The Glass Book - A London Love Story

by Christian Hayes

  But when he opened his eyes, his glance fell upon the power lines that ran alongside the railway track and for a moment they resembled a stave running for miles along the horizon. Looking beyond them, he could see the sky was turning darker. It was still early, the sky still bright and blue, but as he looked onward, he could see a darkness creeping in. The train was heading straight for it. And as it did so, he couldn’t help feeling his anxieties return to him and churn around in his stomach before making their way back to his head where stories spun webs and words wrapped themselves around each other, where fiction mixed with truth and memories with fantasy. And Edward Glass no longer knew who he was. He felt as though he was now nothing but a stranger. And now with the steady motion of the train he felt himself descending into even darker territory where he would know even less about himself. He felt as though he was being sent deep into his past, storming back through his own history at a tremendous speed, unable to turn back even if he wanted to. The only way through was to see his plan to its natural end.

  And as the fear of what lay at the end of the tracks took hold of him, the clouds began to billow and blanket the sky with a grey that grew darker and darker, and soon raindrops began to hit the glass as the train sped on. And for a split second Edward saw a flash of blue light, followed by the most violent thunder that resonated long after it had begun. Edward shut his eyes, hoping that it would all end soon, but as he stared into the darkness he began to feel the full force of the train as it pulled him along unmercifully, deeper and deeper into the storm.

  Catherine stood on the very platform where Edward had been only moments earlier and watched her train approaching from the distance, and as it moved closer towards her, she drowned in the clanking and thunder of the machine. And when she boarded the train she saw that it was filled with people. It had collected many passengers before her and would pick up many more on its long and laboured journey. She forced herself into a corner seat, blocked in by a passenger who refused to move from the aisle, and with her knees pressed up against the back of the seat in front of her, she had to place her bag on her lap, serving only to suffocate her. And as soon as she had settled into and accepted her discomfort, the train jerked into action before sluggishly pulling out of the station.

  She tried to close her eyes, to sleep perhaps, but the closing of her eyes only caused a furrow in her brow and an ache upon her frown. Unfortunately her view out of the window was obscured by a panel of wall that separated two windows, the passenger behind and in front of her both having perfect views. She, on the other hand, was forced to look out of a thin strip of glass that barely reached her shoulder. She could just about see the blur of the ugly landscape as she passed dirty brick walls, scarred by graffiti, and stretches of track that had been somehow sullied by miles of rubbish running along its side: paper bags, food packaging, beer cans. These sights, as well as the blurring of the landscape made her feel a little sick. She ceased staring out of the window and resigned to staring at the back of the seat in front of her. She could hear people talking throughout the train, irritating conversation about irritating people who Catherine would never meet. She heard a baby screaming in the next carriage, a sound that sent chills through the air. Moments later the sound of a young child with an undeveloped pronunciation of words was heard talking at the top of its voice. Catherine couldn’t blame the child, she thought to herself. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t speak properly. She would blame the mother instead, for not teaching her child how to finish off her words properly, for allowing them to sound whiny and remain open-ended, and also for making her child suffer on a train packed with sweating strangers. No wonder she was making a fuss. Catherine wanted to be a child again; if only to scream.

  She closed her eyes and tried to listen to only the sound of the train. As she did so she could feel herself travelling along the tracks as though the train had come away from around her and she was alone, suspended in the air, travelling at the highest of speeds. She was being forced along moment by moment, mile by mile. And as the train came back into view she found herself thinking about the possibilities of her journey. She thought about Oliver’s face and what it must now look like. She thought about touching it, about kissing it, about how it would react to seeing her for the first time. Surprise at first, of course, but then joy and uncontrollable passion. She looked at her hand, at the wedding ring on her finger. She tugged on it a little, imagined taking it off, imagined hiding it.

  The dark clouds filled the sky until no light could get through. The rain beat so hard against the glass that Edward could no longer see through it. The air of the carriage had turned cold and Edward huddled into his jacket. As he felt himself drifting off to sleep, he suddenly realised that the train was no longer moving. He jumped up from his seat, grabbed his bag and hurried along the aisle. He opened the door of the carriage and stuck his head out. There was no one on the platform, nor was anyone else getting off the train. A name was printed in faded white lettering on the stone wall of the station and it matched the one that he had written on many of the tattered pages of his bedroom. He jumped off the train and onto the platform of cracked concrete, corrupted by weeds that had forced themselves up through the stone. And before he had even had a second on land, the machine exhaled before dragging its iron body along the tracks. Edward watched it leave, and looking into its foggy windows he could barely see a single passenger. The train became smaller and smaller as it continued on into the distance and when the train had disappeared, he looked up and down the single track. The platform did not extend further than the length of a couple of carriages and its concrete soon became grass and this grass ran right up to the horizon in every direction.

