Ivory Vellum

By Isabella Muir

This collection of short stories explores the threads that bind us together with friends, family and strangers. Some of those threads are robust and long-lasting, others are delicate and transient. We all deal with loss, regret, fear and freedom in different ways - these stories consider those emotions through the experience of characters of all ages and from all backgrounds.

If you enjoy these stories, then take a look at Isabella's Sussex Crime Mystery series. The Tapestry Bag, is the first in the series - a gripping mystery, full of twists and turns. One of the stories in the Ivory Vellum collection inspired Isabella Muir to write The Tapestry Bag - see if you can spot which one!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isabella Muir
• Release date: Apr 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201683979

Isabella Muir

Isabella is never happier than when she is immersing herself in the sights, sounds and experiences of the 1960s. Researching all aspects of family life back then formed the perfect launch pad for her works of fiction. Isabella rediscovered her love of writing fiction during two happy years working on and completing her MA in Professional Writing and since then has gone to publish five novels, two novellas and a short story collection. Her first Sussex Crime Mystery series features young librarian and amateur sleuth, Janie Juke. Set in the late 1960s, in the fictional seaside town of Tamarisk Bay, we meet Janie, who looks after the mobile library. She is an avid lover of Agatha Christie stories – in particular Hercule Poirot – using all she has learned from the Queen of Crime to help solve crimes and mysteries. As well as three novels, there are three novellas in the series, which explore some of the back story to the Tamarisk Bay characters. Her latest novel, Crossing the Line, is the first of a new series of Sussex Crimes, featuring retired Italian detective, Giuseppe Bianchi who arrives in the quiet seaside town of Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, to find a dead body on the beach and so the story begins… Isabella’s standalone novel, The Forgotten Children, deals with the emotive subject of the child migrants who were sent to Australia – again focusing on family life in the 1960s, when the child migrant policy was still in force.

Book preview

IVORY VELLUM

A collection of stories

Isabella Muir

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CONTENTS

1. WILLOW, SWEET WILLOW

2. REGRET

3. THE JOURNEY

4. PINK

5. LEARNING

6. FEAR

7. MATCHING PAIRS

8. WILD AND FREE

9. THE FOOD OF LOVE

10. REMEMBERING

11. MAKING HISTORY

12. FREEDOM

13. PEARLS OF WISDOM

14. IVORY VELLUM

WILLOW, SWEET WILLOW

The rehearsals were after school on Tuesdays. Four until five-thirty. Mum arrived early so she could take a peek. Mrs Armitage said I swayed very well, but when Mum was there I tried even harder.

‘Don’t sway from the waist,’ Mrs Armitage said. ‘Put your whole body into the movement. Imagine you are the tree.’

Layla was the duck. She had white feathers stuck all around her and on the day of the real play she was allowed to paint her lips. When she came onto the stage she had to sit at my feet for a while, then waddle to the edge of the water and slide in.

‘Be graceful,’ Mrs Armitage said, ‘like a swan.’

But Layla was a duck.

Mrs Armitage said the play brought the outside in. Layla, Mo and me all giggled. It sounded like inside out, but different. Mo was a conker. He had to bounce and roll. He didn’t have the prickles of a proper conker, before you take the shiny part out from its case. And he didn’t have to paint his face brown because it already was.

No-one spoke, but there was music. Mrs Armitage said the music explained the four seasons. I thought spring sounded tinkling, as though it was afraid to get started. Summer was like floating, but made me want to go to sleep, and winter was sad. My favourite was autumn. I could hear the wind blowing when the violins did something squeaky and it made me want to run and jump. But I had to stand.

I stood at the edge of the water. I wasn’t worried about getting wet, even when I swayed right down so that I was almost bent double. The water was plastic and it was Mr Wright’s job to shine a light on it just so, to make it shimmer.

On Saturdays we went to see real trees. Mum said it would help with my movement. She said the weeping willow was her favourite. I don’t know if it really was or whether she said that just to make me feel special. She taught me the names of the trees and told me stories about their ages and the cycle of their lives. It didn’t seem much like a cycle to me as much as a beginning and ending. The sycamore could live for four hundred years. Some pine trees are even older. There are some that are older than the Bible stories.

Dad had buttered crumpets ready for our return. I laid my treasures around the plate; an acorn, a sycamore leaf, a pine cone. The melted butter oozed out of the sides of the crumpets and dripped down my hand.

‘Don’t pick up the leaf with buttery fingers,’ Mum said. ‘If we let the leaves dry out we can keep them in a book.’

The next Saturday we stopped off at Martin’s paper shop on the way home and bought a scrapbook. Each page was a different colour.

‘You can choose the colour to suit the leaf,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to start at the beginning.’

I liked the idea of starting in the middle and spreading out both sides, so then there would be no beginning and no ending. Or at least they would be all jumbled up.

Then one Saturday Mum said, ‘I’m on crumpet duty today’. And just like that it was Dad and I who went to look at the trees, but it wasn’t quite the same.

‘Mum tells me stories,’ I said. ‘She knows the names and their ages,’ I told him.

‘Well, I’ll have to learn then. Perhaps you can teach me.’

It was the wrong way round. Nothing felt right.

When Tuesday came around again I made sure I saved my best sway for the end of the rehearsal. Then I saw Dad’s face through the small window.

‘Well done, Lottie,’ he said. He took my hand as we walked home.

‘Did you see me?’ I asked him. ‘Mum comes in,’ I said.

‘I’ll come in next time then,’ he said. But it was Mum I wanted. She understood about trees.

At tea time Mum’s chair was empty. I put Bear on the cushion and pulled him into the table. Dad smiled. The TV was turned off and the radio wasn’t even on. The quiet sounded strange. I could hear the clock ticking and loud crunching noises in my head when I bit into my toast.

A few weeks ago when I wanted to watch the Magic Roundabout and Dad changed the TV channel he told me, ‘News is important, Lottie. You need to know what’s going on in the world, keep up to date.’

Dad liked the news, but today he didn’t.

Lots of things started to change. I read my bedtime story in Mum’s bed. She listened and made me do the voices like she used to. I could do the high ones really well, but the low ones came out like a grumble. Dad bought me a book about trees. I don’t know if it was for him or for me. I read it to Mum. She asked me questions.

‘Lottie, how tall can an oak tree grow? How deep are the roots of a sycamore?’

The answers weren’t in the book, but Mum knew the numbers. She told me and I remembered. We talked about the ages of trees and she explained that the weeping willow lived a short but beautiful life.

‘Remember that Lottie,’ she said.

I practised my willow dance in her bedroom. The play was just two weeks away. Dad bought two tickets. They would arrive by taxi. We always walked to school but Dad said Mum deserved a treat. The taxi would cost two shillings.

‘We don’t want your mum catching a cold, do we?’ he said.

On Friday 31st October the hall was full. Mrs Armitage told us all to try extra hard.

‘This is it, children,’ she said. ‘A chance to make your parents proud. Just concentrate and try not to fidget.’

I was practising my sway to the side of the stage one minute and then suddenly it was my turn. I stood beside the plastic water and waited for Layla. I bent down with my best sway and as I stood tall again I stared straight ahead. The hall was full of faces, but the seat beside my Dad was empty. Perhaps Mum didn’t like the taxi treat. Dad had his camera and afterwards, when we walked home, he said he’d show Mum the photos. But it wouldn’t be right, photos are still.

Then it was autumn. The best time for treasures. I knew the footpath would be covered with chestnuts. There would be leaves of every colour and shape to put in our book. But we’re not going to the park. Mum can’t do the crumpets, Dad said. We need to do them for her. Except she didn’t eat them. We sat