this is where i'm mainly writing now:
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in summer, the clothes can soften and curl in the wind back to their original shape. now they dry under synthetic heat. though some clothes have warped and stiffened they look beautiful too; scraps of pink and red underwear confettied all over the place, vast avalanches of white hanging over the bath, and clear, glossy tights sliding from the back of a chair into a pool of yellow light on the floor.

i caught my reflection in the french door on the way out to the kitchen; the scarlet of my dressing-gown and the angle of my stoop. from where i was standing it seemed like a ballerina bending to her point shoes, tying and re-tying those painful ribbons over cracked feet. the dancer blanched and then was swallowed by the glut of shameful light.

i can feel the leaves swirl restlessly about my feet. solaced by this simple design, this wild autumnal flash, i can forget my sorrow. it is grey here most of the time,

What’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted?

The candles were so bright. Nancy winced under the light and thought of her most cherished dinner. Her first husband had been a butcher of course and he was an excellent chef. He wooed her with his blood puddings; she loved the way the black fat cracked under the grill and oozed just a little. The delicate shards of bonemeal that gave it grit.

Truffle oil I guess.

The girl just over the way was wearing an enormous black ballgown that was totally out of style. She sat down and smoothed it over her seat with enormous satisfaction. Nancy wished suddenly she were facing the other way.

Truffle oil? That’s unusual.

Nancy could tell by the way that he said it he had something far more unusual to tell her, that he was merely paving the way for one of his stories. She poured herself a little more wine.

You?
No my glass is still full.
I mean what about your most interesting meal?
That’s a different question entirely.

The girl had two gold balloons in the shape of stars attached to her chair; the table was covered in gifts gift-wrapped in the same kind of foil. The girl had a bunch of flowers in her hand. It was a bunch of black roses. You could get seeds for them in mail order catalogues but it wasn’t certain in this climate. Maybe they were flown in. an aeroplane full of flowers comes every day to certain florists. Maybe she was going away. But her face was so young; she must have been having a birthday.

Excuse me are you ready to order?
Can we have a few more minutes please…
Another bottle of wine please.
Certainly.

He couldn’t see in the blaze of the candles that she wasn’t looking at him at all but rather at the girl behind him. He looked as though he was thinking very deeply about how best to begin his story. He dropped his answer between them with some gravitas, his glasses quivering slightly under the vibration of his voice.

Gold.

She had been sitting there for about ten minutes now. She had finished a long pink cocktail that fizzed. She looked around it must have been for her friends. A waitress saw and sashayed across in her pin heels and up-do. She took the order. It was for another cocktail that fizzed but this time in green.

I’m sorry I didn’t hear you.

His face weakened a little. He ran a hand through his failing hair. He knew she must have heard him. He reached for the last of his wine. It stained his teeth but she had insisted on red.

Gold. The best thing I’ve ever tasted is gold.

The waitress returned with their second bottle of wine and poured a miniscule amount in each of their glasses before reaching inside her oversized pocket for a pad. They were ready to order. Despite their conversation they ordered two plain steaks and a dish of roast potatoes to share. Nancy toyed with the idea of winter greens and finally settled on a Waldorf salad. She took the bottle and added a healthy amount to each glass in spite of his protestations. When the waitress withdrew the girl became visible once more and was now drinking something dark purple and steaming. She was caressing the gifts through the paper and holding the shiny objects close to her face, rattling them and trying to guess their contents.

I would imagine that it tastes awful, hard and bitter. How can it be the best thing you’ve tasted?
My friends were in the chemistry class, they knew how to dilute it to make it taste good. I swear it.
I don’t believe you, it’s the idea of it you enjoyed, like the idea of champagne or truffle oil, it’s the opulence that appeals, not the object itself.
No, that’s not it at all, it really was exquisite.

Nancy was annoyed by the conversation. He invariably told these stories, and they were invariably lies. She could not bear to listen to his explanation, but neither could she bear the guilty silence that would follow if she didn’t. Their waitress returned with their charred steaks. She was not a pleasant girl and the plates were set heavily down, sweating with vegetables that Nancy had not ordered. He didn’t notice; he was looking at the waitress’s legs.

One of the girl’s balloons had come loose from its moorings somehow and floated towards the ceiling. It might be that she did it on purpose. She looked peaky in that vast velvet ballgown, her childish features dampened by the excess of black. Signalling for water she looked past the waiter for her friends. Unable to wait any longer she tore at one of the presents and gasped when she revealed a yellow-gold tiara. It was almost the shape of a cardboard crown and must have been some kind of cleverly disguised plastic. It was cheaply made and would not sit comfortably on her head. The heavy Viking plaits she had wound around her ears bulged beneath it.

How’s your steak?

Vile. If we have to discuss eating can you please continue with your story?

He perked up, drained his glass uncharacteristically and mopped his salad dressing up with garlic bread. It was disgusting to watch.

Well we were talking one day about how…

Nancy could not believe it; the man who had sat next to the birthday girl was pushing sixty. Surely her grandfather? Surely not her father? He rescued her balloon and with a practised flick called the waitress with the pin heels over evidently asking for a vase and two more drinks. A man of sixty drinking pink champagne!

His story wound inexorably on to the conclusion, she did not even nod but lit a cigarette and bowed her head beneath the smoke. He took this for concentration. Every time she glanced across to the girl and her grandfather he thought she seemed particularly animated. He smiled and allowing himself a delicious glimpse at the stockinged legs of the waitress he ordered their third bottle of red.

The girl was decidedly tipsy now and her crown had slipped entirely to one side of her head. They had decided to skip most of their courses and were sharing an enormous layered sundae scored with golden sparklers.

She really shouldn’t have been drinking so much.

His tall tale had concluded, those kooky chemists had consumed their gold and she was expected to make conversation. They did not bother with dessert and ordered coffee and cognac. He wanted a cigar. She allowed it.

It’s funny, I’ve got a story about gold too as it happens. It’s a real story my friend is a forensic scientist and he…

He pretended not to notice either the implication that his story was not true or that she was undoubtedly discussing a rival. He gave her his full attention and begged for her to continue. Over the way the sundae had been pushed aside and the girl had begun to open the rest of her presents. The last was a giant cake iced with her name. The old man urged her to cut it open, he winked at her, promising secrets. He took a steak knife and plunged it into the centre of the sponge splitting it open. There was a clatter as hundreds of gold coins poured out of the cake on to the table. Each one a pound coin wrapped in foil from chocolate money.

He was working on a case a few years ago, my friend that is, it was in France where he is originally from. It was out in the countryside. Some godless spot.

He raised an eyebrow at this, she was not exactly a believer herself, he feared her story might have some racist slant. It would not have surprised him at all.

Anyway they had had a call to go out to a crime scene, it was the middle of a quiet afternoon and he was hoping to get off early, but that’s by the by. He got there and there was a young couple sat on this terrible sofa, all springs and no stuffing. They were utterly vacant, looked unwashed and lunatic. He passed by them and went down to the cellar leaving them with the police officers. The cellar was a dreadful sight, three cardboard boxes each one holding a baby in a state of decomposition, one of them little more than a skeleton. The monsters! Anyway he took them off to his lab and did his tests, he’s extremely clever with that sort of thing, and the most interesting thing was the stomach contents. Somehow or other they had fed them with gold! Those peasants had killed their children by feeding them gold!

He looked ill. It might have been from the wine, probably not though. Nancy had been too caught up in her tale to see that his sickened gaze fell elsewhere. Not at the waitress now, though that was why he had wandered initially, but at the girl in the ballgown; the girl and her grandfather. The presents were scattered all over the table, the balloons crumpled and burst. Coins had showered on to the floor and bits of cake were stuck to them. There was a new bottle of champagne virtually untouched in an ice bucket. One of the dozen black roses were stuck behind the old man’s ears, he was evidently extremely drunk. Two red spots troubled the countenance of the young girl and sweat patches had appeared under her armpits. As the waitress walked towards them ready to clear the mess on the floor she stopped and slowly retreated. The old man had taken the girl by the shoulders and began to kiss her deeply. She crumpled beneath her heavy golden crown.

