by Amy Arnold
I could see in his eyes, he understood. I crept in, slipped under her duvet, she always slept lightly, but this time. Things change. Papa said. I slipped in. Got to get used to losing things.
U left too, along with the sofa, Jay and Terry. All three. Don, don, don. Charlie always slept lightly, but this time, my hand in her hair and years to go until the greys come in.
I didn’t think.
I didn’t think I’d cry. It came from somewhere so far from my eyes I wasn’t expecting it. Wasn’t expecting her to feel so warm, so familiar. And why spit if you don’t have to? Why take something so precious? He took Leaves of Grass and where did he put it? I wasn’t sure. Wasn’t all that sure. All my feathers, different birds, hardly a flock, touch has a memory and Keats is the boy, was his boy, and all along, all along I was pretending to be hers.
I went back to the copse in the light, it was the first time I’d been down there in the light. I went waltzing on down there, the way you can when things have changed.
My log, with its root, and it isn’t often you form attachments like that. That’s what I was thinking as I walked to the copse. It was a joke. I said it a few times, to keep myself happy. I was happy. I was feeling upbeat, looking forward to standing on the log, to tracing the grooves of its bark with my fingers and feeling whatever it was. It gives back. I wasn’t thinking about anything else. I wasn’t thinking about the men and their dogs, the cut through. The whole place looked different in the light, and when I got to the copse I was still thinking about the joke.
It was light. I had all day. I had time. I walked through the copse, the sky rolled over the way it has been rolling. I walked through and under the sycamore trees all at once, I walked towards my wall, towards my log. I was trying out possession, waltzing up, whistling even. It looked a bit different, the copse. I suppose it must’ve been the light. I walked to the log, through the sycamores, under the sycamores, inside the sound of their leaves. I got to my wall and looked out across the car park. It was almost empty and the studio looked shut, but that wasn’t it, no, that wasn’t what was bothering me. It was the log. The log wasn’t there.
I looked around, there wasn’t anywhere to look but I looked anyway. I walked the length of the wall, in case, and I must’ve stopped whistling.
‘Has anyone seen my log?’ I said.
I thought, why not? If you don’t ask. I said it again, again, I said it whilst I was walking the length of the wall. I walked it three times in total, and good things come in threes, yes, but the log wasn’t there.
Of course, I knew. Abbott had taken it. He’d put it out of harm’s way. He wouldn’t want me climbing up, or falling down, or both. He wouldn’t want anything to happen to me. He’s kind. I knew the first time he touched me. I could see it in his hands. I could feel it in his hands, and tender was the night and F Scott Fitzgerald took feathers, made birds, and not everybody can, there aren’t many people who can do a thing like that, make flight from nothing, from nothing but a pile of words. Keats was Fitzgerald’s boy. Papa didn’t know. I wanted to be Papa’s. Boy, girl, boy, there wasn’t any point. In looking, if he’d taken it, my log. What’s the point if you have to spit first, if you always have to prepare and then. I mean afterwards, rest, rets, rets?
I walked home. I’d stopped waltzing. You have to stop at some point.
The sky was rolling and the wind was blowing and I was thinking about my log and how I’d wanted to run my fingers over its bark. How I’d wanted to do that one more time, taken time. Abbott had saved me from falling. I was thinking about his hands, how nobody likes hairy fingers, how tender must be a property, and couldn’t really be an adjective. An imposter, tender, that’s what I was thinking as I was walking, and had given up waltzing because nothing goes on and things especially don’t go on if you want them to. That’s the trick. That’s what I was thinking whilst I was walking and the wind was blowing and the street was more or less empty, although it wasn’t empty, because how was empty filled with houses one after the other and I couldn’t see beyond, could only see houses until, merging with sky, but the sky was rolling and the street was still, was more or less empty and Kate was following me.
I heard her under the wind. There hadn’t been a wind, there hadn’t been a wind since. There hadn’t been a wind when the rain came and spawned a stream, here on our hill, a stream to carry things away. We called it a beck. We called it a burn, a ghyll and there’s no real way to say the h against the g naturally. But Kate was following me. I couldn’t think why. Didn’t want to think about y and then I remembered Kate was scared of the wind. She’d told me.
