We made love. The wing story. My body is not bird-like.
Again.
The wings.
The love.
Bird-like.
Again. I beg everything again.
BOYS
We used to play a game called Sonic Boom. We would fly as fast as we could through the pine forest like bullets through a crowd and we would compete to turn at the very last moment before a tree. We would fly as fast as we could through the pine forest and then flip, roll sideways millimetres from the tree, shrieking Sonic BOOM as we reeled off. One day I taunted my brother. I dared him to ricochet off the tree like a bullet glancing off a fleeing shoulder. I went first and I flew hard and true straight towards a tree and Sonic BOOM at the final moment swerved and my wing slapped the trunk, whap, and I barrelled off into the forest (like a bullet glancing off a fleeing shoulder). My brother flew too low and too fast and never turned, whap, a sharpened branch pierced him right through the neck and he hung there crawking ‘sonic. sonic. sonic.’ This is only partially true.
DAD
They played at birds, they played at lions. They went through phases: dinosaurs, trucks, Thundercats, kung fu, lying, sport.
There was very little division between their imaginary and real worlds, and people talked of coping mechanisms and normal childhood and time. Many people said ‘You need time’, when what we needed was washing powder, nit shampoo, football stickers, batteries, bows, arrows, bows, arrows.
There was very little division between my imaginary and real worlds, and people talked of sensible workloads and recovery periods and healthy obsessions. Many people said ‘You need time’, when what I needed was Shakespeare, Ibn ‘Arabi, Shostakovich, Howlin’ Wolf.
I remember they left their tea unfinished and I picked at half-eaten fish fingers, cold peas and coagulated ketchup.
I remember I said, ‘I’m throwing every single toy in the bin!’ and they giggled.
I remember being scared that something must, surely, go wrong, if we were this happy, her and me, in the early days, when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes.
I remember my first date, aged fifteen, with a girl called Hilary Gidding. A coin fell down the back of the cinema seats and we both slipped our hands into the tight fuzzy gap of the chairs past popcorn kernels and sticky ticket stubs and our hands met, stroking the carpet feeling for the coin, and it was electric. The wrist being clamped by upholstery, the darkness, the accident, the lovely dirt of public spaces.
BOYS
Dad and Crow were fighting in the living room. Door closed. There was a low droning cawera skraa, caw, cawera skraa and Dad saying Stop it, Stop it, caw, craw, and hocking, retching, spitting, bad language, cronks, barks, sobs, a weird gamelan jam of broken father sounds and violent bird calls, thumps and shrieks and twinging rips.
Crow emerged, ruffled, wide-eyed. He gently closed the door behind him and joined us at the kitchen table.
We coloured in zoo pictures with our felt-tipped pens and Crow went over the lines.
DAD
I remember her pushing when they told her to push and the Jamaican midwife saying, ‘Push gyal, push gyal.’ She said, ‘I don’t want to poo,’ and I laughed and said, ‘Too late.’ Then there was son one, covered in strange smelly cream, hungry and tiny.
I remember her pushing when they told her to push and the Scottish midwife saying, ‘Blimey, here comes a head.’ She said, ‘It hurts, fuck, fuck-fuck it hurts,’ and we were crying and there was son two, purple, howling and bendy.
She is Mrs Laocoön, standing on the beach with her arms crossed, saying, ‘Look at those bloody boys,’ and we are fifty feet out to sea being chewed apart by sadness.
BOYS
Some of the time we tell the truth. It’s our way of being nice to Dad.
DAD
Introduction: Crow’s Bad Dream I miss my wife
Ch. 1.
Ch. 2.
Ch. 3.
Ch. 4.
Ch. 5.
Ch. 6.
Ch. 7.
Conclusion: Recovery and Growth I miss my wife
CROW
Once upon a time there were two big men who were brothers with one another. They were in brother with each other.
The soles of the bigger brother’s boots were worn through in patches. Half a mile out of the village on Windmill Hill his socks were damp and squelching and he mentioned turning back for better boots but the smaller brother kept walking.
‘The only other pair of boots is my old pair and they would be too small for you.’
‘True.’
‘My spare boots are better than your only boots.’
They trudged up the steep hill mounting thin banks of chalk like swimmers moving out past breaking waves and at the top they paused to gaze down at the village sitting neatly in the cupped hand of the valley.
‘You will struggle in shit boots brother. At some point we might walk on sharp flints or need to tread down thorny branches.’
‘I imagine at some point we might.’
‘Then you will struggle is all I’m saying.’
The smaller brother hocked and spat a ball of ochre phlegm at the gate of the windmill and cursed the owner. The bigger brother laughed.
They walked fast down through the pollard wood that clad the far side of Windmill Hill. A roof of luminous patchwork was suspended above them and the dark floor was stabbed all over with light.
A red deer bolted from a holly bush and the bigger brother whispered, ‘Hello friend.’
The other brother made a gun with his hand and shrieked ‘KABOOM’ and a startled pheasant barrelled upwards into the neon green with a chuckle.
Comprehension Questions:
Do you think the brothers in this excerpt are realistic?
Does the rural setting of the story change the way you engage with the characters?
If the boots are a metaphor for the ability to cope with grief, who do you think has died?
Write the next paragraph of the story, focusing on the themes of man versus nature, boots, brothers, and the Russian revolution.
BOYS
She was beaten to death, I once told some boys at a party.
Oh shit mate, they said.
I lie about how you died, I whispered to Mum.
I would do the same, she whispered back.
DAD
I remember her pretending to like watching award ceremonies more than she actually did because it surprised me, but then I let her know that such-and-such award ceremony was on and we would have to sit through it. Let’s go to bed, she said, we don’t really know who any of these people are.
Winners, I said. Every stinking ugly vacuous cunt-faced last one of them.
And off we went to bed.
Some days I realise I’ve been forgetting basic things, so I run upstairs, or downstairs, or wherever they are and I say, ‘You must know that your Mum was the funniest, most excellent person. She was my best friend. She was so sarcastic and affectionate …’ and then I run out of steam because it feels so crass and lazy, and they nod and say, ‘We know, Dad, we remember.’