Diversifications

by James Lovegrove

  This is how you pay for all you stole, I say.

  That, in sum, is it.

  His words leave me with no clear sense of why I have shared the same fate as him, to have been brought to this place where no clocks tick and no plants grow. I wish him well and go on my way.

  More miles I walk, up and down the hills that rise and fall with no end in sight. I trudge and traipse till my shoes chafe and my feet are sore. Then, just when I feel that I can’t go on, that I must pause and rest, I spy a girl.

  She skips like a leaf on the rocks of the hills, on the tips of her toes, her arms held out wide. Her blonde hair flows with each twist and turn of her head, and her dance is a charm. I know, from the urge in my guts, that I must chase her, and with slow, crude steps I start to run.

  I run, but though I go as fast as I can, her dance keeps her out of my reach. The gap from her to me, from me to her, stays the same. On we go, hound and fox, and all I see is her, though she does not see me—all that is on her mind is her dance.

  For hours (for I still think that time can be told in a place where the hours are not tolled) she leads me on, till the hills cease and cede to a plain, a waste of dark dust where the wind sings and skirls and signs its name in swirls of sand grains. Now, here, at last the girl halts her dance and stands still, so that I, less fleet of foot, may catch up with her.

  Out of breath, I bend and rest my hands on my knees. Then I look up and pant as I ask her name.

  I had a name once, she says with the air of one who has long since lost the thread of her thoughts. But now I just dance. Do you like my dance? I danced all my life. At my death, too, I danced.

  Do I know you? I ask her, my tone sly, for I feel that I do know her, now that I see her up close. She has a fair face, a fine nose, but her eyes are as grey as flint, and as hard.

  It could be that you saw me dance once, she tells me, with a toss of her mane of blonde hair. I danced on the stage, you know. Not just in the corps, mind you. I was a lead.

  Yes, I say. It has come to me now, how I know her. Yes. And you fell in love with a man who did not love you, and when you could not win his love you asked a man for whom you had no love, but who was mad with love for you, to kill him. You worked your wiles on the poor so-and-so, teased him and turned him on, till he was in your thrall and could not say no to you. He killed the man you loved, and then you turned on him and spurned him and sent him from your sight.

  That’s right, she says, with no shame. That is my tale. But I was caught, and in court I was tried and found to be at fault. The judge placed a black square of cloth on top of his wig and told me my fate. I was to be hanged by the neck till I was dead.

  And so you danced to the end, I say. Your feet kicked and twitched as the noose gripped.

  And now I dance all the time, she says, with a laugh.

  She has not made the link yet. She has not asked how I know so much about her case and her death. But then we met for so brief a time, she and I, and no doubt, as she went to meet her doom, the face of the man whose job it was to speed her on her way was not a thing she paid much heed to.

  Are you all on your own? I ask. My thought is that she and I may be here, à deux, with some good cause. It may be that we are here to bring life to this place, like Eve and her mate. These are an old man’s dreams when he comes face to face with fresh youth and grace. These are a man’s lusts, which may fade and dim with age but will not die.

  On my own? I may be. I don’t think so, she says.

  And with that, off she goes once more, in a new dance. And it seems I have no choice but to give chase to her lithe form once more. Like a dog let loose from a trap, trained to run round a ring on the trail of a stuffed hare, I set off.

  Far out on the plain we go, till the hills to our rear are in view no more. I am less prone to trips and slips here, where the ground is as flat as a slate, but still it is a toil to keep the girl close. If I try to up my pace so as to catch her, she ups her pace, too. Her feet scarce stir the dust. My soles clod and pound and send up great drifts of cloud that sift and fade in my wake.

  In time we come to a man. A small chap, with a pair of pince-nez perched on the bridge of his nose, and a hunch in his spine, a curve as though his head weighs more than his back can take.

