Under the Cauliflowers
Haworth Hodgkinson
It began as a blank sheet of white paper, across which she drew a single diagonal
line. Shading beneath the line started to lend a sense of perspective, and before
long a barren hillside was taking shape before my eyes. She added colour, the greens
and browns of grass already old from the ravages of unseen weather. Soon there were
ill-defined objects appearing on the hillside, creatures of some kind inspecting
the grass. Further detail from her pencil transformed these wiry grey balls into
sheep, all facing the same direction.
Another line became a wall, and then a road. On the right hand side of the picture
was a derelict barn, and on the left some old farm buildings, at first looking empty,
but then with grey columns rising from the farmhouse chimneys. A tractor pulling
a slurry tanker left a wet trail along the road.
But that wasn't smoke rising from the chimneys, I realised, as the columns soon
began to branch. Were they trees growing in an old abandoned dwelling, I asked.
‘No! Cauliflowers!’ she replied, as the branches subdivided into rounded
florets. ‘Look at these!’ she added, pointing to the oversized slugs
and caterpillars that were starting to crawl along the stems. There was a mixture
of pride and revulsion in her eye at the monsters she had created. Next she drew
herself in the centre of the picture, and then me by her side. She took me by the
hand and led me along the lane towards the old farmhouse so that we could have a
closer look. We could hear the caterpillars crunching through the canopies above
each chimney.
Slowly, a large grey slug began to climb down towards us, leaving a trail glistening
on the wall of the farmhouse. We stepped backwards in fear, and she set to work
with the pencil again. Soon there was another figure between us and the slug, a
shapely figure with a shield and lance.
‘St George,’ she explained, ‘only... St George is a woman.’
Battle ensued. St George was more agile than the slug, but her lance could not penetrate
its rubbery jacket, and she was careful to avoid treading in the slime. Her designer-label
trainers were brand new. The caterpillars observed from their viewpoints, and the
sheep gathered round to watch. St George fenced with the slug's tentacles until
the poor creature must have been cross-eyed, and when she judged that sufficient
tension had built in her audience she revealed her secret weapon. From her lunchbox
she produced a packet of crisps, and out of it she took a little blue bag of salt.
She threw the salt over the slug, and in an agonised silence the beast began to
shrivel.
The caterpillars retreated into the upper crowns of the cauliflowers as St George
bowed deeply to the applauding sheep, but soon another tractor came along, with
flashing lights. Two helmets climbed out and arrested St George, ‘for the
possession of an offensive substance’, my companion explained. St George was
bundled into the tractor and rushed away to the barn at the opposite side of the
picture, now apparently converted into a jail.
St George adopted a series of heroic poses behind the bars, but the sheep returned
their attention to the grass, and the caterpillars resumed nibbling the cauliflowers.
But this was only to be a brief return to normality: a giant black beak and a beady
eye began to take shape at the edge of the paper.
The pencil was laid down.
‘Finished! Do you like my picture?’
I tried to think how I could explain the need to maintain a sense of proportion.
‘I think I liked it best before the cauliflowers started coming out of the
chimneys,’ I replied.
Evidently frustrated at my failure to grasp her sense of fantasy, she gave me a
look that seemed to ask: ‘Then why didn't you say so earlier?’ She crumpled
the paper and reached for a new blank sheet, across which she drew a single diagonal
line....
Written 1995-1999
Revised 2000
Edited 2002/2008
Published in Pushing
Out the Boat Issue 7, 2008
(Pushing Out the Boat)
|