September 1:

It was dark when we left. My boots looked grimy under the low wattage of the bare unshaded bulbs. There had been colossal chrysalises surrounding them when we arrived earlier in the autumn but they made me feel nauseous, I could see them bulging, teeming with something undiscovered. They were flat now, slashed, deflated, unhung. The light was harsh but unilluminating. My boots as everything else in the room were now grey. They were stupid boots made of cottony fluff that itched and would be destroyed by any leaves or rain. I decided that it didn’t matter, they were right for the dark night, the uncertainty of coming here could be eroded by the certainty of definite ruin. I decided to ruin them because I wanted to. We left in a hushed three, the wine we had steeped in sugar, cinnamon and herbs lay stickily inside us and melted our conversation. Mute and compliant we followed the night.

October 19:

Cold. Sunlit. Entirely still. I was late and even if I hadn’t been I would have forgotten something. My glasses today so a headache I supposed. Alone I find it hard not to almost run. Not that I don’t enjoy the walk but I have this childish desire to prove I can get there faster. I can’t run by the way, or jog or anything specialised but I can certainly walk. My bare legs mottled immediately and the rest of me sweltered under scarf, coat, hat. I could tell that as soon as I arrived and the sweat dried I was going to stink. It seemed so unfair, I wanted to cry. Unbuttoning my coat and unwinding my extra long scarf I turned up the sound in my ears and tried to imagine myself utterly free. I was gaining time at least, maybe not too late after all. I walked past the man who sits on the wall down the road, he’s there about sixty percent of the times I go past. I think he must live there. I think about if he remembers me, the days I forget my make-up, the days my hair won’t lie down. That is the kind of selfish thoughts I have when confronted with his situation. Deflated I rummage for the volume button as the traffic increases. I look down to the open front of my dress, my hated décolletage that I had hoped to cover with a scarf. Vanity cannot outstrip discomfort though and I continue without. I lurch around a corner, there is a sixty year old man coming around the corner and we almost collide. His eyes are like dishes with a puddle of violet-blue dropped in the centre and they slide without apology to the front of my dress.

November 14:

We had a new oven fitted and the man told us that we shouldn’t have been using the old one, it was dangerous. The landlord is getting a fine and we get a packet of stickers from the workmen to stick by the oven and boiler. They should stay white to tell us that there is no poison leaking from our appliances. If they start getting sooty we should call them and not breathe in. I dreamed of gas poisoning that night, it was a long dream about death and ended with a really violent apocalyptic vision. I woke up and couldn’t understand why there was light. I thought we all lived underground in metal tunnels now it was the apocalypse. It took me ages to stop wondering how to get lower, to find cover. I looked at the new cooker and thought about all the things I’d cook on it and that some of those things would have salt, fat, additives, msg, gluten, cholesterol, sugar, e numbers etc. in. Those things would slowly kill me too, as effectively as monoxide but more insidiously. I looked at the flames on the gas hob, I threw different things into them: water, glitter, foil, food. The flames changed colour and sputtered. I felt afraid harnessing this fire it was so unruly and changeable. And all I needed to do was turn them all on and blow out the flames like birthday candles and lie down and that would kill me too.

December 28:

We went on holiday for Christmas/New Year. It was really depressing. We booked a room at one of those Haven Holiday Parks and it was just us and other couples who didn’t really have anything better to do. There weren’t any children or normal families, just loads of oddball losers like us. The entertainment was ok though, I enjoyed the Rory the Lion Quiz, we answered everything right and won a bottle of Matteus Rose. I always thought those bottles were really elegant. Late that night we ate the dinner (microwaved) and had these happy hour and then non-happy hour cocktails until three am. There was this sort of pushy older couple making suggestive remarks to us all night and we finally caved in, it seemed fitting. A couple of hours later I went back to our room to shower and woke up in the bath at seven, the water still running and big sticky patches of semen unremoved from my back. We packed and left soon after this.

The twisted metal grew skywards piled on daily by a hundred strong men. Laxity had allowed his fingerprints to gather in odd, quiet corners where the dust lay. He’d arrived on the first morning with the others, been offered his hat though boots were not provided. There were men he sometimes talked to about his dogs. There was little else to say, his interests were not easily articulated and they deepened in secret. His mania allowed him general peace but frequent, intermittent misery. He told no-one of his pain but the tenderness of his work spoke of it on the days that he suffered. It seemed to him when this mania descended that he was not the stranger whose boots he wore, whose life and health he coveted but the true version of himself. It caught him like that sometimes and the devastating thing about his mania was the vividness of the picture he allowed himself to be presented with. Not one to be so black and white under ordinary circumstances, he fell into a violent frame of mind that he was alone, that he was unhappy, that there was no release. He felt a heightened sensitivity on those days as though he were a conduit for something. Removing his dirty gloves he allowed his work to speak of this. Tenderly he put the metal into place and slowly, softly joined the casing of the building that they would eventually raise from nothing. This act of creation moved him deeply and regardless of many near misses with his fingers he felt no release from his struggle until he removed his gloves and smoothed each section into place.

There were days when he felt much the same as the others, bored by the grind and counting the minutes down until his breaks and then counting them back up again when lumbered with some tedious and relentless conversation in the outbuilding where they brewed coffee and tea. There was a van for hot food and newspapers but he always avoided the conversation that attended these purchases and sat chewing his tuna salad slowly. He cared little for sensual pleasure and his food was not important to him. The delights of fatty bacon were a mystery that could not be revealed to him through mere verbal recommendation. If the weather was fine he could find a corner of his own to eat and sit in silence watching the building take shape. Even on the tedious days, the organic nature of the structure enchanted him and revived him for the long afternoon. Summer was harder than winter in some ways with no chance of early finishing due to failing light. This summer had been worse than most with the lashing rain and wind causing difficulties with the work but being so sporadic and mixed with the pale sunlight that work was never put aside for the day but merely delayed into the evening.

His boots got wet all the time and he kept a pair of dry socks in his belt always. He was miserable when he had wet feet, miserable and useless. During the flashes of turbulent weather he would retreat like the others into the huts and warm his fingers on his dented aluminium mug, squeezing out his old socks. He would then dry his feet on a paper towel and put on his dry socks. This minor idiosyncrasy was occasionally noted by the others who tended to battle on regardless. This had no impact whatsoever on his practice.

He was in many ways just like the others, by turns bored and absorbed. Yet on the days in question there was a chasm between his public appearance and private emotions. He had never specialised in anything and drifted from one job to another. He was a well-built man, fit from physical exercise and a boringly correct diet untouched by whimsy. With regular features and an even voice he had inspired trust in employers. There had been nothing special he enjoyed at school and from the time he left he had drifted from one thing to another. Competent and thorough in his work he still only received lukewarm references from those he worked for. It seemed that they had a common problem with him – the trust he initially inspired turned to suspicion as he grew to realise that they knew nothing at all about him. Only the occasional passionate description of his dogs allayed their suspicion that he had formed no real bonds. There was never any trouble about him leaving, merely a coolness in his verbal and written recommendations.
He’d worked on building sites for three or four years now and found the work sympathetic to his lifestyle. There was rarely any call for references and the work he did was more than enough without need for too much social intercourse. There was always a sense that a group like that, over a hundred men in close proximity, would contain varied levels of friendships and intimacies and similarly several feuds. This dynamic suited him for it was easy for one man to become lost within many and he didn’t ever really become involved. He was interested only in the work and it was with the building that he felt a communion, not the men.

On the days when his mania deepened, he retreated to the corners of the site which the others tended to avoid. The places where not much initial work had been undertaken could prove difficult to get started and the easier, more satisfying work could be done in other places. Preferring a wild, scrubby heath to a well tended garden he flung his vagabond soul and gloveless hands into the work away from prying eyes.


It had been more turbulent than usual the day the accident happened. Though they were used to working in all conditions, as soon as the earlier shift had arrived it became apparent that things would be more difficult than usual. He came at seven oblivious to the general clamour for tea and coffee seeming somehow to be beyond the daily anxieties and preoccupied with his thoughts. He made his way from the hut where the others were happy to congregate and delay their tramp out across the hazardous site. They knew it was unsafe to work with so much metal in a storm. They had clocked in already and felt safe in the thought that no-one would expect them to go outside in such weather. Huddling around the boiling copper urns and reading the papers or complaining about the lack of food due to the lateness of the van they didn’t notice him slip away out into the darkness.

