Raw

by Ian Tallach

Day 0

You own your breath, don’t you?

Surely you own your thoughts.

You own your personality because that’s who you are, right?

No. Not if you were still together, absolutely still, just laughing quietly at time and tide and looking on unflinchingly into the future, smiling … but not anymore.

No, you don’t own your breath, your thoughts are tangled up with theirs and you are not your personality. Not anymore.

Breathe out. Keep breathing out. Everywhere are trinkets, cruel, insanely arbitrary trinkets to remind you of that elsewhereness - that vacuous non-presence.

Narrow your eyes and try to reach the door, feeling your way.   

Shut them and you bump into things – books, ornaments, cards, coffee cups half-empty, glasses full of dregs, leftovers from another time, clothes you’ll never wear again and clothes not yours at all. Everything once redolent of home now turns on you it’s back – ‘you don’t belong here.! In this place you just exist.’

Open them wide. Look all around for something yours and only yours, that speaks only of you. Don’t check your phone; it’s full of pictures. Don’t turn on the computer – not until the narratives of rapture can be dealt with coldly down the barrel of those years and be deleted, one by one. Don’t open books, don’t take them from the floor – they have a certain … scent.

Follow your knees and say out loud – walls, windows, table, chairs, carpet, corridor, rug, porch, front door. You need to know it’s there – your voice – not taken with your breath. Breathe out. Breathe out some more.

Open the door. Stand up. Face the outside. Inhale. Breathe air you don’t feel like you’re stealing. Learn everything again - to fill your lungs and empty them, to walk, to cross the road, enter the park, zip up your jacket, say ‘good morning’ to the dogwalker.

‘Good morning’.

‘Morning, bud! Chill in the air the day.’

(Say something – anything) - ‘Ehm, yes, winter’s earlier this year.’

‘Aye. No half! Dreich as. How’s you?’

(Say something – anything) - ‘Fine, thanks. And you?’

‘No bad. Later then, aye?!’

‘Later.’

Grey sky. Swirling leaves. Wind picking up. A lock of hair across your face. Stop. Wait for it to blow the other way.

Day 1

Wake up!

No.    

No? Why not?

Because there’s no sleep to wake up from.

Imperatives. Instructions in their simplest form. Every noun a verb. Just make a list – shower, cereal, teeth, socks, jumper, fire, emails, sanitiser, half a chapter, jeans, letter, paper, watch the second half on iPlayer (no – DON’T do that) – get milk and put the bin out, but not in that order.

Sister is worried - ‘There’s no way I’m letting you drive by yourself.’

‘but, but …’

‘No buts – I’ll take you through to Mum and Dad’s.’

‘But you’re on call tomorrow.’

‘I can swap my shift.’

The open road. Her smile. Haar coming in. Seaweed in rafts. Headlights. Smoke from the cottages. Sun going down. Her worried face.

Dad, with gnarly fingers kneading life into defeated muscles, fighting with despair, hunched over, all-embracing. The dam bursts.

Mum, in her wheelchair, drawing to herself and cradling, wiping tears away and making way for others. Time for a cup of tea.

Day 2

Go for a walk. Down to the beach. Drenching wind and howling rain. Seems about right. Nobody else around. This, finally, is redolent of no-one. Go on. Walk. Keep walking. Out of the past – the recent past … into the distant past. You’ll know when to stop.

Down at the beach, follow your sticks along the muddy path towards the style. Impediments are cows, cowpats, a bull sometimes, jaunty-angled clods with tufts of sea-grass decked with tiny flowers – beach-aster, rosemary, daisies – a treachery of rockpools and a river fordable at lowest ebb. Beyond – the best beach on the island.          

But no – these sticks are like divining rods. They lead inland. A rusty gate. And only twenty yards in front of it another gate – brand new, but stiff and creaky. A question posed - Are you sure you wish to enter here - this place of the departed?

‘Damned right! Never been so sure of anything!’ The gate yields. Stagger on, into the graveyard. Time to converse with them – gran and granddad, buried side-by side at the far end. Look down – those knees again, irreverently kneeling there, above their bones.

Stand up!

‘No!’ they seem to say. ‘We want you here. Stay with us and tell us everything.’

‘We might be here a while.’

‘Well go on then! We don’t have all day.’ (Graveyard humour. Allow yourself a chuckle).

###

Halfway back it’s all uphill. At least the rain is horizontal. Leaning back against the wind a stranger is approaching with a collie, anorak all gathered up around a pair of blinking eyes. ‘Do you remember me?’ she asks, widening the aperture.

‘Oh, yes! Of course. How could I forget?’

‘That bad?’

‘No, I mean your help back then was … very timely. Thank you.’

‘It was nothing – just my job.’

‘Well, you did much more than your job.’

‘That’s why they got rid of me.’

‘Serious?!’

‘Aye. I’m alright, though. How are you?’

Where to start? ‘Ehm – don’t you need to go that way?

‘No – it’s all the same. I’ll walk with you. He only had to pee.’ She pats the collie’s head.

‘And has he?’

‘I don’t know.’ She lifts a dripping hand.

Laughter.

‘And how are you?’ she asks again. (Is this stupidity … or genuine concern?)

She’s very patient. The dam bursts again. Thank God for rain - why not join in? – everything is sodden, anyway. Bring on the deluge. The lines around her eyes make her look younger. She has a face that tells a story. Yes, it’s genuine concern.

‘Sorry, too much information.’

No, it’s not. I see your Dad sometimes.’

‘Really?!’

‘Aye. Do you have a strong faith like him?’

‘A tiny bit … not so robust, not certain, anyway. Do you?’

‘No, not really. I was raised a Catholic, but I don’t go to church or anything. Can’t say I don’t pray, though. God knows there’s been some times for that!’

‘Really? And how are you?’

‘Apart from wet?’ More laughter. Then, with the saddest face, but through that undefeated smile, she speaks of things too harrowing to mention – lives lost in different ways, trust broken, illness, little windows into private worlds of desolation.

And suddenly, a universe of hurt shrinks to a manageable vastness.

She giggles to compensate. ‘Well, that was a bit OTT … considering we hardly know each other!’  

But, one conversation, shorn of all pretence can cut through years of token friendship.

‘Thanks very much indeed. Their house is up this way.’

‘OK. Cheerio,’ she says. Elbow butts and shoulder pats convey affection and respect. The collie barks goodbye.

‘It’s good to see you.’

‘Aye, you too. Come and visit soon. A quarter mile that way.’

‘Thank you.’

Follow the sticks again. Towards the house. Across the …

‘Don’t do that!’ She yells. She’s hardly moved.  

‘Do what?’

‘Don’t cross the cattle grid! Not with those sticks! Are you trying to kill yourself?’

They say comedy is in the timing. Sometimes laughter is inevitable.

‘Come here, she says. Give me a hug.’

You’ve got to cry sometimes.

‘Trust me,’ she says. ‘You’re better off now.’

‘That’s kind. But … all those years – consigned to oblivion?’

‘Consigned to nothing.’

‘That’s what oblivion means – nothing. Nothingness.’

She sighs. ‘What I’m saying is they’re not consigned – to anything - those years. Easy for me to say, hard to accept, but true – they’re part of your journey, your narrative. Don’t consign them … to anything.’

No elbow butts this time. No shoulder pats. The hug is awkward. Sticks rattle at her back. The muddy path is slippery, but once again she compensates. She’s very strong. And over her shoulder, a patch of horizon.