I Sit In a Boat on the Ocean Read online

  I sit in a boat in the ocean

  ADAM CRAIG

  Published by Cinnamon Press

  Meirion House

  Glan yr afon

  Tanygrisiau

  Gwynedd LL41 3SU

  www.cinnamonpress.com

  The right of Adam Craig to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988. © Adam Craig.

  ISBN 978-1-909077-55-3

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers. This book may not be lent, hired out, resold or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers.

  Designed and typeset by Cinnamon Press. Cover design and artwork by Adam Craig.

  Cinnamon Press is represented by Inpress and by the Welsh Books Council in Wales.

  Contents

  Five Roads

  A Boy and His Mother

  I’m hiding in the wardrobe

  Tramps in Satin

  She is there

  I sit in a boat on the ocean

  Dr Sorn Smiles

  Sandy

  I’ve Been Meaning to Ask

  Stepping into the Grove

  Don Pedro’s Motorcade

  A Serious Job

  Henry

  Everyone Else

  Cat’s-Paw

  Brian Dally

  Pilgrimage

  Five Roads

  My handwriting has grown very small. So many words now cram on to each page. It saves paper, although there is plenty left. Piles lie around me. Even so, my writing keeps shrinking. As if I have more inside to say than there is space left.

  But I don’t have more to say.

  stop, then

  but what else is there to do?

  It takes a long time to fill a page. Each day, longer still. Hard work growing harder. Words are scarce things. Perhaps not the words, themselves. Just the things they represent —

  The view through this window hasn’t altered. Beyond the glass, things stay the same. The roads lead away. One this way. One that. Five roads; five directions. Same, same, same, same, same. Unchanging.

  Even the bushes and the tree that shepherds them no longer change. The seasons are indistinguishable. Days pass into nights. Months cumulate, but the years refuse to move. They just stand and grow … stiller.

  I can see my face reflected in the glass. Faintly. Enough to know I am here. To know I don’t like seeing that reflection. That me in the window.

  look away, then

  it will still be there, when i turn back

  My reflection is always there. Like the roads. When they were built, I never realised how difficult it would be

  go this way, go that, go some way

  to make a choice.

  Back then, back before, there were other people here. I watched through the window, writing down which road each took.

  My handwriting was bigger then. Before the silence.

  One road in five. One had to be right. No turning back, though, not once you start. The one with green bricks, or the one of red. Or purple. No yellow. That used to be a joke. Now it’s

  a memory

  a memory.

  Two lots of paper. One blank. One covered with increasingly small writing. Five roads. One window. One

  the only one left

  me.

  I rewrite it all each day. Hoping, I suppose, that it might come out differently. It always comes back to this. The sound of my breathing, of the pen running over the surface of the paper. Silence, where there used to be noise. Other voices that spoke outside my head.

  Beyond my reflection, the window holds five roads. All I have to do is decide.

  Outside, the rains fall upwards.

  A Boy and His Mother

  “Don’t you go on at me.”

  “But —”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  And, suddenly, it is as if she has a knife in her hand. Spite tightens her voice and acid makes the air between them burn.

  “But —” the boy gestures, eyes wide. Bewilderment forces him back a step, two. She advances, conquering the space between them until she fills his vision.

  “Don’t you forget.” She hisses, leaning close. “It’s me, all me. I take you places. Give you money. Me! Don’t forget!”

  Some force makes the boy’s mouth gape. Gape so the words crawl down his throat as well as into his ears, so what she says grasps his head and squeezes.

  “Me,” she repeats, “so don’t you dare give me grief.”

  She has not touched him. She never does, never has. That does not stop the words striking him across the cheek or prodding him, sharp-fingered, in the chest. Tears well. He cannot stop them as much as he wants to, knowing even before her expression changes that each droplet will only make his mother even more angry.

  “Don’t cry! Don’t cry for him. He’s not worth it.”

  Somehow, without knowing he has done it, the boy steps half out of his mother’s shadow. In spite of the invisible grip she would have on them, his eyes move. Abandoning her to go to his father.

  “I told you!” Still she does not touch him, though the violence in her voice is almost physical. “Don’t waste tears on him. I do everything. Everything. Not him. Never him.”

  Acrid like soured sunshine, she pours more words on him. Yet the boy cannot take his eyes from his father now that he has found him. And his father looks back, across the space that separates them. The space this woman is tugging at, trying to widen.

  The boy looks through rain that he is sure falls only across his own eyes, looks at his father. His father looks back: legs slack as he sits, fixed in a wheelchair that gives him a spurious mobility. Hands limp, mouth open. Eyes as big and as wet as his son’s. More falling rain, then, but she will have none of it.

  “Don’t bother with him.” She closes in so the boy sees only her, smells only acid, feels only alone.

  “He’s useless,” she says. “Useless. Useless.”

  I’m hiding in the wardrobe

  I’m hiding in the wardrobe, my filled-up shoes squeezing into the row of empty ones.

  Big coats stare down. A sleeve reaches out to help. Limp-armed, hand invisible as it touches my shoulder. Steadying. Shoulders and bodies on each side, wool and gabardine rubbing against my face, drawing me in.

