A Way to Be by the Sea
First published by Dear Damsels, March 2017
There’s only the sea,
the hot chips and me.
No boy on the beach.
No dog in the sea.
No kite in the wind.
The chips were for him
but he’s nowhere around
so I sit on the ground
and fend off the seagulls
who dive at my lap
and the bin overflowing
with cardboard and crap.
Forks and white paper
spill onto the sand
and a gull flies so close
that it touches my hand.
I scare it away
then I pick up a chip
and it slips in the dip
and I wonder
if seagulls have cause to ponder
the slippery nature of trying to be
both tethered and free.
That is my shame.
I won’t put a name
to the truth that’s within
but now I’ve lost him.
The sea beside me
is glistening widely
with generous light
that shines up with a glow,
though the fish down below
might take issue with me
for my limited view
of the world I can see.
The wind picks up speed
and it ruffles my hair
and a stray strand or two
gets stuck in my mouth
where the taste of shampoo
mingles with salt
from the air and the food.
Then I see his dog
running wild on the beach.
You beautiful beast!
His fur slinking down
from his head to his tail.
He runs up to me
and sniffs at my soul
and takes me in whole
and tells me so freely
that I can just be me.
And finally I see
the boy on the beach,
he’s way up ahead
and he’s facing away
but the spirit of dog
makes me take a light jog
and I call out loud ‘Hey’.
The dog’s running fast now
and I know that somehow
this is the key
to making me free
so I run to the boy
standing down by the sea.
Then over the din
of the roar of the wind
I put the right words
to the feeling within
so that meaning is flowing
from me into him.
‘You can be you
and I can be me,
and as long as we have that
we both can be free.’
He opens his bag
and he takes out the kite
and the strings are all tangled,
but we both delight
in the plight
of the flight
of a tangled up kite.
We take one handle each
and we wiggle and turn,
winding the string
into the wind.
Then two pairs of eyes
watch in surprise
as our brand new red kite
rises into the skies
tethered and free,
like him and me.
There’s only the sea,
the hot chips and me.
No boy on the beach.
No dog in the sea.
No kite in the wind.
The chips were for him
but he’s nowhere around
so I sit on the ground
and fend off the seagulls
who dive at my lap
and the bin overflowing
with cardboard and crap.
Forks and white paper
spill onto the sand
and a gull flies so close
that it touches my hand.
I scare it away
then I pick up a chip
and it slips in the dip
and I wonder
if seagulls have cause to ponder
the slippery nature of trying to be
both tethered and free.
That is my shame.
I won’t put a name
to the truth that’s within
but now I’ve lost him.
The sea beside me
is glistening widely
with generous light
that shines up with a glow,
though the fish down below
might take issue with me
for my limited view
of the world I can see.
The wind picks up speed
and it ruffles my hair
and a stray strand or two
gets stuck in my mouth
where the taste of shampoo
mingles with salt
from the air and the food.
Then I see his dog
running wild on the beach.
You beautiful beast!
His fur slinking down
from his head to his tail.
He runs up to me
and sniffs at my soul
and takes me in whole
and tells me so freely
that I can just be me.
And finally I see
the boy on the beach,
he’s way up ahead
and he’s facing away
but the spirit of dog
makes me take a light jog
and I call out loud ‘Hey’.
The dog’s running fast now
and I know that somehow
this is the key
to making me free
so I run to the boy
standing down by the sea.
Then over the din
of the roar of the wind
I put the right words
to the feeling within
so that meaning is flowing
from me into him.
‘You can be you
and I can be me,
and as long as we have that
we both can be free.’
He opens his bag
and he takes out the kite
and the strings are all tangled,
but we both delight
in the plight
of the flight
of a tangled up kite.
We take one handle each
and we wiggle and turn,
winding the string
into the wind.
Then two pairs of eyes
watch in surprise
as our brand new red kite
rises into the skies
tethered and free,
like him and me.
The Adventures of Tintin's Wife
First published by Dear Damsels, June 2016
There was a man on top of a train.
There was a woman on top of a train.
These may sound the same.
These are not the same.
There was a man on top of a train, the wind in his hair.
Adventure.
There was a woman on top of a train, the wind in her hair.
In danger.
There was a woman on top of a train.
A man jumped on to save her.
“I want an adventure,” she said,
and pushed him off.
There was a woman on top of a train.
She was having an adventure.
A man jumped on to join her.
They got into danger.
What an adventure they had
together.
There was a man on top of a train.
There was a woman on top of a train.
These may sound the same.
These are not the same.
There was a man on top of a train, the wind in his hair.
