by Tor Udall
‘This is a valley fold. And again.’ A smaller triangle. ‘Lift the top half up then press down along the middle line. Repeat on the other side and hey presto, you’ve got a preliminary fold.’ Her hands have moved swiftly, creasing the paper back and forth, quartering the size of the square. ‘Now we make a petal fold.’
Jonah is already lost, his eyes glazing over.
‘This bit’s tricky. Fold and unfold the lower edges and the top point too. Now lift up the front flap. Keep lifting until its edges meet in the middle then press it flat. Then on the other side . . .’ Somehow she has turned a square into an elongated diamond. ‘So that’s your bird base.’
‘OK . . .’
‘Then inside-reverse-fold the bottom left-hand point to make the neck and do the same at the point’s tip to make the beak. You do a similar thing for the tail. Here’s the best bit.’
She brings the paper up to her mouth as if she is about to kiss it then Jonah realises she is blowing gently into the base of the bird. The delicacy of her mouth against the thin paper, her eyes fixed on him . . . Jonah crosses his legs. Focus. As the body inflates, she pulls the wings apart, until in her palm is a perfect bird.
She waves it in front of him. ‘No wonder Houdini loved it.’
‘Wonderful.’ Jonah’s voice is not entirely enthusiastic. ‘So, um, are you into magic?’
‘When I was a kid.’
She drops the bird into her almost-empty cup. The remnants of her tea stain the paper, browning the wing.
Jonah wonders what’s stopped the conversation, but it’s none of his business. He’s not supposed to care that she’s snatching her jumper from the floor and saying, ‘I’ve had enough of this place. Let’s get out of here.’
They walk across the width of the Gardens to the Japanese Gateway, where Chloe is considering displaying her artwork. They read about the Chokushi-Mon, then stroll along the stone paths of the tea garden until Jonah stops at a dripping water basin. This is where Audrey dropped a coin for their unborn child . . . but Chloe is taking a step forward and back, waiting. He follows her along the path to the Garden of Activity, where gravel is raked in circles around rocks to symbolise waterfalls, mountains and sea. They both stare at the little stone bridges that no one is allowed to cross. But Chloe ventures.
‘If you need someone to talk to I’m here.’
He can’t help himself. ‘I’ve got friends for that.’
She shrugs in disbelief. ‘Well, where the hell are they?’
Tired of my not answering their calls. Given up on me. ‘Most of them are parents now. They’re pretty busy.’
They walk down Cedar Vista in silence. It feels good to leave the structured stone, to be amid spaciousness. Chloe bounds along, beating her shoulder blades, as if trying to hug herself.
‘Do you believe in reincarnation?’
Jonah doesn’t answer.
‘If I did come back, I’d like to be a pigeon.’ She gives a kooky grin. ‘I could hang out at St Paul’s all day. Check out the tourist spots without queuing.’
Jonah focuses on his feet, walking.
‘And you?’ she muses. ‘What about you?’ Passing a bench, she taps on the wood. ‘Ha! You should come back as a drumbeat. Movement . . . rhythm . . . what do you reckon?’
‘I think we just die,’ he says.
Jonah is trying. He admires her creativity, its young bravado, but her imagination exhausts him. There’s something about her that’s not fully formed, as if she’s still finding herself, or playing dress-up. It reminds him of a couple of friends from uni; people hiding, yet so desperate to be seen . . . He tries to come up with something authentic to say, then stops moving.
This is the subtle substance of memory, what remains etched in his mind’s eye. A couple are standing on the other side of the waterlily pond and at first he can’t make them out. But slowly he recognises her green suede jacket. The guy has a familiar shyness in his shoulders, as if he can’t bear to recall his physique when he was younger. He’s just finished his PGCE – her, the third miscarriage.
The August day is cloudy. Together the couple create the picture of silence. The man is contorting himself into any shape he thinks this woman can love. He folds and unfolds his arms, as if he could fold himself into someone dependable, someone his wife could lean upon.
She sucks on a cigarette, holding the smoke in too long. The man waits, watching the still surface of her as she turns towards the pond. Even her shoulders are wistful. Her spine is bereft, the curve of her neck sighing with longing.
