by Amy Arnold
I had her, up there, although the rain was coming down, although the branches were bending.
Still, I came down in the end. I had to. The rain wasn’t stopping, and anyway, there was Abbott. There was Charlie.
I climbed down. I found Kate crouching up against the trunk, her skirt stuck to her thighs. We were wet. Both of us, soaked through, and cold.
‘Are you ready now?’ she said. ‘Finished?’
We walked back across the meadow, we must’ve walked back across the meadow, although I can’t really remember walking. All I remember is that I hadn’t finished. I didn’t say so. Instead I told myself I could go up another day, but I’d already gone as high as I could go. I mean, we’d probably already got to the point where there was nowhere higher.
And now we’ve finished climbing.
We’re walking home, and Charlie’s in front. Charlie’s striding out, pushing back the grasses. Long, loose steps, high on being high.
‘You should actually be watching me when I climb high,’ Charlie says. ‘You should actually be holding my hand as soon as we come off the footpath. As soon as. That’s when you should hold my hand. But never mind. I wouldn’t ever tell.’
She takes my hand. Skips, tips of her toes, should be coming down by now, both of us. It’s the sun, at the backs of our knees, and chasing, chasing us home.
‘We’re probably late. It’s probably eight!’ Charlie says.
It’s a story we both know, and is always the way of things when we go out, because Abbott’s got a watch. A nice watch. He feels the weight of it in his hand every morning.
‘A nice watch,’ he says.
He stands up straight whilst he puts it on; I’ve seen him pulling back on his shoulders. It’s called Second Core, his watch.
‘Second, because of seconds, you know, from minutes and seconds,’ he said, the day he first came home with it. ‘Second Core, because really, you can only have one core.’
‘Apart from caw and corps. You know, c-a-w, and c-o-r-p-s?’ I said. ‘There, three possible cores, at least.’
‘But I’m not talking about homophones now,’ he said.
He asked if I wanted a nice watch. He undid the strap and handed it to me, or rather, pressed it into the palm of my hand.
‘Feel the weight of that,’ he said. ‘A nice watch.’
I said it was a nice watch. I wasn’t sure whether it was the weight that was supposed to make it nice. I couldn’t really think why someone would want to carry around something so heavy.
‘So?’ he said. ‘They do a range for women too.’
‘I’d probably forget to put a nice watch back on after swimming, if I had one,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said, and I wondered for a moment if he might cry. He had that kind of look about him. But perhaps I was reading too much into that look because later, when I was thinking about it, I couldn’t remember ever seeing him cry.
We were late. As soon as Charlie opened the front door Abbott walked into the hallway tapping the face of his Second Core. He was looking us up and down. I think he thought we’d been to the lake, but before he could say anything about it not being clean in there, Charlie said, ‘Don’t worry, Dad, we were at the tree, the ash tree,’ and he went back to tapping, although less forcefully.
After dinner Abbott put his arms around my waist. The back door was open and sounds from our hill were drifting in. The usual kinds of sounds: voices, cars, a door shutting somewhere, a dog barking. I was scraping the last bits of lasagne off the plates into the bin and thinking about how sounds drift in when you can’t see where they’re coming from. Drift in and don’t just arrive. It was soothing, scraping the plates, listening for sounds on the night air, and yes, I thought, this is the way things arrive, nothing happens suddenly. It was at that moment Abbott put his arms around my waist. I stood up straight, I must have done it quickly, because the back of my head caught his chin and I heard his mouth snap shut.
‘Ash,’ he said.
And when he’d composed himself he put his arms back around my waist. We stood there for a while, not moving.
‘If you ever change your mind about having a nice watch,’ he said. ‘I could sort one out for you at the drop of a hat.’
‘And if you ever want to, you can come to the tree,’ I said.
He said it sounded like a fair deal, which is usually the way the watch–tree exchange ends, although sometimes I say one core’s enough for one girl. Either way, it’s the end, and Abbott never comes to the tree.
