240

The timing was off, that’s all. The timing, and my lack of courage, his lack of awareness. But then, anyone can make excuses to cover up the fact that they’ve just fucked up.

He was there, where I could find him, all day he was there, but I played a game with myself. A game of signs and ifs. I never did the thing. Not even when we were sitting face to face, talking about rubbish, about Christmas, about pastel jumpers, and whether to unplug the circuit breaker or just switch it off at the wall.

Maybe I should have taken that as a sign.

I didn’t even say goodbye properly that night. I left, and rang him later. It was his answerphone. I left a pointless message, saying badly the things I’d intended to say two hours, three hours, four hours earlier. Counting on it coming across as charmingly nervous, and not psychotic.

Fifty two hours and forty minutes later, I was still waiting for him to respond. Every morse code beep from the blesséd phone turned out to be someone else. Not their fault, they couldn’t help not being him, but still I blamed them, my lack of enthusiasm clear.

Two hundred and forty hours later, in another country, in another year, I got the headmaster’s summons by text. Businesslike, perfunctory, wanting to draw the line. Two hundred and thirty nine hours 59 minutes too late for me not to expect it. Even so, I didn’t expect it.

I was early for the requested meeting. He was earlier. His smile was tight. I stood waiting for the reprimand, the soft look of disappointment. He told me to sit down while he waited to be served. So I did, painstakingly removing my coat, straightening my hair with fingers cold and nervous and trying not to shake. When he came over with our drinks, I did not even look. He took a cigarette from the packet he took from his pocket, tapping it against the table, bracing himself to speak the words in his mind. I took the longest time to jiggle and remove the teabag from the mug, pour the milk and stir. Jealously grabbed seconds of composure and avoidance.

Speech over, reason given, plea for maintenance of friendship delivered, my assurance offered, his discomfort alleviated, we settled into ninety minutes of civilised chat. Music, films and literature. Adult and measured and tight around the corners of the mouth as we laughed and smiled and said that this was okay, this was fine, this wasn’t uncomfortable or awkward.

The day after, and every day since, it has been as though nothing happened. We’re clever like that. You don’t need to unplug it. Just switch it off at the wall.

© J R Hargreaves 2006

Some Kind of Wonderful

I don’t look my age. Thank god for good genes.

It’s snowing. I hate snow. One of the houses across the street doesn’t have proper insulation in their roofspace. I suppose they don’t know. Or don’t care. The house is up for sale. Or have they just bought it? There was a removal van there a week or two ago, and there are cards lined up in the front window today. Whatever. Their house is leaking heat through its roof.

So yes, I hate snow, but this morning when I looked out of the kitchen window and saw it blanketing the back garden, it was alright. It’s melting already now, and this is precisely what I don’t like about snow. The mush and melt and wetness that follows the pretty postcard image. Pat who has her washing out at all times, in all weathers, has her washing out today. Blues and maroons and purples. Stiff enough to crack, even just by looking at them.

I wonder if I have enough insulation in my roofspace. If I go out (if I go out, of course I’m going out, I’ve got to tax the car), maybe I’ll look up at the roof. Maybe.

I went to see that film yesterday. Factotum. Matt Dillon pulls off a fair approximation of old Bukowski. Listen to me, talking like I know anything about Bukowski. All I know is that he died of old age and I feel slightly cheated by this ending. He was supposed to die of alcohol poisoning, or being run over by a runaway ice truck, or something. It’s a funny film, though, and I’m glad I went to see it.

I’m annoyed with myself for using a cliché like “blanketing” to describe the snowfall up there. I’m going to leave it, though, to remind myself that I’m no Bukowski.

It’s from Old French, according to the dictionary. Blankete. As in blanc. So maybe it’s the perfect word for snowfall, and not a cliché at all.

Words are crazy. The other day I learned that the bogies we have in our noses are actually bogeys, because the synonym comes from ice hanging down from the underside of train bogeys. I think this is bullshit, but I admire the man who spoke it as truth, because he did it with such conviction.

So, what’s so wonderful? Apart from not looking my age, and having a day off so I can stare out of my window at my neighbour’s roof, of course. Well, everything. It’s some kind of wonderful that I can sit and have coffee with someone (of course, you know I was drinking tea) and talk about what I like and who I am and be silent and nervous and reassured all in the space of an hour, and now sit here wishing I smoked so I would be a real writer, and might even be thought of as cool as a result, and still know that it doesn’t matter if I’m cool or not.

Do you know why else I hate snow? Boys wee in the snow. It covers up dog muck, and it makes my knees hurt. Plus I feel stupid walking in it with an umbrella. Even though it’s nothing more than very cold rain.

I’m thinking about him. Wishing I was in work. Or he was here, smoking the cigarette for me. Being cool.

Funny how you can think about someone, and suddenly they pop up and scare you. Funny how you can think you’re in love with the nice guy, and then the bad guy comes back and makes you smile a different way.

My boots leak.

I’m not going to talk to him.

Funny. Some kind of wonderful is melting like the snow.