Adventure.
There was a woman on top of a train, the wind in her hair.
In danger.
There was a woman on top of a train.
A man jumped on to save her.
“I want an adventure,” she said,
and pushed him off.
There was a woman on top of a train.
She was having an adventure.
A man jumped on to join her.
They got into danger.
What an adventure they had
together.
The Waiting Room
First published by The Fertility Road, Issue 30, Jan-Feb 2016
They shift in their hard plastic seats, the seats of the Waiting Room. How long have they been in here now? It’s hard for them to say. Maybe days, maybe months, maybe even years. They don’t remember coming in, they just know they’re in here now. A woman and a man, as is often the way. Woman and Man, that’s how they think of themselves in here. Nothing else about them seems to matter. He squeezes her hand. She puts her head on his shoulder. They try to remember who they were, before they were in the Waiting Room.
Maybe they’ll get their names back when they’re called.
I think of them as the Two: one word for two things, for they don’t know it, but they are like one thing in here and they’re doing so well.
There’s not much to look at in the Waiting Room. There are plastic chairs, all in pairs, for doing the waiting on. There’s a coffee table with old magazines – the sort they didn’t want to read, even when they were new. There’s the Door that people come in through. There are others waiting too, mostly in pairs, some alone, but no one really speaks. There’s nothing to say. They simply have to wait. The fluorescent light shines down on the room, making everything look somehow artificial, unreal even. But the room is real. It’s as real as the thing they’re waiting for.
There’s a desk in the corner with people behind it, but they don’t know anything. The Two have already asked when they’ll be called, how much longer they have to wait, if there’s a way out. The people behind the desk just shrug. The questions are unanswerable.
Then there’s the wall. The wall which they don’t look at. The wall which no one looks at, except by accident. The people waiting think of it as a cruel wall, though the intent was good, for it is filled with pictures of the very thing they’re waiting for, longing for, aching for. Everyone keeps their head turned away from that wall, just in case their eyes should stray and fall upon it and fill the room with the wave of hope and despair that would most certainly come.
So that’s The Waiting Room. That’s all there is. Apart from me, but they can’t see me yet. Oh, and the waiting. Of course. The waiting is the biggest thing in here. It fills every empty space there is. It seeps into corners and clusters under the chairs and winds itself around the bodies of the people waiting: relentless, uncontrollable, hopeful, despairing, impotent waiting. Even the air is waiting. It’s thick with expectancy, full of badness of one kind and another. Sometimes it’s so bad, they can hardly breathe and all they can do is silently gasp and wait for it to pass. Waiting shouldn’t be this bad, they think.
But it is.
And the Two have been waiting for such a long time. A desk-person shuffles some papers and they look up. Is it our turn? they think. Surely we must be next? We’ve been waiting so long. Their hope fills the room for a moment and presses on me, but nothing happens and before long, the Waiting Room takes it away. The Waiting Room always takes it away.
They knew about the room before they were here, but they didn’t know it would be like this. They didn’t know there would be quite so much waiting. They didn’t know that the when wouldn’t be up to them. When, is the question they all ask. When and If, of course, but no one can answer that.
There were others who came in with the Two. They noticed them, although they never spoke. But now they look around and find that none of them are here anymore. Some of them were called, of course, but not all of them. Is there another way out? they wonder. There’s so much in here that we can’t see.
Then there’s a ripple in the air and everyone looks to the Door that people come in through. A couple enters and goes to the desk. There’s something familiar about them. The Two watch them. Then they turn and it’s them, their friends. Their hearts quicken as relief and grief come in equal measure. For here are friends to share the loneliness of the Waiting Room; and here are friends to know the agony of the waiting.
The Two wave, but their friends can’t see them yet. Just as the Two can’t see me. But that’s okay, there’s no rush to be seen. If there’s one thing the waiting room has, it’s time.
The friends sit down and wait. They can’t feel the despair yet, or see anyone else. They are happy and oblivious. They know only their own hope. The Two watch and wait. Waiting twice now. A couple of times they think they catch a glimmer of recognition. A flicker in their eyes. Are they smiling at us? they wonder. They wave, but their friends still can’t see them.
And so they wait more, with hope and dread.
Then, without warning, a desk-person stands up and calls the friends names. The Two freeze in their seats. Already? they think. How are they to bear this? So soon? they think. It wasn’t their turn, but the Waiting Room doesn’t care. It doesn’t keep track. There is no order.
The friends follow the desk-person, full of joy and ripe with happiness, oblivious to the badness. The Two try to call out, We’re in here! but the friends can’t hear them.
