by Robert Power
SPLINTERED
The door was open, swinging on its hinges at the will of the wind. The rain had dampened the carpet in the hallway and there were lights on. In a room somewhere towards the back of the house, a radio played. It sounded like drama. At least the voices we could hear sounded like they were performing, acting, not being real or now. It was dark, but the porch light shone on the broken glass on the step. I could hear the cars on the road on the hill behind the house. The tyres in the rain, turning at the bend. In a gust, the wind caught the door, slamming it closed. The remaining glass in the frame crashed to the ground. You bent down and started to pick up the pieces, the long slivers of broken glass. You placed them in your palm like small birds, like rare fragments. The rain came down harder but we stayed on the step, surveying the scene. You with glass balanced on your palm, me with the door keys dangling from my fingers. It was then we heard the crash, looked up to the road, past the house and the sound of the radio.
The little boy, we read in the paper the next morning, after we cleared up the mess, had been hit by the truck on the curve of the road. The photo, on the front page, with our house in the distance.
TAKE ME FOR A WALK
Walking by the canal. Brambles hedging the lane. A nightingale for a rose as I prick my finger on the dogweed thorn. Grasping a thistle to remind me of my skin. I kneel and listen to the buzz of insects underground. A dog barks on the playing field, somewhere between the goal posts, licking the lime of the penalty spot. The barge glides by as the eel snakes its way through the rushes deep down and the blue-green oil ripples on the surface. Some red and some turquoise, shimmering in the watery sun like old paint. One hand bleeds, the other stings.
PRUNING
The matter of the garden proved decisive.
‘How,’ said his wife’s barrister to the judge, ‘could you even consider removing the restraining order when he wreaked such carnage in his own garden? The psychiatrist’s report stated that the desecration, nay, the decimation of the garden was tantamount to murderous intent. It was indicative of the psychotic mind of a man capable of murdering his wife, the mother of the children he says he misses so badly.’
That autumn afternoon, two months earlier, he had tackled the long-neglected hedges and borders, lawns and fruit trees. His estranged wife and sons were at the coast and he decided to tidy up the garden as a homecoming surprise. It was to be a sign of his unswerving devotion to their wellbeing. He hacked and chopped, raked and swept. He sweated and ached and was happily proud of his work.
‘Horrified,’ said her barrister, ‘she was horrified at the destruction, the abuse, the cynical violation.’
SHINY BEADS
The glass beads I placed in your hand at Christmas. Pebbles from the beach, from the shoreline where the starfish stretch towards the winter’s sky. Dolphins under an illuminated pier, barnacles encrusted as diamonds to the sides of the trawler, tracing the clouds as they race overhead. The glass beads, sweets you might suck on, find a home in a vase. Spangles, acid drops. Each one on your tongue, the hues and colours a reminder of a day in the street, a tinkering gift, a passing from one to the other. Swallow them now, encircle them, enfolding, use them up.
THE WEDDING RINGS
On Friday we bought our wedding rings. We drove to town. It was windy, but we rolled down the soft-top. The blue and white headscarf kept the hair from your face and you looked as fresh and youthful as I’d ever remembered. You had on that crimsonred lipstick that I bought you on your birthday. Remember, you kissed the mirror? We parked in the market square and, after the jeweller’s, we sat by the green and talked of our love and passion and the children we’d have. I’ve still got the ring you bought me. And the mark of your lips is still there on my mirror. And I still remember that day we drove into town to buy us the rings.
MOONLIGHT STROLL
Lying in the gutter can offer a glimpse at the stars, so thought I on my way home from the theatre. I tucked the ticket stub in the band of my hat (as a memento) and ran the willow cane against the whitewashed picket fence. I took a bite from the cream cake I had saved from the interval. The cane clattered against the slats of the fence, alerting dogs and cats of the neighbourhood of my approach. I reached into my waistcoat pocket and felt the sharp edges of the heartmaker’s card, the embossed and italicised letters tingling through my fingertips.
