The Peacock 238

 I don't feel any different.  But something has changed.  That act of gathering and piling together those stones, then lying down in the cold wind, for maybe just a couple of minutes.  How long does one remain lying on a homemade altar before God has accepted his offering?

It´s late now.  Almost midnight. The last guests have gone home, and John  and Chris and I had a lot of work to do cleaning up afterward.  This girl, Mora, really wanted to talk to me.  I have met her casually at church, but I don't think she really knows anything about me.  and John and Christopher have been very discreet and respectful about me.  At least, as far as I can tell. I imagine they already have figured out that I am a charity case, otherwise why would someone my age be staying in the home of their priest and his teenage son?

But what absolutely ordinary people.  They all have their jobs, their classes, their social circles and especially their families.  I don't think anyone here, other than me, has ever experienced poverty.  and I am absolutely sure that no one who was under this roof today has ever cross-dressed, or stood on the street corner, or sucked cocks for money.  

I rather like this nondisclosure, this having such a set of secrets that would completely ruin their day if any of them should really know anything about me.  It gives me a certain sense of power.  Not necessarily over them, but if feels more like a protective power.  So, I am not telling them anything, not because of shame and embarrassment, but because I am not going to cede not even one iota of my power to any of those people.  It would be too much for  them. It would be like slapping a child....

The peacock 237

 John and Christopher are downstairs getting things set up for the potluck.  I helped for a while, getting out and setting up tables and dishes and chairs and stuff, but they accepted my excuse that I was tired, so they happily let me take off up here to my dear little bedroom for a siesta.  I just told them I'd been out for a walk.  I didn't tell them where, and I'm not going to tell them, or not yet anyway.

I took the trail, the grand staircase, as John calls it, down to the beach.  In the summer people go naked here, so it is a nudist beach.  When I found my way to the bottom there was a concrete gun tower, built in the Second World War, facing towards Japan.  What a sad era that must have been, living in fear and hate, and yes, I know about how badly treated were the poor Japanese Canadians here, stripped of their property, their citizenship and herded into concentration camps.  David Suzuki spent part of his childhood in one of those camps, but he has said that this gave him time and freedom to explore nature and to awake his passion for the environment.  and Suzuki has been my biggest inspiration to enroll in environmental studies, where I plan to soon continue again.  

There is a second gun tower, at the other end of the beach, before it bends around to the notorious Wreck Beach, where people go naked.  Must be quite a sight.

I don't know where I got the idea, but I started piling stones together, into a mound, and then it seemed to be a kind of altar.  When it was finished, I lay down on the altar, as though offering my life to God.  I don't know what this means, or if it's going to mean anything.  I have never done anything like that before...

The Peacock 236

 "I am up before everyone else, everyone else being John and Christopher.  I am so excited about staying here.  They have a beautiful little house.  Not too little, but not ostentatious either like some of the neighbouring homes, but this is one swanky neighbourhood.  I just managed to scarf down a bowl of Shreddies and some of that marvelous shortbread we were eating last night.  It was a real Christmas dinner, just us three.  John is a marvelous cook and I can't remember eating so much turkey in my life.  I think they mean it, when they say that they want me to feel like I'm part of the family here.  

This afternoon we are having an open house, which it turns out is a tradition here.  They get a lot of visitors from the church.  I am looking forward, they seem like good people, but I really don't want them to know anything.  I don't know what, if anything John has told them about me.  I have no idea how he is going to explain me.  Cassandra is going to stay in the closet.  I no longer have any of my women´s apparel, shoes or makeup.  I am determined to live my life as a man.  But Harriet is always lingering there somewhere.  I have not been able to kill her, and she isn't about to leave.

John would like me to find a way of integrating Harriet, or Cassandra, or better to just leave them behind and live as a guy.  But they are two different women.  Cassandra is every bit a disguise for Harriet as she is for  Kenny.  But Cassandra is a face of Harriet, and Harriet is Kenny just as Kenny is Harriet.  I am not just one or the other, but both.  And in a way, I am neither.  So then, who am I really?

The weather is supposed to be nice for a couple of hours before it starts raining again.  I want to go down to the beach.  I have never been there before, but Christopher showed me the trail, with the stairs, going down.  It is quite a long descent... 

235

 Carl and I have moved to a different room at the other end of the corridor.  Noise travels fast and easy in this house, and Francois is sleeping in the room next to mine.  He wants to sleep, and we don't want to disturb him.  This is rather a similar room, a bit smaller, with just one dormer jutting onto the roof.  It is almost completely dark now.  Carl is reclining on the bed and I occupy the armchair.  I am afraid he is going to fall asleep on me.  He has smuggled from the kitchen a large bag full of semi-sweet chocolate chips which we gladly pass back and forth.

"I was just  fifteen when Kenny came to live with us fulltime.  It was Christmas, and I gave him this diary as a gift.  He seemed to always have lots of interesting thoughts ideas and insights, and I thought he might want to write some of them down.  Here is his first entry, the day after, Boxing Day.  And, isn't it my turn for some of the chocolate chips?"  Smiling, Carl passes me the bag.  I swallow about a half dozen, then set the bag on the desk nearby.

"Um, thanks", says Carl.

