“Very good.” said the bird, and its voice seemed pleased to see that she had remembered so well.
“Do you know the others?” she asked and the bird flew back to the window ledge.
“Oh we birds have no names for planets.” it said cheerfully, “In fact I do not even know what a planet is.”
“Oh.” said Abigail sadly. “I don’t understand then. Why did you ask me to name the planets? I could have them all wrong and you would not ever know at all.”
“Ah yes.” said the bird, “But I knew that if you did play the game of naming them then it would make you happy, and sometimes being happy is much more important than the name of things.”
Abigail wrinkled her nose and paused, staring at the bird. She did not really know what it meant but it seemed to be happy enough, and so she almost instantly forgot what they were talking about. Shortly after it flew away again, but this time it was more than a week before it appeared at her window again.
“I thought you had forgotten about me.” said Abigail sadly as she placed the bread on the window ledge. The bird did not move however. It just sat on the inside ledge staring at her, and then suddenly it flew into the room and landed on her blankets that were pulled up about her. Abigail was quietly delighted that it was so near and she smiled widely.
“How did you get that bruise on your eye?” asked the bird, unmoving. Abigail thought that the bird sounded strange; stern almost. It seemed like an adult talking to her now. She stuttered but could not answer.
“Mister Swains?” asked the bird and she nodded sadly. The bird hopped back to the window ledge and onto the ledge outside. Abigail jumped out of bed and ran to the window.
“It was not Mister Swain’s fault!” she shouted, “I knocked his cup over and it broke. It was all my fault. He did not mean to hit me. It was because I was playing and did not notice the cup. It was me who was bad. Not Mister Swains.”
The bird however did not answer. It glanced over to her and then flew out of the window heading this time however in the opposite direction to the way that it normally flew. Abigail stood looking out of the open window for some time, but as night began to fall the bird did not return and after a while she became cold and so closed the window and went back to bed to sleep.
For the next ten days Abigail was increasingly saddened to see that the bird stayed away. Every morning she was ready with a morsel of by then dried bread but every night she had to flush it away. On the tenth day however as the sun hung low in the sky and was beginning to descend onto the horizon as night approached Abigail was surprised to find the bird on her window ledge. It pecked on the glass and as she opened the window it hopped inside almost immediately.
“Hello…” she began to say but the bird interrupted her, flying swiftly onto the foot of her bed and watching as she climbed back into bed and pulled the covers about her.
“There will be a visitor with a very loud knock.” said the bird as from downstairs Abigail heard a very loud knock on the front door followed by muffled curses from downstairs from her uncle. “It is of no concern.” said the bird as downstairs heard the front door swing open followed by a loud shout from her uncle and then a very sudden and definite silence.
Abigail waited, listening to her heart beating as the silence drew out. It was absolute though. No sound at all could be heard from downstairs at all.
“It is time to go.” said the bird and Abigail looked at the creature as it hopped along the bed, finally settling right in front of her. “You said that you knew where you wanted to live.”
“Yes I do.” said Abigail.
“Then I say it is time we were leaving.” said the bird, and there was a little bit of sadness in its voice but Abigail knew that there was something else there too. She knew that she was only four, but she knew the sound of relief when she heard it.
“How will we travel there?” she asked and the bird made its odd little clicking sound with its beak that she knew by now was definitely laughter.
“We shall fly.” said the bird. “You will climb on my back.”
“Oh I am much too big for that.” she said. “I will never ever fit on your back. Not at all.”
“Oh stuff and nonsense.” said the bird brightly, “I know a song for that.” and it began to sing.
At first Abigail thought that the bird was growing in size, but as she laughed and looked about the room she saw that it was in fact everything else that seemed to be growing in size. Only then did she realise. Everything was not growing around her. She was shrinking!
On and on sang the bird until finally it stopped. Now the bird was much bigger and the room looked around her like a big cave full of giant furniture, the rumples in her bedclothes as big as hills.
“Climb up on my back.” said the bird and Abigail did as she was told, taking tight hold of the birds feathers as she settled herself on its back. “Here - take my hat.” said the creature, and leaning forward Abigail plucked the hat off the bird's head and put it on her own. To her great surprise it fitted perfectly and did not wobble at all.
“Hold tight!” said the bird as they rose slowly into the air, the bird’s wings flapping elegantly as they flew across the bedroom, out of the window and on, on out into a weary sun that sat on the horizon as if it was waiting for them. Then they were flying high and fast to a place far away but always near to hand. They flew on, laughing and smiling, singing new songs as they did so, heading on a favourable wind into the setting sun and then on to a place called over the hills and far away.
The Dust of Your Dreams
I had time on my hands for I was on a sabbatical from work after an illness that had nearly killed me. Should have killed me really. All the statistics said so. Yet it had not. So I took stock of my life; my family and my work, looking for things that I had achieved and things that had eluded me, and so inevitably my thoughts returned back to my childhood and where I had been brought up. It had been so long since I had lived anywhere near there and so I resolved to take a trip back to where I had come from. Where I had been raised. I wanted to see the ghosts come rattle their chains, but when I did return I found that I slipped silently amongst those places, the landmarks, the fields and schools so well that it was if I was but a ghost myself, untouching and untouched – nothing more than a memory.
