Tuesday 30 October 2012
49 Minutes.....
Her name is Charlotte Grace.
Have you seen her Thomas?
An impatient little girl she is, always running, running, chasing rainbows, catching them! A clever girl, a mischievous girl, pirouetting through the refracted crystals, swooping and diving among the colours, singing, giggling, chattering.
A noisebox, just like you!
Can you hear her?
Sometimes you can catch a flash of her, the essence of her, in the rainbow's sweeping arch across the skies, in the sparkling dew of a summer morning, in the twinkle of the brightest stars.
But only if you pretend you're not looking.
You can hear her tinkling voice (such a chatterbox!) in the birds' evening chorus, in the babble of a sunlit brook, in the frittering of leaves on a silver birch...
But only if you pretend you're not listening.
She's a flighty one, she is! Swift of foot and as cheeky as a sprite, you'll never, ever, pin her down, never quite catch her - this busy, busy girl with moonbeams at her heels.
Little Charlotte, who wouldn't wait, who couldn't wait....
Forty nine minutes she stayed. No time at all - yet time enough for a girl to make her mark, to change everything.
A tiny child, of hope, of dreams, of love. A masterpiece. Perfection.
Peaceful, serene she remained, even as the world around her convulsed, contorted, spun, wheeled and turned in on itself.
And then... placed gently in her mother's arms.
And all was still......and in the quiet, in the calm, they took their little girl back to themselves again.
Dressed in pink cotton and wrapped in a blanket, and snuggled alongside her a yellow teddy bear - small, yet so big next to her tiny frame.
They loved her, wondered at her, stroked her feet, traced her button nose, her rosebud lips, caressed her miniature nails, her hair dark on snow-white skin.
They absorbed her, enveloped her, smelled her. Their baby girl. And it was so right and it was so wrong and it was desolate and utterly cruel. Yet she was there, so it was truly beautiful.
They felt blessed and cheated and desolate but above all they felt love, such love Thomas.
And their love spun like a thread around her, the warps and the wefts, an invisible blanket cocooning her – and them – forever.
And sometimes when they think they can’t remember her, when her mother wonders whether she imagined those firm little kicks, she reveals herself. A gentle breeze blowing the crowns of the tallest trees: ‘it really happened’ she says. And she is there, playing peek-a-boo, a blink away, above, below, all around, swinging, swinging, throwing her legs into the air, back and forth, crooning made-up songs, higher and higher.
Oh she has taught them so much and they know her well. She is a girly girl, a daddy's girl too. The two of them, conspirators, mischief makers, secret keepers! They know this. She is a happy girl, a laughing girl, a skipping girl, light of foot with the cheekiness of a sprite. A mischievous girl, a poppet in pink pyjamas.
Little Charlotte Grace...you left such a big legacy for such a little girl. And what lessons you have taught! How to love with a fierceness that consumes all, how that love endures, how a heart really can be broken but how it can start to mend itself too, though never quite losing the hairline cracks that will forever remain.
How it is the very worst. But how willingly the pain is borne for the blessing of having had you at all, for being you, for being theirs now and always.
49 minutes...but forever.
xxxx
- Published for and with the permission of Claire and Steve in memory of their darling daughter Charlotte Grace to commemorate Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.
- http://www.uk-sands.org/
Saturday 20 October 2012
The Firing Range
You would never find it...unless you knew it was there.
You couldn't merely happen upon it, hidden away as it is between apartment blocks and office buildings, a stone's throw from a noisy ring road, in the shadow of a huge concrete radio tower.
It is city modernity at its most unremarkable. Urban sprawl at its most anonymous. Shoppers with their trolleys head for busy high streets, commuters in their suits come and go but today, a Saturday, it is more or less deserted.
A small sign points the way down a cobbled lane, to unattractive iron gates leading into an enclosure boarded by mature trees, yellow and orange in their autumn finery. Walk down the path and a grassy clay embankment looms oddly, unnaturally on one side, taller and taller until it towers above us.
How could we have guessed the significance of it.