"Like you couldn't use the exercise", I mutter, passing him the bag.

"I promise to stay awake", he says lazily.

"Ready?"

"I am waiting with baited breath."

234

 "Who wants to play Scrabble?" says Melissa.

Carl looks at me. "Do you want to read me some more of your friend's journal tonight?"

I am not sure at first.  I am a bit tired, but for some reason I can feel a second wave of energy sweeping over me.

"I think I'm going to pass on Scrabble", I say.  "I was going to share more of my friend's journal with Carl, and that feels kind of important right now.

"You're no fun", says Melissa, deadpan.  "How about you guys?" she directs towards Aaron and Jesús.

"I'm not sure how fair that would be to Jesús, since English is his second language", says Aaron.

"I can do the words in Spanish", he says.

"No fair", Melissa protests.  "I don't speak Spanish."

"But you speak Dutch", says Aaron.  "You can play in Dutch."

"But what if I cheat?"

"Then we are just going to have to trust you."

"But that means I also have to trust you guys in Spanish."

"Yeah.  Neat, eh?" says Aaron.

"Okay.  Let's play", she says...

the Peacock 233

 We all seem tired, and diminished, by the spectacle that has just passed.  Aaron and Jesús are chatting listlessly in Spanish.

"What are you guys talking about?" Melissa asks.

"I'm just helping Jesús fill in some of the blanks.  That was a lot of English for him."

"or maybe you're talking about us", she says.

"Oh, Melissa", says Jesús with a giggle.  "We have much more interesting things to say."

"Touché!" she says, and is Melissa actually smiling?"

Francois, standing up, says,"This has all been particularly fascinating", he says.  "And now, I would like to excuse myself.  Thank you so much for the warm welcome you have given me here."

"Francois", says Carl, "For us you are family."

"We especially want you to feel safe with us", Melissa says, solemnly. Carl gets up and enfolds our African Canadian brother in a warm and sustained bearhug.

As Francois passes Melissa, she also reaches out and hugs him gently.  I think I notice a tear on her cheek as he leaves for his room...

232

 "By the way", says Carl, "For everyone's information, Carol and Tina's mother slipped into a coma just moments following her final conversation with Tina, and she never woke from it."

"That I remember very well", says Carol, now hunched down in the armchair, appearing suddenly very defeated.  "I am just so awfully amazed, shocked and saddened that no one told me about their visits."

"What would you have done had you known?" asks Melissa, who appears to have not even a tincture of pity for what Carol must be going through right now.

"I would have put a stop to it."

"Is that still the way you feel?" says Carl.

"I am suddenly so confused right now about how I should feel, that I really don't know how to answer this.  Could you please give me a week to make up my mind, or at least to clear it a bit?"

"How do you feel right now?" I ask.

"Betrayed.  and exhausted.  And trapped.  And I should have known I had this coming."  Now she gets up off the chair.  She does look weakened and diminished right now.  

"Now if nobody minds, I would really like to call it a night right now."  And she turns around, and shuffles out of the room and towards the grand staircase that will take her up to the sad and dark privacy of her borrowed room...

The peacock 231

"Those earrings were meant for me", says Carol, now barely able to restrain her anger.

"You must have known that your mother had changed her will", says Melissa.

"I imagined she had had some attacks of conscience about my sister, of course.  But those earrings were mine.  Are mine!"

 '"And you didn't know any of this before?" asks Aaron.

"This was all just sprung on me right now.  If this is a joke, then it has just been performed in the most abominable taste!

"I have all the other visits between your mother and sister recorded here.  I was going to use them in a future article for my magazine."

"I do beg your pardon, Carl", she is now roaring, "But if I see any of this in print for the public you will be hearing from my lawyer and that very soon, young man!"

"We have already been in touch with him.  He has agreed not to do anything."

"This is one absolute fucking outrage!  I have never in my life been so abominably treated, and no I am not going to apologize for dropping the F bomb, now it is my turn."

"Carol" says Carl, "What would it take for you to begin talking to your sister?"

"Do you mean to blackmail me?"

"If you reach out to your sister", Melissa says, "Then Carl won't run the article."

"A bargaining chip?"

"If you wish", says Carl.

She remains seated, now very quiet, as though thinking very and awfully hard.

"Please give me a week to think about it.  Then you should have my answer."

"Fair enough", says Carl. "fair enough..."

The Peacock 230

 mom: how are my grandchildren?

Tina: Well, as you know, I don't get to see them as much as I'd like to.  They're all so busy, but we text each other a lot, and they are always asking about you.

mom: Do thank Emily again for that lovely recording she sent me.  I have been laying it nonstop.  you must be very proud of her.

Tina: I am proud of all of them.

mom: And so you should be.  It was so lovely getting to meet them all Sunday.  I only regret that I never knew them growing up. (she pauses, and begins to cry a little)

Tina: Oh Mommy, please don't.

mom: They are so much better, nicer, than Carol's girls.

Tina doesn't answer.

mom (composing herself): and Jeremy is so handsome.  What is the weather like right now?

Tina: Oh, ghastly as ever.  not too cold, but gey and drizzly.  You know how it is here.

mom: It seems about the same here.  I haven't been outside for so long.  Too weak, you know.  Did the earrings arrive.

