The rows of terraced houses built of millstone grit, swept out across the Pennine hillsides. Poking out of the surrounding peaty heather as though they were its curved chest ribs. Mary's house was in the middle of one short terrace. Once soot blackened, now sandblasted back to its pristine warm honey colour. As though the Industrial revolution had never happened.
Such terraces, were originally built to house the increase in the towns population during the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Coming to work in the mills and factories. Those same terraces were now being re-branded by estate agents as characterful bijou residences. Excellent starter homes for the aspirational young and recent emigres. Though her family had lived here for near on half a century, Mary had begun to feel out of place. As if she were an anachronistic survivor from entirely another era. In truth, she herself had never felt comfortable here, whatever the time period.
The interior of her house embodied all that was 'homely', with all the vagueness that term holds. The house was stuffed with ornaments. All that could be said was that it felt honest. No self conscious aesthetic pretensions. Externally sourced senses of style, adapted or adopted, had never entered through its door. Here inside, it was a world all of its own.
To those who knew Mary, the house interior spoke clearly of who she was. The sort of life and lifestyle instinctively she wanted to create for herself . And that had turned out to be 'homely'. An open invitation for someone to pop round, to stay and chat, though few came. Here were rooms where everything placed within them had meaning, intrinsic or assigned. Each item hand picked, chosen by virtue of love, not fashion trend. They could be entirely functional items too. This had become Mary's private motivation in life, to at the very least be useful.
She rarely reflected on the broad range of her possessions. The role they might have in supporting her mental, physical or spiritual well-being. Well-being was to her a modern fad that had the suspicious whiff of a self indulgence, that was quite alien to her. This sort of sensuous pampering, felt too precious by half. As she took in all three hundred and sixty degrees of her living room, she could reconnect with people, places visited, past events. Conjured by merely being in the presence of a piece of furniture or a decorative object.
This preservation of memories was all part of an obsessiveness with documenting her own life and that of her family. It was as though the past was all there was left that had any real value. Optimism required the future to be less amorphous and indefinite. She had no valuable family silver. What her parents owned had been all mass produced, pressed metal and electroplated. Sentimental figurines of bucolic shepherdesses, were always more pot than porcelain. It was one of the consequences of being born into a large and moderately impoverished family. All their most precious objects felt more valuable than they actually were.
Fog was the towns constant, often unwanted, companion. It came in smoking off the river or rolled down from the moors overnight. Either way, it filled up the valley as though it were a bath. Today was one of those occasions when it was still smugly clinging on around town. Only the chimneys of the quiet redundant mills still stuck their fingers up and pierced through it. Out of her back window Mary could hardly see to the terrace opposite. Figures who walked passed were fuzzy grey silhouettes. Reminding her of her Father, short and stocky. His recognisably ambling walk, thumping along the cobbles in work boots. But, gosh, that was decades ago. Her Father was long gone. Like the back alleys between terraces, it was all smoothly tarmacked over by now.
A good few years had past since her Mother had died too. The sense of her loss, along with guilt tinged relief, had long ago softened into a persistent background noise. A quiet hum of loneliness she'd got numbly accustomed to. Only those shape shifting shadows coming and going in the fog bound streets outside, were ever able to catch her emotionally off guard. She recently thought she'd glimpsed her Mother in the fog, which had shaken her nerves quite profoundly.
Her Mother Enid, had been extremely hard of hearing. By the time of her death she'd become a bit of a phantom, a half presence. A broken shell of the woman she'd been in her prime. But at least, she'd been someone to come home to, to cook for and have faltering conversations with. All Mary's brothers and sisters once married, had left. Leaving Mary and Enid living abandoned there together. Both, husband less and amenable to the comforts of a familiar but stale continuity.
It had not been a life choice for her to become the full time carer of her ailing Mother. This just happened. No one in the rest of the family ever asked her if she'd mind doing it. It was almost as if everyone, including herself really, simply expected that she would. She did her daughterly duty, got stuck in, got on with it. When her Mother's physical robustness and mental brightness began to fall steeply away, things turned more emotionally difficult. Mary, no spring chicken herself, found being around her Mother all day and everyday, far more taxing and stressful.
Much as she loved her, removing fouled underwear, washing and dealing with her regressing into a state of dependency, like an adult sized child, changed and tested her relationship. Slow roasting her affection over the fire of resentments and guilt. Every personal desire was compromised or put on hold. until some time in the future when Mother would no longer be here. Alone, she bore with her anger at the apparent injustice of it all.
Her pride and resolve to be helpful had then taken a real bruising. Usually immensely capable, practically minded and able to manage most things that life threw at her. That quality became gently corroded by rarely getting a break from being the care giver. She'd become tired of just about coping. Her patience with the rest of her family worn paper thin and brittle. Surely the family, who largely stayed away, must realise what she was being put through. But no, it was as if there was a thick opaque veil between her life and theirs. They continued to turn away when their own Mother messed herself again, something she never could do. She had to face that, daily.
