Crazy Carousel Life: Mind Games

By Ros Armstrong

Sex, Religion and Mothers – a Hell Fire mix - as Robert discovers!

Crazy Carousel Life; not a love story but a story of love.

Robert fantasises he’s heroic characters; World War 11 flying ace, the Red Baron, a unicorn, an Arabian Barb but importantly imagines he needs a guardian angel to transform him into Mr Suave.

Robert’s 'angel 'is smart and successful but must overcome her own issues – principally a picky, critically religious mother.

An unconventional relationship story, Crazy Carousel Life is a thought-provoking 35,300-word novella touching on contemporary’s issues; Alzheimer's, loneliness, ineffectual parents, religion, sex, adoption, women's roles, Crazy Carousel Life,

Unknowingly linked, Robert and his ‘angel’ are stunned by long-suppressed sexual relations that strip bare parental influences freeing Robert and his ‘angel’ to jump on the Crazy Carousel of Life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543917826

Book preview

reassembled.

YOU ARE MY GUARDIAN ANGEL

Scrunched. I’m a sheet of paper crushed into a ball and discarded. Then someone … ‘Shut up you stupid rooster,’ Robert mumbled into his pillow. The alarm clock crowed a tinny, sore-throated cock-a-doodle-doo. They ignore the rubbish bin and drop the unwanted, balled-up me… Yes, that’s right step on me. Push me aside. Doodle-dooo, the clock wound down. ‘Shit, shit, shit, it’s 6.30 already,’ Robert grumped, shoved the bunched-up bedclothes back and stumbled out of bed. Peering into the bathroom mirror he pulled the skin under one eye, grimaced, and manoeuvred the skin from under his other eye.

‘Happy bloody birthday Robert. Thirsty-three! Another year closer to dementia!’

Thrusting fingers through his hair, Robert shrugged into his clothes, gulped a mouthful of coffee, looked through the grimy window and scowled as rain-slicked the footpath, road and scuttling people. ‘Don’t expect any surprises this birthday,’ he muttered.

Rain saved up in cloud banks, Robert quoted. ‘It’s February, February 29 to be exact. Summer damn it. Not supposed to rain in summer,’ Robert yelled at the charcoal-coloured day.

Dipping his shoulders against the downpour Robert dropped his head, his chin performing a disappearing act into his collar. The shirt’s grubby. Sprayed it. Rubbed it. Washed it. But no one’ll notice, he thought as rain bounced off his jacket. He pulled the jacket’s cuffs, tugging the soaking clothes clinging to his skin.

‘No one’ll notice, not today, not any day ‘cept I’ll know and you can’t hide from … Oh god, damn shirtfront’s still spotted with egg yolk from yesterday. Or is that the pattern?’

Robert stood at the kerb, peered up the grey road, then staring at his sodden shoes, stepped into a puddle. A horn blared and through the downpour Robert saw a black SUV swerve around him, spraying water like an arcing sprinkler, over his already dripping pants.

‘Happy birthday,’ he grumbled. ‘Well, today I give myself a birthday present. A guardian angel, that’s what I need. An angel of mercy, a guardian angel, a heavenly angel to take care of me like Mum did. Make me debonair. Elegant. Refined.’

‘You are my special angel,’ he quavered, his shoes squelching a wet beat. ‘She’ll swoop in; has to be a she, a bloke guardian angel wouldn’t cut it; wave her wand, they have wands, don’t they? Weave enchanting powers and voila Mr Elegance attired in Laurent Galliano, ready to attend a Mode à Paris fashion event with a crisply starched collar, startling white shirt, perfect fresh cuffs, swanky, refined cuff-links and a Pier Cardin tie perhaps.’ Or is that going too far?

‘Here to watch over me,’ Robert hummed.

Rain studded Robert’s face; the wind whistled and turning up his collar he sank his head lower into his coat. ‘Through eternity, I’ll have my…’he sang, his shoes slapping in the wet. Tasteful ebony shoes, Italian naturally, purring agreement with the suit Robert thought as he wandered down the footpath towards the train station.

Swiping wet from his face Robert laughed. ‘Better still, this guardian angel can outfit me as a wartime flying ace: leather jacket, skull cap and goggles.’ Robert’s mouth curved like a spitfire’s loop, set to dive-bomb.

Sauntering on, Robert pictured his childhood Sunday afternoons when his father, irritated at having his afternoon interrupted, parked the Valiant Charger outside the airfield’s perimeter fence. He and his mother watched small planes; bi-planes and Tiger Moths, swarm like bees, smoke trails zipping the blue as they swooped over the Holden, Falcon and VW cars lined up outside the fence. On landing, the tiny planes, rocking like ungainly pelicans, bobbed along the bumpy runway then juddered to a halt. Robert held his breath and waited as the propellers dawdled to a stop and cheered when his hero pilots dipped their heads and jumped out, laughing.

‘One day I’m gonna fly, Mum, one day,’ he had whispered close to his mother’s ear.

‘Yes, Pet.’ His mother bent down, ruffled Robert’s hair and looking sideways at Robert’s father whispered, ‘One day fly free.’

Robert hoarded material about planes and read everything he could on wartime pilots, fighter and bi-planes. He papered his bedroom walls with pictures, drawings and photographs cut from old aviation magazines, thrown to him from junk hoarded by his unknown grandfather.

‘Daydreaming fool,’ his father muttered whenever he glared at the pictures in Robert’s room. ‘Got my name, he should be confident; a lady killer!’

‘He’s talking about his father DC, being a daydreamer, Robert,’ his mum consoled, ‘you know, he disappeared while flying.’

