by Amy Arnold
I’ve packed our things. The sky is blue. Cerulean.
Kate always asked for adjectives. I never had any, but there’s one. Cerulean, cerulean.
And now Charlie throws the ball out past the rock and Nelson brings it back. He swims.
‘Good boy,’ she says.
Good boy. She throws. He fetches. She throws. He fetches. His tail floats just under the surface. The sun on it. The sun on his tail through the water. She throws again and yes, he’ll be a good boy.
I was Kate’s boy. Once or twice, I was her boy.
‘Will you swim?’ That’s what I say.
The lake’s getting sucked up into the sky and you never know whether you’ll be able to swim again. And you never know when the day will come when you wade out further and further and you have to keep wading because the place where the bottom falls away has gone.
I’ll ask again. I’ll ask twice. Because two’s the first prime.
‘Will you swim?’
Twice I asked and now I’m going in. There. Going in. Wading in.
I’ll wade out to the rock. I’ll swim when I can but it’s shallow. Look up above the place where the swallows fly, because the lake is being sucked into the cerulean sky. I didn’t want a rhyme. Two is the only even prime. There, I said it and now I’m in and yes, the warm water is soothing.
I’ll take my T-shirt off. Nobody ever comes here except on Tuesdays.
I’ll leave it on the rock and then I’ll go deeper and the bottom of the lake will fall away and I’ll swim. Charlie should’ve swum. You never know when it’ll be the last time and she knows how to breathe underwater. I do too. I stood on the rock, the high point of the rock. I called to Kate, but she wouldn’t come in. No.
And Nelson is a good boy. He’s better off with Charlie than the man with the hairy fingers. I had a bad feeling about him. So did Abbott. And now the bottom is falling away. I’ve caught it falling, the way you can catch yourself falling sometimes. Sometimes you catch things and you don’t mind whether you keep hold of them.
I’ll swim out. I’ll swim right out. Charlie can stay there on the edge and throw the ball and I’ll swim out away from the flies, because the flies have come and I don’t know whether I’ll get to swim in here again, if the sun goes on, plucking, snatching. And it is soothing, swimming in warm water. Swimming out, far out, wearing nothing but pants, and Abbott would call them knickers, but there isn’t a good word and we’re only just off the Toll Estate but nobody ever comes here. Except on Tuesdays. I should join the swimming club. They wear orange swim hats so they can spot each other, but nobody else ever comes.
I’m swimming now. I’m swimming, although Abbott would say I shouldn’t swim because it isn’t clean but I’ve got to get away from the flies and who knows when it’ll be the last time.
Charlie’s calling.
She says, ‘Come in. Come in now, Ash.’
And I have swum quite far out.
I’m out quite far. But I know how to swim. I know how to swim and to breathe underwater.
‘You’re swimming away. Don’t swim away.’
‘Ash.’
Swimming away. Swimming a way. I’m quite far out and I’m still swimming and can I see the rock from here?
It was too shallow. It isn’t always that way. I left my T-shirt and kept on wading. I left it there and it didn’t matter because nobody ever comes and it isn’t Tuesday. I kept on wading. I went on until I caught the bottom falling away. I felt it falling. The way you sometimes catch things falling.
And now I’ve swum out. I must’ve swum and swum. It’s easy to keep going and it’s warm. It’s warmer than Tilstoke Baths in here and the sun’s beating down on the back of my head but I could keep on swimming, I could go on swimming.
I am quite far out.
I might not hear Charlie from here. But I can’t be that far out. It isn’t Kevojärvi. I can’t swim away in the lake off the Toll Estate. I couldn’t swim away if I wanted to. And there might not be another chance to swim because the sun is sucking the lake up and I could keep on swimming and swimming and I wouldn’t be able to swim away.
