by Robert Power
CRACKS IN THE PAVEMENT
He had resolved to tell her the truth, to put a lid on the coffin of his secrets and to present it to her for cremation. He shaved, noticing that the hangdog expression had vanished from the reflection in the mirror. He tuned in the radio to a music station as he ironed the clean white shirt and pressed razor-sharp creases along the lines of his trousers. He dressed and whistled, contented in his resolve, sure that all would now settle and move forwards.
Shutting the door behind him, stepping into the street, he sensed something different. In the air. In the ground. Walking across the square he looked up and saw her standing on her balcony, tending a window box. She waved as he approached and she smiled. It was then that the earth shook and rumbled and the great chasm opened up in the square. The earth quaked and he and his secret were swallowed up, never to tell, never to be told.
THE RIGHT SIZE
It must fit. No worry, the time of day, the place, whether still on the move, a journey, or a sojourn. It must fit and it must work, function and enliven, invigorate and galvanise. It must give solace and preside, laud over. It must be comfortable and give comfort, allow for growth and for it itself to grow. It must be strong and make its presence known, like a grandfather clock, a strong and resolute beat. This is what I came to realise about my new heart, as time moved on: that it must fit and be befitting.
CHINA BLUE
Easing the shell from the beach she felt the wet sand suck back the emptiness. Lifting it to her lips, she whispered the secret of the South China Sea. Empty as a shadow of herself; something more had left and the shell remained. A circumflex. A seahorse marooned on the shore. To be claimed and nurtured and admired. A home to find a home. Back in the city, she placed the beautiful shell on the oval dinner plate, among the pebbles and marbles, glass beads and baubles. Sometime later, sometimes, she would hold the shell close to her ear, cupped in her hands. This would often be a cold winter’s day. Mostly dusk. Porcelain. Circumference. She would press her cheek against the icy windowpane. The snow and the roses. The fire and flames. Shadows licking the wall; she, listening to her shell from the deepest ocean. From the furthest quiet. Lip. Suffix. Air bubbles. Succulent. Enfolding. Vouchsafe. Appease. Undulation. Yield, enwrap. Self. Interior. Suffused. Pink. And as the day darkened, she would embrace the shell and hear the soft sound of reassurance, that her secret was safe and that her heart was healing.
FIRESIDE
We hold each other, lying by the fire. She looks into my eyes. Far aware, far beyond. At me, but into the distance. Looks at me and turns away. We drift together. Well practised, finely tuned. A brief complicity, before we rise from the floor and go our separate ways.
KITES ON PARLIAMENT HILL
Looking back into the sky, up the hill, I trace the tails of the kites that dance on the currents of the last of the sun of a winter’s day. I hand you a silver diamanté brooch.
‘Here, this is for you, from me.’
You pin it on your coat, without a word. And then, as I twine in the string, you are down the hill, standing by the pond. There is a heath between us, and no one passing by would connect us.
‘Here are some glass beads. The feather from a peacock. Steamed vegetables and a dish of tea. Here are the blood and skin I tore on the fence.’
I watch you at the water’s edge, the brooch flickering like an ember, an emblem of costume jewellery. Looking back to the ridge of the hill I see the kites loop-the-loop and tussle with the wind. Mine flutters and falters on the grass, catching breath before giving up the ghost. We are both partakers of this dusk, you observing the shards of light that splinter the surface of the pond, and me, wrestling with the breeze. While here between us, between the hill and the pond, are years that fall as dust, and a distance, at once immeasurable, that was once unthinkable.
THE COLOUR OF SIGNALS
At a railway station, a sadness of signals, red, illuminating an empty platform: empty except for one woman and the rain. Above, a window from a house comes lit, yellow and glass and pane, the shadow of a shout and the raised arm of a fist. Waiting for the last train, she notices the rain, the timetable (the cracked glass) and the yellow light from above that brightens her darkness, floodlights her solitude. But she’s oblivious to the internal world of the room (the sobs following the blows), aware mainly of the sadness of signals being red and the lack of trains.
