Joe Treasure - The Book of Air

Walter was in the farmhouse, in bed with a chill. I climbed in the window and sat with him. I’d hear them calling for me. When someone came with food or a fresh hot water bottle, I’d hide in the wardrobe. Getting off the road was where we’d gone wrong, I was sure of that, and I sensed that Walter felt the same. I’d never thought much about Walter. Now he seemed like a frail lifeline, our only connection with the world beyond Lloyd Morgan’s field. I hung around his room for days. I tried to get him to talk, but he was rambling.

‘What did you mean, Walter, in the river, when you said we’ll go no more a roving?’

‘So late into the night,’ he said.

‘Yes, what did you mean?’

‘Though the heart be still as loving and the moon be still as bright.’

‘Do you think we should keep roving, keep travelling on the Jesus bus?’

‘BJ Chaudhry loved that one. The Isles of Greece – that one too – where burning Sappho loved and sung, where grew the arts of war and peace, where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung. Eternal summer gilds them yet.’ His eyes were moist with tears. ‘But all… except their sun… is set.’

I could only just catch the last of it. After that he stopped talking. Everything slowed down. I don’t know how long I sat there – an hour maybe. I thought he was asleep. For a while he made a noise in his throat like snoring. The intervals between the breaths stretched out, and out, and then he was quiet.

Next day I sat with the others for breakfast. My mother brought me bacon and eggs and some black pudding, which she knew I liked. She gave me a pleading look. ‘Be a good boy, Jason. This is our future now.’

Derek stood up and said that everyone had been baptised except me, and today it was my turn. ‘From now on,’ he said, ‘you shall be called Tarshish.’

I knew he meant to humble me. I said, ‘Who’s Tarshish when he’s at home?’

And Derek said, ‘You know, Tarshish son of Javan son of Gomer son of Japheth son of Noah who built the ark and lived for nine hundred and fifty years.’

And I said, ‘Bugger that, I’m not changing my name to Tarshish.’

And Derek got in a strop. ‘You wanna watch it son,’ he said. ‘I’ve had my eye on you, and I reckon you been pitching your tent towards Sodom.’

‘That’s a lie,’ I said, ‘a fucking lie and you know it.’

For a moment I thought he was going to hit me. But he closed his eyes and started praying. ‘Dear Lord Jesus Christ, if it be thy will, cleanse this child of his foul words and foul thoughts and whatever else he’s been getting up to.’ He took a deep breath, while the wind touched the leaves with a dry sound. Then he opened his eyes and said, ‘Come on Lester. Lloyd. Let’s get on with it.’

I turned to run, but Lloyd was standing in my way. I felt his meaty hands on me. Then my legs were lifted off the ground. I saw faces swing past – Granny Cheryl with one hand over her mouth, little Tiffany squirming on her lap, Penny frowning. I saw my mother’s eyes, large and sorrowful, before her head dropped. They carried me into the river and held me upright while I kicked about to find my footing.

‘I baptise thee, Tarshish,’ Derek said. And the rest of it. Then he pushed my head under the water and held it there and, swear to God, Caro, I thought I was done for.

That night I stole an old bike out of Lloyd’s tractor shed. Penny was waiting for me by the farm gates at the end of the track.

She said, ‘I knew you was gunna leave.’

I didn’t say anything – just scowled and shrugged.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t need to if you knew already.’

‘Take me with you, then.’

‘There’s only one bike. You’d go too slow anyway. And the police would stop us.’

She started to cry. ‘If you go, what’ll I do?’

‘You’ll be all right, Pen.’

‘I won’t though.’

I left her crying on the edge of the road. The wheels had stopped turning and the Jesus bus was sinking into madness – I knew that. But I left her anyway.

I know what women they are that speak to me at night. I know how I hear their voices. I have waited for the sun to rise so I could write this.

I was so frightened in the night that I crawled under the bed, though there was hardly space for me. The dust had gathered undisturbed and I must push my face against it, fearing the touch of mice and spiders.

Before, lying in bed, I was almost used to the talking if it was only stories of the next door children stealing from the garden or questions about how to please a man with kissing. But someone had started again about mother’s dead baby, which I can’t bear to think of. I clamped my teeth and said shut up shut up shut up until my voice was sore and the words lost their meaning. I battered my head on the mattress, afraid it would be the wall next and my skull would be mashed like a turnip.

And so I rolled on to the floor and went sliding headfirst on the splintery boards until even the greenish glint of moonlight was blocked out and I took more dust in at my nose than air.

But the voice came even closer than before. My hand found a hole in the floor the size of a saucer, and when I put my face to it, it was like a whispering at my ear.

I knew then that if I went to the window and looked down towards the yard and waited long enough I would see movement in the shadows and it would be a woman slipping from the end of the yard out into the field, or a woman crossing from the field into the yard. They might see each other in passing and say nothing but goodnight. Or nothing at all, each keeping the other’s secret even to herself, a secret for the women of the village to keep from men and children and from the Mistress and all those who lived at the Hall.

It was the voices from the Grace Pool I could hear, coming up through the hidden pipe.

I put my mouth to the hole and caught the smell of smoke and sage.

I said, ‘I’m thirsty, they don’t bring enough water.’ I said, ‘Open the door. The key is in the lock, which I know because no light comes through the keyhole, and I hear only the key turning not the scraping of it in or out.’ I said, ‘I’m not mad but this room will make me mad.’

I think I slept for a while down there in the darkness.

I said, ‘Hang pans on your fence that will clang when the children climb over.’ I said, ‘Peel a carrot for the baby to gnaw on, small enough for its little mouth, but not so small that it will choke.’ I said, ‘He will love you but only when you have stopped wanting him and then it will be his turn to blush and stammer, and the sight of his staring will make you think of nothing more interesting than field work that must be done and what you must cook for tea.’

There was light that came and went so quickly I thought I’d dreamt it. Then a low rumble of thunder. So it was lightning I’d seen, but too far off to bring rain.

I said, ‘Your father is dead and there is nothing to be thought about it except now it is you that must plant the potatoes.’

I said, ‘Sarah taught me to read the Book of Air and every utterance in it four times each time different, and was kind to me at my mother’s burial, and I would kiss her hands if she was here.’

I said, ‘There are four books but what if there were five?’

I said, ‘We contain air and are contained by air, but the air in the red room was breathed in and in out a thousand times before I was born and in all these years no one has taken a broom to its dust.’

I said, ‘Bring me water. Or turn the key and let me fetch my own water.’ I said, ‘This room is memory and I am lost in it.’ I said, ‘This room is mad and I am its only thought.’