Now however I found myself standing on the other side of the road outside the house where I had spent so much time as a kid and wondered if from somewhere I could find the courage to knock on the door and ask if I could have a look around.
I did not live here. I had never lived there, but I had probably spent much more time here than I did at the house where I did live. I had been thirteen, as was Simon too, but my birthday was in August and his was in February so I always considered him a year older than I even though he was in the same academic year at school as me. We spent so much time in that garden of his because it was huge. Him, his mother and father lived in a small bungalow. Outside loo. Hard to believe these days isn’t it, kids with their laptops and phones, Facebook and Twitter. We had two television channels, neither in colour and even the shops didn’t open on a Sunday. They used to close for lunch as well. Tell that to kids these days and they would think you were making it up.
But Simon’s dad, Allan, had a plan. They had bought the land next door to the house that I was currently looking at that was empty and he was going to build an extension onto the house. It would have an all mod cons bathroom inside and a big room for Simon. He was growing up and needed more room, Alan said, so that was the general idea. It was when joined together a big plot of land. In fact, we used to call it the plot, and we spent every spare moment of time there that we could. We were not playing football or climbing trees. Oh no. We were growing vegetables and fruit and we were good at it. Well Simon was anyway. He made a career of it, but our crops were huge and well-tended. Many times we had to stand outside the house and pass cabbages or tomatoes or green beans off to passersby just to get rid of them.
&n
bsp; One year we even grew tobacco. We dried it and gave it to Simon's dad to smoke in his pipe. He made agreeable noises as he did so, but between you and I, the smell of it burning told you all that you needed to know really.
So we grew older and eventually I discovered girls and Simon went to University and soon those days had gone. There was a brief hiatus when he returned from University having concluded one degree and starting another and we went for a few drinks and hung around pretty loosely but it wasn’t the same really. Those days were gone and they would never come back. It sounds sad I suppose but that’s life as they say, isn’t it?
There were other things too but I will come to them. For now, I am standing outside the house where Simon used to live though to be honest it just doesn’t look the same any more. Simon’s mum moved away years ago, as did I and I have never been back. Not until now anyway.
The house looks different. The old bungalow has gone, been replaced by a new one. Still one storey, though it looks much more modern. Double glazing, nice roof. The extension to one side looks different too, and in the place where the old asbestos and corrugated iron roofed garage used to stand there is now a big double garage and a gate that looks as if it opens electronically. The house and garage are so big that I cannot see the garden behind it, which was never the case before.
I stand there staring. It has been quite a journey to get here. I travelled down the day before, three hours it took and I got myself a room in a Travelodge so I would be ready and fresh to have a walk around my old hunting grounds in the morning. It was sunny and bright, though there was a stiff breeze which took the edge off the warmth of the sun. I had my new blue parker coat fastened tightly to keep the chill at bay, for it was Autumn and the weather was variable at best. Yet today it was bright if nothing else, though I seemed to be frozen to the spot, for no matter how long I had been standing there I just could not seem to be able to make the move across the narrow road and knock on the door. It quite simply seemed like a huge imposition to knock on a stranger’s door and ask to look around. Of course there were two possible outcomes to such a conversation. First would be that I was told in no uncertain manner to bugger off, the second that whoever lived there now would let me look around.
I had decided many years before that I would do this, and I also knew that the house may have changed, but it was still such a shock when I found this to be the case. So I had also decided that if the house was different then I would be more than satisfied just to have a look around the garden, for it was there that we spent most of the time. One of the unfortunate side effects of growing and digging was that usually you were covered in mud, and so the soup or hot drinks that Simon’s mum Brenda kept us supplied with were usually drunk either in the small kitchen or more often in the large tool shed that stood in the centre of the garden.
This had no doubt been a garage when the house was one plot but now it contained every tool, nut and bolt, screws and piece of gardening equipment that you would ever possibly need. It was also well lit and had a small gas heater for the winter.
I paused. Was I imagining the gas heater? Do you know, I think I was? I remember the air misting in there as you exhaled, though it was the perfect shelter from both the rain and the wind, both of which we seemed to get quite a lot of on a fairly regular basis. So forget the heater. It was never there, but we did wrap up and wrap up well to keep the cold at bay. Besides, digging is always a good way to keep warm.
Earlier I had started my look around the area with a trip along the river. Well, they call it a river. It is only that when it rains and only then if it rains hard. Fender brook it is called, though to us it was always the river Fender and it ran at an angle across from Simon’s house over the road and off along the fields in both directions. From Simon’s house it was a five-minute walk, though we usually went on our bikes, but there was the long road of houses in the way and so you had to go to the end or the start of the road along a little alley to get to the river.
