Pond: Stories (3 page)

I would listen to a small beetle skirting the hairline across my forehead. I would listen to a spider coming through the grass towards the blanket. I’d listen to a squabbling pair of blue tits see-sawing behind me. I’d listen to the woodpigeon’s wings whack through the middle branches of an ivy-clad beech tree and the starlings on the wires overhead, and the seagulls and swifts much higher still. And each sound was a rung that took me further upwards, and in this way it was possible for me to get up really high, to climb up past the clouds, towards a bird-like exuberance, where there is nothing at all but continuous light and acres of blue. Later on, towards evening, as it got cooler, I would snuggle into myself a little more and listen less and less so that, very slowly, I returned to dusk and earth. And then I’d soon begin to feel very hungry indeed so I’d sling the blanket across one shoulder and head back up to the cottage to start dinner. Which would frequently involve broad beans, lemons, perhaps some spinach, and plenty of chopped walnuts and white cheese.

Chopping.

Morning, noon and night, it seems.

How I love to chop.

Within these deep stone walls the sound of a large knife pounding against the chopping board is often mellow and euphonious; like a lulling chant it charms and placates me. Other times, late evening especially, the blade’s keen reverberation is more rugged and insistent and I have to make a concerted effort to keep my eyes down and my hands steady. I go on with my guillotining and methodically pare down this robust gathering of swanky solanums until they lose colour. Chopping, taking it all to pieces, in a kind of contracted stupor, morning, noon and night; trying not to pay any heed to my reflection in the mirror as I do so. I can’t stand that—above all I can’t stand to see the reflection of my waist, winding back and forth, there in the mirror just to my right—looking as if it might take flight when I know very well it can’t.

First Thing

The ratcatcher woke me, I knew he was coming, but I’d had three overflowing beers the night before and I’d slept through the rat and I wanted to go on sleeping.

Go on sleeping through the rising birds and through the horses walking up the hill and through the four cows rearranging themselves and through the dog that follows the horses on their way down the hill and through the cat here and there and through the fox stopping and starting on the driveway and through the donkey standing, but the ratcatcher woke me and down the stairs I came

and made us both coffees right away. And because I wasn’t really here I didn’t yet know how I like things, so I put two sugars and milk into my coffee, because that’s how the ratcatcher takes his.

The Big Day

I sat late one afternoon for a reason that resolutely refuses to come to mind in my neighbours’ house with my coat on all alone in the room between the kitchen and the parlour. I don’t know where she was, the one who had answered the door, off in the garden somewhere positioning a sign I should think because by that time they really were getting ready for the big day. I had, by then, already given them bunting so that was not the reason for my being in my neighbours’ house. It’s true that besides the bunting I also gave them a box of coloured straws that someone had in fact given me one spring around the time of my birthday perhaps—however I remember distinctly leaving the box of straws on the wall near the gate to the neighbours’ house on a beautiful afternoon when I was feeling particularly magnanimous and lithe— hence the capacity to overcome my growing apprehension and contribute something from under the sink towards the big day. Actually this turned out to be a slightly more bothersome enterprise than I had predicted due to the fact that the box of straws would not stay upright upon the wall. They didn’t look too good lying horizontally, which is understandable when you consider that a level straw is a useless straw, so I was stuck
at the wall for quite a while, fumbling like a laggard, trying to find a way of propping the box up so that its final position didn’t discredit the earnestness of my gesture nor the snazzy appeal of the item it was attempting to convey. There were pink straws and blue ones and yellow ones and perhaps some green ones too. The pink straws were the nicest really because they were very bright and looked surprisingly sophisticated whereas the other colours were not quite so striking and so those straws looked like exhausted flumes that small children come shooting out of in water parks, in landlocked European countries especially. I remember the lido in Bavaria very well in fact and the way the children were very focused, tiptoeing around the wooden sun-loungers all day long collecting glass bottles to return to the dusky hatch beneath the evergreens in exchange for a few pfennigs each time, because it was in fact pfennigs then. That was also an uncannily serene day and I was alone then too, so although I swam I did not feel brave enough to go all the way to the other side for the reason that when I am alone it is practically impossible for me to gauge distance.

