"People like you make the world better, Annie." It was feeble but Annie seemed to take a measure of comfort from it, cuddled in a little closer, squeezed my arm lightly. I was grateful for that at least. I didn't even mind the heavy press of her belly against my leg. Presently a growing coolness in the air set us both shivering and I coaxed her to stand and come inside, asking, "What are you doing out here anyway?" For the third time that night, she smiled, and that one was genuine, one hundred per cent Annie.
"I have to make a mosaic. For the baby."
~
When it came to her work, everything was must, or need, or have to with Annie. Each of her paintings, once she latched onto an idea, was driven to completion by some inner force; usually at the neglect of those around her. That was just her way. She might scratch around for ages for a concept, but once she had it she became fixated and worked hard at it until it was done. It was a fascinating, entertaining process to watch; perilous if you got too close, and often lonely for the observer.
At the end of it though, without fail, something special. A lurid scene, a slant-wise look at the world centred around one or more of Annie's characteristic elongated figures, stylised people simplified to bright ribbons. She said they were human beings reduced to spiritual essence. String people, was how I thought of them.
Annie's String People pictures just about sold, eventually. Sometimes for more, usually for less, but at least they sold. And she had managed to produce them at more or less regular intervals over a couple of years. Money came in, but her contribution to our finances was small compared to mine. Certainly I envied her. I'd have loved to sit and write songs all day instead of tossing off standards and carpet warehouse jingles for take after incomplete take as some idiot drummer slowly got his act together, but any resentment I felt was swept aside by my regard for her talent. I loved each one of those pictures, marvelled at the fierce intensity of colour she favoured. They moved me, and I found them attractive and repellent in equal measure. I couldn't wait until a new one was completed.
Of course, Annie had done nothing recently. No paintings, no sketches. Since discovering her pregnancy she had been unable to work. For weeks she had fidgeted around at her board. Then in her frustration she turned to other forms, other media. Still nothing. Nada. Zilch. Now, suddenly, this mosaic.
~
Annie made herself a rectangular frame which covered most of the kitchen floor. She sat before it cross-legged, surrounded by a semicircle of Tupperware tubs, each containing a pile of pieces; clay, porcelain, metal, glass. I stepped around her to get to the kettle for coffee, watching as she carefully chose a piece, shaped it with a file, cemented it and found a place for it. Rather than the geometric elements traditional in mosaic design, Annie's pieces were shaped irregularly, their edges smoothed and curved to fit with their neighbours. Each had their chosen place in a pattern which was building inwards from the edges of the frame. Perhaps, though, pattern was the wrong word. Certainly, I could not yet identify any form emerging from this pebbled pixel-array. That was the impression it gave, a blankness, like the static on an untuned TV.
~
Annie went out in the car. She left before I woke, and was gone maybe a couple of hours. Just enough time for me to start worrying; and get pissed at her for making me worry. She had not set foot outside the house in over three weeks. I had just decided to start ringing round when she walked into the house, her arms laden with plants in clay pots. Even more filled the boot of the car. An eclectic collection of flowers, shrubs and vegetable plants, one or two of each, even a couple of bonsais. I sighed, mystified. Annie had never been a gardener.
I helped her to unload the car. Neither of us spoke but I caught Annie's eye, asking wordlessly, Why? The reply was that cheeky, knowing look that she was so good at. Because. And I smiled, just a little.
Over lunch our conversation was light, inconsequential. I found that I was beginning to believe this return to as normal a life as you could expect with Annie, however suddenly it might have come about. It was seductive. I wanted it badly, but was afraid to surrender to it completely.
~
The plant pots all found their way into the mosaic. Fragments of them anyway. When I came home that evening there was a broad band of terracotta across the picture, and a heap of dark earth and discarded plants outside the door.
"Oh Jesus, Annie. This is too much," I said to myself, because at that moment there was no sign of her. Then footsteps sounded behind me and I turned, too fast, propelled by anger. Annie shrieked, jumped back, losing her grip on the glass of water in her hand. The tumbler shattered on the concrete. Water, icy, clear, splashed my feet, dribbling in amongst the earth, pooling muddily around my shoes.
