by Matt Wilven
I find the gap in the curtain and step over to the bedside. The corpse looks like it had been very ill. Its cheeks are sunken and the skin yellowed with decay. Its eyes are closed and palms crossed neatly. He’s not an old man. His hair is grey but he’s not started balding. He looks a bit like me, or I look a bit like him. I don’t feel much beyond a slight awkwardness. It’s a shame he didn’t get to see me, not that he deserved to.
I stare at him and try to think of feelings I might need to address. Loss isn’t one. Abandonment almost touches a nerve but I pretty much got beyond that in my teenage years. Anger doesn’t come, he’s too dead. Denial is a possibility but I’m pretty sure I’m fully functioning and not repressing anything. Acceptance is the one and only feeling. It’s simply happened. My father, who I never really knew, has died.
Rather than leaving the room at my first inclination I spend a couple of minutes standing over him, focusing on him, his body, his death. I force my mind back to him when it skips to Lyd, to the baby. I think about a time he turned up out of the blue when I was about six. I was shy and full of fear and wouldn’t go near him. Mum grabbed me and put me on his knee out of charity. His breath smelt of sour coffee and ashtrays. The stink made me squeal and wriggle away from him, back to my toys. I remember his disappointed smile as he left. I glanced but didn’t go to him. I had no idea who he was. I felt nothing. I feel nothing now. Perhaps the sadness of a missed opportunity. Perhaps not.
When I get back to Lyd she stands up and looks at me, desperately worried, pregnant, beautiful, alive.
“I’m fine. It was a bit weird but I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to say goodbye,” she says, hugging me.
“You don’t miss what you never loved.”
She laughs sadly and clings to me, and I hope that she’s glad that I’m still here, still present.
Back at the house my mum is behaving manically because her first husband is dead and she can’t figure out whether me and Lyd are back together and she doesn’t dare ask. We’re tired from the drive and, for a change, we would really welcome my family’s usual sitting around and doing nothing philosophy but they’re dressed for cold weather and there are no plans for dinner.
“It’s Bonfire Night,” says Chelsea, stopping herself from rolling her eyes in an act of sympathy.
I’d forgotten and my stomach sinks at the mention of it. I look at Lyd who is feeling similarly awkward. We always took Bonfire Night as our anniversary because we couldn’t remember when we first made anything official.
Apparently, we have to go to Bitts Park for the Fireshow, eat pie and peas, hotdogs, toffee apples, burgers, candy floss, treacle toffee – “Whatever you want” – and watch the bonfire and fireworks display. I think about saying I’m not up for it but I’ve already implied that I’m fine. I look at Lyd and try to indicate with an expression that we could stay in if she’s willing to blame her pregnancy for wanting to stay off her feet but she shrugs, unable to get my meaning, and we accept our fate.
“Sounds good,” I say. “A bit of distraction.”
We all pile into the car and head to Carlisle city centre. There are no parking spaces anywhere and some of the main through roads are closed. John knows how to manoeuvre around it all but we end up having to leave the car a ten-minute walk from Bitts Park (which makes Chelsea huff and grumble).
As we get closer, Chelsea keeps informing us that she can smell smoke so we must have missed the start of the bonfire and that we better not miss the start of the fireworks. Mum keeps calling her back, reminding her that Lyd is heavily pregnant. Random fireworks go off from people’s back garden displays and each time my mum cringes slightly. I can’t figure out if she’s getting more nervous as she gets older or if she’s so afraid of Chelsea’s mood swings that she’s flinching against the idea that the fireworks might have just started without us. Lyd suggests that they walk ahead but Mum says we’ll never find each other if they do. John looks at his watch and assures us all that we’ll make it in plenty of time.
The park is absolutely packed. I didn’t know there were this many people in the whole of Cumbria. John informs me that thirty-five thousand people were expected. The crowd has turned all of the grass underfoot into muddy sludge. Most people (including my mum, Chelsea and John) are wearing wellies. Me and Lyd, unprepared, are wearing normal, not particularly waterproof shoes.
