Shadows & Tall Trees, Volume 8

by Michael Kelly

  “What are you up to, sweetheart?” Dinah asked entering the room, heading for the coffee pot, her voice unusually buoyant, compensating for the strained atmosphere of the night before.

  Malcolm made to reply but saw her gaze directed at Miranda.

  “Just sorting my shells.”

  “So, there’s a system?”

  Malcolm doubted it. The groupings appeared entirely arbitrary, without any consistency in size or shape or colour. Limpet shells and tellins, periwinkles, dog whelks and cockles all crowded the kitchen table. A cursory glance confirmed that this was a taxonomy devised by a child’s mind.

  “These ones are my pretty shells,” Miranda said, handing Dinah a few speckled examples, “and these ones feel nice.”

  “They do feel nice,” Dinah said running her finger along a pearly veneer.

  “And these ones,” she said, circling a cluster together very delicately, “sing.”

  “Singing indeed? Malcolm, do you hear this?”

  Malcolm had turned his attention back out the window, observing a glimmer of sun streaking between the clouds.

  “Well, they don’t all sing,” she corrected, “some just speak sweetly.”

  “And how do you find a singing shell?”

  Miranda edged closer to her mother, her response almost a whisper.

  “You have to listen very hard.”

  Dinah’s phone vibrated from its place on the table, the shells clattering against the surface.

  “Sorry sweetheart,” she said, scrolling through her messages.

  “Did you know that hermit crabs don’t have shells of their own, that they find empty shells to live in, like periwinkles and whelks?”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Dinah replied, looking at her screen. “Malcolm are you listening?” He mumbled a reply, not seeing why he should listen when she was only pretending to.

  “The male hermit crabs terrorise the females into vacating their shells,” Miranda continued, using two shells to demonstrate their skirmish, “that’s called the moult, when the crabs lose their shells. When they are between shells, they mate.”

  Though the shells of the hermit crabs had been cast aside in her underwater scenario, she placed the shells on top of each other in simulation of intercourse, grating the husks against one another.

  “Miranda!” Dinah looked up from her phone, “that’s not appropriate conversation for the table,” and ushering her out of her chair and towards the door, she added, “I think it’s time you got out of your bedclothes and brushed your teeth.”

  The ringtone of Dinah’s phone accompanied them down the hall and Malcolm heard Dinah’s phone voice as she answered, the conversation diminishing as she moved toward the sitting room to get better reception. He cast a glance over Miranda’s shells, picking up a conical specimen, something distinctly sexual about the ventral cavity. He heard the ring of an elevator bell in his mind before Amaterasu’s Silence began to play softly.

  “I put one of the singing shells in your pocket,” Miranda said from the doorway, startling him into nearly dropping the one he held, “did you hear it?”

  As if pre-empting Dinah’s summons, she returned the way she had come, just as Dinah’s voice filled the house, calling her back.

  *

  A storm was brewing. Malcolm recognised the stillness of the water, a heaviness in the air, the unusual quiet at the sea’s edge. Miranda seemed unaware, her eyes cast down, trawling through knots of seaweed. Malcolm followed her closely, watching how she moved back and forth like the tide, harvesting the shore. What was it that she could see and hear that he couldn’t? She had found a small red bucket washed up at the strandline—its companion spade still lost at sea—and requisitioned it for her beachcombing, collecting fragments of pottery and sea-glass, redundant egg cases—mermaid’s purses—which along with her shells formed a veritable catch.

  Watching Miranda at play, listening to her shells, he remembered what she’d said about her collection, that some didn’t sing, they spoke sweetly. The woman in the elevator had certainly spoken sweetly, perhaps that was why he remembered her so easily, before the memory had soured. Miranda held one of the shells higher as if to catch a better frequency before casting it aside, whether due to a lack of sound or because it emitted a sound she disliked, he hardly knew. You would have to speak sweetly, he supposed, to gain the ear of a child.

  Though the wind was low, he felt a shift in the air, saw Miranda stand as if summoned.

  “Listen,” she called.