  He greets me and the girl as we draw near. This time I do not have to think hard who he is. His face was in the news for months, in print, on walls. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? was what we were asked, day in, day out, we who kept to the law and feared those who did not, till at last we were told that he had been caught, and then we all sighed to know that we were safe. And I, who felt that I would soon have work to do, took out my ropes and made sure they weren’t frayed, and oiled the cogs and the switch of the trap through which, in the end, with a gasp and a choke, he fell.

  Whom did he kill? Boys and girls. Lots of them. No one is sure of the full count, in fact. He was tried for the deaths of twelve, but it was clear to all that he had killed far more than that. His brief said he was mad, but the judge had no truck with that claim. Death, the judge ruled, and death was what I gave the man. For once, my guess as to the length of rope I would need to break his neck with a nice clean snap was off. Just a wee bit off, but it meant that his end was not as quick and free of pain as it might have been. He choked and swung for quite some time. I felt no guilt, though, at my rare lapse in skill. It may not, in fact, have been a lapse at all.

  Nor do I feel guilt now, as I watch the man walk up to the girl and me, to make our two a three. I still hold cold hate in my heart for him for what he did to those small boys and girls (he did not just kill them).

  I do not want to walk with him, but the girl says yes, he may come with us, and since I want to stay with the girl, all I can do is nod and sigh and say yes, too.

  And so, while the girl goes off in front, the man and I walk side by side. The girl keeps her dance slow so that we do not have to run to keep up with her. The man tries to talk to me, but each time he states a fact or asks me to tell him a truth or a tale, I stare straight to my left (he is on my right) and keep my lips sealed. Soon he works out that I have no wish to talk, and gives up.

  A fourth soon joins our group. She glides in from the haze that hangs at the far edge of this dark waste. I know her, too. In life, she was wronged by the man to whom she was wed. He drank a lot, and slept with girls he met in bars, and struck his wife and beat her and once or twice raped her, till one day she could take no more and stabbed him with a knife ten times in the chest. A judge, who was not a wise man and who, I know for a fact, dealt with his own wife in much the same way, sent her to the noose. Folk wrote in from all parts of the land, begged him to change his mind, but he would not.

  I, then, had to play my role, but I did what I could to make up for the wrongs that had been done to her by men and the law. I made sure that I knew her weight, down to the last pound, and tied the rope’s knot tight at the base of her skull, so that, when she fell one warm June dawn, it was done in a trice.

  I wave to her in a sad way, but she seems pleased to see us, and falls in step with us just as if we are friends she has met in a park.

  I was tired of the sound of my own voice, she says. It’s good to see a fresh face or two.

  You’ve been here a long time, then? I ask.

  Have you? she says.

  I’m not sure. It feels like at least a day, but at the same time the sun has not moved since I got here, so it could be that I have been here for just a brief blink in the eye of time.

  Same here. That’s how it feels for me.

  So this is death, I say, but she seems not to hear. All she wants to do is make small talk. Just as though we are friends she has met in a park.

  As we walk on, a fifth comes to us, then a sixth. Both are men and both, of course, are men I was paid to hang. They greet and talk with the rest. The trend is quite clear to me by now, but what I can’t tell is why those whom it was my job to send to the next world should, now that we are in the next
world, be drawn to me in this way. Is it that we share a bond, since I was there at their deaths? Or has my role as the one who placed a black silk bag on their heads and stopped the clock of their lives made them see me as some kind of god? A god, to whom they must flock and pay their due? If so, how come none of them has said to me, I know who you are? Could it be that each is too shy to come out with the words?

  As two more join us, a man and a wife who slew their eight-year-old son, I feel it is time to find out.

  All of you, I say in a loud voice, so that not just those close by me but the girl, who is some yards off, will hear. Please. I must ask this. All of you are folk who, in my life, came to me, though you did not want to, and through me paid the price called for by the law. Does it come back to you now that I’ve said this? Who I am?

  Their chat has ceased. There is a pause. A lull. Each of the group shows a blank face. Then they strike up their talk once more, as if I did not make that short speech at all.