Embers and flakes of carbon are wafting by more and more frequently. Noise from a couple of fairground rides and a number of pounding speakers mixes with the general hubbub of the crowd. As we finally see the enormous bonfire, Chelsea speedily breaks away from us.
“Where are you going?” calls Mum.
“To meet Becca.”
“Have you got money?”
“Yeah.”
“Where will we see you?”
“I’ve got my mobile.”
Chelsea disappears into the crowd.
“That’s why her knickers were in a twist,” says Mum. “She didn’t want to miss her mates.”
The bonfire has been made out of pallets, nailed together in a pyramid structure about twenty feet high. The wood is quick burning and there are lots of gaps for air so the flame is tall, sweeping and yellow, rising ten feet above the structure. The sides are already beginning to collapse inwards even though it must have been lit less than twenty minutes ago. All the way around the fire, about ten feet from its edge, is a seven-foot anti-climb metal barrier fence. It’s see-through, for the most part, but the best view of the bonfire seems to be in a region where its heat is ineffectual. We find a sweet spot on a raised bit of ground where we can see the fire over the fence and just about feel the heat.
I have a memory of being here as a child, standing extremely close to the naked flame of a bonfire made of logs, wooden cabinets, shelves and old couches, poisonous green flames rising from seat covers, sticky toffee all over my burning cheeks, forgetting I was with anyone, looking at the fire until my eyes were so dry that I couldn’t blink. Was I with my dad?
The bonfire crackles and pops loudly, bringing me out of my daydream. Thousands of tiny cinders fizz up into the sky. About a fifth of the crowd releases a vowel noise. Mum tells us to wait where we are whilst she and John get us all pie and peas. When Lyd says she doesn’t want meat, Mum represses a mini-meltdown and says she’ll do the best she can.
When they’re gone I put my arm around Lyd’s waist. She takes a step away, puts her hand on her stomach and looks at me.
“It’s still not right,” she says.
“You and me?”
“The bump.”
“They always say pregnancy’s different every time.”
“Not this different. I can’t feel the shape of it. And when it kicks, it doesn’t feel right. I can’t explain it.”
“So it’s not a big kicker.”
“Knock on my stomach.”
“I’m not going to knock on our baby.”
“Well, just feel it then.”
I put my hand on her stomach. It’s incredibly firm and solid.
“Sometimes you see women who look like they’ve got a beach ball inside them,” I say. “I think it’s a good sign that you’re so big and firm.”
“I’ve had weird cravings. Mud. Twigs. I wanted to eat worms last week. I’m constantly exhausted. It feels like something really weird is happening in there.”
“The sonographer said everything was fine.”
“I know.”
“We could probably arrange another ultrasound, even now?”
“Maybe I’m just a bit delirious. I can’t believe how tired I am. I was still working when my water broke last time.”
“And five minutes after it broke.”
She smiles.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I say, “but you were six years younger then. That’s a long time on the biological clock.”
“I know. Maybe I’m just getting old, and paranoid.”
“It’s completely understan
dable.”
“Is it?”
“Of course. It’s precarious, giving birth. Dangerous. It must be scary seeing a bump that big and knowing that it’s got to come out of you.”
“I guess so. I just wanted everything to be right by now. If it wasn’t for this…”
“What?”
“Nothing. We shouldn’t be talking about me. You’ve just lost your dad.”
“I want to talk about you.”
“You’re dealing with it so well. I think you really might be back to your old self, better than your old self.”
“I know you think I’m being brave but I’m not. I feel like I came to Carlisle to see a stranger’s dead body. And I know it’s my dad and that should make me feel something, but it doesn’t. If anything, it’s made me realise that John’s the closest thing I’ve got to a dad. I didn’t have a father. You know? It felt like a bit of a shame, like there were things I’d never know, but mostly it was just a dead guy.”