Not only did I still have my coat on but my rucksack was still on my shoulders too and I think I’m right in saying that it felt very consoling and perhaps I wriggled back into its padded girth. The seat I was sitting on was a kitchen chair in the old style and by that time I was quite fagged out since in all likelihood I had just come back from doing circuitous errands in town the like of which often causes my neck and shoulders to turn on me. It could be that there was something from the post box to give her. That often happens; none of them seem to check the post box as often as I do which is rather unusual when one takes into account they all seem to receive quite
interesting things fairly regularly. Sometimes I take them, these small handcrafted boxes and crammed envelopes, and put them on top of the storage heater where they might well remain for up to a week before I manage to pass them on to the intended recipient. The post box gets damp you see, causing letters and so on to pucker and leak, so occasionally I am quite diligent about emptying it and other times my mind is such that I just don’t care enough about what happens to other people’s post. Of course already there were things inside the house here and there that testified to the imminence of the big day, and the reason I sat down at all was to have a look at some visual material and historical information they’d acquired from the landlady. First of all there was a rudimentary map with names written either in or next to the various plotted rectangles which denoted the different cottages that were, at the time of this particular survey, a hundred or so years ago, inhabited by various humans. It is necessary to specify humans because actually it was not always the case that the buildings provided a bolthole for people only—my own cottage, for example, was used to store hay for a while and it is likely that from time to time a pregnant cow took refuge there. Attached to this map was a census form which further elaborated on the two-legged inhabitants and the precise dates of their tenure— this was however, no matter how much I tried, of little interest to me. Names, typical names: names you’d see in any number of places around about, on signs above pharmacies and bars, across plastic packages of bacon, for example. Perhaps as often happens I’d misplaced my keys once again and was unable to get into the laundry room to turn my washing out of the machine into the basket so that it could all be carried to the line and hung there to dry.

What difference does it make anyway why I happened to be in the neighbours’ house? I don’t know why I keep going on about it or indeed why not remembering is irking me so much. What possible meaning will be advanced if I do finally ascertain what had me go over there? Perhaps it was bunting, perhaps it was straws, or to gain access to the washing machine and my laundered clothes, perhaps I was delivering mail, returning a spoon, asking for jam, enquiring as to the whereabouts of my sleeping bag which was for two months tucked unobtrusively behind the tumble dryer and is now nowhere to be seen, perhaps it was to bitch about the rotten sheepdog who comes down the driveway every morning to dispense a slapdash turd between the shed and the outbuilding, or maybe I was spotted coming down the steps and a conversation about the big day was embarked upon and I said yes of course I’d like to come in and finally see the material the landlady has provided especially.

She must have made me a cup of tea anyhow, before she went off to place a cautionary notice next to the pond—which, by the way, has absolutely no depth whatsoever. If it were left up to me I wouldn’t put a sign next to a pond saying pond, either I’d write something else, such as Pig Swill, or I wouldn’t bother at all. I know what the purpose of it is, I know it’s to prevent children from coming upon the pond too quickly and toppling in, but still I don’t quite agree with it. It’s not that I want children to fall into the pond per se, though I can’t really see what harm it would do them; it’s that I can’t help but assess the situation from the child’s perspective. And quite frankly I would be disgusted to the point of taking immediate vengeance if I was brought to a purportedly magical place one afternoon in late September and thereupon belted down to the pond, all
by myself most likely, only to discover the word pond scrawled on a poxy piece of damp plywood right there beside it. Oh I’d be hopping. That sort of moronic busy-bodying happens with such galling regularity throughout childhood of course and it never ceases to be utterly vexing. One sets off to investigate you see, to develop the facility to really notice things so that, over time, and with enough practice, one becomes attuned to the earth’s embedded logos and can experience the enriching joy of moving about in deep and direct accordance with things. Yet invariably this vital process is abruptly thwarted by an idiotic overlay of literal designations and inane alerts so that the whole terrain is obscured and inaccessible until eventually it is all quite formidable. As if the earth were a colossal and elaborate deathtrap. How will I ever make myself at home here if there are always these meddlesome scaremongering signs everywhere I go.

