Instructions In The Cauldron

Tradotto da Valentina Giglio.

© Serena Longhi Gelati 2019

To someone who isn’t here anymore but is watching from up above…

I. The Holly Bush Cottage

It was Friday and like every Friday Sarah and I would go to our granny’s.

The Holly Bush Cottage, as we called it in our family, was our second home, we had spent there every weekend and the summer holidays since we were babies.

A nice cottage in the English countryside, in Marlow precisely. Our great-grandparents had built it, our grandpa had inherited it later and it was inhabited by our granny Susan.

The house was composed of a living room, a kitchen and a dining room on the ground floor, three large bedrooms with two nice bathrooms on the first floor and a wooden attic with two large skylights opening on the surrounding countryside. I had spent so many evenings watching spellbound the clouds from up there!

Our pride was however the garden, where the big holly giving the name to the building dominated, followed by the oak near the gate and by a hawthorn bush, standing next to the main door. Of course, roses weren’t missing, and lavender bushes, orchids, pot marigold and a small place dedicated to officinal herbs like sage, rosemary and mint.

Our parents ran a cafeteria called Café Room in Newbury, a nice wooden place whose specialities were, besides coffee, apple pies and scones.

Mum and dad didn’t have much time to devote to us at the time. I wondered who would have looked after  us if our granny hadn’t been there. In my eight-years-old child mind, however, this problem was solved in a short time: granny was there and she would never go away.

I wished I could spend more time with my parents, the only time to stay with them was a week in Palma de Maiorca in the summer. I hated the cafeteria.

“You shouldn’t talk like this, Anne!” my mother scolded me, “that is our job and it enables us to live a comfortable life”.

I didn’t exactly understand what “comfortable” meant, I only understood that my parents devoted more time to work than to us.

“Sarah, have you forgotten your rucksack at school again?” I reproached her when we got into the car.

“Oh, no, don’t tell mum” she begged me.

“Don’t tell me what?” mum asked, driving in the Friday afternoon traffic towards Marlow.

“I should have taken the M4 instead of going through Reading. Hell! It will take ages. I don’t understand why your granny doesn’t want to move closer and live in Newbury…it all would be easier”.

The same old story every Friday, but our granny would never move, she would never leave The Holly Bush Cottage for anything in the world.

“By the way, mum, Sarah has forgotten her rucksack at school again!”. I always felt a bit of fun in putting my sister under a bad light.

“Sarah! How will you be able to do your homework for Monday now?” our mum screamed, hooting at the same time to a big SUV which had cut her way. “People can’t drive…especially on Friday evening. So Sarah, how are you going to do without your books?”.

“I’ll use Anne’s books!” my sister answered innocently. She never got upset, even before the most resounding scolding, she just stared at you with her big eyes. Nothing could trouble her.

“Your sister won’t be always there in your life. You must learn to be more responsible and to take more care of your things!”. I didn’t understand whether my mum was nervous for Sarah’s fault, for the traffic or for the fact that the previous SUV was still before us and it was continually slowing down.

Even if it was almost dark, my granny was waiting for us in the garden, in her apron with pink flowers and a wonderful smell of apple pie associated with her.

“My two naughty little monkeys! Here are my girls!” she received us with a warm hug of the kind she was the only one who could give.

“Where’s Sarah’s rucksack? Forgotten again?”.

“Yes, granny…”.

“She would forget her head too if it wasn’t attached to her neck! She’s terrible, mum, terrible! Her teacher Richie is really worried, she looks as if she lived in a world on her own” my mother mumbled getting into the house with our bags in her hands.

“It’s probably just like that, Rebecca. Tell me Sarah, what were you thinking about at school this morning?”-

“I was fancying I was already here with you, granny, sitting on the armchair in front of the fireplace, caressing Kiki…”.

Kiki was my granny’s big cat, black and lazy, he lived just for  eating, sleeping  and being fondled by my sister.

“I’ve been thinking about that all the while, but I’ve also listened a bit to the lesson, I swear”.

“She has got a natural aptitude for visualization, my little witch!”.

