The Glass Book - A London Love Story

by Christian Hayes

  For only a few pounds a month, Catherine and Edward were given a photograph of the lonely penguin, whose name was Amigo, and a certificate stating that they were the proud sponsors of their very own blackfooted penguin. They were also told that they were allowed to come visit Amigo whenever they wanted. Edward almost didn’t care to see the other animals. As they walked around the rest of the zoo, past the pygmy hippopotamuses, the moon jellyfish and the squirrel monkeys, Edward couldn’t help but talk about his new penguin. They went back to visit him one last time before they left. It wasn’t hard spotting him in the crowd because he was still standing on the lonely rock in the corner. Edward took its picture.

  Edward and Catherine walked around the city as the sun went down, travelling aimlessly from street to street. They talked energetically about whatever subject came their way and did not care where they headed. They walked through Oxford Street, along Regent Street, where they saw the lights, through Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, the Strand and headed towards the South Bank. There they wandered along the Thames, looking down at the water and up at the lighted city. It did not even occur to Edward that these were the very same streets that he wandered along during his early days in London, that he had slept on these very streets. They walked along Hungerford Bridge and sat on a bench on the opposite side of the river, close to a large poster of Charlie Chaplin outside the NFT. There they sat, and as soon as they stopped moving, their conversation came to a halt. They sat and waited, waited for something to happen. Only after the chill of the air became uncomfortable did Catherine say anything.

  ‘Can I read your book?’

  ‘Book?’ asked Edward.

  ‘Your pages.’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ said Edward. It was as simple as that. Edward would later sort some pages for her to read, and she would read them. In fact, she would read as much of the book as she could decipher. Later, she would come to know the book very well, read it over and over, painstakingly unlocking every word and every marking, painstakingly transcribing the text word for word. But that was later. Now, at the South Bank, they continued their walk along the Thames.

  It was closing in on midnight, and Catherine and Edward lay in bed together. Edward thought that Catherine had fallen asleep, but Edward was surprised when she asked.

  ‘Why did you pack them up like that?’

  ‘Pack what up like that?’

  ‘The pages, in the box.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He thought about it. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘There must have been a reason.’

  ‘Oh, there probably was. I can’t remember anymore.’

  ‘You left it like that on purpose, with the light shining on it.’ Edward looked at Catherine.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I saw it.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The night you were taken away, when I locked up your apartment. I was the one who turned off the lamp in your bedroom.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Edward. ‘Well then you should have known what was in the box.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You looked inside, right?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘You didn’t want to?’

  ‘I was curious, but not that curious. It was private.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Edward, a little disappointed. ‘It was meant to be mysterious, meant to leave behind clues.’

  ‘Clues to what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Clues.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone needed anymore clues. There was already a man in the living room.’ There was a silence. ‘But how did you get like that? I mean, what the hell happened to you on that last night. Why the hell was your door open and your clothes off?’

  ‘My door was open?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘You don’t remember what happened?’

  ‘Only in pieces I do. I remember the headache, the removing of my clothes. I remember something about a boat-’

  ‘A boat?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What about a boat?’

  ‘I don’t know, I just remember something about a boat. And I remember the television, there was something playing there.’

  ‘No there wasn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There was nothing playing on your TV when I found you. It was just all fuzzy and loud, on no channel at all.’

  ‘I swear I saw something. Something about colours-no, something about ships, or crashes.’

  ‘Ships and crashes? What?’

  ‘Maybe I was mad, I don’t know. But I do remember something about crashes. Like a sound. Maybe the sound of a crash, or the colour of a crash.’

  ‘What colour would that be?’

  ‘Like a dirty green.’

  She hit him lightly on the arm. ‘You’re making this up.’

  ‘No, I’m not, I swear it. I remember these crashing sounds that had something to do with colours. And I remember seeing colours, all kinds of colours, a bit like a kaleidoscope but more violent, more chaotic.’ There was another silence.

  ‘What kind of sound was it?’

