How To Walk On Water

It was April in June; spring's very own month of non-stop decadence two months overdue. All of the trees, and all of the tangled roots and shoots below them, were erupting in a lusty chorus of wind-tickled new growth, the tick-tock of dandelion clocks and (if you listened carefully) the provocative ripening of stickybuds. Branches were fat with blossom. Thrushes giggled and groaned from hidden loctaions, Daffodils spilt their scent onto the morning breeze. Any suspicions raised by the mis-timing of it all could have been easily forgotten, Big Ron explained to Stepdaughter Number One, save for the fact that this sense of the not-quite-right stretched out, and seemed to cover the whole of sunny London like a suffocating expanse of Clingfilm.

From midday on Tuesday onwards, he said, everything seemed to shift a little. Graffiti dripped from the walls in Harrow and flowed in delicate rainbow trickles towards the gutters. The pigeons of St Pauls vacated their usual perches and slipped off into some small tear in the fabric of time, disappearing forever. People on the tube sneezed constantly. In fact, the whole city became hay-feverish.

This was why he had to stop them leaving the flat. Ron was a Black Cab driver and part-time magician, and therefore knew the wider circles and the smaller spirals on which the vortex of London rotates. And he knew when late springs and disappearing pigeons pre-empted trouble. Stepdaughters Number One and Number Two, as they sometimes affectionately called (Esme and Cece at others), watched him draw the curtains and lock the door with protective determination. They heard the creak and crackle of hinges pressing up against cheap varnish, the heavy breathing of the door. Motes of dust danced ferociously in the sunbeams that sneaked through the cracks, but quickly became lazy and still.

And just like that, life was locked away.

'You are my two greatest treasure-chests' he told them 'and I'll do all I can to protect you from this mad turn of events.'
And so he did. The girls could only be grateful: as April skipped summer and withered into September, the flat became a fortress, a stronghold of sanity in a world becoming ever more strange and serious. Ron left on Wednesday afternoon for supplies from the newsagents by Charring Cross Station, and returned with a banquet of Mars Bars and Hobnobs, jars of olives, tins of sardines and tiny bottles of whiskey to drink from mugs. He sank down into the lazy chair, raised his T-shirt from his stomach and smudged it with the dampness from his sweaty brow. Moisture fat as raindrops collected in the creases of his white-pink belly, only to evaporate itself back up into the water cycle to which it must have once belonged.
'There is no place like home' he croaked to the whiskey, shaking a slow head. And then lifting it: 'now listen carefully.'
A heavy afternoon grew heavier with news he had cautiously collected from the outside world: a September that had already lasted several months and was refusing to budge; vendors selling newspapers in every damn language but English; dogs bloodily tearing eachother tail from snout in the street, and an army of hot air balloons carrying people away to he didn't know where.
'The best place to wait it out is here' he soothed 'until it's safe and those bloody dogs calm down and we can get everything back to normal.'
Even by Friday, no one knew how long that would be.

When the electricity was eventually cut off the following week and the TV stopped working, Big Ron lit candles in the evenings and entertained them with magic tricks courtesy of a box given to him by a school teacher from way back when he used to be a boy. The box was warped, yellowed cardboard, with the beginnings of mould creeping out from the corners, and it smelled like secrecy. Ron would untie the thick, black satin ribbon he used to keep the lid on, wind it round his index finger and tuck it carefully into the box's collapsing corner. He would take the contents out, piece by piece, evenly spacing it on the table in front of him, and place the lid slowly back on the box: each move satisfying in its ritual. Then he would wiggle his fat fingers in anticipation, as if they were the last to realise the fun was about to begin.

Metal hoops entwined themselves inexplicably in mid-air, polysyrene balls disappeared from under plastic cups, and silk flags emerged in a seemingly endless stream from nostrils and armpits. On such evenings, under the duress of flickering candlelight and girlish shrieks, their Stepfather would become the Grand Old Duke of existence itself: a magnificent, Disney-esque wizard circling high above the world and all the dull brick houses of ashtrayland beneath. Until the batteries ran out half way through one Saturday night, he would use his old tape player to blast out bold Afrozap drumbeats and crackling Sanp guitar. Dressed up in a shirt and bow tie, he would throw his top hat and wand towards the starry ceiling and summon them to a wild dance of dilated pupils and fiery irises and unpredictable spasms of limbs. Before the candles burned out he would teach them incantations from Japan to mutter in their sleep ('kon-chi-wa' 'saky saki' etc) and incantations from Wales that would help them learn the art of casting magic ('chwll-lwr Ar frys gwyllt' or 'Nid aur popeth melyn') and, eventually, ones to summon great dragons and daemons to their aid (though such words can't be mentioned here).

Locked up in their castle-flat, the two stepdaughters spent all of stubborn September and more quite content to study their spells and forget about the strangeness enveloping all of outside. The motes of dust grew fatter and lazier. The thick woollen curtains were never drawn, or even parted or peeked through.

An air of forgetfulness and forgoteness fell about the flat. The girls grew and their clothes stayed the same size. Their short hair sprayed outwards into great afroed auras and, unwashed, began to collect dust. Discarded clothes mugs pips pear drops crusts colouring pens and Monopoly money slowly blanketed the floor. Ron's moods became more and more erratic. Sometimes the flat was full of his bass-deep belly laugh and magic, often he would cry all morning, and the girls were shy to ask why.

They began to suspect it was something to do with the strangers, thin and faint as paper-cuts, who stole in and out of the flat after they were in bed and (presumed) asleep: men hooded and hushed, whose trainers seemed to barely disturb the hairs on the carpet. They came in twos and threes and Esme and Cece would sit at the top of the stairs and strain to hear any evidence that their feet touched the ground at all. It was strange. And stranger still because, no matter how late they stayed up, they never saw any of them leave.

On Saturday night the sisters began a stairway vigil. Warming their toes in odd, woolly socks and entwining their limbs between benisters, they breathed quietly and waited for some kind of explanation to occur.

End of Chapter One.