Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain

by Barney Norris

  ‘Talks to you though.’

  ‘We keep in touch.’

  ‘Harsh, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d say you’ve done him more harm than I have in your time.’

  He didn’t say anything to that. I could see he was trying to keep very still, and I wondered if I was in danger now. ‘I just wanted to know what you thought I could do? I just sort of feel like I want to know him again.’

  Jonno was still, but he started to smile. He started to laugh in my face.

  ‘It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?’

  ‘Why? Why’s it too late?’

  He turned away to put his keys by his till, and I wanted to pick something up and throw it, cos I don’t want it, won’t have it, all my life people turning away from me.

  ‘Why the fuck is it too late?’

  When he turned back there was that hardness in his eyes.

  ‘Why don’t you get it? You’ve been mad all your life, and he’s right to keep you out of our granddaughter’s life if all you can do with yourself is get arrested.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Didn’t you just get arrested?’

  ‘Lot you care.’

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’

  Rich must have told him. He must have guessed I might turn up. He knows there’s no one who loves me, no one who’ll listen to me talk.

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘See what he’s got? See what our boy’s got? He’s had to work so hard to have that, even that, just an ordinary life, from starting with a mum who was off her face every evening, who ignored him every evening.’

  ‘Fuck you. Where were you then?’

  ‘He’s right, Rita. Not to see you. Anything else is asking for trouble.’

  I screamed at him now, I couldn’t help it, breathed in and screamed and broke the peace of the shop like it were a vase on one of his fucking shelves.

  ‘You fucking dare say that to me?! When you been like you are with me?!’

  He was across the room and his hands pinning me hard back to the door in a beat, slam up against the door, and it was like falling backwards into the past. I was twenty-one again and he owned me, he could do what he wanted with me, I was scared of him. If someone’s had that hold on you once, it doesn’t matter how strong they are thirty or forty years later, you’re scared of them for ever.

  ‘Listen to me.’ His teeth were in my face, in my eyes, like a dog’s. He was spitting, snapping, and I tried not to cry out or show any weakness, cos that’s when they have you, the bastards, the bastards. ‘You listen to what I’m saying. I haven’t wanted anything to do with you for half my fucking life. Nor has your son, you get that? Cos you fuck us up. You fuck up. And I used to try and save you, but you fuck it all up.’

  He kept shouting, but I didn’t hear any more. I watched his jaws in my face, heard his noise, and I felt almost glad, because I hadn’t been wrong about my Jonno being a cunt deep down; he was still the man he’d always been. When he let go of my cardigan I pulled it round me and walked out without saying anything else. Just like he’d always been. I was so stupid. I’ve got bad taste in people, always picked the wrong people; they wouldn’t look after me. That’s my trouble. I got back in my car and I wanted to cry, but I knew whatever happened I wouldn’t, cos even if he never found out, I’d know, I’d know he made me cry. I’d know the satisfaction that would have given him.

  What I have to weigh in the balance, the good thing that happened to me, was the flowers. It was a total accident I ended up with that. Not something I planned that went right, just luck, luck, luck. None of my plans ever came off right. When I was forty I needed a job. This was after I’d fucked up a lot. Been in trouble all my thirties. The difference between me and Jonno was always that I got caught and he didn’t. I was staying in a tent, and I went to this nursery down the road and asked if they had work going. The boss was standing in the middle of a big room of raised beds, a big white tent to keep the heat in, surrounded by flowers I’d seen before though I didn’t know what the fuck they were. He said, tell you what, let me try you on something. I’m gonna go away for ten minutes. See these? He pointed at the flowers, and I nodded, cos of course I could fucking see them, they were there right in front of me. He said, I want you to pot as many as you can by the time I get back. That all right? And he pointed again to a big stack of plant pots by the door so I knew what he was on about. He must have thought I was a total mong. I told him fair enough, so he went off for a cup of tea, and I got down to it. By the time he got back – twelve minutes later, I checked my watch – I’d potted seven of his flowers. I could see in his face he thought seven was proper brilliant. I think he’d been expecting one or two. He gave me a job there and then, and I felt so big, cos I’d never done anything brilliant before, never got a job because I had a talent. I felt so excited I might have found something I was actually good at. I asked him what kind of flowers I’d been potting, cos they’d be my favourite now they’d got me work, and he told me they weren’t flowers at all, they were orchids, and delicate as anything, and it wasn’t so much the number I’d potted that impressed him as the fact I hadn’t fucked any of them up.

