The gypsies have come down the hill, their eyes in burning hoops. Come pony tail, come pony. Come highwater, come Hell. The river has risen with summer rain, rain in steam clouds above their fires. Fires infernal, fires illegal, bursts of water, bursts of flame.
The Mayor says it will have to be stopped. This is a Conservation Area. No dumping. No overnight camping. No fishing. No fires. No hawking. No begging. No talking after lights-out. No sickness without medical insurance. No travel without passports. No status without a bank account. No welfare without a job. No flirting. No slacking. No drugs. No Queers (maybe rich ones). No foreigners (maybe rich ones or cheap ones).
The gypsies are here. Eyes the colour of stars. Dressed in history. Dressed in rainbows. Some wear jerkins, some wear knee breeches, some wear swami robes, some wear cowhide coats. All wear gold and not the kind they sell. The men look like pirates. The women look like whores. Tall women, heads back, bold stare, easy hips. What right have they to walk as if they have never known pain? Do you watch the way people walk? I do. I look for the disappointments in their shoulders and the stress in their hips. Look for the slight limp that betrays their vulnerable side. What kind of man or woman they are is in their gait. I never give a man a job until I’ve seen the way he walks. I courted my wife because when she moved she seemed to take the earth with her.
What happened to us holding hands side by side? Somewhere in the fourteen years of our married life I seem to have had a sex change and converted to Islam. How else to explain the twenty paces I lag behind?
When I come home caught in the cobwebs of my day, my wife has been planning our next holiday or working out the finance for a new car. I am still building the extension she designed two years ago. I have to fit it in with my job and the garden and time for my daughter who loves me. My wife strides us on into prosperity and fulfilment and I shuffle behind clutching the bills and a tool box. She was right to make me drain the lawn. All our friends admire its rollered curves. I admire my wife. Admire our success. We were nothing and she has coaxed out the grit in me and held me to my job. Why do I wish we were young again and she would hold me in her arms?
Listen to me. I sound like the fool I am. Fortunately I am alone.
At that moment I looked up out of the comforting opacity of my beer and down the trestle table. Tightly packed, like rowers in a slave ship, were a couple of hundred men, heads on their fists, staring into their beer as if it were a crystal ball. And the table seemed to infinitely extend through the candy striped canvas and out over the hills into the city and to be forever lined with men.
I got to my feet and left through an open flap at the back of the tent. I was away from the bustle of the fair and out by a few caravans, their fires pushing up smoke. Sitting beside one of the fires was the woman I had met already.
She said, ‘Take off your trousers.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll clean them for you.’
She turned her back and went up the wooden steps into a caravan. I was about twenty paces behind.
When I finally hesitated myself inside she was pouring blue powder into a copper pot. The caravan was one of those old barrel types with a pair of long shafts for the horse to draw it. Inside it was panelled, carved, sprung, beautiful, clean. She had a feather eiderdown on the bed and the bed was how a bed should be. Not too hygienic, not too hospital, not a showroom bed with matching sheets and pillow cases.
She held out her hand for my trousers and I wondered how her hair seemed so red that when she leaned over the copper there was no distinction between the soft metal and her soft hair.
She smiled and looked down at me. Not at my knees. I had my shirt tails but it was obvious how things stood. I suppose it was obvious how things were going to be but when I bucked into her it was with the same surprise as all those years ago when Alison and I had walked in the woods and made love among the bluebells. I had the perfect freedom of loving her and although we have never given up sex we never have found those woods again.
I felt the trees closing over me and I slept.
It was dark when I woke up. I was alone in the bed. I sat up and grabbed the cover around me. Gradually I could make out the shapes in the caravan and I found an oil lamp with its wick just burning under the brass cover. I turned it up and on the chair beside it were my trousers neatly folded and dry.
I inspected the knees. The accusing stains had disappeared but was it a trick of the light or were the trousers all over now hued invisible green? I dressed as quickly as I could and let myself out of the caravan.
What time was it? I checked my wrist and found my watch had gone. Should I go back in? I couldn’t. I wanted to be away, be home, not be noticed, not be caught. I still had my wallet.
As I set off through the fields towards the empty stalls I saw by the firelight a group of men leading a horse up and down. There was a girl on it, clinging to the mane, slithering a bit on the bare back. I changed direction to avoid them but then I heard the girl shout, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ I started running towards her voice and forgetting everything that had happened I burst through the blanks of the men to the only thing that mattered and swept my daughter off the horse and into my arms. The men were laughing.
‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘Where’s Mummy?’
‘The young lady has bought a horse,’ said one of the men.
My daughter kissed me and said something about her birthday and in my swimming head drowned in horse piss and laundry blue, another woman’s body and my own tears, I thought, ‘I have to get us out of here, I must get us home.’ I took her hand and we walked slowly away, me as cautious as a cat but unfollowed. One of the men shouted, ‘We will bring him tomorrow.’
And I didn’t care because they didn’t know me or where we lived and the fair would move on and my daughter would forget and I would forget.
