05 - Where There is Love, There is Pain

Funny Games We Used to Play, a serial novel

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann via Unsplash

This is Chapter Five of the serial novel, Funny Games We Used to Play. To start at chapter one, head HERE.

Alan sat on the front porch of the small, single-story cottage holding a fogging mug of pitch black coffee, his hands so old they were etched with gorges, honest-to-God ravines that wound around his fingers and dipped around his knuckles and traversed his palm. His skin was somehow both tan and translucent, holding stories the same way the small spiderweb cracks spread under the glaze of the mug. His teak rocking chair had once been well-oiled to a cinnamon brown, but this previous winter it had faded to a granite gray, and he had let it fade, because the end was near.

Behind his cottage, the entire 200-acre estate stretched up the hillside: first, the barns and sheds, crumbling and fading in a beautiful and orderly fashion; next, the immense mapped out gardens with their paths, hedgerows, fountains, and the labyrinth he had walked a thousand times; beyond that, towards the top of the hill, Lion’s Head, which was the manor house, all stone and ivy, glinting glass with iron mullions; and, last of all, cresting the hill above the mansion, the wild forest, stretching on for miles, and you could never tell if the mansion was part of the forest or the forest part of the mansion.

As caretaker of the estate, Alan’s concerns were many: there was a lamb that hadn’t been taken in by its mother and must now be handfed; the hedge on the main lane up the hill needed to be trimmed back, the Old Woman’s fleet of cars she never drove needed tuning up. There were fallen trees to be cleared and split into firewood, touch-up paint on the doors and frames, filling in potholes on the long lane, and repairing the livestock fences. There was the maintenance of the walking paths through the woods, and restoring the old stone wall that lined the far north of the property, deep in the woods. He marveled at how those heavy stones had a mind of their own, taking a step this way or that when no one was watching.

There were decades past when he led an entire staff of groundskeepers, but now, in these latter days, he was the only one. Even with help, he had never unearthed the end of his to-do list. But on that morning, as the western sky took on a light blue and the sun threatened to rise above the tree-lined lane, there was only one thought at the forefront of Alan’s mind.

It's finally time.

What he felt the most, in that moment, with the sun rising over the field, was an enormous sense of hope. So many years, and here he was, this day. He kept looking around and making this small sound, like a whispered, “Huh,” sometimes even with his mouth closed so that the air burst through his nose, and he shook his head again, and he marveled at how long the years had been, and how quickly time had passed.

Because that particular morning, June 18^th, 2015, had always been arriving, always approaching. Some would argue the long and meandering chain of events that led to that moment, with Alan drinking his steaming mug of coffee on the front porch of his small cottage, had begun when the Old Woman of the manor had been born on the other side of the Atlantic, back in 1928, before the war. Others who knew the situation would say, no, it had all truly sprung to life in 1940, when she was shipped off to the countryside, or perhaps in 1949, when she lost her family. Or perhaps in 1955, when she married Charles Isa. Or thirty-five years later, in 1990, when her daughter Lucy died giving birth to the Old Woman’s granddaughter, named Jaida by Charles.

What makes up a beginning?

He took a deep breath and stood, his old muscles and bones creaking and popping, and he walked back through the open door, into the kitchen, where he deliberately washed out his mug and placed it upside down in the drying rack. Through the window he saw thunderclouds, off in the distance. Towering, like a distant army. There would be no beautiful sunset. A storm was coming.

Alan walked back outside, around the house, and down the stone lane towards the entrance of the estate, the morning growing warmer, sweat gathering under his buttoned-down work shirt. The hedgerows lining that section of the drive rose high on either side of him, higher than a man could see over, but just beyond them to the left, up the hill a bit, he could hear the lambs bleating and playing and stumbling. Once past the hedgerow, he slipped into the dark sheep barn and stood there for a time, his hands on the smooth top of the gate, looking at the sheep as they began eating, their jaws rotating, lambs butting their heads up under their mothers’ bellies, pumping their heads, short tails spinning at light speed.

