A TRUE AND MADE-UP STORY
January was cold. As cold as iceboxes. So cold it
stung his fingers and his cheeks. And he didn’t know if his car would make it
to the end of the road and a part of him hoped it would not. But the house was
cold, too, and empty ‘cept for a cat that cried like a baby and his wife said
that was just talking and he said he wished it would shut the fuck up!
February and it was still cold and he remembered
a break he had once, in the middle of the month, years back, and he flew to
Venice and slept in a grand hotel that was not as near water as he would have
liked. And it was cold there, too, but warm in the churches, as warm as prayers
answered. And he wished he could go there again but the coffers were empty this
year.
March roared in like a lion and should have
rolled out like a lamb but all just lions. At least the nights began to shrink
and the days yawned and stretched and stood taller and taller. He smiled more
than before and there was a lightness in his step and when no one was by he was
singing.
April and there was a holiday then and it was
called Easter. He sat at home in front of his computer and wrote a whole book,
and it was quirky, about a man who lived his life scientifically and his name
was Jude, like in the song, and he was made to go out and get her, but he
wasn’t at first sure who ‘she’ was. A whole book and it just spilled out and
was a wonder to him when it did, like giving birth to the most beautiful baby
without ever knowing there was a baby growing there inside till it kicked its
way out.
And then May and a little sun and blue sky, and
he remembered the Meadows and how it was once with a girl teaching him German
irregular verbs and ‘ist, war, gewesen’: is was and shall be. And he walked by
the Meadows and it was warm enough he could sit on the grass and with his eyes
closed he could be back with that girl. Close your eyes and imagine.
June busted out all over, and thank goodness it
did. A little wetter than June should be but sunny too, and though he was tired
from so much work, it was good to go home and it was still light. He thought of
drawing again and he walked abroad in the world with his eyes open and it was a
little blurred without his glasses, so that he walked everywhere in a Monet
painting.
They went camping in July. On the west coast.
Galloway it is called and he’d heard there’d be midges big as spitfires and the
rain so heavy and so full they’d swim in their sleep and maybe drown there,
too. But the days were kind and he ate ice-cream from a cone and watched the
sea coming and going and the Galloway midges are a myth and there were few cows
wearing belts, too.
August took him back to work and really he didn’t
mind. He loves his work. Ask him and he’ll tell you he does and you might think
he protests too much, but you’re wrong. He really does love his work. Not the
marking or the dress code he has to insist on or the endless meetings for this
and for that. But the kids and they need his help and he holds their attention
in his hand and he puts on a magic show and they laugh and think him clever and
entertaining and they learn. Why wouldn’t he love work like that.
September flew by in a whirl. Looking back he
thinks he must have had fun then for it flew by so fast and isn’t that what
they say: time flies when you’re… And he remembered his mother’s birthday in
time, the fifth year in a row he had done that, and he sent her flowers and
chocolates, and she did not answer the door when they were delivered so she
still got them a week late.
He visited his boys in October. In Dundee they
are and he got to see the Discovery, an old ship of some reknown, and he bought
a piece of the deck, a two inch strip of wood that was left over after
they had refurbished the deck. And Scott of the Antarctic was a hero of his
father’s and that piece of wood would have meant something to him so he was a
little sad that his father was no longer in the world.
A bonfire in the village so it must be November
and he stood on the green and he drank firework fizzy wine out of a plastic cup
and he watched small children all sparkler bright and running everywhere in
circles and figures of eight, and music was playing, and it was cold again and
ice on the windscreen and the grass crunchy under foot and each breath like
dragon’s breath.
And so it creeps and creeps towards December
again and the nights are so long they stretch into day. It will be Christmas
soon, he thinks, and the boys will all be home, only they are men now, and they
will fill the house with noise and laughter and he doesn’t mind the talking of
the cat so much then. He has almost finished his Christmas shopping and a story
arrives in his in-box and it is funny and about people he knows and so he
decides he’ll return the gift and write a story of his year. But he makes
things up too, just to keep it interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment