Tales and Imaginings (8 page)

When dawn came he was still drifting blindly. The current had taken him right across the river and he was close to the other shore. A hesitation of the boat as it grazed the bottom made him open his
eyes. A diffuse cold light surrounded him. He raised his head, the boat giving under him until it touched the mud, and saw that a thin layer of white mist lay on the water, its surface rising in vague tongues to dissolve in the clear air. The river-bank beyond was dark and featureless against the steel-grey sky. He let the boat follow the idling current as he lay, still curled up, tasting his own blood on his swollen lips. As the mist cleared he began to see buildings along the top of the bank; a monotonous succession of low warped
box-shapes
, a city, like the one he had left. The familiar smell reached out to him across the grey skin of the marginal waters where
something
putrid lay half-submerged. The boat touched bottom and stopped; his movement of revulsion jerked it free again, and the sluggish water bore him on ever more slowly. He closed his eyes, and felt his despair like a sharp stone in his stomach.

Someone was watching him; the realization made him look up. A figure wrapped in grey was crouched at the water’s edge where an iron drainpipe jutted out over the river. It was a girl; her eyes were intensely dark in the pallid expanses of the dawn. Her cloak was a heavy opaque plastic sheet, dully gleaming, with stiff folds and angles, and blunt whitish lettering down one side. The boat came to a stop as soon as he put his hand up to the end of the iron pipe. She didn’t move as he stared at her black hair just showing under the angular hood, her thin fingers clutching the edges of the sheet together in front of her mouth, and her dark still eyes. He stood in the water with the boat bobbing against his knees. Now that he was so close to shore the city was hidden by the bank, which was high and overhanging to the left and right but had collapsed just here, forming a little bay around the drainpipe. A steep path led up the clay slope towards a shelter, a corrugated iron sheet slanted against a few stones. Nobody else was in sight; the river murmured, the land was silent. Then the girl’s other hand appeared between the edges of the sheet, like a rat, and she suddenly thrust her arm out
towards him with a beggar’s gesture. The movement unlocked him; he flung the boat out of his way and took a pace towards her. She started up, reaching behind her for a sort of crutch, a piece of
splintered
plank which she grasped under her armpit. She stood on one leg, hunched over the crutch; her other leg ended at the ankle in a knob of rags. He gripped the end of the pipe and pulled himself another step towards the shore, his feet sinking in the mud. She turned and tried to climb the path, half hopping and half crawling; she slipped back again as he leaped ashore, staggering to keep his balance; she tried to escape along the narrow strip of land below the bank, almost on her hands and knees, leaving her crutch, looking back at him with terrified eyes, making a little moaning sound. He caught up with her in a few strides as she fell at the water’s edge. The grey sheet was trailing behind her; he snatched it up and spilled her wretched body out of it. She screamed and tried to drag herself away as he tore at the rags knotted around her. She screamed again and again; he pulled her onto her back and threw himself on top of her in the slime, crushing her throat with both hands. A convulsion of disgust hurled him against this creature of the stinking
river-bank
; he threw back his head and howled as she went slack under him. Then a flung stone hit his shoulder; there were shouts behind him. He got up and turned round, astride the girl’s limp body. Three men were at the drainpipe; they hesitated when they saw his grim blood-streaked face. He looked at them for a moment in silence. Then he scraped a handful of mud off his body and flung it at them. They did not dare to approach as he turned to the river and waded out from the shore. When the cold noose of the surface was about his chest he let himself fall forward, and abandoned
himself
to the creeping, dreaming water.

Midday had long passed. The air was still, there was no scent from the flowerbeds, everything was as vivid as the image in a convex mirror. I stepped out from the shade of the peartree and looked up at the sky. Seagulls were passing over, very high up. Although the trees around the garden were motionless, the gulls were heading into a wind that crossed their course almost at right angles. They worked across the face of the wind in a series of long arcs, making a few wingstrokes against the current, then turning aside to let it bear them back, slanting, sliding sideways on the air, and turning into the wind again further on. They came across in a scattered stream, appearing singly or in small flocks above the ridge of beechwood to the west, and following the broad valley inland towards the moors. As I turned to watch them disappearing beyond the rooftops, the crying-out of the newborn child made me look towards the drawn curtains in the gable windows; a moment later the curtains were pushed apart, a figure showed in the dark space, a face glancing down at me for a moment, then looking up at the succession of gulls, and turning back into the room.

