Memories of the Taj Mahal

What made me buy a jigsaw?


1. They were there. I rarely shop for pleasure but I am a sucker for books, stationary and arty crafty places. As you can imagine then, ‘The Works’ does it for me. I can’t remember what I went in for, but I came out with more. Including the jigsaw.

2. The picture on the jigsaw was the Taj Mahal. Just looking at it brought back the heat, the smells, the sounds of India. The thought of absorbing myself in that for a while was quite appealing.

3. I love the feelings associated with jigsaws - childhood with Grannies (though I really can’t think that any of my grandparents ever did jigsaws!), holidays and - best of all - me and Rob sitting quietly together in a shared activity. Rob soon disabused me of that final notion but not of the feeling.

4. Doing a jigsaw is a meditative activity. It stops the noise of the brain whirring. Therefore it is healthy.

We went to India in 1999, I think. It was one of the promises Rob made to me. You know when you meet a man in a nightclub and he makes you lots of promises? That was Rob. ‘I’ll take you on a proper date’; ‘I’ll take you to Dublin’; ‘I’ll take you to India’. Having heard it all before, I enjoyed the evening for what it was and didn’t go to all the effort of raising my hopes.


Within a week we’d been to the pictures - he booked the tickets, dressed up nicely and gave me a gentlemanly kiss on the cheek, arranging to see me again before taking his leave at the end of the date. He also had the temerity to think he could share my pic’n’mix, but that’s a different story. We saw ‘Men in Black’ and he bought me the soundtrack afterwards - although what he actually gave me was the empty CD case, because he’d been listening to the album and had left it in the player!


Within three months we’d been to Dublin. He booked us into a lovely hotel in Temple Bar and we cruised the city in the day and drank cocktails and danced through the streets at night.


Then we went to India. Rob had been before, on a properly organised holiday, staying in the Clarks Shiraz in Agra. Rob is always confident and said ‘We’ll just book the tickets and decide what to do when we get there’. So that is what we did. My experience of travel was limited. I’d been to Spain to stay with a friend, travelling with my equally unsophisticated sister. I refused to go through the check-in until nearly the time of our flight because I’d envisaged a claustrophobic waiting room where we’d all be packed together to wait. When we finally went through and realised it was spacious shopping heaven through there, it was too late and I was not popular.  I’d also had a weekend in Paris with my very young husband where we were nearly defeated by a ferocious camembert. It wouldn’t let us back in the hotel room after a day by itself in the sun. We’d sent the children to school then left the country before my Dad had arrived to babysit. I had so many ‘just-in-case’ arrangements in place that my poor Dad felt like he was being stalked. With this breadth of experience, I was quite happy to just book tickets to India and go. How difficult could it be?


As the time for departure got closer, Rob began to let drop slight hints of his underlying - ‘worries’ would be too strong a word.

“I’m not sure how you’ll cope with the smells’
‘I’m not sure what you’ll eat, because they don’t have bread in India’
 and - best of all -
‘There aren’t any toilets’.

Rob still says that is not what he said at all, but all I can say is that is what I heard. When I was seventeen (oh, and such a young, naive seventeen) and had just - days ago - left school, I set off for Switzerland to work for the summer. My future stepmother had helped me find the job and my Dad had booked my train tickets. I vividly remember getting to Swindon station - on the way to somewhere beyond Interlaken - and saying ‘I don’t want to go’.  My Dad was very reassuring, he put me on the train and held the door firmly shut until it pulled away. Getting on the plane to India was similar.

To be continued.

Househunting.

This is probably the first story I have attempted since junior school. Actually no - I'm forgetting  'Lucky the Naughty Dog' and 'The Princess and the Slug'. I may need to look those out. It is, however, the first story I am daring to share. Both the writing of it and the sharing of it are practice for the Creative Writing module I am due to start in September. The prompt for the story was taken from the Writer Wednesday Blog Hop. I was too late to enter that week's story share, and the story doesn't actually conform to the requirements. However, I appreciate the stimulus and will work towards joining in properly at some point. I hope you enjoy the story (if there is anyone out there). Have a go yourself. It's fun.

