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by Gregory Norminton

  Gabriella’s ankle teeters as she turns. She has forgotten about the wine she meant to buy; she passes the pharmacy, with its photographs of bronzed flesh, and does not go in for the after-sun lotion that would have soothed her sunburnt neck. She hurries back to the apartment – to her lover, to his books and music. She will not forget this casual atrocity. For a fortnight at least, until a restaurant in Islington offers calf’s liver with Belgian frites, no meat will pass her lips.

  Singer

  Her larynx was removed when they found the tumour. The nurse couldn’t figure her out, you see, whereas I know her, I understand her needs. Are you sure I can’t fix you some coffee? Well I sing like an old crow but she listens to music radio. Sometimes, to cheer her up, I put on her old records. I can tell from the way she reacts that she’s very moved. Milk? Yes, we came up here twenty years ago, before it got so crowded. She was a famous woman and we did nothing to dispel the notion that we were sisters. Perhaps it’s a shame the old folk have been displaced by city people, but it makes things a lot easier for us, in terms of attitudes. Oh wait… No, fine. Just thirsty. I bought one of those baby intercoms but she insists on using the bell. I’m afraid that won’t be possible. She gets distressed with people, except for Dr Stern and myself. That? Oh it’s all forgotten. Forgotten and forgiven. We’re both still Christians in our way. It was a learning experience for the both of us. She made a good record in Europe and then a lot of bad ones. Maybe she wanted to get her heart broken one last time: just to see if she was capable of it. I think I can safely say now, this is her home. Yes: it looks like it’s going to rain. If you’re really set on driving back tonight… I think it’s the silence that gets to her most. When she has the strength to she writes me notes. She tells me she hears mice in the walls: the rustling of their paws, their high-pitched squealing. I tell her she imagines it, we bought this house together before she walked out, the walls were perfectly sound in all the years I lived alone. Well if there were mice I think I’d know about it. Did you see that fork lightning? We need it for the garden. Yes she does like the sound of rain. I believe she does. It’s strange how we never talked about such ordinary things. I’ll tell you, dear, the thing she’s most afraid of is showing her fear. She always was a proud woman, proud and brave. You can put that in your article. Did you know I trained as a nurse? I am a natural carer. I remember when I was a kid, my cat disappeared. I called her name for days until my father found her under the sumacs. He said it was a brave death. You must go snarling at the enemy, he said. It makes no difference, my brother replied, while I sat trying to soothe the hackles out of my dead cat’s fur. “Devotion” is a good word for it. It’s hard to be loved, dear. It’s good to be needed.

  The kingdom upstairs

  The day Lydia found out she was pregnant, a new neighbour moved in upstairs. Lydia and Tom were too preoccupied to notice.

  Coming back that evening with a bottle of cordial instead of champagne, Tom observed through the banisters that the light was on in the flat upstairs. Someone was in occupancy.

  It was the quiet that struck them. Their previous neighbour had caused them much grief.

  Tom came back down. His name’s Kevin he said. Their invitation to tea had been politely declined.

  So long as he’s a quiet loner said Lydia.

  The most they heard was the creaking, at night, of floorboards above their bedroom. It wasn’t pacing exactly: more the sound of shifting and pausing, of hesitation and decision.

  In the bedroom they installed a cot. Tom, sweating, considered the flat-pack instructions.

  I need a hex key he said. No harm in asking.

  Shadows had lengthened by the time he returned. You wouldn’t believe it he said. Thousands of figurines. The whole place covered. Dwarves under the bed, elves in the kitchen…

  Did you get the hex key asked Lydia.

  Tom went up a couple more times for small items: strong glue, a Stanley knife. He told Lydia what he’d seen, the tour he was offered among the model kingdoms. The fireplace was a cave of dragons. Goblins snickered under the kitchen units. Lydia concealed her irritation at the half-heartedness of his derision.

  Several nights in a row, Tom returned late from work. On the Friday his parents-in-law came to visit, bringing baby clothes. Supper was cold by the time Tom made his entrance. He had specks of paint on his fingernails.

  He’s got no family said Tom.

  You have.

  I only helped him paint some armour.

  She waited for Kevin to go out, hoping to study him through the spy-hole, but he moved fast and the most she ever caught was a glimpse of his bulk, a shaggy mane, his distant ascending profile.

  After the row, Tom was careful to come home on time. He ate and then set to assembling the changing table, the storage cupboard for toys.

  Lydia contemplated her bump. The little being in there. They had discovered in ultrasound the peaks and valleys, the bogs and hills in which it grew. She was a month off when Tom told her about the conference in Cardiff.

  Three whole nights?

  I have to go. It’s my department.

  Lying back to back on opposite edges of the bed, the cot in moonlight at its foot, they listened to the movements overhead.

  Tom set out for Cardiff while Lydia was at the neonatal class they were meant to attend together. A perfunctory note awaited her on the fridge door.

  She was alone when her waters broke. Tom’s mobile was switched off, as it had been for two days.

