Michaelmas

Blue pressed against startling white.  Heat blazed from the white surface, reflected in the dark windows. Her outline thickened, rounded and was realised and with it she knew that this was her home, as the garden took form around her. The trees, surreal dark green, smooth edged, threw shadows on the road, but offered her no shade from the bright evening. She watched as the long hedge spread out to the edge and the tips of Michaelmas daisies appeared, dabbed white, perfect blossoms bending out of reach on their long stems. The road lay below, beyond the garden where she stood.

She had come to being, self aware, fully formed. No fear, accepting that here she stood, in her garden, by her house. She turned her head to look up, following the clean white lines straight until she came to the top, to the roof and the chimney pot that was still in formation, emerging from the air in smooth quick strokes.

Time held still while the world unfolded to its edges and she did not resist this creation. She was one with it.

She saw movement -  a rapid, rough stirring in the colours below her on the road and from the movement, the swirling greys, emerged a kind face beneath a cap and then a long overcoat that covered his body securely, safely and had done for many years. His foot was raised to hold the bicycle still for that moment. They knew each other, she realised, had been lovers in the past, but friends longer than that, and they looked at each other, knowing and not knowing, amazed at how this life had been realised for them. What would they do now?

There was darkness, and then dull light flickered as the world rolled and heaved and they were pushed and pulled. Vague images of hands and faces, muffled sounds, suggested themselves on the perimeter of sight, like thunder from a far distant country that echoed in the air around them.

He spoke for the first time, “Hello.”

“What do we do now?” she asked him, knowing that he would have no answer.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we wait?” Their breath caused the air to stir with a sweet scent, and she sought out its source, moving within her garden until she saw, behind him, the smudge of red, the hint of beauty wrapped in brown paper.

Movement again and now they were suspended in brightness, in motion, with distant sounds, echoes of faces, rumblings that lapsed into dark and then light, as time passed.

She moved from her step to the house, reached and touched the smooth wall and wondered, if she could she go inside, what would she find? A room full of belongings that were hers, a window she could look out of, maybe an understanding of what this life was?

His eyes lingered on her, seeing the breadth of her, the curve of her hip, the length of her white neck beneath the neat roll of smooth dark hair.

There was sudden, distant, laughter, thuds, the earth shook.

“Do you see them?” he said. “Do you see the shadows, out there? I can see them from the corner of my eye, at the edge of my sight; I see them moving around, sitting down; they talk to each other. Be quiet and you will see them. Sometimes, I think they are watching us,” he said. She stood very still.

 “How many are there?” she said as she waited.

“They are big and small, loud and quiet,” he answered. She made her mind still, and tried not to look for them and as she did so she could see, better than he could, the room, the window, the fire, the woman and man, the children, but they were not looking at her.

“I can see a ... family.” The word appeared in her mouth, and she knew what it meant. There was a family in this world as well, but she could not see them. Was it her family? Was he family?

“Why are you here?” she asked him, suddenly. The question lingered in the air between them and he thought for a long time. Dark followed light followed dark and still he did not know. He watched her standing above him; her dark hair swept back, her brown eyes, so serious as they studied him, waiting for his reply.

The family on the outside moved and lived, while she stood by the house and he stood with his bicycle.

“Aren’t we meant to be here?” he said finally.

“For us or for them?” she asked

“Something’s wrong,” she said. They heard echoes of voices rising and falling, sobs that broke against the surface and distressed them both. They waited, listening.

The world tumbled again, and righted itself to different light. “What do you see?” he asked. “You can see more than me from up there.”

“Come up and look with me,” she offered. “I don’t think I can,” he said, and tried to move past the gate to the steps. The gate would not open for him. He pushed hard. The white painted wood held solidly against his hands.

“Climb over,” she said and he lifted his leg to swing it over the gate, and try as he might, he could not pass over, into the garden. 

“Can you open it for me?” he said, and for the first time she left her house, stepping down until she stood opposite him. She pulled the gate, and pulled again, but it did not move.

“Why are we here, if we cannot be together?” she asked, sadly, and she went back to watch from the top of the steps, to the flat white house, the dark windows and the room inside that she could not enter.

“There is a different room, now,” she said.  “It is empty. But there is an outside beyond it -another road, not our road, where there are trees that move and clouds passing. Why don’t our trees move? Where are our clouds?”

The new outside was very still, except for the waving trees; no thudding feet, no rumbling voices.

A shadow moved across the window with the waving trees and the clouds, and sat down, alone, on a chair by another fire.

“Where is the family?” he asked, as she told him what she saw.

“She is alone now, I think,” she said, and inside her crept sadness and fear. “The family is gone.”

“But we’re still here,” he said, watching her sad eyes.  She smiled down at him.

“I think you’re right; perhaps we are meant to be together. But she is on her own. What good are we to her?”

Light and dark and light. She had more to see now, as she watched the window on the outside. The trees were full and green, then red and windblown. Their branches were stripped bare, then white with blossoms that fell out of sight. She wished he could come up and watch them with her, and so she told him what she saw.

“Why do our trees stay still and dark and round? Perhaps they are not real?” she asked.

“We are real,” he said, “and so the trees must also be real.”

“Can you touch them?” she asked, and watched as he walked across to the side of the road. He stood beneath the branches and pressed the palm of his hand against the dark trunk of the tree. “It feels real to me,” he said. “It’s cool, out of the sun.”

She looked down to the bicycle on the road. He had never left it before. It stood upright, alone and she wondered how that could be?  Now she could see the red and the green, the brown paper . The scent came again, lifting her away from the door, away to other gardens, where different flowers grew.

Suddenly, there was noise again, thudding and rumbling echoes. “Oh no,” she thought. “What now?”

“All I can see are shadows,” he said, stretching to see. “Tell me what’s happening.”

Shadows flickered across the window, small figures danced and bobbed, dark against the light and the moving trees.

“Children – I see children. Not the ones that were there before – these are new. Can you see? She is smiling, holding one in her arms. Can you see?”

“I can see,” he said, watching her smile, her brown eyes.

She turned from outside and looked down at him, smiling still. He was standing at his bicycle once again, his foot raised to steady it as he waited by her gate. She looked behind him at the red and the green in the brown paper.

“Are those roses for me?” she asked.