fiction

The Silent Sky

This is the one thing I really, properly, remember from when I was a child. It’s not very interesting, it’s not even really a single memory — more likely it is a set of memories, overlaid on top of each other like the layers of paint built up over the years on our living room walls, on the window frames through which I so often used to look outside — but it’s so clear and total, a visceral genuine thing, in which I can see and feel everything in an incredibly solid way, rather than just in the abstract, rather than just as a story I’ve told over and over again until all I have left are the words of it.

Because of this I often wonder whether it is genuine at all.

When I was about five my bed was put in the living room for a while, at the front of the house where it loomed up near the pavement and looked out over the road. I’d broken my ankle falling off a wall, and my mother didn’t want me to have to hobble up and down the stairs.

Because of the injury I didn’t have to go to school, although as I’d only just started I didn’t really appreciate this fact in the way I would have done had I been older. In the mornings I’d be left in bed while my brothers and sisters would get ready for school (although my mother would still come in and open the curtains like she always did in her sweep of the house), and I’d lay there listening to them all getting ready, listen to the bickering, the radios and tape-players going on and off in their rooms, listen to them leaving, listen to them and all the other kids on the street talking to each other as they walked past my window.

It was sunny. It was always sunny.

(It was – it must have been – October. It was not always sunny.)

It was sunny. My bed was shoved up tight against the radiator by the window, and I’d lay there, bathed in heat from the sun shining in through the window and from the radiator heating its way through the quilt and the sheets. I’d lay there on my back, below the level of the window, looking up at this odd angle at the sky and the birds and the branches of next door’s tree, listening to the disembodied voices of all the other children fading away as they passed through our street, their dying laughter, their ever more distant shouts.

And then the silence. Inside the house and out.

Every day, I had this fifteen or twenty minute gap, this space of my own, before my mother got back from walking my brother to school, before she got me up and got me cleaned and dressed and fed.

These fifteen minutes where I’d be left all alone. Completely alone. Listening to the silence of the house, the silence of the street. Looking up at nothing, at the pale and silent sky.

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Notes:

1. Written on 27th April, 2015

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London

I went to London once.

I’d never been before and everyone always used to say to me, “Oh, have you been to London?” and “You should go to London, it’s brilliant,” and “I can’t believe you’ve never been to London.”

“London,” they’d say. “It’s fucking amazing.” And then they’d tell me all the ways it was amazing.

There were a lot of ways it was amazing.

Once I admitted that I’d never even heard of London and they looked at me as if I was mad. “What?! How? That’s impossible!” and “You must at least have seen it on the telly?” and “What about that film that came out last year? You must have seen that!” and I said what film and they said, “That one about London,” and so in the end I said “Oh that one! Of course I’ve seen that!” but of course I hadn’t seen it at all.

So I went to London.

And it really was incredible and I’m glad I went.

They had all these buildings and there were so many of them and so close together and they were huge and weird and all sort of knotted and woven together so you couldn’t see where one finished and the others started and they all glittered like jewels in the sun so the longer you looked at them the longer they stayed with you when you looked away.

And there were hundreds of people everywhere, thousands maybe, all going all over the place like they knew where they were and where they needed to be but they all looked kind of dry somehow, all brittle and faded like old newspapers, and when you spoke to them they’d shift and shimmer and get all scared and fly away into the sky in great directionless flocks.

I bought some food in one of their shops but instead of money they had a system based around physical punishment so after that I didn’t buy anything else although I was too polite to put the sandwich back and too cowardly to show them how cowardly I was and so I stuck out my hand and accepted the sharp cuts across the knuckles that it cost me.

In the evening I found this town square and there was a huge unlit pyre of bodies at the centre and more and more people kept stumbling out of the restaurants and the bars and the theatres all around and collapsing against the mass of it and in this way it grew and grew. I danced beside it for a while with a three-armed girl and we danced and danced and kissed and more and at the end I held out my hand so she could inflict her price but she just laughed and said “It’s not there you pay it’s here” and she tapped me on my belly and cavorted away.

I wondered what she meant at first but then I began to feel queasy and dizzy and unwell and eventually I fell to my knees by the empty horse’s trough at the entranceway to the square and began to vomit up my lunch into it, and then my breakfast and then everything else that came before and after that some blood and then more blood and organs and old tin cans and some pieces of string and misshapen lumps of glass that looked like malformed bones and one that looked somehow like a skull and then a few more drops of blood and then it stopped and I spat and spat out all the saliva I had left into that trough of filth and I wiped the tears away from my eyes and I thought I was going to be okay I thought that wasn’t so bad was it and I looked at the blood in the trough and I thought I saw it ripple and I thought I saw it move and then two hands came out and grabbed me round my neck and pulled me down towards whatever it was they belonged to down towards the blood and into the blood and the rubbish and the half-digested food down and down endlessly into the dark.