© J R Hargreaves 2005

Waiting (2)

She lifted her head from the desk, scratched the semi-dried drool from the corner of her mouth, and blinked against the dead white glare of the fluorescent lights. There was no daylight left outside the office window. The yellow of the street lights was oddly depressing. She rubbed her face and tried to wake up properly.

Standing, she almost sat straight back down again. Too quick, the blood rushed to her head, the change in internal pressure causing her to feel dizzy. She steadied herself against the edge of the desk.

Outside, wrapped against the bite of the wind, she huddled and almost charged her way down the street to the bus stop. The bus journey would take at least 40 minutes at this time of night. She knew she would doze, probably invade the space of whatever person was crammed next to her. She didn’t care. This tiredness was almost permanent now, and any snatch of sleep she could get was welcome.

Blank and aching, she walked up the path to her front door. She barely remembered getting on the bus, and had woken seconds before it pulled away again from her stop. Her key slid awkwardly into the lock, jamming slightly and catching as she turned it. It needed seeing to. Like so many things in this house, in her life.

The house was in darkness, and she moved from room to room, leaving a blaze of halogen behind her as she progressed from hall, to lounge, to dining room, to kitchen, shedding layers of clothing as she went.

Sitting at the kitchen table with a freshly brewed mug of tea, she slowly began to thaw. In spite of hat and gloves, her head and hands felt numb. The middle distance was a place she had heard of, and her eyes rested there now. There was nothing to see there, its boundaries blurred, its contents blurrier. Inside her head was a feeling like cottonwool. Blood pounded at her temples, her eyes wanted to close, their lids as heavy as roller shutter doors.

She started. He had let the door bang shut behind him and was even now removing his coat in the hall. Noisy. Unnecessary. Her tea was cold and its surface looked greasy. She decided she would learn to rinse the dishes properly to avoid this in future.

Here he came, rushing and thundering through the house on his legs like treetrunks. Briefcase flung onto a sofa, post scattered across the dining table, followed by keys. A clattering whirl of heat and presence, he arrived in the kitchen, where she still sat at the table, something new and cold resting in her head.

He spoke. Something. She didn’t listen. He stood, hip cocked, arms raised, body leaning, peering, face lit by the ice white light of the open fridge. Slam of the door. Bang of the cupboards, opening, closing, searching, seeking.

Cold metal in her hand, alien yet comforting. Her hand gripped the scored metal, her finger rested against the trigger. Hidden underneath the table. She tested the muscles in her arm. Like sitting on the bus, doing pelvic floor exercises.

She raised her arm. His back was turned. This was the coward’s way. She waited, finger ready to squeeze. She waited.

Waking, she lifted her head from the table and blinked against the humming lights of her kitchen as the front door opened and her husband shouted his arrival.

Next time, she wouldn’t wait.

© J R Hargreaves 2005

Only Human

She’s still in her pyjamas. Pink candystriped bottoms with a drawstring at the waist, and a candyfloss pink top. Still in her pyjamas and starting to stink.

His stomach rolls, or is it hers? Someone’s stomach rolls and gurgles. He hasn’t been able to eat, so it might be his. She’s decomposing, so it might be hers. He has the feeling that it’s his, though, that his stomach wants some food, the digestive acids fighting amongst themselves, breaking down what little they can find.

He wants to move her. He has to really. She’s sitting up in bed, pillows at her back, staring glassily, mouth half open. He stands in the bedroom doorway, looking at her. He’s had to sleep in the spare room the last couple of nights. Obviously. He wonders why she hasn’t fallen forward, why her head at least hasn’t slumped or lolled. Her eyes haven’t rolled back in their sockets, haven’t even closed as though she had fallen asleep. She is upright, glass-eyed, unmoving. Her book has fallen. That’s the only thing that has moved. He can’t remember now whether it was fallen when he found her, or wether it has fallen since. It lies there on the duvet now, though. No longer in her hands. Her hands look as though they should still be holding it.

He has opened the bedroom window. He had to. She isn’t smelling too good. Next door are having a barbecue and the faint smell of beefburgers, sausages, god knows what, is wafting into the room with the chatter of voices. Laughter mixes with music and children screeching as they race in a stew of overexcitement around the garden. Helen caught him yesterday, over the fence, and mentioned it was Dave’s 40th. They were having a bit of a do, and she wanted to know if they wanted to join them. He had muttered something about her not really feeling up to it. Helen has asked if she was still unwell. Unwell was one way of looking at it.

The simplest thing would have been to report it as soon as he’d found her, but he’d panicked, like the fool he was, more worried about how it would look and what people would say. She’s the local GP. Was the local GP, he corrects himself. He knows it doesn’t matter now, what people think or say. He’s in more trouble now than he would have been if he’d reported it straight off.

He needs to move her somehow, needs to get her out of the house. Not today, obviously, but soon. He wonders how long it takes for a body to decompose. Maybe that was something she would have known. Was that the sort of thing a GP would know. He hasn’t a clue, and wishes instead that he had paid more attention to Silent Witness, the scenes where they move the bodies – whether they’re flexible or rigid. He frowns. Of course, they’re actors, still alive. If a body that’s been dead for a couple of days is stiff, an actor who is still alive wouldn’t be able to fake that easily.

