by Galaxy Craze
“My dad’s much more handsome than that man,” I said to Jolene. She looked up at the photo and nodded. Jolene had never met my father; he had never been here. I told people that my mother and father were still married, but my father lived in London because of his business. I knew this wasn’t true, but I didn’t care. I would lie to anyone to save myself, to make us seem better.
Outside it was turning a dark sweater-grey. Jolene and I sat on the floor with the radio between us, eating biscuits. We were waiting for our favourite song to come on the radio so we could learn all the words. Jolene had a piece of paper and pencil to write them down with. Song after song after song, then the advertisements, then another song, then our song. We bent forward, listening closely, trying to learn the words so we could sing it. When I stood up, my feet hurt. It was a dark night. I couldn’t even see the trees against the sky. Winter was coming.
“I’m going downstairs to get my towels, Jolene,” I said.
She was reading an old children’s book, carefully turning the yellowing pages: The Lonely Moon by Elias Loon.
“Do you want to come with me?” She shook her head, looking down at the book.
I was wearing a sweatshirt and my flannel pyjama bottoms. I didn’t have shoes on. Each step down my feet got colder. At the bottom of the staircase I looked down the hallway towards their rooms. Both doors were closed; light was coming through under the bottoms. The stone floors were freezing, I tiptoed down the hallway. It reminded me of being small, standing on my toes and the smell of school around me. A moment can take you somewhere, lift you up, and everything softens. Then something happens, a sound, a person, and suddenly you are yourself again, walking to a stranger’s room to ask for your towels.
I stood outside his door and looked down at my stomach, smoothing my shirt with my hand. Then I knocked.
He opened the door. He stood there in yellow pyjamas, his hair dripping wet and one of my towels in his hand. It was wet, used.
“Oh,” I said.
“Hi,” he said.
“That’s my towel and you’re getting it all wet.” He stepped back and stared at it, holding it out in front of him, the way my brother held the bird with the broken wing he found.
“I didn’t know, I’m sorry.” He looked almost scared.
Then I had nothing to say. I’ve been this way about things before. Once when my mother was on the phone doodling circles and hearts and stars and squares and things. “That’s my pen,” I told her, “and you’re wasting the ink.”
So I just stood in front of him. I put my hands on my hips trying to look tough, like I was just a tough girl. He probably wouldn’t understand how someone could be this way about a towel, about a pen, about anything.
He handed me the towel.
“I just used it to dry my hair. Don’t worry, I just washed it— my hair.”
“Those are them too.” I pointed to the pile that my mother had left at the end of his bed.
I carried the towels upstairs to my mother’s room. She was sitting up in bed, with the side light on and a book in her lap, twisting her hair around her finger.
“See,” I said, walking towards her, holding them like a baby in my arms, “I got my towels.”
She picked up her book and began to read.
“They’re mine,” I said. I wanted her to tell me that she was sorry for giving my favourite towels to a guest who would just throw them on the floor, but she didn’t. She didn’t say anything to me; she just looked at her book.
“I walked in on them kissing,” I said, and left the room.
Six
Annabel paid me one pound to wrap up her antiques in newspaper—the hand-painted teacups, a plate with a picture of the Queen on it, porcelain figures of women in wide skirts—so she could take them safely back to London.
After she was gone, my mother became very serious about not disturbing Rufus. We were quiet when we walked down the stairs and through the front hall. The whole house seemed quieter. No one else came to stay; no one even stopped by for the night.
Sometimes we would see him walk down the drive in his navy blue raincoat.
“He has a strange walk,” my mother said one day. She was standing at the window watching him.
“He has a limp,” I said.
He would return an hour or two later, carrying a bag of groceries from the shops. He didn’t have a car.
…
This is how the autumn weeks passed: The leaves fell and fell off the trees, the mornings got darker and darker. I wore my grey woollen tights. Eden wore his navy wool jumper. The waves got thicker and greyer, heavier and slower.
…
On a warm day in November, my mother, Eden, and I were in the vegetable garden. It was a small patch of earth by the shed, where no one ever went. My mother knelt in the earth, a trowel in her hand. There was a striped blanket with a mug of tea and a box of biscuits on it.
Eden sat on the roots of a tree, the black-and-white cat next to him. He wasn’t ours, but sometimes he would come into our house and Eden would give him warm milk and follow him around.
We had everything in the garden, tomatoes and lettuce and tulips. In the summer we had strawberries; we just ate them right there. They didn’t need washing because my mother didn’t use sprays. The strawberries were gone now, and the only vegetables left grew under the ground, carrots and turnips and potatoes.
I had my own spade to dig with. I put it in, then stepped on it to push it farther down, but it didn’t go very far. It hit a rock. Nothing is ever easy. There were large rocks and weeds right under the grass. This tiny patch took us months to clear. There were worms under the rocks and black bugs that curled into tiny little beads when you touched them. You had to be careful with the spade, so you didn’t hurt them.
“Have you seen one yet?” I asked Eden. He was looking into a hollow cave in the tree.
“I’m not looking any more.”
He had been looking for a leprechaun for two years. My mother looked at me slowly, and I turned away.
