The Truth. You understand, don't you father? You were right all along. Morality is pointless. We are the darkness. We find it easier to hate than to love.
The plain vanished. We were in a white place. Hands over my face, I shook and wept. I sobbed and looked up at the face of my son, returned to its fleshly form. A time-stopped mirror. I recalled how as a young man, I had looked into mirrors and seen the face of my own distant father staring back at me. Now I looked at my son, and saw myself.
"I never..." I started to say, but the words wouldn't come. I tasted metal in my mouth.
Sandor crouched, his face drawing closer to mine. Unsteadily, he resumed the restless form of the Doorbringer's Earthly emissary. Points of light, distant moons, shone in his eyes.
Shhh, he said, a finger rising to his lips as he became shadow. There is only the darkness.
I closed my eyes. He was right, of course. Oh God. My son. My only child.
Somewhere, I heard rain falling.
~
This is, to date, my only collaboration with another author, and it was inspired by a real product. The ever-inventive Mark Roberts had discovered something called Monkey Brand Toothpowder, and that sparked a lighthearted bout of riffing on how monkeys went about brushing their teeth. Next thing we knew, it had become a two-handed story that was simply brilliant fun to write.
Hard To Do
The man on the radio segues with smooth banality into the next request. He tells us, as if we need reminding, that it's a beautiful summer's day and I almost laugh as I recognise the song, turning my attention from the sink to stare at the cheap red boogie box sitting there on the table. The speakers spill those jaunty opening vocals; sugared harmonies as only the Carpenters ever made. The refrain is light and melodic, its message ironically trite. I want to sing along and I want to cry.
Hard to do. Oh yes.
The kettle overflows, cold water flooding over my hands. I place it to one side and return my fingers to the stream. I stand mesmerised by it, the water flashing brightly, drumming into the stainless steel basin, and I enjoy the respite from the sticky hot day until my fingers lose sensation and I start to shiver.
I reach into the drier for a newly laundered towel, and dry my hands with the soft, still-warm fabric. My skin feels caressed. The shiny lid goes back on the kettle, and the whistle cap fits snugly over the spout. I sit at the table to wait. You will be home soon.
~
On the wall, by the phone, hangs that tacky calendar we brought back from Switzerland. Twelve stunningly awful pictures of cows in pastoral Alpine settings. Out of date now, of course, it's a key for memories. I leaf back through the months, reliving shared occasions through scrawled sigils and hieroglyph doodles.
Prior to May, when we bought the thing, the pages are empty. April, March. February has but one date, circled many times, dotted around with red biro love hearts. The first entry you made in it. The day we met. You wouldn't believe how often in the quiet moments when you are not here I have considered the terrifying wonder of the passage of time. Where did the months go? The days, hours, and minutes? The seconds spent just looking at those dumb cows and thinking about this. The ticks in between.
Five hundred days. If the calendar extended this far you would see scratched crosses in black ink marking today's June brightness, desperate lines scoring the paper hard enough to rip through. Looking back after today, I think you might see it like that anyway. Half a thousand days of you. And me.
The kettle boils with a breathy scream, rattling with pent up agitation. I watch it—empathising, feeling the clenching fist tighten in my chest—until it becomes shrill and violent. I snatch it off the hob just in time before... I realise I don't know what would happen if I allowed it to continue.
The water mixes with the jasmine leaf in the little pot. The steam billows in my face as I mix it round with a spoon. If you make it home fast enough it'll be nice and strong, just how you like it.
I like my tea weak—you never did appreciate how weak. I pour myself half a bowl, barely any colour to it, dark leaf bobbing at the bottom. Sitting once more at the table, shifting to avoid the stray piece of wickerwork stabbing into my thigh, I lift the bowl to my face, hold it there, breathing in. Fragrant steam coalesces on my skin. I take a sip, hot and fresh. And I rejoice that I was given this Chinese ancestry, these fine structured features that first attracted you—the delicate bones, the muddy-water eyes.