  Lydia telephoned her mother. It was all happening too quickly.

  Upstairs, the floorboards gave away barely a whisper.

  Intervention

  Amy, bored, with her pants sticking to her and her new skirt frowzy with sweat, looked out the window and saw pink elbows, shimmering bonnets, a pair of hands tapping a steering wheel. Dad was grumbling about speed cameras and bloody swindles and Mum turned in her seat with a tin of boiled sweets. Amy sucked and gauged how soon she could get away with moaning again. But the bottleneck released them and Amy recognised of a sudden the ash trees that lined the road, the dips and summits, each with its tarn of heat, and now they were on holiday, the open windows gulping air and Amy squealing at the whoosh in her head.

  “Granny is too much alone,” Mum said, “she will be glad to see us.”

  “Do you suppose she’ll have her batty friend with her?” said Dad, and he gave a sloping look that made Mum turn around with the Evian spray. Amy offered her face to the cooling mist and said that Mr Collins wasn’t batty, he was birdy. “He likes birds,” she explained, proud of her pun, and Dad said yes, especially old ones.

  But Mr Collins was not at the cottage as Granny received them with pliers in her hand and the straw hat wonky on her head. Dad brought the suitcases in and Mum said what are you pruning?

  “Not pruning,” said Granny.

  Amy ran into the garden to check on her cherry tree. Then she looked for the wigwam but it was not in its place. Granny heard her from the kitchen. “I’m sorry, dear. I was all on my own to set it up. Maybe your father could do it.”

  “But Daddy’s useless.”

  Normally it was Mr Collins who set up the wigwam. The wigwam was old and leathery and it smelled, but Amy liked to gather her things inside it and besides it had belonged to Mum when she was little.

  Dad sighed on the sofa and Amy went off angrily to sit in the grassy patch beside the tool shed. She sat for such a long time that seed heads left an imprint on her legs. Bored, despite having a ladybird poo in her hand, Amy got up and found Granny kneeling beside a wire cage at the bottom of the garden.

  “Did Mr Collins make it?”

  “No,” said Granny, and she pressed her lips together so that lines appeared on her face.

  “What’s it for?”

  Granny looked up and thought for a moment. “It’s for the songbirds.”

  “What songbirds?”

  “You’re too small to know, but this place used to be full of them.”<
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  Amy pulled at the elastic in her sock. “Can Mr Collins put up my wigwam tomorrow?”

  Granny bent down with her pliers to tie up some metal ends. “Forget about Mr Collins,” she said and twisted the metal ends with a sharp, angry tug.

  The next day Amy woke up in a room full of angled shadows. She listened for sounds of movement in the cottage and heard her father snoring. But she couldn’t hear Mum and this made her bold to get up.

  The downstairs curtains were closed but the ones in front of the terrace were moving in the breeze. Amy stepped outside, barefoot, and the grey sky she expected turned blue with cottony clouds. There were bumblebees and hoverflies and the grass felt wet underfoot. She was walking on the grass because of the voices coming from the bottom of the garden.

  Mum was there in her pyjamas. Granny was facing her, dressed in yesterday’s clothes with the hat still on her head and her hair spilling madly under its rim. “I’m not surprised he left,” Mum was shrieking. “How could you do this? How could you?”

  Granny shook her head, the lines hard about her mouth. Mum looked where her eyes had gone.

  “Don’t come here,” Mum said. “Stay there, darling.” But the sob choked in her voice only made Amy panic and she ignored the instruction. Mum rushed to stop her, to catch her in her arms, but it was too late to prevent her from seeing the cage, its open jaw, and the magpies lying, limp and broken, on the grass beside it.

  “It’s nothing, darling. Your grandmother hasn’t slept all night.”

  “Someone has to do something,” Granny said. “They kill all my little ones. They’re murderers.”

  The overnighters

  “It’s a question of space. It’s a question of, okay, we can’t keep everything. I know this goes against your instincts and your training. It goes against mine, trashing books, I don’t like it either. But put yourselves in my shoes for a minute. We don’t have the resources to keep what we have and accommodate future titles. It’s like the world, you know, people have to die to make room for new people. So it’s the same for us. It’s making room for the next generation.”

  “It’s the next generation we have in mind,” Lol said to Tony over a Skinny Latte. “Think of the Iroquois.”

  “The Iroquois didn’t use libraries.”

  “They asked what impact their actions would have in seven generations. Kastner doesn’t understand like legacy. He’s management, he’s about the bottom line.”

  “Look for a loophole,” said Geena. “That’s what lawyers do when the law’s fixed. You look for the loophole.”

  Tony and Lol and Geena read through Kastner’s letter. Their three heads – balding grey, dyed red, straightened black – met above the paper and their identity passes almost touched in the air. Geena was the first to move away. She picked up her Tazo® Chai and Lol watched her.

  “You found a loophole?”

  “No but I found a cheat.”

  “I’m not doing anything illegal,” said Tony.