He wasn’t afraid like the others, he felt such an affinity with the building and the sky was so beautiful that morning, all sheet metal tones under the eerie red light. For just a moment, the rain slowed and a bright streak of sunlight struck the building, shedding sparks across the steel like a glassblower’s torch. He felt coldness spread along his chest at the sight of such beauty and could not control his breathing. In the midst of the violence he felt infinitely calm, walking no more quickly beneath the hissing and torn tarpaulins, battered by the downpour than as though the sky were utterly still. No-one looked over towards him, but if they had, and if they were in an artistic frame of mind, they might have thought he cut an allegorical figure; solitary against a hostile and turbulent world.

The site was wedged neatly between a high school and a hospital. The hospital had small windows shuttered against the cold with beige Venetian blinds. He had asked the others once why the windows at the top were always obscured. They had told him that the higher floors housed the terminal wards and much like a prison, the sight of outdoors could prove unsettling. Someone else had joked about keeping the patients out of harm’s way and the long history of suicides by defenestration. The school on the other hand was fairly modern and nearly all glass. The sixth formers at the top of the building were rather restive, the discussion of poetry with their however impassioned teacher paling beside the beauty of the storm. Sentences trailed off and eventually all the students were contemplating the weather more than the poems. Their administrative block completed the set and rose greyly in the midst of youth and mortality.

That morning he felt a certain fitness to his actions as he approached the crane that was suspended neatly mid-job. He hadn’t known before that he was capable of such passion. The rain did not subside as he removed and discarded his gloves and surveyed the work they had done. He wished there was one person he could tell, it wasn’t often that these flashes of longing touched him, but today one did. There had been his dog, but although she was as close as a family to him, she could never understand. Nor these men he laboured with daily, not one felt exhilaration and despair as keenly as the work took shape. He stood long, staring at the towering steel that he had intimately touched and set into place. A single sob escaped him, the force bending him further into the wind. The sky was darker now and clotted with blood coloured clouds. A thin keening escaped as the winds ripped through the space between the buildings, muffled only by their embryonic construction, a benign presence in the storm.

When he began his ascent, the children at the window were obscured to him, the rain-streaked glass as impenetrable as a one-way mirror. They had given up even half-heartedly dissecting their poems and had been moved rather to take in the terrible beauty of the sky. The poem they had been reading had ended with the line “he offered her a poem; she said to him, it is a dish of plums”. Their teacher had told them to think of the plums themselves as the poem. Some of them began to understand. From the top of their glass block, the first to notice what was happening was a boy named Colin who was sharp-eyed but renowned for his imaginative powers and therefore frequently dismissed. He wanted to tell but something within him wished to selfishly claim it for his own. Like a lepidopterist spearing a butterfly he wanted to crystallise the moment without thought of the pain to his subject. Colin was not to be allowed his moment however as there was a sudden flurry to the window of two sharp-eyed girls who realised that Colin was transfixed by something more than the clouds. By the time they noticed it was already much too late.



As a child, he had been left quite often alone to his own devices. His parents were of the opinion that if you let children run wild they would get into trouble, and if you let brothers and sisters play together they wouldn’t respect each other in later life. He had been a few years older than his sisters and could not penetrate their close world. Though they were forbidden to spend too much time with each other they snuck into each others rooms at night and talked about mysterious things in a giggling whisper. He had felt too shy to ask to join in and felt himself ill-equipped to offer them hospitality himself. His room was small and cold and had nothing that would tempt his sisters in. He knew without being told that his mother preferred girls. They knew it too and bent rules that he would have never have had the courage to. He began to feel hollow as the awareness and intelligence that came with maturity highlighted the unsatisfactory situation he was in. He had never known that life was different until he started visiting his friends and saw the way their families were, the roughness of their discourse, the ferociousness of their debate and the bitterness of their silences. He had never known that silence had different qualities, that it could signify so deeply a mood or emotion. Silence was his ordinary way of life and he was overwhelmed by the realisation that to other people silence was a tool for discussion as often as words were.

Later he realised that the painful spells he could not control were a reaction to the silence of his childhood, never having anything to say as a child, he harboured his intelligence and it blossomed awkwardly under glass. The power of his emotions led to a violent despair at his inability to express them and the more he shut down his daily routine into nothingness, the stronger his rages would come. He let everything go slowly, until that year when he started work at the building site he had no ties left at all. There was a room he went to every night paid for weekly. There was a wardrobe with his clothes. No books or records, no photographs marked his taste from anyone else. There was just his dog. When she had sickened and died he knew it was time to deal with his correspondence such as it was and await the perfect day to end his life. His sisters had no idea where he was and his parents were dead. He would harm no-one by his going and he finally felt ready.


The day he’d chosen was perfect, the beauty and violence of the storm appealed to his romantic side and he felt remarkably peaceful. He knew that work would continue when he’d gone, that he would be part of its history. That gave him the most pleasure he was capable of feeling. That morning as he climbed the crane in the midst of all the metal he had a twinge of fear, wondering what the pain might be like. But he knew it would be over before long and he felt a thrill of excitement at the thought. Before he reached the top, he put the dust mask he had in his pocket over his face, a final gesture to his blank identity, and a kindness to whoever had to bring him down. Eventually, he reached the top of the crane.

There was a wave of fear in the classroom, a sick stomach wrenching silence as they watched his ascent. Their teacher realised what was happening and quickly ran to the telephone in the next room to call for assistance, she didn’t have time to stop them watching. He had reached the top and stood on the metal crane, weaving his body against the wind, his face obscured by the mask and the rain and looking utterly wild. Before their teacher could return there was a huge flash of sheet lightning, which turned the sky the colour of copper pans. They could not hear but only imagined the scream of pain that came from him as he was struck with the full force of electricity, cut off as suddenly as the beating of his heart by the current. Someone began to cry and then someone else began to scream. But Colin understood the man and felt as though he understood the poem better. This man had shown him a poem.

we walked quite a long way down the beach on saturday. there was something in the distance that we wanted to get a closer look at. i'd never been there before, at least not since i was a child and had no idea what it could be. the tide was completely in when we arrived and it had only just revealed a thin patch of damp brown sand. let's walk on the beach now that we're here. i'd brought two pairs of shoes but they both had holes in so i tried to stay out of the deep puddles that lay in the sea-scarred sand. both pairs got wet in the end but later on the train i dried them by the scorching heaters that were on in spite of the sickly orange sun that baked the glass. they were still wet when i got home. my lips tasted so salty, not like the kind you put on food but the kind that cakes and clogs and is apparently good for your skin. i always say i'd like to live by the sea but i think i like convenience too much, i'd probably like to think about living by the sea whilst drinking in bars and buying more shoes. we walked past the rollerocasters and i felt sick to my stomach to see the way people seemed to hang out suspended upside down. since then i keep having dreams about them falling, but it's silent, slow-motion. the lack of screams is maybe the creepiest thing. we walked past the illuminations in the shape of enormous tiffany lamps. we walked past nearly everything and could still see it in the distance, this enormous spinning, dazzling thing. up close you could see what it was immediately and if you couldn't the plaque was there to tell you. in the daytime it span in the wind and glinted from the sun, but at night time it came alive under the twinkling lights and i could imagine sitting outside in the breeze watching it twirl. but we had to leave before then. we had to catch our train.

In the eighth month the heaviness pressed down and floored her sometimes. She’d been to the meetings where they told of the handful of butterflies that joyfully ran through them. She had no such sensation. She felt heavy as compost, layer upon layer of dirt and vegetable mass decomposing in her gut. In the dark room she sweltered, hotter with the curtains drawn, hotter with the sheet off. All she wanted was a quiet, dark room with properly shut drapes. Delirious with fever she dreamt of the butterfly museum, her tiny hands grasping her notebook and pencil. The heat had been oppressive then too and she’d wanted to leave, to go back to the shaded picnic area and have her ice-cream. They told her it had to be hot because of the butterflies; they needed to be reminded of their tropical home. It seemed stupid to her as a child, why take something tropical and imprison it in a simulated version of nature? She had felt terrified of the displaced creatures swooping madly in their hothouse dreaming of home. Worse still was the classroom at the end, though it was cooler in here the chemical smell pervaded and the walls were lined with speared specimens. Up close she could see the alien bodies that twisted beneath the weight of their fragile wings. How could something so beautiful and frail harbour this ugly creature? And they were so blue, bluer than anything she had seen in nature, Virgin Mary blue. The women at the class had no idea what they were harbouring.