The garden was very quiet; depths of stillness separated it from the region of the invisible airstream and the journeying gulls. A neighbour’s car passed, hidden from me by the hedge; the lower branches of the young limetrees along the roadside were stirred by
the rush of air, and came to rest again long before the sound of the car had faded into the murmur of the distant motorway. At my feet the blades of grass were each distinct, each pointing in a different direction. I saw the edge of the peartree’s shadow creeping forward, trembling around and separately capturing each grass-stem. When the shadow touched my foot I began to move about the garden, and a blackbird broke out of the layer of reddish leaves around the french window and flashed across the lawn to the laurel bushes. I heard its sharp triple cry as I brushed my hand across their stiff leaves. At the rustic arch among the bushes I stood and listened to the bird’s call now coming from the appletrees further down the garden. There were little sounds from the house too, soft laughter, the baby’s crying, for a few moments. I waited at the arch, looking at the bare gleaming wood of the trelliswork where the silvery bark had curled back. When the french windows opened a little and the child appeared on the step I ran across the lawn to her and caught her up. Her eyes met the sky’s perfection; the blue of her eyes was perfect recognition. The last of the seagulls were passing over us. I lifted her to my shoulder; ‘See the birds!’ I said, ‘Look, that’s the sky!’ I turned around, turning her gaze about the garden: ‘This is a peartree. And that’s the house. That’s where you live!’ I put her down on the grass and let her crawl to the foot of the peartree. She put her curled soft hands against its bark; the perspective of its trunk drew her up till she was standing, leaning against the tree and gazing up into its crown. Then she turned and stretched out her arms towards me; she came towards me, almost running, half falling, borne up by her trust in my coming to meet her and lifting her to me again. I wondered at her urgent unworded talk, at her eyes already losing their sky-colour and taking on the more difficult tones of heavy summer foliage and the shadowed earth under the bushes. I carried her around the edge of the lawn until we came to the little arch. The part of the garden beyond the arch was a mosaic
of light and shade; the sun was behind the great planetrees in the garden next door, and the network of their shadows lay across the foliage of the laurel bushes and the orchard. The child looked into this complicated domain with troubled eyes,
holding onto my
finger
as she stood close beside me. The path was dark where the bushes overhung it, and just one tiny oval fleck of sunlight lay on the ground before us. I said, ‘I’ll show you a game. Watch me pick up that little shiny thing.’ I knelt down and put my hand on the ground so that the bright spot lay in my palm; then I lifted my hand along the slanting beam towards the hidden sun, and the scrap of light dwindled and danced and burned in the cup of my hand. ‘Let me!’ she cried, grabbing my arm so that the spot fell back to the ground again. She tried to put her hand over it, and it appeared on the back of her hand. As soon as she lifted her hand the spot slid off. I walked on a few paces out of the shadow. She called after me, ‘I can’t do it. Show me how to do it!’ But there was a butterfly on the arm of the garden seat ahead of me; I said, ‘Quick, come and look at this,’ and she ran up to me. ‘Look how it spreads out its colours in the sunshine, the same colours exactly on this side and that. Now it’s closed its wings. It lays the colours together so gently because it doesn’t want any of them to smudge. It looks quite poor and ragged and old now. See that spot like a little white comma – no, don’t touch it! There it goes, over the bushes; go on then, run after it.’ She ran back through the arch onto the lawn. I saw the
butterfly
soaring and tumbling above the rooftop, and I turned to go the other way, towards the end of the garden. She called after me, ‘I’m going inside now; are you coming?’ I looked up at the sun’s fragmented blaze among the black and gold branches of the planetrees. ‘No,’ I called back, ‘I’ll stay out here a bit. You run along in.’

