Thursday, July 05, 2007

The Early Morning Walk

Turn left at the junction into Mulberry Gardens, a small development of starter homes built in the 1980s to house the commuters flooding into the area hoping to catch the coat tails of the financial boom encapsulating the nearby city. You’ll see the quaint, neat lawns, some levelled with concrete to provide a hard-stand for the car, even though the road sees little traffic thanks to its no-through-road status. The numbers run even on the left, 2-8, and odd on your right, numbers 1-9. There is a piece of wasteland, grown over with brambles and nettles where you may presume house number ten should have been, but it’s not. Perhaps the developer ran short of money; perhaps there is simply not enough room for another dwelling, who knows? It’s something to ponder while you locate the small path that runs between numbers six and eight. The sun is about to make itself known, beyond, over the hills. It’s time to hurry.

Find the oak tree. From here you can climb up through the larger lower branches and get an unobstructed view of the cul-de-sac. But there’s no moment to pause here. Listen carefully and you may catch the drifting clang of the alarm clock before it’s silenced by a hand, or pillow. There is a light in the upstairs window of number three, visible through a crack in the curtains where yesterday they were hastily tugged together to shut out the night. And, in a blink, the light is extinguished. Watch as it travels down the stairs and into the back of the house, because this is where the kitchen is to be found with its stainless steel kettle, crumb-coated toaster and the worktop stained with rings of tea from dirty mugs, spilled wine and the years of frantic food preparation while hosting amateur dinner parties.

The light travels to the front of the house again. As it’s scattered through the rippled glass panels in the UPVC door, you notice the empty milk bottles, a folded piece of paper conveying the cancelling of the daily delivery, or perhaps holding a cheque for payment of the monthly account, rolled into the top of one of the bottles awaiting the arrival of the milkman. An archaic tradition, one seen rarely anywhere but rural locations such as here in Mulberry Gardens, where the distance to the local supermarket makes even the high price of milk in glass bottles worth paying for. And then, in the flick of a switch, the light is swallowed by the eerie half-dark of dawn breaking.

Watch as a figure emerges. They turn right, coming towards you. The foliage of the great oak, and height of your perch, hides you even as the sun makes its first forays over the distant tree-lined horizon. Still you hold your breath as they pass, a smudge of black beneath you. It’s time to drop down and follow before you lose sight of them in the dark.

The soft, dew-dipped grass masks the clump of boots as we watch the figure move down the footpath towards the faint sparkle of the city, some half hour away by road. Brush past the creeping fingers of ivy that cascade like a swarm of locusts down the pitted brick wall and then you’ll be at the twisting lane that runs to the farm, its high banks sprouting thin tree trunks and hard chalk flints to catch careless drivers or distracted cyclists. And that’s when you hear it, the hoot of the train as it wriggles through the valley on its wheeled belly, so faint, like the smell of jasmine on the breeze as you pass the stile on the boundary of the fields.

Step across the wooden plank and down and in an instant long wet stems of grass shroud everything below your knees, the colour of your trousers darkening where the fabric’s weave draws in the moisture as you walk. There are large, drunken bees already out to harvest the pollen, buzzing amongst the half-opened blooms that are dotted along the hedgerows and across the grass of the fields. Solitary trees stand guard, acting as nature’s scarecrows; just as ineffective as the bundle of rags and straw flopping like a fish out of water when the wind whips unmercifully over the rutted earth, crucified on scaffold poles like some hideous parody of Christ. And there it is again, nearer this time, the same aching sound of wounded cattle too exhausted to fight against the mud that is claiming them, the train mooing out to warn early morning drivers and passengers that it is coming and to clear the crossings and prepare for arrivals and departures. It’s time to quicken our stride.

At the end of the field lies a gate leading to a tight, narrow path, the grass balding in the centre to show earth smoothed by the feet of humans and dogs. But you will ignore this and instead duck under the barbed wire to follow the figure ahead of us. The sun is up enough now that we can see it’s a woman. She is not hurrying, but she has purpose to her walk. She is dressed in a light coat and dress, her white shoes looking like rabbits’ tails bobbing in the grass. She has not noticed you and there is something in her posture to suggest she wouldn’t stop nor hurry if she knew you were there, behind her, stalking. It’s only now that you notice the rumble, the clack of the tracks as the train approaches.

The undergrowth is getting dense and more of your clothes are wet now, but you know they’ll dry quickly once the sun pulls itself up above the surrounding hills, its rays breaking through the splatter of clouds that are skipping across the sky, burning away the moisture to leave a hot and humid day. But then without warning you’re clear of the trees, the fields and the snagging thorns and stinging nettles. There is no time to react. There is the train. Loud, black, engineered metal stampeding on the rails. It’s deafening, but still a single sound can be picked out, like a flattened note in a blues scale. It’s the sound that makes you look up.

