Free Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey Page B

via the porch, so I waited for her in the church graveyard.
    I had not been in the graveyard for several years, and seeing it again that day I found a peculiarly moving experience. I knew someone who was buried there, someone who I had once loved. I took some flowers from a fresher grave and placed them at the grave of my old friend. The gravestone was simply marked, it merely said, in large bold capitals, the single word:
EMMA
    For there it was that Emma was buried.

A short voyage around the memory of a woman
named Emma .
    Long before the time when Tearsham Park changed its name to Observatory Mansions, shortly before the time when I began wearing gloves, was the time known as Emma-months.
    Emma, already an old woman when I knew her, was the saviour of the village of Tearsham, in which my father’s house, Tearsham Park, was by far the largest dwelling. She helped the old bachelors and old spinsters in our village. She taught children to swim. She visited the sick. She prayed for the dead. Among, I suspect, her less-remembered acts was the miracle she once performed in Tearsham Park.
    Emma taught me to speak.
    I was viewed as being somewhat behind as a child, though I would rather refer to my lack of speaking not as stupidity but as stubbornness. I was in no hurry to speak. I could not imagine what possible advantage words might have for me. Words usually meant company and I was always happiest on my own. Many teachers and therapists had been sent into the Park and they had all left without finding a word in me. My parents had run out of teachers, someone must have suggested Emma as a remedy for my silence, and though sceptical (but without any other options left open to them) Emma arrived the next day.

Emma’s exterior .
    Emma, never married, was never referred to as Miss something, just Emma, only Emma. That’s what I called her, that’s what everyone called her. She lived on her own in a small cottage on the edge of the village. Emma wore black. All-dressed-in-black Emma. Always black. Home-made black clothes. Black beret, black shirt, black skirt all the way down to her ankles. Thick black material, even in summer. Itchy. Emma smelt. I spent many days searching for the particular ingredient that might describe the stench. I found it in the kitchen. Emma smelt like boiled carrots. Emma had long grey hairs hanging from her face, as if she had dipped her chin in a cobweb. Emma’s skin was the worst thing. When she first came to Tearsham Park I was afraid of her. I was afraid of her beard, her clothes, her smell – but most of all it was Emma’s skin that terrified me. I often closed my eyes so I would not have to look upon her skin. Difficult to describe Emma’s skin. Ingredients for a description of Emma’s skin:
Take one orange. Peel it.
Leave it for several days in the summer sun.
    The orange in the sun loses colour, turns white and develops thick, deep wrinkles. It diminishes in size. Open the orange out and, taking one of the thick, wilted and creased segments, tear it in half. Inside, at its very centre, is a tiny piece of the orange that used to be – still fleshy, still clutching to a little juice. Were I to have peeled Emma, I think that somewhere deep within her, past all that thick seemingly dead cover, I might have found a little life, a little blood.
    I didn’t like Emma. Not at first. I wanted her to leave, I made a fuss, I banged things about. Later I’d pray for her to live for ever, but first I’d beg for her to die painfully during the night. And yet, through my child’s mind, I thought there was little hope for such an exit, for despite her hoary exteriorher eyes betrayed more energy, more life than could be found in my youthful body.

Liquorice hours .
    Blacked out and bearded Emma closed and locked the nursery door behind her. She did not smile at me. She regarded me briefly, but without expression. She sat down. She opened her (black) bag, took out a tin of tobacco and a wad of black