Mathilde -- part of a character sketch

Granddad had it, she knows that now, and she's got it, too.

She remembers kneeling in the corner of her grandparents' sitting room, with her dolls and miniature cups and saucers, and her little brother Pete close by, trying vainly to get all of his plastic soldiers to stand upright on the deep, springy pile. In the opposite corner, in the chair that was 'his' by unspoken consent, granddad is sitting silently, staring at the net curtains, which are smeared with the grey, flat light of November or February; the curtains are like a haze of fine dust.

Periodically, grandma would pop in from the kitchen, wafting in the smell of boiling bacon with her, and say something to granddad, who would either look at her silently and then look away again, or grunt inarticulately without even meeting her gaze. Either way, she would mutter 'miserable fucker' and go out again, slamming the door behind her.

Even at such a young age, Mathilde was puzzled at this version of granddad: ordinarily, he was smiling, jovial, loud even. But this other, still, silent granddad sat in his threadbare chair, next to the tall, glass-fronted drinks cabinet, and stared at nothing, never saying anything, and never meeting your eye. Even as kids, they knew that it was no good trying to get him to laugh or talk to them: there was something so blank and stolid about his demeanour that made you baulk. Mathilde thought it was strange, even then, that grandma seemed to hate granddad, when granddad looked like he need to be cuddled.

At home, it became common for Mathilde to be sent out to sit on the stairs during Sunday evening tea: she remembers the sound of the radio reverberating through the wall as she sat on the staircase with her sandwich and plate of salad, feeling the hard edge of the stair digging into the back of her thighs. Even though she had been sent away for talking too much, all the rest of them at the table were still talking, talking, talking -- and laughing, too. It was unfair, and stupid. She didn't understand it, but mum and dad would never let her argue: she had to shut up and go and sit on the stairs. Every Sunday evening.

As a teenager, Mathilde thought that her moods were just like every other girl's: driven by the hormones that their biology teacher had (sort of) told them about, and in thrall to a body and mind that never seemed to settle in any particular state for more than a few hours. One day she'd be smiling and outgoing, confident enough to talk to anyone, and feeling bright and clever; the next day, out of the blue, she'd be tearful and anxious, and want to hide away so that nobody could see her -- she knew that if they saw her, they'd laugh at her or criticise her. When she felt good -- or, better, great -- she assumed that that was how things were meant to be; the lows were aberrations, and there didn't seem to be a neutral place between these positive and negative states.

She remembers a day one summer when she was thirteen. It was a hot July day, with blue sky, a few high, white clouds, and a slight breeze that moved coolly over the skin of her arms. She was sitting in their paved back garden, reading one of next term's set books, the pages feeling dry and rough against her fingertips. She thought she could almost feel the printed words, and she closed her eyes and brushed her fingers over the pages, waiting for enlightenment. None came, so she concentrated instead on the bright pink colour of the bright sun through her eyelids, sensing the warmth there, and squeezing her eyelids tight so that different colours and patterns came: black spots, yellow grids, green swirls. It was as if, when she scrunched up her eyes, she could draw impressions out of her brain. She could smell the wooden fence's parched creosote coating warming in the sun -- it was like resin and liquorice, dark and pungent -- and she thought she could hear the leaves of the bushes brushing against each other, towers of foliage and turrets of yellow flowers. She knew that the sun was glinting on the shed's windows. Everything seemed so bright and clear and vivid -- even with her eyes closed, and an involuntary smile of pleasure spread across her face. The book drooped in her numbed fingers.

She's at peace, poised in a web of sense impressions that her brain is refining and balancing, and she's coping with all this stimulation: it's as if the information is drawn slowly into her brain, at the right pace for once. It's all processed and assimilated, and put into patterns that make sense, and where everything shows up in proportion, and in its true colours. Everything is fixed, and seen in true perspective. With her eyes closed, she can turn her head and 'see' everything, feel that everything is as it should be, and that she is at the centre of this focused matrix of sight, sound, smell and touch. Everything is all right -- she could stay like this for ever.

---

Mathilde is one of the characters in my novel. She's blessed/cursed with arbitrary mood swings, and she doesn't know how to deal with them. In her mid-twenties, she feels as if she's the powerless victim of her body and mind. This bit of the sketch is getting at the inherited aspect of these mood disorders, and at their uncontrollable nature. It's also suggestive (based on my own experience), of the moments of 'epiphany' you get when your brain seems to be working perfectly, tuned in to all the sensory stimuli around you, and perfectly able to synthesise all that noise and make an elegant mental whole out of it.

In the novel, this stuff feeds into the thematic idea that we make structures and stories that explain our lives to us, and that the construction of these stories is partly determined by the kind of mood we're in when intense experiences happen to us: it's touching on the idea that we filter experience and make it fit the patterns of thinking that we're already (unconsciously or consciously) committed to. I suspect, though, that this might be a theme too far, as I already have 237 overlapping themes. Damn.