by Lucy Wood
‘I wanted to get up to the point,’ her father said.
They walked uphill some more.
‘I would have had it off him if it had been cheaper,’ the man said.
‘You wouldn’t want it with a dent like that in it.’
‘He should pay someone to take it off his hands.’
‘What happened to the horse?’ she asked.
‘I thought he got the dent sorted, actually,’ the man said.
‘He did a bit. But you can see it in the paint. It’s right there in the paint.’
‘Was the horse OK?’ she asked.
After a while her father said, ‘I don’t know.’ He checked his watch. ‘Shit, we’ve only got a few minutes.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Maybe we should just stop here.’
‘For what?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know if we’ll have time to get up there.’
‘It’ll be just the same from here,’ the man said. He had already sat down, and then after a moment he lay back with his hands behind his head.
‘I wanted to get right up this bit,’ her father said. ‘To the top.’ They looked around for a patch without too many rocks. Her father kept looking up and he didn’t sit down. The man closed his eyes and started to snore, quietly and with a faint whistle. There was only that noise now in the whole night. She didn’t want to be here next to it; it seemed a shame to be next to the only thing making a noise in the whole night.
Her father looked down at him and then he looked up the slope. He gestured for her to follow and he turned quickly and scrambled to the top. At the top, there was a pointed finger of granite and then a flatter piece. They lay side by side on that and stared at the stars which had been there the whole time. They were like faraway torches. ‘Any minute now,’ her father said. ‘This is good, eh?’
She nodded. She hoped her father wouldn’t go to sleep. He closed his eyes for a moment and she felt as if she had been left alone and the house and her bedroom and her father were all somewhere very far away. Then he opened his eyes again. It was funny how he had managed to find his way here when sometimes he banged around the house because he couldn’t find the scissors or the bin bags.
She was cold. She moved a bit closer to her father. His elbows stuck out behind his head.
‘At school,’ she said, ‘we did a project.’ After a moment she said, ‘The stars aren’t really there, are they?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Because they’re not really there. Because they’re in the past.’
‘Yeah. Light takes so long to get to us. So those stars we’re seeing are the stars from years ago.’
She nodded. ‘What are they like now?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe the same.’
He was thin. And his hair and his shoulders. They were silent for a while. ‘Orion,’ he said. ‘The dipper. Cassiopeia.’
She looked at him.
‘Constellations,’ he said. ‘The patterns. Leo. Canis Major. Draco.’
‘Leo, Canis Major, Draco,’ she said.
He pointed them out to her. The names of the stars seemed to come out of him like some old, half-forgotten language. She looked at him, and had the feeling that something was continuing on without her. They traced the shapes in the air. The stars and the shapes were scattered across the sky and she echoed the names as he said them.
‘There was one,’ he said. ‘I think I just saw one.’
She looked and then saw two stars fall out of the sky, trailing a brief silver thread behind them. Then there were more stars moving, dropping like spiders. They faded slowly into the black sky like ink being absorbed into paper. It was as if the whole sky was dropping stitches, unravelling itself ready to fall and drape over them like a blanket. And she lay there, looking up, and as each star fell closer towards them she thought: that was the best one so far, no, maybe that one,
no, that one
that one
that one.
Some Drolls Are Like That and Some Are Like This
Mid-September and the geese were back. The droll teller saw them as he wandered slowly down the street, following the same small route he took every morning. They flew in over the cliffs, calling to each other, their voices like harmonicas. The droll teller was hundreds of years old and he had seen the geese fly back hundreds of times, but every year he stopped and watched them, thinking about the distance they had travelled to get back to this same place, thinking about the Arctic tundra nestled in their feathers, the strange map they carried with them in their bones and feathers. Except this year he couldn’t remember the word for tundra, and he couldn’t connect the geese to the Arctic – he had no idea why, when he thought of one, he thought of the other. He also had the vague, unsettled feeling that they were arriving early, although he couldn’t remember when they usually arrived, and so after a while he just watched them and didn’t think much at all.
He saw Harry coming along the street towards him. Harry was up and around early, which meant he’d probably locked himself out and spent another night at the harbour looking at boats. If he was lucky someone would have given him a sandwich, thrown him a blanket.
‘Locked out again?’ the droll teller asked. He had never owned any keys. He’d found a buckled tent a few years ago and slept in that, which was better than sheds and benches, no one to rage at you as soon as you’d got settled.
‘The key’s gone,’ Harry said. He always stood too close, so that you could smell his sour clothes. The services had finally given him a flat to live in. It had a TV and a hotplate. He wasn’t allowed guests.
‘You’ll have to get Jack to pop the window. If you can find him.’
Harry glanced back down the way he’d come, then leaned right in. ‘Those people there,’ he said, pointing.
The droll teller looked. There was a man and a woman standing at the end of the street. They were in their fifties and he thought they were probably tourists. They were looking around as if they were waiting for someone. The droll teller always used to be able to recognise tourists, because he’d known everyone that lived in the area. Hundreds of years of people and they’d all greeted him by name. He had been the centre, although he wasn’t sure of what, exactly. His name, his name – no one had said it in a long time and he grasped at it, came up with nothing.