But then she'd never found the personal resolve to move out herself. To escape the foggy streets and commitments inherent to living within that terraced house. It was as though her entire past, present and future life were inextricably bound up with that parental home. Things that might normally draw you away from it - a desire for independence, career or marriage - had for whatever reason not happened. If she had been interested in the opposite, or even the same, sex, or to have children, these were feelings kept firmly off limits. Convincing herself that they'd never mattered that much to her anyway.
Mary was the smallest child, who had turned into a smallish adult. Stocky build, legs like tree trunks, round national health glasses. Complete with the family characteristic of thick hair, untameable as wire wool. With the fiery aubern colour, not quite ginger, that all her sisters had. Her complexion the familial palour of off-white, ruddy cheeked, fine blue veined, with the freckles of youth joining up with the liver spots of age to form a mottled tan. Her gate perennially brisk and purposeful. Even on those days when the fog outside was actually more of a cough inducing smog.
Perhaps she did give off entirely the wrong signals. Dressed like that, like she didn't care. Looking to the outside world like a spinster twice her age. Drab, shapeless, unflattering cloths were her style even in her early twenties. Her appearance sexless. Mary felt uncomfortable within her own body, it had never felt quite right. Privately the family thought Mary an odd fish, which was used as shorthand to explain everything about her that was puzzling. Which was quite a lot.
Her family were traditional working class. The sort that wore stoical pride boldly declared upon their duffle coats. Mary, had been born between the Wars. Her parents inculcating in all their children, that life owed you nothing, and could be much briefer than you might wish. Far too short for self absorption or preoccupation with your psychological difficulties. There was still such a thing as rationing you know. So to others she appeared always chirpy. not a care in the world. Busily tramping around, permanently on a mission. Nothing ever leaking out from her internal world. Her way of processing and dealing with any personal difficulty that cropped up, was simply to knit or sew, with an ever greater speed and ferocity.
That fog, once it had arrived, could hang around for days and days. But this time it was going on for weeks, seemingly forever. No amount of heavily diffused sunlight appeared to shift it from continuing to wrap itself around the streets like an all enveloping shroud. Hardly able to see three feet in front of you. Mary rarely went out much, she was older now herself and unsteady on her feet, particularly in the Winter. She had lots of ready meals in the freezer. So not even a quick dash across to the corner shop was required very often. You could tell where that shop was, because its lights fluoresced so brightly in the fog. It was as though it were a glowing celestial invitation, for residents to shop local.
Weeks went by, never going out, never seeing anyone, no one, not even family popped by on a visit. Since her Mother's death her engagement with the outside world, instead of expanding to fill the space, had contracted. Venturing out less frequently, there was only the four walls of her 'homely' interior. Her loneliness, though painful, appeared also to drain her of energy. To paralyse her sense of being able to take the initiative. Maybe this was what depression felt like. An ever present fog that did not help, impenetrable and all encompassing. It was like being imprisoned within a cloud.
The streets themselves appeared to change form in the fog, they became less substantial, more ethereal. Solid three dimensional human beings, totally replaced by the wraith like spectres that Mary saw. Not just deceased members of her family, who appeared almost daily, but also former neighbours and friends long gone. Maybe the fog allowed these all to become visible, as if they had always been there hidden behind too much clean air and reality.
Mary one morning whilst sitting up in bed, sipping her breakfast tea, realised a stark and frightening truth - that she was living in complete solitary isolation. How long had it been since she'd seen or talked to another human being? She couldn't remember, sobbing uncontrollably. Through her windows the fog was everywhere as usual. The streets sparsely populated with the shapes and outlines of people, phasing in and out of the fog. The outside world too had become less tangible.
Her mind began broaching on more unthinkable, troubling ideas. How did she know for certain she was even still alive? She felt increasingly like a fog bound ghost herself. Not existing on the physical plane, but in that misty realm occupied by sentiment and past memories? These were all questions she ought easily be able to find answers for, surely. She ventured cautiously outside, wrapped in her quilted dressing gown, it was freezing cold out. You could see your breath. That felt reassuring. Could she find anyone else of certifiable flesh and bone? No! All the shadows and silhouttes out on the street dissolved the moment she drew closer. Frantically knocking along the terrace, no one came to their door or even tweeked a curtain. Because all the other houses turned out to be fake frontages, painted facsimiles on boards. It appeared that unbeknownst to her she'd been living on some sort of film set, masked behind masses of dry ice.
She jerked into a full frenzied panic. Shuffling across the street in her slippers towards the warm glow of the corner shop. Maybe the owner Frankie would be on the counter. She knew everything going on locally, maybe she'd tell her what had happened. The bell rang as she entered. No one seemed to be around. The lighting inside the shop seemed more blinding than usual. The bead curtain rustled between the rooms out back and the shop floor. A man, a person she didn't recognise at all, stood there widely beaming at her. He spoke slowly and kindly.
'Ah, at last you've found us. We were beginning to be concerned about how much longer it was going to take for you to come over. The visualisation of your house was due to fade away soon. But, never mind you're here now, come on through to the back. There are folks here who just cannot wait to speak to you'
