Yesterday, and the day before that, I was a magpie, turning on thermals like a black and white kite in air. My mind was small and sharp as a craft knife tip, and red. When I spread my feathers, I could scribble poems in the air, so clever and so sad that the people in the market didn’t know that I was there. Before you made me sit and talk to you, before these pills, I was nothing but a pair of wings in the sky.
Before today I was quick as silver, and I knew the secret things that hide among the city’s pieces. When I was a bird, I was cunning and magic, and a mystery to the world. Before you gave me a blanket to wear, I was narrow like a dart; I could throw myself at people’s heads, and spin away at the very last moment and vanish.
From the top of the town hall clock, the world is flat and hardly there. The sky is a landscape, huge, invisible, made of light and music, with great empty cathedrals and mountain ranges. I knocked my head on an outcrop of nothing, smacked against the gusting morning, and I fell. If you want, we can pretend that I’m a girl, just until my wings are mended.
Scream
AFTER YOU’RE DEAD, the world becomes like gelatine, made of thickened edges and little more, the smudged blueprints of trees and houses and cars. When you’re dead, the world is translucent at best, and you can see at last to the rotten core of things. Trudie can see right through to the rotten core of things.
When you’re dead, all there is to do is wait, as your body grows into tracery, and your skin, and everything you learned, and the shoes you bought in the sales, and your pretty tawny hair, all of this, blossoms into nothing.
And, as Trudie turns to nothing, her mind grows hard, and sharp, and clear as buried glass, and she hoards the nothing of herself because that is all she has to hoard. After thirty-two years of mousey patience, comes twenty-five of rage, with centuries more to rage through.
Beside the bus route, before Saint Ladoc’s Hill, where the Exxon garage clings to its rough hip, the summer evening will not give in to dusk, and the air is sodden. There’s a rain-bitten footbridge, all rust and reddish paint, where resentful school kids troop above the main road, cold and smeared in hockey mud, ready to clamber back up the hill to school and communal showers.
The playing field is churned all year with tyres and football boots. On Sundays, there’s usually a market, where sly-faced men sell each other ripped-off DVDs, and watch from the corners of their eyes.
Trudie is folded against her legs like an ironing board because the hole that Philip dug for her was round rather than long, and he stuffed her in carelessly, inside a scrubby bit of hedge.
There’s a dog in the playing field, black as newsprint text, loping in lines; river and rain water in his pelt. He is explaining to his master, tracing the route that Philip dragged his wife, from car boot to shovel hole.
It’s not in any earnest way; the dog doesn’t care, but that’s the sort of thing that dogs like. They love patterns of death; it comes from thousands of years of tracking wounded things across ancient plains. The thought of it makes the dog happy, he licks his chops; then his owner swears at him, so he goes to heel.
Philip lives in Norwich these days. He’s seventy next week, and the flesh won’t stay on him any more. His glasses are folded on the locker, and his wristwatch too, which is about to stop. The nurse has left him a jug of water, and the ice is dissolving slowly.
His skin is all but transparent now, and the lines of bone and vein are written like tracery on the backs of his hands. Nobody has cut his fingernails; they are yellow and rather long. He is a good patient: gently spoken, grateful for the attention. They think he’s a sweet old boy.
Trudie had loved her new shoes. She stole pennies from her husband, sometimes whole ten pences, and she kept them buried in the garden, in a net bag meant for protecting tights in the washing machine.
She didn’t have money in the last years, not after Philip dictated her resignation letter to the laundrette, where he made her call the manager a horrible name and make mocking remarks about her mastectomy. As Philip waxed lyrical, Trudie’s poor pen could hardly keep up. He made her fill three whole pages, and then got a fresh pad so she could write to Cecily, her one remaining friend, demanding that she never contact Trudie again.