We were on Cotters Hill. When the wind blows up there it blows uninterrupted. That’s when she told me, that’s where she told me, on the top of the Crag. I was wearing shorts and she was wearing a skirt and we were on the top with our bare knees and I wanted to run, I was about to take off, take off running, because the wind was insistent, and I wanted to take off but she stopped me.
‘No, don’t, Ash,’ she said.
She linked her arm through mine.
‘I’m scared, darling. Call me a fool, but I’m scared.’
The wind was pushing, that’s how it was, and I knew how it would feel if I went. I knew how it felt to open my wings, to feel the wind under them, but she was puffing and her mouth was filling, and air was weighing her down. It was weighing us both down.
‘Don’t go,’ she said. I wanted to go, I wanted it so much I said.
I said:
‘Does it have to be you who runs away? Does it always have to be you?’
The wind carried my words. It took them up in its teeth and I bent double and I spat, I spat, but still.
‘Why does it have to be you?’ I said.
She asked if she could tell me a story then and what could I say, but it didn’t matter, she went on anyway, opened that mouth, told me the wind had blown her mum away.
‘Clean away,’ she said.
She let go of my arm and showed me. She showed me with vast sweeping movements, to help me imagine. I imagined where the wind had blown her, I could almost see, I could almost see how the grasses came down to where the river ran and if we went to look for her mum I could see us, yes, I could see us side by side and almost always lying down.
She wouldn’t tell me if her mum had been found. She said, let’s talk about something else, then asked about my mama. Let’s talk about something else, I said, and we did, although I can’t remember, I can’t remember what we talked about, or what we were doing on Cotters Hill.
Kate followed me all the way home. I heard her footsteps under the wind and after a while, when I concentrated, I could hear the sound of her puffing too. I wanted to run, I couldn’t run, and I knew Abbott had saved me from falling and why was I there in the street with Kate if it was Abbott who had saved me, who always saved me, and maybe the thing with Leaves of Grass wasn’t the whole story and I wanted to run and I thought I should, because staring is one thing but following is another and I wanted to run, to run, to run, three times to keep myself, because she wanted my arm, to hold me down and I didn’t. I tried. To run, but she held me, she linked her arm through mine, staked me almost, yes, then. Took the d from down and she did whatever she wanted, she always did, she tucked it where she wanted it, kept it until she owned me.
I put the bolt across the front door.
‘Never thought I’d catch you doing that,’ Abbott said.
He likes it bolted when the last person’s in. He likes to keep us safe.
I slept easily knowing I’d put the bolt across the door. The wind was moaning, it was battering the windows. I knew nothing would get through the seal on the skylight. Abbott said I’d be grateful for a seal like that when winter comes, but it’s turning September and I’m already grateful. He knows me. That’s what I thought as I lay next to him, and I could think what I liked because I knew he wouldn’t stir until morning, and when he did, he listened for my sleeping, he kissed me on
the forehead and counted to three. He left his lips, one, two, and it might’ve been me who counted, but.
Not long after the kiss Lynn came.
She didn’t knock. She opened the front door and shouted ‘Only me’ and came through carrying a few bits. It was the least she could do, she said. She said she knew I wouldn’t want to be running around the supermarket if I was feeling under the weather. But we were under the weather. All of us. The wind was blowing but it was never going to get through, we’ve got eight years left on the guarantee.
She lifted the bags up onto the table and started unpacking them, putting things in cupboards. She knows her way around, I thought, and the girls ran on upstairs with Nelson. Charlie, Sophie, Nelson, eight legs, and Liam in his car seat chewing on a cardboard book.
‘Might be teething,’ that’s what she said, perhaps she spells Liam with a y too, and does Ab want this in the freezer?
‘Please. Yes please,’ he said.
He wants to keep me from falling.
I should’ve told her, set the record straight, but she was busy with potato gratin, she rhymed it with satin, he only has to put it in the oven and pierce the film if he doesn’t feel like cooking from scratch. We were in the kitchen, under the weather and I didn’t know whether to rest or breathe, so I stayed on the stool until they told me which and I agree with Abbott, she’s kind. She’d brought enough apples for Charlie to have one in her packed lunch each day. Although I was thinking about our apple tree, and wondered if anyone had even noticed its September branches, probably close to laden.
