‘Is he done yet, Cecy?’
Cecy’s calm sleeper’s lips turned up. ‘Yes, he’s done. Quite done.’ The languid words fell slowly from her shaping mouth. Nothing else of her moved. She was quite still save for the tremor of lips when they answered. ‘You know what a surrey top is like, Timothy? Well, that’s how the night comes here in this shallow between the mountains.
The sun pulls the dark cover down after it. I’m inside this woman’s head, looking out through the little holes in her skull. I don’t even know her name, while I’m listening to the silence. The sea doesn’t move on the shore, it just lies there, so quiet it makes you afraid. I’m smelling the salt of it, quietly. And over me a number of bombers and pursuit planes float across the first stars.
They resemble pterodactyls on huge wings. Further over in the sump-land, the iron spine of a steam shovel shows — a brontosaurus frozen in metal pantomime, gazing at those aluminium reptiles flying high. And I am watching these prehistoric things, and smelling the smells of prehistoric cookings. It is so quiet, so quiet. . .’
‘How long will you stay in her, Cecy?’
‘Until I’ve listened and looked and felt enough. Until I’ve changed her life some way. Living in her isn’t like living anywhere in the world. Her valley with her little wooden house is a dawn world. Black mountains lift on the west, north and south, all enclosing this huge, solemn valley. Two concrete roads rim the sea, emptied by the war. Once in half an hour I see a car run by, shining its headlights.
But the dark closes behind it. I sit on the porch all day, and watch the shadows run out from the trees, join and become one big night at sunset. I wait for my husband to come back from town. The sea is on the shore, salted and making no noise. Once in a while a fish leaps up, starlight catching its scales, falls back. The valley, the sea, the few cars, the porch, my rocking chair, myself, the silence.’
‘What now, Cecy?’
‘I’m getting up now,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m walking off the porch, towards the mud pots. Another flight of planes goes overhead, flinging off noise in every direction that propellers whirl in. They take the silence apart and the sound gets into my bones.’
‘And now?’
‘Now, I’m walking along the board planks to where the tourists before the war used to stand watching the grey bubbles rise. My feet make hollow knocks on the planks, slowly.’
‘Now?’
‘Now the sulphur fumes are all around me. The bubbles come up in breaking clusters, smoothing again. A bird flies over, crying sadly. Suddenly I’m in that bird! I fly away! And as I fly, inside my new small glass-bead eyes, I see something, a woman, below me, on a board-walk, take one two three steps forward into the mud pots! I hear a sound as if a boulder has been dropped into molten depths! I keep on flying, ignoring this sound. I circle. As I come back I see a white hand, like a spider, wriggling, disappearing into a pool of grey lava. The lava seals over.
‘Now, I’m flying home, swift, swift!’
Something rattled hard against the window.
Cecy flicked her eyes wide, full, bright, happy, exhilarated.
‘Now I am home!’ she said.
Cecy lay upon her pillow, letting her eyes wander for a time. Finally, she saw Timothy.
‘Is the Homecoming on?’ she asked.
‘Everybody’s here.’
‘Then why are you upstairs?’ She took his hand. ‘Well?’ She smiled slyly. ‘Ask me. Go on. Ask me what you came up to ask.’
‘I didn’t come to ask anything,’ he said. ‘Well, almost nothing. Well, oh, Cecy!’ It came from him in one long rapid flow. ‘I want to do something at the party, to make them look at me, something to make me as good as them, something to make me belong and there’s nothing I can do and I feel funny and, well, and I thought you might — ‘
‘I might,’ she said, closing her eyes, smiling inwardly. ‘Stand up straight, and stand very still.’ He obeyed. ‘Now, shut your eyes and blank out your thoughts.’
He stood very straight and thought of nothing, or at least thought of thinking nothing, which was almost as good.
She sighed.
‘Shall we go downstairs now, Timothy?’
Like a hand into a glove, Cecy was within him.
‘Look, everybody!’
Timothy lifted the crystal of warm red wine, wine that veins had distilled, muscled hearts had pushed and pumped through thinking minds.
He held the glass so that the whole house turned to watch. Aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters!
He drank it straight down.
He jerked a hand at sister Laura. He held her gaze, whispering to her in a subtle voice that kept her silent, frozen. He felt tall as the trees as he walked to her. The party, a regular vortex, now slowed. It waited on all sides of him, watching. From all the doors the faces peered. They were not laughing. Mother’s face was astonished. Father looked bewildered, but pleased and getting prouder every instant.