"Ah shit," I cursed, stepping away. She went and spent all that money on plants and now this. "Annie,..." I began, but I ran out of words.
Annie's face had gone tight, shrunk inwards, an expression somewhere between hurt and defiance. She spoke quietly, but with venom, "Okay. I was just coming out to clean this stuff up. I thought we could plant them in the garden. It is summer after all."
My anger melted away into... what? Pity, sympathy, confusion? "Yeah, look, I'll give you a hand."
"Thanks," Annie's face cracked weakly, an attempt at a smile.
Little things like shared tasks, working away without the need for conversation, are what I loved about our relationship. Just being there with her, breathing her air, sharing her with no-one. Occasionally I sneaked glances at her, admired her single minded attention to trowel and earth, to stem and woody roots. The same as when I watched her in her studio; just standing, looking on as she went about her work. Never once did I catch her glancing back at me, but I didn't mind.
Later she picked up the pieces of broken tumbler, delicately disposing of the shards. The thick round base she kept though. Something about it fascinated her. She held it in her palm, traced its still wet surface with a careful, deliberate finger. Then, with a secret little smile, she took it inside.
~
"Hey! What's all this?"
Annie looked up from attending to the steaming array of ironware on the hob. Big smile, warm and generous.
"Hi. Sit down, it's nearly ready."
I stepped nimbly around the mosaic to reach the table, used to it being there now, a part of the kitchen; even if it still refused to offer me anything resembling a recognisable picture.
The table was set with plates that did not match, and a bottle of red wine had been opened and placed in the centre of the table beside a pair of candles which were slender and white as bone.
I sat, poured myself a glass. The wine was thin, but I savoured it.
"So candles, wine. You cooking dinner. What's the big occasion?"
"Celebration," Annie said, placing a bowl of potatoes before me. "I'm nearly finished the mosaic and you're going to have a weekend at the seaside."
I took another swallow of wine to disguise my surprise, and disappointment. As far as I could see, the mosaic was a mess. Still, Annie seemed to be bursting with pride over it. Maybe this was a practice piece. Perhaps it would take her a while to regain, or redefine, her style.
"What are you talking about? I'm not going anywhere."
"Yes you are. Bob rang today. They need a guitarist for a week down at the Pavilion. Starting tomorrow night. I said you'd do it. We need the money."
"No, Annie. Money's not that tight. I need to be here with you."
Annie came over, took my hand. "It's okay. I'm okay, honest."
Her expression was so open. In it I read understanding and gratitude and love. "Listen, I've not been that easy to live with recently. I know that. I'm sorry and I'm so grateful that you stayed around. I was so worried that Sam would, you know ... come between us." Her left hand drifted absently to the pronounced swell of her belly.
Sam? Had she named her child already? That would be just like her. Shaping it before it was even born. Or was she referring for the first time to the father.
We had never talked about that. By rights I suppose I should have been the one throwing tantrums, sick with jealousy that she had been with someone else, a man; that I wasn't enough for her. But I knew that anyway. I accepted long ago that Annie's life did not revolve around me as mine did around her. When she came home one day, mad as hell and told me she was pregnant, I hurt, sure, but Annie's need was greater than mine. The state she was in, I knew I would have to be there for her. She offered no apology, no explanation. I told myself that I didn't really expect any.
I said, "Annie, no..." meaning to stop her. If she was going to explain now I didn't want to hear the details of who and where and why. She ignored the interruption.
"I'm glad he hasn't. I think you do need a bit of time away though, away from this house anyway."
I suddenly liked the idea, but not just for myself. "We could both go. The seaside would do you good. The fresh air..."
"No." Annie cut me off sharply. "I need to finish the mosaic." She shrugged. "You know how I am. When you come back, we'll go somewhere."
It was there in those big, beautiful, too idealistic eyes. I should have seen it, but I didn't. Not then.
