By Olivia Walton
I’ve only just moved back into the old house. Dust gathers still. I try to coax the rooms to life but they are stubborn. They hold their shadows and their windows will not be unsealed. I worked at them slowly, the first few days. Room by room, I thought.
The first day: kitchen. Windows forced open (old paint like frayed bones on the floor), floor washed, lightbulbs replaced.
I lay once in this kitchen, there on that counter on that slab of wood and I counted the panels on the ceiling, and the shadows, leaf-shadows.
The second: walls painted white, eye-white. The third I hung new curtains and the fourth I bought a stove. But then I couldn’t do anything more. It was feeling way too fucking biblical. Anyway I had work to do, other work, things to finish.
Once, we left the stove on. I smelt the burning but it was a while before we ran to the kitchen to open the windows, switch of the stove, throw away the soup. Running down the passage laughing I nearly tripped on the clothes strewn there like... Like what? Footprints? Fingerprints.
So now I sit in the back garden, note book in my lap and a hat on. I have no writing room, no living room (living-room, isn’t the whole house for living?), no room for seating pretty guests with pretty talk and prune-black wine. The rooms squat blackly and they reject my advances and I will leave them. It is too cold in the house anyways. I will write on the lawn.
The pages are blank. Ideas loom in my head like dark shapes in the water. I ignore them. I am waiting for something else. Something with teeth.
Nothing comes.
Shit.
I consider rolling a cigarette. The tobacco is in the bedroom, on the floor. Like the mattress. Was it always on the floor? I think so.
When I stand there are marks on my legs, the red maps of the grass, twigs, leaves, lawn.
I return with a cigarette and some orange juice. The fresh kind, all the little pieces intact. Clouds are flat against the ceiling of the sky, flat and small, broken. Regular, though. Like they had been woven there. Still nothing comes. I draw: my hand (new-creased, nails a little too long), my folded knees (a dress, dark and crumpling), the back door. A crow on the neighbour’s fence, only didn’t the neighbours move out? A tree, pale straight trunk, pale wide leaves.
I remember planting a tree, once.
*
The first morning. The light is like air.
“I’ve never done this before.”
“What?”
“Woken up in my own house. I mean—a house that I own.”
“Sort of. And only half. Half sort of. But, me neither.”
“So it is kind of mine. Half sort of mine. And yours.”
Sunlight lay in a curve beneath his cheekbone. It left his eyes in shadow. Almost—the tips of his eyelashes were caught.
“Almost owned. We could say that.”
“Yes. Almost owned.”
“I like that.” A smile. “You want breakfast?”
Too easy. I moved closer. He bit my shoulder.
“Yes.”
Later, the sunlight was on the ceiling. In leaf patterns, window patterns. I reached my fingers over my head and pushed my palms against the wall. There was no lampshade, no cupboard. No curtains, no bedstead. Books, though. Some magazines. Bags, clothes, wineglasses, a cereal bowl, spoons.
He was sitting on the end of the bed. Near the top of his back spine-bones sat like pebbles beneath the skin. He reached his arms forward to the ground and I watched the shadows moving over his shoulders, under his arms, following the muscles as they pushed and pulled.
“I’m going to go outside. My jeans – “
“Near the door. I might join you.”
He faced me as he pulled his jeans up.
“You should.” Another smile. And as he reached the door: “Hey. You know what?”
“What?”
“You’re nice.”
I waited until I heard the backdoor close. Wrapping my coat around me I went to the window. The garden was wide and jumbled, a patchwork of neglect and sudden whims. A birdbath, a tree house. Restios, frangipanis, kikuyu. A rose bush, in the far corner. A pile of beach pebbles, never un-piled. Only collected. He was there, bending over a pot near the washing line. He’d rolled his jeans up and put on a beanie. I could hear him singing to himself. Something low and rolling. Warmth spread in my chest like honey.
I went downstairs. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table. I poured a glass and found my boots.
Outside, white-eyes flicked in the rosebush. He was at the edge of the lawn, crouched.
“Whiskey?”
He turned his head. Dirt in a line on his cheek. His mouth looked so red.
“Thanks.” Smiling.
“What’s that?”
He stood, had another sip. “I found this sapling thing, don’t know what it is but its pot is tiny. Want to plant it?”
Its leaves were fine, as though light and wind and rain would go straight through them. Behind them the soil was dark and wet, black almost. I thought of Dylan Thomas. Bible-black.
“Of course. Here?”
“I think so. It’s sunny enough.”
I put the glass down and we pushed our fingers into the earth.
*
Tall now, leaves against the sky and not the soil. Pale still. I lay back on the lawn, watching them. The leaves. The light didn’t quite go through them. It cut their shadows softly out against the kitchen floor.
When I got up dark was seeping into the corners of the garden.
Like ink.
I’d have to try again tomorrow.