Around the sun the pale foliage blurred into a dazzling white corona. A sudden gust of wind scattered the whiteness across
swaying
masses of leaves; the bushes stirred, the patches of sunlight on
them flowed, broke up, fell from level to level, and then flitted back to where they were. The wind dropped as soon as it had begun, and gave place to a breeze that filled the garden with fluttering particles of light. A wasp was circling under the appletrees. I crouched down and parted the long grass to reveal the fallen apple. It was broken, and there were two wasps motionless in the golden-brown pulp. There was a flat stone lying by my hand, oblong, like the cover of a book; I raised it by one edge as if I were opening the book. The ground beneath it was covered with silvery threads, densely
interwoven
around the margins of the rectangle and sparser towards the middle, where there was a patch of smooth shiny clay. I let the stone fall back with a small dull sound, so that it lay exactly where it had been, and I waited, smelling the cool damp grass and the decaying apple, looking out between the boles of the appletrees towards the laurels and the garden seat, until I heard the creak of a swing hung from the peartree. A bit of the lawn was visible between the bushes, and occasionally I glimpsed the child’s quick crossing in her play with the children of other houses, who came and went. As the breeze fell, their laughter faded with the hushing of the treetops.

When the garden was still again I ducked out of the orchard onto the path by the hedge that hid the road. Some of the branches of the limetrees along the roadside hung over the hedge into the garden; their leaves were shiny with the honeydew from greenfly and the flagstones of the path underneath were black and sticky. Most of the greenfly were clustered under the leaves in the angles between the veins, but on the upper side of one leaf three of them formed a triangle across the heart-shaped surface, which was slightly arched and inclined towards the sun. I bent to look closely at the tiny, inert, translucent bulks. An ant ran along the edge of the leaf, disappeared behind it and came up again over the other edge. I saw it cross like a black spark to the nearest greenfly and touch it with its antennae. Immediately the greenfly exuded a golden sphere
of liquid. I turned to call the child to witness this act of a minute economy; she was alone, sitting on the lowest branch of the peartree above the outgrown swing, self-absorbed, turning her head to and fro to let her hair brush across her lips; and I looked away again from this private moment of her growth. The ant had gone. I rubbed a little of the dried honeydew off a leaf and felt its sharp brittle crystals between finger and thumb. As I followed the path around the appletrees to the end of the garden I licked the crystals off my fingertip and let the sweet taste expand over the surfaces of my mouth. The fence across the end of the garden was in the shadow of a tall blind wall, the side of a neighbour’s house. There were snail tracks on the creosote-black of the wood, and white threads from the frayed plumes of willow herb were caught on the splintery edges of the fenceposts. I stood looking at these things, the taste of honey lingering and fading, until I knew the girl had gone inside. The air was moving in the tall trees again, but the orchard was motionless; only the patches of sunlight resting on its foliage were agitated for a few moments. I walked back along the path by the hedge, but I couldn’t see the leaf with the triangle of greenfly on it. At the garden seat I looked back for a moment at the region that lay in the shadow of the planetrees, and then I pushed through the gap between the bushes and stood on the lawn.

The light of the afternoon had been perfected. The towering poplar by the corner of the house shimmered and flared; I could see each one of its small restless triangular leaves right to the top, and the oblique shafts of its shade were faintly visible in the air golden with pollen. The whir of a lawnmower came from a garden over the road, two alternating notes with the rhythm of slow breathing. A bunch of sparrows flung themselves from the eaves, fighting and chattering, into the foliage of the poplar. When I heard the girl’s light step on the gravel path by the french window I called to her, still staring up into the tree. She came and stood by me, looking up
too, silent. I said, ‘It fascinates me, that constant flickering of the leaves on the poplar tree. It makes me think of the movement of a watch, the little balance-wheels and cogs and springs, going on and on. I’m dazzled; make me look at something else.’

