she could enjoy the
spectacle of us having a row."
"Anita is our friend!"
"Correction: she's your friend. Correction: she's the wife of your
friend."
"She was looking after Amy and Sam while you were falling down on
the job of being a mother."
"It won't happen again."
"Are you going to tell me where you were?"
She turned to look him in the eye. "I was having a conversation. With myself. I found out some things. I found out you don't
love me, for example."
"Here we go again. Here we go."
"You only want to own me. You can't stand the idea of me having any
life of my own. I'm not allowed my own life. I'm just a clip-on accessory to
your own world."
"That old song."
"I also found out that this garden badly needs a fucking
pond."
Alex looked up in exasperation. He saw Amy and Sam watching them from a
bedroom window. "Look at that! Look at those kids! No wonder they're so
twisted and fucked-up and miserable and unhappy when they've got you for a
mother, disappearing and reappearing without a word! Just look at them!"
Alex dived back indoors.
Maggie glanced up at the children, saw them move away from the window. Twisted and fucked-up and miserable and unhappy. She knew it
wasn't the children Alex was describing at all; it was themselves .
She turned and saw the bird perched on the washing-line pole. It was a
blackbird, stock-still, head cocked to one side as if listening. Its eye was
focused on her. She stared at it for a long time, until it flapped away.
That evening hit a new low. They failed to exchange a single word and
Alex made himself a bed on the sofa.
Maggie lay awake in the feverish dark. She felt anxious, troubled by
thoughts too abstract to pin down. Still light-headed from the episode in the
woods, she was unable to keep her mind from what had transpired there. In one
sense there was little to be said. Listening, that's all that had occurred. No
more, no less than that. Yet it was as if she had listened for the first time
in her life, and discovered that beneath the ordinary sounds of the world was
something else.
The first change was a miraculous softening. Her brittle edginess
dissolved in the peace of the woods, and so too did her visual impression of
the trees, branches, ferns, grasses, and the silky feel of the leaf mould
beneath her. Everything softened. The silence of the place distilled out, and
even when a wood pigeon broke cover, the whirr of wings and flicking of
branches was muted and distant.
At one point she thought she might have fallen asleep, but knew she
hadn't. Time had simply broken out of its tram lines. She had overstayed her
allotted period by two hours. And she had indeed heard a voice, whether in the
leaves or in her own head. It was soothing and, in turns, excitable. It was
reassuring. It knew things she had thought forgotten. It was a voice she hadn't
heard for many years, a neglected, private voice.
It was her own, inner voice,
demanding an audience. It spoke to her in a language half-formed, in fragments
of words, sometimes archaic in sound; it whispered in strange accents.
Strange, but familiar enough to be none other than her own mind, yet shredded
and reformulated, and at last fractured into a small crowd of ghostly women at
her back.
No, she hadn't fallen asleep, because as
she opened her eyes and looked around her she felt intensely awake, her
perception had sharpened. Squinting up through the branches, she saw that the
leaves formed patterns. They structured the light between the leaves, stringing
it together like beads on a necklace, or suspending the light in parabolas,
like spiders' cobwebs.
The woods took on a moist-canvas effect. She too felt
she helped to generate this moistness, and was happy to be a part of the rich
mulch of woodland decay and fertility. She found herself blowing gently on the
back of her hand, to remind herself to stay conscious; and the act chased a
sensuous ripple through her body. She felt moist, inside and out.
And then as she closed her
spectacle of us having a row."
"Anita is our friend!"
"Correction: she's your friend. Correction: she's the wife of your
friend."
"She was looking after Amy and Sam while you were falling down on
the job of being a mother."
"It won't happen again."
"Are you going to tell me where you were?"
She turned to look him in the eye. "I was having a conversation. With myself. I found out some things. I found out you don't
love me, for example."
"Here we go again. Here we go."
"You only want to own me. You can't stand the idea of me having any
life of my own. I'm not allowed my own life. I'm just a clip-on accessory to
your own world."
"That old song."
"I also found out that this garden badly needs a fucking
pond."
Alex looked up in exasperation. He saw Amy and Sam watching them from a
bedroom window. "Look at that! Look at those kids! No wonder they're so
twisted and fucked-up and miserable and unhappy when they've got you for a
mother, disappearing and reappearing without a word! Just look at them!"
Alex dived back indoors.
Maggie glanced up at the children, saw them move away from the window. Twisted and fucked-up and miserable and unhappy. She knew it
wasn't the children Alex was describing at all; it was themselves .
She turned and saw the bird perched on the washing-line pole. It was a
blackbird, stock-still, head cocked to one side as if listening. Its eye was
focused on her. She stared at it for a long time, until it flapped away.
That evening hit a new low. They failed to exchange a single word and
Alex made himself a bed on the sofa.
Maggie lay awake in the feverish dark. She felt anxious, troubled by
thoughts too abstract to pin down. Still light-headed from the episode in the
woods, she was unable to keep her mind from what had transpired there. In one
sense there was little to be said. Listening, that's all that had occurred. No
more, no less than that. Yet it was as if she had listened for the first time
in her life, and discovered that beneath the ordinary sounds of the world was
something else.
The first change was a miraculous softening. Her brittle edginess
dissolved in the peace of the woods, and so too did her visual impression of
the trees, branches, ferns, grasses, and the silky feel of the leaf mould
beneath her. Everything softened. The silence of the place distilled out, and
even when a wood pigeon broke cover, the whirr of wings and flicking of
branches was muted and distant.
At one point she thought she might have fallen asleep, but knew she
hadn't. Time had simply broken out of its tram lines. She had overstayed her
allotted period by two hours. And she had indeed heard a voice, whether in the
leaves or in her own head. It was soothing and, in turns, excitable. It was
reassuring. It knew things she had thought forgotten. It was a voice she hadn't
heard for many years, a neglected, private voice.
It was her own, inner voice,
demanding an audience. It spoke to her in a language half-formed, in fragments
of words, sometimes archaic in sound; it whispered in strange accents.
Strange, but familiar enough to be none other than her own mind, yet shredded
and reformulated, and at last fractured into a small crowd of ghostly women at
her back.
No, she hadn't fallen asleep, because as
she opened her eyes and looked around her she felt intensely awake, her
perception had sharpened. Squinting up through the branches, she saw that the
leaves formed patterns. They structured the light between the leaves, stringing
it together like beads on a necklace, or suspending the light in parabolas,
like spiders' cobwebs.
The woods took on a moist-canvas effect. She too felt
she helped to generate this moistness, and was happy to be a part of the rich
mulch of woodland decay and fertility. She found herself blowing gently on the
back of her hand, to remind herself to stay conscious; and the act chased a
sensuous ripple through her body. She felt moist, inside and out.
And then as she closed her
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