SAFE UNDER THE BRIDGE
Under the arch of the bridge, where the lamplight sprawls on the puddles. My back against the cold brickwork of the wall. Breath condensing and pluming in the sharp night air. The swish of a car and the sweep of the lights turning the corner, heading off up the hill and away. The brush of your hair on my cheek. A kiss on the lips and the soft expectancy of love. Whisper to me, before the signals switch and the train rumbles and clatters overhead.
FORGIVENESS
Walking meditation. The third day of the silent retreat, in the glorious grounds of the Georgian house that was once a nunnery. Engulfed by the wild weather of a Devon summer. Lush and green. Wet and cold underfoot. I’ve got the measure of it. Or so I think. This slow-motion walking. Barefooted. Placing heel and ball and toe. Meticulously. Deliberately. With time standing still. Walking not being the thing. Not a means to an end. With no particular journey in mind. Yet my mind is still. Or so I think. Doing well. Whatever well might be. Or so I think. Forewarned. By one who’d been this way before. Beware the noise of silence. Listen out for the treetops above, the earth below. Not the birds that sing, nor the bees that buzz, neither sworn to hush. Rather, what’s not said. Not uttered in this realm of silence.
And yes, it comes. On this third day. The day after the night we stood in the circle in honour of our lineages. Yes, it comes. Through the silence. I hear her without hearing. See her without seeing. The wordless whisper from the girl on the wind. The one who visited me in my childhood dream. Who stood in the back garden of my youth. A regular visitation. A recurring image. Lightning illuminating her long blond curls. This day, in the garden, where nuns had trod, had prayed, she is there on the lawn, in the uppermost branches of the ancient oak. Not accusing. Though accusation would be more than fair. Yet she quietly, calmly, announces her presence. Befitting the causes and conditions. And I am overawed by her sudden arrival. An unborn ancestor. And I am overwhelmed by the weight of the knowledge of my sin. I am stopped in my tracks. Slower than slow motion. My body crumbles. A marionette. Swooning. Toppling. Weak at the knees. Strings cut. Face-down on the earth.
Some days later, when the silence is lifted, I talk to the wise woman, the only one I trust to tell.
‘Where do you feel it?’
‘Here in my belly. Swelling. Swollen.’
‘… …’
‘So sorry!’ … sobbing, head in hands … ‘so sorry!’
Then comes relief. A feeling that is forgiveness. That was never mine to give. Never sought after. From ancestors. From lineage. From something between the leaves on the branch. The twigs laid reverently on the ground.
HEAD INJURY
‘Do you remember that time at the pinball exhibition?’ I said to her, as the clouds raced over the moon, as the rain stopped and the grass stretched. I wanted to retell the story. As if the act itself might rekindle something of love. ‘When I fell and hit my head on the stone?’
It was the story in the paper that prompted the memory. Headlined on the front page, the account of the two women in Baghdad, adulteresses, bedecked in white gowns, sacks over their heads, led outside the city walls to meet the shower of rocks and stones from the gathered crowd. To be finished off by one of the Republican Guard, dispensing a concrete slab to the skull.
She listened as she watched the peekaboo tide of the moon. Pulling, pulling. Drawing in, drawing up. Sucking and ebbing. I lit a cigarette, phrasing my words.
‘When I hit the ground I could smell my skull, the bones of my skull, and the coldness of the tarmacked ground. And then I had the most overwhelming desire to sleep. An enticement to enjoy the d
eepest of sleeps. In spite of the taste of blood. In spite of the ridiculousness of the situation: lying in a car park, my hands jammed in my pockets by the skateboarding gloves. Death by velcro. Very evocative. It was in Pimlico, outside the pinball machine exhibition at the Agricultural Hall. Very noteworthy. Still, I’m here to tell the story,’ I said to her as she sipped her drink, hoping that I mightn’t be too verbose. ‘I was being sucked down this tunnel, very fast. I could feel the propulsion, the sense of being pulled. And there, at the end of the tunnel, at the opening, was the brightest and clearest of blue skies. I know my eyes were rolling, because you told me later, but the afternoon was dull and overcast. I’d thought that one through. Not a hint of blue in the sky that day. And in the bottom left-hand corner was a glittering golden mass, choral music and singing. Hosts of angels, I would say, but you know me. And then I had the choice: go further, enter the land beyond the tunnel, or retreat. A split second to decide. And, well, you know the rest. I sat bolt upright, shouted out, the blood running down the side of my face. There I was, back in the car park in Pimlico, the paramedics in attendance and you by my side. And so much has happened since then. Ever since that “head injury”. A classic code on any health status questionnaire.’