She took my hand with a nervous abruptness and pulled me round to face her. ‘Let’s walk down to the end of the garden for a moment, I’ve never been there,’ she said, and then, as we went towards the arch, ‘What day of the week is it?’

‘Thursday,’ I said, ‘Thursday the first of September.’

‘The first of September, that means late summer.’

‘Yes, late summer. It’s been a wonderful season.’

‘Has it?’ she said. ‘There’s something that frightens me about this day. Sometimes I seem to be floating in it, and then it suddenly stops bearing me up and I’m falling through it faster and faster. We won’t go further than the seat now, I have to go back in a moment.’

Her fingers felt cold in my palm. I said, ‘It’s all strange to you, I know, but don’t let anything frighten you. Look into my eyes; do you see how beautiful you’ve become? I want to touch your face with my lips. Don’t be afraid.’

‘No, I’m not afraid. Do you feel me trembling? But I’m not afraid all the same. I must go now though. Will you recognize me if I come again?’

‘Yes, you must go now. I’ll stay here a bit longer. I’ll not forget you. There’s a dead leaf in your hair, may I have it? There now. Quickly!’ She went silently back to the house. I moved to and fro for a bit between the arch and the garden seat, crumbling the little scroll of leaf-material between my fingers and letting it fall on the path. The point of light on the pavingstone had moved a bit, and it no longer looked like something one could pick up; it was a
diffuse
intermittent glow, uneasily responsive to the breeze that rattled the leaves of the bushes. There were other indefinite touches of sunlight scattered around the seat, pale on the flagstones and a
luminous golden green where they lay across the raised lines of moss between the stones. I sat down to look at a streak of light that fell across the leaves as if it were spilt from one leaf to the next. After a time I thought I could distinguish a trace of the afternoon’s slow passing among the uncertain steps and broken flights of this sunray. Then the bushes at my back rustled, and I knew she was standing behind me. She put her hand on my shoulder gently and said, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I was just looking at the light on those leaves there. If I had a camera maybe I could photograph it.’

‘I wish I could buy you a camera for your birthday,’ she said. I took her hand and held it against my cheek. ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s this particular moment – look at it now, the way it hesitates from leaf to leaf. You see that little drop of sunlight on the tip of that leaf – and now, as you hear the breeze, the leaf moves and the sunlight falls across the dark space and breaks up into streaks and dots among the leaves lower down. And now it’s back where it was.’

She was quiet for a bit, and then she said, ‘I remember when I was much younger than you; it wasn’t long ago. Do you remember, I wonder? I feel tired now, already. Maybe I’ll go in.’

‘What did the doctor say just now?’

‘He said I should rest. I’ll go and lie down. Will you come in?’

‘Yes, later on. Go and lie down, my darling. I’ll wait in the
garden
for a bit longer.’

‘All right. Don’t go out of earshot though.’

I heard her footsteps on the path, a silence as she crossed the lawn, and then the click of the door.

A little later the trees stopped their slight swaying and the
sunlight
became still. I found I could look through the broken surface of the bush in front of me and see the leafless branches inside,
curving
and forking and crossing each other, a network of grey bands that led my vision in and further in through the greenish half-light.
The longer I looked the more levels I could distinguish, each fading into the next; as soon as I had made out a triangle or a diamond shape among the branches, other branches seemed to form in the dark gap. Then the sunlight flashed and quivered on the surface, calling my eye back, and the interior became quite black again. I waited for another lull in the breeze so that I could explore deeper, but when it came I suddenly heard how quiet the garden was. I shut my eyes and listened. No car had passed for some time, and the
birdsong
I had heard in the morning had died away as the light became more intense. The day’s inconsequent succession of tranquil
suburban
sounds, arriving in the garden from various directions, had come to an end, and as I listened the lingering vibrations of a jet passing over very high up were slowly withdrawn. I tried to subtract the noise of my own slight movements, my breath, my heart, from the faint singing of the air and the registers beyond hearing of insects’ cries. Only the thinnest skin separated me from absolute silence.