Saturday Sample: Invisible on Thursdays by Peppy Barlow, white wine,

 

ELMSTEAD 1978

 

I am outside the gates of the village school.  Waiting for my son to emerge so I can drive home and get on with – who knows what I was getting on with in those days.  A bit of writing.  A lot of trying to reorder my life in my head. A ritual walk round the hill while he was at school.  I really had nothing I had to be doing but somehow every moment mattered.  I had convinced myself that drawing in and concentrating, even when I didn’t know what on, would make things happen.  I was like a child who thinks if you wish hard enough the world will bend to your will.

I see him.  He is wandering in the playground, chatting to a friend, completely oblivious of the boiling cauldron that is his mother standing fifty feet away.

 ‘Adam,’ I call to him, ‘come on now.  I’ve got things to do.’ 

 

He doesn’t seem to hear, or he has learnt to edit me out.  I shout louder. 

‘Adam, get over here, now.’ 

One or two of the mothers turn and look at me.  I can see remarks being passed. 

Adam looks in my direction but he doesn’t move.  He just stands there looking as though I am a feature in the landscape or a summer squall.  Something he can do nothing about.  Something he’s got used to.

This time I shriek, ‘Adam get in this bloody car right now or I’ll go home without you!’ 

He looks at his friend as if to say, ‘Oh well, I better go or my mum will explode,’ and begins moving towards me. 

 

Mothers watch him as he passes. He walks towards me cloaked in their silent sympathy.

‘Now that’s a woman I could be friends with,’ a voice at my side.

I turn to see a small, dark woman dressed in Wellington boots, jeans and a battered Barbour jacket held together with string.  She is much shorter than me but there was a sort of concentrated energy that emanates from her. Two black button eyes that have me fixed to the spot.

‘Everyone else thinks I’m invisible.  You seem to exist,’ she says.

‘That’s a very odd thing to say.  Of course I exist.’

To be honest I am a little scared to find someone else in my landscape, someone alive at least.

‘Then what’s all the shouting about?  If you exist you can whisper,’ she says.

‘He doesn’t seem to hear me if I don’t yell at him.’

‘He hears you.  We can all hear you.  You make enough noise to waken the dead.’

‘Shit, am I making a spectacle of myself?’ I say.

‘I wouldn’t worry. I don’t exist either,’ she says, ‘You want to come back for a cup of tea?’

I could have said ‘Oh no, I have to go home and concentrate on bending reality to my will.’  Instead I say, ‘Yes’.

My new friend gets into a battered Land Rover with a girl and two boys and I follow her back through the lanes.  It is spring.  White blossom in the hedgerows.  Daffodils planted under the trees by the side of the road.  There were daffodils when my sister died.  When we drove to the funeral.  It must have been this time of year. I thought then, I still think, how can anyone want to die when there are daffodils?

 

The Land Rover stops outside a beamed cottage with a broken gate and she unpacks children and a sack of animal feed.  A ragged dog stands at the gate wagging its tail. A couple of chickens are patrolling something which looks like a Belfast sink with bits of cast iron farm machinery attached to it. 

To begin with Adam won’t get out of the car.  Thinking about it now he probably found any alteration in my mad routine quite unsettling.  I don’t yell at him this time.  Just tell him he can come in and play and we will go home soon.

The others are waiting for us by the gate and we all process up to the front door with the dog and chickens taking up the rear.

Indoors, the kind of chaos that children and animals and art demand.  Her husband is an artist she tells me. A sculptor.  Author of the sink in the front garden and other works about the house.  She had been a fabric designer before they started having children.  There are two goats and a pony out the back, she adds, as a sort of afterthought.

She moves a dog bowl off the table and pushes odd bits of bridle to one side before putting the kettle on.  Adam has disappeared to explore with the boys and we are alone. 

We talk.  She says she had noticed me at the school for several weeks. She thought I looked rather standoffish and wasn’t sure whether to approach me.  And then today, the shouting had been so loud she thought I might need protection and had come over. 

Protection seemed an odd word for her to use and then I thought, perhaps that is what I needed.  I felt very exposed up there on the hill alone in my little cottage.  Perhaps I was shouting to fill the space.  Hoping someone would hear me.

‘You don’t look as though you have much in common with the crowd outside the school gate,’ she says.

‘Nor do you,’ I say.

‘I’m forever having their children round for tea and play and rides on the pony but they never ask my kids back.’

‘I don’t ask them round.’

‘Well, you may have it right.’

‘Only because I think it might take up too much of my time.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ she says, fixing me with her black button eyes, ‘Am I taking your precious time?’

‘No, no, I didn’t mean that.  It’s just that I am writing a book. I keep thinking if I can just get it finished I will be able to go back out into the world again.’

‘What world is that then?’

‘I used to be a journalist, before I had Adam.  In Ireland.  I lived with another journalist and his children… and… then I fell in love with someone else… chaos.  This is like being on a retreat. I don’t know how else to get things back in order.’

‘Order, now that’s something I don’t worry much about,’ she says, glancing round the kitchen.

I don’t say anything.  I don’t tell her how I walk the hill each day and go into the church and don’t exactly pray but walk round and round saying a mantra which is supposed to bring about the realisation of all you wish for.

‘I see you walking round the hill, same everyday,’ she says. ‘See you when I’m going to take the eggs to the shop.  Is that part of your getting things back in order?’

I look at her.  Is she watching me?  Can she see me?  This is odd.

 

‘My name is Persephone, by the way,’ she says, ‘Persey for short.  I’m thinking of changing it.’

‘My name is Peppy, short of Penelope.  It really annoys me, the name they gave me.  Always waiting for someone to turn up.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You must know the story.  Her husband Odysseus goes away to fight in the Trojan Wars and doesn’t come back for twenty years.  While she waits she is solicited by suitors who want her and her kingdom. But she tells them she is  weaving the winding sheet for her father-in-law and will only choose when she has finished the work.  Every day she weaves and every night she unpicks it so that she doesn’t have to make a choice. Endless bloody waiting.’

‘Oh, who are you waiting for?’

‘Anyone’ll do,’ I lie. 

In truth I am still waiting for the fallout from Ireland.  The man I had abandoned my life for in the hope that he would realise he couldn’t live without me.  He was showing no signs so far.

‘We’re all waiting for someone,’ Persey says.

I look at her.  She’s looking down at the mug in her hands.

‘But you’re married.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

She doesn’t seem to want to say anything more. 

We go outside to find the children.  Just by the back door there is a moulded bronze of her pregnant self.  One of her husband’s works of art.

‘What do you think?’ she asks as she turns to find me looking at it.

‘Looks like a spare,’ I say without thinking.

‘That’s rather how I feel,’ she says, casually putting her hand on the swollen belly.  ‘I don’t think I can have any more children.’

A little bit later, with dusk falling and the children parked in front of the television, she says, ‘Have you had your chart read?’ 

‘My what?’

‘Your astrological chart.’

‘I read the silly things in the paper sometimes but they’re just for fun.  I did take one quite seriously when I was about to leave Ireland.  It said something about going on a journey to find out who I really was.  I was on my way here.’

 ‘I’ve been to an astrologer,’ Persey says, ‘I’m learning how to do it.  Can I have a go at yours – before I get to know you too well?’

Another lunatic looking for signs from the gods.  This was hopeful. 

‘I’m learning the Tarot,’ I say, offering my madness in exchange, ‘I’ve got my sister’s pack and a couple of books.  They scare me to death.’

‘Scare you, why?’

‘I don’t know.  I feel they have some kind of hidden power.  I lay them out.  I consult the book.  And then Adam wants something and I don’t like leaving them lying there on the table when I’m not in the room.  I feel as though they may come alive and go out into the world to create havoc.   Alright, I know, I’m mad.’

