Location is Everything
I will tell you exactly where we live, now that everyone has gone to bed and I have a moment to myself.
We live near the lake where Agatha Christie was to have drowned. Her car washed up on the shore, and her husband was a suspect in her murder for days before she turned up, unharmed, with no explanation. Only now her husband's adulter had been revealed.
I live near the moors that supposedly inspired Emily Bronte, the moors so lonely and huanting and wild that it cries out, supposedly from the wind lashing through the trees.
The miles of green land and trees and fresh with fowl, of country hunts and village fairs and tourist carnivals among people that strive to pretend that two world wars never happened.
The sky is grey and the grounds are green and everything is wet.
Two months ago tonight, this exact night, two hours from this time, an old rotting oak tree finally cracked and crashed into the house, into the room my father called "Milady's Conservatory" because it two walls were all glass, looking out into the garden. The oak sent splinters of glass into every brick crevice and crack, and since no one has arranged for the tree shards to be removed, the rain pours freely on the imported Tunisian tiles. We use it for makeshift storage shed--wine bottles, Glennis's art supplies, Father's failed plant mutations, bit of furniture charity shops refuse to collect. The trunk of the tree lies in the middle of all this, rotting. Rathus says he saw the servants having sex behind it once.
If you know what you're doing, you can get to the train station in fifteen minutes by car. You can get to the village in ten. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll never find us.
If you head due east, you will find an inn on a craggy coast, once known for as a smuggler's den and pirate's haunt, immortalized by a gothic writer and suspense filmmaker. The inn is a dump and you can get a piece for a couple quid, but I like the fact that you can smell the salt of the sea, if you're in the right room, at sunset.
An American pop star bought a house near us, and then built his own private chapel to baptize his illegitimate children. His wife tried to put in a heliopad, but Mother put a stop to that.
We're in the middle of nowhere, a medeival countryside connected by privilege and the strained pound, the nexus of sex and death and repressed manners. It's not where I would have chosen for myself at this point, but I know one thing--it's safe. Safer than the most privileged neighborhood, the most sensitive burglar alarm, the most alert task force. You do not come here unless you mean it, unless you mean to deal with people like us. And you are not allowed her, in body or in spirit, unless we mean to deal with you.
An interaction, if you use my family as an example, which is not for the faint-hearted.
We live near the lake where Agatha Christie was to have drowned. Her car washed up on the shore, and her husband was a suspect in her murder for days before she turned up, unharmed, with no explanation. Only now her husband's adulter had been revealed.
I live near the moors that supposedly inspired Emily Bronte, the moors so lonely and huanting and wild that it cries out, supposedly from the wind lashing through the trees.
The miles of green land and trees and fresh with fowl, of country hunts and village fairs and tourist carnivals among people that strive to pretend that two world wars never happened.
The sky is grey and the grounds are green and everything is wet.
Two months ago tonight, this exact night, two hours from this time, an old rotting oak tree finally cracked and crashed into the house, into the room my father called "Milady's Conservatory" because it two walls were all glass, looking out into the garden. The oak sent splinters of glass into every brick crevice and crack, and since no one has arranged for the tree shards to be removed, the rain pours freely on the imported Tunisian tiles. We use it for makeshift storage shed--wine bottles, Glennis's art supplies, Father's failed plant mutations, bit of furniture charity shops refuse to collect. The trunk of the tree lies in the middle of all this, rotting. Rathus says he saw the servants having sex behind it once.
If you know what you're doing, you can get to the train station in fifteen minutes by car. You can get to the village in ten. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll never find us.
If you head due east, you will find an inn on a craggy coast, once known for as a smuggler's den and pirate's haunt, immortalized by a gothic writer and suspense filmmaker. The inn is a dump and you can get a piece for a couple quid, but I like the fact that you can smell the salt of the sea, if you're in the right room, at sunset.
An American pop star bought a house near us, and then built his own private chapel to baptize his illegitimate children. His wife tried to put in a heliopad, but Mother put a stop to that.
We're in the middle of nowhere, a medeival countryside connected by privilege and the strained pound, the nexus of sex and death and repressed manners. It's not where I would have chosen for myself at this point, but I know one thing--it's safe. Safer than the most privileged neighborhood, the most sensitive burglar alarm, the most alert task force. You do not come here unless you mean it, unless you mean to deal with people like us. And you are not allowed her, in body or in spirit, unless we mean to deal with you.
An interaction, if you use my family as an example, which is not for the faint-hearted.
posted by M.A.A at 5:12 AM
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