Then they’re gone.
And they are left in The Waiting Room.
Waiting.
They sit, frozen in their own loneliness. They’re emptier now than they can ever remember. The badness closes in around them, a seeping darkness coming at them from everywhere. It’s comes so fast that they can’t see the others anymore, but still they are frozen, unable to move. They are in almost complete blackness now. It’s just them, alone in the dark of the Waiting Room and I wish one of them would move because soon it will swallow them and they might not be able to find each other.
Just as the darkness is almost complete, I see their hands reach out and meet in the small space between them and they pull each other in so tight that the space closes completely.
I didn’t know it could get so dark in here, they tell each other. All they can see are one another’s faces, dimly lit by the artificial light. They hold on to each other, because what else can they do? They hold on tightly and simply feel the solid warmth of the other.
Once, we were in the sun, they think. Now they wait for the darkness to seep away. That’s all that matters now. They wonder if it will ever go.
Surely they can’t stay like this in the dark forever, I think.
Surely we can’t? they think, and I wonder if they are starting to sense me.
They look at each other’s faces properly now and find that they feel almost light, because two glowing faces, surrounded by darkness, staring at each other with nothing else around them but black is surely quite an absurd way to spend forever.
She looks at his face and finds she’s smiling, because after all he is hers and that feels good. He looks at her and smiles back, for who can resist the smile of a loved one?
I wonder now if they’ll see me soon. The waiting is nearly over, for them.
They so wanted the thing they were waiting for, but now they wonder if maybe there’s another way than waiting here? They also want each other, and that’s what they can have. What they do have. Now. And when they think about what that is, what it means, that’s really very good.
In the depth of the darkness, the light flickers back on and there they are, the Two, sitting in the hard plastic seats of the Waiting Room. Only there’s something new now. Something they never saw before. Me.
They look around the Waiting Room, which has been all they’ve known for so long and they know that they are ready to leave. They couldn’t have left a moment sooner, but now that they can see me, they cannot wait a moment longer.
They take one another’s hands and though it’s hard to leave without the thing they were waiting for, it’s much harder to stay and so they stand and walk towards me.
They push me and I let out a great sigh of relief as I swing open and finally release them from waiting and back into their lives where I hope they’ll find what they were waiting for. One way or another.
They shift in their hard plastic seats, the seats of the Waiting Room. How long have they been in here now? It’s hard for them to say. Maybe days, maybe months, maybe even years. They don’t remember coming in, they just know they’re in here now. A woman and a man, as is often the way. Woman and Man, that’s how they think of themselves in here. Nothing else about them seems to matter. He squeezes her hand. She puts her head on his shoulder. They try to remember who they were, before they were in the Waiting Room.
Maybe they’ll get their names back when they’re called.
I think of them as the Two: one word for two things, for they don’t know it, but they are like one thing in here and they’re doing so well.
There’s not much to look at in the Waiting Room. There are plastic chairs, all in pairs, for doing the waiting on. There’s a coffee table with old magazines – the sort they didn’t want to read, even when they were new. There’s the Door that people come in through. There are others waiting too, mostly in pairs, some alone, but no one really speaks. There’s nothing to say. They simply have to wait. The fluorescent light shines down on the room, making everything look somehow artificial, unreal even. But the room is real. It’s as real as the thing they’re waiting for.
There’s a desk in the corner with people behind it, but they don’t know anything. The Two have already asked when they’ll be called, how much longer they have to wait, if there’s a way out. The people behind the desk just shrug. The questions are unanswerable.
Then there’s the wall. The wall which they don’t look at. The wall which no one looks at, except by accident. The people waiting think of it as a cruel wall, though the intent was good, for it is filled with pictures of the very thing they’re waiting for, longing for, aching for. Everyone keeps their head turned away from that wall, just in case their eyes should stray and fall upon it and fill the room with the wave of hope and despair that would most certainly come.
So that’s The Waiting Room. That’s all there is. Apart from me, but they can’t see me yet. Oh, and the waiting. Of course. The waiting is the biggest thing in here. It fills every empty space there is. It seeps into corners and clusters under the chairs and winds itself around the bodies of the people waiting: relentless, uncontrollable, hopeful, despairing, impotent waiting. Even the air is waiting. It’s thick with expectancy, full of badness of one kind and another. Sometimes it’s so bad, they can hardly breathe and all they can do is silently gasp and wait for it to pass. Waiting shouldn’t be this bad, they think.
But it is.
