Standing, out, into the bedroom. And opening a drawer where men’s clothes lay neatly folded. A reflection in the window, on the other side a fine snow is beginning to fall. Underneath a pile of jumpers there is an envelope with six old photographs locked away inside. Take the envelope, close the drawer, and leave the bedroom, and close the door. Back into the kitchen. The photographs in their envelope are placed underneath the letter. A sigh shakes through the air.
- All the seconds in a day
It is afternoon on at the end of November. It is some time in the middle of the morning. The sun is shining. I am looking out of my window. The street there is empty. The sky is cold and clear and blue and moving slowly. There is a man on the street wrapped in a long coat and a scarf. He is talking on a mobile phone. He passes to the end of the street and turns away from me.
Standing at a bus stop in Brighouse, years ago, an hour after a job interview. Wearing a shirt and tie, black trousers and shoes. Stood there on a cold grey day wearing my long grey coat, a size too big for me. I bought it in a charity shop in York, with a girl I used to know. I wonder where she is now.
- Cl.
She sat on our bed and crossed her legs. She wore jeans and grey Converse trainers and a tight black sweater. She smoked her cigarettes and lit them with my lighter. She put the ash in an empty shot glass. I sat on the hard floor. She watched the window and the buildings. Empty bottle in the closet with my jacket. Day. She spoke to me in a flat voice and said things that I think I should remember now but don’t.
The river below was grey and warped as a bedsit mirror. Hire-boats tethered for the night bobbed on the dark current. The sky was empty. All the birds had found tree branches for the night.
I’d found the trick. Remembered it. Tears dried on my face. They took with them the warmth from my body and I was stood with the cold biting into my cheeks as the lights of cars washed over me like searchlights scanning for a body in that river. Every surface was slick and shiny with frost, and on the side of the river there were round wooden tables outside a bright pub. I heard the cars pass behind and every time I heard an engine whine in acceleration I thought that car was going to mount the kerb and plough through me.
- When it all came down
We didn’t exactly argue. And, after we’d stopped speaking, after she’d left, I still loved her. Neither of us had shouted. Neither of us had cried. There had been no accusations, no pointed fingers or pointed words.
We’d sat at opposite ends of the room, though, and we’d not looked at each other very much. And as it got dark, neither of us rose to turn the light on. The telephone had rung, cutting her off, and we’d both waited in silence until it had stopped. Neither of us had made any move to answer it.
With my collar up against the cold and my hands balled into fists and hiding in my pockets I reached the bus stop. It was open-fronted but covered and people were huddled there, closer to each other than they would normally be. In front of the bus stop, in the gutter, on the road, a large deep puddle had collected and was advancing towards the middle of the road. Every time a car or van or motorbike went past the people stood by me stepped back and I stepped back to and a little wave of water washed up over the kerb and towards us. Most of the cars slowed as they passed. Some didn’t.
Things deadly and dark. Rattled and shaken. Out here hidden from the rain. That night into this morning. Rain falling over cobblestones and through grey cloud-covered skies. A shiver all through me, through the coat and the scarf. That middle point when I’d forgotten the crucified men seemed a long time ago and it seemed as blinkered and innocent as a child’s belief in Father Christmas. This now was the new world. The reality of things pressing hard against my skull and the bone there splintering into the amygdale and cerebral cortex. My head open to the blank heavens and to the roof of this open-fronted shed. I didn’t stand still though I stood in the same place. I jerked and twitched like a small electric current was being passed through my body. Like I was a mute soldier in the grip of shellshock strapped to a leather chair in a medical room. I thought that if I stood still then the spiders that nested in the roof of the shed would spin down on abseil lines and make nests in the cracks of my skull. That babies there would be born, and from there they’d burrow down to find something good and grey to dine on.
- Chorus
My phone rang in another room and I scuttled from my chair and answered it and after a minute or two of conversation I had something to do that evening. As I hung up I smiled at the dead television screen with mockery on my face.
Fifteen minutes after that I wrapped my scarf noose-tight around my neck and turned the collar of my coat up in the hallway, checked my pockets, and closed the door behind myself. Down the stairs, out into the street dark deserted and blushed with orange from the streetlights. I looked left toward the river and right toward the chip shop where a queue of people snaked around the block like soviets waiting for soap. I knelt and tied my shoelace and as I stood the terraced houses leant in on me. I stepped out onto the forever-quiet road and walked down the middle, past the chip shop, left, down another provincial street of legend where thin curtains did a poor job of hiding whatever happened within.
The saddest song with the silliest title rose up out of the television and I opened my eyes from a too-early tiredness. I didn’t know where I was until Geeshie came whispering to my mind and told me. She almost lost her scowl before she left my head and went back to her plot. I sat and watched and listened until the song came to an end, and I turned the television off. I didn’t look at my watch. I knew it was far too late, and I knew that I wasn’t going to get enough sleep. I didn’t want reminding of the fact. I stood and tripped over my shoes. The noise was far too loud and in the wake of it I stood and waited for the sound of Anna waking. It never came and I released a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding.
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