{"id":20033,"date":"2012-10-27T15:33:24","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T14:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/?p=20033"},"modified":"2012-10-27T15:33:24","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T14:33:24","slug":"janice-pearce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/?p=20033","title":{"rendered":"Janice Pearce"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Flight<\/strong><\/p>\n

A haiku before breakfast \u2013 keep alert, no slacking; keep the mind active; imagination dies \u2013 this had been her adolescent mantra (how long ago), use it or lose it; keep positive.
\nCloud cover was low and dense and a bitter wind scythed across the leaden sea. The strand was empty; she leaned into the wind and tried to make progress. Things could be worse. I could have retired here with everything past and the sea still grey and the day still heavy. So what’s to look forward to? I play a mean clarinet; know the principles behind particle acceleration and can compose a decent sonnet. What does that make me? Fucking unemployable that’s what. Calm, calm.
\nBetween paint-peeled wrought iron curlicues, she doubled up on the bench and opposed the sea with a frown. Keep hopeful; mindful.
\nThe wind snatched most of his words but she heard ‘coffee to warm’ and saw encouragement in an outstretched arm inviting without the pressure of contact. Why not? The steamy warmth, low murmur of voices, gentle clatter and rush of released steam provided great comfort after the wind. He looked familiar, local she guessed, but couldn’t place him. Difficult to age \u2013 under forty, well-kempt and wearing some sort of uniform under his overcoat. He brought two cups of coffee to the table very carefully.
\n\u201cThank you. What a wind.\u201d
\n\u201cToo cold to be sitting out.\u201d
\nThe voice was strangely monotonal and the eyes slightly unfocussed but the kindly intent was evident. He asked if she lived nearby.
\n\u201cYes.\u201d
\n\u201cI live here too. Peter.\u201d He held out his hand. She took it, and as she said \u2018Jo\u2019, he went on \u201cI’m a pilot.\u201d
\n\u201cSorry,\u201d they both said and she laughed and he frowned until it was clear she was laughing at the brief confusion, not him.
\n\u201cThat’s amazing.\u201d But it was odd too. Intuition warned against further questions, and then the syncopated strains of Benny Goodman made her sit up.
\n\u201cI like the music here too. Do you play?\u201d
\n\u201cYes, the clarinet, since I was a child.\u201d
\n\u201cDo you play every day?\u201d
\nThere was something so intimate about the question that Jo felt she would be giving much away, but she answered nevertheless. \u201cYes, every day.\u201d
\nHe nodded. \u201cI must get back to work. Will you come?\u201d
\n\u201cTo the airport?\u201d
\n\u201cIt’s just a short walk.\u201d
\nTrust in his goodwill overcame the strangeness and she followed him out of the caf\u00e9. Conversation was impossible, and walking a struggle. He gently pulled her arm through his making it clear by the slowness of the action that this was a practical measure and nothing more. She thought he said ‘Nearly there’ but knew they were a long way from any airport. He stopped and indicated the entrance to the lower station of the funicular railway; he was inviting her to precede him in. Out of the wind again, he smiled at an elderly man limping out of the office who looked warily at Jo.
\n\u201c \u2019Ad your break, Peter? No punters today yet.\u201d
\n\u201cThis is Jo. I can take over now Eddie. I’ll just take my coat off.\u201d As he turned to go into the office, Jo noticed for the first time a long scar running just above the hairline from his temple to behind his ear. Eddie was watching her:
\n\u201c ‘E’s a good one; the best. Some call ‘im an ‘ero.\u201d
\nPeter had given her time to turn and leave but she was still there when he returned.
\n\u201cShall we take the plane up? I’ll show you the engine room.\u201d
\n\u201cYes\u201d, she said, \u201clet’s fly.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lifted<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ever, after many years of marriage, suddenly and inadvertently signed yourself by your maiden name?
\nNo, you probably haven’t; probably kept your maiden name, or at least held onto it when it mattered. Well, it’s as though you’ve remembered an old secret, and I felt like that today in the lift \u2013 or elevator as I’ve failed to call it for the past twenty years.
\nI remembered another lift back in London and my mother’s aversion to them. She wasn’t daft, and regularly took the lift to her lab on the 15th floor, but she avoided them when she could. She found them unnatural \u2013 people thrust close together, inactive and moving. She preferred the shared, thoughtful, effort of the stairs where you might meet others climbing or descending.
\nIt was a cold, wet, December day shortly before Christmas when she led me along Queen Victoria Street towards Skinners Lane. I was to sit the Graduate Record Examinations for which I was perilously unprepared, as I was then for so much else.
\nI knew I was brilliant in some respects and whatever I could not or chose not to shine in, I dismissed. My scorn for my worthy and often intelligent contemporaries knew no bounds. I took no pains with anything of practical use; certainly not with the business of negotiating the streets of the City I had lived in for 21 years.