You don’t think of these things when you’re watching tv, though. He realises that now. If he’d known he was going to come home on Thursday and find her like this, he would probably have made time to think about it. After all, it’s fairly important now, he thinks. What if he tries to move her and she is stiff, and he can’t unbend her? Will he have to try to bend her more? And what if she isn’t stiff, but is floppy? Has she decomposed enough to be floppy? He hasn’t a clue.

Really he should phone the police, call an ambulance, suffer the consequences. He knows this is technically the right thing to do. It no longer matters, saving face. She’s dead, he’s left her there too long, people are going to talk now, no matter what. People talk anyway.

He decides to put off the decision, and goes downstairs. Perhaps sitting with a nice cold beer will help him work out how to deal with this. No point in ringing the police or anyone else until he’s absolutely sure how this is going to go.

He walks into the kitchen and takes a beer from the fridge. He looks out of the French Windows and sees Dave barbecueing away in the garden next door. Dave raises his tongs to him, so he raises his bottle of beer in response. He walks over to the French Windows and slides them open.

“Happy Birthday, Dave,” he says.
“Cheers, mate,” Dave replies. “Are you sure you won’t join us?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Thanks for asking.”
“Oh come on!” Helen comes to the fence. “Have you eaten?”
“Well, no, actually, I haven’t,” he says, beginning to think that he might be able to eat. Those sausages are smelling good.
“Come over, then,” says Dave, waving a sausage at him.

He steps out into the garden, the fresh air hitting him and reviving his spirits. Through his back gate and over into Dave and Helen’s back garden. Helen hands him a plate and Dave loads it with sausages.

“Burger as well?” he asks, raising one from the grill, adept with his tongs.
“Why not!”
“That’s the spirit!”
“How’s she doing?” Helen nods in the direction of the bedroom window.
“Oh, you know. Still not too clever,” he says through a mouthful of sausage.
“One of the perils of being a GP, I suppose,” says Helen. “She must have the immune system of an ox, not to get ill more often.”

He nods. One of the perils of being a GP isn’t the number of germs you get exposed to, he thinks, it’s the access you have to the drugs cabinet. He bites down into a sausage.

“There are buns around, somewhere,” Dave says.
“Oh yes, and salad and relish over here.” Helen takes hold of his arm and leads him to another table. She introduces him to the gathered friends and family. “This is one of our neighbours. His wife’s a bit poorly. She’s the local GP.” She looks at him. “He’s probably not eaten properly since she fell ill,” she smiles.

He smiles back and helps himself to salad. Amazing how quickly his appetite has come back, now he’s not in the house with that smell.

“What do you do, then?” asks one of Dave’s relatives.
“Teach at the local comp,” he replies, trying to chew and speak at the same time. He’s aware that he looks like a pig, but he’s ravenous. He tries to think when his last meal was. He doesn’t think he ate the day he found her, but he’s no longer sure.
“A teacher and a doctor, eh?” smiles the relative, trying to ignore the half-chewed food that’s on clear view from his mouth as he speaks and chews. “Pillars of the local community.”

He smiles and swallows, takes another bite. Helen pops up again with a cold bottle of beer.

“You haven’t got a drink!” she trills. She’s always been a bit of a triller, has Helen. She’s small and bubbly, and probably more intelligent than she lets on, but she does the stay-at-home-Mum thing really well. He takes the beer from her and drinks. It washes the sausage and bun down perfectly.

“I was just saying,” continues the relative, “how he and his wife are pillars of the local community, being a teacher and a doctor.”
“Oh, you know,” he says, a touch bashfully, “we’re only human, really.”

He wonders if it’s true, that they’re only human. Her up there, dead and decomposing, she’s not human anymore. She’s just a shell. And as for himself, he’s not sure that he’s human either. He suddenly catches a whiff of something unpleasant. He looks around. Nobody else seems to have smelled it. Perhaps it’s just got stuck in his nostrils. He thinks now that maybe he should have had a shower today. He drinks more beer.

The relative is chatting away about something and nothing. He hasn’t been paying attention. He wonders what sort of a relative she is. An aunt, a cousin? She doesn’t look like she’s Dave’s mum. But then, maybe Dave looks like his dad. Families are funny things.

He’ll have to tell her parents. They’ve never really liked him. Now they’ll have more reason not to. Perhaps the police will tell them for him. He takes a bite out of the burger. It’s cooked to perfection, just the way he likes it. He closes his eyes and savours the taste.

When he opens his eyes again, Helen is carrying a birthday cake down the garden to where Dave is still overseeing the food. Everyone starts to follow her down, and they form a crescent around Dave and his self-igniting gas barbecue. Personally, he’s never understood gas barbecues. He smiles to himself. He’s never understood barbecues full stop. Still, the food tastes good. Not all charred and half-cooked like some barbecues he’s been to.

Dave’s blowing out the candles on the cake. Someone makes a joke about being able to use the cake as the barbecue. They all laugh politely.

She would have hated this. She hated living in suburbia. She hated that she was a GP. He was quite enjoying it, though. He liked people, liked meeting new ones. Dave’s family are great, he decides. Very welcoming. Friendly. He raises his bottle of beer in the toast to Dave and his 40 years on the planet, then he takes a deep swig, and smiles at Helen’s sister. He’s half tempted to wink. She smiles back.

