Photograph by Margaret Durow
Beaver looked at me as if I had a hole in my chest. “You opened it the wrong way.” He spoke. He spoke? He’d been sitting opposite playing with his lips for half an hour. “What the hell Beaver?” I said. He said, “You opened your crisps upside down. That’s unlucky.” I said “good”. Playground lies. After a few minutes I said “go back to school Beaver.” I was thinking it wasn’t too late for a come-back. He didn’t respond. He was completing a Sudoku, it looked disorderly. I offered him a crisp, he hesitated and then he said shook his head.
I pretended I didn’t care about this superstition. But I thought about it all day. I kept the crisp bag with me rustling in my coat pocket as if disposing of it would make the situation worse. Later I opened it out the other way too. It made me feel better. It was a clever thing to do.
***
After work I felt more lucky than not. I went to visit Carl with Mum and Suzie. I sat on the back seat of the car on the way there. Robbie Williams was playing on the radio and Suzie tapped her shoes together. “Let me entertain you....” We were letting him entertain us. Carl was at a friend’s, in a country house. The friends were not there with him, just him and his girlfriend and a black cat that was like a tiny panther. We arrived and drove up a gravel drive-way, and I felt like Inspector Morse.
The house was one you walk around slowly, as if looking through the pages of a magazine, it was spacious and everything was made of real wood. The bath had lions feet. The house sat snugly on two acres of chlorophyll with tall trees standing like monoliths. There was a small woodland further down near the back. There were two Mongolian yurts, one larger than the other. Both hidden behind a queue of small trees and foliage, their thick generous shadows folding over the sides and over the tops of the yurts. Two wooden steps led to each of the tiny doors - big enough for no-one it seemed. A large vegetable patch was filled with kale and large malformed tomatoes, rocket, lettuce, and other leaves I didn’t know. There were onions and garlic growing, and a neat row of potatoes. We picked the kale, and tomatoes and rocket, and used it in the dinner we had that night. We all helped, but Carl cooked. At the table we tried to remember how to draw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, taking turns drawing ugly burger-headed monsters on scraps of paper.
In the evening after the meal we went into the woods, pushed logs together and built a fire to sit around. The night folded us up in an ambience of hazy intimacy. As we talked I felt a light tap on my shoulder as if a tiny man wanted my attention, and I touched the spot to see if borrowers were indeed real. My hand came away warm and messy from an owl’s well-aimed crap (dead mice, shrews... I thought. It was practically still screaming...) that was now slowly dripping down my mums work fleece which I was wearing. I let out a small cry and pointed the torch I had in my hand at it pathetically. And everyone laughed, and talked quickly at the same time... “It’s lucky!” “Eurgh...” “That’s my work fleece!”.
I walked back to the house then with the torch in one hand, and my poo hand held out in front of me. The torch was a small toy torch, which had some cartoon cars on the side, and which made it only slightly better than walking in the dark. I walked quickly towards the dark bulk of the house. Through the back door I was in the kitchen, and I took some time cleaning my mum’s fleece and washing my hand. It wasn’t as bad as I thought and I curiously didn’t mind. Though it smelt fusty. The cat purred at my ankles and then slinked off outside. The lucky bird poo reminded me of the bag of crisps earlier, and I couldn’t work out whether I was lucky or what now but it didn’t matter. I put the fleece back on and walked out back to the fire. And they were all smiling at me, sitting in a circle, their faces warmly lit up and rosy.
When we put out the fire and started walking back to the house I said I wanted to sleep in the yurt. So everyone went around and gathered blankets inside because it was by now cold. In no time at all the bed was ready and looked like an over-sized vibrant birds nest. And then we were sipping tea inside, in the kitchen. We talked drowsily and happily. And after some time we said goodnight; Ben slept on the floor in the lounge, and everyone else had beds around the house. I went around with my mum and helped tuck everyone in and then lastly she went to bed. I walked downstairs and Carl had put the kettle back on.
Carl and I went outside with our cups filled again with tea and sat on our knees in the bigger yurt. The cat came in later and curled up on the bed and slept, sometimes silently lifting her head to listen. Her eyes reflecting everything. We drew pictures as we talked. One drawing was a spiral, with two smiling snails leading off of it, their trails making up the spiral behind them. Arrows pointed two separate ways from one of the snails. One way pointed to two children, their outlines drawn lightly. The other was to an ellipsis.
Carl told me smoothly he thought human spirits would be able to inhabit animals. I said “you’re a piece of gold.” But I believed him. He convinced me that Nanny could be there with us, in the cat, and when he wasn’t looking I looked in the cats eyes to try and see a sign that this was true. There was no sign. A long time after Carl said goodnight and I heard him walk away back up the garden with that toy torch.
I looked at the cat and willed her to stay with me. I curled my body around hers, where it was, and shifted carefully under the blankets, awkwardly half covered. I lay awake for a long time with fuzzy thoughts that didn’t lie down with me. At some point I fell asleep, it must have been for an hour or less, as I woke and it was still as dark as it could be and still cold. I moved over onto my back, pulling the blankets with the cat over me, so it was curled up on top of my chest. She looked up briefly chewing the air, and then went back to sleep. And I fell asleep again. I woke at sunrise, as the cat stretched and yawned and jumped off my belly. It sat poised for a moment, and then walked away, out a small hole next to the door. The morning was cold but it felt new, and it felt good. I rubbed my arms and stood up, aching slightly. I stuffed a pillow up the front of my mums fleece, which I was still wearing, as a last minute maneuver against the cold. Then I stepped out the small door of the yurt and out into the open.
Just beyond the front wooden step was a dead mouse, flattening a tiny portion of grass. It’s delicate body effortlessly dead. It made death look easy. No wounds or blood, no mess. I thought it could be my breakfast from the cat. I felt humbled, and grateful. I left it where it was.
Inspired by the cats’ early enthusiasm, I went exploring, treading slowly around a tall pile of wood. Behind this I found a fence, and a small paved path running off into thick woodland. It was overgrown, and the path collapsed in places. I followed it and came out eventually into a small clearing, the far side ending with another small fence. Beyond this was an infinity of fog. It was crisp and silent. The sky was a purpley red. A non-colour. A colour I couldn’t describe. A hill stood barely visible behind the fog, standing on its own like an animal, and I’m sure I could see it breathing. For a long time I stood there, wordlessly.
I came back the same way, along the broken path. I started treading again around the pile of wood. But I saw something grey and white and large in between all the leaves at my side and so I kneeled down then and had a look. Half buried in fallen leaves was an old statue of a heron, lichen on its concrete wings and beak. So I crawled forwards, under the boughs of this thick tree and I grabbed hold of the heron’s thin legs, dragging it out whilst crawling backwards. When I had it out it was half my size. I carried it with me out beyond the yurt, and stood it up in a small border bush, and patted it lightly on the head. Then I walked up the grass to the house. I looked back and from far away it looked real.
I could see my mum in the kitchen as I approached, and then opened the back door. She had the radio on quietly, a barely audible murmur, so as not to wake anyone up. She was washing up last night’s dishes. The kettle was boiling behind her. She looked up as I walked in and smiled, while her hands continued to wash up without her.
No comments:
Post a Comment