It is peaceful here, in the Enclos des Fusilles. There is no one about. The rain falls heavily, drearily; the wind sways the cedars, there are long-tailed tits bickering in a conifer and there is a sharp 'scaach' from a jay flying overhead.
Stand still. Listen. But no. There is nothing. There are no echoes. Just the wind, the birds and the cold and the rain driving, seeping in, soaking. Everything is sodden, dripping, the path mushy with fallen leaves.
Three hundred and sixty five graves rise from flat mud. Some are the resting places of souls unknown, most bear a name and a few carry a photograph - a face staring from history, unsmiling, solemn - as if the owner knew what was to come.
There's Arthur with his jauntily angled trilby, Lucien, with a mop of black hair, dark-rimmed spectacles, an open-necked shirt, very young; Georges, smart in his buttoned shirt and tie; there's Ernest, who looks older than the others, and quite distinguished; Marcel in his uniform with smart Leo Di-Caprio slicked back hair, there's another Arthur, a doctor and member of the Belgian Red Cross.
Walk slowly. Meet them all. There's the thrum of a generator coming from somewhere behind the trees. A robin trills its lilting song and a nattered wren dives in and out of the smart, clipped bushes lining the paths. Crows swoop on each other, their calls harsh and loud.
There's Alexandre in a striped tie, Rene in a beret, there's Theodore with bushy eyebrows, a thick head of dark hair, scowling. There is Mathias, a handsome young man who stares, stiffly, in his smart uniform. The rain forms droplets on the clear glass over his picture blurring his image. How must it have been for him? How must it have been for all of them.
There are so many. There is Armund, Jean, Frederic. There's Moritz and Robert. There's Gustav, there's Andre, there's Guillaume, Emile, Rudolph, Fernand, Louis, Nicolas, Jules. There's Pieter, Denis, Armand, Hubert, Adriaan, Gaston. And there are women here too, Ghislain, Desire and Sara.
There are tributes, memorial plaques placed by loved ones: 'to my father', 'for my brother', 'from friends and colleagues at the bank', 'to my husband', 'to our son'. There is one from 'Mariette': 'Dear Papa, your little girl weeps but she is so proud of you'.
They died in war, these sons and daughters, but not on any front, in any trench or under bombardment from the skies. Not for them the fire step, the whistle, the going over the top, the mud and the blood and the shells. A cleaner death, then. A polished, efficient death. A termination. A firing squad.
Ordinary, ordinary, extraordinary people.
Heroes of the resistance from WWI and from the Comet Line resistance movement of WW2 who refused to be cowed by an invading army, who sheltered allied soldiers, gave them food, water and stole them away to freedom. Who saved the lives of so many and paid for it with their own.
How convenient a spot this turned out to be for the German commandants. A ready-made rifle range previously used as a training area by the Belgian Military. Perfect as a site of execution - the towering embankment already there, a perfect earthen backstop for high-powered rifle bullets.
It is a stop-start progress to the spot. It must be. Each grave should be noted, should be attended to. Each one demands a pause, a moment; we read the names aloud under our breath, quiet tributes briskly snatched by the wind.
Then we come to a great stone slab, embedded in the grassy mound that was raised to ingest screaming bullets. It is marked with the names of 35 resistance fighters executed here.
Fourth from the top is 'Cavell E.' the British nurse. E for Edith. A woman who saved the lives of soldiers from all sides without distinction and helped some 200 Allied soldiers escape. Court-martialled, found guilty of treason, she met her end here on October 12, 1915 at 6am. Four Belgian men died with her.
What should one expect to feel, standing here, where she and others stood? What should one be expected to do other than pause, trace a finger across her name. Long, long ago now - but in the vast yawning of countless eras, it is no time at all.
The rain falls relentlessly and spats on the mud, and there is nothing to be done except stand for a while listening for unwanted echoes. But then there's a sound, a snuffle and a strangled growl. A huge dog appears and quickly afterwards, hanging on to its long lead, an old man.
He says 'bonjour' and, calling his heaving dog to heel, asks us whether we know the history of the site. I explain that we do, especially because we know of Edith Cavell, and he says 'Ah Madame Cavell..'. He talks rapidly and I cannot slow him down but he is impassioned.