Tina: (holding up two round fire opals.)  Here they are.

mom: I wanted you to have them.  Carol was expecting them, but you really should have them.  Father Griffin did all the work so you have him to thank as well, darling.  By the way, it is all done.  Yesterday we redid my will.  You get half, of everything.

Tina: I wasn't expecting that, Mommy, I don't deserve...

mom: Nonsense.  You are every bit my daughter as Carol is.  I have been very unfair to you, darling.  At least now we can have some peace before I go.

Tina: you appear to be getting tired, Mommy.  Would you like me to call you back?

mom: your sister is going to be here all day, Tina.  perhaps we could try tomorrow morning.

Tina:  Bye-bye, Mommy.  I love you.

mom: I love you too, Tina.

Tina: hugs and kisses, love.

mom: You too, dear.  Bye...

The Peacock 229

 Tina:  Hello Mommy.  How are you today.

mother:  Oh, Tina, is that you, darling.  I just woke up.

Tina: I didn't wake you up, I hope.

mother: What time is it, in London?

Tina: It is five thirty in the afternoon.  What time is it in Vancouver?

mother: Eight thirty.

Tina: How are you this morning?

mom: oh, as well as could be expected.

Tina: What time is Carol coming?

mom: Usually she sails in at around ten.  So we have plenty of time.

Tina: Don't you want to have breakfast?

mom: I'm not hungry.

Tina: Mummy...

mom:  oh, don't scold, darling.  You know I have no appetite.  Food tastes  much like cardboard and rubbish.

Tina: You're going to waste away to nothing.

mom: That right now is the least of my concerns.

228

 Carol, instead of becoming defensive or answering back simply shrugs and looks down.  "I suppose I have been rather a monster", she says, without looking up.

"Here, Carol", says Carl, "There is something else here that you need to see.  It is footage I found here of your sister's Skype visits with your mother the last few months before she died."

"They weren't on Skype.  I heard nothing about it, Mom mentioned nothing about it."

"She wanted to protect both of you, knowing how bad things had turned between both her daughters."

"But how did you get hold of that information?", says Carol her voice rising in indignation.  "Father Griffin, I should suppose!"

"Your mother asked him to intervene.  And to do what he could to track down your sister, which he did with due diligence."  Carl is doing another search on his laptop.  Then an image appears on the large television screen overhead.  There are two images appearing, juxtaposed, of one old woman, and another very old woman.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?" says Carol, just barely containing her ire.

"This would be Tina's last conversation with your mother, whom, I believe, passed away just three days later."

Carol appears to be trying to leave the room, but she remains seated, as though not even she can resist sitting through the spectacle that is awaiting her...

227

Carol betrays no expression or feeling.  Simply she says to Carl, "Where did you find that?" 

"It's the magic of Google", he replies.

"Yes, but, what led you to search for it."

"Would you like the whole truth?"

"And nothing but, if you don't mind."

"First, tell me please, how you came to know Father Griffin."

"Well, I moved here to Canada to be with my mother, as shes was already well in her eighties and becoming frail, and widowed for the second time.  And really, my career in music seemed to be coming to a standstill, what with  younger and more energetic talent now crowding the scene, I suppose just as I once did so many years ago.  I of course began attending St. James with my mother, since it gave us more time together, and I found, and still find the Anglo-Catholic style of worship to be very lovely and uplifting.  Father Griffin did take an immediate interest in us both, and I think his knowing me as a performance artist of his admiration certainly seemed to help.   It would have been about two years ago when he began telling me about the two of you, Carl and Melissa, and your wonderful place here.  He thought it would be good for me to get away..   I imagine he told you about me."

"Robert thought it would be wise if we did a little research about you and your family, especially Tina your sister.  There seemed to be some blanks we wanted to fill."

"Yes.  Quite."

"Do you have any questions about the article I just read to you?"

"I am certainly surprised, and pleased, that things turned out for her  better than I'd imagined.  but this still doesn't tell me why she did nothing to stay in contact."

"She obviously didn't feel welcome."

"I daresay that I can't understand why."

Melissa snaps, faking a British accent, "And I daresay that I simply cannot understand why you are being so obtuse and dense about everything, Carol..."

The Peacock 226

 "Of course, then my mother went and married a Canadian and moved with him to Vancouver, as far away as one might imagine.  And I was not able to attend the wedding because they waited till they got to Canada, and I of course was the last to find out.  I tried to keep in touch with her, but she was very tardy in responding to my letters and phone calls, and later wouldn't give me an email address.  She soon stopped responding, so I gave up, accepting that I really was all alone in the world, but for my children,   I was also singing again, helping provide vocal music for films and documentaries, sometimes for product commercials, like toothpaste, and chewing gum and suchlike.  But I was at least singing and it was income, if not always reliable income.  I even collaborated on a book about the girlfriends of rock stars, particularly from the experience and perspective of a groupie, but we were almost sued and several times over.  But it was always overturned in the courts.  You could say that at that time, in my fifties, I was really gathering strength.  And now here I am.  Not really a lot to brag about.  I still live in this drab little council flat, though I do what I can to cheer it up.  My children are my wealth, really, but painting, nature and other people always give me joy.  Perhaps not the kind of glamorous life that was Carol's by entitlement.  But I can honestly say that I am not only just happy, but that my life has come to overflow with joy.  