She was in the garden and I stayed on the kitchen chair with my rucksack strapped to my back and my coat still zipped up to my chin and I must have had a cup of tea with me surely otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed there very long when in fact I stayed there a good while. I think I liked sitting there actually; I think I felt as if I’d just come home from school on a Thursday. Nobody was taking any notice of me yet there was a lovely comforting sensation that beneficent things were being done for me somewhere. I think, as human experiences go, that is one of my favourite ones.

What they’d done was this: they’d made a sort of collage of images on several different sheets of paper and I suppose the idea was that they’d somehow affix these sheets of paper down below in the garden room which was I believe the intended epicentre of the big day’s planned activities. The
photographs were all contemporaneous—that’s to say they were all taken in the early 90s, 1990s that is, which is when my landlady and her sister obtained the site and commenced the all-out task of redeeming and reviving the various ailing properties and untrained gardens therein. And it is likely that some photographs were taken on one day and some more a few months later and yet more again after a year or two, that kind of thing, because there are changes, remarkable changes, and it is possible, from the photographs, to see what it was and what it became. And what it became, by the way, is not what it is now, and what it is now is not what it was either. She stands there in the mud, my landlady, which needless to say there was an awful lot of, yet it must be mentioned because I’d never seen mud quite like it—feudal and rich, almost igneous in fact, as if suddenly it would rupture and divulge a beast of fire or turn in on itself in a molten whirlpool of dark flashing water. It was quite mesmerising and I wondered what it must have been like, to go over it day after day. I’m sure she must have felt tremendous, really quite tremendous; which doesn’t always make things easy of course. She is wearing boots, naturally, and her blonde hair looks voluminous and very bright, in contrast to all the unearthed things around her, and behind her is the back wall, marbled with lichen and moss, of the building where I live.

The sensation that someone somewhere was doing something nice for me, such as placing a piece of breaded fish onto a pre-heated baking tray in a fan-assisted oven, dissipated the instant the sun left the room; the commonplace order of things reasserted itself with an inhumane brusqueness, and since nothing in my immediate locale belonged to me I felt useless and insipid. Although I was quite alone I had nonetheless
managed to outstay my welcome. I got up and it may have been getting dark by then and perhaps I met my neighbour on the step on my way out and wished her goodnight. I would have to find my keys now. I would have to find my keys and open the front door. I would open the front door and march straight in, and into the kitchen I would go whereupon I would unbridle myself of the rucksack stuffed and shuffling with choice provisions and set it down upon the green cold tiles of the worktop and the contents would slump and settle again yet they would ere long be unpacked and divided but first I would ferret out the cheese buffered there between the pouches of ham and two tapered slices of the purest cheese I’d eat forthwith and this would briefly alleviate me of all other pressing duties so I would gaze awhile out the windowpane and I would not deign to get involved in anything, not one single blessed thing out there. No way. Cheese appeased and back on track I would smooth out the receipt of purchase along the green cold tiles of the counter and I would mull over this inventory of fine produce as if it had no fealty whatsoever to the many articles piled up around about me. Very good, I would say. Good job all in all. Thump thump. Praise be. And on it would go with little pieces of restorative cheese in between, until the surfaces and edges and handles and lids all fell to silence at last.