And now I’m on my back, yes, I’m under the sky. The water’s soothing when it’s warm like this and I had to swim out here, right out here, to get under the sky. I can float on my back and spread out my arms and my breasts are here under the yellow-brown sun water, but nobody ever comes. Not unless it’s a Tuesday. I’m floating. I’m here on my back, under the sky and I’m like that boat, Asle’s boat, but today is nothing like the day Asle didn’t come back and you can’t compare a Norwegian fjord to the lake off the Toll Estate. It isn’t anywhere, the lake off the Toll Estate. It might not have a name.
I’m under the sky at least. It’s a start.
And Charlie. And Nelson. And if I stay floating the sky will turn pink. It does these days.
I can swim away.
I couldn’t if I wanted to.
But here under the sky it’s calm. Asle was probably calm. That’s why he didn’t come back. It didn’t matter what the weather was like. It didn’t make any difference. He felt so calm there was no point in coming back. Because why would he come back to Signe? Why would he come back to a little house if he felt calmer out there on the fjord than in a little house with its stone walls pressing in, suffocating him? It doesn’t matter what the weather was like. And if I had a nice watch I’d know how long I’d been gone, but I can see. I can see I’m quite far out.
I wouldn’t have been able to swim away. Even if I’d wanted to. It was just a game. Swimming and swimming.
I’ll swim in.
I’ll wade in. I’ll get my T-shirt from the rock and wade in and what’s the opposite of falling away? I’ll swim in. I’ll keep swimming until my feet touch the bottom and now I’m swimming. Now I’ve got somewhere to swim to.
Charlie.
I didn’t think she’d cry. I’ll wade in. I’ll wade right back in and I haven’t got a nice watch, so I don’t know how long I’ve been gone but Charlie’s crying and I didn’t think she’d cry because she’s been all right with Nelson. They’ve been OK together. She threw the ball and he brought it back. I watched them do it over and over. They didn’t mind the flies. They kept on throwing and fetching and there wasn’t anything else for me to do.
I asked. I asked her twice.
‘Will you swim?’
‘Will you swim?’
She was waiting on his ball. That’s all she was waiting for, so I waded out. She saw me go. She saw me wading out towards the rock, and she couldn’t miss me and it didn’t matter, me swimming away, but there was nowhere to swim to. I couldn’t have swum away if I’d wanted to.
Charlie.
And it isn’t far. I’ll stop swimming and I’ll start wading and I can feel the sun on the back of my head and I’m swimming in. I’m waiting to feel the bottom under my feet and then I’ll wade.
The midwife said, ‘Enjoy her.’
That was the last thing she said. And I have. I have. I walked to the top of Cotters Hill and that was the beginning. The new beginning.
I thought Nelson had changed things. Things changed so quickly.
But things don’t change quickly.
And now I’m wading. Now I’m coming in.
‘I left my T-shirt,’ I say.
‘On the rock,’ she says.
I’ll hold out my arms and if she wants to she can come. I’ll hold them out.
This is the way I do it. I kneel down and hold them out. Things haven’t changed. Nothing’s changed. I hold them out so she can walk into them.
Papa said my mama knew how to hold me.
Papa knew how to hold me too, but there was no one there to tell him.
He held his arms out. He held them out so I could walk into them.
‘Ash,’ he said.
I was small.
I hold them out. Charlie’s right there and my arms are too, stretched out towards her. I’ll hold them here, if she wants to come, and a nice
watch can’t teach you anything about time.
And it’s OK. It’s OK.
I couldn’t have swum away, even if I’d wanted to. It was calm. Calmer out there than in here. And there has to be a way to get your feet off the ground.
And it’s OK. I know how to stay. I know to hold her like this. This is how I hold her.
Charlie. Charlie.
I didn’t think she’d cry.
If you go far enough out it’s calm. That’s what I tell her. You have to keep swimming. You have to keep going until you’re under the sky.
And I hold her. And it’s OK. It’s OK. And I say, ‘Come down.’ I say, ‘Charlie, lie down, right here.’
And the flies have gone but the light keeps coming. And I didn’t think she’d cry.
Charlie.
