Sinister: voices

[chippy eileen]

an ink polaroid...look closely, if you will.

its taken at dusk, as polaroids of such places should
be.  it is dark.  there are no streetlamps - remember
this is the country.

mrs arkeston's house, or rather mrs arkeston's garden.
 if you have a torch you'll be able to spot me. 
 see those bushes?  the ones in front of the
chickenwire fence?  well, if you're really observant
you'll notice a pair of bright blue shoes sticking out
from underneath.  i'm hiding where i think mrs
arkeston can't see me.  i would be hiding in a better
place, right in the middle of the bush, but my mate
janet got there first.

if you could take a sonic sample...an ink cd, if you
like, you would hear the birds calling.  there's a
forest behind mrs arkeston's house -  or it seemed
like a forest back then.  now they've cut most of it
down to build more dwellings.  they started building a
couple of months after she died, as if they were
waiting for it to happen -

anyway, the forest was full of birds.  birds you could
never see.  birds that hid in the bushes and shouted
out mysterious messages to a little girl who couldn't
help but listen.
if you play your ink cd you will hear them calling. 
somewhere, you'll hear the distant growl of a
motorbike and above it all....

mrs arkeston's voice...shouting out at what she
couldn't see..... "i know you're out there...i can
hear you.  i've told you, stay out of my garden.  you
shouldn't be here, i'll tell your parents"....an old
lady's voice, fraught with the paranoia of a lonely
existence, hovvering in the summer air, competing with
the crickets which join with our giggles in a mutual
chorus of mocking.

poor mrs arkeston.  she didn't know it was me behind
her house.  she liked me.  she even used to give me
sweets when she saw me out with margaret.  i never ate
them, of course.  you didn't eat anything mrs arkeston
gave you.

once, she told me she was my real mother.  we'd gone
to the post office in the next village.  i can't
remember what margaret was doing there, but i'd
wandered off into a little corner full of brightly
coloured trucks and model dinosaurs.  i heard a
shuffling behind me and there she was, smiling down at
me and offering me something wrapped in shiny paper. 
i'm sure i smiled and said thank you, hoping she would
go away.

but she didn't.  she leaned very closely and said

"i knew you'd be here....that's why i came.."

"you see....you're a very special girl to me....i wish
i hadn't left you that night.... but i couldn't keep
you, you were such a beautiful baby, you couldn't be
tied to an old woman like me..."

maybe that's what she said, anyway.  she probably said
something like that.  all i remember is her shuffling
out of the post office, clutching her bag and me
staring down at the stupid bright yellow truck i was
holding, with the tears starting to fall.

later, margaret told me that mrs arkeston said that
sort of thing a lot, and i shouldn't listen to
her....but i always wondered.  till i grew up and
realised she was at least 70 when i was born.

you're probably wondering why i'm showing you this
polaroid.  yes, its a nice picture but what does it
have to do with you...or with belle and sebastian?

keep reading, it should make sense.

the rumour was, mrs arkeston had a troll in her back
garden.  that's what we're doing there.  we're
terrified of the troll, but we couldn't help
ourselves.  we had to see if it was real.  we're not
laughing because the old woman is funny, we're
laughing because we're terrified.  a moment after this
was taken, a bird flew into the bush behind us and
sent us both running, off into the forest.  we didn't
stop till we got back to janet's dad's house and he
gave us both a cup of cocoa. 
 he didn't ask where we'd been.  i think he knew, and
i think he knew he wouldn't be going back.


i don't know if janet ever went back.  she moved away
when i was 14.  her dad met a woman from leeds and off
she went, to the big city.  
i returned though.  many years later.  back to the
spot where the troll had scared us.  the bushes seemed
smaller now, mrs arkeston's house had been replaced by
a small semi-detached residence.  the forest?  more of
a hedge...and the troll?  i had a good look.

no troll.  no mrs arkeston.  just a new, cold looking
house.  i walked back to the chippy, trying not to
feel disappointed.  the magic had gone.  when i was
naive enough to believe a troll lived there, it had
all seemed so much more exciting.

every now and then, i try and recapture that feeling. 
that belief in a big, scary, fascinating world out
there, instead of a little village with a chippy, a
newsagents and a woman that goes from house to house
cutting old ladies' hair.  i try and re-enter the
magical world.  where trolls lurk behind bushes,
mysterious old ladies are your mother and birds sing
secret messages to you.

there's a doorway to that world.  well, there are many
doorways to that world.  david wills, up the road, is
serving six months in jail for selling doorways to
that world.  but there are other entries, easier to
find, if you look properly.  and it isn't a matter of
knowing where to look, its knowing how.

i heard a brittle, damaged yet strangely hopeful voice
drifting through the dark towards me.... 

"she's very quiet...and very small.  in fact she's
hardly there at all.  that's what she is, and what she
is, and what she is..."

i could feel myself shrinking, shrinking back into a
believer.  earlier i'd been to a festival with magic
clowns and balloons rising up in the air.  i can't
remember what stuart david called the festival, but
once i'd listened to it, i went outside, and tried to
see it in the grass, in the flowers, even in the duck
pond.  for a moment, just a moment.  it was there. 
the world with the trolls in was back.  i could almost
hear mrs. arkeston shouting my name.

"tigermilk" took me there... the musical leaping of
the first bars of "i could be dreaming" led me
there.... stuart david seems to know the way every
time.

every time it looks a little bit different.  i can't
wait to see what the world of the new album looks
like.  

i'm planning to take it into the
forest-that-isn't-a-forest, put on my walkman and sink
down beneath the mushrooms to hide in its chords.

wake me up if the troll comes.

eileen

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