When I got back to the farm last night there appeared to be a large triangular black figure with two points of burning flame on its head in the stone circle, and someone running from stone to stone. It was late. It had been a long day. I thought, do I go up and see what’s what? And then I thought, no, to hell with it. Leave them. I’ve been the keeper of these stones for almost thirty years. You name it, I’ve seen it dancing among them. There comes a moment when the strength and power of themselves has to be enough. Whoever those witchy Wiccan druid warlock sunset whirling summer pagans were, I hope they had fun. It could easily have been a trick of the light. It might well have been kids hanging their jacket on the central stone, torches precariously balanced, playing hide and seek.
I will never know because I turned for the house instead, dragging my bag that I’d already dragged from London to Oxford to Guildford, feeling for the key in The Secret Place, opening my laptop as soon as the cats were fed, locking in to GMP vs Djokovic at Roland Garros, hoping I hadn’t missed a titanic unseating having been watching it on my phone all the way from Reading via dodgy wifi, fist pumping in a carriage sweaty with packed to the jowls Sunday; tennis makes me forget my whereabouts. I become that person lost in AirPods and my own enormous world filled with the sound of thwacking ball and grunts, the tension as tight as the strings. GMP is a Frenchman and Djokovic wasn’t happy but he beat him anyway, a deflating in the 2nd set like a child who’s used up all their beans in the 1st, a hot headed youth who came roaring onto court but left with his racket hanging by his side and I crawled off to bed liking Novak even less than I had before, Kenny practically sitting on my head, so determined she was to recognise I was home.
That was Sunday, Oxford because I’d got tickets to see Gentle, Angry Women - the film by Barbara Santi about three young activists who trace the legacy of Greenham forty years on. A kooky little indie picture house, cool after the heat outside, Greenham banners tied badly which kept undoing themselves and slithering to the ground. Peggy Seeger was there looking stylish in pink. To the man handing out CND newsletters she said, I answer to ma’am or babe.” I liked that. I gave her a copy of Fallout. She was beautiful.
But how am I, that’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Okay, I’ll tell you. I was frustrated by the sense that I’ve written this book and they’ve made this film and I’ve been trying to link up and none of that crew seem to be interested. Which is typical of me because when I’m excited about something I can’t understand why the whole world isn’t excited about it too. And like GMP, I feel deflated in the 2nd set of the game of selling books having used up a lot of my beans in the 1st. It’s a deadly mindset to fall into, that I have an opponent across the net who is trying to defeat me. Framing the difficulty of getting public traction as a personal assault on my wants smells, as D would say, like home cooking. Power over a thing precious to me in the hands of untrustworthy others is my childhood all over again. I’ve been dogged by the familiar sensations of being obstructed, blocked, actively banned from my desires; oh look, power handed over. I am small and my life depends on people who don’t give a s**t about me. Who are unreliable. Who hold what is most precious to me and dangle it over a five story drop. Oh yes.
When I was a child, after the man in the basement had left, his insane wife who was our nanny dragged me out from behind my bedroom door where I’d been hiding, pushed me over the sill of the open window and hung me over that five story drop, legs dangling to the spiked iron railing far below. Those of you who’ve read my memoir know this scene, and what happened after, but a new little piece came to light recently in an email from a family member who remembered travelling to France that summer with my mum, the Citroën rushing along back roads heading south, my mother’s hands on the wheel. I don’t know why she keeps going on about it. These the words that were recalled, my mother saying them repeatedly. I don’t know why she keeps going on about it; she being me. I must have been in that car, somewhere at the back, probably lying on the suitcases. I wonder if I’d shut up about it by then.
It was this scene in our class on Voice this month that came back to me. The rushing of the road. The rushing of the wind through that open window. My mother’s hands a perfect fit on the wheel. The nanny’s hands a perfect fit on my waist. The scene a perfect fit over my present day. I am angry. I come roaring onto court. I am not gentle at all and yet, and yet; this is the work, the reframing. I have spent the week pulling that girl in from the window, telling her the threat is over. I am gentle with her. There is no demon. There comes a moment when the strength and power of myself has to be enough.
Eleanor
