The Hedgehog's Quill

Fiction from Beckenham, South East London

Lotta had never had her nails done. In the forty-eight years previous to that very moment, it had seemed an unnecessary or impossible expenditure. More than that, the desire to paint oneself had felt frivolous and even sinful. She was no Puritan nor was she the earthy-crunchy type. Perhaps it had something to do with her Germanness, but plenty of her friends back in Hamburg had regularly gone to the nail salon and come back with vibrant colors or subdued, trendy hues.

It was after a few weeks in South East London that she began to have the desire for this kind of color in her daily life. That’s what it had been. The days were gray, over and over again, and the promise of some bright protrusions, available at any time, that could move through the cold, humid air penetrating her bones seemed like a way to ward off the onset of seasonal affective disorder or at least the English blues.

She watched the lithe Vietnamese man working with dextrous fingers. He barely had to look at what he was doing. The cleaning and moulding and clipping were second nature to him now. Like her lessons about the German language. These actions enveloped the client, the student, in welcome comfort rather than harsh dissonance. They were unlike the kind she recalled from her English lessons in kindergarten and beyond: tense confrontations with failure and incertitude; uncomfortable passivity from fear.

But she had proven them wrong. People complimented her on her English now. It was her porthole between her inner self and the beyond. This Vietnamese man and this German woman could meet in the middle with English and with a knowingness that only outsiders have.

However, they were silent now. While he worked. He was getting the extensions glued on and smiled when he made the perfect adjustment.

“Is this the right length?”

“Oh…maybe a little shorter?”

He paused to examine them: “But this looks good. This is the fashion here,” then didn’t wait for an answer, “What color again?”

She pointed to the neon green bottle that reminded her of childhood bracelets and scrunchies. Something about its vibrancy in contrast with the weather felt like a release, or rather a defiance. She was sick of feeling invisible. She was scared of being swallowed up by the fog.

Her eyes closed in full trust of the body artist as her mind drifted to try to make sense of this new ebb and flow of days, of time’s movement toward the end. Her commute was not long, but was unpredictable. A short walk followed by taking the train two stops to a different part of the area still culturally identified as South East London was often elongated by transport delays or inclement weather, which didn’t actually alter the time but altered her perception of time.

Next to her, a woman was just sitting down in the middle of recounting an encounter with nature to a friend on the phone. The open speaker-mode blared through the salon, echoing off the white walls and mirrors: “So I couldn’t believe it, Morna. I was walking home after drinks with Jess and I nearly kicked this thing in the driveway just before my building. I looked closer and realized it was a hedgehog!¹ Cutest thing.”

The digitally mediated response came back even louder, “Oh, I love that! Was it alive? Did you take a photo?”

“I sort of gave it a little kick to see and it curled up into a tiny ball.”

“That’s how they protect themselves.”

“Oh shit, I didn’t mean to hurt it…I was just hoping it would move around a little so I could take a video,” then, with realization of her audience, “And I didn’t want anyone to run it over. Anyway, yeah, it was fine I think.”

“Hey, do you have a babysitter’s number? I had just found this girl, Irish, really talkative and loved the kids. Was supposed to come last night and I couldn’t get a hold of her. Turns out she’s had a breakdown and gone back to Ireland.”

“Woah! What if she had been with the kids and freaked out?”

“I didn’t think of that…”

“Um, I’ve got one, yeah, I’ll send you a text. They’re waiting for me to choose a color. I gotta go.”

“Ok, hun. See you tonight.”

“Ciao.” As she hung up, the woman peered over at Lotta’s nails with curiosity. She lingered there a moment, then inhaled to reveal her judgement: “Those talons are peng.”²

Lotta nodded silently without any local color to respond with.

The plastic palettes painted in hundreds of colors moved clumsily between her hands with clicking and clacking until she found the perfect shade of iridescent crimson. She pointed at it and stated too loudly and with too much enunciation, “This one,” as if the young woman across from her couldn’t understand. The technician played her role by responding with a nod and lowering her head to work, no doubt hiding a smirk.

⬩

Lotta’s flat was near the big park. She imagined the many animals that must live there, hiding when humans were near. It was nothing like the German forest, but surely wildlife of some kind persevered.

After the nail salon’s fumes, she was in need of this fresh air, despite the grayness of the day and the mist that arrived on her from all directions making an umbrella useless. At least it wasn’t windy and stormy — yet. The walk was manageable, knowing she would simply end up a little wet.