I love my eyes. You laugh at me for spending so much time looking in the mirror—not making myself up or doing my hair or brushing my teeth, just looking. You've never said, but I know you think I'm vain. How can you mistake vanity for wonder? Wonder at this woman, Julie, who has been fortunate to have loved you. This woman who looks increasingly like a stranger.
I'm beginning to worry that you might not come home, that maybe you'll go to a bar instead, somewhere warm and friendly. Snug, insulated. And maybe you'll just stay there until they slop you out into the darkness because right now you don't want to see me. I can't say I'd blame you, but I hope you come home. Soon, or I'll be gone.
When you get home you'll be impressed. I've tidied up. I've scrubbed the flat from top to bottom; I've cleaned, I've polished. Yes, really. It's not something I'm famed for but, well, you've got to try everything once. You won't know the place. It feels almost unlived in.
~
I'm sorry, okay? About the way this has happened. I know it's been hard for you to understand, why things have gone so sour, so fast. I guess it won't be a consolation, but it's harder for me. To see the pain I'm causing you. To turn your words into silence, your approaches to vacuum. To watch you turn in on yourself, quiet and edgy, start up smoking again in some kind of subconscious defiance: and to use that as one more weapon to drive us apart.
Twice I thought you were going to hit me. Some of... some part of me wondered what that would feel like. The anticipation, sickening and exhilarating, the shock cast on your face as, at the last minute, you became aware, watching you fight to control the frustration. Wondering how the dynamics between us would change if you followed through. But you didn't. I was relieved, mostly.
I regret that you'll end up feeling this way about me. Bad, I mean. But hopefully you won't feel inclined to try and find me after I'm gone. We thought it would be best this way—you'll have others, you shouldn't miss out on them, chasing after someone you will never find again. I envy you the complexity of what you feel.
~
I find I'm humming along to a new tune, although the radio has gone quiet. It has the same fluffy addictiveness as the song that was on earlier. The Carpenters again, that's right. I remember how we used to go out driving just so we could blast this stuff out of the stereo and sing our guts out. I wish we could do that again, just once more. I let the melody run its course, dredging up some words to go with it.
Why do birds...?
While I was tidying I found a new pack of Silk Cut. I've placed it with your Atlanta Braves ashtray and a cheap plastic lighter at the centre of the table. The strip tears easily, the wrapping sloughs off like cellophane skin. I remove one cigarette, hold it between my fingers. Its lightness is frightening. This is all the weight you attach to your life. And you wonder why it angers me. The hate I feel when you light up is the strongest passion I have.
Some of us don't have so long. We appreciate each and every of our days, and we waste none of our time.
A band of sunlight enfolds my arm, makes the skin glow, illuminating the tiny dark hairs, but I no longer feel the sensation of warmth that should accompany it. Involuntarily, I shiver. I don't feel cold, though. We don't feel anything.
I spark the gas, bring the small flame close to the palm of my hand. Closer, almost touching. Thankful, I feel heat, sharpening to a red point of pain. I move the lighter to the cigarette, watch as the tip glows, blackens. Carefully I lay it down in the centre of the clean ashtray and watch it gradually turn to ash. The smoke catches in my throat, brings a dull throb to m
y temple.
We've forgotten what colour your hair is. Your eyes, yes, there is a clear picture, blue discs, slivers of sky—but your hair, it's dark isn't it, or perhaps more a sandy red. I'll know soon when you return from ... from that place where you spend the days.
I wait, feeling increasingly... detached. The cigarette has burned all the way to the filter, a slender cylinder of ash.
I dip a finger in my tea, try hard to stamp the feeling on my memory. I smudge the soft tube with the moist finger. Gritty speckled grey, coating my skin. I place it in my mouth, lick the flaky powder. It tastes like death and chokes me. Tears in my eyes, I swig my tea to rinse my mouth. I forget the taste of the ash, I forget the taste of the tea. I dip my finger and scoop some more, smearing it around the inside of my cheeks and gums. I pop the papery filter, nasty medicine for a terminal case.