He refers to the sobbing, weeping relief of the Liberation and at one point speaks of the English and the Americans as good friends. Of Belgium, I assume he means. But the Germans? He blows through his lips and tosses his head in a dismissive gesture. A long-dead past still very much alive and reeling in this old man's heart. How little we who live on our islands protected by sea can comprehend the terrors of an occupation.
A few more moments, both palms rested against the memorial stone. Then, stepping along the foot of the mound, skirting around it we walk back up the path. As we leave, a car stops and two faces stare out. A man and woman. They wind down the window, and he asks in Flemish, then English, if this is the place.
It is, I tell them. It is the place. They had been searching for some time. They are carrying flowers. It is good that you're here now, I tell them.
All should try to pass this way at some point. Read the names, see the faces. Be thankful, grateful, humbled.
It is a place of resting heroes, a place that recalls human spirit at its greatest.
In war it was a place of horrors. Now it is a place of peace.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_line
* http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclos_des_fusill%C3%A9s_(Bruxelles)
* http://www.edithcavell.org.uk/
You couldn't merely happen upon it, hidden away as it is between apartment blocks and office buildings, a stone's throw from a noisy ring road, in the shadow of a huge concrete radio tower.
It is city modernity at its most unremarkable. Urban sprawl at its most anonymous. Shoppers with their trolleys head for busy high streets, commuters in their suits come and go but today, a Saturday, it is more or less deserted.
How could we have guessed the significance of it.
It is peaceful here, in the Enclos des Fusilles. There is no one about. The rain falls heavily, drearily; the wind sways the cedars, there are long-tailed tits bickering in a conifer and there is a sharp 'scaach' from a jay flying overhead.
Stand still. Listen. But no. There is nothing. There are no echoes. Just the wind, the birds and the cold and the rain driving, seeping in, soaking. Everything is sodden, dripping, the path mushy with fallen leaves.
There's Arthur with his jauntily angled trilby, Lucien, with a mop of black hair, dark-rimmed spectacles, an open-necked shirt, very young; Georges, smart in his buttoned shirt and tie; there's Ernest, who looks older than the others, and quite distinguished; Marcel in his uniform with smart Leo Di-Caprio slicked back hair, there's another Arthur, a doctor and member of the Belgian Red Cross.
Walk slowly. Meet them all. There's the thrum of a generator coming from somewhere behind the trees. A robin trills its lilting song and a nattered wren dives in and out of the smart, clipped bushes lining the paths. Crows swoop on each other, their calls harsh and loud.
There's Alexandre in a striped tie, Rene in a beret, there's Theodore with bushy eyebrows, a thick head of dark hair, scowling. There is Mathias, a handsome young man who stares, stiffly, in his smart uniform. The rain forms droplets on the clear glass over his picture blurring his image. How must it have been for him? How must it have been for all of them.
There are so many. There is Armund, Jean, Frederic. There's Moritz and Robert. There's Gustav, there's Andre, there's Guillaume, Emile, Rudolph, Fernand, Louis, Nicolas, Jules. There's Pieter, Denis, Armand, Hubert, Adriaan, Gaston. And there are women here too, Ghislain, Desire and Sara.
They died in war, these sons and daughters, but not on any front, in any trench or under bombardment from the skies. Not for them the fire step, the whistle, the going over the top, the mud and the blood and the shells. A cleaner death, then. A polished, efficient death. A termination. A firing squad.
How convenient a spot this turned out to be for the German commandants. A ready-made rifle range previously used as a training area by the Belgian Military. Perfect as a site of execution - the towering embankment already there, a perfect earthen backstop for high-powered rifle bullets.It is a stop-start progress to the spot. It must be. Each grave should be noted, should be attended to. Each one demands a pause, a moment; we read the names aloud under our breath, quiet tributes briskly snatched by the wind.
Then we come to a great stone slab, embedded in the grassy mound that was raised to ingest screaming bullets. It is marked with the names of 35 resistance fighters executed here.