Lyd looks at me. I look at the bonfire.
“Vince, I don’t want you to think it’s more than it is, but I’m going to move back in. I’m not saying we’re getting back together. I just think it’s time I came back.”
I’m about to respond when Mum and John arrive with four portions of pie and peas. Mum’s frantically excited because they had cheese-and-onion pies so Lyd doesn’t have to miss out. The rest of us have steak, which is actually mincemeat. The pastry is rubbery and the filling is sparse but I’m unexpectedly famished now that I’m holding something warm. I eat quickly and keep glancing at Lyd.
A local radio DJ is announcing the countdown to “the best fireworks show in the North” on a stage that we can’t see on the opposite side of the bonfire. The heat from the thirty-foot mound of flame has dried my face. My cheeks are taut. After the countdown there is a desolate four seconds where thirty-five thousand people quietly look up at an empty black sky.
When the fireworks begin squealing their way up into the air I look at Lyd as she watches the explosions. Her face is incomparable with the one I first saw on Bonfire Night nearly eight years ago. Now, after her love for Charlie, the worry that came with it, and her loss, the grief of it all, and with this new child inside her, exhausting her, her face has been robbed of its scientific appreciation for coloured gunpowder exploding in the sky. In its place is the face of a strong woman, a mother, someone who has seen beyond herself, loved and lost something so powerfully that it has destroyed her but also shown her how to rebuild a life from rubble. She is full of the wisdom of experience and, whether she knows it or not, she is going to be an excellent mother. Those first-child temptations are gone: the need to spoil, to over-love, to imagine everything is perfect and will go on being perfect forever. In their place an emotional realism has taken hold, an affinity with the struggle of life. There will be no pretence, no over-happy fixation. This child will see the lines in its mother’s face and gradually intuit the pain that love can cause, the complexity of emotions that life can instil, and it will walk into the wider world a little bit more prepared because of it.
Lyd glances at me.
“You’re supposed to be looking up there,” she says.
“Are you really coming home?”
She nods but there is a warning in her eyes, Don’t let one thing mean another. I nod back and put my arm around her waist. She lets me keep it there. I catch my mum glancing and smiling, nudging John (who can’t figure out that she wants him to look at us). I look up. A group of red fireworks fill the sky.
“That’s lithium,” says Lyd. “The red ones have lithium in them.”
“Is it?” I say, trying to cling to my hopes.
FIVE
In physics, a singularity is a theoretical space at the centre of a black hole with zero volume and infinite density. In mechanics, a singularity occurs when a system or machine reaches a position or configuration where the subsequent behaviour cannot be predicted. In mathematics, a singularity is the point at which a mathematical set fails to be “well-behaved”. In all these cases, there is a singular point of incomprehension, where logic undoes itself and change is absolute. It goes against everything that has come before, yet somehow epitomises it.
Lyd waddles down the stairs behind me, reading my book. I have a letter in the morning post. It’s official-looking and I’m anxious about receiving demands for the thousands of pounds I owe my ex-publisher. One of the terms set out in the big relationship talk me and Lyd had is that the publisher’s debt is my problem. There will be no financial bailout.
I’ve spent the last few weeks morosely contemplating my options. English teacher? Can’t afford the course fees. A profession? Can’t afford the training. Set up my own little printing press? Can’t afford the start-up costs. Any job, anywhere? Don’t have the experience. I’ve been thinking about setting up a creative writing course in a night school somewhere but it’s been looking more and more like I’m going to have to swallow my pride and find something menial and unskilled so that I can pay off my debts.
I open the letter and read it as I make my way to the kitchen.
“What is it?” asks Lyd, looking up from the A4 pages, noticing the consternation on my face.
“I don’t believe it.”
“What?”
“My dad left me some money. Whatever’s left after the house is sold and the debts are paid off.”
“Will there be much?”
“They’re predicting about eighteen thousand.”