So, those pennies were precious, collected one by one from the change she took from his pockets when she washed his clothes. It took her eighteen months to save £7.99 for a pair of shoes. They were shiny and black and made to look like crocodile skin, with a big goldy buckle on the front that didn’t attach to anything. They were fashionable back then, and Trudie didn’t care that they looked weird with her dowdy seventies dress and kitchen-scissors haircut. She knew that Philip wouldn’t notice them because to him she was furniture.
When Philip thinks of what happened, he finds that he is blameless. He hadn’t meant to actually kill her, it was just a bit of casual cruelty, like kicking a cat. He saw her on the staircase and her face was so stupid, so haggard, so perpetually crestfallen, that he told himself later that anyone might do the same.
One well-aimed foot as she neared the top of the stairs, loaded-up with folded ironing. Well, the moment was virtually comedy. Eric Morecambe would surely have done the same.
The look that she gave him as she tumbled slowly backwards was priceless. When she didn’t move at the bottom, he was annoyed, but at the same time intrigued by the new project presented to him: getting away with it.
Trudie is so uncomfortable, even though the soft parts of her that used to jam against the hole have dissolved, and the dress that rode right up against her back is just a loosish mat of fibres. Her new shoes still pinch her heels, even though her heels are only bone. Her skeleton is holding together with ligaments and hatred. Her anger withers the grass in a circle round her.
Then a car goes by, and its radio flickers out of tune as Trudie’s fingers catch the airwaves for a fraction of time. A bus moos past afterward, and slows for the traffic lights. The rooks gutter to one another as the dark rises, and Trudie is so eaten with fury and rot, that she begins to scream; her screaming interferes with the TV transmitter at Kingswood.
All she has left to her name are her nothingness and the buckles from her shoes. The shouting rooks join in with her hollering for half the night.
Skin
IT CREPT UP on me slowly, the thing with my television. I think it started at the tail end of winter. The central heating was no good; I spent a freezing month in my bedsit while the landlord fobbed me off with promises and an oil radiator that doubled my electric bill in one go. It never did get sorted out; in the end I left before it was mended, if it ever was.
At first the screen turned filmy; I put it down to condensation, and wiped it every morning, worried that water might get into the works. It was an ancient thing, black and white, with one of those tuning dials you had to turn to change the channel. I bet it was older than me, that television, with its plastic wooden panelling and little round aerial. It came with the room, like the one-ring burner on a gas bottle and the spiders who ran about the walls like leggy ghosts. I loved the TV, warder-off of street noise and evil spirits; when I had it up loud I couldn’t hear the man below me bellowing at his wife.
It was so cold. I used to sit all day underneath the duvet, drinking Bovril with boiling water. Giros were every other Thursday. I hated walking outdoors, among the people with their hard faces and the cars that chased in fatal spirals on the roundabout. You don’t know where you are with people: one minute they’re ever so nice, and the next, well, it could be anything. Some of them think so loud you can hear them, accusing you of all sorts.
The residue on the television built up slowly. One morning I knelt in front of it with my damp cloth and instead of scrubbing at it, I put my hand on the screen. It was almost warm, and it had a texture to it like some sort of membrane, like the tiny film of cells you can peel from between the layers of an onion: thin as thought, queasy to th
e touch and infinitely vulnerable. There was a tiny network beneath it, little grey trackways like a medical diagram.
I’d had it on all night; I always did, for the company, turned down quiet so the people downstairs wouldn’t complain. The breakfast programme was on; a weatherman waved his arms vaguely at Wales, prophesying low pressure. I put my hand up to the television once more, and this time I scraped my nail through the thin smeary covering.
It bled. The long drag of my fingernail split it like skin, leaving a ghastly line of clear screen that welled at the edges and drooled deep red in one clotting trickle. I was horrified. Somewhere there was a first aid kit; this too had come with the room. I heaved out an armful of clutter from underneath the bed and found it among the clothes and bits of useless paper.
