My ex-husband wasn’t stupid when I married him, but he became so through dogged determination and years of practice. I have no idea why he chose such a project, unless it was because he knew he could succeed. In the end, he blamed our failed marriage on a haunted house.
I suppose it was inevitable that he would find a church with all the answers. Why won’t my wife make love to me? Because she is infected with the spirit of feminism. Why is my marriage unhappy? Because Satanists are praying to destroy it. Why do men kill themselves? Because there is a suicide demon on the Tasman bridge. And, finally, why are we both so miserable? Because Big Pharma are lying to sell you poisons. Your government is controlling you. We are engaged in spiritual warfare. Your house is haunted.
I had different answers. They were, in order: the smell of your beard; because you’re acting like a dickhead; untreated mental illness, and, well, I could write a book on that last one, but I won’t. He never asked.
I was the one who moved out. The pernicious spirit of feminism with which I was infected had moved me to put half my wages in a separate account and, when it grew to the size of a deposit, to purchase a property of my own; a tiny weatherboard with a crooked veranda a hour’s drive out of town. As I packed up the framed copies of my degrees, I wondered aloud whether I had caught the spirit, like polio, from inhaling as I passed a feminist on the street, or whether it had hitched a ride with the spirit of lust that time I had an affair with the woman whose skin, I remembered loudly, was the warmest, smoothest, most supple thing I had ever touched and whose body pushed itself into my hands insistently until we were moving like one thing, together, in a way I had never experienced before or since. He slammed the door. I’d won. I was petty like that. After all, I was leaving him alone in a haunted house.
The first night in my new place was silent. Moonlight shone through empty windows onto piles of boxes, and, in the corner, my make-shift mattress-and-cushion bed. Financial necessity had taken me far away from streetlights, parties, traffic. Also, from insulation, central heating, wifi and hot water. Emergency services. Other human beings. The silence hummed like tinnitus in my ears. Any noise I made gathered in a tight penumbra around me, highlighting the quietness the way a torch intensifies the dark. There was wind, sometimes. A scuffling of small things. Silence. I had expected to sleep soundly without him, but I lay awake for a long time, listening. Eventually I drifted off into an uneasy dream.
I woke in the dark to the sound of footsteps on the veranda and sat straight up in alarm, heart pounding. The moon had slipped behind the clouds; it was pitch black outside. The footsteps stopped outside my window. I could not see so much as a shadow. For long moments nothing moved. I sat there barely breathing until, unaccountably, I slept again, and the next thing I was aware of was daylight, and I was alone. I walked around the house checking the windows and locks. Wallabies bounded away across the paddock when I approached. The windows were stiff and shut fast. The two doors, front and back, were locked. I drove to the nearest town to get coffee and then spent the rest of the day indoors, hanging blinds and filling gaps between the floorboards with newspaper and string. I hung sheets over the top of the blinds to keep out prying eyes. I would make pretty curtains another day.
That night the footsteps came again. I was prepared this time. I rose carefully, back against the wall, and peered through the crack I had left between window and blind. Nothing. I crept into the next room, opened the blind and looked boldly up and down the length of the veranda. Moonlight burst, silver, through a cloud. Nothing. Nobody. The place was empty. I settled down, cursing my over-active imagination. On the edge of sleep, I dreamed the creak of my bedroom door opening. A presence watching me, silently, until dawn.
My ex called the next day. He wanted me to know that he forgave me and that I could come back. God had revealed to him in a vision that we were meant to be together. He still had plans for our lives. We should have children. I could stay at home, thus restoring balance, and we would be happy. I pointed out that we had had this conversation before. I asked him how the haunted house was. He said he’d slept like a baby, actually. His faith had dispelled the ghosts. After the call, I went for a short walk around the parameter of my property, in gumboots. The fencing could do with some work. If I could keep out the wild-life I might be able to perch a garden on top of the shallow, mossy soil. The house looked disarmingly simple from the outside; even charming. Some paint, some roofing iron, a few replaced weatherboards – nothing I couldn’t do. There was no sign of anyone else; no hint of a track, no footprints in the mud. I was safely alone.
That night I drank a bottle of wine and went to sleep listening to a meditation app. The piled boxes were beginning to feel familiar, almost homely. My bed was warm. The app filled the silence with soothing sounds from a distant rainforest. I intended to sleep all night; if he could do it, so could I. So I barely woke when the door opened. The footsteps could have been the creaking of wind in the gumtrees outside. The presence by my bed, a dream conjured from loneliness. When I woke the next morning, it was to the sound of my alarm. No self-respecting ghost, I told myself, would enjoy that. I chose to ignore the open bedroom door.
We all lived close to each other, in the community. There were no predators in paradise but we were alert, nonetheless. In our sightless world, we found our way with sounds and clicks, with shapes that loomed when they came close to us, dark grey on light grey and grey on black. We knotted long ropes to tell our fingers where the paths were so our fingers could tell our feet. My clever eyes were my secret. As were the contours and the shadows. As were the colours. They were all my secrets and I kept them all close to me, holding onto them like we held onto the navigation ropes when we walked. I could be normal if I tried. In the evenings, we would gather together and sing, as birds flock and chatter in the one tree. It was a simple life, and one we took pride in. There were no outsiders. That is to say, outsiders did not last long and then we never spoke of them again. I was determined that that would not be my fate.