I had started at the top of the road by the builder’s merchants, for alongside here there was a small alley. The river vanished under a culvert under the road here, as it did under the builder’s merchants, and there was a long narrow alley that crossed over it so you entered the fields beyond and there was the river, trickling away, running east to west.
I parked the car a little way along the road, avoiding the junction that was far busier than I ever remembered it, looking at the tattoo parlour that had once been a chip shop that did fantastic mushy peas and walked back up the road, looking across it to the narrow alley that I had forgotten was there. It was pure memory that brought me this far for I had forgotten about the alley altogether, so had everyone else by the look of it. The alley was overgrown and looked like it had been abandoned by everyone.
As I walked along it I felt several threads of spiders webs brush across my cheeks and I shivered and increased my pace, the long grass from either side of the passage rubbing wetly across my jeans. It had rained in the night. The downpour had woken me and I had taken a few minutes to adjust, wondering where I was, the unfamiliar hotel room concealed in the darkness, though I soon drifted back off to sleep again. Now however, as I emerged from the alley I saw the long grass of the riverbank was soaked with rain and I wished I had had the presence of mind to throw a pair of walking boots into the boot of the car but I hadn’t thought to do so, and so I resigned myself to getting wet.
It was early. Eight o’clock in the morning or thereabouts. I had set out early and found myself wandering along the river bank, the water in the deep ditch in which the Fender river flowed higher that it probably normally was because of the rain, flowing quickly towards the builder’s yard and the fields beyond.
Nobody else was around.
I had expected dog walkers, one or two at least, but there were none. Probably the park across the way was preferable, though a ten-minute walk from here. So I stood and looked across the river to the housing estate beyond and tried to remember how it was, for now there stood hundreds of well lived in houses. When I had last been here it was all fields for as far as you could see. Now all I could see was the back of many houses, the basketball nets and car tyres, the rusty barbecues and the dogs barking, barking, waiting for a walk that would probably never come.
I preferred the fields I suppose and I walked a little further, the morning growing old around me. I glanced at my wrist watch and was amazed to discover that it was nearly a quarter past nine. I must have been standing and dreaming for nearly an hour! I laughed to myself but I did not increase my pace, for I had waited long for this walk and I wanted to savour it, for I knew that I would never be back this way again.
Eventually I saw the river bend slightly and I knew that now I would have to head back towards the road, for I wanted to go and take a look at Simon’s house, and I still had a long drive ahead of me after that. Yet as I reluctantly considered heading back to the main road I saw the old bridge that crossed the river and I stopped and smiled.
It was not much of a bridge it has to be said, and was probably there more for when this was fields I suppose. For the farmers. It was more of a culvert really, though when I was a kid and even younger it was a definite bridge, and as everyone knows trolls live under bridges and so we always ran across it quickly, shouting and laughing as we did so. I stood for a while, watching the water flow under it and then, grinning to myself as I remembered I strode away, crossing the thin grass covered fields back to the far end of the main road.
I had considered walking back along the river the way I came but I wanted to have a look at the houses along the road and as I did so I was surprised to see that there were very few changes. This had always been a relatively quiet street, as had the road on which Simon lived that I was now slowly walking towards, and time did not seem to have altered it much. Forty years or so. I stopped to count. Forty-five. Wow. A long, long time. A lifetime in fact.
As I walked along I suddenly came to a gap in the houses, a high barbed
wire covered gate with warning signs strapped to it, a huge rusty padlock and chain wrapped fence barring access to the derelict building behind it. I peered through the gate. I had forgotten this too! What was it? I could not quite remember, but I do recall it was a small factory that made something outlandish. Rubber dinghies or parachutes jumped into my mind unheeded, but I could not recall. I rattled the padlock but it was so badly rusted and heavy it did not move at all.
So I crossed the road and made my way a little further along and found myself outside Simon’s house where I had now stood motionless for probably thirty minutes or more. Yet nobody had walked past, for if they had done so I would have no doubt made a decision about what to do next, even if it was embarrassment that had motivated me to make a decision. I glanced at my watch, and again I was surprised to discover that it was just after ten fifteen. As I folded my coat sleeve back down I glanced at Simon’s old house and flinched almost as I saw a curtain twitch there, held back by an unseen hand for a nearly a minute as if someone was staring back at me, which no doubt they were, before it suddenly fell closed again as the person looking at me had no doubt let it drop.
I swallowed hard and decided to make a move, and walking nervously across the road and opening the gate I shuffled up the very short path and knocked on the front door. To my great surprise, for I was still trying to compose what I was actually going to say even though I had rehearsed this many, many times over the years, the door opened more or less straight away.
“Yes?” said a middle aged man standing in front of me, a stern look on his face. He was slightly greying, perhaps a little overweight, and he did not look happy to see me at all.
“I am not buying anything.” said the man in the doorway. He held the door slightly open as if he was going to slam it shut any minute, but then surprisingly he opened it a little more, as if he had changed his mind, and I noticed was examining me very closely.
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