by Jon McGregor
These are not people with ears to hear or eyes to see. These are not people who will understand, when it comes.
They will say they understand. They will say they know it might take a while to come to terms. But one day there will be shouting, there will be a cracked voice saying: I don’t have time to deal with all this. There will be the banging of objects against hard surfaces, a waving of arms, children standing and crying.
They don’t have time. They have busy and important things to do. They need somebody who can be there for them. They need somebody who can go back to work, even after that. Silence and stillness and contemplation aren’t going to pay the bills.
This is how his days begin, now. He asked me to tell you. He wakes up, he walks across the rough wooden floor, he holds on to the doorframe and he pisses on to the stony ground.
He looks at the height of the river and the colour of the sky. He looks up at the half-built treehouse, and the raft, and he plans his work for the day.
Soon it will rain. And people won’t understand. They’ll just put on their hats and coats, open their umbrellas, and rush out into the middle of whatever it is they need to do. Their busy days. Their successful and important lives.
He thought you should know.
Fleeing Complexity
Irby in the Marsh
The fire spread quicker than the little bastard was expecting.
Vessel
Halton Holegate
She took the tulips from his hands. Let me find something to put those in, she said. His hands were cold. She was surprised that he’d come and she wanted to cover her surprise. She laid the tulips on the kitchen counter and looked around for a pair of scissors. The flower-heads were still tightly closed. The petals were red, with a rim of yellow at the lips. The stems arched, the way that tulip stems always did. She would need a vase tall enough to bear their weight. She picked them up and put them down. She didn’t know where the scissors were. She opened a drawer. She stopped; she’d forgotten to invite him in. He must still be standing on the doorstep, in the snow. She felt the cold air blowing through from the hallway. By the time she got back to him he’d stepped forward as far as the runner and was standing with the door half-closed behind him. Oh come in, of course, come in, she said. You weren’t waiting to be asked were you? He smiled, and shrugged, and snow fell from his shoulders as he crooked up a leg to wrestle off a shoe. She watched. She wanted to brush the snow from him and take his coat, put a hand against his cold cheek. She waited.
She lit the burner and put the kettle on. She wondered what he was doing here. They had a conversation, of sorts, standing there in the kitchen.
‘You didn’t walk, in this weather?’
‘I got the bus. I walked from the end of the village. Where the bus turns.’
‘I’m surprised the bus was running.’
‘I wasn’t sure it would.’
‘And you didn’t think of calling first, to check I’d be here?’
‘I felt like taking a chance. I had the afternoon free.’
‘Well. It is nice to see you. It’s a nice surprise. Tea?’
‘Please. Milk, if you have any.’
She poured the boiling water into a pot and the milk into a jug. She put them on a tray with cups and saucers and the sugar bowl. She carried the tray through to the front room and they sat across from each other while the snow fell past the bright window and the tea steeped and swirled inside the pot.
‘These are nice cups.’
‘Aren’t they? We’ve had them a long time. They were a wedding present.’
‘Really? I don’t remember seeing them before.’
‘Well, no. James never really liked them.’
‘Ah.’
‘So they were put away.’
‘Yes.’
‘But now, I thought, I mean. You know.’
‘Are they French?’
‘Flemish, I think.’
‘They’re very nice.’
‘Yes.’
‘They sit well in your hand, don’t they? They have a nice weight.’
‘Yes. I suppose they do.’
‘I’m sorry. About James.’
‘Yes.’
‘You got my card?’
‘Oh. I don’t think so. No.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. The post hasn’t been what it was, has it?’
‘No, it really hasn’t. Excuse me.’
She’d forgotten to put the tulips in something. She hadn’t even got as far as cutting the stems. She wondered why he’d come today; what was different about today. She opened a drawer. She found the scissors on the side, by the draining board. She cut the twine and the tulips rolled out across the worktop. She looked for the little sachet of plant-food, but of course there wasn’t one. It was just like him, not to have said he was coming. James would never have done such a thing. But neither would James have thought to bring flowers. She cut the ends off the tulip stems, scooping them up and dropping them in the compost-bin. She remembered where the vases were, and that she couldn’t reach them. She didn’t want to clamber up on a stool to fetch one down. She asked him if he minded and he said not at all. Of course, he could reach the top cupboard without even stretching up on his toes. James would have needed to stretch, at least. It was a nice vase he chose. It was the right one: tall enough to support the arching stems, narrow enough to hold them closely, subtle enough not to detract from their colour.
‘Wherever did you find flowers, anyway?’
‘Oh, you know. You can still find these things, if you look.’
‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen cut flowers.’
‘You just have to know the right people, that’s all.’
‘And you do.’
‘I manage. You’re still getting milk?’
‘Straight from the farm.’
‘There hasn’t been any in town for a time.’
‘You don’t know the right people for milk, then?’
‘I didn’t. But I’ve got you now, haven’t I?’