“Mum, please, don’t tell her she’s a witch! If she started fancying about that too, it would be the limit” our mother said in her usual brisk voice.

“I wouldn’t consider it bad at all, Rebecca, really at all”.

“And what about you, miss Anne? Always serious and composed?”.

“One girl with her head in the clouds is enough, granny, isn’t she?” I pointed out seriously.

I was the responsible and cynical one, sometimes even a bit nasty, but that was a part of my role.

Being a twin is difficult: you want to preserve your own identity, to make the world understand you’re a single person and, to do it, you sometimes have to be completely different, not only in your clothes. I had asked my mother to stop dressing us up in the same way since I was five years old. I was tired that people always mistook us.

I would never want to change Sarah, I would be always there for her, but my task was to show her the rational side of life, I didn’t have to nourish her fancies. I was just the opposite she needed to be whole and she was the same for me.

“You must go now, Rebecca, or you’ll be late!”.

“If you lived closer, mum, it all would be  really easier! There are some nice little houses near Newbury…”.

Mum was never going to stop insisting on making my granny move.

“Go, Rebecca, go…You know I’ll never move! It’s more likely you’re going to move closer in a few years’ time…”.

As soon as my granny received us at hers, it was as if we were thrown into a different reality: the sweet smell of the apple pie just taken out of the oven could be felt more intensely, the cat Kiki arrived, scraping against Sarah’s legs, the fireplace made the house still more comfortable and our granny’s love wrapped us like a warm mantle.

We sat in the living room, on the old flowered sofa, we plunged among the cushions and enjoyed telling her how we had spent the week.

“There’s a new girl in our class, she comes from London!” Sarah commenced with enthusiasm.

“Wow, from the capital city…What a big change! What’s her name?”.

“Alison” I answered ready.

“She has just her mother and she’s a hippie!” Sarah went on. It was always like that with us: we spoke alternating, one turn for me and one for her.

Our granny burst out laughing: ”How do you know she’s a hippie, Sarah?”.

“She told me herself. She is sitting at the desk next to mine. But I don’t know what hippie means…do you know, granny?”.

“Of course! Hippies are the children of the flowers”.

“Children of the flowers?”.

“They used to wear colorful clothes, they loved Nature and they sang “ Put flowers into your cannons! It’s better to love each other than wasting time and energy in useless wars”. To cut it short, they were just like that…What does Alison’s mum do to be a hippie? Have you ever seen her?”.

“She dresses up exactly as you are saying, she’s very beautiful, always smiling, with long blonde hair and she wears a pendant with a glittering white stone”.

“It’s not glittering!” I interrupted her.

“Yes, it is. It looks like a white rainbow!”.

“Rainbows aren’t white” I pinpointed.

“It might be a white Labradorite”. Granny got up from the armchair, she moved to the casket where she kept her stones and took one light stone out of it.

“Exactly, granny. That’s it. Have you got it too?”

“I’ve got plenty…they keep me company and they help me”, she said, keeping turning some of them between her fingers.

“How can they help you? They’re just coloured stones!” I burst out defiantly.

“No, Anne, they aren’t just coloured stones! They are much more and I’ll let you know them, when you grow up a little more. If Alison’s mum doesn’t before me…”.

“What are our plans for the weekend, granny?”.

I already knew actually, it was March, the weather forecast said it would be sunny, so we were going to get the garden ready to receive spring.

Life at our cottage was marked by season changes: we carved pumpkins at Halloween, at Christmas it was a triumph of decorations, with evergreens, cakes and candles…it was absolutely our favourite time of the year! We usually spent most of the time at home around the fireplace in winter, towards March we got the garden ready, at Easter we decorated eggs and we spent the long summer days outside, barefooted; our granny picked up lavender, sage, rosemary and mint in order to dry them and we went back to school in September, but just after we had prepared some jam!

“We’re going to the plant nursery, girls: we’re getting new mould, some nice little plants and some seeds; then we’re going back home and we’re putting the garden in order. Mrs Bray is coming too”.

“The lady who lives next door? Why?”