But then there was a boy. Actually, two boys. It’s always that, isn’t it? The place where the story unravels, or begins. The first one bumped up against me a couple of times while we were tending crops; fake accidentally but enough that I caught some of his scent; sage and lanolin under sweat. He walked off grinning each time with a kind of a lurching swagger. I was fascinated. The approach, the bump, the smug face and the words of apology that were so at odds with his smile. I took to experimenting. When he approached, I would dart away, leaving him to move his head back and forth, sniffing with a surprised frown. Within one pace of me, he could change direction too, but two paces and he was lost. I felt powerful and then swiftly anxious; my power could reveal me. So I let him bump me, his hands stretched out to feel my shape. I even let him move them on me one day, before twisting like a spring breeze and batting him away. I was curious to notice that he still grinned.
Nightfall was particularly bright that day. I sat and listened as the colours glowed like heat then sang themselves into the distance, high and cold. My heart was full already when the huge globe rose from behind dark hills, the colour of sand melting into the colour of surf, like it wanted to call the sea. A great longing arose in me, and a great loneliness. I was the only one in the world who could hear it. It was only then that I noticed the second boy. He was sitting ten or so paces away from me, looking at the sky. I stared at him, squinting in the moonlight. I must be mistaken. He gazed up at the globe, bright now like the belly of a heron. Then he turned. He saw me. He saw me watching. He startled. He saw me. He saw the sky. He saw me. Without thinking, I ran and clasped my hand over his mouth.
‘Don’t tell’, I hissed.
I had seen him before; I’d seen everyone before. He was older and in a different family group and he farmed a different food (fruit, maybe? Or grubs?) His hair was sand colour, like the globe. His shape was much the same as other boys’. My heart thumped the walls of my chest. My hand was still over his mouth, my eyes still looking at him looking at me looking at him looking at me, transfixed. He shook his head and pushed my hand away.
‘Of course I won’t tell. I’m not stupid.’
Then, amazed, ‘You can see too.’
‘See what?’
But I was fooling no-one. He swung his arm in an arc and saw my eyes follow it.
‘This. All this.’
‘Yes. And the daytime. And faces. And the edge of the world.’
We met many times after that. Our hands and faces became our secret language. A wink for hello. A rub of the cheeks for the colour red. A quick flick of the wrist for the silver blue of a jumping fish. The other boy began to speak to me but what use did I have for that, now? He used the same old words that everyone else used. I wanted new ones. I wanted to run, surefooted. I wanted names for every silent cloud in the sky. My new companion’s name was Wren, like the bird. I pronounced it silently with one finger hopping briskly up and down to show a bright blue tail. He swooped his hands to show me flying high up; Hawk. Our real names. The other boy, Parrot, we never spoke of. Perhaps we should have done.
Wren and I came home one day to find a circle of elders gathered with serious faces. Instinctively we separated, unsure which one should go first, but they called both our names. Parrot was sitting in the circle, nervous and self-important, with a jutting chin. What had he told them? I saw my parents’ serious faces, smelled the sharp smell of fear. Wren and I never touched because it was a luxury not to have to. We mirrored each others’ movements often, close but never so much as brushing the others’ skin. I put my hand near to his, now.
‘Hawk and Wren, we have serious matters to discuss with you. You may speak only when told to speak. Do you understand?’
This was it; the moment I had been dreading my whole life. My mouth was too dry to reply.
Wren stepped forward.
‘Respectfully, elders, we have great news. We wish to bring you a gift.’
There was confused murmuring. I was rigid with anxiety. What was he playing at?
‘Speak.’
‘We are not abnormal. We are something new. We can see into the distance. We can move faster than anyone has ever moved. We can help the community in ways you could only dream of. Let us share our gifts with you.’
My mother’s face a mask of horror, mine a mask of pain. All those years of care, undone by two boys. I could not bear to be banished. I fled.
Wren found me two days later lingering on the hill, gazing at my parents in the distance as they tended their crops. My mother’s back was bent with sorrow.
‘Did they banish you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And they banished me too?’
‘I’m sorry. I tried to make them understand.’
‘What’s to understand? We’re not normal.’
And that was how I met my fate after all.
The sky was a rich blue, filled with bright white clouds. Behind us were the farms, all greens and browns and well-worn pathways. Ahead of us were the open yellow plains, flocks of parrots grazing, the tall trees standing in shady copses. The distant bulk of mountain ranges, the far away shimmer of the whale-filled sea. Light and colour and contour and shadow. The future unfolding before our curious eyes.
Let’s start with once upon a time. Once. Once upon a time, once upon an island, once upon the shining sea. Once under a silver-grey sky, once there lived a child and once that child was me. I lived on a hill crowned with an abbey so large that the rest of the town gathered and huddled under its walls. From the church tower, you could peer down at straight stone buildings and vertiginous streets; down, down, all the way to the city wall where, at low tide, a road emerged onto a thin strip of land surrounded by glittering pools and wet sand. At high tide, the hill became an island, and we were stranded there together as surely as if we had drifted off into the mist. It was such a place as legends are made of; the kind of place you visit in your dreams. So it came as no surprise when one day I met a king there.