‘I thought you wouldn’t start smoking again.’
She refuses to look at him. ‘I can’t help it.’
Jonah can taste it as he speaks. A futility that reminds him of stale breath. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
It is a lie they both recognise as faith.
‘Let’s go on holiday, Au. Go back to Sicily. You will be a mother, I promise.’
A teardrop falls from her chin and he wishes he had a camera so he could capture this . . . this woman looking like his wife again.
Sitting in the Rhododendron Dell, Harry asks the flowers, ‘What makes us choose one person over another?’
How are we to find the ‘right one’ in this
Atom
Scattered
Universe?
He flicks off some tobacco ash that has dropped on the page then continues writing. The paper, like Audrey, listens without interruption. Harry glances up, almost expecting to see her tilted face, but there’s just a yellow brimstone. As it lands on the rhododendron, Harry worries that his closest companion is a notebook.
Looking up at the sky, he tries to stare out the sun. Are there laws of gravity and grace to guide us? Or is everything random? Harry rubs his eyes, then massages his temples. What makes some of these accidents significant? One person might only be a comma in your story, while another might be a bewitching dot dot dot . . .
His crabbed handwriting looks like it belongs to a physician. The cramped letters remind him of teeth too close together. A few feet away, a man is scoping out a woman. All it took was a momentary glance from her, the vulnerable turn of her shoulder.
How can one gaze hold such extraordinary power?
As the brimstone flits past, Harry scratches his brow with the top of his pencil. Like insects lured by certain flowers, perhaps some people are attracted to characteristics missing in themselves; for others it’s something similar, a narcissistic thrill. But everyone is looking for that quiver of excitement. Like a finger brushing the skin of a drum . . . perpetual anticipation.
Harry turns to a new page and writes: A BEAUTIFUL COLLISION. He thinks about meeting Audrey – the distant glance of that woman as some unknowable thought passed through her like a breeze.
It was that which moved me. Then I made my biggest mistake. I said hello.
This is the body Jonah saw. This is the person he noticed. Audrey eating melon, spilling pips on to her knees, the small moments of her smile, the silent words in her glance; all memorised by heart.
This is where the camera never was: the line of her forearm, the soft curve between her belly button and pelvis. He recalls them trying to talk, and kiss, in the same moment.
In the early days, they would pretend to sleep, his arm under her breast, tantalising close. The air would alter, quickening with sex, just the idea of it. There was the anticipation, the doubt, the pre-empting thought, where every breath mattered, every inch that his fingers moved exquisitely erotic. There was that first tentative gesture, the acceptance when that touch was returned. Here was the gathering in and the spilling out, the sound of their lips and lungs, the tasting of each other until they tasted their tastes merged. Au. Awe.
‘Stop.’
His hand presses down on Chloe’s fingers. They’ve been walking steadily up his thigh, but this isn’t fair. A clammy pause.
‘I’m sorry. But I can’t make love to you.’
‘Why?’
He says it so si
mply it hurts. ‘I am not in love.’
‘You don’t need to be.’
As Chloe straddles him, Jonah looks beyond her slight breasts to the ceiling. He feels pinned down, claustrophobic.
Her voice is quiet. ‘Perhaps I should leave.’
‘No. Not yet.’ He touches the place between her shoulder blades. ‘Stay. Please.’
He feels her resistance, but pulls her closer, spooning his body around hers, as if this will make it up to her. Gradually the fight in her breath softens. He spends the rest of the night feeling her shape. He traces her turned back, then ventures towards her chin, her belly. She feels different from Audrey, younger . . . wrong.
Jonah longs for the soundless sanctuary of sleep. But for now this is enough, this silence where things are real – like this quiet between Chloe and him when there is no need to speak. He imagines them as two shipwreck survivors clinging together in a storm. As this thought bobs in his mind, he watches the night shifting outside. The promise of morning casts a dirty tinge across the ever-lightening sky. It will soon be sunrise.
Five o’clock is a time most people miss. A beginning so unblemished, so absurdly hopeful, that anything that happens after it is likely to be a disappointment. There is even a soundtrack of birds. It is so close to being peaceful and yet; Chloe shatters the silence.