DC was his grandfather’s nickname Robert had discovered, when sitting on the edge of his mother’s bed after yet another doctor’s visit. Waiting for her to wake, he found under the bed his father’s old girlie magazines. Leafing through the magazine and squeezed between the page exposing the overflowing bosom of Christmas Cherry and Miss January, he discovered a faded photo. Scrawled on the back in washed-out ink, To Robert, my son, only chase dreams worth dying for, DC. His grandfather, DC, dream chaser, had vanished chasing his flying dream.

The wind gusted Robert’s hair into brown confusion and shoving his hands deep into his pocket he fondled his grandfather’s battered gold fob watch and sang in time with his padding shoes, ‘Angel, Angel, oh-oh, through eternity, rescue me.’ Robert’s words blurred with the wind that bounced off the lane’s stone walls and swept back at him.

‘And music played at the penny arcade, yes it played, and it played, played all the time, at first I thought it a dream that I was in.’ Energized Robert stomped on to the station.

TWO

I CAN SEE IT IN YOUR EYES

‘Y ou must be an angel, I can see it in your eyes,’ she sang. ‘But such an angelic rascal, Isabella,’’ she said and scooped up the animal. The snuffling dog’s pink tongue, lolling from the side of her mouth, squirmed free and skittered across the cream tiles, Isabella’s claws tap, tapping trit-trot excitement.

Straightening her black pants, she aligned the crisp cuff-crease, buttoned the glossy pearl buttons that shimmered down the front of her alabaster shirt, tucked in the ends and walked into the kitchen, her turquoise shoes pattering a kettledrum beat on the floor.

‘Stop playing games Isabella, or I’ll be late for work,’ she told the dog. Peering through the white timber-framed window at the blue Plumbago, Hydrangea and Agapanthus shrubs heaving with a windy bluster that whipped the giant Plane tree, peppering leaves onto the lawn, she said, ‘Summer, rather damp and windy walking to the train today Isabella.’

Over the radio the newsreader’s clear voice intruded — ‘And in April 1975, history records, Khmer Rouge guerrillas seized control of Cambodia, evacuating cities and set off a four-year plan to execute, starve and overwork nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population.’

She shook her head. ‘More work for Two Hands Clapping.’

Quickly filling the electric jug with water, she grabbed the coffee and plunger, flipped the toaster button and searched for a coffee mug.

‘Come on Isabella,’ she said looking down at the dog, whose tail beat a steady rhythm on the floor, ‘where’s the mug that shows that girl going off to work?’

From the draining board, she grabbed a mug and stared at the image. A spirited young woman with bulging breasts, dressed in fire-station red, strode in high, black, stilettos, her briefcase and hair swinging.

‘Mother would have a few things to say if I wore that, though the stilettos might win her over.’

‘Do not flaunt yourself; it is unbecoming. No man wants a Jezebel’, she strained to imitate her mother’s voice.

Her mother’s image intruded in technicolour brilliance.

As a teenager, hoping to impress her mother, she had dared to buy a sundress that lured with its loud colours and enticing motif. ‘Always drawing attention to yourself,’ her mother had sneered, though the demure design with wide shoulder straps hid any flash of a bra. The vivid orange, yellow and black offended her mother, but it was the skirt that attracted most derision. The heavy cotton skirt, gathered at the waist, formed a bell shape and filling the fabric the face of a Spanish girl with spiky black hair and one huge gypsy earring. Blood-red pouting lips and a giant winking blue-black eye seduced with incisive, luxurious lashes, ‘Olé’, snapping castanets, stamping, eager feet, imagined only a finger flick away. Confused, she hid the dress unworn, her mother’s sneer had stolen the Fandango dream.

Sitting on the edge of a kitchen stool, she flipped through the newspaper, nibbled a corner of toast, swallowed a large mouthful of coffee and jumped when the telephone’s jangle intruded into the house’s rhythm.

‘Oh, let’s hope that’s not Mother, again,’ she whispered to Isabella as though the caller might hear and picked up the phone on the second ring.

‘Uncle Ray, how are you?’

Her Uncle Ray’s quiet, assured voice, warm as melting chocolate, crackled down the line. Unpretentious, her mother’s older brother was like a familiar, adored soft toy.

‘Can’t talk now Uncle, sorry, I’ve just hung up from Mother, who managed to make me feel like an incompetent dressed in rags, and I need to get on to work. We have so much going on including the fund-raising dinner that I’m in charge of, and feeling very nervous about, particularly after talking to Mother!’

‘Now don’t you worry about your mother, she’s always, well, shall we say, uncomplimentary.’

She pictured her uncle’s eyes crinkling in cheerful groovy lines, publicising his irrepressible, cheeky nature. Her mother called them crow’s hooves.

‘Remember when you were at Uni, whatever you did or wore she found it difficult to praise. Saves all that for the church,’ he chuckled. ‘And let’s face it cherub, the church has underpinned her life. What was that verse she quoted back then?’ A woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a women’s garment: for all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord thy God, he said in a preachy voice. ‘Mind, you did stop wearing men’s work shirts back then,’ her uncle laughed.

Isabella looped in and out of her legs and sniffled. ‘Oh Isabella, stop it.’

‘Come on up to the shack, come up tonight, bring Isabella. I know it’s summer but I’ll make up a big pot of soup and if it’s still raining the runway lights will be switched on.’

So unlike her mother, she mused, who barely acknowledged Isabella, or carped on saying, ‘she drops hair, slobbers all over the place and does doo doo dangs everywhere on the lawn.’

The two siblings were opposites; occasionally