  A dry-cleaning bag rustles a soft welcome.

  Hangers scrape. Juddering along the rail as each moves a little aside. Making room to the sound of whispering pockets, gently hissing coattails. Mothball eyes peer between the flitting shadows.

  Step in, then pause. Hands out. Reaching past soft bodies and hoping not to meet anything. Just go on and on into another world. A tunnel to a magical country where animals can talk and the days hold you close.

  The back of the wardrobe refuses to part. I push and grope, wood rough under small palms and fingers. I need it to open and let go its secrets. Instead, the wardrobe only sniggers and rattles. Walls loom a little closer, mocking.

  I turn away. Stumbling, treading on phantom feet. Lips pressed together, swallowing. I’m not admitting how much I wanted to find that tunnel. Not to the wardrobe, not to the coats, not to me.

  A gabardine arm passes around my shoulders. Squeezing. A tweed coat buries my face in its skirts. Shadows rustle, protective now. The wardrobe is sorry f
or teasing. It closes its eyes and conjures memories of aftershave, perfume and old rains.

  The coats keep me safe, as I reach between them. Fumbling. Tugging. In the distance, the voices grow a little dimmer as the door finally closes.

  Tramps in Satin

  Here, the tramps may only lie on one bench. Just one bench for the whole town. The Town Council says there’s no demand for any more than one bench.

  Our town, they do like to say, such a jewel and so prosperous!

  One bench set aside. And more tramps every day. Even the derelict buildings and the crumbling remains of the curtain wall that once stood around the town have to use that bench. There is nowhere else for them. Nowhere even for them to fall.

  Soon, there will be beggars wearing satin. Torn and stained, fraying at the cuff where only last week it had been clean and new. And they will long for a space on the bench, memories filled with the times when they never even dreamt the bench existed.

  She is there

  She is there, even as I look away. Standing at the corner of my vision.

  The leaves have almost closed over the door now. Ivy grasps the walls. Embracing the little shed, holding it closer each day and not wanting to let go. Clinging. There is jealousy there, I think.

  He screamed a great deal, you see. Shouting at the top of his piping voice. Shrieking, sometimes. Always remorseful afterwards. Apologies flowed then. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean it. Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …” I forgave. There was never any question of not. Even at his worst, his naughtiest. He needed attention. Like the ivy, clinging because it has to. He had to have it, even though it brought him sorrow afterwards.

  I forgave, but she would simply stand to one side. Watching. Even then. Never a word, yet there was something about her mouth, the set of her features. Like the ivy …

  I walk a different route now. Deliberately, carefully, I resist the urge to look where I know the shed is concealed within the clinging leaves. I have to do this, even though it does nothing to help me forget. The very act of trying not to remember brings everything back.

  You see, she clung to him. Afterwards. Clung and clung as if holding tight would put things back to the way they had been only minutes before.

  The shed was so full of shadows. Shadows in the corners, in the roof. Running shadows that clotted his head and oozed down his small face. Hiding each feature, losing them in the darkness. Only moments had passed and already he was becoming someone I only remembered.

  She wouldn’t speak to me. There were no apologies, although sorrow was like oil on the stale air.

  I could see her at the edge of my vision. As I bent down. As I grasped the wooden handle and hefted the weight. Of the old spade, and the knowledge of what I had no choice but to do.

  I saw her then from the corner of my eye, just as I do now. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I sit in a boat on the ocean

  I sit in a boat on the ocean.

  Each morning, the stern-lipped horizon awakens the tides. Muttering waves lap the hull as they rub sleep from their eyes. Nodding in absent greeting, the bare-limbed mast watches over the riggings’ listless recital of their devotions.

  Lolling voices overlap, gossiping waves always rehearsing familiar preoccupations: the clouds that visit daily and their pet winds. Occasionally, they furtively unwrap faded, sepia fables of a place where the seabed rises to look directly at the sky and the horizon no longer encloses us.

  Some days, all I do is listen to their talk.

  *

  My only oars are the pages of this notebook. As I finish one, I tear it out and show it to the waves.

  White-tipped fingers tug the page from my grasp. The waves repeat each line to the visiting clouds, who echo the story to their pet winds. The horizon’s mouth tightens. Its disapproval does nothing to stop the narrative becoming part of the fusty sky. Filled with fresh words, the vitalised winds tumble over themselves.

  The boat leaps and we skim the ocean’s jade shoulders, euphoric waves falling sternwards. Amid the gleaming spray, the narrow border between sea and sky seems to be coming closer. Then, too soon, the words thin and become exhausted. The pet winds slip away, hiding behind the clouds now the tale is told. The boat settles back into the placid sea, waves picking up their lolling gossip. Coldly aloof, the horizon is as remote as ever.

  I still hope, but there are only few pages left.

  *

  He strode out of the night towards the flat new day. Darkness streamed from jet coat-tails, blaze-red hair shocking in the half-light.