She roamed the kilometers of trails all weaving around and through one another. It had the effect of continuously circling the old mansion on the hill without actually retracing any steps in succession.

There were still a few people around at first whom she encountered around the bends in the paths, but they seemed to disappear as if she were oil in water and her ripples gently nudged everyone out from the exterior limits.

⬩

Eventually, the moisture in the air had saturated her semi-permeable hooded shell. Her weariness struck suddenly. Without enough inner sustenance or warmth, she stopped in the mansion’s basement pub for something to get her home.

The bartender’s joviality welcomed her: “Hiya luv! What can I get ya?”

“Cider, please.”

“Full pint?”

“Yes please.”

“Lovely.”

As he poured from the ancient tap, Lotta looked around the small enclave. An old woman sat in a corner with a pot of tea, staring off into space. Two young men sat in another corner drinking pints and talking over a diagram and notes. The bartender served her with a smile then returned to his phone on the other end, which was waiting for him with its cosmic glow. He tapped happily at the keys, communicating with somebody, somewhere.

The cider was tart and cloudy. Its tiny bubbles made her aware of her insides as the cold mind-bending drink entered her throat, esophagus, stomach. Peace was here, in just being…without interacting and without a time to be somewhere else. The wooden beams of the old mansion echoed the compartmentalization of her brain. Before entering the cave-like basement that no doubt had once housed servants, a large pantry, or perhaps the estate’s animals, she had read the small plaque overlooking the undulating fields with the grand, sparse trees inhabited by fluorescent foreign parakeets that squawked at squirrels incessantly in attempted full takeover.

The sign informed her that this public park had been the Cator Estate, a golf course, and pieces of its land and buildings had other functions, such as a sanatorium and orphanage. It held pieces of history but created a larger elliptical gap with its conclusion:

The history of Beckenham Place Park is still shrouded in much mystery even though several local historians have recorded many facts about the place. It has become a jigsaw puzzle of facts and assumptions.³

She sat at the bar wondering who she had become.

⬩

Evening had already approached and Lotta felt like taking the train to a different place, to walk around and inhabit it, to see if this little space was any different. From nature to urbanity, this was the magic of the area.

If she had been fully honest with herself, and this had been true for a fleeting moment seated within the interior of the mansion basement, she would have understood that it was the going home that frightened her, not because home was ugly or untidy but because it reminded her of her strangeness. The apartment walls echoed her mind’s shortcomings back to her.

She walked almost compulsively toward the closest station, Ravensbourne, which was either a short walk through the dark, wooded paths or slightly longer down a dirt road by the tennis courts. She chose the road. Rather than make her feel safe, the streetlights created a target on her back. Without housing around and the tennis club closed due to rain, she wondered if anyone would hear her if she screamed.

The station lights beamed from a distance, compelling her to run the last hundred meters or so to the entrance. Both platforms were empty, and so Lotta thought she must have just missed a train. Signs pointed toward the exits and offered no further information about the desolation: the park she had just inhabited or the Greenwich Meridian Line route⁴. The station manager had already gone home but an announcement came on that the next train toward London Blackfriars was approaching.

The coaches were all lit up as usual, but Lotta couldn’t see anybody on as it passed by and then eventually faded in speed to a stop. Perhaps they were slumped in their seats out of view, she reasoned. The button that would allow her entry lit up and beeped at her, daring her to reach out over the gap. It was just a train, she reasoned. The cold plastic opened her porthole. Stepping up, something was pulling her back, as if the wind were gripping her torso. The tension contorted her into a strange shape and her foot slipped off, landing her knee and hands on the edge of the train. The doors were closing so she pulled herself in as a crumple on the dirty floor.

She rested there a moment, unsure what had just happened, but felt that it would be safer to stand up, then find a seat. Her nails were all intact as was everything else.

The world glanced in at her in the cold, damp evening of England’s winter evenings. It was an unwelcome setting of grayness where day and night are nearly identical in temperature and color.

The other seats were empty even on closer inspection, but she felt a presence within them. Perhaps it was just the stuffiness of the train carriage, but intangible, invisible ghosts seemed to occupy the spaces around her.

She got up to circulate a little and see if it was just that spot, to find other faces. The long abyss lay before her.

Suddenly, without warning, the train stopped. No announcement nor deceleration were evident. Once again, she found herself on the train floor but quickly bounced up to get to the door. There was no way she would stay in this uncanny carriage anymore.

Just in time, she hit the button, and fell and onto the dark platform.

Disoriented, she moved to exit the station. Her instincts told her to move away from the abandoned line, as if it were a parallel universe she had stumbled into. She felt some force like a rip tide and knew it was futile to swim against it. At the shores of the Baltic Sea, her father had taught her to swim diagonal toward the shore in this instance. With this attempt at wisdom, she moved on a dark sidewalk between abandoned cars and empty apartment buildings. The silence was startling; only the wind that whipped light but frigid rain on her face was audible. The stinging reminded her that she was alive and awake in some strange place.

This diagonal moved her toward large, looming gates adjacent to a tiny gatekeeper’s home and an open pedestrian path. Inside seemed safer than outside, so Lotta went in.

The path was partially blinded by the weather but dim lights every twenty meters or so led her up a gradual hill. An innate compass told her this direction was still better than outside-the-gate, so she continued. Upward. Shielding her face with her arm. She heard another train in the distance, which gave her hope that this universe was still occupied with others finding their way around the mazes of their own minds.

The hill leveled off and a brightly lit drive in front of a mansion greeted her. Suddenly, she recognized it — the other side of the mansion she had recently inhabited. Her instincts had moved her in the direction of home, just down the other side of the hill. The old stone home’s windows were all dark, but it was impossible to see around to the other side where a cave-like entrance led to the pub. She though if she could just get there…it was irrational, but maybe this was still where her body was…

In the light, something stopped her movement. A tiny thing was waddling along and suddenly curled up into a ball. A hedgehog — unfortunately frozen right under a spotlight as if waiting as prey or in danger of succumbing to the brutal weather. She approached slowly and squatted down, considering how she could help him find shelter. His quills⁵ softly heaved with its breath.

Something was moving nearby. Lotta’s eyes darted around to discover a large fox just a couple of meters behind her. Then another came out from the dark bushes, and a third jumped from nearby. They were slowly circling the lit area where the hedgehog was still curled in a ball. Three foxes, moving as if they were antagonists in a children’s fable, threatened Lotta’s reality until a new, more dominant animal approached and took over the space with its severe white stripe. The fierce badger first ran in a single circle to chase the foxes away in an organized line. They retreated down the hill in search of easier prey.

Photo by David Küng on Unsplash

Then the badger stopped. He faced Lotta and rose up onto two legs, his tiny but vicious claws and teeth out. Perhaps he was much smaller than she, but he was unafraid of attack, desperate for sustenance or power. She cowered for a moment until she remembered what she had discovered in those moments at the bar before heading out on this strange circular journey.

In an instant, her gloves were off and her neon green talons glowed menacingly under the spotlight at the badger. He moved down to his four legs slowly, glared directly into her eyes, and left in the opposite direction toward the pond.

Lotta reached out gently toward the hedgehog with the tip of her nail, using a stroking pattern she hoped would somehow signal to the animal that danger had left. He uncurled himself slowly. His tiny little nose sniffed the air for predators. Satisfied, the sympathetic face moved toward Lotta in thanks. Then quickly, like the others, he ran off, seeking his tiny shelter that the foxes and badgers, the winds and car tires, could not reach.

A single quill was left shining in the light. It was the color of wild rice — creamy white on one end, then fading between black and coffee-brown. Lotta reached down to pick it up. Surprised at its sharpness, she held it up to take a closer look before impulsively piercing it through her undecorated ear.

She was a guardian spirit incarnate: I am the empress of South East London.⁶

1. My son and I have been working on this book: Mr. Hedgehog and his Nocturnal Friends. Don’t ask me why the Olympics sticker is on our draft cover!

2. Slang for good-looking or attractive. My students in Southeast London say loads of stuff I barely catch before they’re gone. I’d love to make a glossary.

3. The park and estate have a very complex history, which you can read an overview of here. In fact, I’m so intrigued by all these layers that I’m now considering writing a novel about the place in relation to its history (as well as the fact that David Bowie spent a lot of time there). If you are a frequent reader here, you know I am curious about the layers of places and the stories they create.

4. You can find all the Greenwich Meridian Line markers here.

5. Apparently, hedgehogs have ‘spines’ (technically) but we say quills, don’t we? They’re made of the same stuff as our hair and fingernails.

6. I love this poem — “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” by Wallace Stevens. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with this story, but it’s a great poem.