Dan Vyleta - Smoke

The silence weighs on her, is like a blockage in her thoughts. She needs to speak to learn what she is thinking; finds comfort in the fact that he cannot hear.

“Charlie did not come today,” she says, so quietly it sounds only within her, the words a movement of her jaw. “I’m worried about him.”

She crosses her legs, uncrosses them, disconcerted by the warmth of thigh on thigh.

“And yet I was scared of his coming. Isn’t that strange?”

Scared, she thinks now, because he will bring something. The memory of the mine. The taste of his skin: two tongues at odds, sparring, breaching the guard of the other’s lips. They shook hands when they last parted.

“But I was scared of something else too. Scared that he would know.”

She holds her breath, listens to Thomas’s breath, deep if uneven, the hint of a whistle marbling each exhalation.

“Something happened, did it not, Thomas? Between us? Yesterday. In the muck of that street.”

As she says it, she knows it is true. Something did happen — not just in the alley where she lay beneath that stranger’s grope but before, on the road, at the creek, perhaps, while she was cold and wet, off guard, or later, in the night shelter of a chapel doorway, when he breathed his warmth into the nape of her neck.

Thomas noticed her.

It was an accident, unsought, irreversible. Livia has watched him struggling against it ever since, cheeks bunched, fingers picking at the scab that runs past his temple, resting his eyes on her only in moments of distraction, dark, unflinching eyes, taking her in. When his Smoke rises, as in London it must, she is there amongst its flavours, dissolved in fear and want and spite. He cannot spit, it seems, without her presence being written in the bile.

She frowns, lingers over the thought, shies at the threshold of another. For there is more to it yet. Thomas has noticed her.

She has noticed him too.

It is odd that this truth should come with so much anger.

“I am in love with Charlie,” she whispers, defiantly, and watches a skein of Smoke crawl out of Thomas’s sleeping form and hover above him like a second blanket. A boy with a dirty soul. He will spoil your dress if you step too close.

But Livia is no longer wearing dresses.

She slips off the stool, slides onto her knees, the miner’s trousers so dirty that they cushion the knees like felt patches. Thomas is a foot away, is hateful to her, a trial to which she must submit. She leans forward, stretches her neck, seeking to understand him and, in understanding, dismiss him; purge him from her thoughts. She slurps his Smoke like soup. Inhales him, tastes him, and learns nothing she did not already know. This is he: anger and strength. It’s her own Smoke that shocks her. It leaps unbidden, a little pink plume that forms a whirlpool in front of her breath, then spirals up, towards the ceiling. It’s like picking up your diary and finding you wrote a name in it over and over while you were not looking. Thomas’s name; thick and ragged, like she was punishing the quill. She recoils, jumps to her feet, disperses her Smoke with dismayed hands.

“Dinner, my dear,” Grendel’s voice calls from the kitchen. “Try to wake your friend. It’ll do him good.”

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They eat in anger. When Thomas learns that Charlie did not come at the appointed hour — and that Livia neglected to wake him — his mood sours and soon colours the mash he is shovelling into his mouth. Livia, too, tastes Smoke with each spoonful, though she does not visibly show. Between them, Grendel sits, unperturbed, imperturbable, a crooked-necked Jesus at supper, sharing out their meagre loaf of bread.

“You woke with an appetite!” he keeps praising Thomas. “Tomorrow you will be strong enough to meet your friend yourself.”

Despite these words, Thomas is visibly worn out by the time the last spoonful has passed his mouth and has soon retreated back to the blanket in his room. Mrs. Grendel too is soon to retire. It leaves Livia alone with Grendel. She is glad for it. She is in need of distraction, of hope. Grendel, she knows, will offer her both.

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They talk without strain, sitting at the kitchen table, tea in the pot. It’s Livia who picks the topic; something safe, simple, far from her fears.

“How about that name?” she asks. “It must have been a burden.”

Grendel answers plainly, directly, the way he told his story; unworried by truth.

“Not at all,” he says. “Growing up, you see, I simply never realised. Not until much later, here in London, when I heard someone sing the song. Have you heard it? Apparently it is very old. There are many versions. But in each of them there is a monster. Grendel. ‘It filled the great hall with its Smoke / And tore the men / Gristle from bone.’” He snarls playfully; smiles. “I doubt my father ever gave it a second thought; nor Granddad. Perhaps though, ten generations back, there was a monster in the family. Or perhaps”—his smile fades, and a frown grows into his forehead, more of wonder than of grief—“the name is like a seed, planted in my bloodline a thousand years ago, waiting to sprout in the one for whom it was intended.”

Livia reaches over and lays her hand in his. How simple, how natural it is to touch him.

“What sort of villain are you? Do you steal away at night to feast on swordsmen in their sleep?”

“What is an angel,” he answers, “if not a monster of some kind?” But he giggles as he says it and seems almost happy. “What about ‘Livia’ though? It’s a beautiful name but I’ve never heard it before.”

“A family name. It was my grandmother’s.”

Grendel nods and smiles and holds Livia’s hand.

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That same evening she tells Grendel how her father went mad. She shouldn’t, of course, it is a family secret, all their servants are sworn to it and only two of them are trusted to tend to his needs. But she wants Grendel to know about him. Perhaps they can visit him some day, stand by his bedside and hold his hands. Grendel is the miracle Father prayed for all his life.

“He wanted to be like you,” she says. “Sinless. Pure. But he wasn’t. When I was a child, I remember, he had a quick temper. I found him once, shouting at a stable boy, Smoke coming out his ears. Two mighty plumes, thick as candy floss.”

She cannot help laughing. It is a happy memory, despite the sin.

“And then he conquered his Smoke. Conquered it completely, for more than two years. We were all in awe of him: the servants, Mother, and I above all. He was like a holy man. Only he grew very thin. And then he started talking to himself. Little things, not always in English. When I returned home after the next school term, he was chained to his bed.

“I’ll tell you another secret: for the past year and more, I’ve wanted to be like him. Like he was, before he went mad. Holy.” She surprises herself by being able to laugh. “But Charlie thinks I have no talent for it.”

“Tell me about Charlie.”

“Charlie is the one we are waiting for. Thomas’s friend.” She feels herself blushing. “My friend, too.”

Soon thereafter, they each retire to bed.

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Thomas is up early the next day. His sickness has left him at last. Now he stands, itching for action. He is that hateful word found in cheap novels. Virility. It’s in his every stride and glower. No other word will do.

And yet he cannot meet her eye.

“I’m off,” he announces after breakfast and does not wait to see whether she will follow. His impatience only increases once — five steps apart, him rushing, her chasing — they reach the foot of the church. Dawn is breaking; a smear of colours in the fog.

There is no Charlie.

“Something has happened to him.”