But despite it all, we sit on this terrace, smoking cigarettes, watching the moon float by.
And there, across the ocean, the two women are left under the piles of rocks waiting for the birds to pick through their shrouds, to pluck out their eyes. I suppose their journey down the tunnel was somewhat more direct. More one-way, destination determined.
DRESS REHEARSAL
‘Okay. A cliché, but it’s not a dress rehearsal,’ said she. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Life,’ she replied. ‘This one and only,’ she said. ‘Now I’m forty?’ I said. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Chapters in life,’ I said. ‘Different phases,’ she agreed. ‘There’s one thing you can be certain of,’ I said. ‘What’s that?’ she asked. ‘The not knowing what’s round the corner,’ I answered. ‘Precisely,’ she agreed. ‘All the more reason,’ I said, ‘to grab it by the throat.’ ‘Stick it in the day,’ she said. ‘No point having one foot in the past, the other in the future and pissing on the present. All that staring into space,’ I said. ‘Agonising,’ she said. ‘All that energy,’ I said. ‘Inertia,’ she said. ‘Cup of tea?’ I said. ‘Sure,’ she said. And off we walked.
DISCARDED FLOWERS
Is this where you waited? By the shrubbery, in the furthest corner of the garden. Is this where you said it? Those whispered words of love and kindness that were composed for me. Is this where you cried them? Those tears of the heart that froze the dew and saddened the dawn. Is this where you kept it? In the locket that hung round your neck on a filigree chain. That I tore from your throat and threw through the air; that rippled the lake and frightened the swans and sank without trace in the deep dark waters.
PEACH TREE
I took my love the stone of a peach and dried it in the sun. The next morning, a peacock on the beach, a flame in the tree, I awoke. On the terrace, facing the sea, listening for the lapping waves, I held it, my love, in my hand, clasped. Its hard wrinkled surface dug into the flesh of my palm. I wanted to feel it, my love, I wanted to plant it somewhere, to give it a chance. It felt so dead and dry. I held it to my ear, but there was nothing to listen to.
SILENT RETREAT ECHOES
In silence, yet in tune. One moment at a time.
The orange moment [elemental]
The thick grass moment [tears from a ravine, a crevice]
The thistle moment [collapsing to the ground]
The horse chestnut moment [time stood still in the wind]
The dog moment [sense of oneness]
The daisy moment [ancestral emblem]
The hummingbird moment [the heart singing]
The wood moment [when two twigs appeared]
The tree moment [clinging to the branch]
The blue moment [time slows down, thick pigment, like paint, like earth]
The water moment [deep down to a clear crystal pool]
All against the common grain. Where words themselves are surpassed, whether spoken, written, conjured or conjoined.
CRICKET ON THE RADIO
The heartmaker sat on his stool in the middle of the room. The new hearts he had made that morning hung from wooden pegs on the line by the window. By his side was the rich red clay that the griffin had brought from the riverbank. He had to work fast before the clay dried out, but there was a pace and peace to his manner and a calmness in the air around. The light bulb shone above where he sat, lighting up the aquamarine and yellow painted walls. Outside, the street was busy with people carrying their wares and livestock to the market.
Is this where I should be? I thought, as I peered through the crack in the door.