Yes, he likes meeting new people.

It’s fun.

Helen’s sister crosses the grass towards him. She’s still smiling, so he broadens his own.

“You live next door, don’t you?” she says.
“I do,” he replies.
“Helen says your wife’s ill.”
“Yes, she is. Been a bit off colour for a couple of days now.”
“It’s a shame she couldn’t come to the barbecue with you.”
“Isn’t it?”

He can’t work out whether she’s flirting with him or not. He’s now on his third bottle of beer, and he thinks the alcohol might be going to his head.

“Helen says you’re a teacher.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What subject?”
“Geography.”

She laughs. “I hated Geography,” she says, and touches him lightly on the arm. He looks down at where she touched him.

“Lots of people do,” he says.
“You don’t look like a Geography teacher,” she says.
“Thanks,” he replies, confused. “What does a Geography teacher look like?”
“Not like you,” she laughs.

He smiles nervously. He wonders whether Helen’s sister might be a bit drunk. He can’t smell anything on her breath, but then all he can smell is barbecue and that faint whiff of unpleasantness, that must be lodged inside his nose. He decides he needs to get away from Helen’s sister. He also needs another beer. And maybe more food.

He heads towards the house. As he walks up the garden, he sees Helen next door in his garden. She’s walking away from the house, with a plate in her hand with cake on it. Her face is white. Like a sheet. Clichés are only clichés because they’re true, he thinks.

He stops. Helen is in his garden. Walking away from the house. She stops. They look at each other across the fence.

“I think you should call an ambulance,” she says, still holding the plate, although it’s at an angle now, and the cake could fall at any second.
“Yes,” he says, “I think you’re probably right.”

© J R Hargreaves, 14 August 2005

The End of Hope

This isn’t the truth, you know. You’re all fools if you think it is. Just like her. Except, deep down, she knows this isn’t the truth. Look at her, turning her head to one side, so she can’t see it.

It’s all she knows, now, this feeling of having to look away, or not look too closely. This avoidance, filling the void with distraction.

In a darkened bar, she talks to a man in a hat. Just a brief exchange of words that shy away from truth, though reality crackles all around them. She says words devoid of meaning, just for the sake of speaking, and he responds with platitudes.

It’s the way of the world.

Inside and outside, she is alone. I watch her, constantly, and still she is alone. Unloved and emotionally bankrupt.

The truth is, there is no truth. No love, no gratitude, no common thread that connects us all. And she knows this, but is afraid to admit it. Because, unless you subscribe to some abstract ideal of truth and beauty, you are devoid of hope. Hope rushes out just as quickly as fools rush in to seek it.

Like her, you’ve probably sat down in a room, low-lit by lamps from IKEA, and listened to some two-bit songwriter singing a love song about being there. Unlike her, you probably find comfort in that song, that expression of love, believing in truth as you do.

She is just acutely aware of how none of it is true.

Once, you see, she would have done anything for love. Believed in it, even.

Because once, there was a man. He had blue eyes and either some sort of problem with his vision or else the appearance that he was looking straight at you was, in fact, a reality. He’s the same man as the one in the hat, except now he has learned to choose carefully who he looks at with his blue eyes, now he knows there is no truth.

There was a woman, too, whose eyes were either blue, or green, or grey, or turquoise, nobody had decided, though all the official forms said grey. She’s the one we’re watching now.

She was born with the knowledge that nothing the world or heaven could offer would ever fill the hole right at the centre of her being. This knowledge somehow never stopped her from trying to fill that hole, though. She threw all sorts of junk in there, believing or maybe merely hoping that, like a jigsaw, the pieces would miraculously fit together to fill the gap. But the spaces between the pieces were enough to let her soul seep out.

Unable to recue herself, then, and believing she could never be loved, she set herself an impossible task: to be a rescuer of others...

He was standing in the corner of the pub, trying to work out how to persuade the cigarette machine to dispense some cigarettes in return for money. But he couldn’t even work out where the money went. His hands were up in the air, his knees were bent, and as she walked past she couldn’t help but stop and ask if he needed any assistance.

“I can’t see where to put the money.”

“Which brand do you want?”

“Marlboro Lights.”

She took the pound coin from where it was gripped between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, and pushed it into the slot above the Marlboro Lights sign. Then she took the remaining money from his open left palm, and fed that into the machine as well. Finally, she pushed the button, pulled out the drawer and handed him the packet of cigarettes.

“Thanks,” he said.

He bought her a drink at the bar, and the conversation flowed, so he bought her another. His blue eyes sought out her suspected grey ones, and she couldn’t quite meet the intensity of his gaze. So she lowered her eyes, and he liked the way her lashes brushed down against the rise of her cheeks. When she raised her eyes again, he was smiling at her.

Now, what many men who believe in truth don’t realise is, when faced with a woman who seems to want to be rescued, they are in fact about to be rescued themselves.

© J R Hargreaves 2004

Right

He chewed his bottom lip and tried to think of all the clichés he could. Storm clouds on the horizon. Trouble was brewing. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. He chewed his bottom lip and whispered mantras to himself inside his head.