"I only wish my sister would deign to call me.  Or my mother.  She did send me a brief letter last month saying that her husband had passed away.  I gave her my condolences, asked her to stay in touch, but so far, nothing."

This is truly an emotional moment for Tina, and I can see that her eyes are welling up with tears.  Instead of trying to contain them, she simply just lets them flow.  I apologize for upsetting her but she says instead, "Oh, don't worry at all about it, love, I think I've just been needing a good cry.  Here let me make us some coffee, shall I.  Or do you prefer tea.  We are English, you know..."

We agree on coffee.  And then, while it is being made, she shows me one of her favourite butterfly paintings.  It is of a gigantic blue morpho from South America, an iridescent splendour of turquoise, indigo, cerulean, aquamarine and violet.  Then she goes on to tell me about a recent trip she took to Costa Rica with her daughter Lara, of how kind and warm the people were, and the incredible wildlife.  "And the birds they have in that part of the world,  especially the hummingbirds.  Soon, I am going to start painting them.  They are so marvelously beautiful..."

The Peacock 225

 "My interest in butterflies really had its start with Emily, when she was bringing books home from the library.  She picked out one book of butterflies from all over the world, full of the most amazing colour photographs, and soon I began to bribe her with little treats and favours and suchlike to keep picking that book and bringing it back for me.  It was as though a whole dimension of beauty was opening up and drawing me in. 

"I had already become very spiritual, thanks to the AA program.  I had begun taking long solitary walks in the country, or at least on the commons, or by the river.  The healing power of nature became for me also a divine presence that was somehow made further real and perfect in those images of butterflies.  So, I began to draw.  Clumsily at first, but then using coloured pencils and pens and suchlike, I began to faithfully reproduce a few of those incredibly beautiful buttery images.  I eventually started to paint."

Did you have any contact with your sister during that time?

"Never.  When my father died I couldn't attend the funeral.  I had a dreadful collapse from excessive drinking and was in hospital when they were laying him to rest.  Carol never returned my calls, but I did try to see mom as much as she would let me.  There was still an awful lot of pain between us.  It is very difficult to forgive your husband or your daughter for cheating on you I suppose and she was none too pleased that I finally went public about it,  Typical British conservative thinking.  Pretend it doesn't east, ignore the problem, and instead of speaking openly and reconciling avoid all contact.  No one wanted to acknowledge that I was the real victim here, and so they completely denied the existence of my pain and suffering.  Public exposure, for them, was the ultimate insult.  How dare I!"

224

I came to feel like I was living in a museum.  that I would soon turn into a fossil.  Don't get me wrong, I love classical music, and especially the Baroque, but more for listening.  performing it was sucking the life out of me.  that's when I started to drink.  In the pub I met Larry, a bricklayer.  I was working there at the time serving chips and ale.  The following year we were married.  then came the kids.  It was not an easy life, we had to struggle, but we did okay, and we were happy.  He was really a lovely man, very devoted to me and the kids.  Back then I started to vote Labour.  In fact, I had never voted before in my life.  Both my parents and carol were died in the wool Tories, which is also why we don't speak.  But Larry was a very compassionate man, with very compassionate politics, and he reallyl inspired me.  But all good things must come to an end.  He was run over by a truck on his way to work one morning.  We couldn't  manage any more.  Britain was under Margaret Thatcher, probably one of the most loathsome human beings to ever creep across the surface of the earth.  I could no longer pay the mortgage and we just barely got this council flat, where now you are sitting with me.

The drinking got worse, and finally when Labour swept in again in the nineties, rehab and recovery programs also began to open up, and I entered a series of day programs as well as joining Alcoholics Anonymous.  It changed my life.  It was still really hard for the kids, and I just had to accept whatever job I could find in order to scrape out a living for us.  I did a lot of waitressing.  and I am still working in the same pub again, part time, but it's enough to pay the bills.  But I was also taking an interest in art. .. 

The Peacock 223

"But you were also a singer."

"I never became famous, not like Carol, but I still held my own for a while.  The problem wasn't I didn't know what I wanted to be.  The Beatle whom I steadfastly refuse to name, who is not to be mistaken for that other Beatle, whom I also steadfastly refuse to name, though everyone knows who he is, who accused me of wrecking his marriage, but the first Beatle, really l had a sincere desire to see me do well.  Actually, he was the only one whom I didn't go to bed with, and we came to enjoy a very fraternal kind of bond together.  He was particularly kind and gentle.  Which I especially needed after the hell I had just been through.  Let me see, now, repeatedly raped by Daddy till i was thirteen, and started fighting back, then there was that incident when I was fourteen that I still refuse to talk about, so don't even think of asking.  But I also abandoned my little sister, then six years old, to go out on such a romp that I was really surprised that my parents didn't end up locking me in my bedroom for the rest of my life.  Followed by my trysts with you know who and the resulting carnage and then two years in the loony ward.  When he helped me get on my feet as a professional singer, he really showed me a lot of care and tenderness, and patience, and diligence.  

