Read by Sarah Gain
"I was put on this planet ter bring happiness ter others, basically."
Nora is dragging her case through the dinky French airport, following a wolf. It's gazing out from Kiki’s fleecy back, above striding lime-green leopard print legs. Kiki is the bringer of happiness.
Nora feels she’s only been clinging onto adult life with her fingernails for a while now. Having exhausted another boss, another man, another landlord in quick succession, she’s decided it’s time for a little soul searching. It turned out that what her friends termed eccentric or, more kindly, ’kooky’ didn’t cut it in your forties.
‘Rebalance your chakras, find wellness in French countryside’ the ad had said. Chakras? Never mind. 'Available all year round.' That clinched it. A retreat sounded positive and focused, the kind of thing a proper adult would do, instead of holing up in bed like a wounded animal.
"Just you. You’re looky I should be charging thousands for me one to one consultation." Nora hadn’t expected such a strong Wolverhampton accent. The ad had breathed wind chimes, not West Midlands.
"Just me?" This sounds like a bleat.
"I told you it’s my purpose to bring happiness – could be one soul or a hundred." Kiki waves her hand airily.
They leave the outskirts of a dilapidated port behind and drive deeper and deeper into La France Profonde, until they reach a beaten-up farmhouse. The dusty yard seems to reorganise itself as a cluster of sandy hairy dogs start into yapping life.
"Freshen up, and we’ll concur in the wellness studio at 6pm.” She indicates a low old stone edifice dwarfed by a huge pile of broken concrete. “It’s time to delve down and find the new you, Moira,"
"We’re still improving the studio… the universe is providing" she adds.
Day 1. Balancing your Chakras
Nora's room has a lot on its mind. Above the cacophony of coral satin, the mantelpiece shouts 'Be your best self '. 'Home is where the heart' counters the bedhead. There's barely a moment to drop her case before it’s time to address her Chakras. I’m poised on the threshold of a new me, breathes Nora as she heads out.
Kiki is sitting cross-legged in a freezing outhouse. It's an old building, maybe a milking parlour or abbatoir. Every beam of the creaking old structure sports a decal message. Refresh and revitalise! they say.
"Chakra healing is a holistic, non-invasive, vibrational energy-based system of healing," intones Kiki, replacing her Midland twang for sing-song mid-Atlantic drawl. "That is, it treats the whole person and their integrated energy system. You can Google it if you don't beloive me."
She turns on an archaic French butane heater, pulls down a screen and switches on a Powerpoint.
" Let’s start with yer brain"… A Ladybird illustration of the brain appears on screen.
"This is what started me on the path to wellness, the brain. I was living in Wolverhampton. I was living the high life, let me tell you, Porsche 911 Carerra in the drive, hubby with his own haulage firm ...”
A tangerine Porsche appears incongruously on the screen.
"Paulie, that's my ex, I said, you can keep your holidays in Barbados, your kitchen island – Smallbone – I need to find me. Well, we’ve all been there ‘aven't wey ..."
"Well actually I haven’t quite been there. .." ventures Nora. "I don't even have a car, let alone..." but this is lost as the chapter titled ‘Separation and finding my true self,’ materialises.
The butane heater ticks; outside, the countryside exhales into a mellow afternoon, cicadas chirrup, a man whistles tunelessly. Nora glimpses the world outside through a swathe of satin over a deep-set window.
She envies them their freedom to move, to whistle, and not to listen.
Back in the over-heated wellness centre Kiki has reached the apotheosis of her divorce.
Nora stretches a stiff leg as the epic self-discovery of one half of Wolverhampton’s power couple continues unabated. She feels as edgy as a squirrel trapped in a train carriage, late for a meeting.
"Kiki," she croaks, "Could we take a break?"
Kiki pouts, irritated at interruption.
"That’s just yer self -sabotaging behayviour.. fight it. Where was I..?"
“The court.”
"Yes I said to the judge ‘I won't be silenced’."
Nora pictures the beige furnishings of a Midlands court room, the weary judge and clerks and feels sorry for everyone involved.
Hours pass and Kiki’s outline has dissolved, her voice disembodied. Nora wonders if she is hallucinating, but no, it has got dark. At last it’s back to the farmhouse.
There, a mute elderly man on a sofa is half buried under with the same sandy, hairy dogs who decorate the yard. An eighty-year-old version of Kiki is serving up Findus crispy pancakes while BBC Midlands blares from an enormous TV screen. It’s Wolverhampton in cinemascope.
"We have a spot of colon trouble," offers Kiki brightly. Who could she mean? The dogs? No, it turns out to be Kiki Maman. Mumsy. It's not a conversation Nora wants to have, but at least it’s not Kiki's colon.
"It started with a gippy tummy in 2012 after the 'divorce’," Mumsy mouths the last word. Nora knows it will be a long meal.
Here it seems troubles are shared: a bowel, a divorce, a realisation all are one and all must be divulged, no detail spared. Nora's troubles, colonic or otherwise, remain unexplored.
Day 2 and it’s crystalogy which starts with some sketchy stuff about Incas but leads inexorably to Kiki’s remarkable gem-fuelled powers.
Drifting off is not an option; various verbal tugs prevent this – are you with me? You get me? Nora wonders if Haute Ventouse has a joke shop and if it sells those glasses with staring eyes painted on.
