The Body in the Clouds

by Ashley Hay

  “Waiting? Gramps, I don’t know what—”

  Her grandfather turned, his fingers rubbing a line from his eyes out to his cheeks, stroke after stroke. “Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown, what else was in that wonderful garden? The lemon tree—do you remember? And the tomatoes and the sweet peas? And that pit with the ashes from the fire, thick silver dust that never seemed to overflow—I thought that was some kind of magic, but maybe it just used to blow away into someone else’s yard. The nights we’d sit out the back, us boys and Joy, everyone full of stories. The nights we’d walk and look at the stars. I was a young bloke then, love, and everything felt possible.”

  More silence then; Charlie hardly dared to move for fear of disturbing whatever journey her grandfather was taking. His eyes were closed now, and he was humming to himself, very softly. I’m sitting on top of the world . . . When he did open his eyes, he was looking through the room, the day, through Charlie herself, to another time, another place.

  “The highest thing I ever dived off was a board at the beach, scared all the time; so scared I could hardly remember it as soon as it was over. I didn’t dive off the bridge, love, you’re right. But there are lots of reasons for telling stories, and I’ve seen that one so many times . . .” He paused. “Have another cup of tea?”

  Her grandfather, silhouetted against the light as he refilled the kettle, flicked its switch. “Never thought I’d get used to this newfangled thing,” he said. “I still miss the old stovetop one we’d set on the combustion stove. Do you remember that, Charlie? Do you remember your gram’s old house, the combustion stove, the rosy-pink kettle?”

  And Charlie, sitting very still on the other side of the kitchen, had said of course she remembered the house, the stove, and was about to confirm the kettle as well when he cut her off.

  “You take things on for people, love.” His face was turned away from her, but his shoulders had slumped a little, and he was rubbing hard at the back of his head with one hand. “It wasn’t that I jumped out of my world and into someone else’s—it was my world; they were my stories. The first story your mother ever told me—she was a little girl, just four or five years old when I got back from the war—was about how I’d dived off the bridge and survived . . . and survived.” He stilled his busy right hand with his left one, and stood awhile, the fingers of one hand rubbing at the palm of the other. “Did it matter that she thought it was me?” And Charlie’s grandfather, stepping back to the kettle and its cheerful whistle, spread his hands, palms up, appealing, and almost smiled. “Did it matter that you thought it was me, Charlie Brown? I mean, whichever man it was, to fall, to survive, that’s still some story.”

  He made the new tea, the same ritual she’d watched him complete through all the years she could remember. He set down the cups, pushed the biscuits towards her first, watched her closely as she chose one, dunked it, testing its sogginess, and then picked it up and ate it quickly before it disintegrated.

  “That’s my girl,” he said quietly. “I always figured someone would find out—someone would, you know, call me on it. But I’m sorry it was you, love, and I’m sorry it was today and this way. It was only you and your mum I pretended to—no, and that barmaid the day the bridge opened. She gave me a free drink for it too.” His smile flared again.

  Charlie glanced down at a little pile of grass growing between her leg and Dan’s: her right hand had been snapping off blades of grass, turning them like rings around her index finger, flicking them away, starting again. “And then,” she said, raking her fingers through the stems, “then he said this thing. He said: ‘We’ll always say we’re someone else if we think it will help someone, if we think it’ll help someone we love.’ ” And she smiled a screwed-up kind of smile.

  Dan’s frown deepened against the day’s brightness; even sitting down, he was so tired he felt unsteady, as if he was at sea. The story that had marked out their childhood, the story about miracles and flying, leaping into the unknown, the first story he’d told Caroline, let alone anyone else, and it belonged to another family? A family whose name he’d dreamed about, somewhere over the earth, on his way home? He blew out a long, slow breath—“That’s some thing, that’s some thing to do”—and turned to Charlie, not sure what to think, or say, about his own appropriations. Her face was still, so close to blank that she looked almost unfamiliar, but her eyes were glassy with tears and he reached out and took her hand to stop it shredding away the grass. “I’m sorry, Charlie, and that he died—so sorry for you—the rest, the story . . . I don’t know what to say.”

