Grayling Junction - Chapter Nine and a half

Prelude to the birthday chapter

Freyja locks the door to her modest rented rooms, her home for over seven years, on the top floor of Pelican Point Flats. She leans against an iron railing that runs the length of a narrow landing, the old, brown metal smooth to the touch. The sea is an indigo smear stretched across the horizon and waves rumble inland with a shudder.

An urgent breeze tugs bleached blonde hair from behind her ears whipping it into her face. Showing through the blonde are roots the colour of fallow November fields. Slender, fine-fingered hands – flecked with dark splatters of paint, glinting silver rings – move the hair from her eyes. A flash of wrist reveals a tangle of leather and fabric bracelets on each arm, like those bought from a travelling fair. Her right forearm sneaks from the sleeve of her black overcoat revealing a tattoo of a delicately rendered blue seahorse surrounded by precise nautical stars. Obscured by the frayed bracelets on her left arm is a deep, narrow scar, stretched like a country lane from wrist to elbow. Over time the skin has tightened to a jagged line of snow-white repair.
Each morning Freyja takes time to look out to sea. For as long as her memory reaches she always wanted to live near the ocean. The moon has shrugged the tide low across the estuary, muddied flats exposed like dirty teeth. Silted banks are strewn with vivid green algae and the early morning air rolls in with a briny fragrance of the water. With a liberal dose of imagination she is able to look upon the estuary and see it as the tender mouth of a beautiful ocean.
At the opposite end of her day she will return to her noiseless rooms, throw wide the window and allow the sad cry of the gulls inside. As dusk brings the sun low on the water, sat beside an easel smeared with paint she will attempt to bring the view indoors, oily daubs coming together in a swirl of muddied yellow, furious red and the blue of night; her palette drawn from welts and bruising.

Waking this particular morning an unremarkable light had pushed through her curtains and coloured her room with a glow of pale jade.
The day that awaited Freyja was her birthday, or to be more accurate, a celebration of roughly the day she had been born, for there are none around who can speak with authority on the day of her birth. She had chosen the first day of May as her birthday when she turned 21 and it had fitted her well enough ever since.
Padding barefoot into the impossibly small kitchen she had listened to the avuncular muttering of her coffee percolator as she yawned and rubbed her eyes. Artemis, a fluffy black and white, longhaired cat had appeared from the shadows and brushed around her legs mewing and purring. As the room filled slowly with the aroma of fresh coffee she had tipped some biscuits into a bowl. The biscuits were shaped as fish and Artemis immediately burrowed her face into the bowl. A crackle of crunching like the pretend gunfire of children could be heard over the sound of the percolator.

From the time she had arrived in Grayling Junction Freyja had earned a living working for Lalo Morrow. Her weekends were her own, but weekdays between the hours of ten in the morning and six in the evening – more or less as neither of them are especially concerned with keeping time – Freyja helped Lalo to run his special house. She had no job title, wore what she wanted and was generally left to the flight of her own intuition and inventiveness. Whilst Lalo busied himself with his customers Freyja made sure that the reception area had a laid back atmosphere, brewed coffee, played old records and sometimes, attempted to bring some semblance of order to the tangled brambles and bushes that made up his garden at the rear of the house.
Whilst working for Lalo Morrow she has remembered how to smile. She enjoys the work and his company and would defend him fiercely.

It is toward the Morrow house that Freyja makes her way, heavy black leather boots sounding against the metal steps as she makes her way down from the sky to the earth. It is a short walk from Pelican Point Flats along the narrow pathway passing by the estuary and through the boatyard. Freyja runs her hands over the boats her fingertips exploring the faded paintwork that withers and peels. They are silent apart from the occasional low moan and in the absence of accompanying water seem desperately useless. Each has been forgotten and waits for the crest of a wave against her bow; held to a pause just out of reach of the water.

As she contemplates her day she feels that prevailing sense of discontent that is inexplicably entwined with the arrival of a birthday; a nagging sense of unease that lingers throughout the day, finally catching up with you somewhere around the folding close of day.
Today is a day of hollow guesswork:
Somewhere there could be a mother and a father, in the biological sense, which know the actual day that she was born.
That day should have a star pencilled on a calendar in a bright kitchen. Instead is it a short-lived fact that has been lost and forgotten.

Freyja kicks angrily at a tin can on the pavement. It clatters across the main road and a metallic echo wails from the vast creep of buildings opposite. She reaches into the pocket of her ankle-length, black overcoat for a crumpled packet of cigarettes left behind in Lalo’s reception. Rooting into another pocket she listens for the rattle of matches. She lights the cigarette and inhales, waiting for the nicotine to show itself in her system as a fleeting dizziness that eases smoothly into a whim of relaxation. As she moves a persistence of smoke trails behind her giving the impression she moves through the power of steam.

Some mornings Freyja stops at the bench opposite Lalo’s and passes the time of day with the three fine friends who have made the bench their own. The sun weeps from the sky over the wooden bench.
Freyja notices a hole on the ground. She is sure she hasn’t noticed it before. It is the size and shape of a prize-winning marrow.
She kicks a pebble and it vanishes into the dark vegetable shape.
There is no sign of Tam and No-Shoes is also missing.
Freyja notices Ron’s ancient pick-up truck parked nearby.
Even rain doesn't usually move the three men from their open-air lounge. Mystified Freyja moves toward the Morrow house.
She stands for a moment outside before opening the door.
Beyond the door is a smell of recent coffee and a fathomless darkness into which she steps with a sigh.