“That’s—”
“Enough to pay off the publisher.”
“And buy the final stock.”
“Do you think I should bother?”
“You can sell them at readings when this one comes out.”
“If it comes out.”
“I can’t put it down.”
“You have to say that.”
“I do and I don’t. I don’t have to say it like that. There’s something about these last few chapters especially.”
“Where are you?”
“The last chapter, I think. It’s all coming together really well.”
“I had this creative surge. I wrote the last five chapters in about two weeks.”
“It’s the best writing you’ve ever done.”
“I’m worried what you’ll think about the ending.”
“There’s not all that much that could go wrong at this stage.”
“Just wait,” I say.
“Eighteen thousand?”
“I know. It never occurred to me that he might leave me money. I suppose I presumed he didn’t have any.”
“It’s about time you had a bit of good fortune.”
“Maybe I should spend it on teacher training?”
“You’ve spent the last fifteen years learning your profession. You’re a writer, not a teacher.”
“I know. But writing’s not really a profession anymore.”
“It is for some people.”
“Not many.”
“Everything seemed more problematic before I read this. Let’s just see how it lands.”
I kiss her neck just behind the ear.
“Stop building my hopes up,” I say.
“What? It’s good. But leave me alone,” she says. “I want to finish it.”
“You can’t. We’ve got to go and meet Serge and Gloria.”
“But it will only take about quarter of an hour.”
“We promised. I think they’re trying to make an effort to get back on track with things.”
“Okay. But I’m taking it with me. I’ll finish it on the way.”
“I’m feeling very bolstered by all this praise.”
She smirks.
“Well, don’t be. Everybody else might hate it.”
Walking down Archway Road towards the café that does the fancy bread, Italian fillings and decent coffee, I’m looking over Lyd’s shoulder, reading the last chapter with her. She’s just coming up to the last four pages and my stomach is turning.
&
nbsp; “I want you to stop now. I don’t want you to read the end. It’s too weird.”
“Shh. Leave me alone. You’re ruining it.”
“Sorry.”
“Get away. Let me read it.”
“Okay. Okay.”
I pull away from her and smile to myself. Her interest in my work makes me feel whole. Whatever I write, she’s my chosen audience. Her heart has the only ear I want to whisper into. As long as she responds to my words, thinks they’re good work and were worth writing, then it doesn’t matter so much what the rest of the world thinks.
My ears pop and start ringing.
As my hearing comes back it dawns on me that there’s birdsong everywhere, blackbird song. I look up and see hundreds of black males on the rooftops, orchestras of yellow beaks. At this time of year most of the blackbirds in London have migrated to Cornwall for the milder air. And blackbirds don’t gather like this. They occasionally play together in spring but they’re too territorial to perch besides each other or fly together. This type of clustering, particularly at this time of year, is unheard of. The sight of all the black feathers and the sound of all the whistling is making me feel light-headed. Nobody else on the street seems to have noticed them.
“Have you seen all the—”
I turn to Lyd but she’s no longer by my side. I look around, panicking. The birdsong is so loud that I can’t hear anything else. I finally catch sight of her. She’s so engrossed in the last few pages of my novel that she hasn’t registered a kink in the road. She’s veering away from me. She doesn’t stop or look up where I expect her to. She takes an extra step and her foot twists on the edge of the kerb, forcing her to take three quick steps so that she doesn’t fall down onto her stomach. She’s suddenly standing in the middle of the road, confused, holding three hundred pieces of A4 paper. There is a screeching sound. A black van with a yellow trim is sliding along the road. Lyd doesn’t have time.
“Baby!” I cry, reaching a hand forward, watching helplessly.
The van slams into Lyd’s pregnant stomach, knocking her a metre through the air and onto the floor, coming to a squealing stop with its bumper above her knees. Hundreds of blackbirds fly up into the air. Small wings flap in a million different directions, chaotically wafting me around as I move towards her, as she clutches her stomach, cries with pain.