She opened her mouth and knives fell out. Pointed daggers like you saw thieves carry in fairy stories. Silver, shiny, bright and sharp. He opened his mouth in response, and set free fat ineffectual duvets.

Under the blanket, where they couldn’t see, where they had forgotten he lay hidden, peering under its edge, under the blanket he couldn’t understand the words that fell or streamed or jerked from their mouths, but he could see the knives and despise the duvets.

He tried not to move. Keeping very, very still was a skill. He treated it as such. He honed it. Barely breathing, eyes like slits so he wouldn’t even blink, he lay under the blanket, waiting.

It was almost like an opera, their daily performance; the same words and phrases said over and over. Her with her knives, him with his duvets. A soap opera, but real. Factual entertainment. Although, he never felt entertained. Just frightened. Sometimes her knives were extra-sharp and shiny.

It was dark under the blanket. Peering under its edge with his eyes half-closed made the room around the blanket seem slightly dark, too; although, he supposed, that could partly be the metaphorical storm clouds having an effect.

A snatch of monologue, recitative; her favourite refrain:

“You always f-ing bring it back to that, don’t you?”

His sighing response lost in a cushion of duvet smothering. Duvets so thick, her knives never seemed to get through. Perhaps that was the point.

He closed his eyes and started humming gently to himself. The room around the blanket went silent. Then his father spoke softly.

“Sh1t.”

He stopped humming. Stupid of him to have started. He heard his father take a couple of steps towards where he lay under the blanket. Please don’t look at me; please don’t pull back the blanket, he whispered in his head.

“It’s okay, son. I’m not going to look at you. I won’t pull back the blanket, promise.”

His father was very near to where he lay. He continued to lie, and let the silence stretch; let his father’s words evaporate. It interested him, lying there in the darkness of the blanket, in the freshness of the silence, that his mother never spoke at this point in the opera. He sensed her, standing behind his father, arms folded; her turn to chew her bottom lip now, with impatience. In her head, he knew, words would be tumbling and fighting, challenging each other to duels. Bright shiny knives clinking and clattering in her head. She must be very tired, he thought.

His father crouched beside where he lay under the blanket. Please don’t look at me. Don’t move the blanket. Even said in his head, the words came through clenched teeth.

“I promise, son. I promise I won’t look at you or move the blanket. But, if you’re okay, will you just nod your head, or something? No-one’s looking, I swear.”

Don’t swear, it’s bad. He nodded his head once, sharp, made himself still again as he heard his mother barely stifle a laugh that had razor blades at the edges. His father patted him through the blanket.

Razor blades from her mouth, not knives this time. You took a shallower cut from a razor blade, but it stung more. His father’s mouth let out steam in response. No duvets this time. Steam like an old-fashioned kettle, or the miniature trains at that place in the mountains they sometimes took him to; always bright and overly cheerful on those trips, brittle pieces of coloured glass fell from their lips, tinkling as they hit the floor, and sparkling as they fell; pieces of glass as cold and lifeless as the fun he knew they were supposed to be having.

But here the hiss of steam under pressure. He pushed his fists into his eye sockets, as though that would stop him seeing, even though it was dark under the blanket and he was no longer peering under its edge.

Then the blanket ripped back with a violence unwarranted. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. Still, his mother accused him:

“Stop howling. Stop it. STOP IT!”

“Leave him be. It’s not his fault. Leave him, Sarah. Please.”

She turned on him, the razor blades skittering at the edges of her words:

“Leave him, Sarah, please. Oh please, please, pretty f-ing please.” She let the blanket drop, but he was uncovered now.

“I’m so f-ing tired of this,” she said to his father. Her words were spoons now, heavy metal spoons, like the ones his gran had in the drawer in her kitchen. Old heavy metal spoons that tasted of metal as you looked at them, the tang wet and sharp against your tongue.

His father stepped towards her, his arms open as though to gather her up, but she was too quick for him, and she stuck her own arms out in front of her, two prongs, a barrier to his comfort.

“No. I don’t want that. I don’t want any of that. Any of this.”

The spoons’ clatter against one another created white noise in his head. He hummed to try to clear it. His mother dropped her arms to her sides and walked out of the room. He listened to her heels clicking on the wooden floor, moving away from him, ticking like a metronome. Softly he clapped his hands together, in time to the beat of her footsteps.

His father stood there looking down on him. Don’t look at me, he said in his head.

“I’m not looking at you,” his father said softly, sadly, daisies and purple clover falling with the words.

And then he was in the garden, beneath his favourite tree. He was watching the pattern of the sunlight through the leaves on his leg, studying one particular patch of light and memorising its shape. The shape was right. He hummed and sat very still so that he wouldn’t miss anything out of the shape as he imprinted it on his memory. A breeze stirred the branches and the shape changed. He hummed louder to let the breeze know he was annoyed. The breeze died down and the shape went back to how it was. He hummed with satisfaction.