  She shrugged again, squeezed his fingers and let go. “If I hadn’t done the climb, or if there wasn’t a climb, how would I ever have heard that story? Maybe it was in a book somewhere, but I never saw it—I suppose I never went looking for other versions of the stories that came from Gramps.”

  Out in the harbor, a tubby little ferry turned its nose east: Dan picked out the letters of its name—it was the Sirius—as he wondered what he should say next. “Did he know this Kelly? Did he even see it happen?”

  Charlie nodded. “Yup. Yup. He knew Kelly. And he saw it. Was standing here, near this pylon, and looked up and saw a man—saw Kelly—lose his footing, turn a somersault, and fall down into the water. Three seconds, he said—” and her fingers clicked their beat the way Gramps had counted them out whenever he told the story. “And then Kelly came back up to the surface, ‘marvelously alive’—wasn’t that always the phrase?”

  “Marvelously alive.” Dan nodded in turn. “That was it.” He was trying to move his eyes smoothly through the space between the bridge’s deck and the water so that it took precisely three seconds. It seemed incredibly slow. He was trying to remember the rest of his dream.

  “And it was bizarre, you know: I didn’t really think about why he might’ve done it, not straightaway,” said Charlie, her head still nodding in time, Dan saw, to the passage of seconds. “I just told him that it was a great story. It was a great story, made us feel so proud when we were kids that we knew the person who’d done that, and made us feel like amazing things were possible. He said that was good. He said that was what he wanted. He said that was all.” She stopped nodding, just for a beat or two, then started to shake her head from side to side. “The thing is—”

  She paused as a batch of joggers went by, as if she didn’t want them to hear, and her voice was so low when she spoke again that Dan had to lean in so that his head almost touched hers, just to catch her words.

  “The thing is,” she said, “he’d borrowed some other stories too.”

  Ted

  “WANT TO hear the story, Ted?” In the cavern of the hangar, Ted pocketed his spanner and wiped his hands, ready for the next tale they’d brought down from the sky.

  The group of boys who’d flown had come back full of some place crumbling beneath them. “Roads, buildings, bridges,” said one. “You should’ve seen the steel move, Teddy,” said another. “Curled up and folded like an overcoat.” Giving his shoulder an extra clap because they knew he was making hard work of it since his mate’s accident.

  Ted went over the machine again—bolts, gears, fuel—listening as the boys calmed down, headed out of the hangar, took themselves off to celebrate another run. There was a letter from Joy in his pocket, and he wanted some quiet before he read it. It was the first one to come since Joe died. He wished his boys hadn’t shot out a bridge that day—or wished they hadn’t told him. Or wished he didn’t take bridges so personally. Still.

  The envelope was miraculously soft and clean against his grubby hand; he let it lie in his palm, testing its weight before he opened it. There was a soft smell too, and the fragile petals of a white rose slipped out into his lap. He scooped them up, let them flutter down again, and then turned them one by one as if part of the letter might be written onto their clean, blank surfaces.

  I went up the bridge’s pylons today before they closed them, Joy had written. I wanted to remember how big the city looked spread o
ut over the plain, how little all the houses looked, and the cars, and everyone in them. I’m not as fit as I used to be, so the climb was hard, harder than I remember when we climbed the arch, but then you always said that was just like one long easy hill crest. There was no one up there, but it was a pretty grey day. The wind smelled salty, bringing the sea in from the coast. I thought I’d send you a rose to put wherever Joe is—I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to visit him so I’m glad you were there. The world feels too big with all this, Ted, so make sure he’s got this bit of the garden, would you?

  He curled one of the petals around his fingers, the other hand holding fast to the page.