‘What’s your favourite smell?’
He can’t see her face, but knows that by making her wait, she has frowned. ‘I dunno. What’s yours?’
‘Skin maybe. Or the sea.’
‘How about tears?’ He remembers Audrey crying, then her swimming in the Mediterranean, the smell of her sun-scrubbed skin. His childhood in Devon. ‘Perhaps it’s the salt?’ he questions.
Chloe rolls over and opens one sleepy eye. ‘Did you know that tears are different depending on their reason for existing? Tears of joy are chemically different from those of grief.’
Jonah can feel the edge of sleep, warmly now, its absolute, beckoning relief. But suddenly he wants to resist – as if it would be unfaithful to give in.
Paul Ridley presses his fingertips together, then bounces his hands as if weighing the air that they hold. Perhaps all he is thinking about is what he’s going to have for supper.
‘It doesn’t look like you’re getting much sleep, Joe.’
‘I haven’t seen Chloe this week.’ Jonah runs his finger along the back of his collar, chastising himself for not changing his clothes after work.
‘Because . . .’
‘There’s a nine-year age gap. At the beginning, there was a choice that I made, we made, every time we saw each other, but now it feels like it’s becoming a habit. A “relationship”.’
‘But since meeting her, you’ve started playing music?’
‘Nothing original.’ He tries to straighten his posture, but the attempt feels false in his muscles. ‘It’s not even been a year.’
He’s been counting. It’s precisely eleven months and one day since he received the policeman’s call.
‘So you’re not available—’
‘Of course not.’
‘And you’re worried that this girl is falling for you?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Or that you could fall for her?’
Jonah recomposes his limbs. ‘We’ve been reading to each other. A chapter at night, taking turns. It was her idea . . . thought it would help me sleep. We’re probably only seeing each other so we can reach the next instalment.’
‘Which book?’
‘The English Patient. But I’m going to end it. Soon.’
Paul Ridley smiles. ‘You’re ambivalent.’
Jonah thinks about Chloe’s hair sticking up in the mornings. She often sketches people in the margins of the newspaper. Biro between her lips, she’ll reach for the cereal. The pale curve of her armpit.
‘I’ve known from the beginning it’s not going to work, but I always end up saying nothing. For ease. For a good night’s sleep. For the sex. Which is great, by the way. I suppose I don’t like conflict.’
He watches the little clock on the desk. For a moment he hates it.
His therapist squints. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to talk about? We have another few minutes.’
Jonah stares out of the open window. A scraggy cat is skulking around the dustbins, and a car pulls up by the traffic lights; the smell of exhaust fumes. Ridley is waiting. Jonah stares down at his shoes, then splays out his hands, his fingers reaching beyond the piano octave. He then notices a splodge of jam on his cuff. He tidies his tie, straightens his trousers, then looks Paul in the eye.
‘I still miss her.’
Time is up.
The heron balances on one yogic leg. Harry lights up a Montecristo, relishing the smack of smoke against his throat, then spits out shreds of tobacco. It is 6 a.m. and there’s a fine mist on the water; but Harry is not feeling peaceful. It takes the length of his cigar to consider why. This is not the place Audrey loved. He can see how the reeds create a barrier between Jonah and the world – but this was not her spot.
Only two ducks are watching. Harry drops his cigar butt and stands up. He wants to pick up her bench and carry it in his arms like a gallant lover. But that’s impossible, even for someone younger. He heaves the cumbersome object upwards until one end is propped on his shoulder. He drags it behind him like a crucifix.
The bench legs leave tracks in their wake, imprinting the ground with his treachery. Even the dew makes way. As his knees buckle, he hopes that Milly is sleeping. The heat of his skin prickles against the curt morning air. As he passes Temperate House, he sees his destination in the distance. His towering love letter: the pagoda.
He takes a breather, wipes the sweat from his face. Not much further. Hauling the weight back on to his shoulder, he drags his feet onwards as if he is making a pilgrimage to a star, but it is only the gilded finial that looks like a spire. It beckons, and his back aches, but if he puts her bench where they met, maybe she’ll find him. Jonah has been waiting in the wrong place.