His back was against the tree trunk. His t-shirt was thin and red. The redness made the knobbles of the tree trunk more scratchy. He didn’t move, but let the redness move apart so that the knobbly trunk could scratch into his spine. His legs were straight out in front of him, his arms hung loose at the side of his torso, his head was down, his chin resting against his chest. He stared and fixed the feeling of the tree trunk through the redness of his t-shirt with the shape on his leg. They were right. It wasn’t possible now to have one without the other.

His mother came down the garden, towards the tree, towards him. She had a cardigan wrapped tightly around her, as though she was cold. But the cardigan wasn’t green, so he didn’t know why she was cold. He didn’t move as she stood and looked down at him. He just focused on the light pattern on his leg. She moved a centimetre closer, then another, and another. Her shadow lay across his legs. He hummed sharply, hummed and stared at the shadow.

She pulled his arm and the rest of his body followed, upwards, away from the tree. His feet were supposed to find the ground, but he chose not to cooperate. So she pulled harder on his arm, then exasperated, a cry fell from her mouth like a ball of wire wool, it fell to the ground at the same speed as his body. Still his head hadn’t lifted once, and now, instead of staring at his legs, he was staring at the soil beneath the grass. The grass was blurred and icy green, but the soil he could see in minute particular detail. The arm she had pulled was still raised, the other still down by his side, as though he were executing some strange semaphore message to the soil.

She moved, walking back up the garden, hugging herself once more. The cardigan was soft and creamy, he told himself in his head. That stopped her in her tracks. He heard her counting inside her head. Counting to 10 like the chimes of the clock over the fireplace at his gran’s house. Then she stiffened, and her legs were like pegs as she walked back to the house.

He lay there, staring at the soil. It was brown and made the same sound in his head that eating crisps did. He looked up, and the sun was gone, but his father shoes had appeared.

“Come on, sonny Jim. Time to go in,” he said. His words were lilac feathers, floating down, settling gently, forming a carpet that they walked on back up to the house.

And then again, the blanket. He was still, it was dark; had he moved? Was this then again, or another now? He peered under the edge of the blanket, remembering not to hum. But the room around the blanket was empty.

He was sitting on the sofa, staring at the window, memorising the shape. It matched the shape he had memorised before. He hummed with pleasure.

She was there. Suddenly she was there. Don’t look at me, he whispered in his head.

“Okay, here’s the deal. I won’t f-ing look at you if you stop f-ing humming. I have to spend my life trapped in this f-ing house with you. I have nowhere to go to get away from you. I have no f-ing choice. Do you hear me?”

He looked at the fish scales that littered the floor around her feet. They were flat and shiny, and he knew if he touched them they would be hard, would slice into his skin. So he didn’t touch them. But he didn’t hum either.

Don’t swear. It’s bad, he whispered in his head.

That brought her one step closer, walking over the fish scales, crunching them beneath her shoes. She placed her hand gently on his head, ran it down over his hair, down so that it cupped his chin and raised his face towards her. His eyes glided away.

“I’m not looking, I promise,” she said, “And I’m sorry that I swore.”

At his gran’s house now. The heavy metal spoons in the drawer in the kitchen. His mother and his gran talking behind him as he stood, perfectly still in calm repose before the shiny heavy metal spoons. He couldn’t see to know what they said; he couldn’t see what fell from their mouths. He tasted the wet tang of the metal spoons against his tongue as they lay there in the drawer.

One’s missing, he told himself.

Gran. She looked down into the drawer with him.

“How can you tell that, just by looking, little man?” She asked.

“How can he possibly tell that one’s missing just by looking?” she said over her shoulder to his mother.

His mother replied, but he couldn’t see to hear what she said. Couldn’t see the shapes. The spoons were wrong and it was like lightening in his head.

His mother. Looking down now, not into the drawer, though. Looking down at him.

“Stop howling. STOP IT!”

She didn’t touch him, but the wire wool scurfed his skin, and he flinched.

“Leave him, Sarah,” his gran said. “I’ll shut the drawer.”

Nonononononono, he said inside his head. The drawer had closed, now it opened again. Still the spoons were wrong. The lightening was flashing.

“For god’s sake,” hissed his mother. “For god’s bloody f-ing sake, what did I do to f-ing deserve this?”

His dad. Not at Gran’s house. Next to him as he lay under the blanket. His dad and someone else. A different voice. He peered under the edge of the blanket. Her words fell like raindrops with sunlight through them. He watched them fall. He wanted to put out his hand to touch them.

Her hand touched his. He didn’t flinch. Her hand was soft.

“Hello, Jake,” she said.

“How on earth did you do that?” said his dad.

“Who knows,” swam through the sunlit raindrops falling from her lips. Inside, he smiled.

“I’ve never seen him do that before,” said his dad.

Her t-shirt was pale blue and had a bird on it. A bird made up of other, smaller birds. He stared at the birds. They were right. He counted them. There was the right number. He hummed contentedly. It was right.

© J R Hargreaves 1 May 2004

Small Steps in Short Spaces of Time

“That’s what this is going to take, you know. Small steps in short spaces of time. No rush, no hurry. Just small steps and we’ll get there.”

She didn’t seem to be listening. He sighed. This had been going on for days now. He would say something, and she wouldn’t respond. He took a sip of his water and looked at her. It was still her, he knew that it was still her. She was still in there, listening to him. He looked at her lying peacefully in that hospital bed, for all the world as though she were merely sleeping. Sleeping it off. As though she’d had too much to drink.