And the Two have been waiting for such a long time. A desk-person shuffles some papers and they look up. Is it our turn? they think. Surely we must be next? We’ve been waiting so long. Their hope fills the room for a moment and presses on me, but nothing happens and before long, the Waiting Room takes it away. The Waiting Room always takes it away.
They knew about the room before they were here, but they didn’t know it would be like this. They didn’t know there would be quite so much waiting. They didn’t know that the when wouldn’t be up to them. When, is the question they all ask. When and If, of course, but no one can answer that.
There were others who came in with the Two. They noticed them, although they never spoke. But now they look around and find that none of them are here anymore. Some of them were called, of course, but not all of them. Is there another way out? they wonder. There’s so much in here that we can’t see.
Then there’s a ripple in the air and everyone looks to the Door that people come in through. A couple enters and goes to the desk. There’s something familiar about them. The Two watch them. Then they turn and it’s them, their friends. Their hearts quicken as relief and grief come in equal measure. For here are friends to share the loneliness of the Waiting Room; and here are friends to know the agony of the waiting.
The Two wave, but their friends can’t see them yet. Just as the Two can’t see me. But that’s okay, there’s no rush to be seen. If there’s one thing the waiting room has, it’s time.
The friends sit down and wait. They can’t feel the despair yet, or see anyone else. They are happy and oblivious. They know only their own hope. The Two watch and wait. Waiting twice now. A couple of times they think they catch a glimmer of recognition. A flicker in their eyes. Are they smiling at us? they wonder. They wave, but their friends still can’t see them.
And so they wait more, with hope and dread.
Then, without warning, a desk-person stands up and calls the friends names. The Two freeze in their seats. Already? they think. How are they to bear this? So soon? they think. It wasn’t their turn, but the Waiting Room doesn’t care. It doesn’t keep track. There is no order.
The friends follow the desk-person, full of joy and ripe with happiness, oblivious to the badness. The Two try to call out, We’re in here! but the friends can’t hear them.
Then they’re gone.
And they are left in The Waiting Room.
Waiting.
They sit, frozen in their own loneliness. They’re emptier now than they can ever remember. The badness closes in around them, a seeping darkness coming at them from everywhere. It’s comes so fast that they can’t see the others anymore, but still they are frozen, unable to move. They are in almost complete blackness now. It’s just them, alone in the dark of the Waiting Room and I wish one of them would move because soon it will swallow them and they might not be able to find each other.
Just as the darkness is almost complete, I see their hands reach out and meet in the small space between them and they pull each other in so tight that the space closes completely.
I didn’t know it could get so dark in here, they tell each other. All they can see are one another’s faces, dimly lit by the artificial light. They hold on to each other, because what else can they do? They hold on tightly and simply feel the solid warmth of the other.
Once, we were in the sun, they think. Now they wait for the darkness to seep away. That’s all that matters now. They wonder if it will ever go.
Surely they can’t stay like this in the dark forever, I think.
Surely we can’t? they think, and I wonder if they are starting to sense me.
They look at each other’s faces properly now and find that they feel almost light, because two glowing faces, surrounded by darkness, staring at each other with nothing else around them but black is surely quite an absurd way to spend forever.
She looks at his face and finds she’s smiling, because after all he is hers and that feels good. He looks at her and smiles back, for who can resist the smile of a loved one?
I wonder now if they’ll see me soon. The waiting is nearly over, for them.
They so wanted the thing they were waiting for, but now they wonder if maybe there’s another way than waiting here? They also want each other, and that’s what they can have. What they do have. Now. And when they think about what that is, what it means, that’s really very good.
In the depth of the darkness, the light flickers back on and there they are, the Two, sitting in the hard plastic seats of the Waiting Room. Only there’s something new now. Something they never saw before. Me.
They look around the Waiting Room, which has been all they’ve known for so long and they know that they are ready to leave. They couldn’t have left a moment sooner, but now that they can see me, they cannot wait a moment longer.
They take one another’s hands and though it’s hard to leave without the thing they were waiting for, it’s much harder to stay and so they stand and walk towards me.
They push me and I let out a great sigh of relief as I swing open and finally release them from waiting and back into their lives where I hope they’ll find what they were waiting for. One way or another.
The Night Train
First published by Dear Damsels, June 2016
Chloe watches as track after track flicks in then out of view through the hole in the grubby floor: the most mesmerising toilet in India. She resists the urge to reach through and touch the speeding ground and instead turns to hover over the small opening. She struggles to keep her balance as the train takes a corner. She strains and wees. A woman once had a baby on one of these toilets, she thinks, noting that here was another thing which made her think of that particular part of life which she’d always thought of as some distant future. This adventure wasn’t finished yet, she thought. The future could wait a bit longer.