"You were favourably compared to Mary Hopkin."

"I was scorned as a mere imitator.  No matter how could my voice or stage presence, I couldn't match her output.  I had to accept early on that I was destined to go on in life as a warm up act."

"But then you reinvented yourself and went classical."

"I didn't do too bad.  But there wasn't much of a market.  Except every year, I was the soloist soprano in the local production of the Messiah and every Easter for Bach's St. Matthew´s Passion.  I did try Baroque opera, but was rather a disaster with Purcell, I'm afraid...

The Peacock 222

"Your life has been quite a roller coaster ride."

"Cartwheels and somersaults by the bushel!"

"Where shall we begin?"

"At my most brutal beginning.  Of course I could already seeing you dancing around the subject of my father, but that knowledge has long been public domain, and I have come to terms with it.  It perhaps wasn't wise of me to reveal everything in that interview back in the nineties, but I was so fed up with everything.  And carol, my sister, was of no help whatsoever.  She wouldn't even speak to me, not until I finally persuaded her to come visit me and then I told her what happened.  About the sex, or the rape I experienced form our father.  She didn't take it well, I'm afraid, and this has further estranged us.  neither was I in a very good way at the time.  I was still drinking, I was ill and recently widowed and raising three strong and difficult children, all of whom, I am glad to say, have turned out rather well.

"I understand that your son Jeremy has become already quite an accomplished playwright."

"I daresay that I must have given the poor lad a good share of raw material for some of his plays!"

"He has admitted in the past (I actually had the pleasure of interviewing him two years ago) that some of his work is almost frighteningly autobiographical.  And what about your two daughters?"

"I am deeply and profoundly proud of them both."

"Emily is now a harpist with the London Symphony."

"That she is.  And Lara is a street counsellor, working particularly well with survival sex workers.  And now there mummy is an artist.

221

So, here is where it begins", Carl says, reading from his screen:

"Tina Barlow-Mead lives in a lovely little flat in the heart of Shepherd's Bush.  It isn't exactly cluttered, and she clearly is not a hoarder, but there are shelves and shelves crammed with books, and different drawings and paintings adorning the walls, some sunny abstract themes, some flowers, a couple of portraits, and butterflies.  Lots of very beautifully and expertly rendered paintings of rainbow hued tropical species of butterflies.

"Tina, is this all your own work", I begin.

"Most of it is," she says.  "I seem to jump back and forth a lot between themes and subject matter, but the butterflies are a constant."  

"Have you done any shows?"

"Once a year I exhibit in a small local gallery here.  They have all been, oh, so very kind to me.  Every year I have sold quite a few there."  

"And you have rendered them with such exquisite scientific detail, yet they don't look like dead specimens pinned to a page.  They seem as if they could almost fly off the canvas.  And these are huge butterflies.  What a spectacle that would be!  And you are also an illustrator?"

"Children's books.  I followed in the steps of my mother, but only recently.  Like the paintings."

"Which makes you a late bloomer.  How old would you be now, and I hope you please forgive the impertinence of the question"

"Oh, not in the least.  I am going to be sixty-two this June.  Cancer.  I mean my astrological sign, I fortunately no longer suffer from cancer.  I did have a frightening bought with melanoma seven years ago, but so far it has stayed in remission.  But I am a cancer, born in the year of the rat, if you follow oriental astrology, as I tend to.  Which makes me a chipmunk."

"A chipmunk?"

"It's from Primal Astrology.  Which is a blend of western and oriental astrology, but I also think a lot of it is twaddle.  But still hugely entertaining, I would think."

The Peacock 220

 Carl, right now, is opening his laptop.  He turns it on, then waits.  No one seems to have anything to say right now, so we all sit quietly, waiting for the computer to start.  The golden lozenges of evening sunlight have shrunk and become like misshapen coppery discs adorning the floor and the wall.  i have been quietly watching Francoise, who so far hasn't said anything, but nonetheless leans forward, fascinated and intrigued by the unfolding drama.  i am just relishing on his behalf a little sweet wave of schadenfreude for the racial rudeness that Carol was subjecting him to earlier today.  She is a brilliant pianist, but even, maybe especially, her ass must also be kicked sometimes.

"Here it is", Carl says.  "First, to give you all a bit of background, I came across this interview while I was researching British tabloids while coming up with ideas for the magazine I was launching.  It was then a very recent interview with Tina Barlow-mead.  A local journalist was, evidently, doing a series of sibling of famous Brits.  Looks like she landed a marlin.

"What is the date of the interview", carol says with studied patience.

"February 11, 2010.  It didn't seem to get a lot of publicity since everyone was talking about the Winter Olympics that were then taking place here." 

"Here that's all they were talking about", says Aaron, rolling his eyes.  "I was part of the resistance."

"You were marching in a, what is the word, Aaron for manifestación?" says Jesús.

"Demonstration", Aaron syas.  Yes, we can talk about it tomorrow if you want.  Right now it's carol's time."

"Oh, but now you have me wondering", says Carol.

"Later", Melissa says sharply.

The Peacock 219

 What's happened to Tina since then?" I ask, noticing how strangely quiet Carl and Melissa have become.  Are you still in touch with her?"