What should one expect to feel, standing here, where she and others stood? What should one be expected to do other than pause, trace a finger across her name. Long, long ago now - but in the vast yawning of countless eras, it is no time at all.
The rain falls relentlessly and spats on the mud, and there is nothing to be done except stand for a while listening for unwanted echoes. But then there's a sound, a snuffle and a strangled growl. A huge dog appears and quickly afterwards, hanging on to its long lead, an old man.
He says 'bonjour' and, calling his heaving dog to heel, asks us whether we know the history of the site. I explain that we do, especially because we know of Edith Cavell, and he says 'Ah Madame Cavell..'. He talks rapidly and I cannot slow him down but he is impassioned.
He refers to the sobbing, weeping relief of the Liberation and at one point speaks of the English and the Americans as good friends. Of Belgium, I assume he means. But the Germans? He blows through his lips and tosses his head in a dismissive gesture. A long-dead past still very much alive and reeling in this old man's heart. How little we who live on our islands protected by sea can comprehend the terrors of an occupation.A few more moments, both palms rested against the memorial stone. Then, stepping along the foot of the mound, skirting around it we walk back up the path. As we leave, a car stops and two faces stare out. A man and woman. They wind down the window, and he asks in Flemish, then English, if this is the place.
It is, I tell them. It is the place. They had been searching for some time. They are carrying flowers. It is good that you're here now, I tell them.
All should try to pass this way at some point. Read the names, see the faces. Be thankful, grateful, humbled.
It is a place of resting heroes, a place that recalls human spirit at its greatest.
In war it was a place of horrors. Now it is a place of peace.
"They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them"
- Laurence Binyon
* Enclos Des Fusilles, Rue Colonel Bourg, Schaerbeek, Brussels.
* http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclos_des_fusill%C3%A9s_(Bruxelles)
* http://www.edithcavell.org.uk/
Tuesday 9 October 2012
Ghosts of the Marolles
It's a faded, stained, shabby card, but still pretty.
On the front, a tied bouquet among marigolds, pebbles and grass; a pink parasol, a straw hat with a pale blue delicate flyaway ribbon.
At the bottom, in gold twirling letters, the words 'Vive Maman'.
On the other side a short hand-written note:
"Dear Mama, I am going to try very hard to become a perfect little girl. Lots of hugs, Beatrice'.
I wonder why Beatrice wrote it. There's no address or stamp on it so it clearly wasn't posted. Perhaps she left it somewhere for her mother to find, to surprise her. Had she been naughty, perhaps? Was this her way of saying sorry? I imagine this little girl, all bright-eyed, giddy with excitement, waiting for her mama's reaction - an embrace, perhaps, a kiss.
And I imagine Beatrice's mama discovering it, holding it to her breast, her heart swollen with love for the daughter who did her best, with careful joined up writing, corrected in places, a few crossings out. Her little girl.
I found it in a grubby rain-soaked cardboard box with other cards, letters and documents piled on top of pots and pans, cracked earthenware, broken glass ornaments, tarnished cutlery, brown, torn newspapers.
There are hundreds of similar boxes and crates carelessly slung on to the cobbles here each day by the flea market traders of the Marolles. And among the knick-knacks, the pottery, the jewellery, the old records, the magazines, the electrical cords, cables, plugs and paraphernalia, among the mountains of cloth, among the antiques and the tat, there are treasures like the card from little Beatrice - discarded remains of countless precious lives played out in words and pictures.
Photograph albums, portraits, letters, telegrams, greetings cards, birth congratulations, wedding celebrations, some faded, torn, black and white, long distant, others garish, bright, in glorious technicolour, modern. Everywhere evidence of past lives lived.
A stern little girl on her confirmation day, an even sterner looking matriarch, white-haired, in the black lace of mourning, a dashing besuited young man with screen-idol good looks, young couples on their wedding day, soldiers in their uniforms, sombre children in formal pose, fat babies in knitted sailor suits, newborns in flowing christening robes.
