,' said Etta, and leant back to study the moon daisies.

'Nice view, anyway,' said the man. Etta looked at his reflection which grew in the window as the light failed. He seemed to be about forty, suited and tied and respectable. The briefcase was still open, and a small pack of brand new Lego components was comfortingly visible. A mortgage, two children and a dog with a jokey name, Etta thought. A normal and ordinary man whose chat could take her mind off dangerous thoughts.

'Very nice,' she said, and the strange feelings awoken by the halt began to subside.

He, too, leant back and surveyed it more thoroughly. 'Although,' he said, 'what it really needs as a landscape is a really good dinosaur, wouldn't you say?'

'Ah,' said Etta, and the strange feelings began to reform and reappear.

'The world lost more than we realise with their passing,' he went on. 'The dinosaur had visual impact. Without him, the focal point is gone.'

Etta had not the smallest affinity with dinosaurs. As far as she was concerned, man had, with the greatest imaginable difficulty, struggled clear of the primeval undergrowth and built floors and walls of concrete to protect himself from pursuing tendrils. Even the gentle, domestic woodland beyond the train window was a degree too primitive for her. The trees had a modern, semi-cultivated look, but the growing shadows were made of the same stuff as the shadows at the beginning of the world. Whatever barriers were built, however many electric lights were switched on, the dark which bridged the two worlds would never be wholly conquered, and all the great, entwining, suffocating, shambling creatures of the ancient past might yet be able to cross the dark bridge if their memory was invoked with sufficient intensity. The last thing Etta needed was any kind of dinosaur.

'Do you suppose we'll be here long?' she said.

'Hard to tell.' He sighed. 'A rich primeval world has gone, you know,' he went, on, rather resentfully. 'Their memory is buried below the surface of our minds – just as their footprints are buried beneath the surface of the earth. As a matter of fact, there is a dinosaur in the landscape, but only a small one. A small, sad, vestige of one.'

Etta glanced at him, smiled, and looked away again. She felt unable to be rude but was hoping not to look sufficiently interested to reap any further information.

'You saw it,' said the man.

'No, I didn't,' said Etta, surprised into response.

'Oh yes. I watched your eyes follow its path.'

'No,’ said Etta quietly. 'I was watching a magpie.'

'Yes. The birds. The dinosaurs never became extinct, you know. They simply evolved, like the rest of us. Evolved into birds. You'll have seen the representations of archaeopteryx?'

'Ah,' said Etta.

'Where are you travelling to?' said the man unexpectedly.

'I 'm visiting someone,' said Etta cagily.

'I go to the end of the line,’ said the man, 'where I've left my car. It occurred to me that if you're going there, too, I could give you a lift to wherever you're staying.'

'Oh no, thank you,' said Etta, who was also going to the end of the line. 'I get off before. But thank you so much.'

'That's a shame, really,' said the man, 'because it's only rarely that I meet a kindred spirit. Most people make it very plain that they're bored by the whole concept of the dinosaur.'

What have I said or done, thought Etta, to indicate interest? If I appear to be showing interest, then how do people express their boredom? Do they, perhaps, beat at you with rolled newspapers, or do they simply walk away?

'Evolution, destroyer of dignity,' said the man vehemently. 'I should dearly like to see a Brontosaurus raise his noble head above the stricken elms.'

Etta sat quiet.

So did the man.

So did the train.

The world gave no indication of movement.

Within the universe there was only one area of discernible activity. It was centred in Etta's adrenal glands.

Sensing that he had disturbed her, although not how, the man leant forward, smiling rather horribly. 'Sorrow, eh?' he said.

How did he know? Did it show? Of course it showed. Would he ask why? What to say? Can't discuss private life. Why not? English is why not.

'Quite wrong, you know,' the man persisted.

Etta smiled wispily.