I didn’t know quite what to do. I knelt in front of it for ages, my belly hollow, while I spread out the contents of the little green packet. Eventually, I dabbed at the blood with cotton wool, terrified that the wound would sting. It looked better when it was cleaned up. After some thought, I applied a sticking plaster, smoothing it gently down. I looked up at the injured TV, wondered if I should say something to it, but didn’t.
I watched it all that morning; the pink fabric strip obscured the top right hand corner of the picture and kept me tearful with guilt. Eventually I began to doze in front of Neighbours when the landlord knocked at the door.
He leant on the jamb and swept his eyes over the room as he said something about refurbishing the heating system. There would be men in, he said, with his stare crawling over all my things. I had better be ready, he said, month’s time, he said, and then he looked me in the eye and said that I had better clean up this mess.
The television flourished like some fleshy square fruit. We had a few days of false spring, and the sudden warmth in the air seemed to bring it on somehow. The plasticky casing grew skin as thick and soft as a cheek. A bluish trans-lucent layer lay over the screen; the images behind were dull but watchable. I left the plaster on just in case.
When the nights turned frosty again, I woke up at four, and returning to my room after using the loo, I found my television shuddering, very slightly. The tiny hairs on its body were raised, and it was covered all over with goosebumps. I found an extension lead and brought it into bed with me.
After that, I kept my television dressed: I tucked a jumper round it when it sat on the dresser by day. During the night we curled up together, with it whispering stories and the plots of old movies. We went along this way for a week or two; we were happy, my television and I.
One afternoon, I was sitting on my bed with it on my lap whilst I stroked its downy fur when the landlord knocked at the door and came in before I could reply. Spot check, he said, spot check for health and safety. I jumped, of course, and as I rushed to stand up, I stood on the electric flex and dropped the television. It didn’t cry out.
The landlord said he was a soft touch, and that he should never have let rooms to DSS tenants. He smiled like a fist and said he was a sucker for a pretty face. He knew his rights within the law, he said, and this place was a fire hazard. There were lots of people out there, people with jobs, who would jump at the chance of a nice affordable bedsit like this. Then his gaze fell on the poor television and he raised his eyes to the ceiling. Proper soft touch, he was, and he said that I might as well forget about my deposit too.
This sort of thing, (at that he pointed violently at my television), this sort of thing would get me more than evicted. That was truly it. He didn’t need people like me buggering him about. He was off to speak to his solicitor, and he had a good mind to call the police, bloody mad cow that I was. The landlord left.
I reached down to my television and lifted it like a fallen baby from the floor. Already a bruise was growing along one innocent corner. My poor television. I cradled it to me and rocked it, sobbing. It smiled gently back at me with the face of Carol Vorderman. The landlord would come, or somebody else would come, and I would be homeless and my television left defenceless.
The thought of it was more than I could bear. They’d throw it out, most likely, leave it to die of exposure in some nightmarish landfill. I brushed its poor hurt flank with my cheek as I stood up.
Its weight was awkward to balance when I stooped to pull out the plug. After I straightened up, I could hold it firm against my chest, facing inward for one last embrace. And then I went over to the window, shoving it open one-handed.
When it fell it did not scream, but dropped placidly through thirty feet of air, resigned. My television met the tarmac all in a rush, splattering blood and flesh and fractured casing in a sad and broken splash.
Vanity
THE SKY WAS diagonal with sleet today: slanting and grey, collecting in the hair of the shoppers on Gentlemen’s Walk. I was standing, deep inside my coat, watching them push along in jolting streams. One of the shops was belting out Christmas carols on a loudspeaker; it rang against the gritty pavements and came to my ears in an unfamiliar key.
I stood there for the longest time, seeing, until I heard a sound approaching, like the singing of a busker when you turn a corner and come across him sheltering against a wall. It was high and breathless, and sadder than hospitals; when I lifted my chin, I realised that it was coming from the sky.
