- Lyrics
- Album list
- Singer Intro
Amanda Palmer( Amanda MacKinnon Gaiman Palmer )
-
My Last Landlady
And this, is probably something you won't have heard before. And it's a ghost story, of sorts. It's set in Brighton, in England, in those little seaside towns where it's not Californian At all. It's always grey and it's always wet, and the beaches are not sand they're hard pebbles.
And it's called, my Last Landlady.
My last landlady was nothing like you. Nothing at all alike. Her rooms, were damp. The breakfasts were unpleasant, oily eggs, leathery sausages, a baked orange sludge of beans. Her face could have curdled beans.
She was not kind, you strike me as a kind person. I hope your world is kind. By which I mean, I've heard we see the world not as it is, but as we are.
A saint sees a world full of saints. A killer sees only murderers, and victims. I see the dead.
My landlady told me she would not willingly walk upon the beach, for it was littered with weapons. Huge hand fitting rocks, each ripe for striking. She only had a little money in her purse, she said, but they would take the notes, oily from her fingers, and leave the purse underneath the stone.
Oh and the water, she would say, hold anyone under. Chill salt water, grey and brown and heavy as sin. All ready to drag you away. Children went like that so easily, in the sea. When they were surplus to requirements.
Or had learned awkward facts they might be inclined to pass onto those who would listen.
There were people on the west pier the night it burned, she said.
The curtains were dusty lace, and blocked each town grimed view. Sea view!
That was a laugh.
The morning she saw me twitch her curtains to see if it was properly raining she rapped my knuckles.
'Mr. Maroney, in this house we do not look at the sea through the windows. It brings bad luck.
She said:
'People come to the beach to forget their problems. It's what we do, it's what the English do. You chop your girlfriend up because she's pregnant and you're worried what the wife would say if she found out.
Or you poison the banker you're sleeping with for the insurance, marry a dozen men in a dozen little seaside towns, margate, torquay.
Lord love them, but why must the stand so still?'
When I asked her who, who stood so still, she told me it was:
'None of my beeswax, and to be sure to be out of the house between midday and four, as the child was coming and I would be underfoot, and in the way.
Find more lyrics at ※ Mojim.com
I've been in that BnB for three weeks now, looking for permanent diggs. I paid in cash, the other guests were loveless folk on holiday, and did not care if this was Hove or hell.
We'd eat our slippery eggs together, I'd watch them promenade if the day was fine, or huddle under awnings if it rained. My landlady cared only that they were out of the house until teatime
A retired dentist down from Edgbaston, for a week of loneliness and drizzle by the sea, would nod at me over breakfast or if we passed on the sea front. The bathroom was down the hall. I was up in the night. I saw him, in his dressing gown, I saw him kncok upon her door, I saw it open. He went in. There's nothing more to tell.
My landlady was there at breakfast, bright and cheery. She said the dentist had left early. She said the dentist had left early, owing to a death in the family.
She told the truth.
That night the rain rattled the windows.
A week past and it was time, I told my landlady I'd found a place and would be moving on and paid the rent. That night she gave me a glass of whiskey. And then another. And said I had always been her favourite.
And that she was a woman, of needs. A flower ripe for plucking. And she smiled, and it was the whiskey that made me nod, and think that she was perhaps a wit less sour of face and form, and so I knocked upon her door that night.
She opened it.
I remember the whiteness of her skin. The whiteness of her gown, I can't forget.
'Mr. Maroney.' She whispered.
I reached for her.
And that was, forever, that.
The channel was cold, and silt wet, and she filled my pockets with rocks to keep me under. So when they find me, if they find me, I could be anyone, Crab eaten flesh, and sea-washed bones and all. I think I shall like it here, in my new diggs, here on the seashore. And you've made me welcome, you've all made me feel, so welcome. How many of us, are there here? I see us, but I cannot count. We cluster on the beach and stare at the light in the uppermost room of her house. We see the curtains twitch, we see a white face glaring through the grime, she looks afraid, as if one loveless day we might start up the pebbles towards her, to rebuke her for her lack of hospitality, to tear her for her bad breakfasts and sour holidays.
And our fates.
We stand so still.
Why must we stand, so still.
-
Top Comments
|
