Children of Light - Lucy English

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slides and a boating lake, but that’s too far, says Pammy. We sit on a bench. We sit in the sun and watch the people. She’s not a great one for talking. If I ask a question, she says, ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ or ‘Don’t ask me that.’ Am I getting this wrong or was Bath quieter then? Now it’s so busy and in the summer heaving with tourists, but I remember warm late-spring afternoons in a park bursting with blossom. We watch a man walk right round the park. The shadows are getting longer. He passes by, raises his hat, and says, ‘Good afternoon, ladies.’ We walk back up the hill, slowly because Pammy puffs and wheezes. I see the paint on the doors. Peeling dark green paint, dark red paint. The windows of the houses are thick with lace curtains. The houses are a gold honey colour, all standing next to each other like old people in a church.

      From my nursery window I can see right across the town and it frightens me. We live up so high we might fall down. Pammy sits by the window and looks out as if she has been put in charge of all the people and not just me. At night I want my curtains closed. I can’t sleep unless they’re closed. I don’t want to see how high up we are. In the night I imagine the house is balanced on a rock and any minute it’s going to fall down and we’ll all be buried. I start crying and screaming, ‘It’s going to fall down any minute!’ Then Pammy comes in, in a flowery nightie, and puts on the light. I want to tell her how scary it is, but I can’t. She tucks me in and sits next to me. She yawns and yawns and rubs her eyes. I say, ‘Leave the door open.’ She pads back to her room heavily, like a bear. I think I can hear her getting into bed. The springs bounce. I think I can hear her snoring. I feel comforted.

      I went to school and Pammy left. This is a fact. I don’t remember it. I don’t remember saying goodbye or tears or presents, but I remember my school uniform. Grey and blue. A grey skirt, a blue blazer, a grey hat with a blue ribbon. Grey socks. It was one of those little private schools there used to be so many of but they got closed down because they were crap. We sat in rows and copied out letters of the alphabet. A,a,a. B,b,b. By the time I went to school I could already read, but nobody paid attention to that. The school had once been a house and the playground was the garden concreted over. The headmistress was called Miss Tanner. There were three boys, but the rest of the children were girls. I had never seen so many children before, shouting, skipping, singing, playing games I had never heard of and didn’t know how to play. The boys fascinated me. They had long grey socks, long grey shorts, and in between were plastered knees. They cut their knees and didn’t cry. Their shirts came untucked and they didn’t care. One had ginger hair and freckles, but orange freckles he wasn’t the least bit ashamed of. He stuck his arm next to mine and said, ‘I’ve got more than you.’ The other two boys were brothers, Desmond and Peter. They communicated by nodding to each other. Desmond got slapped on the hands with a ruler by Miss Tanner, because he was bold. He stood there, pink cheeked and defiant. It was Peter who wailed. Afterwards in the playground they plotted how they were going to get her. They were going to hide her chalk. They were going to piss in the girls’ toilets. They were going to get a black man to look up her skirt. I was silent and insignificant. They didn’t notice me. I heard it all.

      My father took me to school and my mother took me home. She didn’t talk to the other mothers. After all what had she to say to the dowdy women with fat babies in prams, but my father smiled and chatted. They were respectable women, but marriage had made them sport tweedy skirts and cardigans of sludgy green, over-permed hair and unflattering footwear. My mother was as remote as a princess. Sunglasses, and her hair under a headscarf. A cream suit and little pointed shoes. She said the same thing to me every day. ‘Did you have a nice time?’ It wasn’t the sort of question that needed an answer. She held my hand not out of affection but so I wouldn’t get lost. She walked slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, turning her head to look at her reflection in shop windows.

      I’m in my bedroom at night and I’ve had that dream again about the house falling down. I’m crying and crying, but then I realise Pammy isn’t there anymore. I also realise that no matter how much I scream my parents won’t come upstairs. It’s a strange thought and a horrible one and it quietens me. I lie there in the darkness but I can’t sleep. Then I do an odd thing. I get out of bed, open Pammy’s door, and run back into bed as fast as I can. Pammy isn’t there, but I can imagine that she is. I imagine I can hear her snoring on the other side of the nursery. I imagine it so much I can hear it. Then everything feels better.

      I still do this, don’t I, when I’m by myself? I imagine somebody’s there when they’re not. It’s better than being alone.

       CHAPTER THREE

      She woke up under the sloping roof of the hut to a wet, windy morning. The wind sang through the pine trees. The branches creaked and sighed. She had been dreaming of Felix. He smoked too much and wheezed in his sleep. She didn’t open her eyes. He was still beside her in her dream, where she was waiting for him to wake up and start coughing, but she didn’t want to wake him up. Dreaming about sleeping. It seemed a peculiar thing to do. She missed him. It was a physical ache that was difficult to smooth away, much worse than the baby, which was like being given a present and having it snatched from her. Missing Felix was worse because she knew him. He infuriated her. He went to bed far too late. He woke up far too late with a ‘Fuck! Is that the time?’ There was always something he hadn’t done, something he should have done two hours ago. Why hadn’t he seen a doctor about his chest? Why had he smoked so much and why was his life so bloody chaotic? But in the morning, when she was awake and he wasn’t, she felt tender towards him.

      Felix was beautiful in an odd way. He had long fair curling hair, masses of it. His face was angles and hollows. His eyes, which were slanting, were grey-blue. He didn’t look like an angel because angels don’t growl when they’re angry and forget to wash. He looked like a spirit from fairyland. A changeling, furious to be living with humans. He would disrupt them whenever he could. He would turn up at her narrowboat and sit by the stove, warming his hands. Long and bony, a philosopher’s hands. She knew he hadn’t eaten anything and he was tired. He would say, ‘Can I read you something?’ and out of his pocket came a crumpled bundle of paper, and he read one poem, then another. Strange poems with not much sense, like thoughts don’t make sense but have images and words which connect. This planet, love and community, and the goddess, something he saw on the street the week before, something he felt at a party, in a dream. But when he read he put so much into it, it seemed to make him flicker and glow like a candle at night. The closer she stood the more warmth she could feel.

      She opened her eyes and she was looking up at the terracotta tiles, lapped over each other, holding out the rain, which was coming down now in a torrent. It would keep her inside. She turned round to the imagined Felix, still sleeping. ‘I won’t wake you,’ she said, because she wanted him to stay peaceful in her mind. She crept down the ladder and lit the stove. She put the pot of coffee on and a pan of water so she could wash. The hut was gradually getting warmer. She lit the oil lamp and it gave out a soft light over the floor and the rough-cast walls. The coffee began to bubble and the smell of it filled the hut. She poured the liquid into a bowl, sat at the table and dipped in bread. Dark bitter coffee and chunks of baguette. A peasant breakfast. Tomorrow she would go to Draguignan.

       Friday morning

      Felix, this is a letter for you. There’s so much I never told you. You needed to talk about yourself. I was going to tell you so many things but in the end there wasn’t time. I’m glad I told you about the Ferrou. Do you remember, I said to you, ‘You must find a place to go to in your mind,’ and you said, ‘Like where?’ Sad, and grumpy and hopeless. And I said, ‘I know this place in France,’ and when I told you, I could see you could see it. You were walking up the track and towards the great rock and the pool. I could see you looking into the pool and holding your breath. Afterwards you said, ‘Take me there.’ I was cautious because this is my special place, but I knew you needed some sort of vision, some sort of future and I said, yes.

      You are here with me now in this room, so I will take you to the Ferrou.

      I want to find the beginning of this place. I can think of events, but

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