My wife was watching late night TV.
She said, ‘Do you know what time it is?’
My daughter and I, hand in hand, looked at each other and each sheltered secrets the other half shared but could not betray.
The nights are short at this time of year; a reluctant darkness and a terrace of stars near enough to walk upon, as the gods used to do, before the light rinses the sky.
At dawn, around four o’clock, I was dozing, still dressed on the green lawn, my wife and daughter sound asleep upstairs, when I heard a clip clopping coming down the road in front of the house. Shiny noise of shod horse. I thought the hooves were going through my heart. I jumped up and took a short cut through the tool shed round to the front garden.
‘Don’t wake up please don’t wake up,’ I prayed to the motionless windows.
The sky was turning laundry blue and the copper sun through it. She was standing quite still, smiling at me, holding the horse by its halter. A bright Bay the colour of her. I thought, ‘I could leave now and not come back. Grow a pony tail and wear a cowhide coat,’ and my mind bucked into hers with the force of the morning unworn by any but ourselves. There was a noise behind me and my daughter came up beside me in her old dressing gown. She put her hand in mine just as the horse braced its forelegs and serenely shot its piss onto the clipped verge.
The gypsy woman named her sum, an amount as extravagant as unaffordable, and I shooed my daughter back inside with me while I fetched the cash. I had drawn it out on Friday as down payment on my wife’s new car. The woman had tethered the horse to the fence post, and I on one side, she on the other, exchanged the money. I noticed she was wearing my watch. Then, as she counted the last notes and I withdrew my hand, she took it swiftly, put it on her breast where her heart beat and kissed me.
My own heart stopped as she turned and walked away up the empty road.
Turn of the World
At the turn of the world are four islands.
Their names are Fyr, Hydor, Aeros, Erde.
Each of these islands is distinct in character and if none has been fully mapped all have been described. What follows i
s a leaf among the whirl of leaves torn from trees and books by the four winds that blow over the islands and bring their reputations to the haunts of men.
The island of Fyr.
A volcanic island thrown out of the earth’s crust. What was deep is high. What was hidden is visible for all to see. The red peaks of Fyr are a landmark and a warning. No one knows when the island will erupt again, spilling itself in furious melt into the burning sea.
Naturally enough this island is stocked with lions the colour of gold and gold the colour of lions. The yellow sun shines on both and butters the hearts of the unwary who come here. Many are devoured. Many are spent. The lions are ruthless as money. The gold is snap-jawed.
Arum lilies grow here, trumpets blaring light, gunpowder stamens and a flint stalk. The lilies of the field neither toil nor spin but from time to time they explode, strewing the ground with a shrapnel of petals; force, fuse, flower.
To eat, there are carrots, pumpkins, sweet pepper, chillies, tomatoes, red onions, ruby chard, oranges, raspberries, red currants, and a Snow White apple, which of course is red.
To drink, there is wine from the grapes on the vine; Pinot Noir, crushed blood-black. The streams flow fire-water.
Anyone who cooks simply throws their food onto a hot stone. Anyone who sleeps must sleep suspended in a hammock above the heat-charged rocks.
At the heart of the island is a mystery. Everyone knows about it, though most have forgotten and few have ever seen it. Travellers to the island stuff their pockets with coins from the beach, only to find too late that the yellow stuff is sand. Others, who don’t care for the money, safari the lions. There are trails of men, crawling elbows and stomach through the thick and thickening undergrowth of time. Constantly, they synchronise their watches, judging the moment of kill, while the sun on the sun-dial impassively gathers the years they have left behind.
The sound of shot, the clinking of coins, are the island’s quick noises. Only as the traveller moves inwards, which he and she must do concentrically, because of the rocks, do the noises seem more distant, seem to fade.
At the heart of the island, at the point of zero coordinates, is a ring of serpentine fire. The fire has never been lit and will never be extinguished. It burns.
At the centre of the unlit blazing fire are a man and a woman, back to back, holding hands. They do not move. Do they breathe? They stare ahead, she to the East, he to the West, intent through millennia, at the pause of time.
The traveller who can, and who can? moves face to face around the twinned royal pair and the ancientness of what he sees frightens him. The pair are youthful but older than the fire in which they wait and the fire has burned forever.
Whose face does the traveller see? His own.
Whose face does the traveller see? Her own.
Male and female, like for like, separate and identical. A man’s face in the woman’s. A woman’s face in the man’s, and both faces the face of the traveller.
The island of Hydor.
This island is submerged by water. In some parts, the shelves of land cannot be determined at all. In other places, a person may wade or paddle easily and see all that there is to see just beneath the surface.
To explore the island well, it is necessary to swim and to dive and to travel by rowing boat. Outboard motors too easily break the clarity of the water, and while further distances can be travelled, nothing of any worth can be discovered, because what the island offers is beneath.
The island is chiefly visited for its cooling, healing, shallower shore waters, and its fresh springs which refresh and cleanse. Even the inhabitants of Fyr visit occasionally to soothe their red faces and to bathe their wounds. The inhabitants of Hydor make a living bottling their spas and selling fish and they are known too, for expertise in clairvoyance.