  He turned to look at the station, a single stand-alone building with stone walls and a dirty window. Edward walked up to it. Inside he saw a desk, drawers, a chair: a well furnished office, covered in dust. Next to the office was a smaller window where tickets were to be sold. It too was empty. Alongside the ticket window was a small waiting room with a single bench. Edward entered, wiped the dust off the bench with his hand and took a seat. Looking out of the murky window, he could see the grey of the sky as it threatened him with rain. He could not see anything on the horizon except for the same grass that seemed to run on forever. A closer look at it would reveal that the grass had become synonymous with the weeds and in many places both had been withered away to reveal dry patches of land. Edward wondered what to do now. He seemed to be in the right place; that is, if he trusted the writing on the wall. He waited for the rain to come, but it never did. Edward left the waiting room. He decided to walk across the track and away from the station, at least that way the building could be something to judge distance by. And so Edward set out across the railway track, step by step, and out onto the grass that brushed at his ankles. He walked a little way before turning back towards the station. It was smaller. He continued to walk, turning back a little later. The station was now sitting on the horizon. The next time he turned, he could no longer see the station at all.

  Edward found himself walking through fields of nothing: horizon to horizon. The sky had drained itself of colour, now a pure white. The ground was cold and hard, and the air chilled the man who walked across the land. He could feel the ache in his bones, an ache that was taking over his body. His lips were becoming dry, and even though the air was cold he was sweating beneath his clothes. And when he was out of breath, he sat down to rest, a dot on the landscape. He looked right around him: nothing. He suddenly felt fatigue take him over and he was forced to throw his bag onto the ground and lie flat on his back. He looked up at the sky, white masking shades of grey. Edward closed his eyes. He felt as though he would never experience anything beyond the place where he lay: he had no energy to move, no energy to continue. He didn’t know what time it was. He felt as though he must move now otherwise he may never escape this empty landscape that had taken him prisoner. And when he stood again he hoped that he was still facing the right direction.
He picked up his bag, slung it back over his shoulder, and continued on. There was no point going backwards, he thought to himself as he trudged on, nor in any other direction for that matter. He should stick to his path. He’s bound to come across something sooner or later.

  Only after a long stretch of emptiness, of staring down at his feet as they took their step after step for mile upon mile, did he find anything at all. It was standing alone in the distance, a black and white mark on the grey horizon, a break in the landscape. His steps quickened as he hurried towards it. But as he came closer, he became more and more unsure by what it was he was seeing. Only when he had reached it were his suspicions confirmed, that what he was looking at was a cow; a single, solitary cow standing at the centre of all this nothingness. It was quietly picking at the tufts of grass that grew sporadically out of the barren earth. In fact, he was mostly grazing on weeds. He looked like the skinniest cow Edward had ever seen; he looked like he was suffering. He certainly looked lonely.

  The best thing to do, Edward thought, would be to talk to it.

  ‘You all on your own here, cow?’ he asked. Naturally, the cow did not reply. It didn’t even make a sound. It just kept on chewing the threadbare grass. ‘Where is everybody?’ Again, the cow did not reply. ‘Don’t you have a... shepard or something?’ The cow was silent. ‘I am looking for a house. Have you seen a house?’ This time, the cow replied. It let out an extended, nasal moo. ‘Thanks, cow.’ Edward was sure that the cow had answered in the affirmative. ‘Hey, you don’t want to come with me, do you? I could take you home.’ The cow remained silent again and continued to chew. ‘Okay,’ said Edward, patting it on its side, ‘I’ll try and find someone to come out here and get you. See you around.’ Edward carried on on his journey, leaving the cow to its own devices.

  It was a long time until Edward found anything else emerge upon the horizon, but as his eyes wandered the terrain, he found dark shapes forming in the distance. As he approached them, he found that what he was looking at was a small cluster of buildings. Above them, a steeple stretched into the air, and when he reached them, he found there to be three small cottages and a single church. The place was lifeless, the only movement coming in on the breeze. Every window of each cottage was blocked by curtains so Edward could not tell if there was any life inside. He observed the church: it looked deserted. He took a closer look, entering in through a small wooden side-door which he found to be unlocked. The air inside was cold, somehow colder than the air outside. The interior of the church showed that, even though it was empty and still, it had certainly not been abandoned. The pews were clean, the few hymn books and bibles that it held had been placed neatly on their ledges, and the alter shone even in such dim light. In an alcove off to the right, Edward could see a couple of candles flickering. He walked up to them. They were surrounded by half a dozen other candles, unlit. He picked up one of the burning candles and lit another. He watched it burn for a little while before taking a seat on a pew. He was drained, exhausted. He closed his eyes. He could feel sleep taking him over but he didn’t let himself drift away. His mouth was dry, his head aching, his throat burning. He needed some water. He got up off the pew and walked out of the church, his footsteps echoing tall for no one to hear.