Who are they? What did they become? Surely it must be that their descendants are strolling the streets of this city not knowing their history is being so casually hawked, destined for the bin when the picture frames have been filled with new faces.
In one album lie the carefully filed and captioned photographs of a 1969 family holiday to Greece, complete with airline tickets, a map, leaflets from various attractions they visited: here we are on the beach, in a hire car, at the Acropolis, by the pool. They are delightful, filled with beaming, happy faces.
Another album, dedicated to a trip to America in 1975, has on each page in stencilled lettering identifying a place visited: 'Washington', 'South Carolina', 'Alabama' 'Huntsville' a picture of a Red Indian with 'Cherokee' beneath it, a guide to 'The World's Largest Space Exhibit'.
And in another box piles and piles of blue Airmail envelopes. I pick one. The original address is Illinois, but there's a redirection to Manhattan. How did it get here? How did all of them get here?
A gust blows up and some of them scatter into the air, land on the cobbles and are trodden under foot. It's a little overwhelming and I resist the urge to snatch the whole box, find a quiet space and try to digest, record, them all.
As I leaf through them the vendor opens a battered suitcase, turns it upside down and pours...pictures, papers and documents tumble into another cardboard box. I see certificates, exercise books, what looks like school project work and hundreds upon hundreds of envelopes filled with negatives.
I pick up an album, a wedding album, I'm guessing 1950s. The pages fall open on a large photograph, the bride and groom in the back of the wedding car. He is gazing at her adoringly. She returns the gaze bashfully. I lift the album, show the stallholder. 'Who are these people? Where did all this stuff come from?' He shrugs.
Job lots cleared from homes of the dead.
It could overwhelm to dig too deeply...you might never leave, you might buy up the whole place to explore all these half-lives, and it could drive you mad not knowing the beginning, never knowing the end.
In another box a pile of correspondence, secured with an elastic band. And there's something about the starkness of the postcard on top. A pattern-free, colour-free business-type postcard and the message is type-written:
"Dear Jeanne, I've written twice and have not received a reply. I think of you all the time and this silence tortures me. What is it? Sickness? A change of address? What do I know? Quickly, please, send me word and let me know you are well, I won't rest until I hear from you. Yours, affectionately, Christian".
I think I must spend a few minutes staring at this card, willing it to give up its secrets.
The questions rise and froth like bubbles in shaken fizzy water. Scenarios, stories, possibilities, so many endings for the story of Jeanne and Christian. But they are no good to me, I want the real one.
I see another woman browsing through a hessian, bound wedding album. She catches my eye and something passes between us. A kind of guilt, like being caught reading someone's diary. We are gawpers, voyeurs
.
And yet I buy some of the cards, because once I've read them I can't not buy them: the note from Beatrice to her mama, one from 'Your little Camille' sending 'huge kisses' to her Papa.
I also buy a 'Happy Anniversary' card sent on September 9, 1939, popped in the post eight days after Germany invaded Poland.
This card holds me. Six months after it was sent the Nazis invaded Belgium. The couple's address is on Avenue Louise, a matter of doors away from what was to become the headquarters of the Gestapo.
We cannot imagine what happened next. We cannot imagine.
On the front, a tied bouquet among marigolds, pebbles and grass; a pink parasol, a straw hat with a pale blue delicate flyaway ribbon.
At the bottom, in gold twirling letters, the words 'Vive Maman'.
On the other side a short hand-written note:
"Dear Mama, I am going to try very hard to become a perfect little girl. Lots of hugs, Beatrice'.
I wonder why Beatrice wrote it. There's no address or stamp on it so it clearly wasn't posted. Perhaps she left it somewhere for her mother to find, to surprise her. Had she been naughty, perhaps? Was this her way of saying sorry? I imagine this little girl, all bright-eyed, giddy with excitement, waiting for her mama's reaction - an embrace, perhaps, a kiss.
And I imagine Beatrice's mama discovering it, holding it to her breast, her heart swollen with love for the daughter who did her best, with careful joined up writing, corrected in places, a few crossings out. Her little girl.I found it in a grubby rain-soaked cardboard box with other cards, letters and documents piled on top of pots and pans, cracked earthenware, broken glass ornaments, tarnished cutlery, brown, torn newspapers.