What she didn’t realise was that the future has a way of happening, one way or another. Afterall, the future is only ever the very next moment. No more than that.
She pulls the toilet door click-closed behind her and pin-balls along the skinny corridor to find Eddie. He’s sitting at an open door, feet on the outside steps, the vastness of India beyond him, the wind ruffling his brown hair. He could still surprise her. She squeezes in beside him and they sit in the doorway with their legs hanging free into the dusty yellow sunset. They get chai from the wallah. Spicy-sweet steam rises into their faces chaotically as the turbulence dances around them.
They look towards the far away mountains, glowing and unreal on the horizon. In the fields beyond, women dig in the heavy earth, no more than silhouettes against the sun-setting sky; the colourful fabric of their saris merely imagined in the fading light. Chloe and Eddie watch the figures lifting shining patties of wet mud and laying them down in a pattern too mysterious to fathom from afar. They notice that the women’s forms are one of two shapes, for here and there they see the shadow of tiny legs dangling from a bump on a back.
Chloe turns to face Eddie, her long red hair pirouetting her face in the wild air. He wiggles his head through the curtain of curls and they swap a sweet and sticky kiss. He traces his finger over the familiar freckles across her nose, she the stubble of his chin. They shuffle closer to watch the creation of the mud constellations. She leans her head on his and blows at the cloying milk, watching the steam as it’s whipped away by the whoosh of the carriages.
They stay there for a long time, feeling the freedom of their dangling legs, until a broad chested man, with arms so hairy you can’t see the skin, stops and tells them it is dangerous.
“I would not let my children do this,” he says, nodding at their bare legs and the open door. “Many people die like this, you know.”
After he’s gone their stubborn legs dangle still, but the freedom has been taken. The sun has gone down anyway; the seed of night has been sown.
Eventually hunger makes them admit what is gone and they go to the dining car. They face each other across a fixed table, their skin sticking to the cracked leather seats, their knees touching. The waiter brings them cold beers. Eddie shuffles. Chloe deals. Their sweaty hands slap a game of snap on the Formica table as they laugh in bursts at near misses and downright obliviousness.
When the food comes they swipe the cards aside. They watch as mothers show young children how to dip their hot oily bread into the warm yellow dahl, and they copy. They order more drinks and sink giddily into the hard seats, their legs lacing beneath the table.
Outside the train, the land is dark. Inside, benches turn to beds. In the growing silence he looks down and reads the condensation-wet label of the brown glass bottle.
“It’s non-alcoholic!” he says.
Then they grow giddy with irony and peel their legs away to teeter to bed.
As they lurch along aisles scattered with sleeping bodies, they see a baby, peaceful and tiny curled up between flat-out parents. The love-drunk pair exchange the briefest glance, but in that moment the future casts its line and catches them with a hook so richly baited that a whole lifetime passes between two footsteps. He holds her hand a little tighter and they seesaw-shuffle towards the back of the train where their made beds are waiting.
At the door to the four-berth cabin they pause, wondering who will be in the bottom bunks, destined to sleep beneath them. He cracks the door open and shuffles in. She peers over his shoulder. A pale wedge of light reveals one empty bed and one filled with the vast body of the freedom thief. His chest expands and his hairy arm flops freely to the floor.
“Come in my bunk?” Eddie whispers.
Chloe looks at the unconscious man. She nods.
They climb with stealth then tumble into the top bed, out of sight of disapproving eyes.
Starlight rushes in through the open window as the train snakes towards the Himalayan foothills. Up in the tiny bunk, made for one, two hot bodies share breath in the close heat of the Indian night.
“We don’t have to go home,” Chloe whispers. “To have a baby,” she adds, just in case she is imagining the moment that’s passed between them.
“That’s true,” Eddie says quietly. “We could have one anywhere.”
Below, they hear the man’s greedy breaths, sucking and sighing with the rhythm of the train’s sways. Above, the lovers take their muffled revenge, stealing back their freedom. Knees and elbows lift and sink beneath a white sheet, washed soft between a thousand sleepers. Sweaty limbs shift on the thin mattress, skin tapping out a click-and-pop rhythm on hot sticky leather. Then their sighs mingle with the shh-shh white noise of the fast night air beyond the glass as their bunk is carried on, ever forward, towards its inevitable destination.
Then they lie, quietly, part-waiting, part-being.
The train slows to a stop and orange station-light spills onto the shared pillow, revealing their sweaty faces to one another, glowing with rebellion. The man below coughs into the sepia silence and they freeze. They daren’t breathe. They lie still, willing laughter to stay away, which only welcomes its tickling fingers to their bare bellies.