  We go on, and more join us, and yet more. By the time I catch sight of a slight swell in the lie of the land, far off, it seems to me that all of those whom I hanged in the course of my life are with me now. We make a small throng, they and I. Strange how, as the years went by and one by one I sent each down through the trap, down that long last drop, at no point did I think of them in sum. I saw them just as jobs, each much the same as the last. Each just a length of rope to be gauged, a knot to be tied, a task to get through, a thing to be rid of, a load to be shed. I did not see them as a crowd. A set. A clique, of sorts.

  Now I point to the swell that mars the neat line where the land meets the sky. It is like a mole or a wart on a smooth face. Those I hanged, this strange clique, let out an Ah! The swell, I sense, is our goal. Some small hill, a rise, a mound, a tor, is where this trip is to end.

  In time (but there is no time) we are so near to the tor that I can see that a frame has been built on top of it with planks of stout oak. I know the frame’s shape well. It is that tool of wood and iron with which I used to do my work, till the law changed and those with my skill were put out of a job. But by then, to tell the truth, I was a bit tired of the task and, like a slave who has served out his bond, was glad to be set free. On my own—as I had been all my life, for I did not take a wife—I lived out my last years in my small flat in a cul-de-sac in a large town by the sea, till death came for me, too, in the wee small hours.

  At the foot of the tor we come to a halt, the hanged and I, and talk stops as we gaze up at the frame with its switch and its trap and its looped rope that the wind swings round and round.

  What now? I ask. Are we meant to fall to our knees and pray to this thing, as though it were a Cross? I say it as a joke, but in my own heart I think: Am I here to hang these folk once more, one by one? Is that it? If so, what for? What have been their crimes here?

  No one else speaks now, but the girl who was the first of the hanged I met in this place goes up the tor on her light, slight feet, then, at the top, turns and waves with her hand.

  To my left and my right, a pair of big men step forth and seize my wrists. I know, in a flash, what this means, and like a trapped cat I twist and spit and writhe and fight, but the big men are strong. Both killed with their bare hands, mashed throats to stall breath, punched heads till they broke. I can’t stop them as they drag me up the slope to the frame, up the frame’s stairs to the trap and the noose. As they loop the noose round my neck and tie my hands at my back, I kick and yell, but in vain.

  Then the wife who was wronged comes up to me with a black silk bag in her hands, and next thing I know the world has gone dark and it’s hard for me to breathe.

  Please, I beg. I plead. Please don’t do this.

  I hear the switch thrown.

  The trap gives way. The world leaps up. A clean – break.

  When some time (no time) has passed, I come to.

  The pain has gone. I am whole. I am well. I live.

  I am at the foot of the tor once more, with the crowd of the hanged.

  Now do you see? says one, who shot a man dead for no more than some loose change, a few pounds and pence.

  See what? I say.

  And they drag me back up to the top of the tor.

  This time the one who brings the black silk bag to me and slips it on my head is the man who raped and slew more than a score of small boys and girls.

  The switch clanks. The trap springs. I –

  hang

  for

  some

  time.

  Then all is still and dark. And then, once more, I come to.

  Now do you see? I am asked.

  I don’t. Not yet.

  But as I am hanged a third time, then a fourth, I start to glimpse what may be the truth.

  No man is a god. No man may judge like a god or mete out death like a god but God.

  And once more and once more I am led to the frame, noosed and loosed, left to swing.

  A tenth and a twelfth time, and I start to see more.

  If I am to be at one, at peace, with these folk and with the world, I have to be made pure first, and this is the way. I have to be stripped down to a bare, clean thing once more, and this is how. With pain. The same pain they felt.

  The rite goes on for hours. Days. Weeks, months, years.

  Time, like the weight on a clock that has wound down and stopped, hangs.

  RUNNNING

  Awake just before the alarm, as ever. I sometimes wonder why I bother setting it, but then I suppose I wouldn’t wake up just before it if I didn’t set it. The curtains are fringed with light. I don’t look at the foot of the bed, but I know Kieran is standing there, as ever. Pale little face. Wide, solemn eyes. Silent. I can picture him without looking. He’s been there a while.