A few days before the big day a Portaloo appeared to the left of the shed as I see it out the kitchen window. There was, needless to say, very soon a sign stuck upon it saying toilet. I hadn’t seen it coming, that’s to say I wasn’t here when it was delivered—I had been notified of its necessity however so it did not come as much of a surprise to me when I looked out the kitchen window one morning and saw a Portaloo next to the shed. Other more
salubrious indications that a big day was on the horizon included a scant but wholesome menu written in alternating colours on a slate board which was propped up for all to see—once they got here of course—next to the kitchen window of the main house. And of course there was a lot of walking to and fro so that I could hear, especially in the bathroom and up in my bed, the sound of gravel underfoot on and on from early in the morning to sometime later in the evening for days on end. Since my attitude towards the big day had been dependably inconsistent I was not prevailed upon to help with the many preparations underway and this was as well for everyone because a lack of enthusiasm for a project makes me very clear-headed indeed and I would in all likelihood have developed a keen sense of how it should all come together and would therefore have taken over completely. In the days before the Portaloo arrived my mind tipped back and forth, quite unable to settle upon a decision about whether or not I’d be around for the big day. All this vacillating came to a rapid standstill once the Portaloo had been installed, as such, whenever I looked across at the Portaloo I regarded it as an ally, an ally in from-the-hip decision making, and I felt nothing but gratitude towards its moulded and unerring bulk. Cool Portaloo! I called out to one of the crouched neighbours on my way over to the bins. My absence would hardly be conspicuous anyway since it was going to be a big day in many places that day due to the fact that all kinds of events had been organised all over the country so that all sorts of people could discover and participate in the cultural life of their particular region. That being the case, since I appear to be a very culturally-oriented sort of person, it is perfectly plausible that I was already under enormous pressure to negotiate a riveting panoply of worthy ventures further afield.

English, strictly speaking, is not my first language by the way. I haven’t yet discovered what my first language is so for the time being I use English words in order to say things. I expect I will always have to do it that way; regrettably I don’t think my first language can be written down at all. I’m not sure it can be made external you see. I think it has to stay where it is; simmering in the elastic gloom betwixt my flickering organs.

From the photographs it seems that it was open at one end. The other end might have been open too but the photographs were all taken from more or less the same position and so it is possible to ascertain the original condition of one end only and even then it is difficult to really know for sure what that dark space is, and going back through the photographs again did not make things any clearer. It doesn’t matter very much. What the photographs all show over and over is quite plain—when they came here my cottage was just a pile of stones and a sprung tin roof. As a matter of fact I’d known about the photographs and other things right from the start—right from the time I moved in—and I think, at the start, I’d said something like yes, I’d love to see some photographs and read about the history of the place and, actually, I was quite sincere; at the start, when I first moved in, I was quite keen to see some photographs and find out about the history of the place. But I didn’t follow up on the offer; sometimes I fully intended to, but I always forgot. We might talk for a long time, my landlady and I, about all sorts of things pertaining to the hereabouts, and afterwards I’d realise that once again I’d clean forgotten to say anything about wanting to see the photographs and historical records. And then, after several months of this, I had to acknowledge that the reason why I continued to forget to ask about the photographs
and historical records was because I simply had no wish whatsoever to see them. Somehow the time for that had passed; it had passed rather quickly in fact. And then, when I was told all about the big day and all that it would involve, I felt deeply unsettled—and sort of angry actually. Why are they bringing all this up, I remember thinking, outraged. I was outraged in fact. Why are they bringing all this up? I don’t understand the past—I don’t understand the way the past is thought about, I don’t know why but it makes me wild with anger, to hear the ways the past is thought about and made present. Enforced remembrance is, I think, a most stultifying thing. But then, as I have mentioned already, I am often alone and when I am alone it really is very difficult for me to gauge distance, and so, perhaps for that reason, I haven’t acquired a particularly distinct sense of the past. I just didn’t have the first clue about how to respond to any of this stuff if you must know because it seemed to me rather a peculiar way of coming at something that in any case still exists. In light of that I think it is quite understandable that my attitude towards the big day was of a fretful and somewhat indignant nature.