“I need a wee,” Chloe mouths.
“Me too,” Eddie whispers.
They stifle their snorts and press their faces into the pillow, willing the train to move again and secrete their intimacy in the whooshing darkness.
Finally the train pulls out of the station and carries them back into the night of the nearing mountains. As the rocking rhythm returns they see the hairy arm take its sleepy loll once more. They climb down, bladders bursting, and bundle into the cramped toilet together. She squats and wets the rushing tracks beneath with a shudder of relief.
“A woman once had a baby on one of these toilets,” she says. “It fell right onto the tracks.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“It survived,” she adds.
Eddie laughs and nods, “We can go home anytime.”
Back in the carriage they crawl into their own bunks. They watch one another soundlessly across the small, still space, the spirit of the day flowing easily between them. Soon the side-to-side and clickety-clack rocking brings their eyelids down. Their gaze splits in two and they fall into their separate sleeps.
Outside, the tracks spread on ahead, leading the sleeper train up into the mountains. Behind, the tracks wind back into the past where somewhere between two wees, the future had been waiting to happen. As it does.
Afterall, the future is only ever the very next moment. No more than that.
Chloe watches as track after track flicks in then out of view through the hole in the grubby floor: the most mesmerising toilet in India. She resists the urge to reach through and touch the speeding ground and instead turns to hover over the small opening. She struggles to keep her balance as the train takes a corner. She strains and wees. A woman once had a baby on one of these toilets, she thinks, noting that here was another thing which made her think of that particular part of life which she’d always thought of as some distant future. This adventure wasn’t finished yet, she thought. The future could wait a bit longer.
What she didn’t realise was that the future has a way of happening, one way or another. Afterall, the future is only ever the very next moment. No more than that.
She pulls the toilet door click-closed behind her and pin-balls along the skinny corridor to find Eddie. He’s sitting at an open door, feet on the outside steps, the vastness of India beyond him, the wind ruffling his brown hair. He could still surprise her. She squeezes in beside him and they sit in the doorway with their legs hanging free into the dusty yellow sunset. They get chai from the wallah. Spicy-sweet steam rises into their faces chaotically as the turbulence dances around them.
They look towards the far away mountains, glowing and unreal on the horizon. In the fields beyond, women dig in the heavy earth, no more than silhouettes against the sun-setting sky; the colourful fabric of their saris merely imagined in the fading light. Chloe and Eddie watch the figures lifting shining patties of wet mud and laying them down in a pattern too mysterious to fathom from afar. They notice that the women’s forms are one of two shapes, for here and there they see the shadow of tiny legs dangling from a bump on a back.
Chloe turns to face Eddie, her long red hair pirouetting her face in the wild air. He wiggles his head through the curtain of curls and they swap a sweet and sticky kiss. He traces his finger over the familiar freckles across her nose, she the stubble of his chin. They shuffle closer to watch the creation of the mud constellations. She leans her head on his and blows at the cloying milk, watching the steam as it’s whipped away by the whoosh of the carriages.
They stay there for a long time, feeling the freedom of their dangling legs, until a broad chested man, with arms so hairy you can’t see the skin, stops and tells them it is dangerous.
“I would not let my children do this,” he says, nodding at their bare legs and the open door. “Many people die like this, you know.”
After he’s gone their stubborn legs dangle still, but the freedom has been taken. The sun has gone down anyway; the seed of night has been sown.
Eventually hunger makes them admit what is gone and they go to the dining car. They face each other across a fixed table, their skin sticking to the cracked leather seats, their knees touching. The waiter brings them cold beers. Eddie shuffles. Chloe deals. Their sweaty hands slap a game of snap on the Formica table as they laugh in bursts at near misses and downright obliviousness.
When the food comes they swipe the cards aside. They watch as mothers show young children how to dip their hot oily bread into the warm yellow dahl, and they copy. They order more drinks and sink giddily into the hard seats, their legs lacing beneath the table.
Outside the train, the land is dark. Inside, benches turn to beds. In the growing silence he looks down and reads the condensation-wet label of the brown glass bottle.
“It’s non-alcoholic!” he says.
Then they grow giddy with irony and peel their legs away to teeter to bed.
As they lurch along aisles scattered with sleeping bodies, they see a baby, peaceful and tiny curled up between flat-out parents. The love-drunk pair exchange the briefest glance, but in that moment the future casts its line and catches them with a hook so richly baited that a whole lifetime passes between two footsteps. He holds her hand a little tighter and they seesaw-shuffle towards the back of the train where their made beds are waiting.