Only then do you realise it’s you who has spoken. One word. Jump. By that time it’s too late to save yourself.

7 comments:

purplesime said...

While I was redrafting Unresolved I found a small nugget of an idea in my notebook, something I was probably thinking of including.

However, while trimming the out-of-control jasmine on my shed roof this morning it became this. It's just something that doesn't fit with Nathan anymore but it didn't deserve to be left as a small nugget in my notebook. At least I didn't think it needed to be discarded. You may happily disagree!

purplesimon out...

SleekPelt said...

I'm glad you didn't discard it, Simon. I really enjoyed this piece. It actually got my heart thumping a bit!

Anonymous said...

Simon,

First I need to apologise. I hung on with your blog open for an eternity today. I was so busy at work, I had twenty or so windows open and I didn't realise yours was way back in the mix until I closed out this evening!

Seems you open in a cul de sac, yes? Nice detail: the cul de sac.... lined with "starter homes [that were] built in the '80s...". And not a bad repetition in the second paragraph, then.

The camera effect is interesting, except I think you have a more rich setting here to accommodate a set of characters. Perhaps you're edging toward first person? E.g., "I climb the Oak's large low branches and get an unobstructed view of the cul de sac".

I don't mean to put ideas into your head or force my hand, I simply note the more direct the more powerful the story becomes.

I like the return to the numbers on the houses. It's an interesting hook. Without laboring it at all, you deliver an awareness of the setting to the reader, that the houses are identical except for the numbers. It's light and unimposing and revealing.

I wonder if the city could have a name? Once you name the city, then perhaps there's some detail of a bridge or a pulsating red light (if there's a kind of tower) or a spire? I'm thinking of Norwich, and really more of a Cathedral, but that' s only because I had been looking at some personal pics of Norwich. Could be any city right now, when I think detail--the name, and a main site of some type--would help the reader to situate or to place the distance between the sac and the city.

By the way, "the faint sparkle of the city" made me see evening, so I was surprised by the nature--the bees, and so forth. I was also surprised by the ending. Mainly, I suppose, I didn't see what was dire given "you" was being addressed. The reader can place themself easily in to second pov and with that their frame of mind.

So I am vying for first person pov and more what's going on inside of the character. Some directives such as I think, I remember, I believe, might help you to roll out this morose figure.

You're generous to share your work here. Truly, you are. That this setting and idea came from a notebook is wonderful for you to have. Use it to play, to shape. And have fun, absolutely!

And otherwise, how is the new dad hanging in there? September, I believe, it's coming? Sooner?

wow. Makes me happy for you and yours,

-gina+bb

purplesime said...

Sleek: Glad you enjoyed it and the decision to keep it and use the idea was a worthwhile one. Your comments warmed me.

purplesime said...

Gina: I don't mind that you had my blog open all day long, I don't check those stats (or any other stats) all that often anyway.

Thanks for the ideas on making this better. Yes, naming the city could help even if I'm unsure what city it might be! As for the sparkling city, it's more about the first light of dawn that makes things look alive and sparkle rather than the twinkling lights at night, but I can see where the confusion comes from and will draft again!

I wanted to get away from the usual POV, as a tryout, but as often happens when you (or Ing) suggest a POV change it's usually for the better. I'll see and let you know. Second POV is really hard to get right, I know I haven't done it here, but I wanted to try. A bit of character would then fit nicely here and plump out the story, which I have to say I was never thinking of making so morose, it just happened like that.

Oh, baby could be any time from Sunday 15 July. That's 37 weeks now. I'll be keeping people posted! Expect an email at some point to announce, it won't be on this blog. We think early August is the time it'll come. I have a new piece of work in my book (but left at home today) that deserves my attention. It's very, very depressing, but it is real. Truly real to me anyway. It's hard to get it down, being so personal and a difficult subject, but... we'll see.

Well, let's not leave on such a downer! Thanks for popping by, for reading and, most importantly, for commenting.

As for generosity - it's probably more a mix of vanity and shame! I'll let you ponder that!

I'm off now to think some creative things about mobile phones so I can help my client sell more along with my soul...

BTW: you're a star for coming here, for linking me and for helping me improve beyond measure with my work.

Thank you.

purplesimon out...

ginab said...

Okay...so we're into 24 July. I suspect you're a father, and I am thinking, having a memory of a friend and her husband having their first born when it rained for two days straight while she, yes, was in labour...

by chance would your wee one be the instigator (sp) for the deluge?

(joke)

I wish you every happiness and I hope everyone you love is warm and dry.

-ginab

Anonymous said...

hey there daddio and the missus and the wee-willy-less-wink,

just wanted to say THANK YOU for linking 'us' to this:

http://www.litro.co.uk/fiction.htm

by all means!

-ginab