‘So what?’ he asked. Harry was getting more and more suspicious and probably thought those people had stolen his keys. He said there were hidden cameras spying on him in the flat. The droll teller had known Harry for years, could recall him as a boy, in fact, all bones, always hungry. They used to borrow Jack’s boat and go out night fishing. There were a few images that sometimes flashed up: a body tangled in a net; closing a man’s eyes softly; drying their clothes around a fire; a torch cutting through trees; rain on an old car roof; rifling through straw; doors closing hard; bolts drawn. But, come to think of it, he wasn’t sure that he’d done all of that with Harry. He’d known a lot more people than just Harry – people came and went; it was hard to tell one from the other. Faces became other faces. And they had all gone the same way: forgetting, becoming ill, weak, boring, giving up the struggle, while the droll teller had stayed more or less the same, watching it all, getting left behind. Except maybe now it was different, maybe now it was his turn to go through all that.
‘I heard Meg’s got hold of some good stuff,’ Harry said. ‘Crates. She needs to shift it quickly.’
‘Well?’ the droll teller asked. ‘What are you telling me about it for?’ He felt his temper flare up, but not much; it was mostly embers now. He wanted to go and see where there might be food. Hoban had said he could go round to his workshop and watch TV later, his favourite programme was on and Hoban often had slices of pizza, the kind with meat and pineapple. He was good for waiting around with, passing time.
‘Those people there,’ Harry said. ‘They’re waiting for that story tour.’
‘They’ll be waiting a long time.’
Harry nodded. ‘They’l
l be waiting a long time, I should think.’
‘A long time.’ And then after Hoban’s, the droll teller thought, what would he do after that?
‘Season’s over. The tosspot that runs it has gone on holiday.’ Harry looked at the droll teller, his eyes almost closed with old sun-glare.
‘It’s crap,’ the droll teller said. He’d watched that man a few times, smiling with his sharp mouth, wearing a green top hat, checking his watch as he talked.
‘It’s a tenner each person,’ Harry told him. ‘Cash in hand.’
The droll teller looked up.
‘It’s all the old stories,’ Harry said. He started taking his shirt off. ‘Wear my shirt, it’s cleaner.’
The droll teller looked down at his top. Someone had given it to him. It smelled like last night’s chips and the sleeves were unravelling. Underneath, his skin had dried out and hardened so that it was almost like wood. There were grainy cracks and furrows etched all over it. The tendons in his arms and hands had tensed and thickened like branches; they had been like that for as long as he could remember. A tattoo on his forearm had worn down to pale smudges – it could have been a mermaid, or someone’s name. There were only a few faint marks left.
‘All the old stories?’ he said.
‘It’ll be piss easy,’ Harry told him. ‘We’ll go to Meg’s after.’ He held out his shirt and shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. He’d already forgotten how to be surrounded by weather. His skin was getting thin and pale – no more brambles and barbed wire.
Down the street, the man started to pace and check his watch.
It had been a long time since the droll teller had thought about any of the old stories, even longer since he’d told them. ‘Give it here then,’ he said, putting on the shirt. Meg got hold of good quality. He could already taste it; a few bottles would pass the time.
‘An hour,’ Harry called after him.
What was the point in an hour? The droll teller used to tell stories that lasted weeks, spinning them out night after night, weaving everything together. They used to beg him to keep going; the pub would stay open till morning. They would give him a warm bed and more food than he could eat.
The couple watched as he got closer. He caught a glimpse of himself in a shop window, knew there was something of the scarecrow about him. It had been a long time since he’d been to that woman’s, the one who let him use the bath. She had kind hands and soap that smelled like summer. He’d let himself slip more and more, feeling like something was coming to end, that finally, somehow, things were ending. He tried to smooth his matted hair and beard as he walked over the cobbles.
Tourists usually looked bored, as if they felt they had to do things and see things but were just waiting for them to be over. The two people at the bottom of the road looked desperate for the tour to start. He was almost half an hour late – anyone else would have left by now, secretly glad they could browse round gift shops instead. The woman got up from the wall as he approached.
‘You here for the tour?’ the droll teller asked them.
The woman nodded. She looked relieved. ‘We didn’t know if it was still going ahead,’ she said. ‘With us the only ones.’
Her hair was dyed red-brown like conkers. She smiled at the droll teller and a web of lines appeared around her eyes. The man’s hair was solid and black and his shirt was tight across his belly. They looked as if they had just had a good, big breakfast, lots of butter and coffee. The woman reached into her bag and the man reached into his pocket. They both brought out wallets at the same time.
‘It’s still on,’ the droll teller said.
‘Do you want this now?’ the man asked, holding out money. ‘Or at the end?’
‘I’ll take it now.’ The droll teller folded it carefully into his pocket then pushed it in deep. He’d had a note whipped out by the wind once.
‘Can we get a receipt for that?’ the man asked.
‘I don’t think we need a receipt,’ the woman said.
‘Is it possible?’ he asked.
‘I don’t do receipts,’ the droll teller told them. He was sick of this already.