  ‘Like a crashing sound.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Catherine. She got out of bed, still naked, and tip-toed over to her piano. She sat down, lifted the lid, and pressed her fingers down on the keys. A harsh chord, several sounds colliding at once: a piano falling from a precipice, crashing violently into a mass of twisted wire and splintered wood. She continued to play: a million pianos falling all around her, crashing here and there, colliding together, and from these pianos came violent reverberations that swallowed Edward, that dragged him back to that fateful night, that ran colours through his head, colours that spilled and rushed and crashed all around him.

  Catherine hurried back to her apartment, clutching the pages in her hands. She locked the door, turned on the lamp and stretched out on the sofa. It was late, and she promised to read only a few pages before retiring to bed, but as she began, the walls fell away from around her. She looked up and saw vast skies; in the distance she saw the pebbled beach run on for miles. As the words merged with her apartment, she saw a little girl coming towards her.

  Mia Rose stumbled along the stony surface of the beach, her little legs running as far as they could take her. She had already passed the docks where the old fishing boats lived, and also past where the visitors came to stroll during the summertime, and found herself on a particularly empty stretch of beach. She took a seat by the wall where the pavement stopped and the beach began. There she had a clear view of the waves as they tumbled towards her, as well as being out of view of anyone walking above her at street-level. The wind was stormy and the sky was as grey as it always was. The grey of the sky matched the grey of the sea, which in turn matched the grey of the pebbles. The wall she sat against was grey, as was the pavement up above her. The people were pretty grey too, for that matter. It reminded her of the old photographs her uncle would sometimes show her, of a world before colour had been invented.

  She set the book down that she had been carrying in her lap. She had clutched it tight all the way from home in case the wind were to blow it away and toss it into the sea. She stared at the front cover, as she always did, which showed an illustration of a lion that wore glasses and had a bow tied in its mane. The book was an emerald-green hardback and its title was written in elaborate lettering across the front. She read it over in her mind: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. She read the author’s name out loud: ‘By L. Frank Baum.’ She turned to his photograph on the inside front cover, a portrait of a kindly, bespectacled, and moustached man. Mia Rose knew he must have been very clever to have written this book and would have liked to have known him, but the photograph was taken so long ago, when the world was still in black and white. The book must have been written, then, to escape the grey of the world, thought Mia Rose. L. Frank Baum knew what it was like. She had read his book over and over and already had the book that followed
it, The Marvelous Land of Oz. Now that Christmas was coming up Mia Rose was already making plans to receive further Oz books for her collection.

  As she was reading about a man made out of straw who had no need to eat nor sleep, who would just stand all night until the next morning, she heard someone calling.

  ‘Mia! Mia!’ She hadn’t noticed how tempestuous the sea and sky had become. She could see someone far down the beach, waving to her. It was her older brother Jack. She wanted to continue reading but thought she must have been in trouble. She closed the book and zipped it up inside her jacket, holding it in place as she ran. Once she reached Jack, he asked,

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘I’ve been reading.’

  ‘Who said you could be out so late?’

  ‘It’s not late.’

  ‘Yes it is. And it’s dinnertime. The food’s been out for ages now. It’s all going to be cold!’ He grabbed her by the forearm and began to run back to the house, and whenever Jack would overtake her-which was often-he would tug on her arm and jerk her forward.

  ‘Let go of me!’ shouted Mia, but Jack refused and kept on towards the house. And as they ran, it began to rain. Only small drops at first that could easily be mistaken for sea spray, but soon larger drops were falling heavily around them. Mia felt lucky she had zipped her book inside her jacket because it would most certainly have been damaged by the rain. ‘Is it a cyclone?’ asked Mia as she ran.

  ‘No, it’s not a cyclone!’ replied Jack angrily. ‘We don’t get cyclones around here.’ Mia could see the house up ahead through the rain, a small stand-alone wooden house with a light on in the front window. As she got closer, she could see her uncle standing at the window, watching sternly as she and her brother ran home.

  When they finally got into the house, rainwater streaming off their clothes and boots, her uncle didn’t waste any time telling her off.