Room 1: Grey Sunken Cunt

Woman lies in bed, room is almost blacked out with heavy drapes. One low lamp or candle burns at her bedside. There is an old fashioned silver spoon on black velvet beside the lamp or candle. She wears dark glasses or a blindfold. Intermittently she scratches her arms and neck quite violently but without gaining obvious relief.

Old Woman: I forgot this year to watch for the snowdrops. It’s been deadly cold and greyness has propagated greyness…No. I lied about forgetting I didn’t dare to look for the snowdrops. I saw them in a dream all curled up and grey too like dirty swirls of stale smoke. No, I didn’t forget. I lied about forgetting. Did I avoid looking for fear of disillusionment? No. That too is not the truth of it. It comes merely as a symptom of my confinement- no not that - my purdah. Perhaps I am the one who is parched and dead, wracked by this bone-twisting illness into greyness.

For all I know it has been a fresh and crisp late January; a blind white sun scoring the delicate frost. If I dared open the drapes would I see the snow? I think it has been snowing from the breath of the men who deliver my shopping – ragged, bitter and sharp. I know they have been told not to give me news from outside for fear of my severity. I would not mind one with spirit though, one to defy my unnatural demands. They look through me as though I am some parched leaf, some ribbon-veined ghost gum trodden and frayed. They believed the stories about me I’m sure until they looked upon my translucent death’s head, my mangled limbs.

Last time I dared look the lead-blue sky was snarling and pelting its niveous excreta. Hah! That pug-white showy bitch. I saw how it had cast its nasty tricks: the powdered landscape no longer bled into the air. There was definition, a straight dividing line between earth (grey)/sky (black). The crueller elements gather geometrically it seems as though some surer hand than mine were conquering our skylines. A winter blanket sparkling in the treacherous morning light is simple death to those who must endure it without protection. It pays us with a handful of cheap white dust yet exacts its toll wildly. Mingled with bone it will inevitably return.

My body has been covered just this last year with a powder all its own; some vile parasite has taken up her lodging and uses me most unkindly in her feasts. Illness upon illness has plagued me these five years but this last visitor has stripped me of all my dignity. She feeds so freely and so impudently on every inch of my clean pink flesh, setting up her banqueting table all along my thighs, my withered breasts, my scalp. All night I wake at intervals to the clatter of steely knives, the braying and chattering of my uninvited guest as she guzzles what she pleases. By morning she has spit out the bones, belched out her whiskeyed fumes and dropped her filthy napkins all along my body. Once she merely picnicked taking up a corner to spread her red and white cloth gently as she nibbled away. Now there is more of me devoured than healthy and she does not relent though she sees my pain. You must think me insane to be talking like this, perhaps you would understand the indignity if you too were robbed of all your proteins. It is not yellow nor white this crust, it is the colour of a clean shard of bone. It picks away at each cell scouring and consuming it, greedily claiming its furrow, its corner, its line. They tell me that you cure a poison with poison, they were willing to poison me with light. Of course, I refused.
The darkness in this room is almost complete, I have had the black velvet drapes completely drawn for some length of time now and I feel unwilling to become blinded by the sunlight any time soon. If I should turn off this muted then there would be nothing but blackness. I am the palest thing in this room, as I slowly turn to dust. Perhaps I am becoming exoskeletal as the cowardly flesh buries itself deep inside. Perhaps that is why I need my armour so terribly badly now, my armour of lies and darkness. I am nothing but a cage of bones with its innards exposed for what they are. All my private guilt and shame hangs outside my body as though I had been disembowelled. For there are dark secrets within me that seem pathetic now, not worth the suffering I endured to conceal them. They have all heard about me those men who stagger in with parcels for me, and I am not so old as all that - only fifty last year, perhaps they expected to taste of my fabled charms, to feast and devour along with my other tormentors. How shocking it would be for me to tell them the truth about my past, for I was not seeking absolution, but pleasure.

Birth, bloody mess, limbs wiped clean, sticky green knots untangled then severed with the physician’s blade, no cleaner than the abortionist’s knife. Not for me that blood stench spewing its virulent sponge - that murderous leech bloating and sucking in the darkness, fierce as a mouth.

No.

One room much like another I lay in bed to wait for judgement. There were dark dreams that had me seated blindfold and swollen at the head of a banquet, glittering knives ranged above us in the cold white light.

Bedridden, bleeding, bleeding, bedridden.

Small pink curl of tongue that slipped between rodent teeth. She was no better, no worse than any other but it is all a matter of proximity. There was nothing shameful in our liaison, no fumbling or tongue kisses no direct or indirect stimulation. I don’t know that she felt my gaze too keenly at all, wrapped as I was in my endless winding sheet. There was a spoon that I had been given for the baby – silvery grey carved with hearts. She visited me once and took hold of the spoon (not like the others who all regretted so deeply and hurried away from the stink of failure that came from me, the cheesy smell of the unstopped milk that I let soak into the covers) inquisitive she did what all unformed creatures do to test new things, she placed it in her mouth.


One day she came in with a vanity case, sent to cheer me up she said. The truth is I was expecting a visit from my father and he was not to be bothered with all this female mess and ugliness. I was supposed to die of shame should he have seen the dirty napkins in the bucket spattered with the ceaseless spotting blood. Or the rags that were freshened daily in an attempt to stop the milk from staining all the good linen. Protesting inwardly at the deception she wanted me to comply with, still I let her take out the brushes, the rouge, the boned underthings that looked just like torture. It seemed to be the end of my long and fruitless confinement, she was to flatten me out like I had been before.
Artless creature she buttoned me up tight and presentable, never taking a moment’s care over the task. To have been softly laced into my new ribs would have been better than nothing. That moment she let her breath linger on the baby’s spoon, let it steam, blossom, fade was not to be repeated. Like a mental patient I acquiesced to her nursing as though underwater, under rubber, under glass.

I think it must have been around this time that I became obsessed with sick rooms and all their paraphernalia, cold metal stirrups, glass thermometers, endless syrups and potions and unguents. Dressing for night time, negligee’s, bed jackets… bandages. Why not? I thought. Why not become a sickroom companion. It solved my family’s anxieties around my future and yet had little to do with penance.

She did not ask me to help her undress. That was what they paid a nurse to do. But she would not disturb us for a few hours yet and I had her undivided attention. She looked stiff and uncomfortable in her church clothes and I knew that had I not been there she would have divested herself of the starched shirt and intricately boned undergarments. What lay beneath the fur blanket over her knees was uncertain to me. It took on the excitement of the forbidden, and how I yearned to know. My mistress was not used to such appraisal of her figure, and I could see her flinch and retreat.

"Would you like me to undress you?" I blushed at my audacity, retreated for the bell to summon a chaperone, a third party to my misdeed. Her hand on mine was cool, absorbing my flush and smoothing it as if she were a flat, cool pebble assimilating fevers. "Yes thankyou dear" was all she said. My hand now firmly removed from the button. Slowly I gathered my nerves and busied myself helping her choose something more suitable A dark red silk kimono hung seductively on a rail. She sensed my desire for it and with a calculated flourish declared her distaste for such garb, a gift from an artless admirer. In the same breath she offered it to me citing my relative youth and dark colouring as reasons. Mutely I acquiesced. For her an ivory wrapper edged neatly with lace - altogether more fitting for our little chat. Tenderly I removed the blouse from her shoulders and hung it neatly on the rail. Not wanting her to catch cold I removed her skirt and woollen stockings from beneath the fur. Pale greys both they blended with her colouring. The back of her corset was exquisitely crafted in pearlised satin, done in a hundred tiny bones. I did not attempt to converse but rather devoted myself fully to the slow unpicking of tiny ribbons. The task completed, I shuddered as the two pieces collapsed away from her naked back. Concealing my disquietude I dressed her quickly in the wrapper and turned all my attention to the folding and packing of the corset in its tissue paper and crepe. By the time I had finished she had fallen, so softly, to sleep.

They left me plenty those old ladies.

After my fall there was enough to see me comfortably into my own sick room. I took great pleasure in the design, to trick it out like a black box. Supplies delivered frequently, a doctor once a week and several nursemaids. I know the tricks those young girls play. One came in the beginning, hung a string of pearls round my sack neck and planted great balls of blush on my cheeks. Hadn’t the sense to bathe me beforehand so I sat stinking, rouged, ridiculous before the undraped mirror. Lopsided as a half-stuffed clown I saw finally what the others saw. Yes, I thought. Yes I am a witch.

