We Own the Sky

by Luke Allnutt

  And then we leave, via a brief little farce where she said she thought she should go home, and then we are walking arm in arm along the deserted High Street, giggling and shushing and falling up the stairs to the little flat she has above the gift shop where she works. When we get to the top of the stairs, she looks at me, her mouth shaped like a heart and I feel a rush of boozy lust, so I pull her close to me and we start kissing, my hand reaching under her skirt.

  * * *

  After we finish, we lie on her small single mattress on the floor, without making eye contact, our heads buried into each other’s necks. When we have held each other for what seems like an acceptable amount of time, I walk along the hall looking for the bathroom. I fumble for a light switch, but it is not the bathroom, it is a child’s bedroom. While Charlie’s room was sparse, unfurnished, the bedroom looks like a showroom in a department store. A light shaped like an airplane, mirrored by a giant stencil on the wall. Neatly stacked boxes full of toys. A desk with colored pencils and stacks of paper. And then, pinned to a board, certificates and awards, for football and judo and being a superstar in school.

  Next to the bed there is a night-light, and I cannot stop myself from turning it on. I watch as it casts pale blue moons and stars onto the ceiling. I walk toward the window, breathing in the faint smell of fabric conditioner and children’s shampoo. In the corner, I see a little yellow flashlight, just like one Jack once had, and take it in my hands, feeling the tough plastic, the durable rubber, the big buttons made for young, unskillful fingers.

  “Hello,” Charlie says, and it startles me and I jump. Her tone is nearly but not quite a question.

  “Sorry,” I stammer, suddenly feeling very sober, my hands beginning to shake. “I was looking for the bathroom.”

  She looks down at my hands, and I realize I am still holding the flashlight.

  “My little boy,” she says, a moon from the night-light dancing across her face. “He’s staying with my sister tonight, that’s why I’m out getting drunk.” She straightens out some paper and crayons, making them symmetrical with the edge of the desk. “I’ve just had the room done,” she says, putting something in the drawer of the bedside table. “Had to sell a lot of my stuff to pay for it, but it looks nice, don’t it?”

  “It’s lovely,” I say, because it really was, and she smiles and we stand like that for a while, watching the planets and stars dance around the room.

  I know Charlie wants to ask me something: if I have kids, if I like kids, but I don’t want to answer so I kiss her, and I can still taste the vodka and cigarettes. I don’t think she is comfortable kissing me here, in her son’s room, so she pulls away, takes the flashlight out of my hand and puts it carefully back on the shelf. She turns out the night-light and leads me out the door.

  Back on the single mattress, she pecks me sweetly on the neck, as you would kiss a child good-night, and then turns away from me and falls asleep without saying a word. Her naked flank is exposed and the room is cold, so I reach over and tuck the cover under her and it reminds me of Jack. Snug as a bug, snug as a bug in a rug. I drink the remainder of my hip flask and lie awake in the pale amber light, listening to her breathe.

  2

  In the morning, it is cold but sunny and I walk down from the parking lot, past the Magic Merlin gift shop and the sandwich boards advertising King Arthur tours and two-for-one cream teas. With my equipment strapped to my back, I head down into an earthy hollow and then cross a small rocky walkway that connects the mainland to the island. To my right, there is a sloping baize of grass that leads down to the cliff edge, broken up with rabbit holes and occasional patches of sand.

  I didn’t sleep at Charlie’s. She stirred as I was leaving, and I could imagine her, one eye open, pretending to be asleep, waiting for the click of the latch. The guesthouse was only a few doors down. It was strange to be sleeping in a hotel when I lived close by, but I wanted to be able to drink without having to worry about driving home.

  I clamber up the rocky path, my head pounding, the taste of Red Bull still on my breath. Moving slowly as the incline sharpens, I climb the steep wooden steps up to the ruins, the camera bag heavy on my shoulder. Close to the edge, I can feel the spray of the sea, and I stop to rest and watch the tide coming in, quickly now, ruthlessly sweeping away sand castles and seaweed dumped by an earlier swell.

  I climb farther up the hill to the site of the old lookout point. There are no tourists up here, just the wind and the squawk of seagulls. I find a piece of flat ground and place my wooden board down to secure the tripod, to add extra weight so it is not easily dislodged. I fix the lens and then attach the camera, testing to see if the rotation is smooth.

  The conditions are perfect. The sea, sand and grass are so vivid, unreal; in the morning light they look like the colors of a child’s rainbow. With my back to the sea, I can see the natural camber of the hills, the slow descent into the valley, down toward the bric-a-brac town. It is an incredibly visceral place. From up here, you could almost reach out and run your hands over the land, feeling the bumps and indentations as if reading braille.

  The wind is slowly picking up, warm gusts that blow up white crowns on the waves, and I know I must start soon. I set up the first shots for the panorama, looking northeast toward the headland, and then slowly rotate the tripod disc, stopping at regular intervals to take bursts, until I have gone round the full 360 degrees.

  When the camera has stopped its gentle whir, I check the little LCD screen to see that all the images are there and then pack up my equipment and walk back down to the parking lot.