'One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy. It's so typical of the negative English temperament. Noticing that magpies are usually solitary birds, we create a rhyme that defies all natural laws. Just to make quite sure of depressing people. One for sorrow, indeed! One is good, one is god, one is the indivisible. Two is the number of the devil – the life-force divided against itself. Throughout mythology, the higher the number the more horrible the creature. The Hound of Hell has three heads, the Beast of Revelations has seven, the Hydra a hundred, or even a thousand.'

As if unnerved by the mention of the Hydra the train set up an urgent whirring sound and then began to move forwards, first hesitantly and then more confidently. The drooling sleeper in the opposite corner awoke with a jump and sat upright, frowning, the tension of his frown muscles raising two lumps high on his bald forehead. He looked as if he was trying to turn into a goat; with every chance of success.

('The one thing I can tell you,' the psychiatrist had said, 'is that you're not mad. Not even mentally unstable.')

Etta thought that she would very much like to leave this carriage and search the train for an empty one, but was unsure of how to excuse herself to the dinosaur man. She knew she could pretend she was going to the lavatory and then simply not come back, but had she truly needed to go to the lavatory she would still not have known how to excuse herself. At last the wish to leave transcended the embarrassment about doing it, and she gathered up her bag and began to drag at her case in the rack.

The dinosaur man got to his feet and took it down for her. 'Haslemere, eh?' he said.

‘Yes,’ said Etta.

She was almost at the back of the train so she struggled awkwardly up its length, against the swaying of the carriages, until she reached the front one, which was empty. Suppose the dinosaur man noticed that she didn't get out at Haslemere, where the train had just now stopped? Suppose he walked up it and found her? Suppose, most likely of all, they met again when they both got out at the end of the line? Oh why, thought Etta, did life have to be so complicated? Just a quick visit to the South Coast to see Arn Tem, that was simple enough, surely. She hunched into a corner with her case, for comfort, almost on her feet.

Not so simple, really. Inviting herself to stay with someone she had never met in her life and had little clear idea of. Arn Tem had never been spoken of in the family, which meant that the name cropped up often but was only ever accompanied by cryptic remarks. As a child Etta had visualised Arn Tem, for some reason, as a small Indian boy, not unlike the illustrations of Mowgli, seated on the head of an elephant which had pearl necklaces draped across its eyebrows. It was years before she discovered that M was her mother's sister, Mary, and that her mother and Aunt M had had some great row, never to be spoken of or healed. When her parents died in the car that her father misguidedly backed out of his garage into the path of a juggernaut, Etta was already married, and it occurred to her then to visit Aunt M, but somehow the impulse was not strong enough, and she just wrote a brief letter, passing on the news. There was no reply. A few minor panics came after her parents' death, but then there was George to run home to. When George died and the suffocating feelings of 'I must be at home' came thick and fast, there was all at once no home to be at, only a house. The psychiatrist had said that was a good thing. 'If you had somewhere to run to, you might run off and stay there,' he said. 'And then it could take us years to get you out again. As it is, you feel you have no particular haven so you'll be all right.'

Much he knew. 'You're cured,' he also said. 'You're fine. Goodbye. Do call in for a chat if you want to.' Cured. Well, certainly it was possible to live what they called a normal life – to see people and shop and keep oneself clean and tidy. But oh, the feelings that came, the ones he said didn't matter, the ones he said to ignore! Not fear, nothing so simple. But not being able to breathe or think properly or move – hideous, unfocused, mad feelings – what they must have called Possession years ago. A resident demon who slept a lot now, but who awoke unexpectedly from time to time to take command and who, once in command, threatened to destroy personality, sanity, existence. And all the time the thought – if I could get home I'd be all right. Then – I have no home. And the demon strengthened by that knowledge.

The times she felt all right far outnumbered the others, but they were not relaxing times because there was always the danger of awakening the demon and setting him to dance on the dark bridge between the rational world and the hideous, primitive world of dinosaurs and dragons. Still, it was during these all-right times that she had decided she must find a sanctuary, to hide from the feelings until they had forgotten her and she was well again. And Aunt M was all there was.

It had to be family, Etta felt, had to be the blood. Surely she and M would find some