“You see, Anne, even if she lives just on the other side of the fence and she has got the same sunlight, the same shadow, the same rain and the same ground as I have, she can’t make even a daisy grow in her garden. She’s always hoping I will tell her my secrets!”.

“So why don’t you?”, my sister asked her naively.

“Because I haven’t got any. Flowers and plants are living beings, they stay with whoever they want to and they need to be fed, not only with water and manure…They need energy as well”.

“Electric energy?”

“No, silly girl. The power of our mind. We must think about what we are doing when we plant them, to instil our trust, thankfulness and also our desires into them”.

“Alison’s mum has put a fairy house in her garden. She says they are going to help her to make plants grow”.

“I wish I could know what kind of plants is Alison’s mum growing…”.

“I can ask her, if you wish”.

“No Sarah, it doesn’t matter, thanks”.

“Have you seen them, granny?”.

“What?”.

“Fairies!” my sister exclaimed, as if that was something obvious.

“No, darling, I’ve never seen them”.

“Because they don’t exist!” I claimed lofty.

“Anne, not all we can’t see doesn’t exist. I’ve never seen the Great Wall of China, but I know it exists”.

“Of course! They have taken photos of it, it’s real. Nobody has ever taken photos of fairies instead”, I replied, crossing my arms on my chest.

“Because they don’t want to and they show themselves only to the people they choose”, our granny explained.

“I don’t believe it”, I finished.

“So you’re never going to see them…”.

“I do believe in them instead, granny!”, my sister said.

“I had no doubts about it”, our granny burst out laughing.

“In fact I believe Mrs Bray should buy a nice house for them and put it in her garden, so they can help her grow plants and flowers”.

“No, Sarah. Mrs Bray is not the kind of person who believes in fairies”.

“So”, I suggested, “she should just talk to them. I heard in a documentary that plants react very well if we talk to them”.

“That’s true, my darling. It’s exactly like that”.

I really couldn’t believe plants could hear us, they didn’t have any ears! But it was worth trying.

“Look how your little twins have grown up, Susan” , squealed Mrs Bray the day after. “You’re lucky you can see your little- daughters every week. My son never brings mine here. By the way, you’re their maternal grand-mother, you know, you are the favourite one…”.

Our paternal grand-parents lived actually on the Balearic islands, in Palma; they had got tired of the English weather, so they had moved down there when they had retired. We saw them once a year: they gave us plenty of presents, but they didn’t even know our teachers’ or our friends’ names and they sometimes still mistook our names.

“So, tell me, which of you is Sarah and which is Anne?”.

We stared at Mrs Bray with our big light brown eyes, my sister and I were completely different and in an absolutely voluntary way. Sarah had long blonde hair, she was thin and angular. On the contrary I had shorter dark hair, like my dad’s. Nobody ever mistook us.

At the plant nursery, Mrs Brady never left our granny even for a moment; she was her shadow, she kept asking stupid questions: “How much water should I give the roses?”, “Where is it better to place the chilli vase?”, “How long will rocket take to sprout?”, and so on, all the time.

Granny answered her kindly, giving her lots of advice.

“Oh, Susan dear, you really know everything! How can you?”.

Our great-grandmother Maggy had taught her everything, not only about gardening, but also about cooking and knitting. Her works were famous all over Marlow, her best things were scarfs, pullovers and pot holders, all of them strictly purple, violet or pink.

“Knitting helps me relax. The colour which makes the mind calm down the most is really violet”, she used to claim.

She completed her works with some drops of lavender essential oil, then she gave her creations to her friends as a present, or she took them to the Charity shop at the end of the street.

Lavender oil was never missing at home; it had helped me a lot when I was a small child and I couldn’t get to sleep: I remember my granny used to put some drops on my temples and my chest, then she used to massage it, telling a nursery rhyme three times:

“With lavender oil and the moon in the sky, shall my little girl have a quiet sleep tonight”. So I could sleep all night long.

“Granny, do you believe Mrs Bray’s garden will be as beautiful as yours this year?”, my sister asked, placing carefully some vases along the outside wall of the house.