  * * *

  The house is about an hour’s drive down the coast. The village is deserted as I drive through. The corner shop is still closed, shuttered down for the off-season. I drive past the church and then along the winding road across the dunes, past the National Trust information center, and then up the unpaved track toward the edge of the cliff and the house.

  It wasn’t just the cottage’s solitude that attracted me, but it was the way it was exposed, utterly at the mercy of the elements. Perched on an outcrop of rock, across the bay from St. Ives, it is the only building in sight. There is no shelter, no valley to break the ferocious Atlantic wind. When the rain lashes at the windows, when the sea winds refuse to let up, the house shudders, and it feels like it is crumbling into the sea.

  As soon as I am in the door, I pour a large glass of vodka. Then I go to my office upstairs, sit at my desk and stare through the dormer window that looks out across the bay. I log in to my profiles on OKCupid and Heavenly Sinful to see if I have any messages. There is one, from “Samantha,” a woman I was messaging a few weeks ago.

  Hiya, you disappeared. Still interested in meeting?

  I look at her pictures, skipping through the tedium of patent shoes and discarded umbrellas and plane wings and hearts on cappuccinos, and there is one of her on holiday somewhere, and I am reminded that she is pretty, a slight, mousy brunette.

  I thought it was you who disappeared! And yeah would love to meet...

  I connect the camera and start downloading the Tintagel images. When the download is finished, I flick through the photos, happy to see they are well-aligned and won’t need much retouching. I load them into the rendering program I have written, and the software starts stitching the images together, the pixels fusing like healing skin.

  You can never predict the light. Some days, when I am out with the camera, you think it is just right, but then the shots all end up looking grainy or overexposed. Today, however, it is perfect. The sea shimmers, the grass on the cliffs is as green and tight as snooker cushions. In the distance, I can see the faint outline of the moon.

  When the program finishes processing the panorama, and when the images are joined together like a miniature Bayeux Tapestry, I encase the final image in a layer of code, so that people can zoom in and out and spin around. When all that is finished
, I upload the image to my website, We Own the Sky.

  I am surprised that the website has been popular. It started as a hobby, something to break up my afternoons. But the link was quickly shared on amateur photography forums. People wrote to ask me about my technique, the equipment that I used. The website was mentioned in a Guardian piece on panoramic photography. “Simplistic and beautiful,” the writer wrote and I felt a rare swell of pride.

  People ask me sometimes, in the comments, in the emails they send: “What does We Own the Sky mean?”

  “Is it a reference to something?” And the truth is, I don’t know what to tell them. Because ever since I left London, those words have been bouncing around in my head, and I have no idea why.

  When I am out for a walk on the dunes, or sitting at my desk looking out to sea, I whisper those words to myself—“we own the sky, we own the sky.” I wake to the sound of them, and before I fall asleep I can hear those four words, as if they were a mantra or a prayer that was drummed into me as a child.

  The image has now finished uploading and I look out of the window, drinking my vodka, waiting for the ping. It takes a little longer than normal. Ten minutes instead of the usual five. And then there it is. A comment—always the first comment—by the same user every time.

  swan09

  Beautiful. Keep up the good work.

  The comments are always like that—“Beautiful.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Take care of yourself”—and always so soon after the image has been posted I assume that the user has set up some kind of alert.

  The night is closing in and, before bed, I pour myself another vodka. I can feel the pull of sleep, the anesthetic effects of the alcohol, and I want to hasten it, bring it even closer.

  Sometimes, I like to think it is Jack who is commenting on the photos. I know that he will recognize them, because they are all places he has been, views he has seen with his own eyes. Box Hill, the London Eye, a lookout point on the South Downs. And now, Tintagel.

  Just to be sure that he remembers, that he doesn’t forget the places we have been, I leave him messages, paragraphs of text hidden in the code, invisible to browsers, readable only to the programmer’s eye—and, I hope, to his. It is, I suppose, the things I would say to him if I could. The things I would say if she hadn’t taken him away.

  tintagel

  do you remember, Jack, when we got back to the parking lot and you had fallen in the brambles and done yourself an injury. both hands, daddy, both hands, little red welts on your palms. so i kissed your fingers to take the owies away and you wrapped your arms around me, carefully planting two kisses on my neck. i remember, i can never forget. your kisses, like secret whispers. the gingerbread freckles on your face. your eyes, warm like the shallow end.

  Part Two

  1

  “You don’t look like a computer scientist,” she said.

  A little tipsy, I had started talking to her at the bar in a student pub in Cambridge. It was in that postexam, preresults purgatory, a lazy, sun-kissed time, squeezing out the last of our student days.

  “Because I don’t have a briefcase and a Lord of the Rings T-shirt?”

  She smiled, not cruelly, but knowingly, as if this was the type of joke she had heard about herself. As she turned back to the bar to try to get a drink, I stole a glance at her. She was petite with black hair neatly tied back off her face. Her features were sharp but softened by her pale skin.

  “I’m Rob, by the way.”

  “Anna,” she said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  I almost laughed. She sounded so formal, and I wasn’t sure if she was making a joke. “So what are you studying?” I fumbled, trying to think of something to say.

