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“As a matter of fact, I was dancing,” said Finnley with exaggerated politeness. “It is something I do to get back in the flow of the Universe … and counteract negativity.” She looked pointedly at Liz.

“Anyway,” she continued, “allow me read to read a little from the great Prof E P Lemon’s latest offering:

“It’s also like in taiji, you sometimes get into that flow state but for that you need to go past the learning phase, can’t really go around that.”

Finnley looked sympathetically at Liz.

“Perhaps you are still at the taiji learning phase, Liz.”

“How would I learn taiji?” asked Liz humbly. “I can see you are a master, dearest and wise Finnley.”

Finnley looked thoughtful. “Apparently the Prof used to go regularly up a mountain. The air is more taiji up there … maybe you could do that? Don’t worry I will take care of things here,” she said quickly, envisaging the peace and tranquility of a few days without Liz continually haranguing her.

“Take as long as you need to get some taiji,” she added with what she hoped was a kind smile.

CLOVE:

I offered to help Stevie go through her mum’s things expecting her to refuse on the grounds of it being private, but she said, Yes, you do it and I’ll watch, it will be easier that way. Stevie wanted to do it all methodically and start with the drawers, and I said no, that’s silly starting in the least likely place.

So we did it my way, and haphazardly followed random impulses. I’m not sure whether it was successful or not, because Stevie didn’t find what she was looking for (not forgetting that she didn’t know exactly what she was looking for anyway) but we did find something interesting. If I wasn’t going home soon, I’d have sent a message to Corrie right away, but I decided to keep it to myself for a bit, I don’t know why.

The elephant in Sue and John’s bedroom caught my eye, one of those big ceramic Indian ones with a flat saddle to put a spider plant on. It weighed a ton, but we managed to turn it over without making too much of a mess of the spider plant, which we forgot to remove first, and sure enough it had a cavity inside and there were some papers wedged up there.

Stevie got excited and started making squeaky noises and telling me to be careful. I gave her a look, and pulled them out and handed them to her. They weren’t like documents or anything, they were torn up maps with some little bits cut out where the letters of the names of the places were.

“Just a load of old rubbish! It must have been in there when she bought it, I can’t see Mum shoving rubbish up there. How exasperating, I thought we were on to something!”

“Let me have a look at them, Stevie,” I said, slowly reaching out for them. I was starting to have a funny moment, trying to remember.

It took me a minute or two, but I did remember. Although I can’t imagine how it could be connected. But still, it was a bit odd. It reminded me of what we’d found at the Brundy place that day, me and Corrie.

Aunt Idle:

One of the best things about going away is the pleasure of coming home. Never in a million years would I expect to miss dust, or overflowing ashtrays, but it was so good to see that familiar layer of dust all over everything.

I cut Maters grumbling short and lugged my case up to my bedroom, calling “Jet lag, speak later” over my shoulder. What was she on about anyway, two more twins from the past? It rings a bell, but I’ll think about that later. I hope she’s preparing a bit of dinner, some of that food in Iceland was ghastly, especially if you’re not a fishy sort of person.

Now all I want to do is get out of these clothes and into an old tattered T shirt ~ the oldest favourite, the black faded to greenish grey ~ and sprawl back on my bed smoking. Dropping ash on the bed cover watching the smoke and dust motes dancing in the shaft of warm sunlight. Stretching my limbs out unencumbered with layers of clothing and feeling the air on my skin.

Iceland is very nice in many ways, I took hundreds of photographs of the scenery and all, but shivering outside while quickly sucking down a lungful, or leaning out of an open window in the arctic blasts is not my idea of a relaxing holiday. Not that I went there to relax I suppose, which is just as well, because it wasn’t the least bit relaxing.

I drifted off to sleep, contentedly gazing at the stains on the ceiling that looked like maps of other worlds, vaguely recalling some of the names I’d made up for the islands and continents over the years, and woke up later dreaming of Fred, of all people. For a minute when I woke up I could have sworn he was standing right there next to my bed, watching me sleep. I blinked, trying to focus, and he was gone.

MATER:

I jumped as Corrie burst into room.

“Hey, Mater, guess what?” she called out with, in my opinion, unnecessary exuberance.