I think it was London.

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Notes:

1. Written on March 17th, 2016

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Tale #11: The Old Lady And The Thief

A thief was walking along by the river when he came upon an old lady carrying a heavy sack over her shoulder. He called out to her and said, “That sack looks heavy, old dear. Perhaps I can help you carry it.”

“What is in this sack is me and mine alone to carry,” she said, and continued on her way.

The thief then stood in front of her and said, “If you don’t give to me what I want then I will just have to take it for myself.”

“What is in this sack is me and mine alone to carry,” she said again, and continued on her way.

The thief stabbed her in the back as she passed by and pushed her body into the river. He watched her corpse float away and then picked up her sack, undid the cord, and looked inside. Two hands came out and grabbed him round the neck and pulled him screaming into it. Then the old lady climbed out, tied it back up, hoisted it over her shoulder, and continued on her way.

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Notes:

1. Written on July 18th, 2014
2. A condensed version of The Old Lady And The Three Brothers

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“Why do the dead float?”

The swollen birds heaved themselves from the river and waddled awkwardly across the mud banks. The water they left behind was the same pale orange as the sky, and as silent and still.

“Tell me a story from before I can remember.”
“From before you were born?”
“No. After I was born but before I can remember.”
“Okay. Let me think.”

The sun was almost down. We lit the fire. I stared into it and offered up my nightly prayer.

“I could tell you about the snow.”
“No. I remember that.”
“But you were only one.”
“You’ve told me before. So I can remember that.”
“It’s not the same.”
“I want to hear something new.”
“I could tell you something about before you were born. That’d make it easier.”
“No, I have to be in it. That’s what makes it real.”
“Do you remember the boat?”
“No.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you about the boat.”

*

This was after mum and dad had gone, ages after it seemed, although it couldn’t really have been long, and it was much closer to them going than it was to where we are now. Time can move at different rates, and those first few months lasted forever. You were about three. It was still summer. I would have been nine.

It wasn’t this river. It was a different river. Wider and longer and somehow calmer, almost like a lake at times. The other bank was a world beyond our reach. We found the boat tethered to a collapsed old tree. Or rather you found the boat and I found you in it, your bare feet stamping up and down in the mucky water that puddled in there at one end, where the boat leaned down the shallow bank towards the water.

It was an old rowing boat, wooden, painted a peeling blue on the outside and white inside, about six feet long. All the paint was peeling off and you could see glimpses of the wood beneath it.

I’d seen a lot of boats before, when I was younger. I haven’t seen any since. There were two benches, one at the back and one across the middle, and a single oar tucked under them. A dead frog lay bloated and white in the puddle by your feet. I scooped it out with oar rather than touch it with my hands.

It didn’t take much for me to push the boat into the river. I clambered in and used the oar to push us out, away from the shallows and into the river proper, and we floated away.

What I remember most about the water were the jellyfish. Some just hung there, completely still, suspended motionless in it as if the water was a slab of glass. Others gently pushed their way onwards to wherever it was they were going. The perpetual rippling of their bodies – from the outside edge all the way in towards the centre – was hypnotic and serene. That movement is the way I’ve always dreamed our hearts beat inside us, if only we could ever see them. If somehow we could turn our skin to glass and look down into the dark depths of that sea of blood that fills us up and keeps us alive in some way.

The sun shone that day and there was hardly even a breeze. We left the hum of insects and the cries of birds behind us on the shoreline and drifted out into silence. I let my hand fall into the river and watched the water bubble up and break around it, felt the steady constant push of the current against my palm. You pointed at everything – at the boat, the water, the oar, at the sky and the clouds and at the jellyfish and at me.

The boat crashed heavily and we both fell off our seats. You looked at me for a moment and then burst into tears. I picked you up and held you and comforted you while trying to turn and see what it was that we had hit. It was huge, dead, floating there in the middle of the river. I pushed at it with the oar. It didn’t move, and instead we did, driven slightly back from it for a second, before the current pulled us back toward its mass. I pushed again with the oar and slowly manoeuvred us around it, and once we were past we floated off away and left it behind.