  “Economics,” Anna said, squinting at me through her glasses.

  “Oh, cool.”

  “Actually, you’re supposed to say I don’t look like an economist.”

  I looked at her neat hair, so black it was like looking in a mirror, her bag stuffed with books, the strap secured to the leg of the stool she was perching on. I smiled.

  “What?”

  “But you do a little,” I said. “In a good way, I mean.”

  Her eyes sparkled, and she opened her mouth as if she had thought of something to say, something that amused her, but then thought better of it.

  I knew she was friends with Lola, the person whose birthday we were celebrating. They seemed unlikely friends. Hippy-dippy Lola, who loved to tell everyone that she was named after that Kinks song and would always sing it on request. Lola, who was known around town as the girl who got naked at the summer ball.

  And then this Anna, with her sensible clothes and sturdy shoes. I had seen her around campus, often with a musical instrument strapped to her back. Not casually slung over one shoulder, but carefully and firmly attached. She always seemed to be walking with pronounced intent, as if she had a very urgent appointment.

  “So what will you do with computer science?” she asked.

  I was flustered, looked toward my friends at the quiz machine, not sure how to answer a question I thought was normally reserved for people who studied ancient history. There was something almost Edwardian about Anna—her puckered vowels and pristine consonants. She spoke with the precision and bearing of a character in an Enid Blyton novel. A little bit of a Goody Two-shoes.

  “Maps,” I said.

  “Maps?”

  “Online mapping.”

  Anna didn’t say anything. Her face was blank, unreadable.

  “Have you heard of this new Google Maps?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s been in the news a little recently. I’m writing some software connected to that.”

  “So you’ll join a company then?” Anna asked.

  “No. I’m going to start my own.”

  “Oh,” she said, lightly touching the rim of her empty glass. “That sounds ambitious, although, in fairness, I don’t really know much about such things.”

  “Can I see your phone?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I can show you what I mean...”

  Anna looked confused, rummaged around in her bag, and produced an old Nokia.

  I smiled.

  “What?” she said, her grin revealing two almost symmetrical dimples on her cheeks. “It does everything I need.”

  “I’m sure it does,” I said, taking it from her, my hand brushing her fingers.

  “So...imagine in the future, you’ll have a much bigger screen here, perhaps even a touch screen, and somewhere here you’ll have a map. People, anyone, will be able to add things to the map, restaurants, their running routes, whatever they want. So I’m working on some software that lets you do that, where you can add things, customize the map how you want it.”

  Anna looked bemused and touched the blue screen of her Nokia. “It sounds interesting,” she said, “although I am something of a Luddite. Will I still be able to send texts?”

  “Yes,” I said, laughing a little. She was so dry, so straight-faced, I couldn’t tell if she was joking.

  “Good. That’s a relief. So are you friends with Lola, as well?”

  “Yes, a little bit,” I said. “I knew her in the first year. She lived on my floor.”

  “Ah,” Anna said. “So you’re that Rob.”

  That Rob. I thought back. Had I done something when I was drunk? I remembered talking to Lola one night at Fez a few semesters ago. She went on about her upbringing in Kensington as if it was a curse, a leper’s bell around her neck. I found her tiresome, a bit of a bore, but I didn’t think I had been rude.

  “That Rob?” I asked, smiling nervously.

  “Oh, no, just Lola mentioned you,” Anna said casually, trying once again to get the bartender’s attention. “She said you were some kind of computer genius, a whiz
kid, and from public housing to boot.” She gasped as she said “public housing” and contorted her expression into one of mock outrage. “She said it was wonderful that you got a chance to come here like the rest of us,” Anna said with a little giggle.

  “That’s good of her,” I said, smiling. “The boy done good.”

  “Sorry?”

  “The boy done good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, it’s a football reference.”

  “Ah, sorry, I don’t follow the sports,” she said, as if it was a category in Trivial Pursuit.

  The pub was filling up, and we were pushed closer together, our bare arms occasionally touching. On the side of her neck, she had a small birthmark shaped like a heart. I was lost for a moment, looking at the gentle grain of her skin, when her eyes caught mine.

  “So how do you know Lola?” I said, quickly looking away.

  “We went to school together,” Anna said vaguely, as if she was thinking about something else.

  “To Roedean?”

  “Yes.”

  I had figured Anna was posh, but not Roedean posh. “And what about you?” I said.

  “What about me?” she said. She sounded terse, suddenly defensive.

  “After we’re finished with this place I mean.”

  “Oh, I see. Accountancy,” Anna said without pause. “I have five job offers in London, and I’ll decide by the end of the week which one to take.”

  “Wow, cool.”

  “Not exactly cool, but it’s what I do. Or rather what I will do.” She smiled weakly. “We’re never getting a drink, are we?”

  “No. Especially not now.” I nodded to a group of men in rugby shirts. One of them was just wearing underpants and protective goggles.

  “Quite,” Anna said, and looked away. She seemed suddenly uninterested, and I could imagine her weaving her way back to her friends and then never seeing her again.