I had been looking out the window and ruminating on my vegetable garden — the tomatoes didn’t seem to be growing this year — and felt a little irritated by the invasion. Irritated by the children in general that morning, I guess. I had just asked Prune if she could help me with some chores and had been informed that she was unavailable as she was communing with future Prune on Mars. I suppose as excuses for chores go, it was at least inventive.

“What is it, Corrie?”

“Clove is coming home! And she is bringing some twins with her.”

Feeling suddenly tired, I sat down on the sofa.

“Some twins?”

“The twins at the place where she is staying. Sara and Stevie, or something like that. Woo hoo, can’t wait to see her!”

I didn’t know much about Clove’s living situation. She communicated frequently with her sister but correspondence with the rest of the family was sporadic.

Another thing which irritates me.

Sara and Stevie … my mind flittered through the years to rest on some other twins. Same names. Twins I had only met once — many years ago — but nevertheless thought about at times. Wondered how they were getting on in life. I wondered if Fred ever thought about them, or regretted his decision.

Of course there was no connection, but I felt compelled to ask.

“How old are Sara and Stevie?”

“Oh, I dunno … old I think. Maybe about 30?”

“Aaron!” his focus snapped. Was he day dreaming?

As he came to the door, he looked at his suit in the mirror. It was keen, with straight lines and not a wave or wrinkle to be found. It was the epitome of structure and order.

He hated it.

He hated the way it felt. He hated the properness that came with it. He hated the lie.

In the next moment, he began to shake off the prissiness. It felt as if he could wriggle out of it, loosen up a little. And as he stood there, shaking his hands and feet, trying to get the funk off him, the suit shook off, too. It fell to the floor in pieces as though it were the very manifestation of inhibition.

As he stood there, in front of the mirror and half naked, a low murmur came up from his stomach. It was an uneasiness, a call to action, a desire to move…but he had no idea what for or why. It welled up in him and he became anxious without the slightest clue as to what he was going through. Frankly enough, it scared him.

“AARON!”

The voice was a part of him and there was nothing but himself staring at himself. Everything seemed to become more and more energized. It felt like he extended beyond the limit of his skin, like water in a balloon trying to push outward.

Were it not for his containment, there was a very real possibility that he might just completely leap out of his skin and bones. He felt that, given a small slip in concentration, he’d be liable to explode headlong into the atmosphere with the vigor of a superhero on poorly made bath salts.

His heart raced. He could feel it beating in his chest. He could feel it beating all over. What was happening? Where was he?

He looked back at his surroundings and found himself sitting behind a tattered cloth spread with sunglasses and watches…and his suitcase?

Meanwhile, Clove was wondering if she had made the right decision to lodge with the most boring family on earth. True, there had been times when life had been somewhat boring back home, but nobody could accuse her family of being boring.

But the Smith family! why, even their names were boring. John and Sue had spawned a small tribe of boredom: Sara and Steve, the unidentical, uninteresting and unemployed twins, still bored at home at the age of 27; Jason, an ordinary ten year old who wasn’t even autistic or allergic to anything, and a particularly unprepossessing three year old called Jane.

It will be an interesting exercise in observing boredom, Corrie had said. Yeah, right. Corrie didn’t have to live with them.

Corrie:

I’m getting a bit worried about Aunt Idle, she’s been in Iceland ages and we haven’t heard from her, and nothing on her blog for ages, either. When I found this, I did a bit of research into the Bronklehampton case. That’s another story.

“Aunt Idle was going to visit her old friend Margit Brynjúlfursdóttir. It was all very hush hush: Margit had intimated that there was to be a family reunion, but it was to be a surprise party, and she mustn’t breathe a word of it to anyone. Margit had sent her the tickets to Keflavik, instructing her to inform her family and friends that she had won the trip in a story writing competition.

It was Idle’s first trip to Iceland. She had met Margit in a beach bar near Cairns some years ago, just after the scandalous expose on the goings on of a mad doctor on a remote south Pacific island. The Icelandic woman had been drowning her sorrows, and Idle had been a shoulder to cry on. The age old story of a wayward son, a brilliant mind, so full of potential, victim of a conniving nurse , and now sadly incarcerated on the wrong side of the law.