"Oh, I imagine she's still rotting in her council flat.  I don't know, I haven't seen or spoken to her in years.  She never once contacted me or Mom during her illness, and she couldn't even scrape enough money together to fly across the pond for the funeral.  Such filial loyalty.  She might even be dead for all I know.  Or care.

"Tina is very much alive", says Carl.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your sister is still alive."

"And where did you get that information?"

"We've found out a few things about Tina Barlow-Mead, Carol, and if you don't mind, this will take a little time, but I am sure you will find this all very interesting..."

218

 "Oh, but of course there is more, with that horrible, sad, and pathetic train wreck of a sister, there of course is always going to be more, and to think it all got started because my disgusting father couldn't keep his willy zipped up inside his pants, nor keep his hands off of her.  Incest is the gift that goes on giving.  So, anyway, just after my father's death, she comes out and goes public in a bloody magazine article about the horrible things he did to her.  Some loathsome wag of a young journalist somehow cottoned on that the rising star in classical piano, Carol Barlow-Mead, had some rather dark family secrets that might create some entertainment value for all those poor blighters riding the tube every morning to their miserable little jobs.  Tina left absolutely nothing to the imagination.  I cracked under the stress, fell into a near suicidal depression, and then suddenly too my marriage was over."

"All this was going on during your performance at the Royal Albert?" I ask.

"No, that was later, much later.  Graham and I ceased to live together as man and wife, but the actual divorce only occurred ten years ago during that time you saw me perform.  Still, I didn't know what to do.  I couldn't sue my own sister, even if I already hated her.  And I was simply too paralyzed by depression and indecision to do anything, really, so I just simply carried on playing and performing and trying to raise both my rather disappointing daughters.  Which was no walk in the park by the way.  It turned out that the younger, Alisa, had been mildly impacted by fetal alcohol syndrome, fortunately it wasn't really serious, but she has always been a bit of a handful.  She's the one who's turned into a dreadful born-again vegan.  I trace it all to that second glass of sherry I drank with my sister that day when she told me her awful secret, and I was just newly pregnant with Alisa..."

The Peacock 217

 "So, that explained everything.  Her overnight absence, her extreme rebellion, her trysts with rock stars, and her breakdown, her hospitalization, her inability to find success, and the sordid turn her life had taken.  Everything.  I didn't   really respond to her.  I simply told her that mom must never know what happened.  Then, I cleared out, I went away, hating her more than I had ever hated her in the past.

"Dad died a couple of weeks later, and I cut short my tour for the funeral.  I suppose I could have cancelled it altogether and stayed by his side and helped Mom and all, but I can admit now that I was very selfish.  But I also wanted to put distance from everything, and instead of giving it more thought, I simply threw myself all the more into my music, into practicing and performing and absorbing the wild adulation of adoring audiences, and it all kept me so safe and buffered from the reality of my sad and horrible family.  The sister I had never been able to love, and the father whom I battled heroically against hating for what he had done to her, for what he might have done also to me.

"And of course, I also had my own family to attend to. I had been married only a couple of years, had an infant daughter whom mom would be looking after while I was away on tour, that on top of everything else I had to cope with, and I didn't know at the time, but I was already just newly pregnant again, and did have to cut the tour short anyway after the first trimester.  

"I admit that I was a horribly selfish woman.  And I am still horribly selfish.  Oh, why did I even come here to this place..."

The Peacock 216

 Carol reaches for another cookie.  She refers to them, naturally, as biscuits.

"Dear me", she says, I wonder how much weight I am going gain here.  Melissa, I have a lovely recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip biscuits.  I would love to do some baking tomorrow here if I may."

"I don't see why not," she replies.

"I suppose you would all like me to continue", Carol says.

"You don't have to", Carl says, "Not unless you are comfortable.

"Well", she says, sighing heavily, "I am not comfortable"...She takes a sip of coffee.  "But as they say in America, the show must go on."

With a paper serviette, Carol dabs her mouth.  Then she continues.

"What my sister told me next, it was something that no one should have to hear from a sibling.  But hear it I did.  And I think now that that is the real reason I never forgave her.  Not just for abandoning me, but for telling me something about my father, whom I loved as much as she hated him, something so horrible and loathsome.  It turned out that Dad had been having sex with my sister.  She told me about it, right there in her sordid and cluttered living room in her ghastly little council flat.  It began when she was eleven, and already starting to look like a young woman, more than a little girl.  She said it went on till she was fourteen.  He only quit when she threatened to tell Mom all about it..."

The Peacock 215

 "We were on our second glass of sherry and  I, being rather a cheap drunk, was already getting tiddly, but still not sozzled.  Tina, no longer beautiful, and really quite stout and slovenly  looking, she would have been in her early forties, though she had aged something dreadful, such is the fate of many English women,  I am so sorry to admit.  To my surprise, I actually found myself beginning to like her.  I asked about her children, but they were all out playing with their friends.  She had actually told them to stay out for a while as she was wanting to have a few words with Auntie.  She was reminding me of  our mother.  Oh, and I did forget to mention, our father was already sick, and soon to pass away from advanced cancer.  Aggravated by a chronic heart condition from elevated cholesterol.  An entire life of eating that famously healthful and delicious English diet, you know.  It was our father she wanted to talk to me about.  