This is the way I hold her. And it’s OK. It’s OK. I didn’t mean to keep on swimming. It was calmer out there. I didn’t mean to leave my T-shirt on the rock and what am I supposed to do?
Almost naked then. You too. Both of us like this and it’s OK.
It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt if you don’t mean it that way.
And it’s OK to be sorry after.
Kiss her then, like this.
Open her legs.
Kiss her, kiss her.
The swifts have gone.
Papa said you could never know for sure, but I knew. I always knew.
Charlie knew too.
That summer.
We were in the garden with the flowers. They’d grown so high. The petals were bright. The stems, the leaves were bright. Brighter than they should have been and they’d grown so tall they were stooping over themselves, the way tall people stoop over themselves when they know they shouldn’t be as tall as they are. That’s what the flowers were doing.
Charlie and I were in with the flowers. We were on our knees amongst the flowers and our knees were damp. They couldn’t have been any other way. We were on our knees and the sky was thick with clouds and we couldn’t see the swifts. We’d hardly seen them all summer but Charlie looked at the sky and said, ‘Tomorrow. The swifts will go.’
The next morning the sky looked the same.
‘All gone,’ she said.
She said it before she’d eaten a mouthful of breakfast. I remember her saying it because she pronounced her gs like ds back then. All don. That’s what she really said and I said it too. Don. And we nodded.
I knew.
That summer.
I lay on the bed whilst Kate dressed with her back to me. She was getting dressed and I knew. Or perhaps it was only later when I really knew, because if I’d known when she was getting dressed, why would I have been at the kitchen table a few days later, smiling, saying, ‘Don?’
Charlie knew. That summer. This summer she’s hardly looked up. She’s hardly looked up although the sky’s been blue, cerulean even. She would’ve seen swifts if she’d looked. She would’ve noticed them empty the sky.
For now there are swallows and house martins. They go too.
Kate said she’d come for the house martins, and for a while I believed her. I waited for her. Even though. I waited, but I knew.
The house martins left. They’ve left three times now. Three summer days. Don, don, don.
And now Abbott says I should rest.
‘You haven’t been yourself since.’ That’s what he said.
Nobody ends a sentence with since, but that’s what he did.
He stuck his head around the door and said, ‘You haven’t been yourself since.’
So this is the third day of rest, three summer days, the sixty-third hour.
I’ve been watching the sky. I’m reading Leaves of Grass. And it is restful, watching the sky and reading.
I saw a woman on the train reading Leaves of Grass once. I was sitting up on Papa’s knee. The woman who was reading had her hair tied up. I was only small. Not too small to be able to read, but small enough to sit on Papa’s knee.
‘Leaves of grass are impossible.’ That’s what I said in Papa’s ear.
Papa laughed. The woman lowered the book. She smiled at him.
‘It’s poetry,’ he said. Everything. No. He said, ‘Anything’s possible with poetry.’
The woman smiled again and my papa reached out and touched her. I don’t remember where he touched her but that’s what he did because I remember holding on to him. I had to hold on whilst he reached across the table towards the woman with her hair tied back.
Years later, but definitely before I met Abbott, I saw a woman reading it on the bus. The same book. She could’ve been the same woman as before. I asked her if the seat next to her was free. She nodded, but she looked across at the empty seats. There were plenty. I looked at them too.
I sat down next to her. I was sitting next to possibility. I told myself that was where I was sitting. I didn’t mind waiting for the lights at the Ryland crossroads. Anything’s possible. That’s what I was thinking. Poetry, poet-tree. I almost went to the end of the line, and when the woman squeezed past me to get off the bus, she brushed me on the knee with it. With her copy of Leaves of Grass.
‘Bye,’ I said.
I waved. I got off the bus at the next stop and ran. I ran until I reached our front door.
Later, after I’d met Abbott, I told him about the woman on the train and the woman on the bus. I told him they might’ve been the same woman, I told him everything, every detail, and he listened all the way through. He nodded his head. He understood.
‘Have you read it?’ he said when I’d finished. Leaves of Grass. ‘Have you read it?’
