‘Ceratinus Rex’ by Lauren-Shannon Jones
Manderley. Give me your sprawl, your overgrowth, tremendous fountains. Two centuries of schizophrenic architecture, curtained doorways, cheerful lack of discretion. The statue of an angel damaged by fire. Parts brambled in darkness, parts bright with brooklime by the stream. The monk’s cell beside the pagoda, where five zebras (imported specially) died years earlier from the cold.
We stayed in a room full of taxidermy, and we were young. I remember the smell of the old hides, their distinguished silence and glass eyes. Two blond boys, and I. I couldn’t say how long we stayed, but we were seventeen. My blond son is eight, now, and that is how we tell time.
I knocked on the window and startled him. He came over and raised the sash. I said ‘Heathcliff’ and he grinned and pulled me through the window. The sill left a graze on my stomach. His eyes three shades darker when we kissed.
He brought me out early one morning when the other was asleep and took photographs of me lying on the beaded grass. In the pictures I am docile and insane. When we came back he was up and he looked at my wet dress and sulked for the rest of the day.
We don’t get cockroaches here but I could swear (lying in the cooling bathtub in a gloomy room) that one swam slow towards my throat. Black legs scrambling chaotically, it left a brackish trail in the soft water and wasn’t there. I closed my eyes and listened, plink, plink, and felt the welling waves. I stayed until the water was cold enough to drink.
He came to me that night and I’m still not sure which he. They looked like brothers, you see. His silhouette, the line of him, smelling of spiced wood and wine. Behind, the horns of a mounted ibex cast their shape above his head, watched by sixty glassy eyes.
I put my son to bed last night and brushed his hair back from his head. His little mauve translucent eyelids, the skin there thin enough to watch the rapid sleeping iris underneath. His flushed cheeks, his small curled hands. And then I felt under my soothing palm first one, and then another swell. Two tender budding horns, hidden by his golden hair.
From issue #2: spring/summer 2016
About the Author
Lauren-Shannon Jones is a playwright and filmmaker from Dublin. Her first two plays opened to critical acclaim: Grow (The Virgin Eclectic, 2013) and The Assassination of Brian Boru (The New Theatre, 2014-5). Lauren is currently in residence at the New Theatre, Temple Bar.