“You look pretty today,” she said. “You have roses in your cheeks.”
My socks didn’t match, but I didn’t care. We were all alone in the vegetable patch. My mother was wearing her beige trousers; there was dirt on her hands and knees. I went to get a biscuit but the box was empty. I looked over at Eden. He was crouched down by the bottom of the tree with twigs, moss, clover, and a pile of biscuits. I walked over quietly and stood behind him. There were four leaves lined up in a row, two big ones and two small ones; they were a family. He took the biscuits and broke them into tiny pieces and put them on a rock. It was their dinner, the leaf family.
This is where fairies and wood nymphs lived, at the base of a tree in the moss and hollows. I looked behind and saw my mother watching us, wondering what I would do. I could take all the biscuits or just step on the leaves and then pretend I hadn’t seen them. “It was just a leaf,” I would say. He was so quiet; everything was in his head and he looked so small, crouched at the bottom of the tree. The wind blew in, warm and soft, and took something out of me. I went back to the patch I was digging, pulling up the stones, shaking the dirt from the roots.
I heard a soft whistling. At first I thought it was the wind far away, but when I looked up I saw someone standing at the other end of the garden. It was the man in the downstairs room, Rufus. He was looking up into a tree, whistling to it. He stood very still, then a small bird flew down and landed on his head. He whistled again and the bird said something back. Then it flew off, ruffling the hair on the top of his head. He turned to watch it. Then he started walking in our direction. I don’t think he saw us. He walked through the woods, and the trees were thick. I could hear him, his footsteps through the leaves.
My mother looked up. “Who’s that?” she said, but she knew right away and wiped the dirt off her knees.
He saw us too and walked slowly towards us, looking up, then back down at his feet.
“Hello,” my mother said
. The plant she was holding fell out of her hand into the dirt.
“I was just taking a walk. I was going to have a look at the sea. I didn’t mean to bother you. . . .” He looked at me and I looked away quickly.
“No, no, you’re not. It must be freezing now, the sea.” She laughed to herself, a nervous tickle.
“I wasn’t going to swim,” he said.
“Oh, I know,” my mother said, bending down to pick up the plant she had dropped. I thought he would walk away, but he just stood there.
“This is a very . . . Did you do it all? By yourself?” He was looking at the garden, his arms hanging at his sides.
“May helped, and Eden. My friend Annabel told me where to plant what; she’s a decorator. I would have just plopped it all down. Getting the weeds out is the hardest part. That takes the longest.”
“Are there lots of stones?” he asked. “I can help. I can dig with a shovel, I think.”
“You’ll get all muddy. I mean your clothes . . . .”
He looked down to see what he was wearing. It was almost the same as yesterday: grey corduroy trousers and a thin navy jumper, old brown shoes.
“I don’t care. I have more clothes.”
“You can dig that spot. I’m trying to make it bigger.” She handed him the spade. I sat on the ground and picked out the little stones with my hands. I didn’t say anything. Eden was quiet, still sitting at the bottom of the tree. We stayed for a long time in the garden. Rufus dug out the edge, making it bigger. The air was warm, but the sky was turning grey above us. Occasionally, one of us would look up, wondering if it would suddenly start to rain.
Eden came over and tugged on our mother’s sleeve. “I’m getting hungry,” he said.
She stood up and looked over at Rufus. He was still digging with one foot on the spade. He was concentrating, really trying.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked in his direction, but the wind blew her voice away. She started to walk towards him but stopped and asked again, taking a breath first. “I’m going in for a cup of tea. Would you like one?”
He turned around to face her. There was colour in his cheeks now. “Okay. I mean, yes, I would love one.”
“God, you’ve done well with your digging,” my mother said.
“I want some tea, Mum,” Eden said. He was standing next to the tree, touching the bark with his fingers.
“Well, come on, then,” she said, and started to walk towards the house with Rufus.
“Are you coming, May?” Eden asked me. I shook my head. I was stuck to the ground. Eden came over to where I was sitting and stood in front of me.
“Don’t touch it, May. I’m not done yet.” He was talking about the house he was making at the bottom of the tree.
I looked up at him.
“Please don’t ruin it,” he said softly, above my head. Then he looked behind him. Our mother and Rufus were nearly at the house and he ran to them, his skinny arms flapping at his side.
When they had gone into the house I pushed myself up off the ground and walked over to the tree where Eden had been playing. There were some acorns, leaves in piles, small stones and twigs: a whole world of something I couldn’t see any more. When you are six years old you can sit at the bottom of a tree and everything becomes alive around you. The moss is a soft green carpet, the stone a sofa, the hollows of the tree a house.
The wind was a low voice around me. It was getting darker out. The kitchen light was on and I could see the yellow walls and the long shadows made when someone walked past the light. I stared down at the base of the tree, but all I could see was a pile of twigs and leaves and a few stones. This is how I know I’m getting older: a stick is just a stick.
Seven
Early one night there was a knock at the door. I opened it. It was Rufus.