At the door to the four-berth cabin they pause, wondering who will be in the bottom bunks, destined to sleep beneath them. He cracks the door open and shuffles in. She peers over his shoulder. A pale wedge of light reveals one empty bed and one filled with the vast body of the freedom thief. His chest expands and his hairy arm flops freely to the floor.
“Come in my bunk?” Eddie whispers.
Chloe looks at the unconscious man. She nods.
They climb with stealth then tumble into the top bed, out of sight of disapproving eyes.
Starlight rushes in through the open window as the train snakes towards the Himalayan foothills. Up in the tiny bunk, made for one, two hot bodies share breath in the close heat of the Indian night.
“We don’t have to go home,” Chloe whispers. “To have a baby,” she adds, just in case she is imagining the moment that’s passed between them.
“That’s true,” Eddie says quietly. “We could have one anywhere.”
Below, they hear the man’s greedy breaths, sucking and sighing with the rhythm of the train’s sways. Above, the lovers take their muffled revenge, stealing back their freedom. Knees and elbows lift and sink beneath a white sheet, washed soft between a thousand sleepers. Sweaty limbs shift on the thin mattress, skin tapping out a click-and-pop rhythm on hot sticky leather. Then their sighs mingle with the shh-shh white noise of the fast night air beyond the glass as their bunk is carried on, ever forward, towards its inevitable destination.
Then they lie, quietly, part-waiting, part-being.
The train slows to a stop and orange station-light spills onto the shared pillow, revealing their sweaty faces to one another, glowing with rebellion. The man below coughs into the sepia silence and they freeze. They daren’t breathe. They lie still, willing laughter to stay away, which only welcomes its tickling fingers to their bare bellies.
“I need a wee,” Chloe mouths.
“Me too,” Eddie whispers.
They stifle their snorts and press their faces into the pillow, willing the train to move again and secrete their intimacy in the whooshing darkness.
Finally the train pulls out of the station and carries them back into the night of the nearing mountains. As the rocking rhythm returns they see the hairy arm take its sleepy loll once more. They climb down, bladders bursting, and bundle into the cramped toilet together. She squats and wets the rushing tracks beneath with a shudder of relief.
“A woman once had a baby on one of these toilets,” she says. “It fell right onto the tracks.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“It survived,” she adds.
Eddie laughs and nods, “We can go home anytime.”
Back in the carriage they crawl into their own bunks. They watch one another soundlessly across the small, still space, the spirit of the day flowing easily between them. Soon the side-to-side and clickety-clack rocking brings their eyelids down. Their gaze splits in two and they fall into their separate sleeps.
Outside, the tracks spread on ahead, leading the sleeper train up into the mountains. Behind, the tracks wind back into the past where somewhere between two wees, the future had been waiting to happen. As it does.
Afterall, the future is only ever the very next moment. No more than that.
One Egg or Two?
First published by Scrittura Magazine, December 2018
‘One egg or two?’ you ask.
‘Two please,’ she replies.
You listen to the crack and fizzle as each egg is released from its shell and into the hot butter.
You eat breakfast, savouring the moment of not knowing. You are both silent. Not because you don’t want to talk to. Not because there is nothing to say. Not even because you’re nervous. You don’t speak because there is too much hope in the air and each of you know precisely how easily hope is agitated. The slightest whiff of expectation and bang it’s out there. You can’t help it sometimes. You didn’t get through three years of this without triggering a couple of hope bombs.
So this morning, you both remain within yourselves, where you have been since you kissed goodnight. There is a plan for today, for whether you are, or whether you aren’t, so there is no need to talk. You clear away breakfast, collect your coats and meet by the car.
You sit side by side in the front and make your slow way through the morning traffic. You listen to the news, hearing how life could be worse. You park the car at the clinic. Later, you will go your separate ways. You by car. Her by foot. Each to work, no matter what. Life goes on.
You’re buzzed in and instructed to go upstairs. You walk along the top floor corridor. You’ve never made it this far before. You pass an empty waiting room.
‘Perhaps it’s just us here,’ she says.
‘Just us,’ you said last night, ‘is enough.’
‘Just us,’ she says.
She leans in for a brief moment before the door, and you press yourself to her as if to pass through her skin.
Inside the room, you sit very still in the pale pink not-quite-an-arm-chair chair.
She lies very still on the pale pink not-quite-a-bed bed.
Still you don’t talk. You are too solitary in your hope for the shambles of language. The thing you hope for too singular to say. Just one thing.
You hear the door open and watch the nurse come in.