We know we are losing it. It was inevitable, but that doesn't make it any easier.
~
"What are you doing?"
The voice is familiar, the face too—round, lined with concern. The eyes we recognise. The hair, after all, is dark brown.
You come and sit by me at the table, taking my trembling hand and ask, "What's wrong?"
I can see that you are already halfway to interpreting the situation for yourself. You sense an end to things, you feel that this is where we break up. In this instant you hate me for making this happen; and for the small feeling of guilt rising with the realisation that you are not as upset as you feel you ought to be.
I can't remember your name. My own was never important, but losing yours is tragic. Tears, again.
~
The second time around, sharing a shortened life with a million others, the experience is less immediate, diluted—like viewing it all through dirty glass—but at the same time infinitely more wonderful. The second time around, tears are always an occasion for joy. The colour orange is a miracle. The deep, dizzy smell of mimosa and the polyglot dialects of music: from the heart-stopping slow grief of Gorecki right through to the superficiality of the packaged pop voices of Richard and Karen. All of it is to be treasured with joy and with regret that we never appreciate anything fully the first time when it is all new and we have our own single set of totally devoted senses to comprehend it.
~
In a minute or so you will have talked to me (although we won't have answered), tried to hold me (like melting ice), and watched me lift a suitcase (which does not exist) and walk out of our lives.
During that minute we will strip down into brittle ribbons, thin as parchment and fly, whipping and twisting, into the never, disintegrating to dust. Billows of saffron, glinting hails of carnelian and jade. Soul pollen, we mix and float on the breath of the world, aware of nothing but the longing for our five hundred days to come again.
~
I consider this story to be the keystone of this collection. It was where I first started thinking about ephemerality, and this story—which blossomed pretty much fully formed in my mind—was an attempt to capture that notion. It remains one of my favourites.
The Codsman and His Willing Shag
Old Peter had a way of looking at a pint that gave the impression that his world started and ended at those foam-flecked glass walls. A sailor he was, adrift on a murky, hand-pulled, real-ale sea. He had the look of a Crusoe about him anyway: all that wildman grey hair and beard, the chunky Arran-knit sweater, nicotine-stained around the collar. Of course, the nautical look was part of the band's image, but Peter really lived it. It was in his eyes, that impression that he was staring at a different horizon from everyone else.
Damien sipped his cider and pulled himself back into the nook, partly to avoid any awkward questions about his age and partly in case any of the guys from school—Mark McGregor and his year six crowd, who didn't bat an eye at drinking in The Dolphin even though they weren't much older than him—came in. Damien hadn't gone as far as the full beard, but the band had encouraged the bushy sideburns, and McGregor's lot hadn't been slow to notice. He didn't really care what they thought of him, but he could do without the oh-so-witty shouts of 'Oi, Supergrass.' He tugged the itchy wool of his own pristine sweater away from his neck and gulped his cider.
Peter looked up from his glass, raising a nimbus eyebrow. "You'll be wanting another in a minute," he said. It didn't seem to be a question.
This was getting really awkward.
For the next few minutes they both drank in silence, but when Peter started humming a tune, drumming his fingers on the sticky table top, Damien couldn't take it any longer.
"Rodger's sacking Steve, isn't he?"
Peter shrugged. "The lad's a fine guitar player," he said, "but he's got ideas that aren't right for Smuggler's Knot."
Damien sank back. He had known it from the look on Rodger's face when Steve had accidentally chopped a little groove into The Eddystone Light. Then when the group's leader had offered to help Steve load his gear into the car, and suggested none too subtly that Damien stay behind for a post-gig drink with Peter instead of Steve giving him a lift home as usual ... well it was too obvious wasn't it. Rodger. He might have been one of his dad's mates, but ... what a prick.
"Steve's a better musician than all of us put together," Damien said. "Where's Rodger think we're going to find another guitarist that good. Robin Hood's Bay's hardly swarming with them." Robin Hood's Bay was hardly swarming with anything apart from smugglers tales and misplaced tourists.