The morning eased further into light. Nearing 6 a.m., he left the barn and continued on further down the lane to where two cottages sat side by side, small houses that had not been occupied by renters in at least nine years, since Charles had died. The Old Woman’s husband. Charles had always seen to things like that, or, more likely, put other men in charge of seeing to those things—renting and charging and collecting. The Old Woman had no interest in such things, and so after Charles was gone, she stopped renting out the cottages, perhaps even forgetting the two small buildings existed. She hadn’t come down the hill in three or four years. But Alan maintained the old places of the estate, including the two cottages, which he affectionately referred to as #1 and #2 Lion’s Head.

Where the barns ended and the cottages began there was a small entry, barely wide enough for a car to drive through, and it led into a courtyard surrounded by more barns, mostly for storage. Alan entered the courtyard, simply making his regular morning rounds, when he saw it.

The lamb he had been caring for, the one rejected by its mother.

It lay on its side, as if sleeping, but all around it a sticky darkness clung to the cobblestones. He sighed and walked over to it, crouched there in the morning, lifted its tiny, light head. That velvet nose was flecked with the tiniest bits of blood. Most of its midsection had been torn away. It was still warm—Alan realized his approach likely frightened the predator away, but he still glanced around. Tracks in the mud, too big for a fox.

He sighed again. Life and death on the estate, the natural order of things, and yet something about that little lamb lying there in its own blood sent such an ache through him. He picked up what was left of it and carried it into one of the barns, placed it on a high table. He would wrap it later and bury it deep in the woods.

That’s when he heard something unusual, a sound so foreign to that property that he stopped and gave it his full attention, the way a deer might freeze in place when it hears the rustling of leaves in the distance. It was the crunching and rattling of a car slowly moving down the stone lane, towards the cottages.

Alan moved over behind one of the shed doors, peering through the crack, a shaft of light falling across his face, and he waited. A white Mercedes rolled tenderly into the courtyard and stopped. Even the car looked lost.

A beautiful young woman stood up out of the sleek machine and stretched, taking some minutes to look around. Alan could feel the thirst in her gaze, as if trying to consume everything she saw, to take it into herself, to absorb it. He was close enough to see that her eyes were misting up, close to tears, and that she kept squeezing each of her hands with the other, because they were trembling.

Miss Jaida, Alan whispered, shaking his head. Because while he had been waiting for this day for a long time, and while he knew many of the things that were about to happen, Miss Jaida’s arrival was completely unexpected.

She was glossy and bronzed, her dark hair shining. Alan couldn’t remember her being at Lion’s Head since her falling out with the Old Woman. Her grandmother. And when was the last time she’d been there at the bottom of the hill, among the barns, so close to the animals and the cottages? She had come down often, when she was a child on adventures with grass stains on her knees and leaves tangled in her hair. But as a teen, a girl growing up, finding her way, she had abandoned the quiet edges of the estate.

Jaida popped the trunk and stared inside. Alan could see the red suitcase shining against the black interior, but she decided against taking it out, closed the trunk, trying to do so covertly. She looked around again, this time with the air of someone who was somewhere they were not supposed to be. Or at least not expected to be.

“Jaida,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t expecting you today.”

He had tried to enter into her morning gently, but she still spun around and let out a muffled scream.

“Alan!” she said, exasperated yet with a deep fondness. Her voice reminded him of so many firsts: giving her a lamb to hold; showing her the robin’s nest in the nook above his front door; sitting up in the tree branches and watching a doe and fawn move silently below them.

“Jaida,” he said her name again. “Why are you here?”

She looked confused. “Why am I here?”

He sighed. “I guess you heard?”

She shrugged. “Grandfather may be dead, but his network of spies is alive and well.” She laughed.

“Does everyone know?”

She waved her hand at Alan, as if she could dismiss his concerns so easily. “Only those who matter.”

The two of them stood there in the early morning. The smell of the animals, the sound of birds, the light gathering around them and gently tucking the shadows away. Finally she spoke again, this time timid, unlike herself, almost shy.

“Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“She’s…dying?”

Alan cleared his throat and looked down at the cobblestone, kicking absently. “She’s not well.”

“How long…” She didn’t seem able to finish the sentence.

“Any day.” Alan looked up discreetly, wondering how she would take it. “Any hour.” She made a small sound, like a hiccup. It could have been a sob or a tiny laugh.