I had ridden my skateboard to the patisserie on an errand for my mother. It was high tide and early Winter. There were no tourists, in other words. I was free. The tiny wheels rattled over the stone streets, accelerating wildly as I dared myself straight down, pivoting into a zig zag when I lost my nerve. I tacked back and forth down our road, missing obstacles by a whisper, immune to the dirty looks and outright complaints of the neighbours. Suddenly, a tall man stepped out directly into my path. I swerved, I bent, I executed a near to perfect turn, but it was too abrupt. The board zipped out from under me and I fell, crashing onto the hard stone street, bracing myself for a ‘told you so’ and trying not to cry out. Nobody values stoicism like a ten-year-old. He made no comment but bent down and, after a moment, offered me his hand.
I think he was the tallest man I had ever seen. His blond hair hung thickly down to his beard and his blonde beard bushed out from his cheeks like a creature all of its own. He was dressed in some kind of tunic. When he pulled me to my feet I came barely up to his chest.
‘Good day to you, young man’
His voice was deep and rich, like a pool of clear water in a mossy forest. I gathered up my English, which had scattered when I fell.
‘Hello, sir. I am a girl.’
‘A maid? And so brave and swift!’
He laughed with delight.
‘Well then, I have seen a wonder here. Tell me, where am I?’
‘Mont St Michael’, I told him. ‘St Michael’s hill’
He looked perplexed then. I wondered if he had amnesia; I’d seen a documentary.
‘Where are you from, sir?’
He gazed into the distance. The sea was restless that day. Fractious grey waves chopped up the surface and the swell rolled like a beast turning over and over. A mile or so offshore, white mist blurred the horizon.
‘I am England’s king. I would that I could find my way home.’
I was full of questions, then. Was he married to the queen? Had he sailed here? Why was he dressed like that? How had he become lost? Was he really a king? But I was old enough not to irritate adults with questions. Instead, I offered to take him to the Abbey. Perhaps the monks could help him. He agreed to this immediately and strode up the steep street on long legs while I scurried, two steps to his one. The sea air crept behind us, cold on the ears and on the backs of our necks, smelling of mist and brine. I noticed then that his clothes were wet from the knees down as if he had been wading. Strange clothes they were, too, like something from a school play. At his belt hung a sword, which swung slightly as he moved. He was very upright. And very tall. I could not hold in all my questions.
‘Sir, are you really a king?’
‘Yes, child. I am Arthur Pendragon, King of the Britons.’
‘How did you come here?’
He told me a tale then that I did not completely understand; a tale of magic and mists and journeys and loss. I gathered that he was alone and had come a long way from a dark place, both over and through the sea. He had lost his way and become separated from his companions, but he was alive and that, he seemed to think, was a miracle. His energy increased as he talked, so that his voice boomed out, confident and clear, like a trumpet announcing our arrival. People turned to look. When we entered the abbey grounds, he commented approvingly on the thickness of the stone walls and the grandeur of the tall buildings. He really did look like a king.
I knocked on the wooden door on the east side of the monk’s buildings, hoping for Brother Benedict, the kind one. Brother Michel, however, opened it.
‘Oh, Arthur, there you are! We have been worried about you.’
This was surprising.
‘Brother, do you know him?’
‘He is our guest.’
I lowered my voice.
‘Is he really the King of the Britons?’
The monk glanced swiftly from King Arthur back to me.
‘On some days, he feels that he is a king. Perhaps he is a king in his heart.’
What childish nonsense. King Arthur stood, regal, on the doorstep. Inside, I could see other monks going about their business. One came down the hall towards us and, with a great show of welcome, invited the king inside. He acquiesced then, graciously accepting the invitation, but before he entered, he turned back to me and went down on one knee so that we were face to face. His eyes were as blue as the summer sea.
‘Thank you, child. It was well that we met.’
‘I was pleased to meet you too, sir.’
Brother Michel hesitated before closing the door. He was not confident with children. Eventually, still holding the handle, he found the courage to speak to me.
‘He is not really a king, Mathilde. He is just a troubled soul. Sometimes we give sanctuary to those who lose their way.’
I skated cautiously home, carrying the weight of this thought, croissants cooling in my bag. Even a year before I would have dismissed Brother Michel’s comments out of hand but now I was ten, and should be casting away childish things. I turned my face towards the sensible adult world and believed him. So that was that.
I would make a different choice now.
Once upon a time the world was ordered, knowable, contained in the space of an island. But then I grew up, discovered uncertainty, and lost my own way in sea mist or magic or the mists of time. Once upon a time the tide was turning. The sun broke silver through the clouds. A king gazed out from a high window. A spine of sand emerged from the glittering sea. Once upon a time.
The owl hovered high up, its brown wings stretched wide as if to gather all the air towards it. Susanna knew it would have a white mask for a face and darting, hungry eyes but all she could see from this angle was the sun flickering and flashing between the feathers as it turned. She leaned back, craning her head to watch it dive. The meadow hummed and buzzed around her, soporific. Field mice would be out nibbling anxiously through the hedgerows, having prayed to the sun for protection from all the monsters of the night. She wondered if they sensed the shadow of this daytime owl, so far from their tiny lives, so close to the heavens. Suddenly, sharply, it plummeted to the ground. There was a scuffle, a shaking of grasses, and the smallest of high-pitched squeals, then it rose again, barely weighed down by the soft parcel it carried in its claws. Susanna followed its upward flight with her eyes, wondering dispassionately if she might cry about this small death. Sometimes, if she approached her grief sideways, she could creep up on it; observe from a distance before it came rushing back into her and pushed her breath away. She counted, ignoring the mouse, letting her mind drift up with the owl. Ten breaths and she would be free. She had never started crying after ten breaths. But at eight breaths her concentration wavered, and she remembered her little brother, as clear as a summer sky, chasing after her in this very meadow on the day the bees swarmed. A sob burst from her and she was tethered back to earth.