  “What it is is, we got a way of preserving the collection. We don’t have to break the law. Jeez Tone, you’re so paranoid.”

  “I’m careful is all.”

  Geena put on her glasses. “What the basis is for trashing titles is how long a book has gone without a request. Anything that hasn’t been called up in five years is for landfill. Okay, so this is a dumb-ass way to evaluate the value of a book. But knowing the rules means knowing how to make them work for us.”

  Lol and Tony listened as Geena thought out their strategy. It would mean staying late. Lol didn’t mind about the nights as her kids were in college and she had no one home since Norm passed. Geena’s mom would be only too happy to look after Leticia.

  “Tony?”

  “I think it’s a crazy notion.”

  But Lol and Geena were already grinning at the prospect of their mission. Tony shook his head and went to buy another cup of Zen™.

  *

  Tony was walking in the park beside the river. It was a warm night. The air was spiced. Sprinklers and cicadas rhymed. He sighed like the one responsible adult and turned around.

  He found the library in darkness; let himself in with his staff key. He saw headlamps, like miners had just surged up from under ground. Lol and Geena were going through the shelves, picking up volumes and checking the borrowing slips. “This one’s never been taken out.” “This book’s waited since 2000.” Anything that was due for elimination got a date pencilled in: a new lease of life!

  Lol giggled. “This is, like, Geena’s List.”

  Tony got given a hand-torch and he took it to the small philosophy section. That night the books he saved included The Philosophy of Beekeeping by Merle Beckstein, Uncommon Moths of the Western Palaearctic, Quaker Quilts (14 illustrations, b&w) and Incantations of the Hopi Indians by Frances Blue Jay Wilson.

  They converged in the foyer at three am. “Well that’s a start,” Geena said. Tony wished his colleagues goodnight or good morning and left the building.

  He walked home beneath the stars.

  Thank Christ they hadn’t yet moved to the IT database. That would mean changing the call-up dates on computer. Geena was smart and Lol was sassy but neither of them would make a good hacker. Tony could, but that was for something entirely different, and he asn’t going to confess to any of that stuff anytime soon.

  Dormeue

  what is that tapping sound, i’m not imagining it, i’m certainly not dreaming, chance would be a fine thing, where is it coming from and why must i be alone to listen to it, i should hear nothing, i should fear nothing, like my relatives all curled up in sleep, whole months of it, oblivious to wind and rain, to the rime that coarsens the leaves, to that tapping sound, is it coming closer, is it something hungry crawling on its belly towards hot blood, i say hot, their hearts are barely beating while mine pounds in my chest, could it be that tapping sound is me, is it my heart, i’ve made the mistake before, like chasing your own tail, oh, if only we had stayed up there, in the hollow, holed up, but my kin are creatures of habit, they gathered the bark as usual, they gathered the grass as usual and the moss, what comforting industry before the great slumber, working up an appetite for it, i’m as hungry as the rest of them but the feast is not for me, i listen to them gorging on it, there’s nothing like six months of unconsciousness to dull the edge of terror, if at least they knew what i did for them, what a service i render, keeping vigil, listening out for danger, not that it can help much, they’re all so fat on sleep, even in summer when the flowers are gone and you’re lucky to have a grub to chew on they sink into a torpor, a snout will cast its shadow, the jaws close over a dream and you wake up in someone’s gullet, but enough of that, I must not think of that, though I will have to sooner or later, this sitting here is all very well and it’s warm enough if you don’t mind the occasional shiver but everything that lives must eat, it’s the LAW, i’m perishing here, the fat is melting off me, if only i could be like the rest of them, but i’ve run out of strategies, there aren’t enough sides of my body to lie on, i’ve never seen a sheep, so i convince myself that they need me, that this torment serves a purpose, for someone has to keep an ear twitching, complacent oafs, but they’re not to blame they’re just doing what comes naturally, what ought to come naturally, am i unnatural then, a false start and a dead end, who will want to breed with me come spring, i’ll be a wreck, all skin and bones, they won’t know what i did for them, they won’t have heard the tapping, it’s coming from outside, i can hear breathing, i can feel vibrations in the soil, i’m not alone in being hungry, there are no haws no sloes no nuts no berries, no point in staying put, i’ll only use up my store of fat, my supply of heartbeats, can it be worse than this, it will only last an instant, oh my kin, my companions, think of me when you come round, and do not mourn, not that you would, for i am gone to meet the great sleep that is the goal of all our slumbers and has the added kindness of being without dreams

  Wild things

  Mr Gillespie was
not a friend to wilderness. In its proper place, of course, it was all very nice, he had nothing against wilderness per se. But it had no place in a garden. Driving his wife home from the hospice, Mr Gillespie used to shake his head at gardens where the grass had grown to seed or trees sprawled and ivy crept up the walls of houses. Letting things go like that – allowing nettles to swamp a flowerbed, or ignoring the spread of goose-grass till it plucked at the heads of flowers and dragged them down to its level – were derelictions of neighbourly duty.