  A low plaintive moan filled the air and they both moved towards it, Miranda breaking into a run, her bucket clattering and spilling. Malcolm thought of the ghost of Fingal’s son, stationed at the summit of the cave where his body lay entombed, issuing his ardent battle-cry, calling men to action. And at the same time, he wondered if the voices he’d heard in the cave could carry this far, reminded of Amaterasu’s Silence rising up from the pit.

  Miranda came to a stop, took a cautious step back, and when Malcolm edged closer, he saw why. A group of seals had set up camp at the entrance of the cave, basking on beds of kelp, calling to one another in doleful, drawn-out notes, their song sweetly sorrowful when echoed within the hollowed chamber.

  *

  He’d seen a lot of different set designs for Amaterasu’s grotto over the years. There were always conceptual treatments, the auditorium itself imagined as the interior of the cave, the stage pared down, either minimalist in principle or economy. Then there were those that drew on a Japanese aesthetic; one popular production imagined the space as a concave white screen onto which shadow puppets—the actors of the outside world—danced, while the haloed-boulder obstructing the cave’s entrance filled the backdrop like a full moon.

  But Malcolm’s favourite by far had seen Amaterasu’s story transposed to a frozen tundra, the cave appearing to be made of crystal, the imitation stalagmites not unlike the hexagonal columns of Fingal’s cave. It reminded him of the Fortress of Solitude in the Superman comics, a place fit for a hero’s retreat. He thought of the chitinous surface of Miranda’s shells and of the mineral parity of shell and rock; how the pearlized interiors of clams and oysters, their offspring pearls formed by layers of nacre, could rival the lucent beauty of crystal.

  Though Dinah’s questions had ceased for the time being, the study was still littered with the remnants of the retrospective. He rummaged through Dinah’s files, looking at photographs and concert programmes, newspaper cuttings of reviews and articles. Then he replayed the interview on Dinah’s camera, listening to his voice and Dinah’s in concert, discordant and off-key. Surrounded by the artefacts of his prolific career, it was plain that nothing had really mattered since Amaterasu. It was his magnum opus, he was the only one who refused to see it, to think so obstinately that there was still more music to make. Maybe it was time for him to take his bow and let Dinah sing his requiem.

  “Who are you talking to?” Dinah said, before realising the camera was in playback mode. She let it run and joined him in leafing through the contents of his life. Though Ayoko hardly featured, Dinah paused on a photograph of Malcolm rehearsing with the orchestra. A younger man then, he was hunched over the score, making notes, whilst in the background, barely noticeable stood a slight figure, her eyes closed, her arms raised as if conducting the music.

  Veins of light flickered on the horizon, followed a few moments later by the grumble of thunder, the din of the sudden downpour.

  “Will you come with me to the cave?” Malcolm asked.

  He knew it was asking a lot, to relive traditions that weren’t her own, to walk in the wake of his first wife.

  She looked out at the rain then back at the photograph.

  “No, Malcolm.”

  She had always loved him for Amaterasu, just as others had before, but since the interview he’d seen the doubt in her eyes, the dawning suspicion that he was not the sole author. How could he explain that the island had devised an arrangement for two voices, voices that
harmonised so well that it was hard to separate their respective parts, though one had always soared slightly higher than the other. But their duet could not continue forever and as those summers had passed, the world outside had become more clamorous, disturbing their peace until they had to arrange silence just to hear their song. It was Ayoko’s idea to add lacunae to the score, to make space for Amaterasu’s voice. But her own voice wasn’t right to carry Amaterasu out of the cave and onto the stage, not at that time; it wasn’t white and male, the qualification needed to head an orchestra, to conduct their opus, so she was left to command and inhabit the silence instead.

  He was soaked to the bone by the time he made it to the cave, his dressing gown sleek like seal fur. He’d thought only of Ayoko as he hurried through the rain, of the times holed-up in the cave, listening to the tempest outside, her voice rising above the dissonance. He made his way to the stone plinth and upended his pockets, arranging Miranda’s shells into a loose circle. He’d brought her entire collection, unsure which of her finds was responsible for the voice he heard on that first visit to the cave. Whether he believed in the magic of Miranda’s singing shells or not, the hope of hearing Ayoko’s voice again outweighed any feelings of irrationality.