One monosyllable in the purling stream of words that fill the room and threaten to engulf her jolts Nora upright. The word is fast. It has been decreed that she must fast 'to focus and clear her meridians'. (Didn’t she pay for meals?) It will help flush toxins both mental and colonic from her damaged, sceptical, self-sabotaging body. "I’ll be fasting with you," adds Kiki piously. "It gives me a feeling of lightness and spirithu’ality."
As they trudge out of the wellness centre an old man is ambling past, a dog trotting at his heels. "Whoa Claude, hold up!" Kiki cries. He looks alarmed, hunches down into his collar and scuttles on.
“Well someone’s in a hurry,” Kiki, eyes narrowing.
Day 3 Dancing your Dark into the Light.
It’s early. In the ashy light, the toads are croaking loudly in the pond. Nora wonders if they’re edible. She hasn’t slept: the satin quilt was hot and gave off nylon sparks, plus she's already hungry. There’s quite a lot of darkness for Nora to dance today – some is directed towards herself for choosing this retreat, some towards ex-lover and ex-boss … but most, it has to be said, is directed towards Kiki.
Kiki is sitting crosslegged in silence as Nora enters the grimy wellness centre. Without opening her eyes she indicates a cushion – it has picture of a pug on it. ‘Dance like no ones watching!’ says the pug. But the apostrophe is missing. Punctuate like no one’s reading, says a voice in Nora's self-sabotaging head.
Kiki is squinting at the file of plastic wallets – each illustrating what look like solo ambulatory kama sutra. Kiki brings her hands up like a dog begging, and begins high stepping around the room.
This is a dreadful prospect for Nora, deprived of alcohol, darkness or cover ... just exposed as an uncoordinated prancer.
"Faster! Faster!" shouts Kiki.
The words on the wall blur as Nora, half crazed with hunger and butane fumes, whirls about. Live like no one, heal and restore, laugh, best, dream, love. Love.
How did I end up here, trapped in the middle of nowhere, miles from a bus or train, an unwilling apostle in a personality cult? Why can’t I leave? Suddenly Nora is seven years old unable to put up her hand to ask maths teacher if she can be excused. And we know how that ended – with sodden woolly tights in a shameful plastic bag.
"Urrghle." The thought makes her splutter.
Kiki stops mid-prance, eyes swivel.
"You think it’s funny? That's your dark side trying to sabotage the healing process… she thrusts her face close to Nora’s … that a real problem for you isn’t it? Don’t think it can’t see … that l can't see the nasty cynical one. We need to beat her down. Who’s the boss, eh? The lazy Nora who doesn’t want to cleanse her chakras or dance her darkness, the one who can’t listen to the lessons from someone who knows what’s best for her. Who’s the boss? Who’s the boss?" she crows.
"You are?"
Triumph glints in Kiki’s eye. She thrusts her face close.
"No. You are the boss of lazy Nora, who can’t dance, or go a few hours without checking ‘er phone or stuffing her face."
"Are those crumbs round your mouth? You’ve been eating. What have you eaten?" Nora squeaks.
" I’m hypoglycaemic," Kiki says, turning away.
"Hypo? First I’ve heard of it and I should know, I’ve had a complete medical history from the whole family, not to mention the daily newsflash from colon central in there…" Nora indicates the farmhouse kitchen.
A cloud passes across Kiki’s face. She's gone too far, but it’s too late.
Silence. Dust sparkles, a blade of light illuminates the 'restore, re-heal' sign and the crack running the length of the wall
"I’m going to put it down to your toxins.." Kiki sniffs.
"It's not toxins."
"I think you'll find ..."
Nora has the pug cushion in her hand, she’s wringing the life out of it.
"It’s you, Kiki."
“Me?”
"I'm tired … of satin, stupid messages everywhere, and hearing about divorces and Porsches and bowels … no one asked about my bowels or my anything for that matter, and you, and ..”
"Anything else?" Arms crossed.
“No one's has an apostrophe in it.” She looks down at the offending pug. "And so does you're."
"I see. Yow must be glad you got that off yer chest. We welcomed you into our home… And this is what we get.”
Nora feels as if she has kicked a puppy.
There’s only one thing to do.
At dawn a fairytale mist hanging over the pond and its sleeping toads. A woman emerges; she swears as a door creaks noisily behind her. Eight kilometres away in sleepy Haute Ventouse a man is rattling up the shutters on his dusty little bar/tabac, sluicing fag ends from the pavement. Her face is sheened with sweat when she arrives, her suitcase and lower legs floury with dust. Three workers stand silently over coffees and tiny brandies. They view her without interest or greeting. Le proprieteur lifts his chin in question with mild contempt but without dislodging the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.
Et bien?
Un cafe.
He plonks down a tiny cup of tar, coffee so potent it practically growls, and goes back to reading Loire Atlantique.
Silence. No words, no analysis. She checks the walls – they do not ask her to be her best self. She sips it. Scalding, rich, bitter and dissolute. The lifeblood of a tired woman. And resolutely unimprovable.
(c) Fiona Salter, 2017
Fiona Salter is a communications officer for a mental health charity in London, trying to save her sanity on her commute by writing fiction in trains, tubes & queues. She lives in Sussex with her two diverting children.
Sarah Gain is a Brummie by birth but has managed to escape without the accent; however, it is available on request. Recent performances include multiple roles in a four-person tour of The Comedy of Errors and Fairy Twinkle for Santa Saves Christmas, covering Shakespeare to St Nicholas in one fell swoop
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