by Matt Wilven
Ten hours? Fifteen? There’s still no sign of him and my eyes are worn out so I quickly go downstairs and retrieve the stopwatch I sometimes use to time myself when I go jogging. It makes sense to rest in short bursts because, if I spread my sleeping out throughout the day, there’s a greater probability that I won’t miss him entirely. I use the stopwatch as an alarm and trial sleeping for half an hour and then staying awake for three hours.
After three, maybe four rounds of this I struggle to stay awake for the full three hours so I have to keep reducing the sleeping and waking times. It gets blurrier and blurrier but I eventually find a good balance sleeping for three minutes and waking for ten.
Meals are reduced to sporadic grazing. I’m never hungry but now and then I notice a strange twinge in my stomach and eat a couple of sultanas. After a single bowel movement my digestive system slows down to a near stop. I only have to go down to empty the mop bucket into the toilet once. The light level surprises me. The edges of the blinds gleam and lint collides with golden photons slipping through into the room. The whole house is thick with warmth.
It’s hard to know if he’s ever going to show up again but occasionally I wake and sense that he’s been and I’ve missed him, or else that he’s getting close but choosing to stay absent. This makes me feel so empty that my stomach cramps and folds me in half.
More and more I find myself crying. Occasionally, my nervous system is attacked by electric convulsions. My back arches, my limbs tense up and the back of my head slides around on the floor, banging into cardboard boxes. My spine is constantly shaking near the pelvis. My hands shiver. My right eye twitches. Sweat drips off my back. The air gets thicker and thicker. I’m awake, I’m asleep, I’m awake, I’m asleep.
Soon enough my attention is not so much focused on seeing Charlie but on feeling his presence in the space. I have to make myself ready to receive him. It’s a process. The first two were flukes. All the conditions were accidentally right. Now I have to work for it.
Everything changes when he’s near. When he’s close by I lie back and try to feel him washing through me, try to summon him through my body. I have no appetite for anything else. This feeling is the only thing I’m hungry for.
When he finally appears weeks might have passed, months, but it’s as if he’s come from nowhere, as if I’ve put in absolutely no effort and he was always going to simply show up at this moment. This is the fated time. I should have known all along.
“Charlie?”
He ignores me.
“Charlie?”
He starts grinning. He’s playing the ignoring game. My tension subsides.
“Do you want to play a game?” I ask him.
He’s still trying to win at the ignoring game.
“Charlie. You’re terrible at ignoring. I can see you grinning.”
He laughs and looks at me.
“Is that what you want to play? The ignoring game.”
He shakes his head and looks around.
“Fire Engines on the Moon,” he says.
“We can’t play that one. There is no moon.”
“Daddy. Please. Fire Engines on the Moon.”
“Okay,” I say. “Don’t go anywhere. I have to get some things.”
I rush downstairs and get two cushions from the living room, then string, paper, Sellotape and lots of old newspapers. Charlie is still there when I get back and sits dutifully by my side, marvelling at my handcraft. It takes me almost an hour to make but I recall the process of creating the first moon very clearly.
When the final piece of paper is attached, I remember one last thing and so descend the ladders into the baby’s room, remove the small hook from the ceiling, take it up to the attic and screw it into the highest roof beam. Charlie claps his hands together with glee when he sees the new moon hanging a foot from the attic floor.
“See? It’s just like the old one.”
“Please, Daddy. Fire engine,” he says.
I open one of his boxes of toys, find his favourite fire engine and put it by his side.
“Do you want to see how the moon travels around the world?” I ask. “Or do you just want to play fire engines?”
“Yes,” says Charlie, with a nod. “Moon Around the World.”
“Sit there then.”
I point to a spot on the floor and grab hold of the moon. Charlie shuffles into position with coy excitement, holding onto his fire engine.
“Close your eyes for a minute and imagine you’re floating in space,” I say. He closes them, his expression becoming slightly concerned. “You’re the whole world, the big blue planet Earth, where we all live. Way over in the distance is the bright yellow sun. And that’s what the world spins around all year long. Okay, you can open your eyes now. This, in my hand, is the moon—”
Charlie covers his face with his hands in excited anticipation.
“Not yet, Charlie. Wait for it.”
He parts his fingers and looks through them with a smile.
“This is the moon. And when do we see the moon?”
Charlie mumbles.
“I can’t hear you. When do we see the moon?”
“Night-time.”
“That’s right. We mostly see the moon at night time, when the sky is black. The sun shines onto it from the other side of the world and lights it up shiny and white. And what does the moon spin around?”
“Me,” says Charlie, covering his eyes again.
“No, Charlie. What does the moon spin around?”
“Moon Around the World.”
“That’s right. And what are you?”
He giggles and hides his face in his lap.
“Charlie. What are you?”
He peeks up.
“World,” he says.
“That’s right,” I say. “You’re the world. And the moon goes around world… like this.”
I push the moon in a small circle around Charlie and he laughs infectiously and intensely, like he almost can’t bear how amused he is.
“See,” I say, pushing it round. “The moon travels around the world.”
