Sharon Gerber-Crawford - Visits

Dieses Buch erscheint als Band 1 der Belletristik-Edition poetis im Verlag des Institute for Science and Innovation Communication (inscico)

This book appears as Volume One of the Edition poetis published by inscico Institute for Science and Innovation Communication

1. Auflage 2017 / 1st Edition 2017

Das Buch ist unter der ISBN 978-3-9814811-9-8 im Handel erhältlich.

This book is available for sale under ISBN 978-3-9814811-9-8.

Alle Rechte vorbehalten

Die Weitergabe dieses Buches als Ganzes oder in Teilen ist nicht gestattet.

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced.

Copyright © 2017 by inscico GmbH, Kleve / Germany

www.inscico.eu/verlag

Cover-Foto: Robert Bräutigam

(Taken in a Ruin Bar in Budapest / Hungary)

For Eva, Maggie and Lila – my true inheritance.

Your feet will bring you where your heart is

An áit a bhuil do chroí is ann a thabharfas do chosa thú

Irish Proverb

Thanks

To all those who offered practical help and encouragement.

In particular:

My husband Alexander Gerber for formatting and production and for pushing me out through the door to my first writing group.

The Creative Writing Group in Berlin.

The Schreibgruppe, Culucu in Kleve, Niederrhein.

Erwin Kraut for editorial comment, proofreading and mentoring.

Louise Churcher for proofreading.

Vanessa Gneisinger and Fiona Kahlau for editorial comment.

To my son Dylan, my family and my friends for helping me stay on track.

Contents

Foreword

Visits

Marching Orders

Visiting Gran

Visiting the Past

The meaning of it all

Me, aged six

Memory Tricks

Exposure

The Journey Home

The Playground

The Big Brown Car

Up Yours and Definitely No Surrender

Inheritance

A collection of rather banal memories

A Safe Distance

Making Small Talk in a Troubled Country

Tour Of Duty

Secrets

Green

She was invited to a wedding

After Noelle

A Walk In The Dark

Into the Light – Dia non Dul

Wishing Well

The last time I visited

In May

About the Author

Illustrations

Endnotes

Foreword

Whilst many of the pieces in this collection are based on real events, this is creative writing and not autobiographical. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously.

Therefore, whereas, for example, my son really did ask me about Bloody Sunday in an airport bookshop (Up Yours and Definitely No Surrender), my brother and I were never turned into thorn bushes (The Playground) and there was no insurance man called Raymond (The Big Brown Car).

Although I left Northern Ireland for good in 1990, somehow I am always visiting it inside my head. Always looking for that piece of myself I left behind. This is why I say I left Northern Ireland a long time ago, but Northern Ireland has never left me.

Sharon on the dunes looking out across The Channel to the UK.

Visits

Rattling down a road of my own making

still alone, chasing ghosts

from Berlin morning windows

March sunshine seeks me out

but I’m not playing

I can‘t

We stop

„Bitte entschuldigen Sie die Störung. Wegen einer technischen Defekt können wir die Fahrt voraussichtlich nicht weiter...“ i

But I can’t

Stop

Mourning

from Berlin morning windows

still alone, chasing ghosts

rattling down a road of my own making

Marching Orders

last orders

real women don’t drink pints

and swear at real men

or forget to comb the curls

at the back of their hair

so there

and anyhow I’m not good for you

and you’re certainly not for me

but I know this

so who cares

My head is full of words, and worries and other people’s questions. Cycling home through the woods, in deep and earnest conversation with myself I suddenly realize it’s The Twelfth of July.ii Fancy that, and I can still remember that one warm 12th thirty years ago, nineteen years of age, home for the first summer break from university. I fancied myself in love. With Rodney. A bad guy, not even a very clever one. But a beautiful one. Warm grass and kisses, grown-up drinks and blushes. In a hurry. Always in a hurry. The cows strung out along the foot of the hill, going home for milking. Sheep feeding and bleating on the blue-green Sperrin Mountains deep into the night.

In those days you could still cycle down the main road and survive. In the evening traffic was minimal, cycling to the cawing of the late evening crows, retracing the tracks of my first secret Catholic friendship. Calling in on my gran, playing cards with one of her slightly crazy sisters or my other gran sitting in front of a turned-off telly watching for signs of life outside the window. How often did I push my bike to the subway entry, turn round and wave at my gran still standing there anxiously waiting? And how I would love to do it now, then turn round, for one last wave. Before I am swallowed up by that subway entry.

View from my childhood bedroom of the Sperrin Mountains

Visiting Gran

Granny clacks her cameo rings, gnarled knuckles gripping scored and burn-marked surfaces. She’s dealing cards onto her coffee table.

„Can I maybe open the window?“ Me, small-child conscious, tries to prise, unpermitted, the window latch open. But it is stuck with years and years of smoked-out Silk Cut. The china dog guarding the plastic fireplace seems to be mocking me as I sit back down in resignation and am promptly swallowed up by a too-big mock leather sofa. It farts me out again just in time to stop my son from hitting his head against a chipped edge. He is trying to pick up cards, which have tumbled out of his hands, uncoordinated in anticipation, onto a deep-pile carpet which needs a good shampoo and conditioning.

„You’ve dropped your cards. Be careful.” Granny admonishes. „And there’s still one there!“

„Where?“

„There. By the poof. A Queen of Spades.“ she snaps. And I had been told that she was almost blind.

“Here. Let me.“ The card is greasy, smudges my fingers. I try to wipe it on my trousers before putting it back into the nervous grasp of my son.

„Mind ye don’t bend it. I’ve had those cards for ages.“ Granny sticks a Silk Cut in her mouth and squints over a lighter.

We’re going to play Blackjack. Granny goes first, looking for all the world like a dragon with a perm, she slaps a card down on the table.

„But I don’t remember the rules!“ I protest.

„Aye.“ she replies.

„No! I mean how does it go again?“ I glance quickly at her ears. She’s not put her hearing aid in again.

„THE RULES! HOW DO YOU PLAY IT?“

„Sure ah taught ye.“ she says.

Thirty years ago I think, but don’t say it.

„I’ve forgotten, Granny. Just tell me again, please!“

„Och!“ Her eyebrows snap at each other in annoyance. „Them aul things.“ she mutters under breath. Then louder:

„Yer aim is to get a hand of twenty one. Two to nine at face value. Ten, Jack, Queen and King are all worth ten. An Ace can be one or eleven. Blackjack is when you get twenty one with just two cards. That’ll be of course an ace and a ten.” She hacks up some phlegm.