‘Summer’s gone so quickly,’ Lynn said, looking out of the window, beyond, yes, probably beyond the apple tree.
Last week she cleaned.
I heard her tell Abbott she’d leave the master bedroom.
‘If Ash is resting,’ she said, under her breath, and under his, he said, ‘thanks’, and she didn’t mind, she likes cleaning, she likes the, you know, feeling, when everything’s the way it should be. She’s probably so clean she squeaks when he touches her although they keep themselves quiet. I’ve got to say that. They keep whatever it is they’re keeping under her hair, there’s room for something big in there. For rhymes, for plenty, but at least they’re quiet. At least. Which is more than can be said for Kate. She can’t keep her mouth shut, and never could.
‘What is it about her?’ Abbott said. That summer. I’m sure it was.
‘She doesn’t stop talking. Doesn’t know when to shut it.’
He moved his hand like a talking mouth. He was standing by the barbecue, pushing his fingers against his thumb.
‘Ah, it’s not big enough,’ he said.
He moved away from the heat and snapped his crocodile arms, together and apart. Make a cavern instead, I thought. A place for getting lost.
‘There are plenty more fish in the sea, Ash,’ he said. ‘In the river,’ he said. ‘Trout mouth.’
He laughed. He picked up the barbecue tongs.
I was sitting on the stool in the kitchen. Abbott and Lynn were putting away the bits she’d brought. I was sitting so still I’d almost disappeared, although Kate was there, Kate was wherever she was, could see me perched on that stool, and said, be still, which she must have lifted straight from the Bible, although it didn’t seem like the wrong thing to say, so I tried to be still. I sat on the stool and imagined the lake, untouched. Without wind, I mean, or boys. With nobody wading or swimming.
And she must’ve got through the front door somehow, although I’d pulled the bolt across and checked it the way Abbott had shown me. She could see me though, from wherever she was hiding. Could see me trying to be still, and I was still, a statue almost, because. Lynn and Abbott, after a while, relaxed enough for him to say:
‘Come here.’
And he said it twice, the second time softly, like the second wave, the gentle one, and I wondered whether, under the weather, she’d come when he said, but I knew the pull, the place where gravity takes over, and I stayed where I was on the stool, because Lynn was coming, and Abbott was asking, was more tender than I remember him, his edges smoother and I didn’t want to think, though he took his glasses off and put them next to the coffee beans, and he hadn’t said that we can’t grind them, and it’s usually me who doesn’t tell, but Lynn was coming and Abbott was patient, as tender as.
They left and came back three times. House martins that don’t come back are unheard of.
‘Come and see them before they go,’ I said to her. We were looking across the street, resting our elbows on her windowsill.
‘Before they go?’ she said. ‘Why do they have to go?’
Not long after that they went.
Left and came back. Three times, but.
She’s here now, hasn’t had to come that far, although where’s she hiding herself? Where?
They’ve flown seas, the house martins, flown in one fell swoop, and so many miles, and on wings that size. That size. But she hasn’t asked. She never seemed to think to ask.
That day I told her anyway.
‘When house martins go, they disappear,’ I said. ‘They might congregate high over the rainforests of the Congo basin. Nobody knows.’ I was resting my elbows on her windowsill, two boys were passing, pushing their bikes along the pavement, but she had her phone. Her head in her phone.
‘Nobody knows. Kate,’ I said, and she lifted her head.
‘They always come back though, right?’ she said.
But coming back wasn’t the mystery, and she had her phone, her head was in her phone, her thumb on the screen and I wanted to say, but I didn’t say:
Don’t you think? Losing twelve million of anything should raise suspicion. Or wonder?
Lynn washed and ironed Charlie’s school uniform. She hung it on the back of her door in her bedroom and didn’t see me creeping in behind her, standing behind her as she straightened it, as she breathed out.