  ‘Where have you been, young lady?’ he yelled.

  ‘I was sitting on the beach.’

  ‘And who told you you could do that?’

  ‘No one, I-‘

  ‘Exactly. No one. Do you know how long this food’s been sitting here? I slave away for you and now the food’s almost wasted. You’d better take off your coat and Wellingtons and sit down right now.’ Her brother helped her off with her jacket and the book tumbled out, hitting the floor with a thud.

  ‘My book!’ she yelled, picking it straight up, hoping it hadn’t picked up any dirt from the floor.

  ‘You and your stupid books,’ said her uncle, already eating at the table. ‘So that’s what you’ve been doing. You’ve read all those books hundreds of times, what do you need to read them again for?’ Her uncle wasn’t a very educated man and didn’t feel the need for keeping any books in the house. Mia frowned and placed her book carefully on the small table by the window.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ yelled her uncle.

  Mia, her brother and her uncle ate their dinner quietly and afterwards Mia retreated to her room. It was too dark to go out again, so she lay in bed and continued to read about a world outside of her own. Many nights she would lie the opposite way around and stare out the window into the night’s sky and imagine that each star was a new world to be explored, worlds where animals talked and everything was made from the brightest of colours. She thought hard about this, hoping that it would influence her dreams and send her there one night.

  Her brother had mentioned something about Santa Claus coming to visit the town soon. Mia thought this an ideal opportunity to settle an agreement with him over what present he should get her that year. The day of his visit drew closer until finally, one weekend, her brother made sure she was wrapped up in her warmest clothes before walking her into town. There were a lot of other children already there when they arrived and she wondered if she would see anyone from her school. Amongst the crowd, she saw a girl called Emily standing with her mother and asked her brother if they could go over there. She tapped her on the shoulder, and Emily turned.

  ‘Are you here to see Santa as well?’ asked Mia.

  ‘Yes. I’m going to ask him for a doll,’ said Emily.

  ‘I’m going to ask him for a book.’

  ‘Which one?’ asked Emily. Mia didn’t have time to answer because the crowd suddenly became excited and nothing could be heard over the noise of the children.

  ‘Here he is,’ said her brother. Mia stood on her tip toes to see if she could catch a glimpse of Santa, to see whether he was anything like she had imagined. She caught a glimpse of his red suit, but had to wait in line with all the other kids until she got a better view. When she did get a good look at him he seemed strangely familiar. She tugged on her brother’s arm.

  ‘I’ve seen him before somewhere,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you have,’ he replied, ‘he’s Santa Claus.’ Mia was transfixed by him, staring beyond his red suit and boots, his floppy red hat and his big white beard, staring deep into his eyes. Santa Claus was a lot thinner than she had seen in picture books, and she couldn’t remember him ever wearing glasses. As she got closer and closer to him, her heart began to pound. She hoped she had been a good girl and that Santa would be kind to her this year. She only wanted one present anyway, and even if she had been a little bad-which she was sure she hadn’t been-just the one present would suffice.

  She was lifted up onto his knee and there got a closer look into his eyes. They still appeared strangely familiar, but her heart was beating too fast to register her suspicions.

  ‘Have you been a good girl this year?’ asked Santa in a deep and jovial voice.

  ‘Oh, yes, I have been,’ replied Mia as well-spoken as she could manage.

  ‘Have you been on time for dinner and eaten all your greens?’ asked Santa.

  ‘I do eat all my greens, I promise,’ answered Mia, ‘but I have been late for dinner once or twice. Does that mean I won’t get a present?’ Santa let out a booming laugh.

  ‘Ho! Ho! Ho! Of course you’ll get a present my dear. Now tell me, what is it you would like for Christmas this year?’

  ‘Ozma of Oz,’ replied Mia, loudly and clearly so that there was no mistaking.

  ‘And what is Ozma of Oz, my dear little girl?’ Mia was very surprised that Santa had never heard of it since she thought he knew everything there was to know, especially about presents.