"Somewhere really nice. Together. I promise."
I allowed myself to be persuaded. "Okay, I'll go. Thanks, love."
~
Later, Annie was staring at me through the green glass of the empty wine bottle. Slow wax dribbled down the side from the candle wedged into the neck. I leaned back in my chair, strumming loose chords, warm sixths and sevenths, on my old acoustic. Dreamily Annie reached out, her fingers resting lightly on the glass. She spoke softly, her voice muted by the wine.
"I can feel every note you play. Vibrating. Your music is so beautiful, but it lasts so short a time."
I put the guitar down and went over to her, touching her hair.
"Come on," I said. "Let's go to bed."
Lying together, relishing every warm point of contact between us. So good to return to this at last. So good to have the old Annie back. As I drifted into sleep Annie whispered into my spine.
"You will bring your music back to me, Lorna, won't you?"
"Of course."
"I couldn't live without your music."
"I love you too, Annie."
~
As soon as I opened the door I knew Annie was gone. The house sighed its emptiness. Crossing the threshold, I stepped into a calmness, as if a great tension, invisible until now, had been released. It was the relief of looking up at the inky-black, star-pocked sky after a long day under a fierce, unrelenting sun.
The TV drew my attention first. For weeks it had been on constantly in the background, showing Annie's videos of nature programmes, and now it was conspicuous by its silence. Easy to see why. Its screen had been caved in, spilling dead-grey chunks of glass onto the carpet. There was more. The bedroom mirror had suffered similar vandalism; and around the house various other items had been smashed or broken.
In the kitchen, the late evening sun illuminated a wedge of floor; a hot knife blade of light slicing across Annie's mosaic. Now, at last, I could see the picture. Why only now? Tears blurred my vision as I began to understand the sense of it, as if my body was trying to blind me even at this late stage.
A scene; so real, so clever. I could almost feel the warmth of the clay road beneath the naked soles of my feet, baked by the polished copper disc of the sun. To the sides of the road, smudged greenery was beginning to sprout from the dark earth, and in the distance a smoky grey forest, restless with quick shadows that echoed with the calls of exotic birds and animals. Off to one side, a cold lake, still and clear as glass, invited me to drink.
In the centre, at the focus of the piece, two of Annie's string people, one long and one short. Two thin strands composed from slices of silvered glass, shining with the sun's white-yellow brilliance. I let my fingers trace the strips of warm glass thoughtfully, then the aperture beside the figures, a dark hole similar to them in shape. The only piece of the mosaic that remained to be completed.
Annie had left a note. It lay on the table weighed down by the empty wine bottle from that last meal and a hand-sized rectangular mirror which reflected my face. Not pretty. Puffy, dewy eyes betrayed my feelings, but there was no-one there to see them. The handwriting was neat, almost childlike. As was her way, it said very little, and it spoke volumes.
Sorry Lorna. So beautiful, couldn't wait. A
First I swept up the broken things around the house, and then tidied up in general, washing and scrubbing, brushing, polishing. Erasing. Then, when the house was a place I felt I could live in normally again, I went to the step and broke the glass, selecting appropriate pieces and tidying the rest into the bin. In the kitchen I cemented the pieces into the place reserved for them. They glowed in the sunlight as if lit from the inside; a soulful, bottle green, so deep I could almost hear captured chords strummed softly on an old guitar, remembered music rising with the heat in the shimmering air, echoing far across the lake. And yes, I thought, it was beautiful.
I took pride in that thought. With night falling I grabbed my guitar and went to sit on the step. Sitting under the stars, my seat still surrounded by splinters of glass and china and clay, I rediscovered chords and melodies. I sat and sang all my old songs until they were exhausted, and then, remembering how, I started to make a new one. In it, I wished Annie and the baby well, wherever they were, and then, after that, I just played for the pleasure of playing for myself.
~
The seed for this story—rarely for me—was the title. The phrase just appeared in my brain one day, and the story was written to find out what it meant. Later, I recognised that the title was cumbersome, but by then it was the heart of the story and I couldn't have changed it if I'd wanted to.