She didn’t know about that. She didn’t know about that at all. It seemed somehow presumptuous. He must know there was a limited supply. She didn’t say anything, and he seemed to realise that he’d overstepped the mark because he moved towards the window and started talking about the garden, about how difficult it was to start things off with the snows getting later and later like this. She looked at the back of him while he spoke. How very upright he was, even at his age. He’d always been one of the standing-up-straight sort. Proper. It was certainly nice to see him again. But she didn’t know what he thought he was doing here. She carried the vase of tulips into the front room and set them on the coffee table, where they would best hold the light. He followed her through, slightly unexpectedly, and, standing a little too close, asked whether she’d ever considered taking in paying guests. She told him she didn’t really know about that.
‘You have the space though.’
‘Well, perhaps.’
‘I just rather wondered whether you couldn’t use the extra hands about the place. You know. I realise money’s not quite the thing at the moment, but there could be other forms of payment. Help, you know. Connections.’
‘I’m not sure, really.’
‘I do have a strong back, even now. There’s lots I could do.’
‘I have people who come and help, thank you. I manage.’
‘It’s just that, you know how it is. Things are rather difficult. In town. I thought we might be able to help each other out. At a difficult moment. For old times’ sake. A mutually beneficial arrangement, you know.’
‘I don’t think it’s very practical, actually.’
‘It’s completely practical!’
‘Excuse me.’
‘Oh, now.’
‘I think the bus may be leaving soon.’
‘Look, sorry.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to miss it.’
‘Will you think about it though? Will you be in touch?’<
br />
‘I think you’d better get on. If you’re to catch that bus.’
‘Mary, will you think about it?’
‘Thank you very much for the flowers. They really are lovely. I do appreciate the trouble you must have gone to in finding them.’
‘Mary, please.’
She moved into the hallway and held out his coat, waiting for him to put his shoes back on. She held it out between them, as though to forestall him. She couldn’t bear a scene. He opened the door and took his coat and ducked his head beneath the falling snow. He didn’t look at her as he left. She closed the door to keep the heat in. She watched him through the spyhole. The lens made him appear warped, smaller than he really was.
Which Reminded Her, Later
Grantham
And then there was the American woman he’d offered the spare room to that time, without question or thought or apparent consideration of the fact that Catherine might at least like to have been told. The first she’d known about it had been when she’d got home from work and found the woman standing there in the hallway, looking not at all surprised or uncomfortable, eating natural yoghurt straight from the pot and waiting for whatever it was that Catherine was going to say. Which had of course been nothing more than a faintly quizzical hello? Holding the front door open behind her, the rain blowing in from the garden and something like smugness or amusement lingering on the American woman’s face for just a moment before she finally acknowledged Catherine with a quietly unconcerned hello of her own. And carried on eating the yoghurt. And made no attempt to explain herself.
A strange-looking woman, she remembered. Very slim, and very pale, with rubbed-red eyes and mismatched layers of clothing; a long cotton dress, a man’s checked shirt, a college scarf, a beige raincoat. Sandals. No make-up. She looked at first as though she might be in her sixties, but Michael said later that he’d thought she was closer to forty-five. Which was their own age at the time, in fact.
‘Can I help you?’ Catherine had asked, only slightly more pointedly – strange, this reluctance to be more direct, to say who the hell are you and do you mind getting out of my house – and the woman had shaken her head, and smiled graciously, and said, ‘Oh, no, thank you, your husband’s been very kind already.’ Holding up the yoghurt spoon to demonstrate what kindness she’d been shown. At which point Michael had appeared, loitering purposefully in the study doorway, and Catherine had understood the situation, had gone straight through to the kitchen without another word to take off her wet coat and sit at the table and wait for something like an explanation while the woman drifted away upstairs.
The woman had been in a bit of a situation, apparently. That was what she’d told Michael, and that was what he told Catherine when he followed her through to the kitchen and sat at the table to explain. She wasn’t someone who went about asking like this, she’d told him, but she wasn’t sure what else she could do. She’d come over for some medical treatment, she’d heard that the hospital here was a world-renowned centre for people with her condition, and of course she hadn’t thought she’d need worry about accommodation, it being a hospital and everything, only now there’d been some difficulty about being admitted, a difficulty she was never very clear about but which seemed to involve documents she didn’t have, and she should have foreseen that, of course, she knew she should, but people with her condition tended to grab at possibilities and this is a world-renowned centre we’re talking about at the hospital here and logistics came second to hope sometimes, Michael understood that, didn’t he? But the thing was she’d spent all her money getting here and so just for now she was in this sort of, well, this situation. If he knew what she was saying.