“Hi, May,” he said. “Is Lucy here?” I yelled to my mother, but she had already heard his voice and was at my side. “Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked us. She had to hold her lips together so she wouldn’t smile. I think she was hoping for this, that he would walk up the stairs and knock on our door. She was always making excuses to go downstairs, to make sure the phone worked, to check the post.
The four of us had to walk across a field of sheep to get to the woods. They were asleep in bundles and ran away from us as we walked through. We were as quiet as possible; we tiptoed past them. The bravest ones stood up on their feet and made a noise at us.
“I wish we didn’t have to disturb them,” Rufus said.
There was another way to the woods, down the drive and past the farmer’s house.
“We could have gone the other way, Mum,” I said.
“I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t think about the sheep.” She said it like she was kicking herself.
“Don’t worry, they’ll go back to sleep. I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant as a person, being a person, people always disturb other things . . . .” He was explaining away, moving his hand in the air, apologizing. His voice was soft and sorry; he knew how easy it was to make her stumble.
“Mum says she’s always the one being bothered,” Eden said, running up to take her hand. “‘Mum, where’s my book? Mum, where’s my socks? Mum, where’s my bum?’” He was skipping up and down, holding on to our mother’s hand, swinging her arm. When they laughed, they looked at each other, my mother and Rufus.
“Skip with me!” Eden said, pulling her ahead. He was happy outside at night; he wasn’t even scared. Rufus and I were left behind, walking together.
“I know what you mean,” I said, walking closer to him so my mother wouldn’t hear me. “Because once I was walking home from school and it was dark because it was winter, so I couldn’t see the pavement.” He leaned his face closer to hear me. I was nervous but I liked him because he seemed nervous too. My mother looked back at us and I closed my mouth. When she looked away I said, “I stepped on something and it smushed underneath my foot. I felt it, but I kept walking and didn’t look at it; but I know it was a snail, and I kept thinking that it was trying to cross the road to get to its babies or that it was in love and was going to meet the other snail. And I ruined it all.” I couldn’t really explain it to him, the feeling of having ruined something else’s life.
“That’s exactly what I meant,” he said to me, and lifted his head slowly so he stood straight. We walked on a little further side by side. The woods looked like a curtain in front of us. It wasn’t a dark night. The sky was the colour of the sea in winter, that grey-blue. The moon was almost full, full and low.
We could see our path and each other clearly. When I looked behind us, the sheep were back together again in bundles on the short grass that they eat and sleep on. It’s everything to them.
The wind blew in from the sea, which you could hear somewhere out there. On the other side, the field, suddenly stopped and dropped into the water. You had to be careful on dark nights, when there was no moon, not to walk straight off the cliff. There was only a low barbed-wire fence to keep the sheep in. This was the cliff where, one night, a teenage boy left his girlfriend in a bar and took a train late at night, drunk, drunk with a heavy drowning heart, and threw himself onto the sharp and jagged rocks below. I wondered if maybe, in the middle of the air, he wished he hadn’t. Don’t run at night, especially in the fog.
“Why do you think the sheep never fall off?” I asked Rufus, but he didn’t answer. I looked up at him to see if he heard and was thinking about it. He was looking straight ahead, at my mother and Eden.
“Sorry, what?” he asked, leaning forward again.
“Nothing.”
The woods were all around us. We followed the trail that led to the wheat fields. Eden thought we were looking for the haunted house, but I had walked this path to its end and had never seen it. To the end and back takes an hour and a half; I just walked and walked. On the way home I would imagine that my father had made a surprise visit from London to see me and that he would be walking from the house, through
the woods towards me. But he never was. Then it turned into a phone call, and I imagined that there would be a note on the table in my mother’s handwriting that he had phoned. That’s what happens to hope: it gets smaller and smaller.
Eden walked along behind Mum, swinging his arms and looking at the ground. He was holding his little black torch now that we were in the woods and it was darker. Sometimes he would start to sing a few lines of that song, the summer song, the one Jolene and I waited for on the radio. It was everywhere that summer and now it was in the middle of the woods.
“Now all the trees have heard it too,” Rufus said. My mother laughed. Everything he said made her laugh.
“Look!” Eden shone the torch at something on the ground. “Look, Mum! Mum, look!” He scuffled down to his knees and looked at the spot like a squinty-eyed inspector.
“What? What is it?” she asked, kneeling down next to him. Rufus knelt down next to her to get a good look too. I just stood there. I knew Eden was just getting excited about a root or leaf or something.
They stared quietly at the spot where Eden shone the light for a few minutes until Rufus said, “What are we looking at?”
“That rock!” Eden shouted. He shone the light on a big mossy rock. “It looks like the rock that had King Arthur’s sword in it!”
They moved in a little closer and huddled around the rock as though it were a tiny fire on a freezing night. There was a dent in the top and Rufus ran his finger over it. Then he looked up at my mother, keeping his hand on the rock. I saw him looking at her. The light from the torch shone on her mouth and neck and breath. When she turned to him, their eyes caught and he looked lost for a moment. Then she turned quickly towards Eden and asked, “Is it the rock?” Her voice shook. Rufus looked down and my mother turned her face back to the rock and asked, without looking at him, “What do you think?”