He looked at her, the way her dark hair fanned out on the pillow, framing her face, which was pale and freckled, clean of make-up. Her lips were pink and full, her chin impish. Her closed eyes were overarched by strong dark brows, neatly shaped but full for a woman. He liked that though. Couldn’t stand those wispy pale affairs.

He took another sip of water and looked at the tubes going in and out of her body. While she was asleep like this, she needed help with all sorts of things, he supposed. At least she didn’t need help with breathing, though. That was one thing. She didn’t seem to be paralysed, as long as she was breathing on her own. Of course, they wouldn’t know until she woke up whether she could move her arms and legs, but breathing on her own, that was a good sign.

She had been here for nine days so far. Nine days since the accident. As soon as he had heard that this was where she had been brought, he had come. He couldn’t not come. He came every night, straight from work, and stayed for as long as the nurses would let him.

He would go home to the empty house and sit quietly before the tv, letting the programmes wash over him, thinking about her alone in that hospital bed. He would sit and think until he felt his eyes grow heavy with sleep, then he would go to bed.

It was good to have a routine, he thought, for him as well as her. So he went to work every day and carried on as though nothing in his life was any different to how it had been 9 days ago,

He took the newspaper with him every night, the Sale and Altrincham Messenger, and sometimes the Metro from the train station. He would read to her, keeping her up to date with the local news and the pick of the day’s national news as chosen by the Metro. He didn’t want her to feel lonely or out of touch while she was having this long sleep.

He started to read to her now, telling her about the opposition to the waste management centre they wanted to build in Partington. A nurse came in.

“You here again, love?” she smiled at him.

He stopped reading and smiled back.

“Oh, you carry on reading, love. I’m sure it’s doing her good. Don’t mind me, I just need to check her IV lines and take a few readings.” The nurse bustled about her work.

He took up the paper again and carried on reading, but more self-consciously now that the nurse was present. He had never been the strongest reader, and hated to have an audience. He didn’t mind so much thinking that she was listening to him, as she lay there in the hospital bed. Reading aloud to her was different.

The nurse finished what she was doing and smiled at him on her way out. He smiled back, then turned further into the newspaper, trying to find something that would interest her.

Every so often, he paused in his reading to look at her, check she was still breathing.

“I’m daft, aren’t I?” he said, smiling indulgently at himself. “Because, those machines they’ve got you hooked up to, they’ll soon let us know if anything’s wrong, won’t they?”

He thought for a moment that she had heard him, because her eyelids fluttered slightly, then he reminded himself that it was probably just muscle spasms.

He could hear talking out in the corridor. He looked up, through the window in the door. The nurse was in the corridor talking to someone who looked official. Not a doctor, probably an administrator. She looked his way a couple of times while she was talking. He frowned to himself, wondering what was being said.

“Ah, who cares what they’re saying, eh?” he asked her, sitting forward slightly in his chair. “We just need to concentrate on getting you better. Small steps in short spaces of time, remember?” He sat back again and looked out through the window in the door, but the corridor was empty. Something and nothing, probably, but he couldn’t help feeling slightly uneasy. The nurse had definitely been talking about him, he could tell.

He looked at his watch. It was almost 9. He would have to be making a move soon.

“Almost time for me to be going again,” he told her. “They kick me out at 9, you know, and it’s almost that now. But I’ll be back tomorrow night, and you’ll have to make do with the staff in the meantime.” He tried to laugh, sound light-hearted, but it was hard with her lying there so still and silent.

He folded up the paper and dropped it into the bin. There was nothing much worth reading in it tonight. He stood up and looked down at her, then pulled on his coat. Opening the door, he stepped out into the corridor. It was deserted. He turned in the doorway and said goodnight to her. He decided to leave tonight before the nurse returned to throw him out, with her “Don’t you have a home to go to?”

He walked steadily down the corridor to the main exit, past other side wards like the one she occupied. He was surprised that there had so far not been any other patients in there with her, but supposed it was probably best to keep her quiet. He walked past the reception desk and said goodnight to the woman who sat there night after night. He supposed a nurse took over for the night shift. You wouldn’t need admin staff to be on duty when there were no visitors.

The automatic doors swooshed apart and he stepped out into the frosty autumnal air. Late October. The seasons were changing. It was dark now when he got to the hospital from work, since the clocks had gone back that weekend.

He walked across the hospital forecourt to the car park. As he approached his car, he was puzzled to see two men standing by it, expectantly. He thought about walking past, afraid of being attacked, then one of them said his name.

“Andrew David Rowbotham?”

“Yes,” he replied, pausing a few steps from his car, keys in hand.

“Is this your vehicle, sir?”

Police. He sighed. Of course.

“Yes, it is,” he said, relaxing slightly.

“Were you driving this vehicle on Sunday 19 October along Wilbraham Road in the Chorlton area of Manchester, Mr Rowbotham?”

He thought for a moment. He never knew why, whether it was for effect, or whether he had genuinely forgotten for one brief moment that he had been on Wilbraham Road just over a week ago.