There are three regions: The Shore. The Lakes. The Deep. At the shore, with its bustle of nets and crabs, bottles and booths, men and women roll up their trousers, and shrimp in the friendly waters. Here are rock pools and pleasant bays, teasing, hospitable. Lie down, and the water is snug as a blanket. The days are long. Fyr is visible across the channel and the shoreline of Hydor enjoys Fyr’s sun.
The region of the lakes is stranger.
Willows and alders grow at the margins of huge stretches of still and connected water. Brown trout dawdle beneath the water’s skin.
There is little sun here. The moon, crescent, full, waned, is always visible and reflected in the water. The waters themselves might be moons, so luminous they seem.
The traveller by boat has few landmarks. The lift and fall of the oars are the only sound, the only movement, to comfort the solitary rower. It is as though all the waters of the earth are here, illimitable, dark. That which rose from the waters at last returned to it, without form, void.
There are shapes in the water. Fantastic turrets and crenellations. The remnants of a flag. At night, the rower imagines that he sees fires burning at the bottom of the lakes. He longs to plunge down, into forgetfulness, away from memory, his life washed off him, clean at last. The lakes are full of abandoned boats.
It becomes harder to row. The fluid waters seem fast as steel. The agony of rise and fall, the strength to pull forward, the clang of the oars on the metal surface of the lake, all become hypnotic. The boat noses through the water’s stars.
There is a horrible drop. The boat will be tossed over a cataract and smashed to bits. If the rower, falling in vertical terror, can survive the ceaseless roar, she finds herself floating towards a small natural well.
This well, the island’s deep centre, beyond the shore, beyond the lakes, is a mandala of pure water. By its side is an urn. In the well itself are two fishes, one red, one blue.
She lies down and looks into the well. She sees her face, her many faces, masks drawn through time. She sees her face since time began. She sees all the world in the enveloping waters and remembers everything. She sees the beginning and the end swimming after each other.
There is no beginning. There is no end. The water is unbroken.
The island of Erde.
Here are mines and jewels. The climate of Erde is blustery and damp with frequent snow fall in the long winter. To keep warm, the inhabitants have perfected a cast-iron stove that burns diamonds. Diamonds are the cheapest fuel source on Erde. The coal seams are so ancient and undug that their carbon is no longer carbonaceous rock but crystallised carbon. Anyone who foots a spade into the earth will find a shovelful of uncut diamonds, which will burn unattended for two weeks.
It is true that certain mines on the island are still young, and these are highly prized. The richest women wear coal earrings and coal necklaces and the coal merchants of Erde are the wealthiest men in the world. Tourists are taken round the filthy, black coal-cutting studios near the mines, and marvel at the treasures on display. The King of Erde has a crown made entirely of coal, including the largest lump of coal ever brought up from the coveted mine. The cut lump is two feet by three feet and weighs as much as a Tamworth Sow. On state occasions, when the precious crown is carefully blacked and sooted, four men must walk beside the king to support the fabulous glory. To be covered in coal-dust is thought a great honour.
For the most part though, the people are modest and content, sitting quietly by their winter fires, poking the diamonds.
Visitors to the island come for the caving and the hunting. The underground passages of Erde are hung with stalactites and furnished with stalagmites. Carving is a national hobby, and the growths of minerals, deep in the caves, have been fashioned into beds and chairs, elephants and whales, making a world within a world. Cavers drink their coffee out of fossil cups.
Beasts of every kind still roam Erde and hunting parties are organised throughout the season. The guides and beaters are strict; no one must stray from the route. If the prey reaches the interior, it is given up for lost.
There have been stories of foolhardy hunters who have rushed ahead into unmarked places of Erde, and t
hey have never returned. The guides are silent. No search party is sent out. The guides themselves would not return.
What is the mystery of Erde? It is said that when a man or a woman of that place has done all they wish to do in the world, they set off, without warning, drawn as if by a magnet, towards the interior.
If the people of Hydor are known for clairvoyance, the people of Erde are known for prophesy. It is said that the Norns live in the interior, weaving their fateful rope.
Perhaps they do. The traveller has seen three sisters beckoning to him, as he nears the magnetic pole of the island. There is a tree there, whose top stretches up to heaven and whose roots push down to hell. The tree is eloquent. In its branches seem to be the tracings of the whole world. The traveller rubs his hands against the thick bark and his hands are sapped with time. He puts his head against the tree, glad to rest, and hears the rumble of history coursing through the trunk.
Perhaps it is the World Ash Tree. Perhaps it is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Perhaps it is the alchemists’ tree, under whose shade the self will grow again. The traveller does not know but he starts to climb.
The island of Aeros.
Where to begin? Aeros is not to be found in the same place for a week together. There are stories of travellers who set out to find the island, and when they arrive at where their destination should be, the island has gone.
The World and Other Places: Stories Page 9