Song Of Time (43 page)
Authors: Ian R. MacLeod
“No speeches, then?”
Dad shakes his head as he steers the push chair around a heap of dog poo on the pavement. His ginger hair is close-cropped, and the crown gleams in the sunshine where it’s starting to thin as he leans over to speak to me. “You’ll be watching this one day, Roushana,” he says.
And here’s Leo, jog-trotting to catch up. His two friends must have gone home now, as have my two Nans. It’s just us, the Maitlands, walking in and out of the shade along the car-lined, tree-lined streets beside the tall redbrick Victorian houses. The scene snows before we get to the picnic, but Moseley remains. I remember the circular barometer set in the wall beside the doors of the Fighting Cocks on the Alcester Road, the pointer wavering beneath its grimy glass between STORMY RAIN CHANGE FAIR, and I remember the peeved hiss of the buses. I remember the high ceilings of our house with their peeling covings and the dusty Ikea paper lampshades and patiently zigzagging flies, and the night-time heat of the boiler which came through the wall beside my bed, and the stormy commotion of the spin cycle of the old washing machine. I remember the orange faces on the telly and the exercise books Dad brought back to mark from Selly High strewn in a leaf-fall on the back seat of the Citroen. I remember Mum letting me eat as many Smarties as I wanted from a magical jar just as long as I counted them correctly. I remember gates clanging and car doors banging and the taste of the scabs I picked from my knees, and I remember the white boat house on other birthday picnics at the park, and the fishermen fishing and the dragonflies floating as if on metal threads and the green smell of warm stagnant water. Leo was right—the moment’s there, and then it’s irredeemably lost—but he thought he was merely talking about music, when what he really meant was life.
It’s all still there, or almost all of it, and I think Claude knew even on that last terrible night that he could never destroy my past without destroying me as well, which was something he could never do. The only thing Claude ever really hurt when he tried to break things was himself. In his heart, he was always a healer, a maker, but he dragged something with him into this adult life, something which came from those desolate suburbs of once-golden Georgetown and the smooth, lost certainties of his parents which he could never really face or resolve. Oh, I’d love him to be here with me now—I’d love to lean again into his arms—but I suppose I’ve grown used to loneliness, and to loving him for dancing naked to Miles Davis with a spectacular hard-on in those times in Paris when it sometimes seemed as if we’d need to keep stones in our pockets to stop ourselves taking flight, or playing some ridiculous game of his own invention with our kids, or driving in that fine car which no one but him could ever have re-made. Claude’s like Leo now, he’s like Dad and Mum, he’s like everyone else who has ever lived apart from a recent few, and that’s how I will also soon be—and for that I rejoice. Life, living, is such hard work. There are so many things to arrange, choices to consider, faces, places, commitments and aches, that I really don’t mind joining all the rest of the long-lost in whatever place they happen to be now, be it heaven, hell, or oblivion. At my age, I feel I’ve earned the rest.
It’s taken me many broken years, the imminence of death, to come to terms with the loss of Claude, and even then I don’t think I could ever have managed without Adam. I’ve looked Abaddon up, and it’s the name of some kind of angel from the fiery pit, a creature of medieval myth and nightmare, but I’m not that credulous—not even now. Nor do I believe in miracles, but if there was one in my life, it was him, and I really do hope he’ll come and visit and stay with me here in Morryn again before it’s too late. I’d like to sit and listen to Karl Nordinger’s
Fourth Symphony
with him for one last time. Not that I expect it to mean anything more to him than any other great piece of music, but I want us both to rediscover how the piece has evolved. Once stormy and tempestuous, as famously bitter and ironic as Karl himself, it’s changed into something far quieter. In fact, there are stretches in the third movement, and especially in the
Song of Time,
when the strings are so muted, the orchestra so subdued, that they’re barely there at all, and seem to be falling towards silence. If I can remember, I might also admit to Adam that the other story I told, the one about lying in bed listening to my husband getting softly drunk as he played the piano down here in this room on our last night together on this earth, was true as well. Or almost…
We’d long had our differences and difficulties by then, and Claude had had his liaisons and affairs, but I was still happy when, instead of going out in the DB as I’d feared, I heard him climbing the stairs after the piano had fallen silent, and I turned unhesitatingly into his arms as he lay down in our bed. We made love on that night for what must have been one of the last times, and it seems to me that we already knew some kind of ending was looming between us, and that we clung to each other all the more passionately, and that the moment was all the more sweet. I’d long given up by then with all the tests and protections which a younger, more sexually active, woman would have taken. The possibilities of our having another child were getting very remote—I wouldn’t have minded, anyway—and as for the idea of some other risk—well, part of me always understood the chances I was taking with Claude because I knew of the chances he took himself. So it was probably on that night, or a night much like it, that he passed on to me the virus which, like the unadmitted secret of my guilt, remained dormant in my system for many years before it finally began to destroy the little that remains of this flesh, these thoughts.
Are you still there, jewel, crystal? Can you hear me now? I know you’re fading, dissolving, but I think that you probably can. Outside, dusk is darkening the sea and thinning the sky as another day turns to its end, and the implements which tend to me in this enchanted house will soon be preparing dinner, but there are still tasks I need to perform. I must speak again to Maria, and then to Edward. They’re both coming to stay here with me soon, and something about their expressions as we’ve discussed times and arrangements tells me that they’re already expecting what I now realise must be obvious news. In fact, I can barely understand why I’ve spent so long putting the moment off. More to do, perhaps, with knowing that Edward will want me get myself to a clinic like the one in Bodmin, and that Maria will be against it. That, and the ways in which I lost Mum and Dad, and Claude and Leo. Not that I’m afraid of death—I realise that now—but I’ve long been afraid of dying.
I still am.
Barely anything’s changed, and this is still my life, the little that’s left of it. Maria and Edward can think as they like, do whatever they want, but, more than ever now, I realise that it’s time for me to let go. The world is theirs, and they can take it—they’ve taken it already—and bear it on towards the unknown and unknowable future. Still, I’ve come to understand that the one thing a parent owes their child is honesty, and I will take them down to the old boathouse to show them what’s left of the DB before this winter’s storms wash it away. I won’t burden them with the circumstances of Claude’s death, for that terrible weight belongs to me alone, but I do feel that I owe it to them to share the bitter, unspoken truth of what a harsh and infuriating—as well as a charming, funny and loving—man their father, my husband, was. That, and to tell them how much I love them both, and how poor I’ve often been at showing it, and how proud I am of what they’ve become.
This is the future, Sis…
but it’s gone now—and this day is dying, crystal, just as surely as you and I both are. Still, if I can summon the energy to get up from this chair, then perhaps find a warm coat, there might still be enough time left for us to take one last walk along the shore before it gets dark.
SONG OF TIME
Copyright © 2012 by Ian R. MacLeod
The right of Ian R. MacLeod to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Originally published in printed book form by PS Publishing Ltd in July 2008. This electronic version published in January 2012 by PS by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.
FIRST EBOOK EDITION
ISBN 978-1-848632-39-4
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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