Part II
Falling
I can hardly withstand the joy
Beating, like wings, in my belly:
This fluttering, thumping bliss
that demands I learn again
how to be here
and to love.
Audrey Wilson, 30 March 2003
RIP
Among industrial backstreets is a warehouse studio filled with light, containing a simple stove, a sink, coils of wire, paint pots, blank canvases and naked bulbs. Several pictures of a child are taped to the walls: drawings of her crying, smiling, rubbing her nose. Others are collages made up of fabrics and wool. There are newspaper images photocopied on different-sized paper, embellished with stitched flowers and paint. Some are creased as if they have once been folded, but the girl is still staring at the camera, her gaze confidently straight.
Smells from the outside trespass in – cleaning chemicals, engine oil and gutted fish; they waft over a man lying on a mattress, his back heaving with snores. Chloe can’t remember if he’s Christoff? Claude? She had wanted to spend last night with Jonah, but he had a therapy session, essays to mark, so she dropped by a party and met a photographer’s assistant. His eyes, half-hidden behind a flop of ginger hair, had been ludicrously flirtatious. Above his skinny body, sewing machines whirr, dishes clatter.
Chloe sits on the concrete floor, creasing a sheet of paper, ten centimetres square. She wears vest and knickers, her thin thighs white as her underwear. Folded creatures are scattered around her while she focuses on her experiments with greaseproof paper, parchment and foil. She finds comfort in a crease, her reassurance in a square.
At art school, she studied the practice of folding one thousand cranes. Traditionally the folder is granted a wish. Twenty-five strings holding forty birds, each a burning prayer. She read about these senbazurus as wedding gifts, or offered at birth to wish the newborn a thousand years of happiness. There were pictures of cranes hun
g outside temples, left exposed to the elements. Tattered in the wind, the birds would slowly dissolve, the wish released.
Chloe wanted to try it. In her graduation project she used newspaper: the weather on a bird’s body, a crossword on its wing. Others were feathered with headlines of genocide, sex scandals, football results, assorted carnage. She chose each cutting for its politics or its typeface, working until her hands were stained with ink and her joints sore from folding. She persevered as if it were punishment. When she was tired of angles and edges, she made pictures of a little girl in paint and charcoal. Many dated October 2003. During those autumnal, sleepless nights, Chloe shaved off her hair and repeatedly re-drew the shape of the child’s nose or shaded in her cheeks. In the early mornings she would fold again, hoping that, in this act, her thousand yearnings would turn into peace. She experimented with different-size birds, hanging them in a variety of ways, until she had completed a chandelier of flight and wars.
The project is now suspended from her ceiling, holding the horrors and jubilations of the world. Beneath it, the studio is filled with folded animals, and photographs of Kew: details of blossom and swollen fruit. For a while now she has yearned to create there; she has unpicked the practicalities, what materials will survive the humidity of the glasshouses or existing outdoors. She considers a technique called ‘wet folding’, then remembers Jonah telling her about a place for lost things.
Chloe’s knickers are still damp with sex. She wonders when the man in her bed is going to wake. Her longest relationship lasted two years; it was Simon Caldous who had first taken her to the botanical gardens. Back then, she had a black bob that suited her gamine face, and had mastered the illusion of intimacy. She discussed the intricacies of art with this fellow student, but never revealed enough for there to be anything to fall in love with. But still he did.
The man in her bed moves his leg. Chloe takes out a pencil and draws his haunches, but as the life study takes shape she shades in another man’s frame. The androgynous back becomes broad, Viking. She tries to capture the power of the sea, a tide through his muscles, but it isn’t true: there’s something of the fallen hero in the fragility between his shoulder blades, Jonah’s softening bulk. At first she thought he was too old, his suit lame; but now she’s interested in his body’s contradictions. Where does he hold tension – in his jaw, his hips? Starting another drawing, she sketches his beard, a little longer than stubble, then hesitates. Why is she doing this? His hand supporting his head, she draws his fingers, trying to find the poetry that she knows is in his knuckles. Then she smudges his gaze, blotting it out until there is no expression left, just a blindfold of graphite.