  After a quarter of an hour or so, I heard someone come out onto the lookout behind me—a biggish bloke, thick hair and a nice smile; I thought I recognized him; thought he might be one of the bridge boys that used to come for a beer in the yard. He’d such a fancy watch on, and the bluest eyes: you know, I reckon it was Roy Kelly, coming up for one last look himself. The mountains looked so blue, Ted, and the ocean out in the other direction. There was a storm coming in, big banks of dark clouds rolling closer and closer and changing all the colors to steely grey. And this man and I sort of followed each other around the pylon’s walls, not quite catching up to one another. I tried to remember which section of the arch we’d climbed onto. Do you know I couldn’t even remember which side it was—east or west, front or back? It must have been the east. Did we see the beginning of the sunrise?

  He held the door open for me when I was done. And he smiled and said, After you, Mrs. Brown. I don’t know; I didn’t want to ask him who he was in case it wasn’t Kelly—I wanted to be able to send you that story and think that it was him. It’ll be good to see you, Ted, when this is over and they let you come back round the world. It’ll be good to have you near again. They might have the lookout opened again by then, and we can go up and wait for the miracle man. Write to me about where Joe is, and when you leave the flowers for him. He always said you’d bring his watch home for me if anything like this happened. It will be good to see you, to hear all your stories.

  There was no signature, as if she’d just decided that was enough to write, and folded the paper, once this way, once that. Then, before she sent it off, she’d sketched that familiar arch, the stripes of steel that suspended its deck, the salt-and pepper-shaker shapes of its pylons. Maybe she thought that was signature enough. Counting through the rose petals, Ted wondered if she’d mind if he kept one for himself: he could see the whole backyard—him, and Joe, and Joy, and summer—in its tiny triangle.

  On the floor next to him, Joe’s things sat in a bag. “Take the watch,” Joe had said at the end, “take the watch and get it back to Joy, will you? And tell her the good stories from all this, not this, not the end.” And, “Take care of her, would you? You know how much she makes of things.” His voice had trailed into a cough.

  The next time he’d spoken it was as if he was back in the backyard with the bridge boys, slugging cold beer, his breath faster, and his hand reaching out for his wife.

  “Joy? Where are you, Joy? Can’t see you for the darkness—we need a shooting star, love, or that comet, at last.” The words had sounded strangled, as if they must have hurt. “Where are you, love? Joy?”

  So that Ted had reached out himself, patted the seeking hand, and said it was all right, it would all be all right, said that Joy was here—“I’m here”—as softly, as gently as he could. And watched as his friend’s breathing slowed, and slowed again, and stopped.

  The letter in his lap, Ted rubbed his thumb across the watch’s glass, not velvety like the rose petal but still so smooth it was almost soft. He watched the speedy sweep of the second hand awhile, fascinated that it could move so quickly when he knew how long some minutes, some hours, could be. Compared to the watch’s sheen, there was so much grease ingrained into the lines on his hands that his skin seemed to have disappeared completely.

  All those years of working up in the air, out over the harbor, and the silly bugger had slipped from a scaffolding, falling not far at all, and that was it. The first thing Ted had thought was that there must be some way of trading Roy Kelly’s fall for Joe’s; there must be some way of making that Joe’s miracle. If only Ted had known how to do it, and if only Ted had seen Joe’s fall, the way he’d seen all those fragments, those premonitions, those leftovers of Kelly’s. Kelly’s miracle, in that faraway place with its water and its sandstone and its impossibly blue sky and white clouds. Joe’s accident, in some loud tangle of men and engines and blood and dirt.

  Lying back in his bed later, Ted closed his eyes and saw the bunk above become a big hunk of steel rising up into the sky above his head, the way he’d watched cranes floating huge girders and braces and bits of deck and track up to become the bridge’s shape. Why had it never occurred to him that one might drop? Why had it never occurred to him, on the barge beneath, that something might fall? Now, in this night, with Joe’s things nearby and the letter from Joy in his pocket, the fear of some great big remembered beam crashing down, squashing the life out of him, set him shaking all over. Not now, he thought, not after all this.