We used to call it our tree. It was just something we said, but at the beginning it felt that way. A few weeks after we’d seen the Utsjoki film Abbott turned up at my front door without warning, though he said it was more impromptu than without warning.
‘Without warning makes it sound, well, you know,’ he said.
I didn’t know. But I took impromptu for my collection. The m, the p, the t. The way my mouth had to work to get them out, that’s why I took it. Then, of course, the u. Unexpected, I thought. Completely unexpected.
Abbott had his shirtsleeves rolled up and was carrying a picnic. I could see he’d gone and bought a French baguette. He was standing on the doorstep and the end of it was sticking out of his bag. He wanted to take me out. Out of Tilstoke.
‘To the country,’ he said.
He swept into a low bow, pretending to hold a hat in his hand. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, rolled up perfectly, and he’d parted his hair down the middle, exactly down the middle. I remember thinking how much he looked like F Scott Fitzgerald. His hair, yes, but not only his hair, his smile, which was more of a smiling look than an actual smile. I almost said something. I almost went back inside to get the book with the photo of F Scott Fitzgerald on the inside back cover. I almost brought it out to show him.
‘Are you coming, Ash?’ he said. ‘Grab whatever it is you women grab, and come on.’
We went out to his car. We were sitting in the two front seats ready to move off. It wasn’t the first time we’d sat like that, no. We’d sat like that on the way back from the film. This was the second time, sitting side by side, and I thought, I’m sure I was thinking, that I was beginning to get used to it.
‘À la campagne,’ Abbott said, turning the key in the ignition. ‘La belle campagne. That OK with you, Ash?’
I said we could always go to the meadow instead, if he didn’t feel like driving far. We could always sit under the old ash tree.
‘What?’ he said. ‘Where?’
He said he’d never set eyes on a meadow in Tilstoke. How could a meadow just spring up? If he’d lived here his whole life, how could it? He smoothed his hair, once, twice, on either side.
‘But it’s you who’s sprung up,’ I said.
His dad though, his dad was born here, born and raised. His mum too. Aunts and uncles and cousins. He made circles with his hands as he explained. His family, spiralling, sprawling outwards.
‘Never a word about a meadow between them all,’ he said.
‘Still, there is one,’ I said.
We went to the meadow. We could have walked, but Abbott wanted to drive.
‘Now we’ve got ourselves in the car,’ he said. ‘And the picnic and all.’
He parked in the lay-by at the bottom of Lot Road and we walked along the footpath towards the meadow. We carried his big picnic bag, we took one handle each. It was late May, it must have been. The hawthorn was heaped with white flowers, and the bees were in and out of it and buzzing. We walked alongside the hawthorn, and as we walked Abbott’s face opened up. It was as open as I can ever remember seeing it.
The footpath too, opened. Opened into meadow.
‘This way, if we want to go to the tree,’ I said, and I gestured through the grass. Through the long grasses and the buttercups, as sprawling as Abbott’s family.
‘This way,’ I said.
And Abbott’s face. His face, his features, unfolding beneath the high sun.
Let me try to explain, although h
ow can I explain?
It was that meadow, that day, the rush of early summer.
‘This way,’ I said, although what did I mean?
It was the air, the swallows, it was the grasses stretching.
‘This way, this way,’ I said, overcome by a sort of giddiness. I tugged at his arm. I pulled him down with me into the sticky warmth of the meadow, right down inside the drone of hoverflies. There was nowhere to go down there, but we weren’t going anywhere, we weren’t trying. And Abbott, his face lax, looked nothing like F Scott Fitzgerald, and everything like Abbott. Abbott the boy. That’s what I thought, although I’d never even seen a photo of Abbott as a boy, but still, I must have been sure. I put my hand on his forearm, just below where his rolled sleeves fell. The bees, the heat. Rogue weather, they called it. Rogue weather, and grass prints on my bare legs. I held his forearm and moved towards him. I moved in, I was moving slowly enough to see the look on his face, which might have been a look of anticipation. I moved in, until I was as near as I could be without touching him.