‘Okay, let’s take a look,’ she says, pulling on latex gloves. You dimly acknowledge that in another universe, this is funny. But nothing is funny in here.
You stare at the not-quite-white ceiling tiles and don’t look at the nurse or the screen at her feet.
You close your eyes for a moment, and an involuntary image erupts in your mind. The two of you, pushing a... It threatens to obliterate you and suddenly the space between yourself and her is too wide. You are two singular bodies, disconnected from the future, adrift. Your hand shoots across the space between you, an anchor to hold you together.
Out of the corner of your eye you notice her chest rising and falling. Her breathing is loud in the silence of the small space.
In. Out. In. Out.
There is life in here already, it reminds you, never mind what next.
You join up your breathing with hers.
‘You got any others?’ the nurse asks her.
‘No, it’s just us,’ she says.
‘Mmm hmm,’ the nurse nods. ‘And did you have one egg or two?’
For a moment, you think she means breakfast and cannot fathom the relevance of such a question.
‘Two,’ she answers, clearing her throat. ‘We had two.’
You look to her, then follow her gaze to the crackle and fizzle of the black and white screen, scanning a tiny universe for life. You watch in silence. Not because you don’t want to talk. Not because there is nothing to say. Not even because you’re nervous. But because even you can clearly see there are two beings on the screen. Two. Twice as much, yet infinitely more than you could ever have hoped for. And you can’t speak because the hope in the room has already exploded, silent and joyous and utterly intoxicating.
And all you want to do is savour it.
‘One egg or two?’ you ask.
‘Two please,’ she replies.
You listen to the crack and fizzle as each egg is released from its shell and into the hot butter.
You eat breakfast, savouring the moment of not knowing. You are both silent. Not because you don’t want to talk to. Not because there is nothing to say. Not even because you’re nervous. You don’t speak because there is too much hope in the air and each of you know precisely how easily hope is agitated. The slightest whiff of expectation and bang it’s out there. You can’t help it sometimes. You didn’t get through three years of this without triggering a couple of hope bombs.
So this morning, you both remain within yourselves, where you have been since you kissed goodnight. There is a plan for today, for whether you are, or whether you aren’t, so there is no need to talk. You clear away breakfast, collect your coats and meet by the car.
You sit side by side in the front and make your slow way through the morning traffic. You listen to the news, hearing how life could be worse. You park the car at the clinic. Later, you will go your separate ways. You by car. Her by foot. Each to work, no matter what. Life goes on.
You’re buzzed in and instructed to go upstairs. You walk along the top floor corridor. You’ve never made it this far before. You pass an empty waiting room.
‘Perhaps it’s just us here,’ she says.
‘Just us,’ you said last night, ‘is enough.’
‘Just us,’ she says.
She leans in for a brief moment before the door, and you press yourself to her as if to pass through her skin.
Inside the room, you sit very still in the pale pink not-quite-an-arm-chair chair.
She lies very still on the pale pink not-quite-a-bed bed.
Still you don’t talk. You are too solitary in your hope for the shambles of language. The thing you hope for too singular to say. Just one thing.
You hear the door open and watch the nurse come in.
‘Okay, let’s take a look,’ she says, pulling on latex gloves. You dimly acknowledge that in another universe, this is funny. But nothing is funny in here.
You stare at the not-quite-white ceiling tiles and don’t look at the nurse or the screen at her feet.
You close your eyes for a moment, and an involuntary image erupts in your mind. The two of you, pushing a... It threatens to obliterate you and suddenly the space between yourself and her is too wide. You are two singular bodies, disconnected from the future, adrift. Your hand shoots across the space between you, an anchor to hold you together.
Out of the corner of your eye you notice her chest rising and falling. Her breathing is loud in the silence of the small space.
In. Out. In. Out.
There is life in here already, it reminds you, never mind what next.
You join up your breathing with hers.
‘You got any others?’ the nurse asks her.
‘No, it’s just us,’ she says.
‘Mmm hmm,’ the nurse nods. ‘And did you have one egg or two?’
For a moment, you think she means breakfast and cannot fathom the relevance of such a question.
‘Two,’ she answers, clearing her throat. ‘We had two.’
You look to her, then follow her gaze to the crackle and fizzle of the black and white screen, scanning a tiny universe for life. You watch in silence. Not because you don’t want to talk. Not because there is nothing to say. Not even because you’re nervous. But because even you can clearly see there are two beings on the screen. Two. Twice as much, yet infinitely more than you could ever have hoped for. And you can’t speak because the hope in the room has already exploded, silent and joyous and utterly intoxicating.
And all you want to do is savour it.