Photograph albums, portraits, letters, telegrams, greetings cards, birth congratulations, wedding celebrations, some faded, torn, black and white, long distant, others garish, bright, in glorious technicolour, modern. Everywhere evidence of past lives lived.
A stern little girl on her confirmation day, an even sterner looking matriarch, white-haired, in the black lace of mourning, a dashing besuited young man with screen-idol good looks, young couples on their wedding day, soldiers in their uniforms, sombre children in formal pose, fat babies in knitted sailor suits, newborns in flowing christening robes.Who are they? What did they become? Surely it must be that their descendants are strolling the streets of this city not knowing their history is being so casually hawked, destined for the bin when the picture frames have been filled with new faces.
In one album lie the carefully filed and captioned photographs of a 1969 family holiday to Greece, complete with airline tickets, a map, leaflets from various attractions they visited: here we are on the beach, in a hire car, at the Acropolis, by the pool. They are delightful, filled with beaming, happy faces.
Another album, dedicated to a trip to America in 1975, has on each page in stencilled lettering identifying a place visited: 'Washington', 'South Carolina', 'Alabama' 'Huntsville' a picture of a Red Indian with 'Cherokee' beneath it, a guide to 'The World's Largest Space Exhibit'.
And in another box piles and piles of blue Airmail envelopes. I pick one. The original address is Illinois, but there's a redirection to Manhattan. How did it get here? How did all of them get here?
A gust blows up and some of them scatter into the air, land on the cobbles and are trodden under foot. It's a little overwhelming and I resist the urge to snatch the whole box, find a quiet space and try to digest, record, them all.As I leaf through them the vendor opens a battered suitcase, turns it upside down and pours...pictures, papers and documents tumble into another cardboard box. I see certificates, exercise books, what looks like school project work and hundreds upon hundreds of envelopes filled with negatives.
I pick up an album, a wedding album, I'm guessing 1950s. The pages fall open on a large photograph, the bride and groom in the back of the wedding car. He is gazing at her adoringly. She returns the gaze bashfully. I lift the album, show the stallholder. 'Who are these people? Where did all this stuff come from?' He shrugs.
Job lots cleared from homes of the dead.
It could overwhelm to dig too deeply...you might never leave, you might buy up the whole place to explore all these half-lives, and it could drive you mad not knowing the beginning, never knowing the end.
In another box a pile of correspondence, secured with an elastic band. And there's something about the starkness of the postcard on top. A pattern-free, colour-free business-type postcard and the message is type-written:
"Dear Jeanne, I've written twice and have not received a reply. I think of you all the time and this silence tortures me. What is it? Sickness? A change of address? What do I know? Quickly, please, send me word and let me know you are well, I won't rest until I hear from you. Yours, affectionately, Christian".
I think I must spend a few minutes staring at this card, willing it to give up its secrets.
The questions rise and froth like bubbles in shaken fizzy water. Scenarios, stories, possibilities, so many endings for the story of Jeanne and Christian. But they are no good to me, I want the real one.
I see another woman browsing through a hessian, bound wedding album. She catches my eye and something passes between us. A kind of guilt, like being caught reading someone's diary. We are gawpers, voyeurs
.
And yet I buy some of the cards, because once I've read them I can't not buy them: the note from Beatrice to her mama, one from 'Your little Camille' sending 'huge kisses' to her Papa.
I also buy a 'Happy Anniversary' card sent on September 9, 1939, popped in the post eight days after Germany invaded Poland.
This card holds me. Six months after it was sent the Nazis invaded Belgium. The couple's address is on Avenue Louise, a matter of doors away from what was to become the headquarters of the Gestapo.
We cannot imagine what happened next. We cannot imagine.
Everyone has a story Thomas. And I see them in all the boxes, the crates, the cartons, scattered on the cobbles, picked over but in the main ignored. We can't keep everything and they are, after all, only words, only pictures. But if only they could talk.
xxx
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