After a few revolutions Charlie loses his timid fear, sits up and follows the moon’s path with delighted eyes. Unconscious of his own wonderment, he raises his fire engine into the air as though it is caught up in the motion of it all. Occasionally, he releases a spasmodic burst of laughter.
His intense happiness is having a shimmering effect on my vision. Lamplight is passing through him. I can see the space behind him. My hands are sweating and beginning to shake so intensely that I can feel the reverberations in my elbows. I’m pushing a big white ball around an empty space. A toy fire engine is sitting still by my side.
The next time the moon comes around I clutch it in my jittery hands, hold it to my chest, tuck my chin down into it and stare at the empty space where he was, trying – but failing – to will him back into existence. I don’t ever want to let it go.
“I won’t,” I promise the warm air all around me. “I won’t.”
SEVEN
A black hole’s entropy is proportional to the size of its event horizon, not its inner volume. Since a black hole is space in a state of maximum entropy, this can be taken to mean that there is an elemental spatial entity – a region of space that allows for one unit of entropy – and that this space is a surface area, not a volume. To put it another way, it might reveal that the universe works in a similar way to a hologram. If true, a physical, linear existence in space and time is a false construct. Every moment, from the beginning of the universe to the end, already exists on a flat surface, surrounded by inconceivable dimensions. Time is a circle, space is an illusion and reality is relative to the number of dimensions that something exists in.
I’m standing on Suicide Bridge, my eyes tracing the skyline. The rumble of speeding traffic rises from below. London is cloaked in fumes and heat. The city is a single thing, a single word, a single idea. It has survived plague, fire, bombs, war. It’s over two thousand years o
ld. I’m not even a speck of dust falling off its skin. I grip the bridge’s black metal bars. My legs are agitating. Someone pulls up beside me on a vintage pushbike. An unnecessarily enhanced startle reflex passes through my body.
“Don’t do it,” says the cyclist, mock-seriously.
In a petrified stupor, staring at the sunlight in his ginger beard and the sweat glistening on his freckled skin, the attributes of the stranger slowly form a memory of words: Dieter, bookshop, barge, mushrooms. With them, his flat, meaningless face takes on form and character.
“No. Never. Good. Hi, Dieter. Hi.”
“I didn’t take you for a jogger. I almost didn’t recognise you. I can’t stand it. Bores the hell out of me.”
He’s talking about my clothes. I put on my jogging outfit because I wanted to be invisible. I wanted people to see a jogger, not me. Dieter saw me anyway.
“All that time in the cave,” I say. “No movement.”
“I don’t know how you do it. I’d go out of my mind, cooped up on my own all day… I’m not disturbing a profound moment here, am I?”
“No. Far from it.”
“Good.”
“It’s all surface. It looks real but it’s just memories piled on top of each other.”
“Okay.”
“Lyd was right. It’s best to keep the door shut. Keep the cat in the box.”
I let go of the bars and look at Dieter. He’s looking down the street beyond me. His cheeks are bunched up and his squinting eyes are awkwardly imagining his own back, cycling away.
“How’s the mushroom farm coming along?” I ask.
“Erm, yeah… I’m still at the bookshop at the moment. Can’t get the funds together. My mate in Wales wants me to partner up with him. It’s the only place where there’s a real mushroom scene at the moment.”
“Sure.”
“But I’m in a really serious relationship with my yoga teacher. And I don’t want to sell my barge. How’s the writing going?”
“I’m trying not to force it. Wait. Listen. See what comes. Don’t judge it.”
“Are you writing another novel then?” he asks, looking out at the view.
“Stories about delusions… Different times. Different places.”
“Sounds interesting. Can you believe this weather? Best summer we’ve had in years.”
“You don’t want to sell your boat?”
“Barge. No. But I can’t get it to Wales. And this yoga teacher…”
“You have to learn how to hear the surface. Stop hearing too much. You know? Just hear her.”
“I’d love to wax lyrical about her, really, but I have to get to work.”
“Sure.”
“See you later.”
He cycles off. I start jogging. Blackie swoops down and lands on the end of Suicide Bridge. I stop before him, waiting for a message or instruction but he just wants to demonstrate his power for a moment. He flies up onto the roof of the first house and whistles diagonally across the road. Over there, the way he calls, another Blackie acknowledges him and tweets further down the road to another Blackie who’s standing on a lamppost at the crossroad ahead. I set off jogging again and as I pass each bird it chirps to the next one:
– tck-tck-tck-tck-tck-tck –
(Keep watching him. It’s nearly time.)
Blackbirds talk about me all the way to Hampstead Heath. Every time I think I might be imagining it another one is looking at me, whistling to the next one. The park is full of people. The sight of them is overwhelming, almost too much. Their flat, desperate souls are jumping out of their eyes. I stick to the paths through the woods and stay away from Parliament Hill and the main fields so that I don’t come across any crowds. I have a bench in mind that I want to sit on – over by the boating pond – but first I want to run the lap I used to walk with Charlie.
As I speed along by the playground I find myself slowing down and standing still, watching the children and their parents. I’m aware of how I might look – that I live in an era where I can’t glance at a child without its paranoid parents thinking that I want to sexually abuse and kill it – but Charlie loved coming here with me. I used to be one of those parents, beyond the gates.