“Oh Sarah, I hope it will, for her, since she spent a lot of money at the plant nursery. You know what I think: you should only take what you need. There’s no use of having lots of kinds of flowers, if you can’t deal with them or lots of different herbs if you don’t use them and you don’t know what to do with them. That’s why I only keep the necessary ones; lavender, sage, mint, roses, pot marigold, hawthorn, laurel and rosemary are never missing. I also like geraniums, orchids and of course I couldn’t do without the oak and the holly, but for them that’s a different question…they keep me company when you aren’t here”.

Granny never had rest when we weren’t there. There were always her friends coming and going to see her.

“They are always telling me their troubles”, she had explained to us, “sometimes talking with someone is enough to feel better, to break the dikes of the dam we built to protect our ego. While they keep talking, I make a good tea, I knit, I think about what they are telling me and in the end I give them the little work I made. In that way, as if by magic, sadness disappears”.

“How can you do that?” I asked curiously.

“I’ve told you, I just have to let them give vent to their feelings and always think about what I’m doing. While I keep knitting and they keep talking, I imagine them at peace, light-hearted, so I can charge my work with a positive energy, instilling these nice thoughts into it. It’s not difficult, but I need to concentrate a lot, so I use the violet so much, it helps me stay more focused”.

I didn’t understand much, neither did Sarah.

“Granny, I’ve heard someone saying that oaks should never be cut down. Is it true?” I changed the subject.

“Absolutely! Just like an hawthorn branch should never be torn, except for May Day”.

“But how can you do, if the oak gets ill?”.

“When an oak gets ill, that’s a bad sign…however a part of the trunk must be kept there. Roots are as important as the outer part”.

“The cut down trunk can be turned into a nice little table”.

“That’s true, Sarah, an oak should never be completely eliminated, especially when it’s inside a private garden! The family would crumble”.

Sunday evening always came too fast. When we heard the noise of our dad’s car on the gravel, we were caught by a mix of happiness in seeing our parents again and of melancholy. They usually took us to a nice family pub for dinner on our way home and it was nice to be with them, during those uncommon moments together, but we also knew that we were leaving behind us the magic of the cottage and of our granny.

Luckily our week went by very fast between school and the various volley ball and dance clubs, we came home tired in the evening, mum gave us dinner, she spent some time with us and then we went to bed.

II. Passages towards other realities…

The following weekend was mainly rainy and cold.

“That’s not bad”, our granny told us. She always saw the positive side in every situation.

“The new seeds need also rain and I have a lot of work to do. Old Mal invited me to take part in our May Fayre at Higginson Park, I’ll have my own stall! I’m going to sell mainly knitting and some herbal oils I produce by myself”.

Old Mal was a dear family friend.

“That’s great, granny! Can we help you sell?”, my sister exclaimed enthusiastically.

“Of course, Sarah”.

“Alison’s mother used to have a stall too, when they lived in London, in Camden Town”, she went on in her dreamy way.

“That’s really a very large market!”, our granny claimed, brushing poor Kiki.

“They sold stones, amulets, incense…you know, those little sticks which are sweet-smelling if you light them. But she said it has become too commercial now and she doesn’t like it anymore. What does commercial mean?”

“It means that most of the goods are alike, they aren’t original, they just follow trends. London is a tourist city, people goes to Camden expecting they can find some particular goods. There are various trends: punk, rock, gothic and hippie, but, as she said, they have turned into a commercial style, to avoid disappointing expectations and to be sure they’ll sell. Unfortunately, everywhere is like that…excepting Chalice Well’s gardens and the Tor, of course”.

Our granny’s family came from there, she always took a dreamy mood when she was talking about her village. We had never been there, mum said it was a den for crazy people and granny always scolded her because she didn’t understand the magic of that place.

“Is old Mal your fiancé?”, Sarah asked her impudently.

We had always suspected it, but we had never had the courage to ask her.

“Absolutely not! He’s just a dear friend, we keep company to each other. We’ve known each other for ages”.

Granny had told us again and again that she still missed our grandpa; he had died ten years before. A heart attack, he had passed away from morning to evening, without any notice. Our mum was just eighteen, she had never got over the shock.