In the room above, he hears the door slam. Like exploring a new lover, he runs his fingertips tentatively, tenderly, across the craters and mounds and bruises of his face. He crawls across the floor, pushing aside, like a swimmer, the broken shards of plate, the bits of food. He hauls himself up to the window. The cooling glass and the rivulets of rain outside comfort the stings from his face. He notices a smudge of blood by his eye, vying with the raindrops on the window he caresses. Below, on the platform, he spots a lone woman looking up, for hope, for succour. The rain beating through the night. A signal, raised like a broken arm. Like the old days.
OMIS, CROATIA
So this is the deal. If we get to the square by half past the hour (the same time that I asked you out to dinner twenty months ago) and the waiter has brought us a coffee, then I’ll ask you to marry me. I know I said I wouldn’t, that it’s not what I wanted, but I can change my mind, can’t I? The small bay at Mimica is sparkling in the morning sunshine as we set off in our hired car. How innocent you look in the passenger seat, so unaware of what might unfold (or what might not). The coast road is a torture of bends as we drive along the familiar route. After a while we turn inland and head up the hill towards Omis. It’s then we notice the strange smell in the air. A mile or so more and smoke begins to waft across the narrow road. Up ahead the traffic has slowed to a halt. The man in front is out of his car, waving his arms.
‘Forest fire,’ he yells, ‘the road’s blocked.’
I look at you, you smile.
‘An adventure,’ you say.
It’s not meant to be, I think.
Soon enough a police car arrives and we are directed along a small unmade road that winds back down the hill. Within a few minutes we come to a junction. There’s a sign to Omis, our destination.
‘Shall we?’ I say.
‘Why not?’ you reply.
We arrive in the town and park our car in the street in front of the square.
‘Let’s get a coffee,’ I say, beckoning for you to follow me along the little alleyway we know so well.
‘Stop a second. Stand just there,’ I say. ‘I want to take a photo.’
And you smile as I frame the picture: an unknowing but beautiful smile.
We find a table in the square and the waiter brings us our coffee. And, right on cue, the church bells chime the half-hour, the sun pours down from behind the clouds and the birds, I jest you not, begin to sing.
SWING
She’d got into certain habits since her husband died. One was eating sardines on toast for lunch. He could never abide the smell, let alone the taste. She’d also taken to sitting on the veranda in the late afternoon, sometimes for hours on end, enjoying the sights and sounds of the garden. Her husband had been such a busy man, always doing jobs around the house, helping out neighbours, spearheading community events. He was intolerant of those with less energy and verve than himself and especially disparaging of older people who took to napping and dozing. Even though he was dead and gone, she would sometimes apologise to him out loud, but less so of late. She was becoming her own solitary person. The widow. Quite recently, a couple with a young daughter of about five years of age had moved into the house next door. Today, the father was hanging a swing from a cherry tree. The little girl was whooping with delight, clapping her hands at the prospect of her very own swing in her garden. Unseen, unknown to them, the old lady watched from the attic bedroom as the scene unfolded and the swing was secured in place. The father lifted his daughter onto the seat and gently pushed her to and fro, the rhythmic sounds of the creaking ropes lulling the old lady’s
thoughts to a distant time. To sunny Sunday afternoons, to the smell of cut grass and the laughter of her own infant child. And to the blossom in a garden long since overgrown.
IN THE POST
At last the package came. The postman had left it on his doorstep, while he was out that morning. Turning the corner at the end of the lane, running the stones in his pocket through his fingers (as was his wont), he had that feeling in his bones. The sun had been shinning since dawn and he had spent the time walking by the riverbank, searching out a sprig of holly to decorate his mantelpiece. When he saw the parcel he was barely surprised, but his soul lit up. Indoors, he placed it on the kitchen table and cut the string with the knife he always kept in his waistcoat. And there, lifting the lid of the box and unravelling the black velvet wrapping, was his new heart. He pinned it to the lapel of his jacket and danced around the room, basking in new hope and the late morning sun that streamed through the stained-glass window.