"Tina, on the strength of a bit of alcohol, was already confessing that she had been a most delinquent and negligent sister to me, and daughter to our parents.  She actually did apologize, and I think very sincerely, for abandoning me when I was a child, when she went off to wherever all tarted up like a fourteen year old harlot and stayed out the entire night.  I thanked her.  But I didn't forgive her.  And you know what?  I still haven't forgiven my sister.  I simply have not been able to find that place within myself.  Perhaps I never will.  I don't know.  I am actually, right now, starting to feel actually rather badly about it, too.

"But what made it so hard for me to forgive my sister, really had nothing to do with what she did to me, and almost everything to do with what she was about to tell me.  She offered me another glass of sherry.  Wisely, I think, I turned it down..."

The Peacock 214

 "She didn't even attend Mom's funeral.  Not that she would have been expected to. I think everything really went to hell between us with my father's death.  They always hated each other, and Tina boycotted the funeral, and this caused an eternal rift between us, which is to say the rest of the family.  never heard so much as one single peep from that mouldering old ingrate when Mom became ill with cancer, and of course absolutely nothing from her when she died, nor even a word of condolence after the funeral which, of course, she did not deign to cross the pond for."

"I would like to hear your sister's story", says Melissa.  

"Well, I could tell you a little more, I suppose.  This would have been our last conversation, I think around thirty years ago.  I was about to go on a performance tour, and for some reason she wanted badly to see me.  She was by then herself a widow, doing rather a bad job of raising her kids unaided.  She had just moved into her council flat in Shepherd's Bush.  My God, to think she has lived in that dreadful hole for three decades and counting.  It wasn't a comfortable visit.  They never were, with her anyway.  We really quite disliked each other, and my own success as a performer of music simply entrenched in Tina towards me a slow burning toxic hate.  Envy, you know.  She never met with this kind of success, and now look where she was.

"She was serving Sherry.  It was a Sunday afternoon, mid November, as colourless and dreary a late autumn day as could ever be imagined in London.  i really disliked her apartment.  It was rather cluttered and disordered, somewhat dirty and there was a certain cling odour of, what should I call it, an odour of sadness.  And she had really taken to drink..."

The Peacock 213

 "Does anyone here remember Mary Hopkins?" Carol asks.

"British folksinger, sixties and seventies", says Aaron.

"They were competitors, Mary and my sister.  Mary had greater popular appeal, but Tina had a better voice.  They still packaged and formed her into a minor success, but she never became rich, she never played to packed houses, but even in the small coffeehouses and other venues where Tina performed, she never failed to bring the house down.  We all became proud of her, nonetheless.  Family, you know.  Meanwhile, I pursued my future as one of the great classical concert pianists of this generation.  

"Tina burned out in her twenties and tried to do a crossover into classical music.  She was an adequate coloratura soprano, and did rather a decent job of interpreting the works of Vivaldi and Corelli, but she had lost her zeal, and soon had quite run out of money.   On the cusp of her thirtieth birthday, she married a bricklayer, a drinker himself, and she simply bred and crapped out three rather miserable and below average children with below average prospects."

"Where is she now, your sister?" I ask.

"I imagine she is still rotting away in her little council flat in Shepherd's Bush.  We haven't spoken in years.  It is as though we have long been dead to each other."

"What about her kids?"

"Oh, they all turned out abysmally.  Drugs and alcohol and petty crime.  It is suspected that my niece might even have done a few turns as a prostitute."

"Sex worker", corrects Melissa rather tartly.

"Oh, do spare me the politically correct rubbish!" Carol barks.  "She was a bloody prostitute.  And hardly much better than her deplorable mother!"

The Peacock 212

"In the meantime, I was already being entered into competitions, and I was winning almost every single one of  them, competing against kids older than me, with more years of practice, but I still excelled.  One of the rock stars who was regularly bedding her, later credited her with ending his marriage, since his wife had walked into the bedroom at the moment of flagrante delicto.  The scandal hit the gutter press, no one would shut up about it, and this sent poor Tina into a mental institution where she stayed for two years.  I remember going to visit her sometimes with Mom and Dad on Sundays, not too often.  They went every week, but I had piano practice and lessons to keep me occupied.  But my poor sister, looking so sad and broken, like a fine porcelain vase that had fallen down the stairs, not broken, but so chipped and cracked that no one would want to use it again.

"We didn't really talk much to each other.  I was simply taking it all in.  And I really didn't want to see her, but somehow I thought it was making my parents, especially my mother, happy, so I did keep going, maybe once every couple of months with them, if only to make them happy.  To this day, I still don't think I have forgiven her for abandoning me that night when she went away.  

"But when she was finally released, a few months later, as she got better, and became pretty again, one of the rock stars, not the one whose marriage she had ruined, started to contact her.  It turned out that someone had heard her singing, perhaps while in the bathroom.  So, he coached her in voice production, and actually made a minor star out of her..."

The Peacock 211

 I was curled up asleep in front of the telly when Mom and Dad returned from the cinema.  They wanted to know where Tina was.  I said I didn't know.  They asked about what time she left, and I said early.  They asked if I saw anyone and I said no, but I didn't think to mention the car with the two horn blasts outside.  Or that she was dressed like a film star.