  Long legs stalked wave crest and trough, black boots kicking iron spray with each step. Ghost-bird hands swooped, ash-white, as they sowed hail in diamonded arcs across the speechless waves. The horizon’s frown deepened with each broadcast. Granite-lipped, it closed in on itself, leaving the wincing clouds to quail behind seething thunderheads. Curt new winds snapped rain-inflected cantrips, alien hexes fuelling the coursing sky. Black-robed hands cupped the boat, laughing as they shook it in time to the storm.

  The striding man dwindled into the false dusk. Fleetingly, his hair blazed between swathes of drifting rain, then was gone. The alien clouds bowed, cloaks rising to mask their eyes as a second, steel-and-mint dawn flowered.

  Not even a footprint remained to show he had been by.

  *

  I sit in a boat on the ocean.

  Morning and afternoon pause in balance. Stern and silent, the horizon watches us as always. Yet, today, its lips are pulled thin and its changeless face hangs strangely mute. Carefully avoiding my gaze, the waves watch the familiar clouds wipe down the sky with rag cloths made of old winds. Making it as if nothing happened.

  I hold the thinning notebook, wondering if perhaps nothing —

  Yet the whales still sing his name.

  Dr Sorn Smiles

  The octopus stirs in its pit, arms slithering and groping. Exploring. Walls and lichen-stained corners out of reach, it takes hold of the grill enclosing its pit. The rusted bars groan under the stress but hold. For now.

  Dr Sorn smiles. He holds a lantern close to the ancient barometer nailed to the stone wall, rapping its scratched dial, once, twice. The pointer wavers, then drops. Smile widening, Dr Sorn looks through the observation slit at the rectangle of night’s sky and land outside.

  You know, he murmurs, I think it will rain tonight.

  The grill rattles against its frame, tentacles the size of someone’s thigh coiling and re-coiling around the bars. The octopus is just as eager as Dr Sorn to go out again this evening.

  I say nothing. Eyes downcast and respectful as ever, I pray, wishing as hard as I can for dry weather.

  Sandy

  Sandy is so small for his age. Hair like sunlight on corn falls in a shock across crystalline blue eyes. His head rests on a narrow neck, above bony shoulders and skinny arms that end in hands too small to be able to grasp puberty’s first mysteries. His thin legs tremble with a youngster’s endless energy and his voice is high and black-bird sweet. Sandy looks so young.

  Yet, look into those azure eyes and you can begin to see the truth. Pain makes them brittle gems, protected by the shutters of experience. Shutters that warn you to keep your distance.

  Sandy looks ten. Sandy is thirty-eight.

  Time flows past him, water tumbling around an intractable stone. The years mould the world without leaving anything but the faintest marks on Sandy. A small boy, standing quietly on a corner watching the traffic clip passed, he has seen everything change.

  Children he was at school with are now grown, stooping under the weight of mortgages and worries about their own children. An audience of one, Sandy watches as they marry, divorce, get arrested, have affairs or break-downs, religious experiences or become redundant.

  Time writes its memories on their faces. With Sandy, it wants no part. Only his soul ages. The once open heart of the boy he appears to be is now closed. Experience, at least, has left its marks on Sandy. He
suffers in this half-life: a little boy who knows what is passing his eyes but cannot join in. And so pain brings down the shutters over his eyes.

  In the darkness, Sandy’s mind returns to the last summer before he realised he was not going to grow any more.

  The big sun soaks through his pale skin, leaving it golden brown as it turns his hair into something closer to ash bark. Cold strawberry yogurt tingles against his throat. The long, long afternoons are rich with the smell of yeast as his mother kneads dough. Sandy stands just outside the kitchen door, a huge red, green and yellow beach ball squeezed between his small hands. He watches her work, bouncing a little in his startling white baseball boots, the shoes new and brimming with the pent-up thrill of running just waiting to be unlocked by the shimmering days.

  As he thinks of that distant, amber summer, Sandy remembers his dreams. Stories once filled his head: pirates and space ships, phantasms and flight, adventure and a limitless future.

  He remembers and he smiles at last because, as small as he is, Sandy can fit Time and the Universe inside his mind.

  I’ve Been Meaning to Ask

  They drained all the oceans of the world and, now winter’s come again, there’s snow lying over the Norwegian Sea. It’s deep enough to ski across the Greenland Basin. Last winter snow, Grandfather says when we pause for a breather, last ever. Father says nothing, just checks the compass and sets us going North again. I catch sight of an arctic hare. Its fins are crusted with scales that glint in the beams from our torches. Every fish we see is white, their winter plumage ghostly amidst the long night. They’re talking of bringing back mammoths, Father says, if there’s enough demand. Grandfather stays silent this time, but I can tell what he’s thinking: You can’t go back, snow and demand or no. The Arctic looks like rice paper mountains, valleys gasping like beached whales. There are things I want to ask Grandfather. Things about the past, when there was water in the oceans. But I’m not sure I can now. Before I try anyway, the sky turns white. The ice, Father says, they’ve put the ice crust back where it was before … Grandfather turns to me, I’ve been meaning to ask — But the ice is beginning to fall about us. Great chunks as first one, then another ice breaker cuts through the sky. Tunnelling for an ocean that’s no longer there.