After a while he went back in, and watched the fire till it sank down into its cradle, then he put the guard up, locked the back door and went to bed.
41
I walked along beside the wall, to the gate, but the old gate was no longer there, just those rusted posts that somehow were still familiar. Hello, walls. I thought time was playing tricks. Down along the lane I stopped and listened. I wanted him to have followed me, my only friend, that clumsy silly man who was all wrong. Damn, still there! The sound of water running down under the road, under the house, down and away under the woods and meadows, its channels splitting and diverging all over the place and somewhere no doubt in that mythical mystical mine under the ground, where all the little streams combine into one great subterranean lake. Six hundred years I was a stone, six hundred a drop of water, six hundred, the sunlight that passed once a day on that one spot on a wall no longer in existence. Six hundred more I was the ditch in the lane a few hundred feet down that curly leafy lane from our holiday house, I was the black strings of slimy dirt hanging like thin teeth over a gap more than a foot wide, I suppose, don’t ask me, shaped indeed like a mouth. And gurgle gurgle shine shine went the water over long green strands of hair. That’s where I’m going.
Clear as day, all that time. Walking down the lane with the limp roll of the rug gathered up and hugged close: this is why I came here. I should have done this years ago. I see my way, nothing’s changed. I like that. Nothing changes round here. If they ever touch my wood I’ll kill them. I remember the exact turning with the thorn tree, up above the Long Wights, the tracks never driven. I remember the car rocking and bouncing on the rutted track, creeping forward, the bushes on either side closing in and scraping the windows, and everything so dark that I couldn’t even see the place ahead where the midden darkness of an empty space where once there was a gate waited like a fall into unconsciousness.
Not that it makes any sense or any difference. I know it’s not him any more, but I’m getting him out of that place. Over the years it has lain inside me, foul and wet, black and freezing, rank, green and stinky. I walk. It’s a climb, I breathe hard, never thinking how much further there is to go, one foot in front of the other, stars and moon above, on and on, up and up, till at last here it is, the approach, my feet slipping in the grass that’s covered it all. The gate-place, fully dark between the faint leafy tremblings on either side. Still advancing, my side hurting, I find myself laughing. Such fools. Life’s wasted on the living. In the gateway I stand still. When you reach the darkest place, if you stand long enough you begin to see things. The old lost field stretches before me. Don’t move. Listen. Water running underground. Big sky. Because this is impossible and not to be borne, I have emptied myself, there’s only my walking feet, my breath, the smudged and blurry picture my eyes see, moving as I move. Go on, slightly towards the left.
It takes a while. I have to get down on hands and knees and feel my way beneath the hedge, pushing under, not here, not there, stopping, listening, as if you might give me a sign, as if a voice might call me, this way, this way!
Not that I can see but I know that this is it, this void. Suddenly my hands feel nothing but space and damp air. Cold. I’ve been saving the torch for this. Now I switch it on, get down and turn myself into a mole. I’ve done this before. Head first I go, flattened, crawling. In here there’s no sky, no world, no life. The light jerks and swerves over low walls of ridged mud, curtains of mould that hang like cobwebs, dripping serenely. There’s no time. Whatever’s left of me is gone to ground, watching, wondering at the strange dream. Perhaps I can never come back. Perhaps this is my end.
Oh.
There you are.
You’ve been washed many many times. You have no face. Oh my boy, you’re flat. And what are they? Secretions. You are nothing but secretions. You’re not even skin and bones, just empty rags. Your brown boots, rotted. Your ripped green t-shirt, filthy dirty, what’s left of
