A Shadow in Yucatan

By Philippa Rees

A mythical jewel of a story... This distilled poetic novella of the Sixties evokes the sounds, music and optimism on the free-wheeling streets and parks of Coconut Grove. You can hear Bob Dylan still strumming acoustic; smoke a joint with Fred Neil; and 'Everybody’s Talkin' is carried on the wind. Stephanie, a young hairdresser living in lodgings finds herself pregnant. Refused help from her Catholic mother in New York, unable to abort her baby, she accepts the kindness of Miriam, her Jewish landlady, whose own barren life spills into compassionate assistance for the daughter she never had. The poignancy of its ending, its generosity and acceptance, echoes the bitter disappointment of all those of us who hoped for so much more, but who remember its joy, and its promise, as though untarnished by time.

A Shadow in Yucatan tells Stephanie's story but it was also the story of the golden time. Its nostalgia sings like cicadas in the heat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philippa Rees
• Release date: Jul 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9780957500242

Philippa Rees

Philippa’s life, has been one of extremes, always all or nothing, seemingly feeling its own way towards the book ‘that wrote the life the Magnum Opus, Involution. Almost from birth in South Africa she straddled a divide, her family genetically half British, half Boer (on both sides of that vehement political conflict) and socially half black and half white, which necessitated becoming adjusted to conflict and contradiction—but mostly comfortable with solitude and its requirement to make sense of things without instruction or much help. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a thrice removed aunt may have cast a spell or perhaps her curse of poetic narrative.Ideas to make sense of it were found in books, and the inspiration of literature, theology and art. Choice was somehow never offered and when it was, everything was always better than something. At University five faculties were sampled before graduating in Psychology and Zoology. Later life, with a marine biologist husband, meant mangrove swamps in Mozambique fishing for supper, then the Max Planck Institute in Bavaria with Konrad Lorenz and the vitality of the new school of animal behaviour. This amalgamation of both study and experience was set alight by unsought spiritual revelation that cost the loss of everything and demanded a re-examination of all received opinion about the nature of Nature. Poetically narrated science was the result. Poetic narrative fiction, in A Shadow in Yucatan was a tribute to the girl to whom the true story happened, too universal for a short story, too mythological for prose. It was, however fictionalised and the (other) characters entirely created to reflect the time in which it happened.Apart from the compelling demands of both these books, many poems and a collection of short stories are now awaiting publication. One was a finalist in Narrative Magazine Winter Short Story (2014) and has been selected as Story of the Week (07 28-2014) Philippa has raised four daughters, lectured to mature University students, built an arts centre, and lives in Somerset, with a long-suffering husband and an aged collie, which continues. Writing always came first.

Book preview

A Shadow in Yucatán

(A Tale Sung in Exile)

by

Philippa Rees

Cover design: Philippa Rees, Ana Grigoriu

Book Interior: Philippa Rees

Photographs: Cover and some internal images Crestock

others Shutterstock

First Print Edition 2006

This Smashwords edition published by:

CollaborArt Books

Copyright:Philippa Rees 2014

ISBN 978-0-9575002-4-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated.

This book is licensed for your enjoyment only. If you would like to share it with another person please purchase an additional copy. If you are reading this book and it was not purchased for or by you please respect the hard work of the author and purchase your own copy. Thank you.

Table of Contents

Dedication

1 The Beauty Parlour

2 Saturday

3 The Specialist

4. Sunday-Key West

5. Monday. Brooklyn

6 The Park

7.With a Truckee Hitching North

8 Gethsemane

9 Going Home

10 The Landlady

11 The Wisdom of Solomon

12 The Agency

13 The Dream of Childhood

14 The Storm

15 Birth

16 Post-Mortem

17 Reincarnation

18 Infancy

19 Adolescence

20 Maturity

21 About Philippa Rees

22 Other Books

Reviews of Yucatan

Dedicated to the Nameless Girl.

El Progresso was further than the back of beyond.

It was the flywhisk refuge of the poor waiting for winter work and the sharks that cruised past in hope of the equally unlikely; a dry landscape of fathomless cenotes and human sacrifice.

Here in pitiless sun this tale was spilt, by a troubadour of sorts, a girl who had fled her past, blindly and in pain. I have written it for her, and for others that remember the eclipse of joy. The setting has been changed; the characters are fictitious, but our betrayal was universal. We were betrayed by our hunger for hope.

This song is a lament.

The Beauty Parlour, Coconut Grove.

All day the cycles swing around the window, the tanned legs flattered by the double glass then arrested...Ratchets buzz impatient..

The slow generator arbitrates...

The green light frees the traffic’s undertow.

Reflected twice, the lightweight English Raleighs, gears, toe-clips, nudge the dryers against the far white wall.

Wink and seduce the gap-toothed rubber plant, skewer Mrs. Sklayne at her pedicure, with spokes.

‘Not too short at back...mind the kiss curl’s at the side...let me remove my spectacles…’

‘Vogue or Harpers, take ya pick?

Will y’ave coffee, chocolate or iced milk?’

Stephanie works fast, (she’s real nice Steph...)

not smart y’hear, but steady, plain but clean;

her fair-isle sweater under the gingham darned at the elbow

'But the ankles, it’s a shame, a shade too thick.

She’s been with us, let’s see...goin on three years and as I recall, never a day missed...

Quiet with the customers, never chatty...that sort leave..

Ten fifty altogether...have a nice day...’

‘Where the hell’s that cheeseburger?

‘I jus gotta have a cigarette’

*****

‘Are you early lunch or late?’

Stephanie shrugs, her wide mouth full of pins.

She fixes the bangs, sprays and dusts the neck... powder tin is empty...

‘Drugstore’ll be crowded’

‘I’ll eat my apple in the park’

‘Yeah? Well suit y’self. I’m blowin. Gotta rip.’

*****

The tide is out, the grass worn summer-thin.

The cymbal-shakin Hare Krishna set have gone to swim.

The wind is blowin west, there ain’t one jib, the burgees up the masts a yelpin din...

The pelicans have gone.

‘Christ I feel sick!’

Wally’s in his hammock with his kids,

his squint son, bored with bark, with woodlice, and the tethered tree.

His daughter sunk in her talcum sleep is stroked...

The monocle of light, now focussed, flames her hair, it lifts, it falls, it curves, conceals...

Her open nectar-mouth, now shaded, breathes.

He peers between his knees into the dust

unable to distinguish screw from seed...

He sifts with fingers, looks beneath his thigh,

investigates the folds of