The cottage clung tenaciously to the farthest edge of your country, a tiny stone blip among the endless squally chatter of sea and sky. The approach was impossible by sea: jagged rocks and furious waves deterred any boat. Seagulls poured down to daily scraps and the wind could blow a dog off a chain, but after six months of hard work a new roof sat snug and the cottage’s thick stone walls shielded you from the weather that whined day after day to get in. The aim: to create a little bauble of serenity far away from that niggle of anxiety that now followed you in the city wherever you went. Because it wasn’t safe for your type to go to cinemas or public pools any more, to markets and shopping malls, anywhere that people would congregate. Then petrol stations became a worry. Theatres. Airports. And far, far away from all that Motl and you were determined to make your world like a furnace lit, a furnace of warmth and light. Fat lovely life of love, in your little glow home, and how fiercely you cherished it. The pleasing circularity of your life. You were reclaiming childhood here, and simplicity; shedding the city crust.
Free yourself of ties as a fish breaks through a net.
The three of them spin, talking through the bewilderment.
‘Look. The bed’s wider than it’s long …’
‘… which only happens when you’re rich.’
‘The coat hangers in the cupboard are really stubborn …’
‘… they won’t come off.’
‘The shower head’s as big as a dinner plate …’
‘You know, I don’t think Mum and Dad have anything to do with this. It’s all too … careful.’
‘They’re not here. Anywhere. They’re not. I know it.’
At Mouse’s bitter conclusion, absolute quiet. Because they’re utterly alone. And the realisation is like stepping from the warmth of a fire-toasty house into the formal cold of a deep winter night. Tidge paces the room. Brushes the walls. Recoils. Too cold, too soundproofed. Mouse slides down the door, his hands cupped in horror at his mouth. Your worrier, always thinking too much. His anxiety’s demanding like a toddler fresh from sleep.
‘The window!’ Tidge exclaims suddenly. They scramble.
A street. An old office building across the road. The eyes of its empty windows as blank as the freshly dead. Everything abandoned, everything quiet. Traffic lights changing but no traffic anywhere, not a car, not a bike. Endlessly and obediently the traffic lights changing but no people anywhere. No life.
‘It feels like the proper world has stopped,’ Tidge says quietly, in wonder, pressing into thick glass that doesn’t bend.
‘Like we’re the last ones left,’ his twin brother whispers.
Soli shivers like a pony. As do you.
For the world has lost its youth, and the times begin to wax old.
Motl and you battened down the hatches on your country’s strife. Created your little bauble of enchantment far away from everything while you sat the new politics out. And the new life was good, varnished with love and light. Motl was the teacher. He was born to it, he should have done it from the start. He’d grab the kids by the shoulders and tell them to go to the window and look, look, you wallies, because there was never nothing there. A cloud like a rocking horse!’ ‘A one-legged seagull!’ A snail’s frilled foot!’ ‘Look at the sea inhaling and exhaling but it’s the tide and it’s governed by the moon.’ ‘Look at the stained-glass window of that grasshopper’s wing, that’s your art lesson.’ ‘Biology, the carpet beetle’s defensive curl’ ‘Don’t ask me one more time, What are we doing next? Work it out for yourself! Explore everything, debate, rip the world apart. I want thinkers. Children who question everything. Who have vigorous, audacious, independent thought!’ And eventually, they forgot to ask, What are we doing next?
Taking it in turns to dance with their cheeks to his belt buckle and their feet on the pedals of his shoes as you’d sing your favourite song line, ‘I will wrap you in kisses’, and demonstrate. And everyone rushing outside when dolphins leapt past and standing in a row and whooping at the lovely oblivious joy of them, and at night Motl and you lifting each child solemnly to the high canopy of stars and telling them not to worry because you’re all in the magic house now, it will look after you, you’re safe here, you’re safe.
And now, and now, you wear them like a coat. Their squirmy demanding heat. That can never be taken from you. You envy the air in the room they’re in, rubbing up close. The silence here is a presence, constantly watching, listening, taking note. You need to be released into the outrageously beautiful world. Can’t. Bear. This.
The sun and all light have forever fused themselves into my heart and upon my skin.
Out of the window a ferocious sunset falls away. The colour of blood in it. Lightning spits and flickers in the distance as if it’s a faulty fluorescent light. A tree right outside tosses its branches at the approaching storm like a horse spooked. ‘No panicking, all right.’ Soli. A tremor in her voice she can’t iron out. She checks her new watch. So, obediently, do her little brothers. They all received them on your final night. They say 1707. The kids don’t get it. What happened to the past day? They woke just after 4 p.m., on the bed, in a line, on their backs. They’ve never slept so late in their lives. And they’re still tired but it’s an unearthly tired as if some enormous rake is dragging them down and pulling them back into sleep.
They’re fighting it. Tidge: shaking his arms like an actor warming up. Mouse: jogging fast on the spot. Soli: biting her lip because she’s the eldest and is used to getting what she wants and no way is that sleep having her back. Because of the things that now happen in it. Because it can’t be trusted. Because of the terror that could envelop them if unconsciousness, once again, gets its chance.
We have got ready the fire whose smoke will enwrap them: and if they implore help, helped shall they be with water like molten brass which will scald their faces.
Motl and you wormed that fat little teapot of a house into all their hearts. You both dreaded a blunting when wonder would not cradle them but it never came, for the two of you pulled happiness around them like a wondrous cape. So much of it in this briny new life! You’d forgotten how to be a mother immersed in Project Indigo, but Salt Cottage taught you that a nanny makes you afraid of your kids and it’s so much richer to do it all yourself. They chisel out your deepest feelings, your wildest love and rage and frustration and euphoria, they haul you to the coalface of life. You could be distant, remote without them; but as a parent you were forced to participate. And to your shock you revelled in it. These were the shining hours; the kids burnished your life.
There were complaints, of course. About the new poorness. Crockery chipping and not being replaced, duvets stuffed with newspaper, baths topped up with saucepans from the stove. Complaints about windows encrusted with salt because there wasn’t a cleaning lady any more and