‘It will be happiness now,’ he sang. ‘It will be light and love and black days will find their new home.’
He wound the clocks of the house and lit a candle in each room.
‘And the streets will be cobbled,’ he sang as he moved from room to room. ‘The fruit and the berries and the long sweet grass in the valley,’ as he turned on the gramophone and played a love song.
Every beat of his new heart was a reminder of the days laid before him. The sun set and as all the other villagers slept soundly in their dreams, he sang out loud.
‘Oh my new heart, my new love,’ he sang, to the sky and the fields and the days yet to come.
POETRY LIBRARY
The book you were reading was one of the Liverpool poets. Adrian Henri or Brian Patten, or so I think. But not the other one, the one with the long hair and the jolly lyrics. The poem on the page might even have been ‘Love Is’. That would have been right, if not too coincidental. Or if not Henri and ‘Love Is’, then perhaps Brian Patten’s ‘Sometimes It Happens’, with the ‘It’ happening to us at that singular moment in our lives. Anyhow, love was where we both knew we were heading. That Sunday afternoon, in winter, on the South Bank, near Waterloo Bridge, between the shelves of the Poetry Library. As I leant over your shoulder, read the words you were reading (which I no longer remember), then kissed you on the neck. For the very first time.
WALK IN THE PARK
I see him through my bedroom window. Walking in the park with his small cocker spaniel. Yes, I feel excited watching him as he meanders along the pathways, past the old conservatory and the rose garden. Is that wrong? Is it disrespectful to your memory? You have been gone these six years and, yes, I am settled, no longer raw and despondent. Playing cards, having lunch, afternoon tea, with those friends still alive. We who have survived the ravages of the sixties and are now well into our seventies. Comfortable with our homes, our pensions, the safety of our neighbourhoods and the company of those we have grown old with. And then I met him in the park. This man of a certain age. With his beautiful hands (aged, admittedly), long slender fingers and immaculately kept nails. That’s what I noticed first. His lovely fingernails. And his clothes. A knee-length greatcoat and a trilby hat, and cufflinks (silver with onyx stones). And, of course, his warm smile and gentle words.
‘Ah, another cocker spaniel!’
That was the first thing he said to me as we met by chance one Thursday afternoon. That brief encounter. I was heading to the post office before it closed and said something like, ‘Yes, they always find each other, must rush … the post office … before it closes.’ As if I needed to get away before something happened. As if some sense, something hidden away, deep inside me, made me rush off in case it might emerge. But we met again and he said he was new to the area, had decided to make a fresh start, somewhere else, now that he was alone. A widower, he called himself. And I said I was sorry for his loss and that I knew how he must feel. But then the dogs started to play again and we said no more of it.
I can see him on the far edge of the park. He’ll be opposite my house soon. He’s alone, except for Charlie, of course, who is looking around wondering when my Rex might appear. Dogs know about love.
I pick up the row of pearls from the dressing table and put them around my neck, clipping the clasp. I can almost feel your fingers. You always helped me with the necklace, always leant forward and kissed me behind the ear. Oh, so very gently. Do you mind my watching this man in the park? The widower. There, on the dressing table, are the earrings you gave me on our anniversary: silver, or was it golden? They sparkle in my hands, like you did down all the years of my life. Can I wear them today? As the dusk begins to fade and the shadows lengthen in our park. The park where we played with the children, where we walked in joy and sadness, talking things through. Can I wear the earrings for another walk in the park?
He turns the corner by the big wrought-iron gates that lead to the avenue at the end of my road. I watch him as he walks, Charlie by his side, alert and eager. Downstairs in the passageway Rex runs to the door and lets out a bark. I leave the earrings on the table and walk down the stairs. Taking my coat from the rack I look in the hallway mirror. What is there of the young girl of my youth in the face that looks back at me? The old lady in the reflection, doing up the buttons of her coat, her dog jumping up at her legs in anticipation. I take my hat from the hatstand, place it on my head, then wink in the mirror and readjust it to a slightly jaunty angle. When I open the door the fresh crisp air from the park greets me with a silent kiss, a silent wish.