  So I did that for a little while, worked for this gaffer outside Salisbury potting plants, and it were lovely. He never wanted to shag me or nothing, I just worked there cos I was good, and I got my drinking and smoking right down to nearly nothing, and then in the end I got a room of my own in Salisbury, and that was special to have that kind of life back that I’d fallen away from. I’d had bad luck with my living situation. Mum wasn’t talking to me, no one else was putting me up, and I ended up on this farmer’s land in a tent and borrowing his shower and his outside loo, which was cushty of him. I’d just walked up his drive crying one day after someone chucked me out of a car, and he’d fixed me up with a little plot of my own under a cedar hedge. Used to wake up to the lemon smell of the needles, it were lovely. But to get a proper room again with a window on the world and a door to keep it all out was magic. For that year I was happy. Then the nursery went bust. There was a fire, and my old boss hadn’t had the proper insurance, and you can’t come back from a fire without insurance. He got all us potters together and told us he wasn’t going to be starting again, and I was so sad. He took me to one side afters and said, I heard the bloke runs that flower stall in Salisbury market square’s looking to pack it in. Why don’t you go and see if he’ll hand his licence on to you when he does? You’re good with flowers and you’re good with people, it’d be good for you.

  I cried again when he said that. No one ever told me I was good with anything before or after him. Makes me wonder where he is now, cos I barely saw him after that day. People come and go. I felt so proud I had new strength in me, and with that firing me up I went into Salisbury to the flower stall, bought the bloke there a few drinks, and he said if I helped out for a month I could have the stall after he packed it in. So for a month I paid my rent dealing instead of making proper money, and helped on this stall learning the ropes. And then the old bloke retired and I was running a shop. And that was how I got my hands on the best thing in my life.

  So what I did was drive back home and fuck it up. When I say home I mean Salisbury, right – that’s my heart, that’s the fucking heart of me, ripped out and dropped in the middle of England. This is where anything worth telling anyone about ever happened to me.

  I parked my car in the market square and didn’t give a fuck about paying or displaying, cos it mattered fuck all now. The men in my life always wanted to hurt me, I can see that. I can tell that they wanted to own me. Fuck them, I was thinking. I owned my own life. I could hurt my own life without help from any smug cunt. It didn’t matter what parking tickets anyone gave me, I was going to prison and losing my stall, and my mum and my son and the only bloke I ever thought I loved all think I’m a wanker and spat in my eye.

  I went to the stall and I took out all the flowers I had and trampled t
hem there in the street. Then I smashed my lovely little wooden stall to bits, little bits, tore up the piece of paper that used to be my trader’s licence, cos none of it matters, it all ends anyway. I walked away before the police turned up, left my car behind me and walked back to my flat. In my flat I made a pile of everything, my photos and books and my memories, and I took it outside and I turned it all into fire. And I turned on the taps in my flat and plugged the sink. I took a knife to the bed and the sofa, and a hammer to the telly, then went outside and I wanted to be clean, I thought I’d feel clean, but I felt so fucking dirty. Then the police turned up and saw what was happening, and I was back in that cell of myself with my solitude and nothing to interrupt it.

  And for some fucking reason what I was thinking of was that weird old woman in the graveyard after she buried her husband, on her own and nothing to look forward to. For some reason what I did in the police cell was wonder what had happened to her.