They always come in that way, furtively. As if the mistake was all theirs. Another wrong turn, another mistaken identity. He didn’t turn, but carried on busying himself with the task at hand. This shaping. Perched on his stool, he continued as he always did, seemingly (at least to me, the visitor at the door) oblivious to the lift of the latch and the creak of the hinge. He had intended to stop after he had shaped and hung this one up to dry, this last heart of the afternoon. He was thirsty and wanted a cup of something: lemon barley or orange squash, and maybe a chocolate biscuit or two. The sun had gone down a while back and he could hear the clatter and wheeling of the market traders pushing their stalls along the cobbled street outside the small window of his workroom.
So that’s how I first glimpsed him, hard at work and concentrating. As I popped my head around the door, one foot still in the street, I pushed the door slightly ajar, just as the heartmaker turned on the wireless and tuned the cat’s whisker to the cricket scores.
PEBBLES & CHOCOLATE
He had always been drawn to the pebbles on the beach. Ever since he was tiny he had been fascinated by their shape and colour, their varying textures and feel. Even on the coldest mornings he would scour the water’s edge for any new stones that had been gifted by the sea. The hold by which the pebbles held him was mesmeric. And so it was, this November morn, when he offered his love the most treasured of his collection.
‘Will you stay with me forever, if I give you this shiny pebble, so smooth and round?’
‘Yes I will, forever I will stay with you,’ she replied, accepting the gift with a grace that defied her tender years.
And so it happened and so it was that they stayed together till death. And that’s how penguins find their mate, or so I was told on the wrapper of the chocolate bar that I ate after dinner.
STATUE IN THE GARDEN
He might start like that. Seem always to be there. In that position. Holding that pose. Seated in the dark, by the high window at the end of the long corridor that looks over the expansive garden down below. Paths and straight-edged lawns, neat flowerbeds and shrubberies, statues that ponder and fountains that cry real tears. But he doesn’t always stay there, even when all is dark and deepest silent. He sometimes stirs and walks along, past the closed doors and gilt-framed portraits. But you are right. Mostly he sits there and listens, listens out towards the garden. For he knows that is when he will hear her voice: on the spray from the fountain, the leaves of the copper beech as they reflect the moonlight. And then he will turn his head to the window and listen.
‘It was for love,’ she says. ‘It was for us,’ she whispers.
And he bows his head and cries softly: not enough to wash away his sadness, nor to drown out her voice. He bows his head, gently weeps and waits for morning.
CORNERED
Does this corner have a door, to open? Or a window for the fresh air to be let in? Am I sitting here now, still waiting for a tap on the glass? Not the rain, as it is, but a fingertip, a beckon. A tap, an answer. The wave of a hand on the other side of the glass, promising a movement, a recommencing. There being more to this than that.
THROUGH THE WINDOW
‘Life i
s here,’ she cried.
‘In the hills, the pastures, by the stream in the wood?’ he asked.
‘On this sofa, in this room,’ she replied.
‘Tomorrow, the summer, on that beach as the waves sting the sand,’ was his plea.
‘No, not then, not there.’ She wept her frustration at his missing the point. ‘Here, here, here,’ as the light, even as the light faded, ‘now, now.’
But even then, even as the light faded, his head was turned from her. He was looking out the open window, past the gardens, trees and houses. Towards that distant place, seeking out the mirage of the horizon.
A SCANDAL ON THE FARM
How was the cow to know? She only acted on instinct. Never come between mother and child, cow and calf. The farmer’s wife, impaled on the horn and bleeding to death. How was the cow to know, a mother herself, of the tragedy yet to come? As the farmer, all in black on the funeral morn, found the little pile of letters at the back of the bureau. Releasing them from the neat blue ribbon. The love letters from the baker in the village. How was the cow to know, as she suckled her young?
SHAPE
Show me the shape. Let me feel the continuity and line. A log crackles and breaks in the fire. The flame erupts and subsides; I look to the window, to the wind. So heavy this heart, it weighs me down in its fulsomeness. Show me the shape. Let me taste the wind as it flows between the trees on the hillside.