Trickle of plasma
Blue heart stone
Set in its transparency
Flutters in plastic
Like a flicker
A shutter
A reel.

Slides
That my mother
Partially burned
Before the garage sale,
Before dissemination
Occurred
Of our childhood
Hopscotch
Your treacle hair
Dancing in loops.

Just a few
Ribbons left,
Dry filmy ends that
Rasp,
Whisper to the
Paranoiac.

Mundane fall from the
Plum tree
Left you still.
Trapped in glass
You danced those
Endless loops in
Her projector.

I slit open the night with
A rusty needle,
With spray painted
Pine cones
Stuck into eyeholes;
All I see is silver -
The nights seem so festive.

I parcel the hours
Stacked up to touch you
In the
Pocked moon
To melt his
Soft green heart

it felt like trying to fold the sky into soft squares. I wanted to give them to my friends - endless grey boxes full of words. I didn't want to make the first fold, the first incision, to commit to anything. Five pale blooms lie crumpled in the bin. I made them out of grey sugar paper.

Even the bald sky crouched down
To dip it’s dirty fingers in my purse.
Therefore it came as no surprise
The butcher’s strange request.

Outside the sky had a black look
Glowering above the dead-eyed
Shuttered street.
He drew me inside.

Spread like an altar cloth
The sheet was darkly stained
Far deeper than red
The colour of mourning.

He set me down amongst his
Dainty offerings:
Plum heart, brown lung

Beneath balletic half-pigs I splayed
Sides pierced dry.

The taste of filthy pennies
Filled my mouth
Thick wine the colour of oxblood
A poor anaesthetic.

The butcher held aloft his cleaver
Like a monstrance stiff with blood

Out rolled my bloody pearl.

I named my dolls after you Peter. They were not fancy prom queen dolls done up their ludicrous lengths with ruffles and bows and velveteen ball gowns. Neither were they famished-looking plastic gamines riding around on pink motorbikes whilst they waited to go on dates with their muscular boyfriends. Rather, they were odd little patchwork creatures worked from scraps of satin and fluff heaped lovingly upon me by Marta the laundry maid. She was a wonderful girl of about nineteen who had answered an advertisement in the local paper intending to take on the job temporarily whilst she visited the country. Having left an altogether indifferent family and no true friends behind her she grew to rather like the comforts of our opulent home and the chatter and bustle that a child brings. Later, when you had left us, I think she felt bound to stay at least a short while as ballast and comfort to all that remained of our shattered family group – me.

As a child I had been used to absence – the long dining table set for forty people, the tinkle of glasses and the glitter of knives seemed not to mask but rather to frame the empty places where my parents should have been. I had no way to grasp their memory as you decided to remove and destroy all their photographs to dull the horror of our loss. I understand now that it was not a cruel trick you played on me Peter but rather to assuage your own pain that you took such drastic measures. Being denied access to the true images of my parents I naturally began to create my own and lovingly conjured a regal looking pair to accompany me throughout the loneliest times. Eventually I found it easier to condense them into a single entity, which much to the chagrin of pretty much everyone I christened Hitler. Marta tells me that this was not my only excursion into the world of the imagination; she says that for months after you left I babbled incessantly of seeing you, talking to you, playing with you. Worried that I might be taken away from the house despite my fabulous inherited wealth, Marta contrived to keep me close by her and so to my delight I was allowed to spend all day in the laundry.

There is a degree of treachery in a five-year-old girl that allows her to betray her loss and grief in the briefest of periods and I was not mourning for long. Though I am ashamed to admit it I think that had even Marta vanished I would have possessed the exquisite selfishness to carry on. For I was a solitary creature and though I loved Marta and her dolls I was at my happiest buried deep in the folds of clean sheets, barefoot and often naked in this soft white womb. The laundry had always been a magical place to me full of miracles and potions. I had been discouraged from venturing to the depths of the house before you left Peter; I was thought to be a bit of a nuisance I am sure. As a result I had imagined it as a sort of magical cavern far below full of secrets and magic. The laundry maids appeared as sorcerers in this enchanted kingdom bearing baskets piled high with linen to the surface, sprinkled with oils and herbs and steaming hot. These spiced offerings would be laid out in chests and on our beds and I knew each scent by heart. When I went down to the laundry and watched Marta and her helpers perform these alchemical transformations I had not been at all disappointed by the jars and bottles that lined the walls, at last I had seen their magic potions.

Perhaps it was because I had such an imagination and was used too seeing the world I created rather than the one I was living in. Perhaps it was because I was such a wilfully clumsy child always banging into things and begging to be allowed to career down the spiral staircase with no regard to how recently it had been polished. Yet again, perhaps it was the vagabond nature of my existence running wild around a huge house peopled only by myself, Marta and the other servants that allowed my deteriorating eyesight to go unnoticed for so long. One day I heard Marta call me and I thought she must have been very far away because I couldn’t see her. I was hungry and hoped she was calling me for my supper. Supper was a tragic affair with myself and the servants ranged along the vast dining table using the best silver and linen every day. I think that they were anxious to maintain the illusion of your imminent return Peter and their infinite readiness should you choose to entertain a party of one hundred guests. Otherwise what purpose was there in their being employed at all? At their head I would sit as mistress of the house in some uncomfortable starched dress and itchy woollen stockings. I must admit that I found it all a little confusing and inconvenient, much preferring to sit in a cotton smock eating with my fingers. I believe that it was fear that held us all prisoners to this disquieting ritual; no one wanted to face the reality of your loss. Marta’s voice sounded so near now that I could not understand why there was no sign of her. Suddenly, I felt the ground give way beneath me as Marta picked me up and smacked my bottom for hiding and ignoring her. Gabbling in terror I finally made her understand what was wrong.

By the age of six I had been struck totally blind. We could no longer continue to make-believe that things were okay. Marta let the others slip away quietly as she stayed loyally to deal with the aftermath of the terrible lie. She told me first so that I wouldn’t hear it from anyone else; that you had been so sad after mummy and daddy died that you wanted to go to them in heaven, you were never coming back. I don’t know what happened after that but I was taken to some dark place much like any other dark place and the house was sold, the money put into trust for me. Marta returned despondently to her family and all the sordid details came out one by one. When I met with Martha twelve years later I thought I would be so full of questions; why had she kept the fact of your suicide to herself and said you were merely extending your trip? Why had she and the others so wanted to preserve our fairytale existence that no one had thought of the effects on me? Why had they not taken me to a doctor earlier? Why had she patronised me when I was quite resilient enough to learn about the terrible finality of death? In the end it was obvious to me that there were no answers to these questions that I had not already discovered myself. The plain truth was that she had been frightened and acted rashly in a moment of weakness.

It is almost impossible to describe a sensation accurately, even a sensation that you feel more or less all the time. Try as I might I could not describe to you now the sensation of eating something very cold or the warm feeling of passing urine. I reach weakly for these loose and over worn epithets that are really far too vague to convey the most universal of feelings. How then can I explain to you the steady erosion of my store of images, having had noting to sharpen them on since I was six years old? Perhaps the paucity of these tired lexical sets to sketch sensations could be used as a comparison. I have very few true images stored any longer, and without help I find I can barely remember the crudest of visualisations. There is one image that I carry stronger than the others, and that is of the one time that you had the devil in you and played wildly with me all afternoon. It can only have been a few weeks before you died Peter. The spiral staircases had been polished to such a gloss that they seemed almost golden. Taking my hand you followed my lead and swooped gloriously to the bottom crashing on to the fawn rug. I don’t even know if this is a true memory or a wistful fabrication.

I spared Marta the pain and embarrassment of explaining herself to me when I saw her yesterday, but of her own accord she furnished me with a little extra information. A wealthy family took on the house, she thinks that they may have been Americans, and almost immediatly sold on to property developers for twice the price. I think that this must mean it has been demolished Peter, land is far more lucrative to developers that way. I wasn’t sad when Marta told me, far from it. Do you know what that means? It means that I never have to go back and try to glean the truth about you. Our secrets are preserved in those long vanished spirals.

Frazzled from the night’s hardness she shook out her hair and tormented it with fingers. The cut glass bowl smeary in the cold light grinned lopsidedly with bananas, apples, pears. You weren’t supposed to put bananas with other fruit it spoiled them, made them unfit to eat but she had simply watched them rot to speckled brown. Breakfast always unsettled her, replacing one nausea with another as she gulped it down; scalding tea, soggy and lukewarm porridge, brown mush. She had started choosing a piece of fruit every day now, it felt cleaner to her, the crispness of an apple, the definite curve of a pear. She hated plums though, their yellow-green flesh belying their regal exteriors.

