Excerpt

Chapter 14 – The Offing

Instinctively, Clive started to run. His parents called after him, yet still he ran. Gorse and brambles grabbed at him snagging his clothes, but still he ran. The wind blew his tears across his cheek, and still he ran. Until he arrived at the house in the hill. The door squeaked ghostly on its hinges and a broken shingle clattered off the rooftop. There was no boat, no Edwin, and no end in sight to Clive’s anguish.

He slumped, breathless, onto the edge of the grassy bank and surrendered himself to the tears that wracked his whole body. He had not cried for a long time; so long that he couldn’t even remember what he last cried about. Now he cried, not out of self-pity or shame, but out of true grief for Edwin, who was all but lost to the world. No-one else might ever notice him gone, let alone mourn. It was too sad.

Songs to write stories to

A Railway Sketch

Image kindly reproduced courtesy of Michael Tanner.


The track scores rustily through the countryside exposing the backs of things; the backs of houses with windows that rattle with each passing train; the backs of timber yards, factories and scrap yards, where rows of pallets, crushed cars, mangled metal, timber and old bricks breed. We pass piles of burning things and watch as the acrid grey smoke floats towards us like fleeting cataracts covering blind eyed windows. We pass, we pass. And the dull thrub of the engine is our afternoon lullaby. We glide along tracks that shine when the sunlight hits them before we enter hushed through tunnels. Our eyes get accustomed to the darkness a split second before the sky returns. As does the landscape blur of quarries and fishing ponds, allotments and flytipped furniture. Next to the new housing development; a selection of three and four bedroomed homes with ensuite bathrooms and off-road parking. And rattling windows.
All a pattern of disorder. A jungle garden tries to encroach upon a clipped elderly garden, filled with riotous bedding plants and more than one shed. We pass by two empty deckchairs positioned to take advantage of the afternoon suntrap. Although, the sun has disappeared behind flat clouds for now. There is unfinished paving, unloved furnishings, overwintered outdoor toys and washing lines dripping with threadbare towels.
The views flatten; now there’s just the occasional spire or poplar tree to pierce the firmament. A row of willows even dip down to drink thirstily from a river. And here, we are fast now. Whirring empty stations into the past. Charging past rolls of hay and dead farm machinery, past barbed wire fences and guard dogs, past soot, dirt, mould and the dying of things. The truth of things.



April 2010