Timothy took Laura’s hands behind her, she didn’t fight him, her eyes were glazed. He spoke and reached up, gently moving her head back, exposing her long white neck.
Gently, over the neck vein, he nipped her.
Candle flames swayed drunkenly. Wind climbed around the roof above. Relatives stared and shifted in the dark and stared again.
He released Laura, turned, popped toadstools in his mouth, swallowed, then, seized, he beat his arms against his flanks and dashed about. ‘Look, Uncle Einar! I’ll fly, at last!’ Beat! went his hands. Up, down, pumped his feet! Faces flashed by him!
At the top of the stairs before knowing it, flapping, Timothy heard his mother cry, ‘Stop, Timothy!’ far below. ‘Hey!’ shouted Timothy, and leaped off the top of the well, thrashing!
Half-way down, the wings he thought he owned dissolved. He screamed.
Uncle Einar caught him.
Timothy flailed whitely in the receiving arms. A voice burst from his lips, unbidden:
‘This is Cecy! This is Cecy!’ it announced, shrilly. ‘Cecy! Come see me, all of you! Upstairs, first room on the left!’ Followed by a long trill of laughter. Timothy tried to cut it off with his tongue, his lips.
Everybody laughed. Einar set him down. Running through the crowded blackness as the relatives flowed upstairs towards Cecy’s room to congratulate her, Timothy kicked the front door open. Mother called out behind him, anxiously.
Flap! went his dinner, straight down upon the cold earth.
‘Cecy, I hate you, I hate you!’
Inside the barn, in deep shadow, Timothy sobbed bitterly and thrashed in a stack of odorous hay. Then he lay still. From his blouse-pocket, from the protection of the matchbox he used for his retreat, the spider crawled forth. Spid walked along Timothy’s arm. Spid explored up his neck to his ear and climbed in the ear to tickle it.
Timothy shook his head. ‘Don’t, Spid. Don’t.’
The feathery touch of a tentative feeler probing his ear-drum set Timothy shivering. ‘Don’t Spid!’ He sobbed somewhat less.
The spider travelled down his cheek, took a station under the boy’s nose, looked up into the nostrils as if to seek the brain, and then clambered softly up over the rim of the nose to sit, to squat there peering at Timothy with green gem eyes until Timothy filled with ridiculous laughter.
‘Go away, Spid!’
In answer, the spider floated down to his lips and with sixteen delicate movements tacked silver strands back and forth, zig-zag, over Timothy’s mouth.
‘Mmmmmm,’ cried Timothy.
Timothy sat up, rustling the hay. The land was very bright with moon now that the rain had retired. In the big house he could hear the faint ribaldry as Mirror Mirror was played. In that game a huge mirror was set against one wall. Celebrants shouted, dimly muffled, as they tried to identify those of themselves whose reflections did not, had not ever, and never would appear in a mirror!
‘What’ll we do, Spid?’ The mouth-web broke.
Falling to the floor, Spid scuttled swiftly towards the house, until Timothy caught him and returned him to his blouse pocket. ‘Okay, Spid. Back in it is. We’ll have fun, no matter what.’
Outside, a green tarpaulin fell from the sycamore as Timothy passed and pinned him down with yards of silken goods. ‘Uncle Einar!’
‘Timothy.’ The wings spread and twitched and came in with a sound like kettle-drums. Timothy felt himself plucked up like a thimble and set on Einar’s shoulder. ‘Don’t feel badly, nephew Timothy. Each to his own, each in his own way. How much better things are for you. How rich.
The world’s dead for us. We’ve seen so much of it, believe me. It’s all one colour; grey. Life’s best to those who live the least of it. It’s worth more per ounce, nephew, remember that.’
From midnight on, Uncle Einar bore him about the house, from room to room, weaving, singing. Late arrivals by the horde set hilarities off afresh. Great-great-great-great and a thousand more greats grandmother was there, wrapped in Egyptian cerements, roll on roll of linen bandage coiled about her fragile dark brown bird bones.
She said not a word, but lay stiff as a burnt ironing board against one wall, her eye hollows cupping a distant, wise, silent glimmering. At the four a.m. breakfast, one-thousand-odd-greats grandmamma stiffly seated at the head of the longest table and red toasts were pantomimed to her.
Grandfather Tom wandered about through the throng at all hours, tickling young nieces, holding them, gumming their necks, a look of unbearable desperation flushing his features as time passed. Poor grandpapa, in his profession, and no teeth!
The numerous young cousins caroused at
