Sharp edges.
Bad breath.
BOYS
Once we were doing some drawing at the kitchen table and Dad said, ‘We can never think too much about how important Picasso is,’ and my brother said, ‘Wankerama Dad!’ and Dad was nearly sick from laughing so hard.
We abused him and mocked him because it seemed to remind him of our Mum.
Once upon a time we went to a secret place with our Gran. It was a huge semi-circular wall of red sand that was once in the sea. Give it a kick and a shell would fall out. This was in the middle of a bright yellow rapeseed field.
Dad did not come. That was something Dad had nothing to do with.
DAD
She had flu. It was unusual for her to be ill. The boys were tiny and it had snowed and she couldn’t bear us rampaging about the house so we got dressed and went sledging in the park. We were pathetic without her. The boys didn’t know where their hats were. Couldn’t get their joined mittens through their puffer jackets; didn’t want to see other boys, bigger boys sledging on the hill. I was hopeless. I took them out without wellies so before we’d even got down the road their little toes were aching. They both whinged and we all felt, the three of us, that without her things didn’t work as they should. They pitied me. I felt acutely embarrassed that my brilliance as a father had been exposed as wholly reliant upon her. Perhaps if I’d known it was a dress rehearsal for the rest of our lives I would have said BUCK UP YOU LITTLE TURDS, or HELP ME. Or take me, take me instead please.
DAD
Things Crow is NOT scared of:
Ted.
Biographies of Sylvia.
God.
Wind farms.
Motherless children.
Bald eagles.
Tar Baby.
Scarecrows.
Man.
Death.
Things Crow IS scared of:
Divorce.
Plot.
Business.
Catholics.
Barbed wire.
Pesticides.
Gossip.
Taxidermy.
Keith Sagar.
DAD
About two years afterwards, far too soon but perfectly timed, I brought home a woman, a Plath scholar I met at a symposium.
She was funny and bright and did her best with a fucked-up situation. We had to be quiet because the boys were asleep upstairs.
She was soft and pretty and her naked body was dissimilar to my wife’s and her breath smelt of melon. But we were on the sofa my wife bought, drinking wine from glasses my wife was given, beneath the painting my wife painted, in the flat where my wife died.
I haven’t had sex with many women, and I only got good at it with my wife, doing things my wife liked. I didn’t want to do those things, or think about whether I should be doing those things or thinking about the thinking, which meant I bashed her teeth, then knelt on her thigh, then apologised too much, then came too quickly, then tried too hard, then not hard enough.
But it was good, and she was lovely, and we sat up smoking her strong cigarettes out of the window and talking about everything we’d ever read that wasn’t by or about Sylvia or Ted.
She left and I felt nervous about feeling cheerful. I walked around the flat as if I’d only just met it, long strides and over-determined checking of surfaces. I looked in on the boys.
*
When I came down Crow was on the sofa impersonating me pumping and groaning.
BOYS
We seem to take it in ten-year turns to be defined by it, sizeable chunks of cracking on, then great sink-holes of melancholy.
Same as anyone, really.
We used to think she would turn up one day and say it had all been a test.
We used to think we would both die at the same age she had.
We used to think she could see us through mirrors.
We used to think she was an undercover agent, sending Dad money, asking for updates.
We were careful to age her, never trap her. Careful to name her Granny, when Dad became Grandpa.
We hope she likes us.
DAD
Dearest boy,
One Christmas about three years after your mother died, I had put you and your brother to bed and I was sprawled on the sofa drinking red wine and reading R. S. Thomas when she walked in and said Hello. She was naked except for her socks (never a good look even when she was alive). She tripped on the rug, stumbled, and banged her knee on the coffee table. We went upstairs and I put some arnica cream on the bruise and we bickered about the mess in the medicine cupboard. Then we filled your stockings with presents and tiptoed into your rooms to lay them by your beds. I went to sleep and your mother sat up reading for a while.
That is completely true.
Are you being good? Don’t worry about doing stuff or not doing stuff, it doesn’t matter.
Love,
Dad
BOYS
One brother sat quietly inside the brother bits and tried hard but felt angry. It’s me. I had a difficult few years, now I’m fine, but I’m quiet and I’m unsentimental. My brother calls out KRAAAA and talks to them. The terrible years of my life were stained crow. And here’s a little secret. I’ve never even read it. I don’t like Hughes and I don’t like poetry.
Insanity. Pretentiousness. Denial. Indulgence. Nonsense.
I took an air rifle into a field when I was a teenager to shoot crows. I shot one and wanted to keep on going. I wanted to pile up a bonfire pile of dead black birds with nasty beaks. But they are so clever, they knew what I was up to and kept just far enough away.
I went back to the one dead crow just in time to see it limping off across the flint-stubbled ground.
Dad had a few girlfriends but never married again, which seemed to be the best thing for everyone.
I’m either brother.
DAD
Moving on, as a concept, was mooted, a year or two after, by friendly men on behalf of their well-intentioned wives. Women who loved us. Women who knew me as a child.
Oh, I said, we move. WE FUCKING HURTLE THROUGH SPACE LIKE THREE MAGNIFICENT BRAKE-FAILED BANGERS, thank you, Geoffrey, and send my love to Jean.
Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.
So I walked into their room in the navy blue middle of the night in summertime and listened to them breathing. Duvets smashed and tangled, little soft limbs emerging from robot and pirate print cotton and assorted soft toys. My wife and I used to come and tuck them in and marvel at how perfect they were asleep. We laughed at how beautiful they were — ‘it’s insane!’ we said. It was, insane.
And I stood and breathed their air and considered — as always — things like fragility, danger, luck, imperfection, chance, being kind, being funny, being honest, eyes, hair, bones, the impossible hectic silent epidermis rejuvenating itself, never nervous, always kissable, even when scabbed, even so salty I made it, and I felt so many nights utterly, totally yanked apart by how much I loved these children, and I asked them, loudly:
Do you want to MOVE ON?
No reply.
Should we think about MOVING ON? The swish and ruffle of air in nostrils, clacking tongues, sighs, the gentle invisible concentrated upper air of a room in the top of a flat where young people are dreaming.