The End We Start From
Page 6
* * *
I tell R that we are on the dry list. I say the word home, that old lip-press, and this seems to make him happy. The difference between happy and not-happy is a jerk of his cheek, something like a twitch.
Until. I put our huge boy beside him, and Z puts his face all the way in.
R holds Z’s upright body, his transformed self.
They touch noses. Eskimo kiss, goes a phrase from long ago.
Perhaps this is reunion, or the beginning of it.
xii.
We are on boat number 34. Everything has numbers now. R looks for patterns, and I encourage him not to. This is the afterplan.
Z is not showing his father how good he is on boats. He seems to sense the shallowness beneath us, the threatened scrape.
The waters are greyer than I was expecting.
Z bangs his head on my chest.
He reaches into my dress for my breasts. R looks away.
* * *
The birds dived for earth, but none could find a single piece.
* * *
We have brought all of our personal belongings, like the leaflet tells us to. Everything fits in one plastic bag.
R’s donated T-shirt is in there, a pair of boxers wrapped around Z’s socks.
He lost everything, he says. Or it was stolen, I imagine. I want to stop imagining.
* * *
I ponder the tone of the leaflet, its early-reader simplicity. Do not hope too much, it warns.
Z improves as we get closer. He stands on my knees, puts his eyes to the horizon like a lookout. I am held by his velvet grip, feel his whole weight quivering, his head above mine.
* * *
Our flat is on the top floor. This is how it is already dry.
The rooms feel like home on a school day. Unused, waiting.
Other returns cluster in the air like dust. Coming back from work, from holiday. The slight refreshment of a change.
* * *
Amongst the ruined old, the sogs of stuff, there is something new, a spreading blotch, a mural of mould.
I think I can see R’s absent months there, in scene after scene, white and blue as willow china. This is not the afterplan.
R running. R in hiding, watching it all unfold beneath him.
* * *
In the kitchen: a deep indigo spread. I touch its collapsing centre, its valleys and plains, the borders bumping under my skin.
I move my hand along the trails of the stained wall, veined water paths plotting all the days we missed.
* * *
I walk into the nursery, a room that has never been used for this purpose. The walls are yellow – we didn’t know Z was a boy – the pale of the inside of a lemon.
I almost put him in his cot, for the first time, almost let his feet sink into the sponge-sodden organic mattress.
But here is the pattern again, telling the story of R, of every single place he found to hide.
* * *
One bird brought earth from the very bottom, caught in its beak like gold.
* * *
R is in our room, picking things up one by one and dropping them again.
I touch only his fingers, his large hands that can play the piano.
We have this touch, our fingers in the ruined room, the new slow light drifting around us, our child squirming in my arms.
* * *
The earth spread until it became the mountains and fields, until it became the whole of the world.
* * *
I let Z down on the bare damp boards, on the rotting wood that glowed a year ago.
He grapples around our knees for a few minutes, feels his way over the idea of his parents.
Then, he lets go.
His body stands on its two points. He puts his hands up for balance.
He lifts a leg and – impossible, impossible – he takes a step.
Thank you
Tim Hunter, for remembering when I had forgotten; Leo and Sylvie Hunter, for making it new; Penny Morris and Ernie Dalton, for understanding, for everything; Kaddy Benyon, for invaluable mentoring, gin, for KEEP GOING; Suzanne Draper, for the labour story; Sophie Hunter, for setting an example, for words in spring 2013 and autumn 2015; Belinda Drake, for electric enthusiasm and all; Madeleine Dunnigan, for making a crucial connection; Laurence Laluyaux, Stephen Edwards, Tristan Kendrick and all at Rogers, Coleridge and White, for guiding the novel on its first journeys; Paul Baggaley, Camilla Elworthy, and all at my publishers Picador, Grove Atlantic, Gallimard, C.H. Beck, Hollands Diep, and Elsinore for big faith in a small book; wonder trio of editors Sophie Jonathan, Elisabeth Schmitz and Katie Raissian, for passion, precision, so much more; brilliant agent Emma Paterson, for insight, generosity, for believing in the end from the start.
* * *
The sections in italics are inspired by and adapted from a myriad of mythological and religious texts from around the world. I am grateful for the inspiration provided by the anthology Beginnings: Creation Myths of the World, edited by Penelope Farmer and illustrated by Antonio Frasconi (Chatto & Windus, 1978).
Megan Hunter was born in Manchester in 1984, and now lives in Cambridge with her young family. She has a BA in English Literature from Sussex University, and an MPhil in English Literature from Jesus College, Cambridge. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. The End We Start From is her first novel.
First published 2017 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2017 by Picador
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ISBN 978-1-5098-3911-7
Copyright © Megan Hunter 2017
Cover illustration © Kazuko Nomoto
Author photograph © Alex James
The right of Megan Hunter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The epigraph here is from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot; it appears here with permission of Faber and Faber Ltd
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