Aunt Idle didn’t immediately make a connection between the name Brynjúlfursdóttir and Bronklehampton, indeed it would have been impossible to do so using conventional means, Icelandic naming laws and traditions being what they were. But the intuitive Idle had made a connection notwithstanding. The maudlin woman in the beach bar was clearly the mad doctors mother.

Idle had invited Margit to come and stay at the Flying Fish Inn for a few weeks before returning to Iceland, a visit which turned out to last almost a year. Over the months, Margit confided in her new friend Idle. Nobody back home in Iceland knew that the doctor in the lurid headlines was her son, and Margit wanted to keep it that way, but it was a relief to be able to talk about it to someone. Idle wasn’t all that sure that Margit was fully in the picture regarding the depths to which the fruit of her loins had sunk, but she witnessed the womans outpourings with tact and compassion and they became good friends.

The fasten your seatbelts sign flashed and pinged. The landing at Keflavik was going to be on time.”

““I wish you’d told me about the 60’s fancy dress party, Margit, I’d have brought an outfit with me,” said Idle.

Margit looked at her friend quizzically. “What makes you think there’s a fancy dress party?”

“Why, all the beehive hair do’s! It’s the only explanation I could think of. If it’s not a 60’s party, then why…..?”

Idle noticed Margit eyeing her long grey dreadlocks distastefully. Self consciously she flung them over her shoulder, inopportunely landing the end of one of them in a plate of some foul substance the passing waiter was carrying.

Margit jumped at the chance. “Darling, how horrid! All that rams bottom sauce all over your hair! Do try the coconut shampoo I put in your bathroom.””

And that was the last I’d heard from Aunt Idle.

Corrie’s findings from elsewhere:

“You can’t leave without a permit, you know,” Prune said, startling Quentin who was sneaking out of his room.

“I’m just going for a walk,” he replied, irritated. “And what are you doing skulking around at this hour, anyway? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“What are you doing with an orange suitcase in the corridor at three o’clock in the morning?” the young brat retorted. “Where are you going?”

“Owl watching, that’s what I’m doing. And I don’t have a picnic basket, so I’m taking my suitcase.” Quentin had an idea. “Would you like to come?” The girls local knowledge might come in handy, up to a point, and then he could dispose of her somehow, and continue on his way.

Prune narrowed her eyes with suspicion. She didn’t believe the owl story, but curiosity compelled her to accept the invitation. She couldn’t sleep anyway, not with all the yowling mating cats on the roof. Aunt Idle had forbidden her to leave the premises on her own after dark, but she wasn’t on her own if she was with a story refugee, was she?”

“Seeing Dido eating her curry cookies would turn Mater’s stomach, so she went up to her room.

Good riddance she thought, one less guest to worry about.
Not that she usually thought that way, but every time the guests leaved, there was a huge weight lifted from her back, and a strong desire of “never again”.
The cleaning wasn’t that much worry, it helped clear her thoughts (while Haki was doing it), but the endless worrying, that was the killer.

After a painful ascension of the broken steps, she put her walking stick on the wall, and started some breathing exercises. The vinegary smell of all the pickling that the twins had fun experimenting with was searing at her lungs. The breathing exercise helped, even if all the mumbo jumbo about transcendant presence was all rubbish.

It was time for her morning oracle. Many years ago, when she was still a young and innocent flower, she would cut bits and pieces of sentences at random from old discarded magazines. Books would have been sacrilegious at the time, but now she wouldn’t care for such things and Prune would often scream when she’d find some of her books missing key plot points. Many times, Mater would tell her the plots were full of holes anyway, so why bother; Prune’d better exercise her own imagination instead of complaining. Little bossy brat. She reminded her so much of her younger self.

So she opened her wooden box full of strips of paper. Since many years, Mater had acquired a taste for more expensive and tasty morsels of philosophy and not rubbish literature, so the box smelt a bit of old parchment. Nonetheless, she wasn’t adverse to a modicum of risqué bits from tattered magazines either. Like a blend of fine teas, she somehow had found a very nice mix, and oftentimes the oracle would reveal such fine things, that she’d taken to meditate on it at least once a day. Even if she wouldn’t call it meditate, that was for those good-for-nothing willy-nilly hippies.