  He looked over the three cottages and wondered which would be best to knock on for some water. He chose the one with the pale orange door that was fading and cracking. And after his knock there came a silence. All he could hear was the wind blowing past his ears. He waited. There was no answer. He knocked on the door of the second cottage but again there was no answer. The third door was no different: not even a flicker of life inside. All there was left to do was continue on his way. But as he was leaving he spotted a rusty tap sticking out of the wall of the third house. He rushed over to it, fell on his knees, and turned it on. At first nothing happened, but after a moment water spilled out all over the ground. Edward drank up as much as he could, as quickly as he could, and when he had drunk so much that his stomach felt as though it had just devoured a large meal, he was out of breath.

  As he walked, the sky grew dark and mean. He would soon have to find somewhere to sleep: there was no way he was going to find anything before nightfall. The flat grey landscape appeared to turn to water, a sea in which he was drowning; he gasped for air as he walked, as he stumbled, as he fell, as he picked himself up, as he continued on. He felt as though he would never experience anything beyond this landscape and this fear began to consume him until he found himself running: sprinting across the land, trying to find anything that would reassure him he was still on Earth, that he was still alive.

  He fell to the ground, except this time, he could no longer feel his arms moving, his legs shifting; his body seemed to be giving up. He did not want to rise, did not want to open his eyes. He hated the darkening sky, the cool of the air, the cruelty of the earth. He begged to see a cow upon the horizon, begged to see a small wooden house that had only ever existed in his mind. And he soon began to fear that it had fallen to the ground many years ago, that the sea had reached out and dragged it down to its bed. It had been the fierce determination of his mind that had dragged him out here, to the middle of nowhere, where he searches for his past only to find nothing: nothing upon nothing. The landscape was as barren as his knowledge of his own history. Everything he had known, everything he had thought he understood was now as bare as the land he ran across, the land he lay upon motionless without tears in his eyes. And he dug his fingers into the earth but the ground was so hard that they did not made a mark. And he sighed, and he gasped, and he cried out for someone to help him. And time passed, and he wasn’t sure whether he had slept. And time passed, and he wasn’t sure whether he was awake. And he rolled onto his front and, with his head rushing with every movement, he found his muscles forcing his arms to push his body up, and his legs raising him up to his knees. And he found himself on his feet. And he stood straight ahead, or at least as straight ahead as he could make out, and he began to run. He ran over the earth, faster and faster, until he found himself sprinting at full speed, the ground and his feet a chaotic blur as they rushed beneath him. And he could hear his own breathing so loud that it was as though he was trapped inside his own head. And as he ran the sky began to turn darker and the clouds that were grey became clouds that were black. But just as the last moments of light lingered and just before his body was about to give way, he saw something up ahead, something stretching right across the horizon. He stopped, almost falling to the floor, and caught some of his breath back as he stared out in front of him. There, upon the horizon, he could see the thickest, longest, darkest of forests. And there was nothing to do but walk towards it, to negotiate it step by step, to become entangled in its roots, its leaves, its branches. And when he reached its threshold, the darkness outside of the forest was as thick as the darkness within. And with a few deep breaths, he stepped inside.

  13.

  Catherine found herself standing at the centre of a city that rushed around her; everything had been built on top of everything else, with streets that became bridges before twisting and running underneath themselves. At its highest point stood a castle and everything ran either towards or away from it. Behind the castle she could see the sky turning darker and below her she could see streetlamps flickering on all over the city.

  She found herself wandering the streets in darkness. Her walk was unmapped: a series of steps that took her around the various streets of the city. At first she wandered along high streets, then through residential areas; she found herself on busy streets, empty streets, streets with cobblestones, cracked pavements, with restless traffic. She passed houses, shops, parks and playgrounds, except that every direction only served to drain her energy. She clasped a scrap of paper in her hand, hoping that if she gripped it tight enough, she would naturally be drawn to the address written there. Instead she found herself completely lost. At least before there had been a castle. She sat down on some steps to regain her energy. She co
uld feel herself falling asleep: her eyes stinging, her lids heavy. She widened them, took some breaths and decided that she would have to eat; her stomach was tying itself together.

  All she could find was a sandwich which she ate on the street as she strolled. When she was done with it, she walked into the closest late night shop and bought a map; she was tired of walking blind. Once she figured out where she was she was surprised to find how close she was to Oliver’s street. This discovery refuelled her body and she found herself marching steadily closer to her long lost’s home. There were streets and there were corners, but only on one corner did she turn and find herself staring down Nightingale Avenue, a street that very much resembled all the others she had come across this evening. The difference was that she could now feel his presence, could sense him through one of these walls. Each paving stone lead her closer and closer, and as the house numbers rose, she pulled her wedding ring off her finger and slid it into her pocket. She was standing outside the home of Oliver Eden.