  Marie stirs, snuffles, rubs her nose, draws the duvet up tighter to her chin. “Alex?” she murmurs.

  “Go back to sleep. It’s OK.”

  I switch off the alarm before it rings. I stand up. In the dawn light: Kieran. He watches me as I pad across the room, his head slowly turning. I go out onto the landing, over to the spare room. There, I rummage through the chest of drawers, taking out items of running kit: singlet, shorts, socks, and what sportswear retailers euphemistically term an “athletic support”. While I get dressed, Kieran waits in the doorway. He’s seen this ritual of mine countless times, this transformative act of donning skimpy name-brand sports clothes. Naked man becoming runner. He observes without comment—not even his expression betrays what he might be thinking.

  I round out my running ensemble with a stopwatch—a digital wristwatch with a fat dial and a chunky plastic strap—and a large blue neckerchief rolled up and tied around my head bandanna-style, to keep the sweat out of my eyes. Downstairs to the hallway, Kieran patiently following. On with my trainers: bulky, well-sprung, absurdly expensive. Now a few warm-up exercises. Stretching thighs, calves, hamstrings. Unknotting the night from my anatomy. Loosening and limbering up while my audience of one stares stolidly from the staircase. And then at last out through the front door, onto the street.

  A blackbird is chirruping, its bright song lilting between the houses. The town is quiet and there’s a fitful dawn breeze. It feels like it’s going to be a fine day. Weather-wise, that is.

  I start off along the pavement. I don’t glance back, but if I did glance back I know I would see Kieran, perhaps at the living-room window, perhaps outside the house, at the front door or the front gate. But I don’t glance back. I’m off, at an easy, loping, breaking-in pace. I beep the stopwatch. Time starts counting up from 0:00 in flickering increments.

  For the first half-mile I’m making my way out of town, threading along car-margined streets until I reach one of the main roads, then heading along that—feeling like I’m the only moving thing in the entire world. I have no idea what circuit I’m going to take this morning. The route is still unplanned. There are myriad possibilities. My knowledge of the lanes and byways and footpaths and thoroughfares in and ar
ound the town is extensive. I know them as vectors in space but also as vectors in time. I know roughly how long it will take to complete any given section. By putting the various sections together I can plot out a course of any duration I choose, from half an hour to two hours or more.

  Breath coming easy. Knees bearing up. I think I’ll turn right here, off the main road, down a shared drive that leads to a public bridleway. Shoe soles slapping. I’ve had this pair of trainers nearly three months now. It’s getting to be time for a new pair.

  9:11, 9:12, 9:13…I’m at the river now, on a high-banked towpath. Some cows lumber out of my way, one of them emitting a pat in a spectacularly violent fashion.

  15:15, 15:18, 15:19…Up through Cutter’s Copse and over a stile into one of Mr Stevenson’s fields. I’ve met Mr Stevenson a couple of times while out running. He was a grumpy farmer long before British farmers had good reason to be grumpy.

  29:41, 29:42, 29:43…I’m climbing a steep chalk track. It’s a killer, not just on the legs and lungs but on the lower back, that mesh of muscles where spine meets pelvis. I lean into the gradient, taking short little tiptoe steps.

  36:21, 36:22, 36:23…Up high now, along the crest of the hills on a broad bone-white path like the exposed spine of some dead-and-buried leviathan. A bit of a twinge in one ankle—an old running injury, never quite been allowed to heal properly. I don’t let it hamper me.

  43:41, 43:42, 43:43…Now down, the town coming into view, and the town bypass, cars spinning along in both directions. Early commuters, beating the rush. I’ll be joining them soon.

  56:18, 56:19, 56:20…Back on the streets again, confined to pavement. Past Mr Ghosh, opening up his shop. “Hi.” “Good morning to you!” The final push for home, stepping up the pace, kicking out, make it good, every little extra helps.