‘Forget it,’ the woman said. ‘We don’t need one.’ She shook her head slightly at her husband, then brushed something off the sleeve of her coat. They were both dressed up smartly, strong perfume mixing with harbour smells. The man’s shoes were long and shiny as cars. They didn’t look comfortable, unlike the droll teller’s boots, which were worn in just right from the miles and miles of walking he used to do. He’d found them on a beach one winter.
He turned right down an alley and the couple followed him. Rows of whitewashed cottages backed on to each other; there was only a narrow gap. A few bins were out. Most of the cottages were empty year round, except for a few weeks in summer. He’d squatted in a couple of them, found them cold and stale. He could see the blue flames of a gas heater in one window. He’d always been drawn to hearths and fires. They used to keep the fire going all night at the pubs and houses he visited, if the story he told was good enough. They could get through a whole tree. He’d had his own camping stove once but someone had stolen it. There was no point looking for another one now. His boots creaked like gates. He walked slowly and now and again he would let out a long breath through his nose which whistled quietly, like a breeze through a gate.
‘We’re going to end up at the mines, aren’t we?’ the woman asked. ‘For the last story?’
‘The last story,’ the droll teller said. A black cat jumped up on a wall, its body fluid, like water gathering back into water. Black cats. He automatically looked at his palms, at the lines printed there, but there seemed to be too many. There were thousands of lines, crossed and re-crossed over each other.
‘The tin mines. I think it said on the poster.’
There was a story up there somewhere. ‘Beware you who go to the mines at night …’ the droll teller said slowly. ‘Who said that?’
The couple glanced at each other.
‘I don’t know,’ the man said.
‘More words come after,’ the droll teller said. He could see the words but he couldn’t put them in any order. He stopped trying. The music from his favourite TV programme started playing in his head. When life is hard, I know that you’ll be near me. He led them through the network of alleys.
After a while the woman said, ‘This is a lovely area.’
‘We had to come down anyway,’ the man told him. ‘We thought we’d stay on a few extra days.’
‘No point hurrying back to an empty house,’ the woman said. She laughed and it echoed off brick.
Why were they telling him all this? He hated it when people talked about this place when they knew nothing about it. Did they sit hour after hour watching drenched palm trees in the churchyard? Did they know how to avoid the kicks and the sticks if they strayed into the wrong area? Did they know the difference between how the streets sounded now, with all the traffic and the building work, and how they had sounded before? Did they have to force themselves to get up, day after day after day here?
‘Day after day,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Day after day after day.’
September always had clear light and big, mackerel skies. The droll teller could smell cold, wet clothes from a washing line, and inside a house, someone was calling, plates were clattering, cupboards slamming. He had no idea where they were, needed to get his bearings. It was happening more and more. He wondered how far they were from the main square. He saw a set of steps leading down to a basement. They reminded him of something – what was it? He stopped. They all stopped and looked at the steps. There was a story associated with those steps, he was sure of it, some kind of ghost in this alley.
‘See those steps?’ he asked. ‘A hundred years ago, on a dark and stormy night, there was a murder there.’ He thought about the details. They would want it short and easy, they would want a storm. ‘A woman, Jane Lyons, had been cheating on her husband. Whenever she could, she would sneak through
the streets to that house there and meet with her lover.’ It was coming back to him now. ‘Her husband became suspicious. He was a violent man, a drunk, and one night after she left the house, he hid and followed her. He confronted her. There was an argument and he threw her down the steps and she died there, at the bottom.’ The couple looked down at the spot, half expecting blood. ‘And to this day, people swear they still see Jane Lyons hobbling around, her back broken, searching for her lost lover.’
Even as he was finishing, the droll teller realised that he’d used a plot from a soap he’d watched at Hoban’s a few weeks ago. A husband had discovered his wife’s affair and killed her by pushing her down some stairs. It had been a good episode. Hoban’s chair had cracked when he’d leaned back on it. He’d fallen asleep and when he’d woken up there was a coat over him.
He looked down at the steps, shook his head, muttered something about roofs, or shoes. The shoes were important: he could see a shoe snagged on a hawthorn bush somewhere; he could see a tree with ribbons tied on it, small yellow leaves, but the right story wouldn’t come, the parts wouldn’t join up. So, he had let the stories slip away. They weren’t buried anywhere. He thought they might have been buried somewhere. He realised now why the world had become flat and empty. Things were ending. He felt, what did he feel? Scattered perhaps, stretched thinner, relieved.
They went out of the alley. The droll teller picked at his fingernails, which had a layer of something growing under them. It was moss, or maybe algae, wet and dark green. He’d had it under his nails for about fifty years but he was sure it was getting worse. He tried to dig it out but it stayed fixed.
‘Isn’t this where we just came from?’ the man asked.
The droll teller looked around. He’d taken them back past the first meeting point. The harbour wall was in front of them, a steam boat on the horizon. ‘This is the route,’ he said.
The man and the woman glanced at each other once, shrugged. They weren’t holding hands. They didn’t walk next to each other; they left a gap, as if they were making room for someone else. The droll teller used to be able to see exactly who the lost person was, standing in the empty spaces people left for them. This time he hardly noticed.