  It was an impressive collection. In the flashes of light, he recognised the hinged shells of mussels and cockles, delicate cowries and he opened them up in the absurd hope it might encourage them to sing. And there were whelks and periwinkles, their coiled peaks like the tails of mermaids turned in on themselves. Maybe this was all that remained of those fabled creatures, their imprint echoing in the waves and spirals of nature’s pattern, and he was reminded of the little mermaid from Miranda’s story, willing to give up her voice in exchange for something greater.

  Malcolm heard only the storm for a long time but gradually as his ears become more accustomed to the stillness of the cave, it gave way to a different cacophony. There were voices in the shells, voices he recognised for the most part, women that he had hurt or overlooked, loved and spurned. Some spoke, others sang, and some shouted their words vehemently, spitting out their pain in plosive notes, all competing to be heard, their voices, consigned to silence, now liberated within the sanctuary of the cave. Rising above it all was Ayoko’s voice, his not-so-silent partner, singing Amaterasu’s Silence in doleful tones, not just the first few bars this time, but the entire melody, her voice soaring above the din, curating all the pain into a beautiful harmony.

  *

  “Malcolm! Malcolm!” he heard his name far off in the distance, was conscious of the reek of seaweed, his cheek wet.

  “Malcolm!” came the voice again, calling him from outside the cave. He rose slightly, seeing that he had lain in the pit of the cave, interred overnight, the light streaking through the rock, along with the lapping of the tide restoring him to life.

  “My god, are you ok?” He saw Dinah and Miranda run towards him, Dinah kneeling at his side, placing her hand against his head.

  “Yes, fine, fine,” he replied. She tried to lift him to his feet, but he remained rooted to the spot.

  “Let’s get you back to the house.”

  “No. I want to stay here.”

  Dinah stood over him.

  “That’s preposterous! You’ll catch your death.”

  “I’m fine,” he repeated, leaning against the plinth. “Miranda, fetch me some more of those singing shells,” he said and before Dinah could object, she had run back out to the shore to do his bidding. Children were much better listeners than adults, able to perceive possibilities and frequencies adults couldn’t even fathom. Untold songs lay undiscovered out there, stoppered like messages in bottles, cast out into a seemingly silent world, just waiting to be found. Malcolm cast a glance about the cave; it was a moult of sorts, an absence in-between, those silenced voices just needed the temptation of a bigger shell to entice them out.

  “Malcolm?” Dinah pressed, “we have to leave.”

  He thought of Amaterasu in her cave, wanting to be left alone, barring the door to the shadows dancing outside.

  “I can’t,” he said, “I have to listen to the music.”

  “What music?”

  He glanced toward the rocky ledge; his chorus of shell already assembled. They all had stories to tell, silences to speak, their pain rendered more beautiful in the depths of the cave. Like Macpherson and his songs of old, he would weave together fragments of forgotten voices and compose a piece of epic proportions, a haunting polyphony, of silence lost and found.

  “Malcolm?”

  “Wait, they’re just warming up. Listen…”

  Dinah laughed and the sound reverberated through the cave.

  “Malcolm,” she entreated, after the laughter had faded and she saw he was in earnest, “please.”

  But he wasn’t listening to her. Instead, he could just make out the shell voices in muted concert, muffled whispers, faint glissandos scaling higher. It didn’t matter if Dinah was angry with him because eventually her anger would subside to silence and then there was every chance it would find itself lodged in shell, washed up on the beach for him to find. Then he would add her voice to his choir, where the sound would be so much sweeter.

  In the distance he heard footsteps through water, Dinah’s voice urgent on her mobile, I think he’s had a fall, calling for action, but diminishing as she made her way up the shore seeking better reception. He wanted to tell her to get her camera, to come back and document the composer’s lair but the music was getting louder, calling for his complete attention. He had a lot of listening to do, to atone for all the silence he had imposed on others, while his music had been free to rise above the cave and into the world. He closed his eyes and inhaled the salt air, pulling the damp fur of his gown about him tighter, listening to the song of salvaged voices, as the seals in the bay wailed at the loss of their pups drowned in the tempest.