That first conversation had taken place at the church. People often went there looking for help, and Michael almost always gave them something: food, or money, or the address of somewhere else they could go. Sometimes it was enough that he didn’t just shut the door in their faces, that he listened to their long explanations of funerals to be attended, school trips to be paid for, faulty gas meters and lost cheques and misunderstandings over benefit forms. He wasn’t naive; he knew when to say no. It was just that he didn’t always think being spun a yarn was a good enough reason for not doing what he could to help. It’s the desperate ones who come up with the best stories, he used to say, and Catherine had admired him for this, once, for his refusal to let cynicism accumulate with each knock at the church office door. She wasn’t capable of such a refusal, she knew. She’d grown cynical in her own job a long time ago, listening to students mumble excuses about late and inadequate coursework, attending departmental meetings where people used phrases like rebranding the undergraduate experience. And then coming home from one of those meetings to find a strange American woman eating yoghurt in her hallway.
They’d had people staying before, of course. That wasn’t new. Lodgers, friends of friends, people like this woman who just turned up at the church needing somewhere to stay. Catherine didn’t usually mind. Vicarages were big houses, and they had plenty of spare rooms. Michael seemed to consider it as much a part of his job as the visiting, the preaching, the offering of communion; or not even as part of his job so much as part of his life. What does our faith mean, if we don’t do these things for even the least among us? She’d heard him say that in his sermons, many times, and she’d been thrilled by how sincerely he’d seemed to mean it, once.
She’d asked him how long the American woman was going to stay and he’d said not long. A couple of nights, three at most. Maybe four. She’d asked him why he hadn’t talked to her first, and he’d said he hadn’t really had the chance and didn’t she trust his judgment? She’d asked what sort of condition the woman had that would bring her all this way to find treatment, and he’d said that he wasn’t sure, that the woman hadn’t been specific but that he’d got the impression it was some kind of bone disease. Something quite rare, he’d said, and she’d raised her eyebrows, and made a disbelieving face, and said that he wasn’t making any sense, the story didn’t make any sense. Which he’d pretended to ignore, and so when they’d made dinner then it had been in a bristling near-silence. Catherine boiling and draining and mashing the potatoes, adding butter and milk and salt. Michael turning the sausages under the grill, setting the table, stirring the gravy, disappearing upstairs to ask the woman to join them, coming back to report that she’d said she wasn’t hungry and she didn’t want to put them out. Moving around each other with a practised ease, passing forks and spoons and stock cubes from hand to hand without needing to be asked, and by the time they were sitting at the table and giving thanks her irritation had faded enough for her to be able to check what the woman’s name was. Michael said he didn’t know. He hadn’t asked, or she hadn’t said, and the whole time she was there they only ever referred to her as this woman or the American woman or most of the time just a shorthanded her or she. When are you going to talk to her. What’s she doing here. How much longer is she going to stay.
The whole business should have been the final straw, Catherine thought.
The day after she arrived, the American woman went back to the hospital – they knew this because she left a note in the hallway which said gone to hospital in thick capital letters – and when she came back, early in the afternoon, she went straight up to the spare room without telling Michael what the result of her visit had been. The same thing happened, complete with a second note – gone to hospital, again – the day after that. On Sunday the woman stayed in her room all day, and when Catherine knocked on her door around suppertime she was met with a sudden taut silence, as if the woman had been pacing around and had now stopped, her breath held, listening. Catherine knocked again.
‘Who is it?’ the woman said. ‘Who’s there?’ This said suspiciously, almost aggressively. Catherine hesitated.
‘It’s Catherine,’ she said. She half thought, since they hadn’t been properly introduced, that she should add something like Michael’s wife, or possibly even the vicar’
s wife, for clarification. But she didn’t. The American woman jerked the door open and stepped forwards, standing a little closer than Catherine would have liked, wearing the same mismatch of clothes she’d been wearing when she arrived. She didn’t say anything. She seemed to be waiting for Catherine to speak. It was infuriating, this misplaced sense of – what was it, self-assurance? Self-possession?
‘We were just wondering if everything was okay,’ Catherine said. Speaking calmly, she hoped. ‘We were wondering if you needed anything,’ she added. The woman seemed to relax slightly.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Thank you for asking.’
‘Have you had any luck at the hospital?’ Catherine asked. ‘With your documents and everything?’ The woman smiled.
‘Oh, you know what these places are like,’ she said, waving her hand dismissively; ‘it’s all forms to fill out and papers to sign and documents to produce, it’s all just bureaucracy, isn’t it?’
Catherine looked at the woman, and noticed again how thin and pale she was. A little powder would have helped, a spot of colour, something around the eyes. She looked so drained. But she was probably the sort of woman who would disapprove of make-up.
‘Do you mind if I ask what your condition is exactly?’ Catherine said, speaking more abruptly than she’d intended. The woman looked at her a moment, blinking fiercely, as if she had something in her eye.
‘I’ll be going back there in the morning,’ she said, ignoring the question. ‘Maybe I can resolve the matter then and be out of your way.’