Two weeks later, after serving up risotto, he brought out a book from behind his back and put it on the table in front of me.
‘The Complete Poems,’ he said.
He said that Leaves of Grass was in there, but he thought I’d like them all.
‘The Complete Poems. The whole lot,’ he said.
He pushed the book across the table towards me.
I’ve been resting since.
Almost three whole days of rest. This is the seventieth hour, and it’s a fitting thing to say, the seventieth hour, because here I am at ‘To Think of Time’. It’s a long poem. Most poems in Leaves of Grass are long poems, some are as long as a long short story. Abbott says he hasn’t got time for long poems, but how does he know how much time he’s got? That’s the problem with his nice watch, it makes him think he knows.
He says things like, leaving in ten. You’ve got five minutes. He likes saying them and I’ve never seen him look back at the minutes after they’ve gone. No, the only time he ever looks over his shoulder is when he’s driving. He never has the urge to stop the minutes from leaving because his watch goes round and round and it makes him think that time’s chasing him, which is the opposite of the truth. That’s what he thinks, time goes in circles, although he hasn’t said so. Maybe I should get a nice watch. But I know this is the seventieth hour. I don’t need a nice watch.
I’ve been watching the sky. It’s empty. It’s been blue for so long. Deep blue, azure, cerulean even. And look now, just when we were getting used to it. Yes, look up, look out of the window. There are clouds building.
There are clouds in our sky and I thought I’d seen U look up earlier, or was it yesterday? I thought I’d heard her say it was going to break. I thought I saw Terry nod, but I’ve been resting for a long time. This is the seventieth hour and I’ve been looking at the sky. I mean, I’ve been reading and looking at the sky and I’ve been resting, and I wasn’t sure whether that’s what she’d said, but yes, now the clouds are definitely building. They’re building, that’s the only way to describe it. The clouds are building. And perhaps I should call Charlie, but I haven’t seen Charlie, not since I started resting and I suppose Abbott said, ‘your mum’s resting’, and she went off with Nelson. I suppose that’s what happened, but look at the sky. Everyone, no, anyone would want to look at the sky because the clouds are building, and who says no
thing happens when you’re resting, because something always happens and time can’t move in circles, even though watches make you think they do.
Charlie would like this. The clouds are stacked in the sky, the sky’s dark, getting darker, and yes, she’d like this because it feels like something’s about to happen. Look. The sky’s dark, the clouds are stacked and it looks, it definitely looks like it’s going to rain.
The windows of heaven were opened.
Those were the words in the Bible. Papa said he didn’t like me reading the Bible, he said he didn’t know why we didn’t get rid of that book, but nobody gets rid of their Bibles. I liked the Flood. I liked the part when God told Noah to get all the animals into the ark.
Every bird of every sort.
And every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Creepeth. That was the word I liked. I had to read it to myself, under my breath, because Papa didn’t like the Bible. I wanted creepeth for my collection.
Charlie liked creepeth too. Abbott said he didn’t mind one way or other about the Bible, but he didn’t want creeping animals inside our house. It isn’t anything to do with the house, it’s to do with the ark. The arc. Two good words. Charlie would like them both. She’d like the sky right now. She’d like the way the clouds are building up and up and surely clouds are the only things that can keep on building, that can build up indefinitely, and Charlie would like it, she likes it when something’s about to happen and why shouldn’t I go downstairs, now the clouds are building? How can Abbott expect me to rest when something’s about to happen? And the sky’s dark, yes, the sky’s got so dark it’s difficult to read, so I’ll go downstairs, and seventy hours of rest are enough hours of rest for anyone, and something’s about to happen to the world. Something’s about to happen.
It rained. Of course, it rained. I went downstairs and sat at the kitchen table on the wooden stool. The rain came down. Charlie opened the back door.
Rain pelteth.
That’s what I was thinking. Rain pelteth. It came out of the sky and onto the patio, the shed roof, the grass, the flowers.