\nIt held no interest for me and the organisational skills and sacrifices of my mother avoided the need to address such failings. Yet I wasn’t really sure of the value of what came so easily to me and I felt the lack of a cause. I had drive, but I was uncertain of direction: so I watched television.
\nIt had been a difficult term. I had been trying to decide if sex was important, discovered that this was not a question to which I could apply a detached analysis, and got hurt.
\nCambridge was well-equipped with counsellors, but they didn’t have the way with words or the depth of understanding my mother did. She lifted me out of my depression and carried me through to the vacation. I decided the Ivy League beckoned; no one who was anyone studied Eng. Lit. in England only. It was all so late.
\nI left myself a day to prepare for the GRE, and of course it became the vital key to my Future. My anxiety and self-recrimination found their usual outlet \u2013 I blamed my mother. My lack of preparation for this and for all else was due to her inadequacies. I saw the hurt I caused and I relied on her strength and love to overcome it and carry on lifting me.
\nWe approached a bright modern office block through the chill, dripping lanes of an earlier time. I hadn’t even been able to get to the exam on my own. She would have left me at the door but I made her come in. The immaculately dressed receptionist called ‘second floor’ and directed us to the lift. I saw my mother hesitate. She wanted to take the stairs; it would remind me of the need to work to rise, that it takes effort to get to places worth reaching. She followed me into the lift.
\nMy mother came with me to New York, organised the practicalities, saw me settled. I have succeeded with an ease that I sometimes find embarrassing \u2013 publications, prizes, my work on standard syllabuses; I have been the subject of numerous doctoral theses. My mother has been back many times, often when I needed lifting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Revenge<\/strong><\/p>\n

After a long, hot day at the office, laden with a chic leather backpack; plastic-covered dry-cleaning in one hand and a gym-bag in the other, Poppy strode down the narrow passage towards home.
\nA tall man, of mixed race appearance (as she later described him) pushed past her. It occurred to her that people usually ran, if at all, in the opposite direction, towards the station. He stopped at the end of the passage, looked quickly up and down the road and then turned back to her and said \u201cGive us yer bag love.\u201d It was a chilling conflation of endearment and threat.
\nPoppy turned to run back and straight into an accomplice blocking the passage who pushed her to the ground. She was unclear as to the precise order of events that followed, images became kaleidoscopic; she knew that she screamed throughout and never lost contact with the coat hanger.
\nHer knuckles scraped against one rough brick wall and her shoes were dislodged against the other. She did not try to protect her backpack but while one man pinned her arms and the other tried to tug it from her back it was just not possible to release it. As the scuffle became more desperate she took a blow to the face and as she jerked her head round she saw another pair of legs nearby.
\nShe screamed louder, was winded by a foot in the midriff and saw the legs move closer, stop, and then slowly back away towards the sunlit end of the passage where she glimpsed a woman writing. The men shouted at each other and she gasped as one produced a Stanley knife.
\nHer cheek forced against the ground by a knee on her neck and shoulder, they sawed through the straps of the backpack ripping through her jacket in the process. Then it was over. They ran off with the bag, straps trailing. Stunned, shocked, breathing heavily but still crying out, Poppy pulled herself up and sat against the wall. A woman hurried to help, retrieved her shoes and supported her back into the July sunshine.
\n\u201cI got the registration, I’ll call the police. Do you want an ambulance?\u201d
\nPoppy shook her head. She felt sick and battered; she just wanted to get home.
\nTwo young men stood by \u2013 she recognised the third pair of legs.
\n\u201cI thought it was just mates having a laugh. You know, just mucking around,\u201d said the head that was attached.
\n\u201cYeah,\u201d said the other, who didn’t meet her eye; had he done so he would have been startled to see a deep contempt that overcame shock and pain.
\nThe police took statements, took Poppy home and, after a call a week later to confirm that the car was stolen and had been involved in similar incidents and to chastise her for choosing that route home, she heard nothing further.
\nThe days were getting shorter and it was late when Bruce left the pub. He had tended to avoid the passage after dark, being well aware of the danger: \u2018Hell, what am I, a girl?\u2019 he thought, taking the short-cut. He was almost at the end when he was grabbed from behind and something sharp at his neck pierced the skin.
\n\u201cYou move, I’ll slip \u2013 right through the jugular.\u201d
\nWhen he was found, hands bound by his own tie and ankles by his belt, Bruce still had his wallet, but absolutely nothing else.
\n\u201cI’ll call the police.\u201d
\n\u201cNo! It was just . . . just mates having a laugh. You know, just mucking around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Flight A haiku before breakfast \u2013 keep alert, no slacking; keep the mind active; imagination dies \u2013 this had been her adolescent mantra (how long ago), use it or lose it; keep positive. Cloud cover was low and dense and a bitter wind… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20033"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20043,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20033\/revisions\/20043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}