He had left much earlier than her, he did every day now. She didn’t ask questions though about what he might be doing in the early hours, what can you possibly get up to between six and eight in the morning? She usually got up then, eight o’clock and washed her hair. He hated long hair so she’d been growing it past her shoulders, she hated long hair too, the lugs and the dead useless weight of it. Short hair made her look gaunt, almost ghoulish but she did not want to give him the satisfaction.

Last night she had looked at the fruit bowl, and noticed how most of it was dying; a handful of withered grapes clustering round a half empty stalk. It disgusted her to think of the fruit she bought and wasted. Finding a smaller bowl she placed all four of the sweet reddish apples into it and with one swift movement clattered the dirty cut glass bowl and all its rotten fruits into the bin. The apples were pretty much all she liked to eat for breakfast now, they felt the right shape and size to her, the right weight. She would have one after her bath.

She ran a bath full to the brim. She liked the water to be scalding hot so that it made her sweat and her heart raced. It was very much discouraged by her doctors who warned her about the effects of sudden exposure to heat on a heart such as hers. Still she lay there writhing under the flashing faucets as she kept refilling the hot water. This hour between eight and nine was her favourite time of day, she felt encouraged by the idea that anyone’s day could start like this, get up at eight, drink a cup of tea, have a bath. But then when she got out and dried her endless hair, she became restless. The problem was not that she had to get anywhere in a hurry, no urgent appointments, or children to see to or job for example. No lunch with friend’s or sister. Rather the point was that she had none of these things to do, and the washing and drying of her hair had become tortuous, a game of endurance, a useless task like counting the ashes in the grate.

She had been in this house a long time now, seven years she had bathed in this tub, dressed before the cruel glass sometimes quickly, sometimes in slow fascination. The place she had come from was not exactly a bad one, but her mother had a hankering to retire comfortably and see her only daughter suitably matched so she could begin the long process of luxuriating toward death. In exchange for her mother’s comfort she had come here at twenty and now edged closer to thirty having done nothing much in between.

She had worked a little in the beginning; endless arpeggios with clumsy young ladies on the piano. He had made her comfort his priority giving over one of the largest brightest rooms to her lessons; a new piano, ivory drapes to protect her sensitive eyes and pale skin and an expensive record player for her to play all her old records in peace. She had harboured dreams of something more, and asked for the lessons to be terminated whilst she concentrated on her own playing. He had been delighted with the idea, encouraged by her fervour he called to make the arrangements himself to cancel the next term’s lessons. The problem was that she became confused sitting day after day in that white room practising and listening to music and she forgot what to do with her fingers. With her husband gone all day and no friends to talk to she began to miss the chatter of the girls and fell into a sort of blind panic. Crippled by solitude she sat staring at her useless hands and began to accept the inevitable. Six months after she had begun her project, she decided to end it and told her husband with eyes red from crying that she would never be a wonderful pianist, but was fit only to teach children their scales. There was still some affection between them and he had folded her into his arms and comforted her gently, telling her that there was nothing to be ashamed of in teaching children their scales.
The bath was never hot enough for her; it lost heat quickly in spite of the radiator because of the size of the room. By nine she was always ready to get out and dry off in front of the mirror. She needn’t get dressed all day if she wanted, she needn’t do anything. Sometimes she waited until seven to get dressed, just in time for the caterer to ring the doorbell and drop off the supper that they would almost never eat together. She would have her portion and leave his in the oven for whenever he returned. The doctors didn’t like for her to do any heavy work, no cooking or cleaning and certainly no pregnancies in her condition. She sometimes called a taxi and wrapped herself in warm layers to go shopping in the village. There was not much there that she wanted, she had lost interest in clothes and so very rarely dressed these days that it seemed silly. Still she enjoyed going to the market and buying fruit, not much, just a few things - the colours reassured her.

Wrapping her hair in a fluffy towel, she dressed quickly in white cotton pyjamas. Before she began drying her hair she decided to sit down and eat her apple whilst she had an appetite. She brought the fruit bowl into her sitting room where she often listened to records and read in the shameful presence of the shrouded piano. She had talked often of advertising for students, but the truth was that if she was not going to be a great pianist she could not bear to teach those children who might one day become great. Her husband sensing the hurt which she felt on the subject did not bring it up again. She put a record on, The Carpenters, and sat down to eat.

She liked to do something else whilst she ate; it was a peculiarity of hers. Like doing a crossword or something or maybe reading a book. She had the record on today but that wasn’t enough, the sweetness of the music cleared and focussed her mind too much, she liked to occupy it. She thought that she might as well start drying her hair whilst she ate, and turned up the record much louder. There were no neighbours near enough to complain so she often did this. She reached into the bowl for one of the red apples and realised that there was something wrong, they were all blemished. Even by removing the source of infection, the bananas, the apples were still suffering the after-effects. She looked at the bruise on the apples and started to cry. Lying down on the couch with her wet hair spread all around her she calmed herself down slowly, and took deep breaths. She was twenty-seven years old and crying over apples, crying over hair as the Carpenters record swelled all around her.

There were nine hours until anyone came to the house, nine hours at least for her to take action and do something about her situation, trapped by nerves and shyness and a lot of doctors into the identity of an invalid. There was nothing so wrong with her that she should lie stricken on a sofa because she must spend twenty minutes drying her hair, because she let the apples rot. A wild thought came to her, prettier and more daring than she was used to.
Soon, a great roaring far louder than the music came into the room as she shaved off every inch of her wet hair. From this turmoil came a great quiet, the music stopped and besides the skating of the needle on the empty groove, the room was still.

Vladimir’s Christmas Coat.

There was something delicious about being naughty, it appealed to Vladimir above all else. He knew that his mother’s stern words of warning sprang from the same part of her heart as love did, he was told so all the time. Still he so enjoyed the thrill of pinching his little sister’s chubby arm and stealing spoonfuls of jam that his mother left out for the moths so as they wouldn’t ruin her clothes. They lived in the dampish woods by a shallow creek that gave little actual water but much grey spray especially at this time of year and which was absolutely perfect for wood-moths. His mother despaired of ever having a nice coat or underskirt or mittens that were not ragged from the hungry moths. Vladimir was not much interested in underskirts or mittens, but very interested in gooseberry jam.

When Vladimir was ten years old he began to be a very naughty boy indeed. Where his mother and sister loved to wander the gloomy woods with baskets picking berries and brambles and exotic fungi to make dinner and decorate their cottage, Vladimir stopped taking an interest and just wanted to kick stones into the creek. Vladimir’s mother tried many times to interest him in cooking, in painting, in gardening, in writing, in playing the unusual instruments that she carved for their birthdays every year. Vladimir was not interested in these things. Vladimir was not interested in anything but skimming stones into the damp creek and feeling a bit sorry for himself stuck in this dark and lonely wood with only his mother and sister for company and no other boys or girls to play with.

It was on Vladimir’s eleventh birthday that something very strange happened. The day was unusually still and clear for November and Vladimir’s mother woke him up bright and early so as not to miss the few hours of daylight they had in the wood at this time of year. He woke up hot and tangled in his sheets, sweating from the nightmares that had plagued him lately. Night after night he dreamed of being swallowed by sea-monsters and clawing his way through their gaseous entrails only to be swallowed once more by the indifferent sea. The world was red to Vladimir; red sea, red heart, blood and gases. Every time he had a bad dream he would wake up to his heart doing a hammer-dance and roiling hotly in his chest. Vladimir knew it was his naughtiness that caused him to feel so violently, especially the lies he told to his sweet and patient mother, but he wanted to keep hold of those exciting feelings and though he meant to stop them, the lies poured forth and the nightmares claimed him. This morning he saw that his mother had made a special effort and there were presents heaped up on the table with some fresh toadstool porridge for his breakfast. Taking it down in one rude gulp, Vladimir pulled on his boots and left for the woods, leaving his presents unopened behind him.