  Trial started. My lawyer was a bright spark, but I didn’t listen to her cos none of it mattered now. I was going down and I’d taken it all with me, all my life fallen in on my head; I felt like fucking Samson. I wouldn’t see my mum. Let it all fall away behind me, all disappear and the slate be blank. Let me get out of my life as if I were a snake and everything I’ve ever done just an old fucking skin. And I knew it was a stupid fucking wish, knew the slate’s never blank, cos it all gets etched in, it all stays with you, your life is a blue tattoo. But I thought at least I could try to slash it into too many pieces for anyone to read what it said. I said nothing in court, argued nothing in court. Once I got inside I would fight and spit and turn my back imperious on everything. Maybe I’d even fuck all this and try to die, just get it all away from me for ever. My lawyer she pleaded with me to go in the box and explain myself, but I told her it was all bent, all crooked and broken anyway, the whole world gnarled up like a tree root, no point in me saying a word. I told her I couldn’t see the point in my having been born, all the time the face of my son and Jonno’s spit in my face and my mum’s disappointment hanging over me, and the way I’d let myself get old. I told her to fuck herself and that it was the rich like her born into everything had made sure I never had a chance of a decent life and how did she sleep at night. And all the time I thought about the old girl in the graveyard, envied her, wished I was her, thought everything might have been different if I’d only found someone to love me back.

  You can imagine how I felt when the jury came back in and it turned out she’d got me off.

  I didn’t have anything any more. I mean, fucking nothing. I walked out the court feeling numb, because I’d got it so wrong. I’d ruined everything for no good reason. She found a weak point. She worked a technicality. And I should have been glad, but she made me feel a right idiot.

  I went to Brown Street car park where my old moped’s parked up. I leave it there, it’s such a pile of shite, no one ever nicks it. I was feeling numb. I thought, I’ll have a ride, that’ll help. An hour or two with the wind in my hair then I’ll feel a little cleaner and I’ll work out what to do. I hardly use my moped any more. Till last year we were joined at the hip, but I’d get so cold in the winters, so I got the car, the banger. But I’d kept the tax up on my little scooter, I’d kept up the insurance, course I had. I loved it. I pulled the bike chain out through the wheel and jumped on, and the engine started first time and it felt good under me. I’d be rusty, been too long since I rode it last, but the machine was still working beautiful. I backed out of the little corner I kept it in, behind the cars against the far wall of the car park nearest the Arts Centre and the registry office, and headed off buzzing like a wasp in a tin into the evening. Just an hour in the open air. Just the wind in my hair. Then I’d work out what the fuck to do with my future.

  A River Curling Like Smoke

  1

  THERE WAS ONCE a boy who didn’t know how to speak out loud. It was as though his mouth had been sewn shut. He wanted to know how to open it, but he couldn’t ask anyone what to do, because his words wouldn’t come to him. Instead, he lived his whole life in silence.

  In my world there isn’t much talking. I’m sixteen now. I go to an all boys’ school. Talking’s not what you do. Life is about rugby and cricket and football. And life has just started to be about girls. The most exciting year you’ll ever live, the old people tell you.

  Talking isn’t natural in my home either. Me and my mum and my dad never really went in for it. Boys in my class used to laugh at us, say we were people that time forgot, because we weren’t like anyone ordinary. They said we were typical Salisbury – an oxbow family in an oxbow lake of a place. And it was probably true, we were probably old fashioned. I never cared about the Internet or knew how to download anything. I went for walks instead. And Dad must have looked strange T at the school gate when he used to meet me, coming straight from his shop, when so many of the other parents were lawyers or still in the army. I’ve never played a computer game in my life, and I don’t think my mum has ever sworn in hers. But that’s what it’s like when you live in a small place. All kinds of ways of being survive you might think would have vanished long ago, because people don’t know they’re weird if you don’t tell them.

  With Mum I always talk about school, because that’s safe territory – she knows which questions to ask and I know most of the answers. With Dad it was football. I don’t think either of us had ever been to a football match, but we kept up with the matches in the papers so there was always something to talk about. If it wasn’t for football I don’t know whether we’d have spoken to each other at all. So I found I’d started to sweat as I built up the courage to ask him the most embarrassing question I’d ever asked anyone.