Househunting

            She wasn’t shocked so much by the screaming as by the way it contrasted the deep quiet that preceded it.

           

            “What the…?” Their three heads swivelled as the shrieks bounced around the dark walls. The crash of the heavy door against the arm of the overstuffed sofa focussed them on their source.

           

            “Jasper? What…?”

            “Babies!”

            “Babies?”

            “Dead Babies. There are dead babies everywhere. I think I saw one move.”

            Confusion vied with the need to take the sobbing child into her arms. The house was heavy with the smell of dust and mothballs; day-to-day noises were absorbed by the wooden panelling and faded velvet curtains – but dead babies? One could imagine a stuffed fox or two. The estate agent laughed a little too shrilly.

           

            “Probably the dolls.”

            “Dolls?”  She seemed to have lost the knack of doing more than repeating the last word of every sentence. She looked at the estate agent and tried again. “Erm…dolls?”. No. It was all she could manage.

            “The lady who lived here - poor Mrs. Iles – was a bit of a collector. There is a story but we usually show you around downstairs before we warn….err, before we…” She sighed. “Before we warn you.”

           

             The three of them plonked down in the indentations left on the sofa by years of bottoms. Jasper parked his six year old behind firmly on his mother’s knee. No-one here would tell him that not only was he too old for such babyish behaviour but moreover he was a boy. Any of his friends, if they’d seen what he had seen, would be on someone’s knee too. He hiccoughed and a thumb crept unnoticed towards his mouth.

           

            “Mrs. Iles still thinks she is coming home so we can’t move anything until the house is sold. We’ll clear it then of course.” She turned a wide and hopeful smile towards the puzzled faces. “The price reflects the décor.”

           

           “But the babies?”

            “Dolls. The dolls. Mrs. Iles couldn’t have babies so she rescued dolls. Well, I say rescued.” The smile had faded, her drooping shoulders presaging a sigh that was taken up and passed around the limp aspidistra, the table with its tea-towel protection and the dangling fringes of the antimacassars. Hope put its tail between its legs and slunk behind the sofa.

            “People say she stole them.”

            “Stole them?” Good grief! She was stuck in a groove. She cleared her throat and gave herself a mental shake. “Ahem. She stole them? Who from? And what did she do with them?”

            “Looked after them. Nothing was ever proven against her. Nothing.”

            She stood up with such decisiveness that Jasper staggered three steps sideways, his thumb jolting damply to his side.

            “Let’s see these doll babies.” And grabbing a small, sticky hand she headed for the stairs, her husband and the estate agent like reluctant bridesmaids bringing up the rear.

***********************************************************

          

           “No wonder Jasper had the heebie jeebies.”

            She put her knife and fork down and considered the wisdom of having ordered trout with the head on after what they’d seen today.

            “Four bedrooms and these dolls lying on every bed. I don’t know – ten to a bed? All of them dressed in baby clothes and wrapped in blankets. It would have been sweet but they had no heads. All these little bundles and no heads. What with all the curtains drawn and that eerie quietness, well, you didn’t want to look behind you.”

 Her friend’s eyes were getting wider and wider.

            “Did you…did you…touch anything?”

            “God, no! The estate agent just wanted us out of there. She kept muttering about the amazing potential of the kitchen space and the possibilities for a wine cellar. As if we were going to look in the cellar after the bedrooms! What’s wrong?”

 Now neither of them was eating. Her friend leaned forward and glanced to each side.

           

           “I forgot you didn’t grow up round here. We weren’t allowed to go near the Iles’ house when we were children. It wasn’t just our dolls that disappeared. When I was about six, a real baby was taken from outside the bakery in the village. Mrs. Iles was questioned but nothing was ever proved. She wasn’t seen much after that. Mr. Iles did all the shopping and stuff until he died last month. I don’t think anyone was invited into the house until she was taken sick and had to go into the home. Oh God!” She shook her head slowly. “I’m glad I’m not the one who has to go and sort through all those dolls.”