There, high above me, a seagull was turning in the air and weeping. It was the most beautiful noise that I had ever heard. She was shedding tears too; big sad drops that I could tell weren’t the rain because they were hot as bathwater. I felt one drip against my cheek and was astonished; when I lifted my palm to the air, there fell three more. The seagull was choking with sorrow.
I shielded my eyes from the sleet and looked up; her head was black, but the rest of her was bleachy white, and her eyes were bright and blue and thick with lashes. When she saw that I was watching her, she cried the more, until I thought I’d die. I crept through the people until my back was resting against the window of Starbucks. The gull was gliding in spirals, strung up from the sky by Christmas carols and thermal currents.
A man walked past me frowning at his phone; with one hand he held a little girl by the wrist. He was going much too quickly for her, so fast that she was almost falling down with every step. She was wearing little ankle boots and a thick hooded coat, but her fingers were bare and cold and red. The seagull cleared her throat and cried louder still. The man had turned to the child, and shouted at her for dawdling and I couldn’t bear to look any more, so I called up to her through the water and the crowds: I called out, Seagull, why are you crying?
Because I am sad, she said, And because I am sick. Because I am going to die and not a soul cares for the death of gulls. At that she wept all the more, with a noise like music, so much louder and realer than the Christmas carols and the angular, elbowing crowd. Someone shoved at me to get past, but it didn’t matter, not a bit. A baby started to howl, but it wasn’t gorgeous like the weeping of the seagull.
It was so cold on the Gentlemen’s Walk, and I felt sad for the sobbing bird, so I called up to her again. I asked her if I could help, if maybe I could ease her anguish a little. Perhaps she would like some chocolate, or just a shoulder on which to cry? At the very least, I had a clean hankie in my coat pocket, but I wasn’t quite sure if offering that to her would be polite.
Shedding fat hot tears with every word, the seagull replied that I could never help. She said that my even asking her was cruel, for people were vain and mean and selfish, and as far from God as they could be. Seagulls, she went on, were pure in soul, were almost angels in fact, although cruelly neglected by the world and forced to live in poverty and dine on chicken bones and pizza crusts.
I denied it, of course I did, and I emptied out my purse to prove it. I threw all my dole money to the seagull so that she could buy better food and a warm place to sleep, but the coins fell among all the busy feet of shoppers, and the breeze picked at the fivers and tens. Wh
en I lowered my face away from the seagull, they were nowhere to be seen.
The seagull sniffed sadly and said that money was all very well for those who had it but, she said, seagulls were poor in every way. What use is twenty quid, she asked, if you have nothing to your name but wings? For gulls, she said, are identical to each other, and none are uncommon, or beautiful or ugly. The whiteness of gulls is cold, she said; it is just like wearing snow.
I gazed into the heaving crowd, and I saw what the seagull meant: everywhere there were colours of skin and hair, and people who were fat or tall or balding. I looked back up at the seagull with brimming eyes and I told her that it was not because we are proud, just that we are made that way. She laughed at that, and her laugh was as tragic and chiming as her tears, and told me that I would not be parted from my beauty for anyone, and certainly not to cheer up a poor unhappy seagull.
I smarted at that, and as the shop music began to play that song by Slade, I hunted in my handbag for scissors. I waved them at the seagull: they were meant for nails and were small and silver and sharp. I said to that to prove that I cared more for her than beauty I would cut my hair, if she just said the word. The seagull stopped her sobbing for a moment, and the relief was so huge that as I sheared off my hair, I cried myself, with the joy of it.
It took me a long time, as the scissors were so little and my hair quite long, but eventually my hands were full of tangled brown locks. I held them up to the wheeling seagull. I asked her did she want to have it, to weave herself a wig or make a nest with it, but she laughed and told me that the police were coming.
Sure enough there were two men in uniform, pushing slowly through the Christmas shoppers with their radios beeping, heading my way. The seagull flew in curls above my head, laughing and laughing and calling me an idiot, until she gave one last snigger and vanished through a rip in the sky.
Broken Things (Salt Modern Fiction) Page 3