‘I too am not a bit tamed. I too am untranslatable,’ I said into his ear.
I stole the words. There was no need to tell Abbott. Papa would have said, you can’t just, but you can. One feather, and it starts you longing for the bird.
We ate our picnic in the shade of the ash tree. Abbott didn’t say much, just watched the swallows skimming the grasses.
‘Nice,’ he said when I told him they were swallows. ‘Nice birds.’
After we’d eaten he wanted to carve our initials into the ash tree, using the knife he’d brought to cut the baguette. He said it was destiny, the pair of us having names beginning with A, and that we should make our mark on the world. He said we should make our mark and come back.
‘It damages the bark, cutting,’ I said. We packed up our picnic and walked to his car after that.
‘Leave nothing but footprints,’ I said as we walked.
I turned back to check. There wasn’t a trace of us. No footprints, nothing, not even a shape where the grasses had been laid flat.
We went to our tree one more time. It was January. Abbott had been saying he wanted to go ever since that time in May and he’d finally got some time off work. He said we should just do it. Put on our coats, grab the car keys and go. So we went. He drove us to the lay-by on Lot Road. He likes to drive, and anyway, it was cold.
We walked along the footpath towards the meadow. The sky had come right down, the way it sometimes does in winter. Still, we kept on, kept the hawthorn so close we scratched up against its skeleton.
I watched Abbott’s face. I watched his features move closer together, as though relying on each other for something.
I thought perhaps I should speak.
There were redwings on the hawthorn. A small group of them, balancing on its bones, picking at its berries. At the scrub underneath too. I thought perhaps I should point out their red flanks, say something.
But we kept on. We kept the hawthorn close until the footpath opened into meadow, and when it did, the grass had mostly disappeared to mud and the sky was down, far down. Of course it was only fog, and nothing to worry about. It was January after all. Abbott stopped walking. He stopped in the place where the hawthorn ended and the footpath opened up. He stopped, and looked, although there was nothing to see but fog. He turned. He turned as if he was expecting something else, as if by shifting a few degrees he might still find what he was looking for.
‘But,’ he said.
That was the only word I remember him saying.
We walked across the meadow, in the direction of the tree. The sky lay heavy. I mean, the sky was down, and it was difficult to see, difficult even to see the ground in front of us, but we carried on towards the old ash anyway. I walked in front.
‘This way,’ I said, although I’ve got to admit I wasn’t completely sure.
Abbott felt for my hand, then let go.
‘This way, this way,’ I said, but I don’t think he heard.
There was nothing to do but carry on towards the ash, because that’s what we’d come for. I told myself it was only the meadow, it was only Tilstoke. Abbott’s relatives had been here for generations and not one of them had ever been swallowed up into fog. It was thick, without doubt, but the idea of it swallowing anything. Hyperbole. Yes. But I had to admit it was thick. Thicker than I’d ever seen it. So thick, it slid deep into my oesophagus every time I tried to speak.
We got to the ash tree. It came out from the fog without warning. It came out whole. I suppose what I mean is unviolated. There it was, it always had been. Abbott walked up to it. He took a branch in his hand. He held onto it for a while then let go and took a step back.
There were black buds rising from the ends. ‘Black buds,’ he said later. Black. Black.
When we were safely inside his car he said he could see why people only visit the countryside in summer.
‘All that nakedness,’ he said.
‘Nakedness?’ I said.
It wasn’t the kind of word he usually used.
‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘It might be good to watch a bit of sport when we get in, a bit of snooker or something.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
But now. Now it’s June and it’s been hot all night, and after we’d come down, Charlie and I, after we’d tidied up the lasagne, put the things in the dishwasher, Abbott said he was off upstairs to put a sheet on the bed.
‘It’s my feet. I like something over my feet,’ he said.
