The Muddy Metronome

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When Nutmeg was tiny, Uncle said we should put a ticking clock in his bed, wrapped in an old towel so he didn’t miss his mama so much. The problem with living with Uncle was that we were poor and there were no spare ticking clocks or even broken clocks: just the kitchen clock and my digital alarm that got me up for school.

What we did have, as Uncle was a jazz composer, was a morgue of metronomes. He’d start a metronome swinging from the moment he got up in the morning (so he could ‘tum-ti-tum-bow-bow-chicka-boom’ in time as he boiled up coffee on the stove) until the witching hours, when he and his sax would retire to bed. And so I retrieved an old metronome from the pile under the stairs. It had a bent pin but reliable swing.

            “Here’s a heartbeat for you, Nutmeg,” I said, tickling his chin. He’d been whimpering a little and I was keen to show him he was safe. I placed it on the kitchen table.

            That was the start of Nutmeg’s odd relationship with metronomes. I’d find him transfixed sometimes when I came home from school, tilting his head this way and that, and Uncle in his own world too, tap-tap-tapping on saxophone keys.

            “He’s like a nodding dog,” said my first girlfriend, when she came over some five years later. Left, and right, and left, and right, as Uncle played his jazz. When my next girlfriend came to meet Uncle and Nutmeg, she saw the commercialism in our furry friend’s trick and uploaded a video to YouTube: the faster the beat, the quicker his tilts. Someone remixed it to dance music, which Uncle thought was horrific.

            One day, as is the way with pets, Nutmeg died, and we buried him with a metronome in the garden. My son patted the Earth down with a plastic spade, and I slept with a bag of flour on my feet at the end of my bed, because I missed my dog so.

  

Thank you, Alley Cat, for the title. 

The Girl Who Should Lie

I was texted a title for some micro-fiction a couple of days ago, but as I worked through my lunch break yesterday, I didn't get a chance to play. This morning my internet wasn't working. I'd probably have watched Pretty Little Liars whilst eating my breakfast if it had been, but the box, should I have opted to reset it, is four floors down. Might as well write, I thought. In my defence, I did spend the whole day at work editing other people's writing yesterday. Sometimes words get a little bobbly and you just want to brush them off you with a clothes brush.

I had a breakfast of rye bread, two boiled eggs and a blood orange, and this is the burst of words that sprang forth.

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The Girl Who Should Lie.

Daria was taught to lie by her brother, Pimm.

                “Lies are right,” said Pimm. “Lies are good for you.” His mouth was crammed with Wheetos, and flecks of chocolate shot across the table on to Daria’s rusks.

                “Mummy will be really pleased with you if you lie, Daria. Okay? You got that?”

                Daria hadn’t been quite sure what a lie was, and so Pimm said he would illustrate it for her. He came at her with his big boy hands outstretched and gave her a Chinese burn so hot it made her cry out. He then yanked a fist full of hair and ate the rest of her rusks.

                “Is everything okay in here?” asked Mummy.

                Pimm was stroking Daria’s head as she quietly snivelled.  

                “She just wants more breakfast,” said Pimm.

                “Do you, darling?” said Mummy. “We don’t want you getting fat like Mummy.”

                “You’re not fat, Mummy,” said Pimm, giving Daria a wink. “You’re thin.”

                “Don’t lie, Pimm,” said Mummy, laughing and giving him a big kiss on the cheek.  She didn’t kiss Daria. So, Pimm was right, then. Lies were good. Lies were rewarded.

“Of course I didn’t break your favourite cup,” said Daria, to Grandma.

                “I did not cheat!” said Daria, to the University.

                “I was often held up as an example,” said Daria, to her first employers.

                “I think Gemma is claiming too much on expenses,” said Daria, to the law firm.

                “The man is guilty beyond any shadow of a doubt, ladies and gentleman,” said Daria to the jury.

                “I would never do that to you,” said Daria to Mike.

               

And then, Daria met Sam – a man she thought was as beautiful and profound as an Oak tree.
                “I love you,” said Daria, wondering why she cried so much these days.

                “I love you too,” said Sam, thinking about filing his tax return.

               

Let’s hope neither of them were lying.

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Anyone remember this song by Chicks? It's in my head now.

The Travelling Woman's Success

He warned her from the beginning. “Don’t put your trust in me,” he said, as he stitched the lace ruff to the corset of her dress. “Just because I am a dressmaker, doesn’t mean I belong in the home.” His cheek was close to her bosom and the sharp needle glinted in the candlelight.

“But, Sandy,” she said. “Only a trustworthy man would say that.” So, she kept coming back to him with requests of new costumes for her stage act: The Travelling Woman, and after she’d been fitted they would retire to his flat above the costume shop and live as man and wife for two or three days and nights, until a performance called her back or the shop needed to be aired to stop the fabric from getting musty.

One day, she got a proposal from a rich gentleman who had taken a fancy to her from the Royal Box. “Your costumes are so glorious,” he said. “You look like a performing orchid. You could be the centrepiece of my estate. How are you with running family affairs?”

Now, The Travelling Woman had received many proposals from men over the years, but this gentleman was taller than the others and she loved a tall man, and what’s more he wore plush green velvet; every man is attractive in shades of dark green.

“Thank you, Lord Spick, for your generous suggestion, but I love another. The man who made the costumes you admire so much, in fact.” She hardly knew what she was saying, but it was out of her mouth before she could stop it with her gloved hand – gloved by Sandy, in soft white leather with twenty pearls for buttons.

“He is very nimble with a needle,” said the Lord. He bowed low and took leave.

When The Travelling Woman returned to Sandy’s shop, with an anticipatory blush in her cheeks, she was horrified to find it boarded up. She hammered at the boards, and when nobody came, she ripped them away with unaccountable strength, borne from the love she had tended like a plant over the last year.

Inside, she found Sandy slumped over a table, with both of his hands as fat as clubs.

“They broke my hands,” he said, his mouth a parallelogram of pain. “I need to go to the hospital but I think they might amputate.”

Over the next few months, The Travelling Woman nursed Sandy back to health, and though his fingers could no longer sew, he was able to draw, and what he drew were the plans for a machine that could sew forth automatically, making line upon line of neat and tight stitch, and what’s more, it would be strong enough to penetrate leather and canvas.

The Travelling Woman took the plans to engineers and presented to them with her most professional face, and one man bought the designs for a large sum of money.

With the money, Sandy and The Travelling Woman ordered twenty of the finished machines and built a dressmaking factory, giving work to young women. The Travelling Woman became the Head of Personnel, and everyone loved to work for her. Sometimes the girls would sing as they worked.

Many years later, when the couple were reading by the fire, she asked him why he warned her away all those years ago. “You said not to put my trust in you.”

“I’m an ex-convict,” he said, simply. “When I was younger, I stole a hen and it all blew up into a much bigger matter than it should have done. I’m probably still a wanted man in Somerset.”

“Well, you’re a wanted man, here,” said The Travelling Woman, feeling lucky. She had lived enough to know that things could have ended very differently indeed.