by Guy Burt
I shake my head, smile. It’s too late for that. I already understand her.
Somehow, through the painting, and through the remembering, I have brought them back inside me. It was never Altesa that was hollow. I have done enough. I can do something else, now.
I have no idea what it will be.
In getting them back, I have lost something. I’ve filled my life with Jamie and Anna without realizing, and now that the realization has come and it’s all over, I have nothing left to paint. There’s nothing else that will fill that space. I will have to start all over again; and I’m fifty years old, and everything in me says it’s too late to make new beginnings.
I should be scared. I’m not. If anything, what I feel is – exhilaration.
In the dry riverbed, the rifle shells will bake in the sun, and the soft red dust will blow over them, and the lizards will skitter past. And when the summer ends and the rains come down from the hills, the river will fill and they will be swept down the channel of the river and out into the sea. Everything will be gone.
Above me, the dandelion clock hangs, patient, waiting. Across its surface is the past, laid out like a landscape in which I could lose myself for ever; but there are other landscapes through which to make a way.
I turn, and walk away from the chapel up the valley, towards the road that leads into the hills.
I don’t know where I’m going.
There are crickets in the bushes by the track, and the smell of thyme from the roadsides. The late spring sunshine is warm on my face as I walk. Above me, the pigeons are starting to fly back from the distant trees to which they’ve scattered.
The past is mine again, and I don’t want it any more. I feel like laughing, or shouting, or singing.
Mad Alex, a faint voice grins, and I grin back.
I gave them what I could, and it’s enough. I am whole. The valley is bright and warm as I walk away from it into the hills.
I feel alive.
THE END
About the Author
Guy Burt wrote his first novel, After the Hole, when he was still at school, and his second, Sophie, soon afterwards. After gaining a first in English at Oxford, he taught for three years at Eton. He now lives in London, where he is working both on a new novel and on several drama commissions. His first play for television, The Visitor, was shown on Channel 4 in 1999.
Also by Guy Burt
AFTER THE HOLE
SOPHIE
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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First published in Great Britain by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Guy Burt 1999
Guy Burt has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446421482
ISBN 9780552998246
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