Papa used to tell me to lie on top when the warm nights came. He’d pull off the covers and throw them onto the floor. He’d say it was my chance. Your chance to let the night find its way into you, he’d say.
He’d pat the bed and his hair would shake. His black curls. That’s what he always did when the warm nights came, but they didn’t always come.
Abbott likes something over his feet. He pulled the sheet right up to his chest, he folded it back and clamped it around his body with his arms.
‘There,’ he said.
Before long he was asleep, and as soon as he was I got out of bed, went over to the skylight and opened it up, just a crack, just enough to let some air in. There wasn’t any air to let in, not really. The air on the outside was the same as the air on the inside. I stuck my arm out of the skylight as far as it would go. I stuck it out and brought it in a few times. Inside and outside felt the same, exactly the same. I couldn’t remember a single day with heat like that that summer, and I suppose some summers it never gets hot.
I didn’t shut the skylight. I didn’t think it mattered, but as soon as I woke I could tell Abbott was working up to something. I could tell from the way he was flicking the strap of his Second Core that he was going to make an announcement of sorts, and it wasn’t a surprise when he did.
‘Leaving windows open overnight brings flying insects indoors,’ he said.
He pulled his shoulders back and strapped on his Second Core.
‘So. They’re better off shut,’ he said, and smoothed his hair down on both sides.
But now he seems to have forgotten about flying insects. Now he’s running late, he’s looking for the sunscreen and can’t understand why people don’t put things back where they belong.
Charlie brought home a letter yesterday.
Could all parents/guardians provide a hat and sunscreen for their child/children, due to the unremitting warmth? It was signed off, with warm wishes.
So now Abbott’s looking. He’s crawled inside the cupboard under the stairs, he’s half inside, half swallowed.
‘Did you read the letter?’ I say. ‘Did you see the joke?’
‘What now, Ash?’ he says, backing out a bit.
‘Did you read the letter? Somebody’s written, someone at the school has signed off, with warm wishes. That letter, the one about the sunscreen. With warm wishes.’
‘What?’ he says. ‘Can you look upstairs for it? Try the bathroom cabinet.’
‘It’s a p
lay on words. With warm wishes. You know, warm, and—’
‘She’ll have to do without. It’s 8.30 already. She doesn’t like them being late, Mrs McIntosh,’ he says.
He reverses, goes on reversing and when he’s out in the hallway he squints a bit. He looks very warm now, a bit flustered, now he’s out in the open.
‘Is it warmer in there?’ I say.
‘No Ash, not warmer. We need to go. Charlie! Let’s go.’
I stand on the front step and wave them off.
Charlie’s in her car seat. Her car seat, covered in clouds. All of them white, all of them cumulus, and behind them the sky, always blue, one blue, uniform blue. It’s unrealistic. Abbott says it doesn’t matter, he says it doesn’t have to be realistic.
‘It’s for children, Ash. Young children.’
But look now, look at the sky above our house. It’s been blue for days. I don’t know how many days, but it’s hard to look up and not be surprised. I mean, day after day, blue. Blue, like Charlie’s car seat, blue and nothing but blue.
Look, there, the people from number five have brought their leather sofa out onto the pavement. Perhaps the council are coming to pick it up later. Abbott says twenty-five pounds is too much to pay the council to do something like that. He says it should be part of the service, although I don’t know which service he means.
And just as I’m going in, at the moment I decide to go back in, the woman from number five, the one who’s about the same age as Joan, probably a bit younger, comes out of the front door carrying a piece of toast on a plate. She walks out to the sofa and lowers herself down onto it. She sits on the sofa, the one outside on the pavement, and eats her toast. And there, look, a mug of coffee by her feet. It must have been there all along, whilst I was waving to Charlie, as Abbott drove her down our hill. And the woman looks so relaxed, so at home, she looks as if she always eats breakfast on the pavement on our hill, with the sky stretched out above her.