  ‘It’s a book, by L. Frank Baum. It’s one of the Wizard of Oz books.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ Santa cleared his throat. ‘And where would one get this book from?’ asked Santa.

  ‘Don’t you have all the presents at the North Pole?’ asked Mia.

  ‘Yes, that is right. You are a very clever girl. We keep all the presents at the North Pole, but I think at the moment we’re all out of Ozma of Ozs. Where else could I find one?’

  ‘In a bookshop, silly.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. Have a sweetie,’ said Santa, dipping his hand into a bag by his side. He handed her two whereas the rest of the children had only received one.

  ‘Thank you, Santa,’ she said as she hopped off his knee, turning again to take one last look at him before taking her brother’s hand.

  Leaving, she saw Emily unwinding her sweet and popping it into her mouth.

  ‘Emily!’ called Mia. She turned towards her. ‘What did you get from Santa?’

  ‘A sweet,’ said Emily with her mouth full.

  ‘I got two,’ said Mia smugly. Emily tugged on her mother’s sleeve.

  ‘Mummy, Mia got two sweets.’ Her mother looked down at her.

  ‘I’m sure it’s just a mistake, sweetie. A sweetie mistake.’

  ‘Do you want to go play?’ asked Mia.

  ‘Mummy, is it okay if I go play with Mia?’

  ‘Of course it is, hun. Just be back in time for tea.’

  ‘Let’s go!’ said Emily and they raced on up ahead, Mia’s brother and Emily’s mother lagging behind. They headed towards the docks, one of the places where Mia liked to play the mos
t, and sat close to where the boats swayed gently.

  ‘What kind of doll are you getting for Christmas?’ asked Mia to Emily.

  ‘It’s a special kind that talks to you when you ask it a question.’

  ‘How does that work?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a talking baby.’

  ‘Babies can’t talk though.’

  ‘Yes, they can. This one can.’

  ‘You know, in Oz all the animals can talk.’

  ‘Toto can’t talk.’

  ‘All animals apart from Toto.’

  ‘If I took my cat to Oz, do you think it would talk?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Of course it would.’

  ‘I wonder what he would say?’

  ‘He would probably tell you lots of things, like how he likes milk and wool, and how he doesn’t like dogs.’

  ‘Well, he probably wouldn’t like Toto, especially with him not talking and all.’

  ‘I’m going to Oz someday,’ said Mia.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m going to work it out though. I’m waiting for a cyclone to come and take our house away. I hope I’m not at school when it does come otherwise I’ll miss it.’ There was a pause. ‘Do you want to come to Oz with me?’ asked Mia.

  ‘I don’t even think you can get there.’

  ‘Of course you can, and I’m going to find out how. When I do, do you want to come or not?’

  ‘Okay, but I’d better be back in time for tea otherwise I’ll be in trouble.’

  ‘In Oz you never have to be back in time for tea. You can spend the whole day having fun with all your friends.’

  ‘Sounds nice.’

  ‘And it’s a lot more colourful than this place. Look at all the old boats.’ Mia hadn’t seen half these boats leave the dock before. They just seemed to be forever floating up and down in their place, anchored for all time. All the metal ones had become rusty and all the wooden ones had become rotten. It was a miracle they were still floating.

  Christmas day drew near and every day Mia Rose would stare out of her window and watch the stars, hoping Santa would arrive early this year, imagining his reindeer shooting across the night sky and her book falling down the chimney. On the night of Christmas Eve she could not sleep and lay waiting for Santa to appear, but all she could hear was the creaking of floorboards as her uncle paced the floor of the small wooden house. Eventually her eyes shut and her body gave into the temptation of sleep and she must have missed the visitation for when she awoke the stocking at the end of her bed was full. Apart from the nuts and oranges she also got a spinning top, some chocolates and a small wooden puppet, but no book. She hurried into the front room to find a short and spindly Christmas Tree in the corner of the room, sparsely but affectionately decorated with tinsel, lights and with a star at the top. Underneath lay a few presents wrapped in brown paper and tied with ribbon.