"Tina came home in the morning. It was Saturday, and Dad was home.  I was sent to my bedroom, and I could hear them talking to her.  My parents were never ones for making emotional scenes.  Very well behaved English middle class, you know.  But Tina got emotional.  She started yelling and screaming about how dull, crass and unfair they were.  Then Dad spoke.  Then Mom.

"Tina stayed close to home until the next year.  To this day I do not know where she went that night, or with whom, or what she got up to. To this day, I still don't want to know.  But somehow, Mom and Dad were able to persuade her to stay home more.  She was fifteen when she started going out again.  all dolled up of course.  But she was careful to be home by ten, and it became a rule that if anyone was going to come and get her, that they would be expected to come in to the house and introduce themselves.  So she took the Tube instead, I imagine.  

That was when I began my piano lessons.  By the time I was nine I was declared a child prodigy. I didn't find any of this out until many years later, but at that time, barely just sixteen, my sister Tina had become a groupie.  To British rock stars.  To very famous British rock stars.  They traded her among themselves, John, Paul, George and Ringo..."

The Peacock 210

 "Tina, or Christina, is eight years older than me.  We grew up in a lovely middle class home just on the border of Notting Hill and Kensington.  She was a very talented singer, and also quite a rebel.  This was, of course, back in the sixties, in the days of Swinging London.  Things really began to get lively with her when she was fourteen, or in 1962.  To spare some of you the mental strain of doing the math, my sister was born in 1948, and I was born in 1956, making me sixty-five, and Tina now would be just about to reach seventy-three.

"Tina, shall we say, began to ripen on the early side.  She was barely twelve when she already had the body of a voluptuous young woman.  And even then she was hauntingly beautiful.  For me, just four, it was very strange.  For me, she was a grown woman.  She was already a lady.  I have no memory at all of thinking of her as just being a girl the way that I was a little girl.  So, it could be said, there was always a distance between us.  Of course she did babysit, and often, but she really seemed to resent it.  And she could be rather brutal at times.  She rarely actually hit me, but her voice, when angry, had for a little girl, quite a terrifying edge.  

"I was six, and Tina was fourteen, and one night our parents were away at the cinema, and she of course had to take care of me.  So, it was about seven in the evening, and we were both curled up in the sitting room watching the telly.  But Tina was all dressed up.  She was wearing makeup and earrings, and a tight green dress with a slit up the side.  And high heels.  She looked so glamorous and I felt oh so very proud of her.  but she was waiting for someone.  There was a blast from a car horn, and without telling me a word or even saying goodbye, out she went and was driven away somewhere..."

The Peacock 209

"I was just beginning to lose consciousness, when he found me nodding off on the bench.  He saw the pill bottle, then bodily dragged me to his car and drove me to the hospital.  Brother Laurence came with us.  We were later told that had it been five minutes later, I would be a goner.  They set me up with a psychiatrist, one of the few that still do talk therapy, so for four years, every other week, I saw this guy in Mission for up to an hour.  best thing I could have done for myself."

"The same thing happened to me, between 2002 and 2006", says Aaron, "A psychiatrist who practiced talk therapy, four years, just under an hour, every two weeks.  

"Funny how we seem to be connected by parallel experiences." Carl says.

"Is Brother Laurence still here?" says Carol.

"He left some time ago", Melissa says, "But later."

"You´re not off the hook yet, Carol", says Carl, smiling.

"But I am just so amazed at all this", she says.  "Something very similar happened to my sister.  She overdosed on pills, just as Graham and I were negotiating rather a nasty divorce, but aren't they all nasty divorces.  but I suppose I could tell you a bit about Tina, my sister..."

The Peacock 208

"For several weeks we coexisted, Brother Laurence and I.  This, as you know, is not a small house, and it became very easy for us to each get lost in our own little worlds.  What didn't help was that he took a room in the far wing of the house, where he basically brought to birth the entire community.  It was just as well, I suppose, because I was still battling one huge depression.  My guest's insistence on avoiding me only aggravated my sense of isolation, and even when I tried to reach out to him I was greeted by a kind of timid indifference from him.

"I was also being haunted by nightmares, of the cult that used to live on these premises.  It turns out, Jesús, that the small bit of Cosme's journal that we have heard thanks to you and Aaron's noble efforts at translation, was also the substance of some of my dreams.  People robed in white, chanting in procession while carrying torches and then suddenly vanishing, and threatening to carry me with them.  In those nightmares I was studiously resisting being swallowed up with them.

"I started trying to seek out brother Laurence.  From time to time, he would tolerate my presence, and stand and listen patiently while I tried to talk with him.  I could tell, especially with what I was going through, that he was suffering from trauma, but somehow we just weren't connecting.

"Like others here, I have also, of course, been obsessed with the southern magnolia out in the back.  One day, sick of everything, I picked up all my sleeping medication that the doctor had just put me on, and brought the pills with me along with a bottle of water.  I sat on one of the benches.  swallowed a fistful of pills, then drank some water.  I had forgotten that Robert was coming up that day, because he was especially concerned about how things were going.  Fortunately, he found me before it was too late..."