  ‘Dad?’

  If the world sets its face against you, there are ways of fighting back. You can challenge whatever it is that’s getting on top of you, do something about it. Or otherwise you can always get out of the world you’re in and escape into another one. Make your own shape of it. Tell it like a story till it makes some sense. There’s no problem you can’t outrun for a little while, just till you’re stronger, just till you’re ready to face it down. You can be one of those boys who hides out in the middle of nowhere. But if you haven’t learned that trick yet, there are worse things to do than grasp the nettle when a problem lies heavy on your heart.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How did you know the first time you’d fallen in love?’

  School had finished and I had come to see Dad in the shop instead of heading home. That was what I did when I had somewhere to be in town in the evening. I would pack some clothes into my rucksack in the morning then change in his stockroom before going on to whatever it was that kept me in the city. He would take my bag home when he locked up, always walking back over the water meadow footpath, past the Constable view of the cathedral in the day’s last light, whistling away to himself. He was a good whistler, because he had had a good treble voice and been in the choir, so he understood about music, but he was never interested in whistling tunes other people had written. He whistled as a way of thinking, his song a melody exploring and wandering through the air while he took the same meandering route through the backstreets of his mind, over the waterways of the city.

  I would come to see Dad and change in his spare room, and then if there was time he would make us a cup of tea before I went back out, and we would sit together in the quiet of the shop for a little while, cradling mugs in our hot hands, making small talk, sloughing off the day.

  There was once a boy who drank tea with his dad at the end of every day and wanted to tell his father, every time he saw the steam rising up from his cup, that this moment, this scrap of time they shared, was the best thing in his life. But he could never find the words to do the job. It was as though his lips were sewn together.

  I’m haunted by that. The way I was dumb and never told him how I felt about him. My life these days is like one of those long walks home after y
ou’ve lost an argument, when you think of all the things you should have said in the heat of the moment. When you’re confronted by the person you could have been, should have been, the witticisms that might have carried the day. These days I can’t stop telling stories to myself, because I want to be eloquent next time something happens in my life. It’s so strange when a song or a story can do that, put your own feelings into words as if you’d hidden them there yourself. I can’t do that. It’s only afterwards I can ever work out what I felt about anything. That’s the curse. I can’t speak in the present tense. That’s what I wish I could change.

  Grandad, Dad’s dad, that is, had been a runner for a shoe factory before he joined the navy. His job had been to pick up leather from the train station in his village, where it arrived in consignments, and then to share it out to the men in his village who sewed the shoes together. Cobbling was slow to embrace industrialisation. I learned about it in the Northampton Shoe Museum when we went one time to visit where Dad grew up. Before the factories came, the men who had the skill to finish a shoe had workshops of their own at the bottoms of their gardens. They would get up and dress, drink their tea and head down to their sheds, go to work with their own tools on their own wooden benches. The arrival of mass production didn’t change this straight away. The skilled men didn’t want to centralise, didn’t want to have to catch the bus, and because no one else had their talents they could get a lot of what they wanted, so the factory owners trying to mass produce shoes reached a compromise. They had the leather cut centrally and then sent out to these experts hidden in the villages around.

  Grandad was the conduit for this delicate arrangement. He acted as an artery for his trade – an artery, not a dumb waiter. I’ve got that image right, because he only carried the leather one way. His job didn’t extend to collecting the shoes once they were finished. The cobblers would gather up their aprons to make little bags for holding the shoes and run down the high streets to make the deliveries themselves instead. It said in the Northampton Shoe Museum that these cobblers had a peculiar, distinctive gait, which came of trying to run with a pair of boots tied up in an apron and hanging between your legs like massive balls. The Northampton Shoe Museum didn’t say that last part; the testicles are my addition to the picture. The cobblers saved my grandad the journey because if they handed in the shoes themselves they got their hands on the money quicker and so could get faster into the pubs.