We liked old Mal, as she called him. He was tall, with greying hair and a smile which always made you feel well, he could have been the perfect fiancé for granny. He was kind, smiling and he always took strawberry candies for us. He was fond of horses, he had two, Smelly e Shelly, and he was ready to saddle them and take us for a tour whenever we wanted to. I always insisted on not riding Smelly. He was famous in Marlow because he organized the yearly May Fayre with stalls, merry-go-rounds and gastronomic stands. If it wasn’t for him, the fair might not be so nice; at least that was what granny kept saying.

“While you are knitting, can we watch Harry Potter?”, I asked as I turned on the TV.

“That’s ok. I’m really curious, everyone is talking about that young wizard”.

“Great! Dad bought us the first boxed set, we could watch the first one today and the second one tomorrow…”, I suggested.

“We’ll see…you know, I don’t like letting you stay before the TV set for too long”.

We crouched down on the sofa for the whole length of the film, spellbound by the story. We knew it by heart, but there was some new detail to be discovered every time. It was absolutely our favourite movie. Granny never stopped knitting, she only got up to make tea. I couldn’t understand if she was either following the story or  thinking about something else.

“So, did you like it?”, I asked as soon as the film ended; I was curious to know her point of view.

“If I liked it? It’s great, girls! The author deserves all the success she is having. Absolutely gifted, a fancy worth of a great mind”. Granny was really enthusiastic.

“And you still haven’t watched the second one!”.

“I especially liked a detail”, she went on, “The idea of platform 9 and ¾: creating a passage to get into a different reality…neither the usual doors in tree trunks like in “Nightmare”, nor the holes in the ground like in “Alice in Wonderland”. Do you remember, little girls, when Alice is following the White Rabbit? She falls into a hole and, after a nice flight headlong, she finds herself before a door”.

We had watched that cartoon hundreds of times.

“Another clever idea is the transformation of Professor McGranit into a cat…really nice. I liked it. But children, that’s not magic, remember that. That’s fancy. Waving a magic wand and saying a formula quickly isn’t enough. Magic is something more: it starts from our work on ourselves to understand what we want to change and why. And above all, it doesn’t hurt anybody. Never! It sends away, but doesn’t hurt. Life, God, Mother Nature, Karma or what you call it will punish the ones who behave badly. Remember that: tit for tat.”

“You also taught us: don’t hurt, don’t be afraid”, I went on.

“Exactly.”

Someone rang the door at that moment. Who could it be? Tea time had passed and it was raining hard outside.

Granny ran to open it.

“Oh, Mal! Come in, what’s happening?”

“Pizza! Pizza for the most beautiful women in the county! Someone should feed you…”

“Old fox; come in, it’s a pleasure to have you here.” She immediately took his umbrella and laid the pizzas on the table.

“Where are the two little monkeys? Here they are, they are getting more and more beautiful! Miss Sarah, Miss Anne, how are you?”

After a long bow, he took two strawberry candies out of his sleeve. I can’t remember seeing him without them, even once. “The sweets after the pizzas, girls. Now wash your hands and lay the table.”

“You’re so demanding with them, Susan.”

“Rules, Mal. Rules.”

“Yes, Madam! I see that the production for the stall has taken off: there’s violet wool everywhere. Don’t overdo it, Susan.

Mal was looking around himself bewildered: when our granny did something, she always put her best care in it. “I don’t want to cut a poor figure, it’ a honour for me to join it. Who is going to get the proceeds this year?”, she asked him, handing  him the glasses and the cutlery to lay the table.

“The proceeds will be partly used to build a town gym and partly for research on multiple sclerosis.”

“Excellent Mal, as usual.”

We spent a pleasant evening, between pizza with cheese and frankfurter, a Scrubble match and the old man’s jokes. He didn’t go away late, however we were already exhausted.

“Granny…”

“Yes Anne, tell me.”

I was in my bed, but before she turned off the light, I had to tell her something: “When I come here, it seems to me I’m getting into another reality.”

“What do you mean, my child?”, she asked me, sitting down at the foot of the bed.

“Here at yours, I feel like Harry, when he goes through the wall at King’s Cross Station.”