HEARTBEATS
He lived for those rare moments. They made him feel alive and vital. When hope glimmered. When he allowed himself to be kind to his self. When he listened to his heart, his new heart, and heard the drum that it beat to. Sleep soundly, my friend from the shadows. The tiger snaps, but lets the wildebeest roam.
HEADING TO THE TEAROOMS
When our fingers touched. The aged and leathery skin still sensitive to the kiss of love. I felt that little tell-tale spark, the one I knew of old. I looked into your eyes, those that had seen the best part of a century, and saw that you too had felt that tiny pulse. So I take your arm and we walk together passed the conservatory and the rose garden, and down the sloping path towards the tearooms. We strange old pair, waddling through the park, invisible to the bright young things that jog by and laugh and kiss. We’d already talked about the murmur in your heart and the stiffness in my legs. (‘Only two minutes each for ailments,’ you’d joked when we first met last month and chatted on our singular daily promenade.) We the widow and the widower, with only a short time to share, but share we will. Both quietly relishing the prospect of tea and shortbread, with the weak autumn sun on our cheeks and a tingle in our fingertips.
GIVE THE DOG A BONE
Dogs see in black-and-white and dream of bones. Pirates dream of rocking seas and the old man imagines his new heart. A bone, a sea swell, a trickle of blood. The boy rests in the orchard among the drying leaves from the sycamore tree and waits for sleep to harbour him. The dog with the bone at his feet, the pirates, the waves beneath the bow, and the man with his new heart in his waistcoat pocket. The boy’s fingers feel through the grass, his nails digging into the soil. He frees a stone and clasps it in his palm. My last thought, he thinks, my last sense. Let me dream of the earth and the stone, and the pebble that makes its way to the ocean floor.
FOUR
Life is a journey. When we stop,
things don’t go right.
—Pope Francis
NIGHT
Deep into the night. A street corner. Raining, albeit softly. Light from a lamppost casting shadows. The sound of cars on wet tarmac from Main Street. But there’s no traffic down here by the canal. Wait. Listen. No sight of him yet. She lights a cigarette: Camel, untipped. She tunes the radio. Hiss … hiss … and then baseball scores and a live commentary.
He said not to worry, to trust him. Hadn’t it always worked out?
‘Red Sox … bottom of the ninth … a h
ome run away from …’
She draws hard on the cigarette. Looks at her watch. He’s late, late. He should be here by now. Something’s wrong. Something has gone wrong; not to plan. She stares at the bridge, the place they last talked, last kissed. Wait in the car, he said. It’ll be all done and over within the hour, he said. I’ll be back and then we’ll be made. Then we’ll be together forever.
‘The Red Sox are home and dry … We interrupt this sporting coverage to bring you some breaking news …’
She cries out. Oh fear, oh dread.
ACE
All Jack needs is the ace of hearts. He watches the dealer, willing him to turn over the card to complete his hand. If he gets the ace, then he holds a royal flush, the first of his poker career. He thinks of the tale of the landowner from Mongolia who lost his house and one of his wives chasing an ace. It was Cheung, from Chengdu, who first told him that story, the same man who sits opposite him now. Cheung, whose name means “good luck”, would often repeat it whenever the stakes got high. ‘I knew a man in Kunming …’ he’d say. ‘It was in the top room of the Dragon Post Hotel …’ Jack reckoned it was some kind of double bluff, to confuse, to intimidate, to sow uncertainty in the mind of the reckless. To make the other card players think that Cheung had the better hand. He’d always bring it up at some crucial point, with a huge pot and a lot of adrenaline in the room. Just like now. The other players – two locals Jack knows well and a high roller from Macau – survey the pile of chips in the middle of the table, each calculating, each deep in their own thoughts and hopes, each waiting for Big Dave, the dealer, to show the last card. Jack swallows hard. It may not be his house and wife on the line, but not far off. Big Dave looks around the table, thumbs the card from the top of the deck.