  He pulled his breathing back to slowness, tracing the curve of the arch on the top of his blanket—a decade since it was finished and opened, and he could still draw such accurate pictures of its shapes, its structure, by heart. These were the most familiar topographies he had—the bridge, and what was planted where in Joe and Joy’s garden. He recited those rivets, those plantings, like a spell, a mantra, running through them each night as he teetered against sleep.

  But when the sleep itself came, he stepped straight into the same old dream more often than not: the bridge, the day Kelly fell. He knew it was that day in particular by the bands and puffs of grey clouds that covered the sun around midday. Except now it was always Ted perched up in the air—and perched high on the arch’s peak, another three hundred or so feet up from where Kelly had stumbled. It was Ted turning and pausing and lining up his flight, Ted easing through the blue air down towards the blue water, Ted going down, down, down into the darkness and then turning again to surge back up to the surface and emerge, just as the sun did, “marvelously alive.”

  And the man standing watching on Dawes Point, fiddling with Jacko’s ears, was the old swaggie in the faded red coat who’d reared out of the shadows that night he and Joy came down from the arch and ran home. Faded coat, shining eyes, and a look of puzzled wonder on his face.

  He’d meet her, he said, off the ferry at the quay, but he was early, and wandered west around the cove, finding himself under the bridge—the southeastern foot, just down from the spot where Jacko’s kennel had been, just down from the spot where he’d met Joe. Where he sat, waiting, looking out across the water, smoking a bit, because he did now, and wincing a bit every time a train rattled through the air above him. Out over the water, a gull circled, swooping and diving and climbing back up into the sky. It was the right kind of movement for a coat flaring behind a falling man, but you could always trick yourself into thinking you were seeing something normal instead.

  The sensation of falling through air—he’d asked Kelly to describe it, the one time he’d seen him after his famous fall. But all Kelly could say was that it had been fast, so fast, and that if there was a sound, well, he didn’t really know, but maybe it was like a huge gust of wind.

  How strong would the wind need to be, wondered Ted, to carry you up instead of down?

  Kelly had done a better job of describing the mechanics of his somersault, the one chance you had to use the speed of your fall and jerk yourself around so your feet were facing down. To have the presence of mind to think that; to know how to make your body do that. Joe should have practiced falling after all—maybe such a little drop needn’t have killed him. Ted closed his eyes, pictured himself in the air, clenching at the pivot of his stomach, kicking himself over and down, down, down. There it was; there was the dive; there was the moment. And something did splas
h into the water as he got to the end of counting three and looked up at the pure blue of the sky. Probably just a fish leaping, a bird swooping, or something tossed in from a boat. But still, there it was, there it was, like an echo in this place.

  The harbor’s foreshore bustled around him, and he swung between the sense that he’d been gone an irreparably long time, and that he might have been here yesterday. It was good to be home at last. Walking around the city’s streets, trying to remember its geography, he’d felt like an observer walking in an unfamiliar land, as though the space he knew best was playing tricks on him, keeping him at bay. But he’d taken care to keep out of the way of the bridge until this morning, trawled through his mind for all the corners and crests that might reveal it unexpectedly, and stayed away, his head down as an extra precaution. He’d imagined coming up the rise to find her sitting there—even earlier than him and filling in time herself. But the little park was empty and he sat there, looking at the birds, the water, the headland out to the east, alone.

  He thought about Kelly’s flight, about the softness of Jacko’s fur, about running into Joe here in the fading light of that long-ago evening, about all the stories in the backyard, and walking out to look for comets, for shooting stars. He thought about his smaller self, sitting here while his mother cried; thought back further to Joe’s astronomer.

  All the watching and waiting that had been done here.

  A dog barked, and the round sound of a couple of boats’ horns cut across the top of it. The watch in Ted’s pocket lay heavily against his leg and he took it out and wound it automatically, shining its silver edges on the cuff of his shirt. Another quarter of an hour. He lit another smoke and walked back towards the wharves, his breath quickening as the ferry emptied and Joy didn’t come.

  “Joe Brown?”

  There was a man standing behind him, a smooth suit, a hat; he had a satchel of some kind in one hand and a little girl, pretty blue frock, held fast to the other.