Bitterhall by Helen McClory (story books to read .txt) 📕

She settled and began kneading on my chest. ‘Who was here, while I was away?’ I said, or I thought. I imagined Daniel and Órla, lying together all pale, like a long-married couple waiting for death – I thought that was the best thing, a miracle, to hold together that long – I saw them doing it – I saw their whole lives up until they were old, spent there in bed, still as glass. And at that I dropped into the pit that’s in all of us, and I waited for some other part of me to wake me up.

In Bitterhall

I began to have all these dreams. I don’t remember if they were one after another or over the course of a few days. Or before the clothes, for that matter. They seemed long, like films. Like BBC mini-series of existence. I remember it only now. I can see out the window the sea is disappearing. No, you’re right. The ocean. The ocean is disappearing, and I’m still, somehow, alive.

James Lennoxlove is writing at his desk. A servant comes in; not a servant for the house; he has dirty boots and an uncompromising look. He says, ‘Come out, master, the light’s dancing in the sky, strangely. Will you not come?’ And Lennoxlove, startled, says yes he will. And they stand together in the field between the stables and the ghillie’s house. ‘Dear James,’ says James, ‘thank you for telling me about this.’ And the second man is so glad he sighs. And James is both me, and you. There’s a look of the green and red northern lights running over our clothes. It’s like if you set fire to wire wool – ever done that? It burns in a rolling way, in an epic way, though small. James must go back inside; James must go to the stables. I don’t know these men. I am both of them, in their sweat-stiffened clothes.

Flatmates

When I woke it was dark again and I began crying; not that I meant to, not that my heart was broken or my mind or anything – just some switch got flipped between unconscious and conscious and the tears bubbled up wet and quick and without any reason. Night tears going down my fingers, going into the corners of my mouth. Had I dreamed of anything – had I gone anywhere again? But I was wearing only the boxers I had gone to sleep in. I pulled on my pyjamas and shoes and walked out of my room, expecting – chaos. Expecting overturned chairs. I had the realisation, slowly, that someone was at home where I was at home as nowhere else – in my own body. This new person; do you get me? Am I making sense? You could say I was pushed aside from myself in that home, and that anything might happen. You could say anything. You, you, a plurality of others. I stood between the table and the doorway of the kitchen and I touched my face and a sob came out. The shock of that led me to start crying again. Great abandoned sobs and tears going through my fingers. But I wasn’t sad – I wasn’t hurt. I’ve never really cried, not at anything. My grandmother would get upset with me for not crying. But I never could, until I cried like something was crying through me and I followed the instruction then, of my body, or whatever else it was, as I would with any kind of arduous process – knowing it would be over soonish, and by the sounds of it no one was in the house.

Except Minto.

Minto was sitting on the black sofa in the living room. I eyed him, he clocked me.

‘Hallo again my dears,’ he said, and ran his fingers through his white hair. I almost turned around to see the person he was also addressing – but again, no one, but not and entirely no one. I thought about laughing and wiped my eyes – sat on another chair. The television was on with no sound, set to a documentary about the deep sea. Small frilled things frisked across blackness. Minto, for his part, was dressed in a summery-looking suit with a huge camel-coloured coat over the top of it, and at least three scarves, all of different red shades. He had fingerless gloves on – I marvelled at those. The last time I’d seen fingerless gloves was in a Dickens adaptation. He had painted his nails matte white, perhaps with correction fluid. I realised it was pretty obvious that I had been crying. My face felt red and raw from my outburst earlier and worse, Minto may have heard it, the sobs I mean. Even someone as strangely removed as he is had noticed. But Minto was only looking at the television – perhaps he had seen but perhaps also he had never paid much attention to anything.

‘They’re getting worried about you, you know,’ he said.

An Interesting Discussion

At first neither of us said anything else. A large van rumbled, beeping down the street and in its wake, seagulls crying. A beautiful smell filled the air – some kind of cologne he was wearing. It smelled like the woods in summertime, green and fresh. I’d assumed he would smell musty, like the old shut-in he was. The cologne made me more curious. If he was able to put on cologne maybe he was able to make other kinds of choices about his life. Maybe he was not the old kook I thought.

‘You mentioned last time that you saw someone else with me,’ I said.

He looked up and smiled kindly. ‘Yes, this young man here,’ he said in a reedy voice, gesturing at the space beside me where a small table held a lamp.

‘Well, the thing is,’ I said, ‘I’m struggling to picture him. Bad eyes, you know. Could you tell me what he looks like?’

‘Come, don’t condescend. But I’d be glad to, be glad to.