‘You think she saw it coming?’ Persey asks after a short pause.

‘What?’

‘I’ve heard about it.  We all have.’

‘Oh that.  I don’t know.  She talked about dying a lot.  Had been talking about it for as long as I can remember.  We stopped taking any notice.’

 

‘But she did it.’

‘Father always said she would cry wolf once too often.’

‘Must have taken courage.’

‘I suppose so.’

My sister, Charlotte, had died just before I arrived home.  She was babysitting for my brother and his wife.  They also had a house on the top of the hill. They went out. They came home.  They had made up a bed for her in the study.  The room with the guns.  They heard something in the night. They thought it was the wind.   It was a wild night.  She had taken a gun.  Walked out into the wind and the rain.  Walked to the corner where the road fell down into the valley.  Climbed a barbed wire fence and shot herself.  The local farmer found her the next day.  He spotted her sheepskin coat.  Thought it was one of his animals in trouble. 

I passed the place every day on my walk.  Out across the top of the hill, down into the valley and up past the bend in the road with a view out to the horizon where a line of trees seemed to stand on the edge of the world.  A thorn tree in the field where she was found.  This is where she left from.

‘If you’re going to die, that is a beautiful spot,’ I say.

We sit in silence. 

‘So give me your birth details and I’ll see what I can do,’ Persey says after a while.

I wondered then if it was a good idea.  Did your fate run out in front of you like a giggling child until it delivered you to the edge of an abyss?  Had my sister looked too far and not liked what she’d seen?   Did I really want to know?

‘Course,’ I say.

 

Notebook – Belfast 1970

 by Peppy Barlow

steaming mug of tea

 

There is a clotted circle of glass in the centre of the door.  A spy hole.  She assumes there is someone behind it.  She has rung the bell.  Is someone looking at her standing in the street?  If she put her eye to the glass, she wonders, would she be able to see in?  See the other eye.  She thinks not.  The windows on either side of the door are boarded up.  It is not intended that people on the outside should look in.

 

            The door opens.  There is a man standing in front of her.  A policeman. without his cap.  A man in his fifties maybe.  Stout and grey.  Tall.  A massive figure filling the doorway. 

‘Yes, Miss,’ he says.  Eyes on the street behind her.

‘I’ve come about the notebook I lost. It must have dropped out of the car.’

‘You’re Miss……’

‘Williams.  Jenny.  You phoned the man I was interviewing yesterday.  Said someone had handed it in.’

‘Miss Williams.  That’d be right.  You better come in.’

 

            She passes him.  Catches the smell of his heavy uniform.  Waits as he checks the street and bolts the door.  Shutting them into the half light of the reception area. 

 

            There is another man sitting behind a wooden counter.  A heavy black telephone and a large book on the polished surface in front of him.  The first man goes slowly up to the counter.  Speaks quietly.  Almost in a whisper.  Not, she feels, in order to prevent her from hearing.  More so as not to drown out the muffle sounds of the street outside.  It is the tone of a sentinel.  ‘It’s the young lady.  The lady who lost her notebook.’

 

            The second man looks at her.  He is old.  Very close to retirement she thinks.  But his eyes are blue.  Startlingly blue.  Unexpected.  Like a mountain lake in summer. 

‘Indeed.  I have it here,’ he says, ‘Would this be what you’re looking for?’

He reaches under the counter.  Places her red reporter’s notebook carefully on the top.

‘Yes, that’s it.  Thank god you found it.  I’d be lost without it.  A whole week’s work.  Lost.’

 

            He opens the large book.  Turns it on the counter towards her.  She moves forward.  He takes a pen from his top pocket.  Holds it out to her.

‘If you’d just sign for it.’

‘Say I’ve got it.’

‘We wouldn’t want it to be going to the wrong person.’

‘I don’t think it’d be much use to anyone but me.’

 

            She takes the pen. He places a large square finger over the space where she should sign.  She notices that the hairs on the back of his hand are grey.  The skin freckled.  Ingrained with dirt.  Earth.  Brown earth.  Not the grime of the city.  She imagines him working a small plot of land.  Digging.  In his shirt sleeves.  Pulling patiently at the weeds.  Throwing them to the edge.  Stopping to survey his work.

‘You’re a reporter then?’ he says.

‘Of a kind.  I write about schools.  I’m an educational journalist.’

‘A journalist. That’s a new thing isn’t it Joe?  To have a journalist in our midst and not to have her asking about how we go about upholding the law.’

She thinks she detects the shadow of a smile.

‘Do you get many of them round here?’ she asks.

‘Not us.  There’s not enough that happens to us.   Not in a small place like this.  It’s the army they’re interested in.’

‘That comes into it.  What I write. It affects the schools as much as anything else.  More sometimes.  I was in a school this morning.  A Catholic school.  They’ve had the army billeted there for months.’

‘Ah, I’d say it does.’

If there was a smile, it’s gone now.  The man just looks tired.  Weary.

 

            The room is full of silence.  She wonders if it is finished.  If she can go. She picks up the book.  Puts it in her bag.  Turns to the other man.

‘Well, I suppose I should be going.  Back to work.’

‘I’ll just take a look for you,’ he says.  Goes back to the door.  Puts his eye to the spy hole.

‘Ah no.  You’d better stay in here for a while.  There’s a patrol coming down the street.  It’d be better if you waited.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do.’

 

            She is standing in the middle of the room.  Half way to the door.  It is difficult to know what to do now.  She looks at the man by the door.  He shifts.  Looks at the floor.  Then looks up. Smiling. 

‘I’m sure you’d like a cup of tea.  While you’re waiting.’

‘I wouldn’t like to put you to any trouble.

‘Sure, it’s no trouble, is it Bob.  We always make one about this time.’

‘Then thank you.  That would be very nice.  I only get given coffee when I’m interviewing people.’

‘You can have coffee if you’d rather.  I have some in the jar.’

‘No, no.  I meant I’d rather have tea.  I like tea better.  That’s what I meant.’

‘Then I’ll get on with it.’

 

            He moves across the room.  Behind the counter.  To a door at the side.

‘Would be ready for a cup of tea yourself now Sergeant?’

‘Indeed I would Joe.  And let’s find the young lady a chair.  We can’t have you standing there like that.’  She looks round.  There is a bench against the wall.  Somewhere to sit.

‘I can sit there.’ 

‘No, no.  That wouldn’t be right,’ he says. ‘’I’ll find you a chair.’

 

            The Sergeant goes into the room at the side.   Brings out a chair.  Comes round the counter and puts it down.  She sits.  Feeling like a child at a high table. She can hardly see over.  He sees her.  Laughs.   

 ‘Oh no, that won’t do either. Here, you can have my stool.’

He comes round again with the stool.

‘There now.  You can perch on that and think you’re in some posh hotel.’

She thanks him.  Looks into the blue eyes.  There is laughter in them now.

Back on the other side of the counter he comes and stands opposite her.  His blue eyes twinkling.

 

            Joe comes back in with three steaming mugs of tea.  Goes back to get the sugar and four biscuits on a china plate.  She takes one.  Joe retreats.  Takes up his position at the end of the counter.

‘This is nice,’ she says, ‘Exciting.  I didn’t expect to end up drinking tea with the law’ 

The Sergeant laughs.

‘Ah, then, life is full of surprises.  We didn’t expect to be entertaining a young lady, did we Joe?’ 

‘We did not.’

They all laugh.

 

            Another silence.  She sips her tea.  Wonders if she should ask them about their jobs.  A wrong response in the face of their hospitality perhaps. The sergeant speaks first.

‘You’re English, I take it.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So what brings you to this place?’

‘I always get asked that question.  As if it’s a form of madness to want to be in Ireland.’’

‘It might be. Especially now.’

‘Well I like it.  I’m interested.  I’m going to be living in Dublin soon.’

‘That would have nothing to do with us,’ he says.

 

           

            More silence.  This time Joe speaks.

‘Aren’t you ever afraid now? Being about on your own.’

‘Should I be?  It all seems very personal to me.’

‘You’re safe enough round here perhaps.  I wouldn’t like to think of you in a Catholic area.’

‘I’ve never had any trouble. I try not to take sides.  Why would they bother me?’

‘You need only have trouble once,’ says the sergeant, ‘There are guns out there and they’re not afraid to use them.’

‘The army have guns,’ she says, not knowing whether this is a conversation she should be having.’

‘The army are English.’

‘Do you think I’d look English at the end of a gun sight?’

‘You look different surely,’ says the Sergeant, ‘We know our own.’

She looks straight at him.  The blue eyes have taken on a milky haze.  It is impossible to tell how serious he is being.   Joe interveners.  ‘Ah, we mustn’t be frightening the young lady Bob.  She’ll be safe enough, doing what she does.’

 

            The Sergeant turns and goes into the inner room.  Joe moves towards her a little.

‘You mustn’t mind him Miss.  It’s the way things are.  He’s from near the border himself.’

‘That’s alright.  I expect it was something I said.  I’d like to be going now though. Could you see if it’s safe?’

 

            Joe goes to the door.  She follows him.  He puts his eye to the glass.

‘Can I look through that?’ she says, ‘I’ve always wondered what it was like to see through one of those?’  He stands back.  She feels the heat of his body as she moves past him. She looks.  Redbrick.  White doors. The line of houses opposite smoothed into a circle of symmetry. 

 

            A child moves into view. Stands dead centre. Looking straight at her.  At the spy hole.  As though he is posing for picture.  She notices that he has something in his hand.  He is motionless.  His face immobile.  Without expression.  The face of a grown man supported on the body of a child.  He can’t be more than eight years old.

 

            Now.  He is moving.  Lifting his arm.  The hand with the thing it . He is taking it above his head.  Like a dancer.  Moving.  Aiming.  The thing is leaving him.  Coming towards her.  Across the space that divides them.  It smashes against the door.  And everything goes black.  She jumps back. Against the man behind her.  He weight absorbing the shock.  He turns her.  Takes her hand away from her face.  Looks worried.  Afraid.

‘Are you alright Miss?’

‘No.  Yes. I’m fine.  It was a child.  He threw something.’

‘Little bastards.  They’re always doing that.  I’ll see to him.’

He moves towards the door.

‘No, no.  It was only a lump of mud. Leave it.  No harm done’

‘He’ll be gone now anyway.  They don’t hang around.’

‘Well, I’ll be going then.’

‘If you’re sure you’re alright.’

‘I’m sure.’

 

            He opens the door.  Looks up and down the street.

‘There now.  All clear.’

‘Thank you.  I’m sorry to have caused you so much trouble.’

‘You’ve been no trouble to me Miss.  Brightened our day.’

‘And thank you for the tea.’

‘You’re welcome.  Come again when you’re next in the area.’

‘I might do that.’

 

            She walks away.  Down the empty street. Turns at the corner to see Joe cleaning the spy hole with a large white handkerchief.

 

            Three weeks later a man throws a child’s satchel from a passing car.  It lands on the step in front of the police station.  And explodes. None dead. One injured.  The newspaper report doesn’t give the name.  

About the author 

Peppy Barlow is a founder member of the Woven Theatre Company, a playwright and screen writer. She teaches Creative Writing at the Ipswich Institute.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carpet

by Peppy Barlow

 

lemonade with ice

There was a woman who made carpets.  She sat by the side of the road all day, everyday, weaving.  And she sold her carpets to the people passing on the road.   But there was one carpet she wove only for herself, threading the bright colours a stitch or two everyday.  It took her twenty years to make her carpet and when she had finished she took it inside and put it on the floor of her house.  Her family walked on it, sat on it, slept and ate off it for another twenty years and then the woman died, leaving all she had to her two sons.

“Let’s get rid of that old carpet,” was the first thing they said and threw it out onto the roadside where their children played in the dust.  

“Look,” cried the youngest girl, “Its grandmother’s carpet,” and she turned a corner of the warn cloth to see the colours still bright on the other side.

So the children turned the carpet over and sat on blue and green and fiery red and found a thousand games to play on the pattern the old woman had made when her life was new.

Now

By Peppy Barlow

hot chocolate

 

She had woken in the night.  Sure they were being watched.    She got up to look. The moon bright over the autumn  fields.  The road clear.  She must have been imagining things.

Now It is morning.  She draws the curtains. A clear, sunny day.  Leaves carpeting the lawn.  The hedge no hiding place for an intruder.   No one there.  She had chosen the cottage because it stood alone.   Now she is not so sure.

She turns and calls to her son that it is time to get up.  He answers from downstairs where he is probably watching television.

At breakfast he asks her where his sports kit is and grumbles when she admits she forgot to wash it.  He stuffs it into his bag and gives her a perfunctory kiss and is gone.  Up the path to the garage where the bike is kept and then off down the road to school.  He is nine years old and growing fast.  She wonders idly what will become of him.

Now it is time for work.  She clears the breakfast things and puts the kettle on again.  A second cup of tea.  Then to the table under the window which serves as her desk during the day.  She opens her notebook and sits.  She is working on a story.  A story that one day she will tell her son.

Now there is someone there.   A man.   Standing outside the window by the back door. For a moment she is frozen in the chair.  Then she gets up and goes to the door.

‘Yes, can I help you?’  she says.  As if she was some kind of receptionist in her own life.  He looks up as though he didn’t expect anyone to be there.  He has a map in his hand.

‘I’m a bit lost,’ he says. ‘I wonder if you could help me.’

He looks quite harmless.  Middle aged.  Brown eyes.  A quiet smile. 

‘Come in,’ she says and leads him to the table where he can lay the map out.  ‘Where are you trying to get to?’

‘I was hoping to find the church,’ he says, ‘I gather it has a wooden spire and some nice brasses.’

‘Are you interested in church architecture?’ she asks.

‘Not particularly but I like wandering over these hills and it’s nice to have a place to go to.’

‘It’s not far,’ she says. ‘I can take you there.’

‘Oh no, I couldn’t expect you to do that.  I can see you’re busy.’

She looks at the notebook on the table.

‘No, that’s fine,’ she says,’ I walk that way everyday.  Today I will just be going a little early.’

She reaches for her coat and a better pair of boots.  He waits while she puts them on.  Seemingly taking in the surroundings.  The pictures on the wall.  The Rayburn breathing quietly in the corner.  Traces of her son’s drawings on the wall.  Left there from when he was three and wanted to draw sheep.

Now they are walking over heavy plough.  He seems to be finding it difficult.

‘You do this every day?’

‘I do.  It’s a ritual.  A way of making sense. ‘

‘Does it help your writing?’

‘It helps with my life’

They walk a bit further in silence.  She forges on ahead for a while.  Turns when she realises he has stopped.  He is standing with his hands on his knees.

‘You’re not used to this are you?

The man stands up and smiles.  Shakes his head.  She waits for him to catch up.  They continue.

‘Was that your son I saw?  He asks.

She turns and looks at him in shock.

‘When?’

‘This morning.  Was he going to school?’

‘You saw him going to school.  How long had you been out there?’

‘A while.’

‘You’ve been watching us?’

 ‘I told you.  I was lost’.

Now she is standing in front of him, barring his way.

‘Lost, what kind of excuse is that? ‘

The man looks uncomfortable.  Shrugs.  The woman continues.  She is very angry.