*

“And then what happened?”
“I don’t know. Nothing much.”
“How did we get back?”
“Get back where?”
“Where we started.”
“We didn’t.”
“But what about our things.”
“We had them with us.”
“In the boat?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“I forgot to. It wasn’t important.”
“What else did you forget to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Where did we end up? Did we float out into the sea?”
“We got out further up the river. On the other side.”
“What was there?”
“Nothing much. It was like the other bank. It was like this one. Like all of them. Like everywhere.”
“Did we see any people?”
“Not that day.”
“Why do the dead float?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the living sink?”
“I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t seem fair.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“Do you remember mum and dad?”
“A bit. Less and less.”
“I do.”
“You can’t. You were tiny then.”
“I do. Although sometimes I think I made them up. Or you made them up.”
“Maybe we both did.”
“What do you think that thing was in the water?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think you made that up?”
“I don’t know. How would I know? How could I tell?”

The fire crackled as it burned. Smoke drifted up towards the stars. The thin sliver of the moon fell down below the horizon and the last of the light left the night sky.

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Notes:

1. Written in June and July, 2012

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Tale #10: The Old Lady And The Three Brothers

There was a road on which three brothers lived. The youngest of these brothers was a farmer, and one evening as he worked in the fields he saw an old lady walking past. He called to her and said, “My friend, it is a long road ahead, and almost dark. Why not join me for dinner and stay here the night, and continue on your way upon the morn?”

The old lady said, “I am but old and poor, with nothing save the hair upon my head, the clothes upon my back, and the hands I have with which to work.”

To which the man replied, “I expect no payment in return, nor do I wish to place an obligation upon you that you cannot fulfil. I offer my hospitality as a gift, for we are all travellers together in this world, upon a journey we know not where will end.”

“Then I will join you,” said she. “And thank ye kindly.” And they went together to the farmer’s cottage.

There the farmer, though it meant he would go hungry in the days to come, cooked for the lady a fine meal, and while they ate they talked of many things. Later, though it meant he would sleep that night upon the cold stone floor of the hearth, the farmer prepared for her a fine bed, with quilts of fur and blankets of homespun wool to keep her warm. And finally, though it meant by the next morning he would have no more, he piled the last of his wood on the fire and kept it burning until the darkness waned and the sun rose up and brought with it the warmth of the new day.

As she came to leave, the old lady said to the farmer, “You have been greatly kind to me. Although I would not wish to insult you by attempting to pay for that which was freely given, I hope you can accept a small gift from me in return.” And she reached up and took the hair from her head and placed it in the farmer’s hands, and as he held it he saw it was not hair but finely spun yarn of purest gold.

She left him then and went on her way. The road was long, as the farmer had said, and she met no-one on it for the rest of the day. As dusk was falling, she happened upon a large house by the side of the road. The second brother, a merchant, lived there, and on seeing the old lady passing by he came out and said, “My lady, it is a long road ahead, and almost dark. Why not stay here the night, and in the morn continue upon your way?”

The old lady said, “I am but old and poor, with nothing save the clothes on my back, and the hands I have with which to work.”

The merchant looked at her clothes, and saw they were made not from cotton, but from finely spun yarn of purest gold. And so he said, “Then I will have your clothes, for I should be able to sell them for a high price.”

“Then I will join you,” said she. And they went together into the merchant’s house.

The merchant gave her some bread, which was stale and old, and left her at the table to eat by herself. When she had finished he showed her to the cellar and, pointing to the cold stone floor, said, “Here is your bed.” And then he took her clothes in payment, and went back up the stairs and locked the door behind him.

The next morning at the break of dawn he unlocked the door and woke her up and threw her out on to the road. “You tricked me, you witch!” he shouted. “Last night these clothes were made of purest gold. Yet now they are nothing more than old rags.”

“It was your greed that tricked you, not I,” she said, and turned to the road and continued naked on her way.

The road now was longer than ever, and she met no-one on it for the rest of the day nor into the night. Eventually she fell down in exhaustion by the side of the road and lay there asleep until dawn.

The third brother, a king, saw her there and said, “How dare you sleep upon my road. Pay me what is rightfully mine or I will place you in chains and not let you go.”

The old lady said, “I am but old and poor, with nothing save the hands I have with which to work.”

“Then your hands it will be,” said the king. And with a desperate laugh the old lady reached up and throttled him dead.

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Notes:

1. Written on July 18th, 2014

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