  Down to the Roots

  Neil Williamson

  • • ∞ • •

  “So, is it all coming back yet?” Ursula Crichton’s question snaps Dan back to the here and now. Tires grit on tarmac as she eases the Subaru estate around a corner, a bar of spent sunlight scanning across her face. Outside, brambles and browning gorse overhang moss-scabbed walls. Branches of birch and oak shiver above, clinging on to the last of their leaves, and in the woods’ deeper shadows loom spruces and Scots pines. At some point she’s rolled the windows down half an inch and the air is cold and sharp with autumnal moulder.

  Despite a lifetime of promises there’s no doubting where he is. Memories of it, though?

  As kids Ursula and Dan were friends but this middle-aged woman in a North Face fleece and no make-up, her scrunched-up hair threaded with wires of silver, is a stranger. She glances over with bark-brown eyes. Dan has been trying to recall since she picked him up at the station, but can only picture a cheeky, stork-legged teen in denim shorts and an Aberdeen football top. He vaguely remembers thinking that he might have fancied her if her hair were cut like Dee Hepburn’s instead of Clare Grogan’s but not what colour eyes she had. Likewise, he can picture in his mind almost nothing of the village that lies along this winding Argyllshire road. Never had a reason to want to remember it, so it’s long gone. Discarded, junked, along with the rest of his childhood.

  Dan makes himself smile. “Starting to, yeah,” he says. “It’s good to be home.”

  Ursula grins, the sun sliding off her face again as they enter a cloister of tree shadow and lapse back into the ill-fitting silence that so far has characterised their reunion. Back to the stereo’s nineties indie mix, tinny over the road rumble. Dan’s recognised few of the tunes. By the time of Britpop, he’d already escaped to Glasgow. Business school and club culture were the scratch and flare to his life, the fizzling touch paper that launched him into the world of banks and security software: the job in the City of London, the Jacob’s ladder of promotions, the house in Highbury complete with Home Counties wife and kid, business class travel and expense accoun
ts, living the good life—the best life—wherever he happened to be and with whomever he fancied. Strategically calendared vacations in Disneyland Paris and on Barbadian beaches. The condo with the pool that English Sara didn’t know about, but Californian Courtney did. It had been a blaze, every second of it.

  It was never fucking meant to lead him back here.

  It’s only when the Subaru passes a pair of gate posts topped with stone pineapples and then swings through a particularly lurching right-hander that anticipation unexpectedly clutches Dan’s breath. He thinks cattle grid a second before they rattle over one, and bow-backed bridge just as they emerge out of the trees and rise over the old stone arch. And that’s when memories start to resurface. As they cross the River Afton, he remembers skimming stones in the late summer, defying his mother’s warnings for the joy of raising white lips from the brown water. When they pass the sign that reads Crawfoot, he remembers pretending to patrol there with Ursula, sharing a borrowed air rifle like sentries in a war movie. And when the car squeezes through the narrow choke that he knows will feed into the bottom end of the Mains, they pass a two-storey building with boarded windows, a rusting roller door and a dilapidated petrol pump, the red and white ESSO all but scratched away. The garage’s signage has been taken down but Dan remembers the name of the girl who vanished playing near the woods, there and then gone one trick-of-the-light autumn evening. That name, a warning and a prayer around the village for months afterwards: Christine Hutchison. Fuck, he’s not thought about Christine Hutchison in decades.

  They’re flooding in now. He remembers standing in the kitchen of the old house, staring at the drab olive Formica while his Mum lectured him about wandering around on his own. The house is a few streets from here, through the Mains and past the school. He remembers the redbrick garden wall and squealing gate. Their living room with polystyrene stonework around a two-bar electric fire, like a cave of modernity. His bedroom wallpaper, aeroplanes among the clouds, pasted up over a horrendous green flock that his curious, picking fingers had disinterred behind his headboard in his early teens. He remembers the unpleasant fuzziness, soft like an over-ripe peach. His Mum had done her nut when she’d found out.