‘We’re all on our own out here.  I’m all on my own with him. You had

no right.

I’m sorry.  I didn’t know where else to go.

‘You should have thought of that… ‘

She turns and walks away.

‘A long time ago.  You have thought of that a long time ago.’

He waits for a moment, not sure whether to follow her.  Moves  to catch up with her.

‘Wait.  Let me explain. Please wait.’

She turns.  Now she really is furious.

 ‘Nine, fucking years, you bastard.  Nine years of wondering, of

waiting, of not knowing what to tell him. How dare you….’

The man is still struggling to catch up.

‘I didn’t mean, I didn’t.  It was…’

She starts picking up clods of earth and chucking them at him.

‘Bastard, bastard….. ‘

Some of the clods fall short.  One of them hits him.  He stops in his tracks. 

Now they are walking together along a grassy lane.  They are talking, laughing.

‘… and you standing in the street telling me you loved me.  Yelling for all to hear…’.

‘You stood there like a frozen rabbit.’ 

‘I couldn’t believe my ears.’

‘I felt such a fool.’

‘It wasn’t til you were walking away that your words reached my brain..’

‘I thought you loved me.  I thought you’d come.’

‘I did have a wife and children to consider.’                   

‘’And I was falling into a black hole.’

They stop and look at each other. 

‘Are you ever going to forgive me?’

She smiles and shakes her head.

‘Probably not.’

He puts his arm round her and they walk on.

Now the Church is in front of the.  He stops.

‘Now this is a place I haven’t seen for a long time,’  he says.

‘I can’t stay away,’ she says.

‘You come everyday?’

‘I had to have something to remember you by.’

‘And the boy?’

‘What has he got to remember….’

‘What do you tell him?’

‘That his father has to live in his dreams.’

‘You can get caught in dreams.’   

The woman stops and looks at him. Her look says ‘Tell me about it’

The church is quiet and empty.  There is a bird flying round inside. Banging against the windows. 

They stand together at the end of the aisle taking it in.

‘Would you really have wanted me to stay?’ he asks.

‘It’s difficult to know now. ‘

She starts wandering.  Touching surfaces as she goes.

The man moves down the aisle. Stops to take in a grave stone set in the floor.  Crouches down to read.

‘Thus death triumph, tells us all must die.’

She moves to look over his shoulder.

‘Sad business death.’

‘Is it?’

They are held in the moment.  She notices the bird.

 ‘Oh look, there’s a bird. We’d better leave the door open.

She moves to open the door to let the bird out.  The man stays with the grave stone.  She moves back to him. He is still crouching over the words.

‘Why couldn’t we make it work?’

He gets up and turns to her.

‘Perhaps we did,’ he says.

Now she is sitting at the table with her notebook.  Writing.  It is late afternoon and the light is fading.

The boy comes through the door. Hot and windblown from his bike ride.  He throws his bags on the floor. Goes to get a drink of water.

‘We won.’

‘Oh good.  That was good’.

‘Did you have a good day?’

‘Not bad.’

She takes the boy onto her lap and holds him close.

‘Anything happen?’ he asks.

‘Nothing special’. 

She pauses.

‘There was a bird in the church.  I let it out.’ 

‘And your story?’ he asks.

‘Coming along nicely

They both sit for a while.  Close and alone in the room.

‘You want to watch some tele?’ she asks.

The boy gets off her lap and goes through to the other room and puts on the TV. 

She sits for a moment .  Reaches for the open notebook.  Looks as though she is about to write in it.  Then closes it.  She looks peaceful.  As though something has been settled.

She goes through to the window in the front room.  The boy is watching television.  She looks out.  Nothing but the garden and the road.  She draws the curtains. 

About the author 

 Peppy Barlow is a playwright and screenwriter.  She teaches Creative Writing at the Ipswich Institute and for Coastal Leisure Learning.  Members of the Woodbridge Writers have had several stories published here.