Vladimir was feeling so restless and annoyed that he kicked up all the stones and dirt he could find, scuffing the boots his sister had recently made for him. Pleased with the effect he scowled and scuffled his way deeper and deeper into the woods until he realised that it was very dark and he could not see the way out. A strange, musky smell seemed to linger on the air in this part of the forest and Vladimir became suddenly afraid. Vladimir was not given much to silence, but he lost his bluster and swagger now finding himself alone in the dark woods. A cloud of wood-moths screeched past his face, beating their ragged wings against his cheek. Vladimir screamed and began to run as fast as he could from this cold, brackish place.

There was a horrible squelching sound and Vladimir fell face first into the dirt. Looking down he realised that he had squashed a tiny green frog, softened now into a messy pulp. As Vladimir watched in amazement pieces of the flayed frog came together and sharpened into hard glittering stones. Thinking of his good fortune, Vladimir hid the emeralds in his overcoat pocket and thought of running away from this place to make a life for himself on his own. At this thought, the woods seemed once more to clear and untwist their brambles for him and he ran all the way home hoarding his secret jewels.

A few days later, Vladimir and his sister were busy making Christmas cards at the kitchen table whilst their mother lay down with a headache. Vladimir kept scribbling all over his sister’s cards with a black pen every time she turned her back. Though not quick to anger, this time she leapt at him and shook him with her tiny fists. Vladimir let out a horrible laugh and said to her “I’m going soon anyway and you won’t ever find me again. I’m sick of this nasty forest and the damp and the toadstools. I want an adventure”. At this his sister began to cry so hard that her little body shook and she pleaded with him to stay. Unmoved by his sister’s sorrow, Vladimir simply laughed harder. The tears dripped down her face and clattered on to the floor as hard as teeth. An unholy glee seized Vladimir as he realised that her tears were now soft milky pearls. Grabbing them he thrust them into his pocket and stormed out, leaving her crying at the table.

Christmas came at last and the little family sat together under a beautiful tree that Vladimir’s mother had brought in from the woods. Lighting all the candles, Vladimir’s mother gave each of them their stockings. Vladimir had not said a word all morning and his mother was afraid that he might be sickening for something. Passing her hand across his forehead she felt the fire that consumed Vladimir leaking from him like heat and worried about him. “Poor Vlad, how unhappy you seem, you know how much I love you my precious son”. At this Vladimir wriggled from her grasp and shouted angrily “But I don’t love you!” The words streamed from him and hardened into rubies. At once they settled on his shoulders and would not move. Amazed, Vladimir watched as his coat vanished, the secret pocket full of pearls and emeralds split apart and the jewels covered him from head to toe. A ruby for each lie he told, pearls for when he made his sister cry, and emeralds for selfishness. How Vladimir glittered in his Christmas coat, and how rich he looked. Dazzled by his good luck, Vladimir rushed to the still lake outside to admire his present.

When he reached the pond he could not see himself clearly in the water, there was nothing there! Stepping a little closer he could see a little sparkle in the corner of the pond and he gazed at it in amazement. Peering closer and closer he did not heed his mother’s warning as she ran toward him. With a great splash he landed in the deep murky water and sank beneath the weight of all his secret jewels. This was the red sea of his nightmares, hot and gaseous and full of danger. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Vladimir exclaimed before he sank fully below the waves.

His mother screamed as he disappeared and caught the words as they vanished on the air. “Vladimir! Come back!” she yelled out to the bubbling water. The water was pure red now, churning and sparkling in the last of the daylight, it almost looked the colour of rubies.
At last Vladimir’s mother realised that Vladimir had broken the curse by apologising to her and as the sorrow melted from his heart so too did all the bitter jewels he was laden down with. The water was red because it was full of the rubies that Vladimir had worn. Swimming to the shore, Vladimir appeared shaken but alive and his mother and sister hugged him to them as they wrapped him in a patchwork blanket that they had made for him for Christmas.

Vladimir was never quite so naughty again after that. He still ate the gooseberry jam sometimes, and sometimes pinched his sister, but he realised that he loved his family too much to ever run away. So it is a happy ending after all, though not a perfect one. Vladimir could not resist keeping one each of the jewels and strung them about his neck as a remembrance. Each single jewel had cost him a finger, so he will never play the piano as well as you or I could. Yet you or I have never had such adventures as Vladimir and probably never will!

The day my jellies thickened into cells
Barefoot and sheathed in red I danced for you.
Veined starfish I became your carousel
Your waters, your rapids and your jets.
Electric firefly forming in the dark
All thickening vessels, moist and bloody tubes
What pride I felt to dress in crimson robes
Torn from the casket of our matriarch
No stained sheets flown from the tallest tower
Nor spinning-wheel designed to prick and maim
But resolute I shouldered all the blame.

Ten days we knew abandon and desire
Until the scarlet sheath was whipped away
Marishka came upon the final day.
Fresh roses I had never seen before
For in the tower nothing ever grew
Pale jellies shimmered in the yellow light
And dark wine gleamed in goblets. How I drank
What fever! Burning scarlet in my bed
For days you hardened deep inside my sac
Crustacean heart, scarred fins, gilled beast you swam
That rotting-berry stomachache black sea
Emerging from the musky tangled sheets
Marishka bid me sleep well, and I slept.

My father's fishing boat was barely big enough for two. He sailed each day alone. What bliss to drift solitary among the whispering sea. I missed him so much on those long winter days. He rose like a stalactite in the blackest hour, leaving my mother and I in the grey light.

The dreary mornings with my mother were relentless; though she set out pretty yellow cups for our hot milk, she was not cheerful. I think she would have liked a boy. Yowling for scraps my kitten roamed at our feet, sometimes I dropped something but my mother stared so fiercely that I was not often brave enough. I was tamer than my cat. Once I dropped a pink iced bun for her, my favourite. She saw it on the floor and licked the soft pink centre. Tossing her grey head, she sniffed it and laid one sharp claw at its heart. Having discarded the bun she walked off, her tail drooping. My bun was ruined. Now it was no one's.

All day I waited for my goodnight kiss, my bedtime ritual. My dad would come home with the glow of the deep on him. Though he never told me stories about his day, or the extraordinary fish he had caught, still he let me sit quietly at his feet as he plunged his haul deep in the steaming ice. He never called me princess or treasure though I would have liked him to. Still as I sat at his feet watching him offer up these gleaming slivers so delicately wrapped in thin rice paper, I felt like a bride with her trousseau. And my mother stood there her grey head twisted away from the scene exclaiming about the filth, the unnatural stench that my father dragged in with him after spending his day elbow deep in blood. Her words floundered in the empty space and she succumbed to silence. Grey cat eyes flickering between us she did not fan but let smoulder that hot blue flame of love.
It's strange how memory works, because now I don't see the silver glitter of fish, nor the steaming ice, but my father's hands smeared with blood as my mother would have me remember.

In this way my childhood passed as insubstantially as a dream. Do not think my mother lax in her detachment; there was nothing that she could have done marrying a man like that. Though she worked hard every day on the house, the corrosive saltwater still got in. the truth is that my mother's two chapped hands could not protect our little house from the turmoil of the ocean. Her sickness was hidden from me for a long time, as it was hidden from the world. Cloistered together all day in our small white house we did not see much of the outside. My mother talked occasionally of sending me to school, indeed this seemed to be the one thing that had the power to animate her. My father heard us one day, coming home early, his nets fortuitously full that morning, another trip possible that afternoon. I didn't hear him raise his voice to my mother, nor his hand but she was silenced just the same. There was no more talk of school. From this time we talked little to each other, believing that my mother had upset my father in some unknowable way I took umbrage on his behalf. Deeper I must have known that she was not strong, that our dreary existence was not enough and that if she should have done anything, she should have sent me to school. Shut up together all day, we grew accustomed to each other, twisting like smoke around corners to avoid the possibility of touching in the corridors. What my mother did all day I never knew, we came together blankly for meals, the crackle of the radio obscuring any need for conversation. I loved to listen to the shipping forecast, the names grew fantastic in my mind as I imagined my heroic father battling on the waves.

Because we were together so often, I suppose I became used to her bloodless look and long silences. Day by day we did not see the changes in each other until she was to me like a cracked glass figurine waiting to be shattered. All day long she kept to her room, reading she said or arranging flowers. Having no curiosity toward her and growing more comfortable with isolation, I welcomed the time alone and did not enquire further. Now I see that she was battling her enormous sickness and could not have attended to me had she tried.

