Instructions In The Cauldron

“That’s true, my darling. It’s exactly like that”.

I really couldn’t believe plants could hear us, they didn’t have any ears! But it was worth trying.

“Look how your little twins have grown up, Susan” , squealed Mrs Bray the day after. “You’re lucky you can see your little- daughters every week. My son never brings mine here. By the way, you’re their maternal grand-mother, you know, you are the favourite one…”.

Our paternal grand-parents lived actually on the Balearic islands, in Palma; they had got tired of the English weather, so they had moved down there when they had retired. We saw them once a year: they gave us plenty of presents, but they didn’t even know our teachers’ or our friends’ names and they sometimes still mistook our names.

“So, tell me, which of you is Sarah and which is Anne?”.

We stared at Mrs Bray with our big light brown eyes, my sister and I were completely different and in an absolutely voluntary way. Sarah had long blonde hair, she was thin and angular. On the contrary I had shorter dark hair, like my dad’s. Nobody ever mistook us.

At the plant nursery, Mrs Brady never left our granny even for a moment; she was her shadow, she kept asking stupid questions: “How much water should I give the roses?”, “Where is it better to place the chilli vase?”, “How long will rocket take to sprout?”, and so on, all the time.

Granny answered her kindly, giving her lots of advice.

“Oh, Susan dear, you really know everything! How can you?”.

Our great-grandmother Maggy had taught her everything, not only about gardening, but also about cooking and knitting. Her works were famous all over Marlow, her best things were scarfs, pullovers and pot holders, all of them strictly purple, violet or pink.

“Knitting helps me relax. The colour which makes the mind calm down the most is really violet”, she used to claim.

She completed her works with some drops of lavender essential oil, then she gave her creations to her friends as a present, or she took them to the Charity shop at the end of the street.

Lavender oil was never missing at home; it had helped me a lot when I was a small child and I couldn’t get to sleep: I remember my granny used to put some drops on my temples and my chest, then she used to massage it, telling a nursery rhyme three times:

“With lavender oil and the moon in the sky, shall my little girl have a quiet sleep tonight”. So I could sleep all night long.

“Granny, do you believe Mrs Bray’s garden will be as beautiful as yours this year?”, my sister asked, placing carefully some vases along the outside wall of the house.

“Oh Sarah, I hope it will, for her, since she spent a lot of money at the plant nursery. You know what I think: you should only take what you need. There’s no use of having lots of kinds of flowers, if you can’t deal with them or lots of different herbs if you don’t use them and you don’t know what to do with them. That’s why I only keep the necessary ones; lavender, sage, mint, roses, pot marigold, hawthorn, laurel and rosemary are never missing. I also like geraniums, orchids and of course I couldn’t do without the oak and the holly, but for them that’s a different question…they keep me company when you aren’t here”.

Granny never had rest when we weren’t there. There were always her friends coming and going to see her.

“They are always telling me their troubles”, she had explained to us, “sometimes talking with someone is enough to feel better, to break the dikes of the dam we built to protect our ego. While they keep talking, I make a good tea, I knit, I think about what they are telling me and in the end I give them the little work I made. In that way, as if by magic, sadness disappears”.

“How can you do that?” I asked curiously.

“I’ve told you, I just have to let them give vent to their feelings and always think about what I’m doing. While I keep knitting and they keep talking, I imagine them at peace, light-hearted, so I can charge my work with a positive energy, instilling these nice thoughts into it. It’s not difficult, but I need to concentrate a lot, so I use the violet so much, it helps me stay more focused”.

I didn’t understand much, neither did Sarah.

“Granny, I’ve heard someone saying that oaks should never be cut down. Is it true?” I changed the subject.

“Absolutely! Just like an hawthorn branch should never be torn, except for May Day”.

“But how can you do, if the oak gets ill?”.

“When an oak gets ill, that’s a bad sign…however a part of the trunk must be kept there. Roots are as important as the outer part”.

“The cut down trunk can be turned into a nice little table”.

“That’s true, Sarah, an oak should never be completely eliminated, especially when it’s inside a private garden! The family would crumble”.

Sunday evening always came too fast. When we heard the noise of our dad’s car on the gravel, we were caught by a mix of happiness in seeing our parents again and of melancholy. They usually took us to a nice family pub for dinner on our way home and it was nice to be with them, during those uncommon moments together, but we also knew that we were leaving behind us the magic of the cottage and of our granny.

Luckily our week went by very fast between school and the various volley ball and dance clubs, we came home tired in the evening, mum gave us dinner, she spent some time with us and then we went to bed.

II. Passages towards other realities…

The following weekend was mainly rainy and cold.

“That’s not bad”, our granny told us. She always saw the positive side in every situation.

“The new seeds need also rain and I have a lot of work to do. Old Mal invited me to take part in our May Fayre at Higginson Park, I’ll have my own stall! I’m going to sell mainly knitting and some herbal oils I produce by myself”.

Old Mal was a dear family friend.

“That’s great, granny! Can we help you sell?”, my sister exclaimed enthusiastically.

“Of course, Sarah”.

“Alison’s mother used to have a stall too, when they lived in London, in Camden Town”, she went on in her dreamy way.

“That’s really a very large market!”, our granny claimed, brushing poor Kiki.

“They sold stones, amulets, incense…you know, those little sticks which are sweet-smelling if you light them. But she said it has become too commercial now and she doesn’t like it anymore. What does commercial mean?”

“It means that most of the goods are alike, they aren’t original, they just follow trends. London is a tourist city, people goes to Camden expecting they can find some particular goods. There are various trends: punk, rock, gothic and hippie, but, as she said, they have turned into a commercial style, to avoid disappointing expectations and to be sure they’ll sell. Unfortunately, everywhere is like that…excepting Chalice Well’s gardens and the Tor, of course”.

Our granny’s family came from there, she always took a dreamy mood when she was talking about her village. We had never been there, mum said it was a den for crazy people and granny always scolded her because she didn’t understand the magic of that place.

“Is old Mal your fiancé?”, Sarah asked her impudently.

We had always suspected it, but we had never had the courage to ask her.

“Absolutely not! He’s just a dear friend, we keep company to each other. We’ve known each other for ages”.

Granny had told us again and again that she still missed our grandpa; he had died ten years before. A heart attack, he had passed away from morning to evening, without any notice. Our mum was just eighteen, she had never got over the shock.

We liked old Mal, as she called him. He was tall, with greying hair and a smile which always made you feel well, he could have been the perfect fiancé for granny. He was kind, smiling and he always took strawberry candies for us. He was fond of horses, he had two, Smelly e Shelly, and he was ready to saddle them and take us for a tour whenever we wanted to. I always insisted on not riding Smelly. He was famous in Marlow because he organized the yearly May Fayre with stalls, merry-go-rounds and gastronomic stands. If it wasn’t for him, the fair might not be so nice; at least that was what granny kept saying.

“While you are knitting, can we watch Harry Potter?”, I asked as I turned on the TV.

“That’s ok. I’m really curious, everyone is talking about that young wizard”.

“Great! Dad bought us the first boxed set, we could watch the first one today and the second one tomorrow…”, I suggested.

“We’ll see…you know, I don’t like letting you stay before the TV set for too long”.