“Yes,” he finally said.

“Mr Rowbotham, a car matching your vehicle’s description and registration was witnessed to be involved in a hit and run accident at 18.15 on Sunday 19 October on Wilbraham Road, Chorlton. A young woman was seriously injured in that accident.”

“Yes,” he said again.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind accompanying us to the station, Mr Rowbotham, so that we can take some details from you.”

He stayed silent for a moment, looking down at his feet. It was pointless denying anything. Especially with her lying there in the hospital behind him.

“Of course,” he said, moving towards the two policemen. “I’ll be glad to help with your enquiries. Anything at all to help.”

He was assisted into the back of the police car, the way he had seen criminals being assisted in early evening dramas. Hand on top of his head, a slight push down, he wondered whether he ought to hold his hands behind his back, although he hadn’t been cuffed.

As he sat in the back seat of the police car, being driven away from the hospital, he thought about her lying there. He thought about the way her body had crumpled against the front of his car, and the way he had panicked and driven off, not knowing what else he could do. He stared out of the car window, a police officer sitting beside him. He supposed it was normal not to make conversation in situations like this. He wouldn’t know what to say, anyway. He stared at the houses as the car sped along from the hospital to the police station.

The other officer stopped the car outside the building. He wondered whether to open the car door and step out, but then thought that there was probably some sort of locking mechanism that meant the door could only be opened from the outside, like when you had a child in the back of the car. While he was thinking this, the office who had been sitting beside him had got out of the car and come round to his door and was opening it.

“Step outside, please, sir,” he said, not looking at him. He was young. Younger than him. Young and hard and cynical.

He stepped out of the car and the two officers accompanied him into the station. It was all very civil. He felt very meek. He searched for a word, something grand sounding, something that would take away the dry bitterness of fear from his mouth. His mind settled on chagrined, and he was satisfied with that. His mouth still tasted burnt, though. He would have liked a cup of tea.

Inside the station, he was left at the desk with the younger of the officers, who took down all his details. He wondered whether he would be expected to hand over his watch and his wallet and other personal effects. His tie and his shoelaces. That was the sort of thing they did in the tv programmes.

The young officer directed him to a small room, however. He didn’t want his personal effects yet. Maybe that came later, after he had been charged, when they locked him up in a cell. He walked into the room, it was just like the ones on tv. Bare and clinical, with a single table, four chairs and a recording device on one wall. Somehow he felt reassured by this. For all the bizarreness of the situation, it was oddly familiar.

The interview started. A detective and a police officer. Not one of the ones who had brought him to the station. Had he been arrested? He couldn’t remember. He thought not. He thought he had come of his own free will. He rolled the phrase around his head, smiling slightly. Of his own free will. He liked that phrase.

The two police officers were looking at him. He shook himself mentally. What were they expecting him to say, he wondered. He looked back at them blankly.

“What is your name?” the detective asked, coldly.

“Andrew David Rowbotham,” he replied.

And so it began. He answered their questions calmly, mechanically, and described the accident with precision. He had been driving. His phone had gone off. He couldn’t find it. He was scrabbling, trying to find it, one hand on the wheel, one eye on the road ahead, then he had looked away. Had he had a drink? No, he hadn’t been drinking. He didn’t drink during the day. Didn’t drink and drive. He had looked away, because he thought he had felt his phone and just for a split second he needed to look to make sure. He caught hold of it then, once he saw it, and pulled it out of his overcoat pocket, and looked back up at the road. He was at a zebra crossing and a young woman, her, the young woman in the hospital, she was looking at him as he drove towards her. Then, he shuddered, put his head in his hands, covered his eyes as if he thought he could block out the image of her.

“Boof!” he said.

The police officers remained impassive.

“Boof!” he repeated. “Boof against my windscreen. I could see the shock in her eyes. She sort of crumpled against the glass.”

“Could you take your hands away from your face, please sir, so that the tape recorder can catch your words,” the detective said calmly.

He lowered his hands from his face and looked past the two officers, unable to look at them. Ashamed. Chagrined. Meek.

“Could you please repeat your last sentence, for the tape, sir,” the detective said.

He swallowed, his throat dry. He couldn’t bring himself to repeat his last sentence, so he tried to say it a different way, a calmer way.

“I hit her. She sort of sprang up, landed against the windscreen. Her body crumpled. She was looking at me, shocked. Then her body sort of jerked, like a puppet. Her arms. Her legs. They sort of flew out from her body. She was looking at me. Then she sort of slid along the bonnet. I think I was still driving. I don’t remember. I must have hit the brakes. But she slid away and I couldn’t see her any more. She wasn’t looking at me any more.”

He stopped. Not sure what to say, or how to go on. She must have gone under the front wheels of the car. He couldn’t remember whether she slipped sideways or off the front of the bonnet. He stared at his hands.

“That’s it,” he whispered.

“For the tape, please, sir,” said the detective.

He looked up. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s it,” he repeated, more loudly, towards the tape machine. “That’s all I remember. I drove off. I panicked. I drove off. Oh god.”

His head went down again, his hands rising to meet it.

The room was silent.

© J R Hargreaves 2004