The Euonymist
Calum knew there was a word for it. This sick feeling that had been accreting stealthily in his gut since the transport burned down from the orbital and lit in over the North Atlantic; that had formed a discernible kernel over Arran and bubbled up to his chest when they landed. When he set foot on Scottish tarmac again, he felt it tickle his heart in a most unwelcome way. It was like anticipation of something you knew you should be looking forward to but suspected might not turn out the way you wanted at all. Anticipation, yes, and there was an element of leaden fatigue to it too. There was definitely a word. Calum pondered it as the government car shushed him southwards out of Prestwick on the rain-glittered expressway heading down the Ayrshire coast. If anyone should have been able to come up with the name of this feeling, it should have been him but, even with the implants off, his head was still mired in the Lexicon mindset. None of the words that came to him out of the residuals created in his flesh brain by the thousand-language database were quite right.
It was a human feeling. It needed a human word. He was sure it would come to him in time. Now that he was home.
Scotland in July. The lazy, wheeling polka of sun and rain, baking the earth to oven stillness before dousing it with steaming flash showers. Chasing the clouds down past Ayr, heading inland via Maybole, the car's windows were slapped with wet foliage so lush and luminous green that for a disorientating moment Calum could have been back in Ghessareen's island jungles. To stop from thinking about that he mouthed the names of the roadside plants to himself—the thick ferns, the wide-leafed sycamores and chestnuts, the tall, purple foxgloves springing erect, relieved of their burden of water by the car's passing. Calum enjoyed the foursquare precision of the Latin, the quirky, old folksiness of the English. On Ghessareen nothing had a name until he had given it one. Here, it had all been done centuries ago. Foxglove, he thought. Whoever it had been that came up with that, they had a sure gift for euonymy. The name fit perfectly. Of course it had originally been 'folk's glove', but whoever had decided that the little bell-shaped blossoms might have been used as faerie mittens had created a lasting image. Calum sometimes wondered what it would have been like if the Unification Bloc had come here before humans h
ad evolved language. What would a foxglove have been called then? If the influence of the Integrated Machine Intelligences had been ascendant at that point it would have been something horribly functional like, 'flowering-plant-of-average-height:0.7m-with-many-blossoms-of-hue:400nm-wavelength'. Thank Christ Earth had been overlooked for long enough for uniquely imaginative names like foxglove to rise up, get spread around, and achieve acceptance through established use and their own organic rightness.
"Foxglove." He said it aloud, and the unnamed feeling receded.
~
Calum looked into the baby's eyes once more, just to be sure. The infant gazed up, yawned in a way that suggested the serenity she had displayed for the last five minutes was about to slip into boredom. He took it as a warning sign. He'd had her long enough anyway.
When Calum opened the door the expectant sotto voce murmur stilled, and the faces of thirty or so assorted family, extended family and close friends and neighbours all turned his way. En masse they leaned forward an inch or two. The youthful mother—his cousin Donna, who had barely started secondary school when Calum had left Earth—and her equally callow boyfriend beamed like idiots. This was almost as stressful as reporting a naming judgement to the Bloc.
"She looks to me," he said, "like an Ellen."
There was a pause before the predictable chorus of oohs came, followed by a smattering of applause. It had been just a hint of a pause, but it was a familiar one to Calum and it brought the feeling back with a vengeance. It was the pause that happened when no-one wanted to react to a new name until they found out what the person it mattered most to thought. A grimace of consternation passed across the baby's features. It matched the look on her mother's face. Calum decided it was a good time to reunite them.
"There you go," he said. "Congratulations."
Donna offered a niggardly smile. "Thanks."
As if seeking to head off an onrushing display of petulant ingratitude, Calum's always harmonious Uncle Dan wedged himself into the picture.
"Well done, Calum, son." He pumped Calum's hand. "We're very grateful." His eyes widened. "Honoured, even."
The Ephemera Page 2