There are twenty-three children on the playground, eleven parents and four pushchairs lined up against the perimeter. One girl in a yellow-and-white polka dot dress is screaming on the swings so loudly that it’s beginning to embarrass her mother. I quickly make all the connections between the parents and the children. Two boys are here with a man text-messaging on a bench (he keeps glancing at them). Four of the bigger girls, about nine or ten years old, are the children of three women standing together over by the monkey bars. One rogue girl and boy are here alone. Of them all, only one boy is unaccounted for. He’s sitting in the box compartment the children go into before crossing the blue rope bridge. He’s sad, morbid, hiding on his own. He’s not playing with anyone, not talking. Nobody’s checking on him or looking for him. He doesn’t look like a boy who would be left to roam free. Even from this distance I can see that his haircut is more expensive than mine.
I’m getting increasingly worried about this little boy. My legs are jiggling. The birdsong is getting loud and intrusive, swelling out from the surrounding trees. I pointlessly wipe my damp hands across my sweaty face. He’s only three or four. He shouldn’t be left unattended. Maybe his mum or dad popped out to get him an ice cream, or get themselves a coffee.
Maybe I’m his mum or dad, I think, and then sneer.
I decide I better stay here and look out for him in the meanwhile, just in case.
The group of three mums over by the monkey bars start glancing over at me. I jump three times, bringing my knees right up to my chest. I can’t stand still. One of the mothers is particularly unsubtle. At the precise moment she covertly points at me, a child’s hand clasps tightly around the index finger of my right hand, the way Charlie used to hold it. She thinks I’m a demented paedophile who has just stolen a child.
I look down but Charlie’s not there. When I look back at the playground I can’t see the four-year-old boy. I scan all the places he could be. One of the fathers has joined the three worried mothers by the monkey bars and is looking my way. My rising panic tells me that they will think I’m crazy if I try to warn them about the child who just went missing. I should just start jogging, look like a jogger.
Before I set off I look around for a sign and, sure enough, Blackie’s standing on the backrest of the nearest bench, watching me, waiting. If I sit there, it’s near enough to show that I’m not fleeing and it faces away from the playground and so displays that I’m not predisposed to constantly look at children. I head towards it.
– tck-tck-tck-tck-tck-tck –
(We’re watching. Everybody’s watching.)
Blackie flies away as I approach.
Sitting on the bench, I take a sip of my water and then spread my arms out. I wait seventeen seconds before I twist my neck to glance at my accusers. They’re all looking in another direction now. I follow the line of their stares and see a man who is wearing the same shorts and t-shirt as me. He is walking away from them. A four-year-old boy is holding his index finger. It’s the boy from the playground.
The man standing with the three mothers breaks away from them to use his mobile phone. From his urgency, and the way he keeps eyeing the man and the boy, it seems like he’s calling the police.
I stand on the bench, trying to glean more of the scene, and start waving my arms around. I’m trying to get their attention and show them that the man with the boy and me are different people, but they won’t look. They’re too intently focused on them.
“It’s not me!” I find myself shouting. “My boy’s dead!”
A happy family who are out to walk two golden retrievers and grandma in her wheelchair are talking about me, glancing, staring. The birdsong is getting louder again. Twittering chaos flitters through the air. I hop off the bench and start running away from the playground.<
br />
I must be running too fast because people are looking at me like a criminal. I slow down and jog over to the boating lake trying to avoid people’s eyes, trying to jog like a jogger.
An old man is sitting on the bench I planned to sit on. He has a Jack Russell on his lap. The bench before him is free, as is the one further along, but I sit next to him anyway. It could be a sign. I might have to talk to him.
As I sit down his dog immediately erupts into a whirl of barking and spinning. The man looks at me sidelong, well aware that the other benches nearby are free, and pins his dog down onto his lap, reassuring it with whispers.
“My little boy’s dead,” I say. “He used to smile when I whispered in his ear. Astrocytoma. If you could tell your dog one thing what would it be?”
I reach towards his lap to stroke the Jack Russell. It growls and its flews tremble. I snap my hand back. The old man shoos it off his lap. At first the dog looks back at him with its tail raised, waiting to see if he is about to stand, but with no movement or instructions from its master it decides to run after a goose about fifty metres away on the grass behind us.
“Merdre,” says the old man.
I’m only half sure that this is the word he says. It could have been a dismissive and inaudible grumble. It’s not likely that he used a made-up word from the Ubu trilogy that has the double connotation of “shit” and “murder”. Nonetheless, I decide to move forward as though this is the word he’s uttered.
“Sure, sure. Ubu Roi. The realm beyond metaphysics. A dog would get that.”
“My little dog’s dead,” says the old man.
I look over my shoulder. I can’t see it anywhere.
“Sure, sure,” I say, my legs bouncing up and down four and a half times a second. “Dead. I don’t think so. What else would you tell him?”
“Life is plentiful,” he says, “but cheap.”
“A literary theme. Nineteenth-century Russian realism. Twentieth-century Southern Renaissance. I never got to read a decent book with Charlie.”