“I heard it was bad. That’s why I came.”

“Because it’s bad?”

“Because…I still have questions. It’s been a long time.”

“When was it? The last time you were here?” He tried not to sound vindictive or judgmental, but there really was no other way of asking.

Her mouth flattened. “Twelve years. Or so.”

“We’ve missed you,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets, his eyes finding hers. Her face softened.

“I missed you, Alan. And grandmother. I really have.”

“Why didn’t you come back sooner?”

She paused. “You know how we left it. She said horrible things, Alan.”

“And you?”

She sighed. “Yes. I said things.”

The sound of lambs bleating mingled with another gust of wind in the trees.

“Should I walk you up to the house? It’s early. She’s probably still asleep.”

Jaida paused. “That’s okay. I’d like to wander around a bit.”

Alan nodded, but made no move to go.

“Do you think she’ll be happy to see me?”

“Of course,” he said, unconvincingly. “Of course she will. Won’t want you to know it, though.”

She smiled, a smile that turned into a laugh, and it was that laugh that opened him up. Maybe it was good she had come back in time for the end. Who could tell? Maybe her being there would help bring everything back around to how it had always been meant to be.

Still. He’d need to keep an eye on her.

“Do you remember all those stories she used to tell me, Alan? The ones about her childhood?”

Her question caught even him off guard. He nodded.

“I believed them for a long time. I believed they were real.” Jaida’s voice trailed off. A breeze blew through the courtyard, and the tree branches around them swished together, and the hedgerow rustled.

“Yes?” Alan asked. Where was she going with this? In her eyes he could see the little girl who used to run Lion’s Head, back when there were more people on staff, when there were parties. She would sneak from her room, still in her purple pajamas, and Alan would find her and take her to the kitchen for a midnight snack. And how many times had he stumbled in on the Old Woman telling Jaida a story in the gardens, the little girl’s eyes alive with whimsy and the longing for fantastical things?

She put her sunglasses back on. “Well, we all grow up, don’t we.” Her voice had a hard edge to it, and Alan wondered where it had come from. He wished she hadn’t come home. She shouldn’t be there. He knew this, in that moment. Her presence would not make it any easier, what must happen.

“I can walk you up, if you like,” he offered again, but she shook her head, a series of quick jerks.

“I’m okay. I’d like to wander.”

Jaida walked up to Alan, paused, and for a moment he wondered if she was going to reach for his hand or lean in to hug him, but then she shuffled her feet awkwardly and kept walking, left her car in the courtyard and headed in the direction of Alan’s cottage. But beyond the barns, before she got to his place at the very end, she turned right through a gap in the hedge and went up the hill towards Lion’s Head. He followed to the corner of the barn and watched her move in and out of view, behind shrubs and along pathways, stopping a few times to take in the flowers. Maybe she had changed. Maybe she noticed things now, things outside of herself.

He watched her all the way to the manor, all those hundreds of feet up the hill until she was a tiny figure against the great gray stone of the house and the dark backdrop of the forest above it. He could just about feel her breathlessness, both at the long uphill walk and also at finding herself at the base of that three-story, stone manor, suddenly so small. Or maybe it was in the proximity she found herself to the Old Woman. That could also leave one feeling breathless and uncertain.

He sighed and went back to his cottage, stopping at the corner and drawing a small, narrow pruner from his pocket. He squatted down beside a tiny rose bush, a solitary plant growing alone in an unfinished bed that lined the side of his house. There were thirty-seven rose bushes in the gardens on the hillside, the official Lion’s Head gardens, and when they were all in bloom, especially after Charles died, the Old Woman would stand at the back patio doors and take them in.

But of all the rose bushes on Lion’s Head, it was this lonesome plant bearing one unopened rose bud that captured Alan’s attention, his devotion. He whispered the Old Woman’s name to himself, her entire name, the name she had as a child, and it was almost like a prayer. Then he reached forward and clipped off a bit of dead, brown stem rising close to the ground. With his calloused index finger, he gently felt one of the thorns.

“Ubi amor, ibi dolor,” he whispered to himself. Where there is love, there is pain.