Morning - a descriptive story

Morning

It happened by chance because they were outside the window. They were in the hedge, nestled like purple jewels in their thorny bed. Juicy black secrets hanging off the branches, wet with moisture and dew from the English rain that had just fallen. The sky was dingy and grey, but the rain had awakened the world, so that every smell was tangible in the thick, wet air. Dung from the farm was mixing with the sodden damp smell of freshly cut grass, the mud of the ditches tingeing the musty aroma of the Somerset field. The red brick tang of Emma’s house grated our noses; making us blink each time we took a breath. Yellow were the windows that warmed our thoughts; black were the gloves that were damp, sticking to our hands with blackberry pips. Purple rivers ran down our wrists before black clusters found their way to the wicker basket usually used for carrying hens’ eggs.

We had to empty the berries out of the wicker basket because of the hens’ eggs that needed to go in it. Emma’s mum gave us some Tupperware boxes: they were cold and made out of rough plastic with a lid that had a little button at the top. Emma said that you knew it was closed properly when the button couldn’t be pressed anymore. I never did work out if I had got it closed. But I didn’t say anything to Emma because she might have thought I was arguing with her and she was my best friend. Emma’s room was up the stairs, turn left, second door to the right. The oak door had a panel with “Emmeline” written on it. I always wondered if it was because she might forget where her room was. I didn’t think she would but I always kept the directions in my mind just in case.

Becky was Emma’s sister and she was really thin, spindly and white. She was older, and at a posh school. Her hair was a mass of orange threads like Emma’s but her face was whiter; and her freckles small flecks of spiced red that dotted her face like bloodspots on bleached linen. My mum used to talk about her sometimes at our house and there was a word that was specially for her and it was called Leukaemia. She had an inhaler and some tablets that she took with orange juice. The inhaler was a long purple bottle and it looked like the big water pistol that I had wanted so much in the toyshop for a whole 20 pounds. But the inhaler wasn’t a toy, Emma told me, her hair covering her face while she looked for the friendship bracelet box of coloured beads, silvery threads, and large dull needles, the ones that we spent over half an hour with trying to get the thread through the eye, outside in the garden.

I knew that Becky took tablets every day because I stayed over at Emma’s a lot when we were doing our ballet exam. My mum always used to say that Emma was better at ballet than me because she was lanky and she let herself go. I didn’t like being near Emma in ballet class because I always felt stupid and I could feel the eyes of the teacher boring into my back because I was wobbling. I don’t know why she did it because it always made me wobble more.

The smooth wooden parquet of the ballet hall smelt of chalk and resin, and the grain went one way so that we didn’t scuff our ballet shoes. Emma’s ballet shoes were always muddy because of her farm. I really did like that farm, with the hedges and the red bricks, the cows giving birth, the sun hot on our necks as we played in the crops on the field, the strong smell we always savoured by the horses, placing our smooth hands on their rough coats, counting how many hands they were. Emma’s big strong dad was six foot four with large shoulders and huge rubber boots that came up to his knees. He would whip the russet hair out of his face and lift me up so I could continue counting, lifting me clear of the long green grass that whispered around my knees, softly chanting the sweet song of summer. The blue sky mirrored his crinkly periwinkle eyes that danced when he smiled. He was a beacon of gentle power against the backdrop of his working farm.

One day my mum told me that one of the cows had accidentally kicked Emma’s dad in one of those kind blue eyes. Emma didn’t come to school the next day. When I went to her house she was quiet. The sun was piercing through the windows and the birds were singing their high-pitched melodies from far away in the trees. Emma would usually have been able to tell me the bird names but she didn’t that day. When my mum came to pick me up she said goodbye solemnly and I was abandoned, listening to our mums talking in hushed voices. She had closed the big oak door on me. Left me staring at the golden lion knocker on the worn wooden panels.

Alone in that bright, pure morning.