Peter appeared unaffected by Damien's outburst. "Shanty scores say trad. on them," he said patiently, as if explaining the bleeding obvious to a five-year-old. "So they should be played trad." He nodded at the glass in Damien's hand. "I'll get them in then, I suppose."
Well it's not like they'll serve me, is it? thought Damien as he watched Peter at the bar, fishing coins out of a grubby purse. He checked the door too, in case any of McGregor's lot did put in an appearance. Maybe if just Heather Burnett came in it wouldn't be so bad to be spotted having a couple of pints—even with someone as terminally uncool as Peter—but the door stayed firmly shut.
While he waited, Damien became aware of a tune in his head. One of the shanties. God, they'd not played that one in ages: The Codsman And His Willing Shag. The first verse rolled through his mind.
A Codsman he went out to sea
And left his lovely, dawn til eve
And pine she did for company
And suitors had she many.
What had put that into his head? It was one of those bawdy ballads that went down well with rugby clubs and the like, but it had been months since they'd played to more than a handful of the Dolphin's salty regulars. This time of year with the tourists away, it was a ghost town, this place. Especially when your only means of escape was the shitty bus service or cadging a lift off your parents.
Steve was bloody lucky to have a car, but Damien was going to miss more than the lifts home: he'd miss their chats too, when even the act of driving along to a guilty indie soundtrack, and talking about Steve's acceptance to Leeds University, had felt like a vicarious taste of freedom. Rodger didn't know that Steve had been going to leave anyway, but it wouldn't have been a surprise. Everyone left here as soon as they were able. Damien himself would be learning to drive in a year's time. He couldn't wait.
He looked up at the sound of Peter singing.
But she turned her back on each dandy cock
And she waited day long on her rock
Til the Codsman sailed back home to her
Til the Codsman sailed back home.
Oh please. It was jaunty wee tune, even in Peter's bassy growl, but it was bad enough singing it as part of their set without calling attention to themselves in the pub. "Drink up," the older man said, sitting down and taking a long swig from his own glass. Damien looked warily at the new pint sitting beside the one had yet to finish. He stifled a burp. If he wasn't careful he was going to get pissed.
"Shouldn't be in too much of a hurry to leave your roots behind, son
," Peter said. "You think there's so much more to be had in Scarborough or Leeds, London even? Maybe so, but a place like this, your home town, it's in your skin. A place like this has got things you'll not find anywhere else, no matter how far you go."
How would you know? Damien thought, but didn't say. He liked Peter, especially as an alternative to talking to Rodger. He genuinely admired the old man's musical knowledge, but he was a fixture of the town. What did he know of the rest of the world?
"Nowhere else has rain?" Damien didn't bother to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "Nowhere else has gloomy black slate? Slippery cobbled hills? Half-dead pubs?"
Peter grinned into his glass. "Nowhere else has traditions," he patted the accordion on the seat next to him. "Not like our traditions."
"Are you talking about the shanties?" Damien asked. "They're just stupid old songs."
There might have been a flicker of anger in the way that Peter smacked down his already nearly empty pint glass, but it didn't enter his rumbling drawl. "Drink up, son, I've got something to show you."
When they left the pub ten minutes later, the weather conspired with the hastily downed cider to remind Damien of what he was so anxious to leave behind. The wind slapped him with a fistful of rain just as his first lungful of cold air rushed to his head. Dizzy for a second, he leaned against the wet brick, and watched Peter arch his back and suck the squall into his puffed out chest.
"I have to get the last bus," Damien murmured, surprised at how slurred the words came out. He'd got drunk with friends tons of times, but never this fast. Even as he thought about catching the absurdly early last bus for Whitby that would drop him at his road end on the edge of town, he began to wonder if the long, bracing walk up the hill wouldn't be a better plan. He might even be nearly sober by the time his mum saw him.
"Come on." Peter led him down the steep and slick-stoned street. A gaggle of misplaced tourists hurried past them, a cloud of laughter erupting like sea spray from their midst.
The Ephemera Page 19
