Too Much Sky Part 4

Maybe it was the same day, or days later or a week or so after - I find memory like this now, time like each wave of the thousands I've watched breaking across our shoreline, one so much like the next and the next. What I do remember is the stillness over the house, how each room I entered held its breath, a hush falling as my bare feet padded over floorboards and the silence of walls, how as I turned the cold handle of each door, closed out the space – but what? Nothing – of course nothing, no sudden life beyond, no cacophony of sound, shifting of furniture or rhythmic strain of a rocking chair playing its part - just the misunderstanding of darkness and the need for more than what is left behind.

For a time I knelt by his bed and watched his breathing. We'd arranged our conjoined rooms so that from our beds we could see each other through the gap of the open door, and he slept so silently - sometimes I'd wake him in the morning and he'd look surprised, embedded in the same place i'd left him so many hours before, as though the time from closing to opening his eyes had been a mere instant. The horrors of the night, of those first months after, seemed so far away - at least for him, and that was enough for now.

Something about this stillness had bothered me, as it did sometimes – and the door had closed slightly so that my view of him was obscured, a breeze perhaps or the forgetfulness of alcohol, the thought of sleep so far distant as to seem unreal. I wandered through, put my face close to his, counted the rise and fall of breaths. These visits could become vigils, more than once i'd woken to his hand on my head, and the first light seeping below the curtain hem and in those moments it was difficult to tell which of us was man and which boy.

I left him silently; wandered in to the large back bedroom – something comforting in the familiar smells of oil paint, turpentine, even the wood of the easel, the essence of its history. I pulled back the curtains - let some air in, waited for the half moon to appear from behind the low cloud but when it didn't, turned on the easel lamp - but instead of sitting back, reaching for the trusty glass and the comforting burn of the whisky, staring dumbly at the potential of colour in that cold absent space as I had so many times, I made a mark: no thought of colour, no decision or thought process – just the need to fill up the space, to destroy the bone whiteness that i'd come to again and again for all those months in-between.

I stopped with the birdsong, nothing concrete completed, but ideas and beginnings and they would be good enough, would bring something in for us to carry on and from then it came in regular waves as it always had, evenings spent working, clearing the debris from mind to paper. I'd never painted landscapes and hadn't meant to now, but this place, and the way the measure of it seeped into you - well they came, abstract at first - but ultimately closer to what I would find through the large bay when I would move across, watch the sun falling away, burning the sea, the mountain of sky.

The strange thing is I never made the connection – lost in the relief of something new, and lulled by the new life and not thinking that the small things were important to all of this - now.

The weather had turned, the sea mist and heavy cloud covered the landscape again – just as it had those first days. We'd spent more time indoors, Tom happy in his own games, allowing me to paint more in the day times and giving me time to assess the body of work born over those last weeks. I'd approached two galleries in neighbouring towns who had been more than pleased with what I'd shown and had asked me to display as soon as possible. Neither suspecting who it was they would be hanging on their walls. One painting in particular I knew would sell easily, a large landscape i'd called, The Death of the Day capturing exactly that, the Watch House glowing in that last light and the beginnings to a storm. I worried even that it might be a little too good.

I raised it up onto the easel again now and immediately noticed the dark shape that had appeared there, hovering between the the horizon of land and sea, I thought at first another picture had caused the smudge – so long it took for each to dry, but looking closer saw the brush strokes and the definite outline purposely formed. It seemed unbelievable that Tom could have done this, he never came nearer than the studio door anyway and besides – it was too good - not something I would have put there myself, but it didn't detract as it so easily could have. I knew I hadn't made it in some spirits fuelled stupor - the hard drinking had practically stopped of late and I would have remembered anyway i'm sure. The thing was if Tom had done it, I wasn't really angry about it – it might not be worth quite as much, but the brushwork, quite similar to my own, was remarkable for a child of his age – I was proud if anything and of course after weighing things up again, I realised it had to be his – there was no other explanation.

He denied it and I didn't want to press him on it – told him he could come and paint with me whenever he liked, but that there were too many dangerous things in there for him to be on his own and that he mustn't touch the paintings i'd done to sell. He carried on playing, moving the soldiers around his fort, picking up the dead ones – only looked at me once, blankly, like he did when I needed an answer to Marmalade or Jam.

Maybe it was the same day, or days later or a week or so after – I heard the sobbing first, opened my eyes and saw his shape next to my bed. When I reached for him I found him clammy, his hair matted, a smell that seemed foreign, dead fish – the mud of stagnant pools. His trousers were wet from what I presumed was urine and cold and I wondered how long he had stood there in the darkness listening to my breathing, not waking me. I got nothing out of him for some minutes, he clawed at me in the sobbing but held on for all he was worth.

'Just the old bad dreams again Tom...sshh now, it's o.k, just the old dreams, I'ts gone now, just hold on to me.' For some reason I couldn't find the switch to the bedside lamp, I fumbled stupidly, still half asleep and as my eyes adjusted slowly I turned suddenly - sensed movement across the gap through the door into his room – definite movement and a sound underneath Tom's breathing and the drum of my own heart, like something dragging along the carpeted floor.

I don't think he heard – he was whispering something and I raised him closer so I could catch his words, but he stopped and I waited for him to speak again.

'What is it, what are you saying.' I could feel his breath, close, shallow, his heart racing.

'He's in there...it's in there.'