Inflorescence

Inflorescence

We lie in fine gravel, in a shallow dish, on a broad windowsill. The warm sun falls on us. We are pebble plants, living stones, oddities, coffee table fascination. Fascination which quickly fades, given we seem as inanimate as the stones we imitate.

But her fascination does not fade.

Being taller and wider I am at the heart of our clump. Around me are the others; we make an attractive cluster: our colours range from subtle blue greys to russet reds. Some of us have patterned surfaces, most of us bear a shallow groove across our surface. Our planting medium is finely calibrated, our watering regime precise. We lie in the sun in a small circular room, in an apartment at the top of a stone house overlooking a northern harbour.

We’re unsure why she’s here. We sense that she, too, is a living stone: close grained, unyielding, impenetrable.

She positioned us here when she arrived. When every room was bare. From the beginning we understood that small talk and coffee mornings would not feature in our lives. To be frank, we were relieved.

In fact, no one else has crossed her threshold. Except that is, for the locksmith who installed new locks and deadbolts. His work done, he came and stared out at the bouncing lights and reflections of the harbour below. Then he noticed us. A stubby finger reached out to move us around.

‘Don’t!’

He turned. ‘They’re just stones.’

‘They’re lithops. Living stones.’

‘You could’ve fooled me. Do they do anything? Or do they just sit there, like stones? Forever.’

‘They can flower. Bloom. These haven’t. Yet.’

Collectively, we cringed in unreasonable guilt.

The man shrugged and left. The bolts snicked into place.

There has been no one since then.

***

She is attentive. She speaks to us last thing each night and first thing each morning. We observe her predicament, monitor her fear.

Five days a week she leaves us: baseball cap, shapeless coat, bag over her shoulder, keys in hand. Before she leaves, she tells us the duration of her absence. Then she presses a button and we are bathed in gentle harmonies. Bach is my favourite but from the way they shift and relax I know that many of those around me prefer Taverner or Glass. She believes that music keeps us calm and reassured. She doesn’t understand that we have more power, more agency than she knows.

She is a creature of habit. She starts early, returns late. She greets us and then inspects the answering machine. Replying to messages, her voice echoing through the apartment, terse, businesslike, arranging to view and assess work. She is a rarity: a furniture restorer and a good one and she’s in demand. We overhear all this, know that she won’t be bullied. We also deduce that, once upon a time, she was a promising furniture designer but now, all promises broken, she designs nothing. Instead, she repairs and restores. The metaphor is not lost on us, nor, we assume, on her. And though the pieces in these rooms - picked up for a song, slung out as being irreparable – have been restored to beauty, which is life, she has not.

Each time she returns, she turns off the harmonies, kneels before us, speaks. Then she showers, eats, lies on the wide sofa, stares at the TV, sleeps.

Sometimes late in the evening, her phone chirps. We feel her flinch, see her glance at it, throw it aside.

At weekends she gets up late, dusts and polishes, goes out, comes back carrying supermarket bags

Occasionally she sits on the big, patterned rug and performs a series of stretches. Or breathes slowly for an hour, cross legged, eyes closed, hands cupped at her waist. Occasionally, she dances, wildly and erratically to loud music on the radio. Then she stops and hangs her head.

At such moments we fuse together in a solid clump, our roots shiver in the gravel, we plump and edge taller. Unknowing, she receives our energy and resilience, shakes her head and moves again. We relax, our stillness sifting the sinking gravel.

***

Tonight’s different. The light goes early and the air cools before she arrives. She locks and double bolts the door then comes straight to our room. She looks out at the lights winking along the jetty, hears wires tinging in the boats’ rigging. She kneels before us; a slender finger hovers over each of us in turn. Her breath warm, she speaks to us.

‘Take your time,’ she says, ‘no rush, whenever you’re ready.’

But who’s she kidding? We won’t bloom until she does.

Behind her, the apartment spreads out, lamplit, sparsely furnished, the lustre of polished wood gleams.

Her obeisance done, she stands, stretches and, heads to the bathroom, discarding clothes as she goes. The shower hisses. Afterwards, she sits at the elm table, pours a glass of red and forks Chow Mein into her mouth. She looks more relaxed now: wearing sweats, hair down. We know better and are not surprised when she lets fall the fork, presses fingers over her eyes. Tears leak through them, drip into the foil tray.

We contract and draw together. This has been coming.

She wipes a hand across her wet face, drops the foil tray into the bin, arches her back, pulls back and tethers her hair.

And that’s when the doorbell rings. And rings again

A deep voice calls her name; a palm is slapped hard and repeatedly against the oak.

My tap root tingles in the gravel; I feel the others contract around me.

Her hands fly to her throat, she edges to the door, peeks through the spyhole and recoils, chest heaving, eyes wide.

The slapping becomes a hard fist pounding, a deep voice calls out.

‘You can’t run forever!’

She moves fast into the kitchen and returns, the large kitchen knife held upright. Her eyes are closed; her chest rises and falls.

The others are pushing in towards me, I feel their anxiety, their need for closeness, for comfort. The whole quivering clump of us tense.

Another furious volley of thuds shakes the door.

‘Now I’ve found you, I’m going nowhere.’

One last thump rattles the door frame and footsteps clatter down the stairs.

She drops the knife, runs into the bedroom. Drawers slam. She reappears, a bulging holdall in one hand. From it a sleeve dangles. She gulps air, her movements are jerky. She thrusts her computer into the holdall. When it won’t fit, she pulls out handfuls of clothes, which slide and pool on the wooden floor. Then she freezes, looks around at us. I feel our plumpness clench; the gravel tightens around our roots.

She lets fall the holdall, comes and kneels before us. Her breath is hot, as cups our dish in her hands, cradles us at her breast. Tears drip onto our dry substrate, we drink them up, thirsty for all of her.

That’s when I feel them edging closer, vibrating in urgency and insistence. They are looking to me.

I’ve not been entirely honest. We are a symbiotic entity, we feel and react as one. But I know, as do they, that I can channel and intensify our common potency. This I do now. And to that potency I summon an extra force which drains me. I watch as she suddenly opens her eyes wide. Her grip on our dish tightens. Gravel grates, our molecules fizz.

She stares, unseeing, out into the darkness.

‘If he can find me,’ she says, ‘I can find him.’

I feel those around me shiver in surprise. I quiver in duplicitous accord.

she pulls her laptop from the bag, kicks the spilled clothes under the sofa and sits at her table, pen and notepad to hand.

When she closes the lid of the laptop she sits, unmoving, her eyes open.

We sink and relax, our clump subsides, relieved enough to push roots down deeper. I alone remain taut and anxious to hear the first crack of lightning, the first lash of rain.

The room darkens. I watch her slip out, return clad in work overalls, toolbox in hand. She is wet. Outside winds buffet the building, the wires on the boats shriek, rain thrashes at the black window.

On the table, in a pool of light, she takes out tools: knife, chisels, a coil of cord, a wooden mallet, a large G clamp. These she pushes aside, reaches in, lifts out a lump hammer, piles in the rest and closes the cantilevered toolbox. The dense weight of the lump hammer being laid on the elm table resonates. She slips it into a small backpack.

I feel the gravel softly sift itself as the others nestle closer. We are exhausted by this evening’s trauma. I force myself to summon concentration, summon every grain of my potency.

She leaves. The storm howls. We bathe in music and storm and darkness.

She returns at dawn. Her footsteps are hesitant, uneven, footprints wet on the parquet. She slumps onto the sofa. We clench together at her sharp intake of breath.

She dismisses the harmonies: her finger briefly touches each of us. We swoon. I sense sweat and grass and fear.

She limps over to the table. Sitting in lamplight she empties the backpack. The lump hammer is not there. Her every action is slow, deliberate.

Much later, it’s dark, and she is weeping. Our roots grip the gravel in distress. The bedroom door opens; a glimmer of light dilutes the room’s thick blackness. Duvet tugged around her, she pushes long hair from her face, limps across the floor.

‘I warned him,’ she says. ‘He wouldn’t listen.’

Her voice is strange, and we are feeling strange too, our roots tingling, our flesh tightening.

She draws in a great breath and begins to weep again, quietly, at first but then she claws at the duvet, sobs are ripped from her, wails become howls.

We edge ourselves tighter. A slow, insistent pressure build in me. Increases. The others lean in closer, in support and solidarity. Panic floods through me. I realise that it’s going to be me.

Her cries subside to whimpers and she curls herself on the sofa and sleeps again.

The pressure in me becomes more insistent. I swell and plump. I feel a deep sense of spreading, of opening to which I can only surrender.

In the morning the room fills with soft light. We hear the murmur of the radio, the seething and splutter of the kettle followed by the clinking of crockery. Indistinct words about an accident at St Abbs Head, a body found at the foot of the cliff. The radio falls abruptly silent. She walks stiffly towards us, her face pale

Teacup balanced on palm, she stands in the sun-struck room looking down at me, a grey-blue stone that yesterday bore a narrow cleft, but from which there now protrudes a sharp green stem topped by a vivid, golden explosion of bloom. I am radiant, glorious. The others shift closer, swelling in pride.

Her cup rattles on its saucer. She looks suddenly brighter, fuller. She kneels before me.

It’s over. It’s done.

‘