by Sarah Moss
And the dancing was why by the time he shouted and ran and banged on the doors of the people who weren’t at the party, on the door where the skinny brave woman was in the house with her kids and the door of the posh old guy with the doddery wife and the door of the older boy with the red boat and his grumpy sister who never puts a coat on even in this weather, and they all came out and then went back for their fire extinguishers and came back again, running, even the old man, already the flames were shining on the branches and the daytime birds thought it was morning.
The dancing was why the fire had time to take hold so that Dad and Lola and the other dad had to climb out of the bathroom window of the burning cabin and the neighbours fired their fire extinguishers and brought wet towels and buckets of water, and the boy with the red boat went in, right into the flaming building because the fire brigade had been called by then, by the skinny running woman who ran to the pub, but the wooden building was going fast, faster than you’d expect really given the weather, and everyone knew how far the fire engine had to come, how long you’d be able to see the blue flashes signalling off the water and through the trees before help arrived.
The men from the car came out from the back of the burning cabin, one of them half-carrying the other whose feet didn’t seem to be working, and the old man and the boat boy’s dad ran over to them and laid the foot-dragging man on the ground, on the wet grass and the leaves, and turned him on his side and the other man bent over and threw up, right there in front of everyone, stuff dripping out of his mouth and pooling by his feet in the firelight, and no one paid any attention.
A tall bearded man in an Army jacket came out from the trees carrying an axe, a real axe glinting in the flames, and Jack thought for a moment that he was part of the fire somehow, that now the killers and creepers Lola talked about at night were coming out of the wood, but when the man raised the axe he started hacking at the burning window frame where the boat boy had gone in, and Mum was there, outside, not stopping in the doorway but running and shouting for Lola who stayed where she was, watching. Mum brought the running woman’s kids and the mum and baby and toddler from over the way into the kitchen, talking to them, to people she’d never even met before, saying, you come in here, it’s not for kids to be watching, this, you stay here in the warm, and the baby was crying but no one was doing anything about it and Jack stood there, quiet in the corner. Come on, Jack, Mum said, help me, and he went to help but she was moving really fast, she pulled the duvets from the beds, hauled them off herself and carried them bundled in her arms out into the rain to put over the people lying on the ground and Jack followed her but only as far as the steps. The curtain couple were out again and they looked weird by now, their faces dark and their eyes too white. He stood there breathing smoke and feeling the heat on his face and arms and watched Mum use his duvet, his duvet from home, to put over one of the women from the big shiny car when the red boat boy brought her over and she was crawling on the ground and sicking up white froth, the fire louder now, growling, and Mum tried to get the young couple to stop, to come in and have a drink, but they wouldn’t because where was the little girl, where was the little girl with the shiny shoes and the bicycle, and where was her mum? The curtain couple and the boat boy tried to go back, right into the flames, although the boat boy’s dad was telling him not to, because there was still the little girl in there, wasn’t there, the little girl and her mum, weren’t they still inside? The other little girl, not Lola. Lola was still standing there, watching, her hand in her pocket, her smudged face and her hair pale in the firelight.
Violetta, Jack said, though no one was listening to him, her name’s Violetta, the other little girl.
The axe man chopped at the wall again and the boat boy and the curtain couple held red-checked tea towels on their faces and the old man knelt on the ground next to the woman wrapped in Jack’s duvet. His Batman duvet cover was on the ground, wet and muddy round a woman he’d never seen before and her mouth looked as if she was making a noise but you couldn’t hear it over the music and the fire.
The flames were too big. The curtain man pulled the curtain woman and the boat boy back from the burning walls, and then there was a bit where everyone waited, stood back like on Bonfire Night and the music was still playing, the beat still coming through the noise of the flames.
And then the music did stop and then there came a human sound he never wants to hear again and will always be hearing, somewhere in his head, and he was right, Jack, you notice, when it stops.
acknowledgements
This book began one wet summer in Scotland. I thank my family for believing that there’s no such thing as bad weather.
I thank my brilliant and dedicated editor, Kish Widnaratya; Camilla Elworthy and everyone at Picador in London; Jenna Johnson and the team at Farrar, Straus and Giroux in New York; Anna Webber at United Agents for afternoon teas in the face of interesting times as well as superb representation; and Seren Adams for second readings.
Sinéad Mooney was, as always, my first reader, and as always she was right. I thank the MacDonald-Badenoch clan for advice on titles and terms, and especially Helen MacDonald for her ear for Scottish teenagers. Thank you to Asher Kaboth for answering questions about soundwaves and wet trees, to TM for expertise on fox cubs and the dream life of deer. All errors of fact or probability remain my own.
also by sarah moss
FICTION
Ghost Wall
The Tidal Zone
Signs for Lost Children
Bodies of Light
Night Waking
Cold Earth
NONFICTION
Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland
Chocolate: A Global History (with Alec Badenoch)
Spilling the Beans: Eating, Cooking, Reading and Writing in British Women’s Fiction, 1770–1830
a note about the author
Sarah Moss is the author of Ghost Wall, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a best book of the year in The Guardian, Southern Living, Refinery29, The Times Literary Supplement, Nylon, and other publications. It was also long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her books include the novels Cold Earth, Night Waking, Bodies of Light, and Signs for Lost Children, and the memoir Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland. She was educated at the University of Oxford and now teaches at University College Dublin. You can sign up for email updates here.
contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
The Sounds of Blood and Air
She Could have Kept Going
The Days of the First Plants
The Opposite of Dancing
Engines Above the Clouds
Zanzibar
Always Wolves
A Stone Falling
Beginning to Drown
The Audacity of small Craft
Bones of Skin Coracles
Other Silent Swimmers
The Weight of Water
Once There Stood
Where The Bodies Lie
What It’s Like Being
Beginning to Rise
Hold off Your Tornados
Flights Begin
Shadow People
Maybe they Dream
A Woman Sitting On the Edge
Drums
Noise in his Body
Acknowledgements
Also by Sarah Moss
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2020 by Sarah Moss
All rights reserved
Originally published in 2020 by Picador, Great Britain
Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2021
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-374-71957-9
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