Keith Ridgway - Hawthorn & Child

I have never killed anyone in my life.

The water closed over the sun and the moon and Estator stretched his neck and the gathered host howled and raked the dark earth and proclaimed the King Of The Wolves. His firstborn son rolled in the leaves and Klew scratched the name of the new King into the Tree Of The Hidden Tree. The hawks in the night carried tribute. Dogs from the western mansions bowed seriously. The company of Pauper Rats giggled in the shallows and the ravens of Clerkenwell screeched in the branches of the surrounding woods like human young. Estator breathed deeply and knew that all these creatures soon would be blood and decay and the soil, and that the soil was his food, and that he himself would not live as long as his name or his deeds, and that all he now did was done forever, because it would be spoken of and told, and he was no longer himself but a story. He looked at the fox companions, and they smiled at him, and he was filled with sorrow at the closing down of his life. At the closing down of his life

There were no dogs. No guards. No wolves.

I think my finger is broken.

My coat is torn in three places. It is smeared in mud and at least two different sorts of shit. My shoes are caked and scratched, and there are pebbles and gum and a bottle cap stuck to the heels.

On the bus a woman sat beside me and then moved.

There is a small cut on my forehead, and a rather larger one on my left cheek. I stand in the bathroom watching myself in the mirror as I take off my clothes. There is considerable bruising to my chest. There is a scrape across my back, which curls around my hip and plunges into my groin. The are patches of dirt in impossible places. And a surprising gash on my thigh with no corresponding tear in my trousers that I can see.

The chief sources of pain are my finger — the ring finger of my left hand — and my ankle, my right ankle, which is swollen. It’s a sprain I think. I went over on it when I landed — immediately after injuring my finger by almost leaving it behind, trapped between the spurs on the top of the fence.

I can see no reason for anything. Certainly not for any of this.

Trainer must have had exposed beams in his ceiling. Or a hook, or something like that.

Sitting on the bus all the liquids running out of me started to dry, and I was unsure which trickle was blood, and which was sweat, and whether I had pissed or shit myself. There is less to it than I felt there was and I am disappointed.

I hate my life.

I read stories all day long. All week long. I read them. I hear them. I listen to stories and plots and fictions. I weigh characters in my hand like I am buying fruit. I purse my lips and roll my head on my shoulders and I suggest this and that. It might make more sense if you did this. It would be more believable, the character would be more sympathetic, the story would flow better, the loose ends would be tied up if you did this or that or the other. And they do it. And people read these things. People actually read them from within their lives and the pages are numbered and the numbers are sequential.

No one saw me there. I was not apprehended.

Time stretches but it never breaks. It never breaks.

There are no beams or hooks or anything likely in my flat. There is rope. I have rope. Unused rope. It lies on top of my wardrobe neatly tied in a pinched loop. I have never been this angry before. I have never been this furious or cold.

I pour a Highland Park. I think about Trainer. I wonder about him. What a terrible mess he made of his life. I consider that judgement and I look out at the park. Naked, I sit in my armchair and I stare out at the mist over the grass and the cold light in the trees and the crisp shadows where things move and sway and inch forward and retreat.

Knowing things completes them. Kills them. They fade away, decided and over and forgotten. Not knowing sustains us. Why do I care about Trainer? I do not. Why do I care about a worthless manuscript that smells of contrivance? I do not. All I am doing is comparing my own set of misunderstandings to the misunderstandings of others. All I am doing is wishing that I were not what I am. All I am doing is constructing a story that might be told about me when I have given up hearing the stories of others.

I am naked. I can dress. I can dress and go downstairs. I can take the manuscript with me. I can cross to the park.

The night is bitter and dark. The air is empty. I dig with my hands in the hard earth beside a high tree in sight of my windows. My finger runs pain through me like a hot iron. I make a shallow depression and I put the manuscript there and I cover it up with dirt and I make no great effort to disguise it. I limp back across the road. I pick up a rock. I fling it at my window, my office window, and it punches a hole through a pane and lands on my desk. I struggle back upstairs. I leave my door open. I pull over bookcases, tables, I knock pictures from walls. I smash a vase, I break bottles, I throw the contents of cupboards and drawers on the floor. I pull books apart, I rip covers from them, I kick a crack in the television screen, I dial Child’s number and when he answers I throw the phone against the wall and roar. I find it again and pick it up and plead with him to come, to come now, and then I roar again and drop the phone on the kitchen floor and stamp on it. I turn over my own bed. I open the fridge, pull out the shelves, pull it over. I smear my blood on the walls. I turn on a gas ring, light it, turn it to full. I strip. I tear my clothes. I get the rope from the top of my wardrobe. I tie one end around my neck. I tie the other end around the … what?

All of this I can do. I can do it. Child and non-Child. Pages to turn. I will become fascinating to them. Never ending.

I sit in my armchair. Naked.

I can do it. I will do it.

I sit in my armchair.

Naked.

What to tie the rope to, though. That’s the bloody problem, isn’t it?

She liked art. She liked paintings and video art and photography. She liked to read about artists and she liked to hear them talk. She had been to all the big London art museums already, and she had been to some small ones too, and some galleries. She wanted to be an artist, she thought. She liked the way the world looked and felt one way when you looked at it or breathed or walked about, and looked another way completely when you looked at art, even though you recognized that the art was about the world, or had something to do with the world — the world you looked at or breathed or walked about in. She didn’t mean realism. She didn’t like realism very much really, because usually there was no room in it. She would look at it, and everything was already there. But she liked abstract art because it was empty. Sometimes it was only empty a tiny amount, and it was easy for her to see what the artist was trying to say or make her feel, and sometimes that was OK, but she usually liked the art that had lots of empty in it, where it was really hard to work out what the artist wanted, or whether the artist wanted anything at all, or was just, you know, trying to look like he had amazing ideas. But really good artists had lots of empty in their paintings or whatever they did. They left everything out, or most things anyway, but suggested something, so that she could take her own things into the painting (or the installation or the video or whatever) and the best art of all was when she didn’t really know what she was taking in with her, but it felt right, and when she looked at that art and took herself into it she felt amazing.

She wanted to be able to do that. Make that.

Photography was a bit different. She hadn’t worked out why yet.

Her dad was having a text fit. She put her phone on silent and stuck it in a drawer.