‘Yes,’ she said. She brushed it down, and she likes the, you know, feeling, when everything’s the way it should be. She took a step back, I was right behind her, I had to be quick, stepped back too. She didn’t hear me, didn’t notice, yet I was close enough to see. A white hair in the pile on her head was sticking out, out of place and I thought about touching, and I wouldn’t have been the first person to think like that. I put my hand out, reached towards the hair, and she was standing, standing up straight, with posture. She was looking at Charlie’s uniform, the way it hung, and she hadn’t noticed, hadn’t felt my breath, which must’ve been close enough to feel. But I had it, her hair between my thumb and forefinger, I was waiting for her to move.
‘Do you mind the greys?’ Kate said.
My hands were in her hair, I mean, her hair was over my fingers and later, sometime later, I found one and kept it until I let it go, and Abbott doesn’t want to be late on Charlie’s first day back at school. I heard him from the other side of the door this morning and I thought about getting out of bed to tell them, now it’s September, the geese.
But they weren’t thinking.
About geese, about grief, and Abbott wants me to stay, to rest, and doesn’t want to think about geese. Instead, the first day back, and Charlie’s going to write neatly this year, that’s what she said, starting from today, she’ll be neat, and especially if she gets a new book, and if nothing gets in through the window, it must come through the door.
Kate says. I agree. We haven’t always agreed, but now we do. It’s easier that way, when everyone’s sharing such a small space, I mean.
And here, look, a long hair woven into the sheet. Auburn, I’d say.
Auburn.
It isn’t ours. It isn’t Kate’s or mine. And now, pull on it, until it’s free and I’m holding it like this. I’m holding it up so one end’s loose and see, look carefully, this hair, so light it’s found wind where there isn’t wind. It isn’t mine, almost a fathom too long and hangs in a curve, so can’t be Kate’s.
And didn�
�t I say?
Didn’t I think, at least, that it wouldn’t be long until Lynn made it into our bed? And now here, at last, a thread of evidence, the hair, the auburn hair.
‘Have you always had yours short?’ Kate said.
I took the scissors from the drawer in Papa’s shed. Three hot days in April and I’d been watching the sweat on his neck bead into real drops, the way of rain. I waited until Papa had gone, and I got the scissors. I didn’t think, I tried not to, and took hold of my hair, pulled on it until it was straight, and chopped. I chopped until my neck was bare like his, completely bare. I took a little leap. And then I waited. In my blue dress, and I liked it short. My hair too. I already liked it short, short, short and I liked my neck, the skin on my neck where hair had been and wasn’t. It was the change I liked. I stroked my neck and waited until Papa came back, and when he did he stood. He propped his spade against the shed and called me over to him, although he didn’t say a word, just called with his huge hands, and I walked over, my blue dress up above my knees and when I got to him I leant my head into his waist and he tousled my hair. He wasn’t rough. He was more like the way boys touch, when they touch, and it’d been a good thing, I already felt it, then knew for sure when he stepped back, his hands on his hips and said, ‘your mama would’ve approved.’
‘So have you?’ she said, ‘Always had yours short?’
‘Always,’ I said.
Although this hair. It isn’t Kate’s hair, or mine. This is auburn. Look at its length, the way it hangs in a curl as though it has memory and Papa said, I’m sure he said, grey or black, black or grey, hairs were dead anyway. But that only made it worse, the rhyme. It only stopped us pretending, left us getting used to change, and this hair, I’ll only be able to lose it if I want it, but I don’t want it, not this one. It could be auburn, or sorrel, and Abbott probably lost his fingers in it, in here, asked her if he could pull it down, her auburn tower, if he could look inside and find whatever plenty he needed, he probably asked, he’s always been so polite, he wouldn’t lose his hands, let them loose, without asking first and he wouldn’t be used to cascading locks, or anything falling, and come to think of it cutting my hair off was radical. But radical’s called endearing when you’re small, and especially when you’re wearing a blue dress. I wouldn’t want endearing in my collection. Endear, oh dear, my dear, dear God, dear old Joan. No. Deer though, a completely different thing, with its sorrel coat and vanishing as soon, but where’s the hair, I’m looking around and I can’t see it, against our sheets, white, and the hair is auburn, or sorrel, fathom-long with a curve, as if it had memory, this hair.