Bea (A Novel)

Bea is a character I created in order to explore the complexities of a woman moving through mid-life. A time when your children are moving through their own metamorphosis, altering the dynamic and relationship which you had become accustomed to. A time when you may have been with the same partner for years, navigating changing desires, dreams and life dramas together. Many women I speak to discover that during their forties there is a kind of weird culmination of energies within their marriage. A yearning for change, excitement and newness coupled with a simmering resentment over the childrearing years, uneven work life balance and the years of unequal mental and emotional load, can create an environment in which restlessness, boredom and frustration thrive. This is a time when many women, sensing within themselves fundamental changes and unstoppable emergence and discovering their-new found confidence and power, begin to question if this is what they really want any more or whether the rate and extent of their changing will render their previous life unliveable. Do we change with enthusiasm and expect our partners and husbands to come along for the ride? Or do we let our old, shed skins fall by the wayside as we step into a new phase, a new stage, a new, bolder version of ourselves?

This is a blog post with a difference. Below is the opening of a novel I am working on about Bea, a woman navigating all of the above. It feels like a privilege to give Bea a life and a voice and I can't wait to see where she ends up. Hope you enjoy it.

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As always seemed to be the case in these old churches, there was a bone-deep, musty chill in the air, the damp smell of thin paper. A baby squawked, echoing dramatically. The multifarious background noise; talking and shuffling, the odd laugh, someone coughing. The sounds of the human invaders gradually stirring up the settled dust of un-use, the heavy, static air. Bea sat tall. There was little other option on the hard, upright pews and she wondered how she was going to manage, potentially for over an hour, in this mild discomfort. She looked at her children, on the pew beside her, Bluebell closest to her, already restless, itching in her unfamiliar, unwanted dress. Bea laid her hand, gently, on the child’s jiggling leg but she slid out from under her touch, slithering to the floor like liquid. Bea glanced behind her wondering how long it was going to be, realistically, before she was tiptoeing in her noisy shoes down the outside aisle, the coiled spring of Bluebell in her hand. Beyond the space which, until a moment ago her youngest daughter had occupied, sat her oldest daughter, Avalon, glowering under thick lashes at the phone in her lap. Planted on the floor beneath her were her beloved Doc Marten boots, the wearing of which, or not, had been a fight which, that morning, Bea had not felt inclined to enter into. Avalon’s overly dyed hair was beginning to look brittle, her mother thought, casually, with no consequence, as her gaze grazed her to fall on her son, Amos, reading a novel beneath a long, blonde fringe at the pew’s end. As though sensing his mother’s gaze he turned to look at her. ‘You okay?’ she mouthed, smiling gently and Amos nodded, turning back to his book. Avalon sighed. And then again for emphasis, also turning to her mother. ‘When’s this thing going to get started?’ she hissed. Bea put a forefinger to her lips, glancing, unwittingly, at the still, silent, perfect family on the pew behind. Avalon rolled her eyes and they both understood that the messages of comparison which Bea tried to instil in her children were largely ignored by herself. ‘Mum,’ she said, louder this time and Bea turned back from the better family, reminding herself that they didn’t worry about what other people thought of them. She slid fractionally into the space beside her and tried to placate the resentment and rumbling anger that was her middle child. Bluebell, still on the floor, had unzipped her small rucksack and was busy lining up a series of Playmobil pirates across the kneeling cushions. Bea instinctively curled her feet up under the pew to give her daughter more room. She looked back at Avalon, placing her hand on her arm, sighing inwardly under Avalon’s glowering look of disapproval. Despite Avalon’s face of fury, her mother smiled at her before twisting to look to the back of the church, at the arched entrance. It was bloody typical of Graham, this. Always trilling, ‘I’ll catch you up,’ in a jaunty tone, before sloping off in the opposite direction from herself and the kids, in order to take care of whatever pressing situation had arisen. Today it was trouble parking the car and so, yet again, he had waited with the engine labouring while they had all piled out and she had stood, seething with resentment on the spongey grass as he pulled away, Led Zeppelin drifting from the open windows. Obviously, she had then had to spring after him, her stupid heels sinking into the grass, to rap her knuckles on the back panel and retrieve Bluebell’s rucksack from the foot well of the back seats. But now, suddenly, she saw him, as he stepped out of the glare to become a silhouette, momentarily, in the golden, arched vestibule. Bea raised her arm and waved, waiting for his gaze to find her semaphore. Avalon’s eyes rolled again. ‘Oh God. Please, no,’ she muttered under her breath. Graham arrived down the central aisle, appearing at the pew’s end. Only Bea acknowledged him, leaning across Avalon to touch her son’s arm. ‘Amos. Move up for your dad,’ and they all shuffled along. But Graham was pushing past their knees, stepping over Bluebell, to sit on the far side of his wife and they all slid back again, Avalon sighing loudly, Amos never looking up from his book. Graham found Bea’s hand. ‘Sorry, love. Had to park about five streets away.’ He let go abruptly, looked at his watch and then reached for the Order of Service pamphlet from the little ledge on the back of the pew in front. He had brought some of the summer’s day in with him, Bea noticed. She could actually smell the warmth of the sun which lingered around him. Bluebell appeared at his knees, holding out a headless figure and Graham laughed, letting the pamphlet fall to his lap as he took the toy from her and began to urge the severed head back into place. He strained comically as he pushed, pulling a series of faces to which his daughter dutifully giggled. Bea sat back, trying to consciously force some kind of relaxation. When was this thing ever going to start? The groom was already stationed at the front, in his pale grey, box-fresh suit, glancing nervously about him, grinning back and forth with his best man. The best man was very good looking, and Bea lingered on his face, enjoying the brief flush of pleasure that ran, pursued by guilt, under her skin. Forcing herself to supress a smile, to look away, she idly began people watching the bride’s friends and family across the aisle. In her periphery she could hear Graham entertaining Bluebell, their low voices, her daughter’s throaty laugh. What an odd, false spectacle, a wedding. Everyone struggling to appear comfortable in their crippling discomfort. In rarely-worn heels, too short dresses, trussed up, made up. And those hats. She sighed. Wasn’t that a bit passé now? And when had they got so small, perched like birds, stiff, dyed lace as fancy, unnecessary plumage. Bea experienced a sudden, proud rush of love for her unconventional, boot wearing daughter. Oh, to be sixteen again. Free to wear that couldn’t-care-less badge with honour. Bea glanced at her daughter, hoping to convey some of this proud love with her eyes but, as was the norm now, Avalon simply rolled hers, loosening her hair from behind her ear, closing the curtains against the dusk of her mother. Wounded, Bea looked back across the aisle at the sea of floral cotton and jacket-less shirts made lurid by the constant, restless movement. As she moved her gaze idly, a face became clear in the crowd and in an instant all surrounding motion ceased. She blinked rapidly, as though trying to erase the image in her vision and swallowed dryly on her thundering heart. She was mistaken. That was certain. An alarming doppelganger. They became more common the older you got, she had noticed. Why did nobody ever tell you this stuff? That after a few decades the same faces simply came round again, recycled. For a second go. She looked at Bluebell. The boredom was ratchetting now. The whining had started. She tried to steady her hands, casually sliding them damply down her black skirt and then she looked again. It took her a moment to re-locate him; a moment of held breath, before suddenly he was there, rushing into focus, the man who wasn’t the man she had once loved. A sudden blast of organ made her jump and as one the congregation turned to look at the back of the church. Bea looked to the front, to the groom, Rob, Graham’s teaching colleague and football buddy. His smile was a hundred watt now. He had been joined by the vicar and she wondered, idly, whether this vicar even knew Rob and found herself feeling mildly irritated by the thought. I mean, did anyone get married by the family vicar who had known them since they had first held them over a font in a christening gown? Surely not, nowadays. Even so, it struck her as ridiculous, disingenuous, to have a stranger preside over the happiest day of your life. Why did everyone do it? Sensing the bride approaching and feeling rude for not partaking in the welcome spectacle, Bea dutifully turned in her seat to stare, smiling, as Amy drifted by, a gaggle of small children in her wake. As they all turned to follow her as she passed, Bea looked to each of her children. Catching Bluebell’s eye she patted the wooden bench beside her, widening her eyes and nodding slightly to the front. But Bluebell shook her head, climbing instead into her father’s lap. Bea turned, indicating to Amos that his book needed to go away now, and she smiled as, reluctantly, he slid it under his thigh and, brushing his fringe aside, sat up straight. Avalon watched him scathingly, herself remaining resolutely slouched. Bea caught her eye and, wanting something to say, leaned in and whispered, ‘doesn’t Amy look beautiful in that dress?’ Even as she was saying it she realised what a hollow lie that was and that her astute daughter with her finely tuned bullshit-ometer would have yet one more reason to be disappointed in her. Avalon stared at her for a moment, presumably trying to ascertain the level of sarcasm implicit in that comment and then, deeming a response unnecessary, she turned to stare, fiercely, ahead.