There it was. She turned each bit one by one, to reveal the haiku-like message of the day.

“Bugger!” the words flew without thinking through her parched lips.

looked forgotten rat due idea half
getting floverley comment somehow
prune hardly wondered eyes great
inn run days dark quentin simulation

That silly Prune, she’d completely forgotten to check on her. She was glad the handwritten names she’d added in the box would pop up so appropriately.

She would pray to Saint Floverley of the Dunes, a local icon who was synchretized from old pagan rituals and still invoked for those incapable of dancing.
With her forking arthritis, she would need her grace much.”

Corrie’s findings from elsewhere:

“It was no coincidence that “Elikozoe”, his nom de plume (he was born Albert (Al) Yokoso, from a father of Japanese descent and a mother of Cajun descent) had been sent to the Pickled Pea Inn (formerly known as the Flying Fish Inn).”

I thought about leaving that one out, as it seemed so nonsensical, this place has never been called the pickled pea, but I’m leaving it in for now. Might make some kind of sense somewhere down the line.

“This morning was quiet, but his mind was not.
There were always the nagging thoughts that something ought to be done, the restless fear of forgetting something of importance.
But this morning was quiet.
A bit too quiet in fact.
No raucous cackling to stir the soft velvety dust from the wooden floorboard.

Quentin was wondering whether the story makers had lost all interest in moving his story forward. Yet, he was more than willing to move it notwithstanding, his efforts seemed of little consequence however. Some piece was missing, some ever-present grace of illumination shrouded in scripting procrastination.

His discussion with Aunt Idle had been brief. She’d told him with great intensity that she had a weird dream. That she looked into a mirror and saw herself. Or something like that,… she was not a very coherent woman, the ging wasn’t helping.

Maybe his task was done. Time to leave the Pickled Pea Inn.
His friend Eicnarf seemed eager to see him. Or maybe that had been a typo and she really meant to sew him, or saw him,… she could be gory like that…

No matter, a trip out of the brine cloud of this sand coated place would do him good.”

And good riddance, you cheeky bugger, I can’t help thinking.

““Did anybody see our last guest?” Mater couldn’t help but regularly count her herds (so to speak), and although she wasn’t as authoritative with her guests as she was with her family members, she couldn’t help but notice that her last count was one person short —enough to start worrying her.

“Hmm lwwft thws hhmmmng” said Idle, her mouth full with cookies.

Mater shrugged. It was still better than when she used to talk with sauerkraut.”

I had better ask Clove to remind me how to do italics I suppose. This could get confusing.

Liz adjusted her reclining chair and lit another cigarette. Idly, she contemplated getting up to make another cup of tea, but was not thus far compelled to take the necessary action. There were advantages and disadvantages to locking the others in the cellar to work on her anthology. She had to make her own tea, it was true, but the unaccustomed peace was worth it ~ so far, anyway. Glancing out of the window, she noticed the lawns were in need of mowing and the herbaceous borders needed dead heading, but it was still green and pretty, if a trifle unkempt, and the birds still sang in the branches of the plum tree. “Blubbit, blubbit, blubbit,” they seemed to be calling, with the occasional “peakle!” shreik.

“Can’t get the staff to stick around and mow the grass these days,” the thought popped into her head, which reminded her of something else, something a wise man had once said about certain types of gardeners. “Great at planting the seeds, not so reliable about finishing the weeding, though.”

A loud rumble like approaching thunder roused Liz from her thoughtful reverie. She was hungry. “I wonder if Finnley had the decency to leave some Peasland soup in the freezer?”

“I wish you’d told me about the 60’s fancy dress party, Margit, I’d have brought an outfit with me,” said Idle.

Margit looked at her friend quizzically. “What makes you think there’s a fancy dress party?”

“Why, all the beehive hair do’s! It’s the only explanation I could think of. If it’s not a 60’s party, then why…..?”

Idle noticed Margit eyeing her long grey dreadlocks distastefully. Self consciously she flung them over her shoulder, inopportunely landing the end of one of them in a plate of some foul substance the passing waiter was carrying.

Margit jumped at the chance. “Darling, how horrid! All that rams bottom sauce all over your hair! Do try the coconut shampoo I put in your bathroom.”