During these years of deep silence, I felt myself growing indistinct from the house, the pebbles, the beach. My dresses hung loosely and I stemmed from them awkwardly. My mother spent much of her time mending altering and creating these garments like Penelope at her loom. These fog-coloured dresses heightened my indoor pallor and muffled my figure. Yet just as a missing tooth or a lazy eye can enhance an otherwise flawless face, so too my slender limbs and high neck were made the more striking as they emerged from their grey fold. Though I see now in pictures how lovely I was, I felt as insignificant as the furniture.

Until my thirteenth birthday we drifted like this around one another and I having no desire to do anything beyond our small yard, virtually the same. The whole wide sea glittered from my window but could not tempt me in. My only contrast in those blurred, dreamy days was the time I spent with my father. His taciturnity, I believed, was of a different quality to my mother's; her desperate silence stalked me all day until I had even taught my kitten to purr softly so as not to break the stillness. My father's silences seemed rich with untold stories. Alone all day in my room o collecting pebbles for my indoor garden, I was desperately, hungrily lonely and fantasised about my father's love. In theory my days should have been full of lessons and chatter as my mother had promised to teach me herself. There was no-one likely to come and check on us in our isolated wilds, and so I drifted, bookless. There were some books of course; my father's seafaring novels and my mother's murder mysteries, the usual array of fishing, gardening and cooking manuals, just enough to fill a narrow bookcase but nothing to pique the interest of a young girl. Mama why don't we have more books? I used to periodically complain. When we are millionaires you can have all the books you want she caustically replied. She wore her bitterness in intricate layers, sweeping and twining one through the other, one chiffony layer seeming transparent but taken together as thick and restrictive as fog. One sentence could embroil me in her neurotic world for we were not poor as she imagined, but extremely comfortable, and if I had no school then at least she should have bought me books.

My thirteenth birthday approached much the same as any other and I managed a small pang of delight as the postman made it through choppy weather. My birthday itself was on a Monday that year and that was the day we received post from the mainland. We always had a heap of orders from the classier restaurants for my father's fish, and letters for my mother from my elderly aunt who visited us every six months or so when she was released from her duties as Mother Superior of a small and dwindling convent. For me there were sometime letters or cards from pen-pals, and almost always a letter from my cousin Mathilda, my father's orphaned niece. She empathised with my loneliness and often brightened my day by sending extremely well-written and funny accounts of her glittering lifestyle; a whirl of dinners and dances and wealthy admirers. Being only a child at the time I had no idea of the extent of Mathilda's deceit, and that her decadent lifestyle was pure fantasy. Really Mathilda lived quietly just across the bay pouring out dates and locations to one strange little girl. Though it became apparent that I was not her only intended audience. As far as I was concerned Mathilda could be anywhere in the world, I didn't examine her beautifully-coloured stamps too closely but devoured only the words. Sometimes my father would glance over at them with an indulgent smile and say something about how exciting it must be to be young again. My mother never showed the slightest interest in these florid missives, but merely went straight back up to her room with her own lilac scented notes from her cloistered sister.

This Monday was different, I could feel it as I watched the rickety old post boat wind towards the harbour. Sure enough, when the postman rang he had very full hands. My mother shooed me from the door and sent me up to do my teeth. For once she had garnered the strength to take charge of things, and when I went downstairs she was dressed immaculately in white with a starched frill at her neck fastened with a cameo pin. My parents were sitting together at the table and there were pancakes and tea laid out on our pretty china. After breakfast my mother gave me a kiss on the cheek and set out the post before me. Much as I longed to tear at the blue ribbons and silver paper and brown parcels done up in string I knew that the joy of them could not temper the pain of realisation that this level of normalcy had cost my mother so much. The illusion that my parents had tried to create for my birthday was insubstantial and I could see the pain creep into my mother's mouth as she tried not to cry. No-one had told me what was wrong with her, that her illness consumed her like fire and left this ashen spectre behind. Yet in spite of everything I tore at the string and opened my gifts.

From my mother there was a beautiful shell-coloured swimsuit that would shimmer in the sun. From my aunt a set of adventure stories in hardback that came in five separate cartons! Mathilda's gift I saved for last, expecting something lavish, a case of jewels perhaps or a velvet stole. I was a little disappointed to see that there was nothing but a cardboard box with a few greyish parts inside. My father saw my puzzlement and explained that 9it was a magic garden made of salt crystals. Just add water and spend a few hours watching to see it grow into a beautiful garden. Patiently I watched for hours as it burst into a glittering landscape of flowers, plants and snow-capped mountains.
For the rest of the day, though sadness lay beneath, glimmers of delight lit me as I watched the garden take shape. How beautiful I whispered to my mother, she said nothing but flicked a tired smile to her lips and wandered away again. Strange how it got here all the way from Mathilda's in one piece, such a delicate gift she murmured to my father. To my surprise, his face reddened at this and he seemed at something of a loss. Having said this, my mother went off to bathe and dress more comfortably and my father promised my present from him. He told me to go upstairs to kiss my mother as he was taking me out on his boat. Even at my thirteenth year I knew better than to seem excited, to be needy or a bind and at this sudden gift of time together I was merely polite. Immediately I left the room I allowed myself a smile that I just as hastily discarded at my mother's door. Shakily, she responded to my knock and edged open her door a little. Dressed now in a cream robe covered in grey stars she had grown colourless. The white frill having been removed from her neck revealed the sunken look of her lolling head. Goodbye darling, have a wonderful time she implored me, offering her powdered cheek even as she retreated. Guiltily relieved, I ran down the stairs and into the salt-clean air, away from our square white house and into my father's capable brown arms.

As I lowered myself into the boat, I felt no fear, not even a healthy one and blithely abandoned myself to the battered vessel. Sky looks a bit angry Eleanor I don’t know how far we can go out today my father announced darkly. It felt as though my scarf were caught on a nail and pulling at my neck when he said that. No I said look at that cloud. And there was a cloud gilded with the late afternoon sunlight that moved so gently it looked as though it were still. And I knew it was not true that cloud that I had wanted to be so true but as it spilled gold all over my knees I felt infinitely calm.

i slopped a little soup into my tray. instinct made me quickly right the bowl. just a flick of the wrist to ballast the volatile liquid. for the sake of a few drops of soup my new books lay sodden and brown amongst the shattered china.

there are only 13 days left here and i was sad that we would miss the green afternoon light that soothed us so in the beginning. then at last the blossom fell like scales and tiny green curls spread outward. we will miss the thickest time when light is filtered in through a canopy of leaves, but though they are a paler version, our last afternoons will be like our first.

this is the most perfect room for sitting still and watching. in february i lay mute and seasick watching the sky turn grey, turn black as all the distant streetlights flickered and flared like a picture done in bronze shavings on tar-paper. perhaps this window has stolen many hours from me, perhaps not.

this morning as i awoke i noted that my rasping was worse and the sting in my throat had forced its hornet tail right into each papery lung. a doctor once told me a way of measuring your infection by the colour of your mucus, a spectrum that runs white through black. today i matched my eyeshadow to it; moss green.

what wonderful conditions i have been gifted with this year - a desk at the window, a working computer, and most importantly of all two full quiet days alone at it. have i written what i should have? no, not at all. i have so many unfinished projects that lie languishing at my useless hands. i think perhaps this year my confidence has come a little and perhaps my frame of mind has been improved enough to say that my year at this desk has not been wasted. what i have written in sporadic bursts has been at least not shameful to me, not scrawled over and destroyed. could i call myself a writer? i do not think that i could, it takes some feat of courage to do that which i have not yet mastered. i would call my friends writers, though would they be able to do the same? we talk about it but not often, it is the great black shark that we try to keep fed but sometimes how hungrily he eyes us.

last november perhaps, our fridge began to bulk with ice so gradually that we could easily ignore its niggling demands. slowly it grew so thick that we could barely shut the door and it was dripping on to our food. still we did nothing. finally two days ago our landlords announced they were coming to make an inspection. we cleaned and defrosted the fridge. it took approximately twenty minutes of effort and it was done.

there were three long needles of ice that cracked into perfect shards, i saw that they had been forming for as long as we had been here. i wanted to drive them down my throat as far as they would go, partly to ease the hot dry pain and partly to consume the essence of our stay. they were too dirty of course. perhaps i would be that mother who talks endlessly of eating a placenta then at the last moment baulks at the sight of such a stringy, bloody mass.

twice daily i fear that if i am the only one left to look after them, my teeth will be nothing but ugly black stumps.