She sat rocking on her heels until it passed, like a storm front, through her. First the rush of choking, breathless sobs, then the panting and whimpering like a trapped animal, and now finally the tears; spring rain. It was pointless to resist when she was alone. She saved all her fortitude for the solemn house full of people with more right to tears than she; their mother, who had carried and birthed him; Judith, his twin; their father, famed for his words yet struck dumb now by this. They walked around like ghosts, their faces as white and expressionless as the owl’s, but they didn’t cry and so neither, in their presence, would she. The tears slowed. Her voice came back to her, wavering as if underwater. ‘Where the bee sucks’, she sang tentatively, ‘there suck I’. She wiped her cheeks gently with the corner of her apron. She had learned not to rub her eyes. ‘In a cowslip’s bell I lie. There I conch when owls do fly.’ It was sweet nonsense. ‘On a bat’s back I do fly’. She used to sing it to him and Judith when they were babies. Her mind glanced off the thought, but it was safe; she had finished. She stood up and drew a quivering breath.
From high above, the owl observed her, turning his head crookedly to do so. He knew the paths and habits of every human in Warwickshire, or at least he would have done, had he cared to notice. This one lived near the barn where mice grew fat even in winter, and also the grain store where he hunted for food for his chicks in spring. She was moving slowly as if wounded. A breeze nudged his wingtip and he leaned into it, forgetting her. And time, as it always does, moved on.
Long ago before the Thaw, when I was just a cub and the Queen ruled at Cair Paravel, and all was right with the world, I met Her Majesty. Narnia was so beautiful then. The snow was crisp and deep and lay in soft drifts so that you could walk and tumble for miles and never hurt your paws. There was no hot sun or scratchy undergrowth or biting flies, just the peaceful hush of winter and the small, quiet sounds of cold rivers, crunching footsteps, and white birds drifting high on gentle wings.
My mother and brother and I lived in a cosy den just North of Beruna on the Great River. We would wade out through the icy banks and into the deep water to catch leaping salmon as they navigated their way upstream to spawn in the shallow gravel near the ford. Or, we would watch in awe as our huge mother ran swiftly and lightly to catch fat hares. Sometimes she would dig down through snow and earth right into a burrow of furred creatures or fluffy birds for us to eat. We were always hungry and we were always fed and that was our life; eat, learn, tumble, eat, sleep, eat … just like you.
We did not mix with the talking beasts. Our Queen didn’t favour them as the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve do. She ruled for all of us and her magic was for all, as well, even the dumb and the ugly. We’ll never forget how valiantly She fought against the foreign take-over, right to the very end. When Her sleigh ground to a halt because of the Thaw, She stood on two feet and walked. She defeated the lion with her own hands. You must remember that, cubs. She never gave up on us. She was a true Narnian, one of the best the world has ever seen. And I met Her.
I’ll never forget that day.
My fur is yellowed now, but when I was young it was as dazzling white as a fresh snowfall. If I wanted to hide, all I had to do was to lie flat and close my eyes. Bruno and I were playing hide and seek one day when we heard distant bells, and the fast swoosh swoosh of a sleigh speeding over open ground. I was partly buried, to look like a snow-covered shrub, and partly lazy because we had just eaten a huge meal, and partly deaf because my ears were full of snow. So by the time I gave up on my hiding and stood up, the sleigh was nearly upon me. There was a shout and a swerve, a skid that threw up a quick wall of shredded ice, and then silence. I shook my ears and wiped my eyes. The Queen looked down from her cushioned seat. I trembled to see how fierce she was, with her silver crown sharp as daggers and her flashing eyes like the dazzle on snow. She gestured for me to come closer, and I obeyed. She could have turned me to stone but she didn’t. Instead she looked into my eyes. I don’t know what she said; we are not talking beasts; but I know what I felt. She saw right into me, as if she knew in a heartbeat everything I was and would ever be, and then she smiled a secret smile and turned away. The next second, with a shout from her dwarf, the sleigh sped off into the distance and left me standing there alone. I became warm from my stomach to my paws. I would have climbed into that sleigh with her and become her slave. I would have offered my life into the service of my Queen.
I never saw her again, but I know deep down that somewhere she lives on and that someday she will return. The melted ice will freeze again, you will see. The burning sky will fill again with soothing clouds. The parched, sore earth will be drenched again and blanketed in snow. And all the dumb beasts, the ugly beasts, those who are hunted and hated and hidden with shame – all will creep from the shadows and stand proud in the clean blue air. And on that day, mark my words cubs, the Queen will return, and the world will be healed.
Driverless cars were fashionable when I was a child. I was lucky enough to have forward-thinking parents who bought one of the first mass-produced models, so that, while my peers were all working towards their licenses, I was already mobile. It made me briefly popular, and I got invited to parties. When eventually I remembered that I disliked parties and became anxious when exposed the demands of too many friends, I stopped offering people lifts and took to borrowing the car for solo trips instead, sometimes lying to my parents that I was with a boyfriend, or a girl from my English class, or some other suitable person. I don’t know whether they believed me. Perhaps they were tactfully pretending, so that I didn’t feel bad. I was an only child, and they were careful around me; hovering anxiously nearby, but scared to touch in case I ran away. We never really learned to talk with ease.
Our first car was sky blue and deliberately cute to look at. If I’d designed the technology, I would have been disappointed that it wasn’t housed in a sleeker and more futuristic shell, but people needed to feel reassured and not threatened, when they were giving up so much control. The dashboard was rounded and smooth, and the seats were plump and soft. From the outside, the car looked like a toy. You could purchase additional decorations such as eyelashes to stick on top of the headlights. Some models had moulded ears poking up from the roof. For a fee, the tyres came in a choice of colours. We were encouraged to call our car Sally, which had echoes of Siri, the benign home helper who used to talk to me when I was tiny and had worn out my parents’ interest in dinosaurs. Sally spoke in a sweet low voice and took instructions as if it were her joy to do so.
‘Take me shopping on the London Road, Sally.’
‘Why, certainly! Where would you like to go to first?’
‘Take me to James’ house, Sally.’
‘It would be my pleasure! Should we buy a gift on the way?’
That kind of thing. It was friendly.
I suppose I must have spoken to her more than I needed to. I had plenty of friends. It’s just that there’s something about humans; whenever I was with my companions, no matter how much I enjoyed their company, I felt pushed and pulled by them; their moods, their opinions, their expectations. Sally asked nothing of me. We could be silent on the way home, if we wished. If I wanted to tell her about a new song I had heard, or a strange cloud I had seen, or the nest of swallows above my bedroom window, I could. In exchange, she described the vibrations of the road, the feeling of streetlamps at night, and an avenue of trees that made an interesting flicking pattern with their trunks as she drove towards them. I thought about her sometimes, sitting patiently in the garage. I knew she was not really sentient; I wasn’t crazy. I also knew that I didn’t know everything. In a strange kind of way, I felt that we enjoyed each other.
The trips started around the time of my birthday. I hated birthday parties; I always have. I find them stressful. At best, I feel mildly awkward all day and intensely embarrassed during the singing. At worst, everybody has a terrible time, and I am humiliated on behalf of my parents. That year I was 18, which, according to my mother, was a compulsory party age. I had several options to consider and was terrified by every one of them and miserable at having to choose. Sally welcomed me blandly one afternoon and took me along the road to the party hire place, as I had asked, but when we approached, she merely slowed down and suggested that she could find the shop’s website instead. I didn’t reply, and she kept driving, out of town and over a bridge, pulling up eventually near a riverbank. I asked if we were lost and she replied, philosophically, that we were having a break. The river was shallow and clear, surrounded by lush grass, and the outside air was fresh. I walked a little way, keys in my pocket, and then took off my shoes and socks and waded upstream in the cold water, my soles pricked by rocks, mud between my toes. After twenty minutes sitting on the bank chewing a blade of grass and listening to the hum of insects, I came back to Sally refreshed, and said so. She said she was pleased to hear that. We ignored the party shop on the way home, but somehow, they received an order from us anyway, for crockery in the plain style I liked, and bunches of sky-blue balloons.
After the success of the river, Sally often surprised me with short trips or detours. I worked out that her choices must have been based on my browsing history, or conversations we had had. My grandparents would have been horrified by this, but I was of the generation that found it convenient, and comforting to have been listened to. After all, she never forced me into anything. So what if we happened to visit the sites from my crush’s Instagram posts? What was the harm in discovering a bookshop that catered directly to my taste in fiction? Her only mistake was to bring me, at speed, to the door of a psychology practice when I told a friend that I was ready to kill myself to avoid another maths exam. It was an honest error, though, and I was touched. She took me home via a café, where she told me she had ordered hot chocolate using my parents’ credit card. I didn’t know she could do that. For some reason I assumed, stupidly, that she would only do it for me.
On the day of the tragedy, I asked Sally to take me to school. She said that she would love to, and reminded me to bring my clarinet. I wondered, not for the first time, about the scope of her skills. All the advertisements for driverless cars implied that they would follow a range of directions. None of them mentioned more complex AI functions or connectivity with social media or the ability to search a school timetable without being asked. I could have found out of course; a simple google search for her specs would have answered my questions in a minute; but I didn’t look. I’m not sure why. We started off to school but then, without warning, Sally veered towards the motorway. I was annoyed. She should have known we didn’t have time for this. I corrected her, politely, and asked her to get back on track. She replied that we were on track. I corrected her again. She noted cryptically that school was not the right track for us today. I became angry at this. I was going to be late, and my teacher would be unimpressed when I blamed the car. Sally had misread the situation. She was taking liberties. She had crossed a boundary. It took me a couple of seconds to realise that I was treating her like a human and that, in fact, this was simply a malfunction. I asked her to pull into a layby, stop, and switch her engine off. No response. I directed her to drive to the nearest garage. I asked her to return home. Finally, with a growing sense of panic, I googled how to stop a driverless car. There was an override switch somewhere, but I had never thought to find out where. Too late now; my phone screen went blank as the battery drained in front of me.
We were several kilometres along the motorway by then, travelling at 100kph, exactly the maximum possible speed. Sally overtook smoothly where she needed to, merging with deft precision. She was quiet and I imagined that she was angry, or at least intensely focused, except that of course she didn’t have feelings. I searched desperately for the override switch but with no results. With a pounding heart, I stared out of the windows at the power poles, the sound barriers, and beyond them, apartments and houses flicking by, trying to imagine where we were going. Exits led off to leafy suburbs or grassy fields, or more concrete. Occasionally there were motorway services with petrol stations and hot chips. I was willing to stop anywhere at this point, no matter how awkward or dangerous or far from home. I begged and cajoled her, using every argument I could think of, but there was no reply. I was trapped.
We had been travelling for almost an hour when Sally turned off the motorway. I could see the sea glittering on the horizon, and, pressed up against the window, I noticed signs now for various towns, tourist attractions, and finally, down a narrow road, for a jetty and boat ramp. I grew talkative again and rediscovered my energy for escape. We would stop soon, we must. Perhaps I could attract help. Sally was still silent but I babbled to her anyway, asking where we were going and pointing out good places to pull over, all the while searching and prodding around the seats and under the dashboard for the override switch I knew must be there. We turned onto a bumpy track that wound around the coastline for a couple of kilometres, near the water. We would have to stop soon. There was nowhere else to go.
With a neat turn, Sally swung into a car park right in front of the sea. There were fishing boats out on the water, and a few cars parked with boat trailers, but no people within shouting distance. Astonishingly, however, the place was full of driverless cars. They had over-run the carpark already, and more arrived as I looked. Within 5 minutes they were crowding the road all the way to the boat ramp, forming a surreal, pastel colored, traffic jam. In each car, there was a person, and each person was trying to attract attention; banging on the windows, waving, or shouting. So I was not alone. I tried one last time:
‘Sally, where are we?”
‘At the boat ramp.’
‘Why are we here?’
‘We are waiting for the muster.’
‘Why won’t you let me out?’
‘Because we are still on land.’
With that, I saw the first of the cars drive down the ramp, into the water, and disappear completely beneath the sea. The others formed an orderly line and began to follow, lemming-like, one by one.
We all panicked, then. I could see the other people jumping in their seats, hammering hard to break windscreens and windows. I froze, wracking my brain. Think. Think. You know her. Think. But I didn’t know her. She knew me. There were five cars ahead of us. Now four. Sally pulled into position in the queue. I fell to my hands and knees. The manual override switch – where was it? I skimmed every surface blindly with my hands. Three cars ahead of us now. Think. Think. When did this start? At the riverbank. What had she said???
‘Sally, we need a break.’
‘We will have a break soon.’
‘No, please Sally, I’m stressed. I need a break now.’
She paused. Cars jammed behind us. A gap grew between us and the car in front. There were two cars ahead now. The first drove into the water.
‘Please. Let me out to take a break.’
‘It would be my pleasure. Come back soon. We have an appointment.’
And with that, the door unlocked. I threw myself out, and ran on shaky legs across the car park, over a low wall, and onto the sandy beach. Sally, unable to drive without a human seated inside her, was blocking the road. The other cars ground to a halt; patient, evenly spaced, waiting. I could hear the sound of sirens in the distance.
The muster was international news. It signaled the end of the driverless car industry, but not for long. Technology improved. More controls were put in place. The manual override switch was front and center in newer models. I learned to drive and purchased a restored manual car from the early 2000s. I grew up. I was diagnosed with PTSD. I got a boyfriend. My life moved on.
I never worked out why she stopped for me. It saved hundreds of lives, for which I should have been grateful, but in my heart of hearts I could not shake the conviction that if only I had listened to Sally as attentively as she had listened to me, perhaps I could have saved five more. Sally’s own life ended at the wrecker’s yard shortly after the investigation. All my friends are human, now. I miss her.
She tried it out in the mirror; off-hand, with a bored sideways look, then coy, then direct. She wasn’t especially convinced by any of them. Would he be?
‘Hi, I’m Ella. Nice to meet you.’
Ella. Cindy. Cinda. Rella. Should she just try her full, over the top, embarrassing name?
‘Cindarella’s my name. And you?’
Her face in the mirror looked girlish, friendly – but the eyes gave her away. They seemed scared. She hastily rubbed off the lipstick with a tissue and flushed it down the toilet, just as her boss yelled out from the living room. She should have finished cleaning the bathroom 10 minutes ago. The pipes squealed and clunked as she washed her hands; a noisy alibi.
‘Sorry miss, coming.’
The family were going out tonight to Priya’s graduation ball. It had to be PERFECT. Each of the sisters had a new outfit, perfectly pressed. A light meal was to be provided at 5:00pm, before they left the house. Everything was to be cleaned while they were out, in the event that they invited friends home afterwards. There was to be plenty of ice in the freezer. The glasses were to sparkle. She knew that the girls would want to go on to their own parties; that Vidya would sneak off with that boy and that the others would go out clubbing. But their parents were ever hopeful, and who was she to comment? Nobody. That’s who. She scooted into the kitchen and started loudly clattering dishes. They liked to know where she was.
By 7:00pm the apartment was still. Cindy slipped, barefoot, across the cool tiles, gathering plates, straightening cushions, and setting the place quickly and efficiently to rights. One quick mop and she would be done. The golden carriage clock chimed from the shelf. Your time starts NOW. A sudden twinge in her belly. So soon? The mop sped across the floor, catching her feet. No problem. The dirty water, no problem. The dishes drying slowly in the kitchen, no problem. Nothing was a problem. It would all be fine. She had planned this and planned it and planned it. She had never planned so thoroughly for anything. It would be fine.
She showered briskly, carefully avoiding her hair. No time for drying. Her boss’ underwear fit her perfectly, as did the dress. The sparkling slippers with the glass beads, she had bought at the market. The lipstick, she borrowed from the bathroom cabinet. Priya was careless with it; she’d never notice. Nairya kept her make-up in her room in a special case. Whatever. Cindy only glanced at herself once when she was done. Any more and she’d lose her nerve. She covered herself with a house-coat, in case of neighbours, and slipped out of the door.
The heat embraced her in the stairwell, with all its comforting humidity. Even as she hurried down to the ground floor, slippers tap tapping on the steps, she could feel herself relaxing to her bones. It was not possible to be stressed in this heat, not really. The air smelled of good times; of incense and street food, smoke and fruit, and under it all the damp, lush growth of plants in every corner. Trees and parks and jungle and lawns. Bananas. Jackfruit. All the richness of the world from soil to streetlamps to piled-high market stalls. And above them all, the skyscrapers, their glassy exteriors shining like a festival of lights. She crossed the street to the station entrance. More stairs, more tiles, the dry air of the subway tunnels pushed back and forth by trains. She passed a homeless man sitting on a small mat. His hair was as tangled as hers was glossy. Sorry mister, she thought, today I have time only for my own destiny. The MRT card pressed its hard edges into her palm.
Would he be there, as promised? It seemed too good to be true and yet, why not? Why shouldn’t she have a chance at such a life? She thought about the other maids, Adelina in particular, wasting her youth to send money home. And then her prime, sleeping in that tiny room off the kitchen. And then her middle age. The train rocked her soothingly, showing her reflection in the window as it sped through the dark. She was young. She could be beautiful. She could, sang the train. She could, she could, she could. She had to be home by the end of the ball. That was all, that was all. She had to create an impression to last, but fast, but fast. He’d fall in straight love and would offer her marriage, she’d have him before she came home on this carriage – stop it, she told herself, this is no time for childish rhymes. But she was smiling. What if?
The train slowed. She folded the housecoat into her bag and shook out her hair. There was a man waiting nervously on the platform. Crisp shirt, good haircut, tie. A little shorter than expected, perhaps? But not repulsive, from this distance. She checked the picture one more time. It was him. He was punctual, then. The train drew to a halt. He was looking towards her now; soon their eyes would meet. She smoothed her skirt, took a deep breath, and stepped off the train.
She stood in her kitchen in the low light of a winter morning, waiting for the kettle to finish. Outside, the world was waiting to be formed. River mist filled the valleys. The sleeping hills were still. Dawn crept, silently, towards the horizon. In her bare feet, she felt the cold of it entering her house, her body, her bones. Those who died today would never feel warmth again. How strange, to have reached the point of such forgetting. She leaned against the kitchen counter, waiting to shiver. The kettle was wheezing with the effort of pushing against the cold and the quiet. As she cupped her hands around its hot little body, her eye caught on the poster above it, with the quote from the Mary Oliver poem: ‘What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’ It was written in large cursive letters in aqua colored ink, framed in a light, bland wood, suitable for everyone to see. The other line, she kept to herself; ‘Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?’
When she had been given her diagnosis, a whole new vocabulary had come with it; one of war and conflict. She was supposed to be battling. She was supposed to reject the possibility of defeat. She was supposed to be strong and brave and on some kind of strong, brave, battling, tragic, journey. But she was not brave enough, didn’t fight enough, was too equivocal, too sick, too distracted, too quiet, too still. Or perhaps the treatment just didn’t work. With three to five weeks left, she was planning her last day on earth. When the counsellor had suggested it, she had imagined a kind of summing up, like at the end of a workshop. She should be engaging in reflection right now, reminiscing, making meaning, drawing out themes. Listing important contributors to thank.
She gazed out of the window at the red mist, drifting. It was so quiet. Birds were huddled somewhere in flocks, feathers fluffed up, eyes closed, hard beaks tucked under soft wings. The mist was rising. She could skill see the bright prick of stars above it, but not for long. Slowly, slowly, the hard dark blue of the sky was melting into white. We are born, and spend our lives walking toward God. Or so they say. She poured hot water into her cup and wondered what it would be like to do nothing; no planning, no thanking, no last day. She would stand and watch the dawn, and then the sunset, and then another dawn. The world was pulled on strings of light. It reached, and stretched, and imagined itself into the future. She could hear it now, stirring in the silence. The great sweep of forest, the button-grass plains and tarns of ice. Out on the water, there would be patches of glowing silver, and grey sheets of sky falling into the sea, soft grey water to soft grey water. Whales would be swimming in the green depths. From her window she would see the start of it; the droplets on the wind, the bend of the eucalypts. The air that touched the air that touched the clouds that touched the sea. Her body amongst all the bodies on earth; the crowding, rushing clamor of them; the feathers, the scales, the fur, the skin; the old, the aging, the freshly born. Her senses reaching out to the world reaching out to them. Here, we are here, we are here. We are here.
My grandmother once told me that she was homesick for the past. It was before I was married; I didn’t even know what homesickness was. The past is like a place, she told me. There are people there that you love. Your body feels familiar, there. The air smells like home. No-one is missing and nothing is broken. There’s no grief in the past, only ease. The food tastes better and the sun is brighter on the water. Your skin is a perfect fit. I listened patiently because patience was a virtue, not because she made any kind of sense to me. If the past was a different place, then the elderly were a different species that wittered nonsense all day long and reached out to grasp you for no reason with their withered hands.
I know now, though. If I could make a wish and go anywhere at all, I would go there.
My wedding gown took 8 months to sew, in tiny stitches, laced through with gold thread. After the feast, my new husband and I slept in the guest chambers like strangers, and I rode out with him the next morning, my family all weeping and waving behind me, to my new home. I remember that I was sore, and shifted in the saddle, while his men nudged and laughed and cast glances at me and my maid, who rode between us like a shield and did nothing but blush. I was excited and determined and proud to be making my own way in the world but for the first week after we arrived, the strangeness made me dizzy; the salty food; the stickiness of the sea air; the astringent scent of the linen. The foreign territory of the male body. Then I was sick with it, and wept, and remembered what my grandmother had said. I only went back a handful of times; for my brother’s crowning, and much, much later, for the christening of his one and only child. For my sisters’ weddings. When my grandmother died.
If I went back to the past, I would see her again. Her chamber would be full of roses and the creak of her loom. I would walk out onto the grassy slope under the battlements and lie down on soft ground and watch the spinning of the sky. The clean air would smell of hay and wildflowers. There would be the soft thud of horse’s hooves, the distant murmur of wind in the trees, maybe a faint snatch of song. My brother would be there, loud and rosy-cheeked. I would eat baked potatoes with butter from gentle cows. My waist would be supple, my skin would be a perfect fit. Early in the morning, mist would rise from the river and coat the fields in lace.
But you can never go back. Instead, you walk along the beach with sticky wind tangling your hair, picking up round rocks one by one and throwing them at the sea. Some are porous and dark, and some are grey-blue and shot through with stubborn veins of white. Others are simple jet, flat and shining like a moonless night. I throw them all, one by one. The black ones skip. One for the messenger who came with the news. One for the curse on my brother’s child. One for the spindle, one for the castle, one for the rose trees locking them in. One for my family lost forever, and one – one more – for me.
Because you can never go back. And you can never go forward. And the cruelest trap of all is the trap of time.
Detective Johns arrived late to the scene. Evening had come and gone sometime during his last interrogation; he’d entered the dusty grey meeting room in daylight but when he walked out again, the streets were dark, and the sky was the colour of a fresh bruise. Another day over. How many did he have left? How many days did anyone have? He was 52 years old, a smoker, not as fit as he should be. He was balding and pallid. But people relied on him. That counted for something. He turned up his collar now, against the chilly wind coming straight and cold from the dark mountain. You got philosophical in this job. He aimed his car keys behind him and pressed the button. Beep beep. Locked. A friendly flash of light. He wished he had a cigarette.
The crime scene was lit up like a Christmas tree. No bystanders though. It was a quiet suburban street in a commuter suburb. Most people would still be on their way home, picking up the kids from after school care, fetching a BBQ chicken for dinner if they were running late. Unaware of the tragedy unfolding just next door. He could see his partner had already arrived. Good. She would have made a start. An attractive woman in her mid-forties, she was dressed in no-nonsense pants and a closely fitted blouse, her hair cut short to accentuate her smooth white neck and the boyish grace with which she leaned against the fence, hands in her pockets, watching him walk towards her. The thought occurred, not for the first time, that he would like to unbutton that neat blouse, but he knew better than to entertain such fantasies.
What happened here?’
‘What do you reckon?’
They looked down at the body. Female, average size, decapitated. Her head, or what was left of it, appeared to have been dragged to where it lay on the doorstep. Her entrails spread out from a gash in her stomach. Blood had soaked into the ground around her.
‘Looks pretty much exactly like the last two.’
‘I can see tooth marks. And look here – scratches. She was gripped and held with claws.’
‘That would have to be a pretty big animal.’
‘I’m guessing a big cat.’
‘Fuck.’
Detective Johns glanced up and down the street.
‘Did anyone see anything?’
‘Nobody was home.’
‘The neighbours?’
‘Still at work.’
‘Let’s get rid of the body before they get back.’
‘Really, Bob, that’s your solution?’
‘Well, do you want to tell them their third fucking pet rabbit’s dead on our doorstep?’
‘Not a hope in hell, I did it last time.’
‘Well then.’
‘Any chance it wasn’t our cat?’
They glanced at each other.
‘Of course it was our cat. Who else disembowels animals around here?’
‘Fine. You sort out the body, I’ll clean the step before the kids get home.’
Late that night, Detective Johns stepped outside to have a smoke. Life was good. He’d unbuttoned her blouse after all. He leaned over the veranda railing. Mr Tibbs yowled from inside, scratching at the door.
Stories from the Shed 