Claire-Louise Bennett: Pond: Stories

Hard to tell this time of year how long anything is going on for and for that reason I took it upon myself to intervene now and then, such as when, just two days after Christmas, I avouched enough was enough and promptly took down the decorations. I didn’t have a tree, just some things arranged along the mantel, holly and so on, but since it’s a large mantel it is something of a feature and therefore very noticeable and I’d made it particularly resplendent and was first of all very pleased with how it all turned out. Even so, it quickly became oppressive actually and the holly itself almost sort of evil, poking at the room like that with its creepy way of making contact with the air, no I didn’t like it one bit so a week went by and then it was all got rid of in a flash. The holly I flung directly into the fire beneath, and it was a young fire because this happened even before breakfast and as such the impatient stripling flames went crazy with the holly, consuming it so well, so pleasingly — I was enormously pleased in fact and shoved in branch after branch even though the flames were becoming really tall and very bright and the holly gasped and crackled so loudly. That’s right, suffer, I thought, damn you to hell — and the flames sprouted upwards even taller and brighter and made the most splendid gleeful racket. Burn to death and damn you to hell and let every twisted noxious thing you pervaded the room with go along with you, and in fact as it went on burning I could feel the atmosphere brightening. I won’t do it again, I thought, I won’t have it in the house again. And I recalled the sluggish misgivings I’d felt when the man took the money out of my hand and held up a tethered bundle of muricated sprigs for me to somehow take hold of in return. Standing there, with this dreadful trident, while his young son manoeuvred a small hand around a grim bag of change. The whole thing was sullied and I remember at the time feeling faintly that I should just leave it but then I located the cause of that regrettably irresolute sensation to an area in me where snobbery and superstition overlap most abominably and I chided myself for being so affected and fey — what are you some sort of overstrung contessa I thought — certainly not, then wish them well and get going. And off down the street I bobbed, yet, anachronistic feelings of pity and repulsion notwithstanding, I had a very clear sense of having succumbed to something I was not entirely at ease with and it was at that moment perhaps that the first pair of red eyes partly opened and considered me with age-old contempt.

The sticks, in case you wondered, make very good kindling of course and I thought it a good idea to collect a nice lot of them before any rain fell and made them damp and less inclined to combust. It was a nice thing to do anyway — going about the driveway like that, picking up sticks, was a nice thing to do. In I came, two or three times, and deposited bundles of sticks into the basket in front of the shorter bookcase. It surely was the afternoon by then and the atmosphere had really brightened, everything was good and nice again because of all that wonderful fluttering industriousness that keeps everything buoyant and encompassed. I’m referring primarily to the birds of course who had naturally always been there. During those two days that are decorously ceded to Christmas whenever I looked out at them it was not the same thing in the least as when I look at them on all the other days, and so, though I’d only done what I took to be the bare minimum, I acknowledged that I probably didn’t ought to have gone along with the putative festivities at all this year, even to the slightest degree. And anyway, you do it or you don’t — all I’d managed to bring about with my reluctant tinkering was a subtle yet agitating distortion. One has to have illustrated links with the fair to middling ranks of reality I should think in order for something like Christmas to really work out otherwise it just seems odd and sort of accusatory and one feels turbulent and extrinsic and can’t wait for it all to slump backwards into its shambolic velvet envelope and shuffle off down the hill.

No doubt about it, Krampus was in tow this year, and when I looked at my lovely sticks piled so neatly in the basket in front of the shorter bookcase it seemed not for the first time something of a lapse indeed that I don’t possess the first idea of how to go about casting a spell. Just say a few words, I said, as the sticks are burning, but that wouldn’t be right at all and anyway what words would I say and I’m sure they should rhyme now and then at the very least and I’m hopeless at making up rhymes. It doesn’t matter actually because it’s all over with and there’s no trace of anything now. Besides, there’s never any need of course for me to be messing about with twigs and verses and chants on account of the fact that my technique for moving matters along is really quite advanced by now. I’m quite sophisticated in all sorts of ways you see and hardly ever need to dwell upon anything. That’s right, I don’t go into things too deeply any more — as such, when they ask, and they will ask, how it all went, and had I a nice day, I shall say it went just fine, thank you, I had a very lovely day indeed. On its own that’s a little pacified perhaps and might well be considered evasive and could, thereby, be misconstrued, so I’ll do my bit and say a few tantalising words about the dinner itself — we had pheasant, I’ll say. One apiece. Wrapped in thick rivulets of streaky bacon and the whole thing gussied up with such deliciously tart and exuding redcurrants. Oh how nice, they’ll say, was it nice? Oh yes, I’ll say, it wasn’t bad — tender overall, but perhaps a little dull in places. Is that so, they’ll say, do you think you’d have it again? Sure, I’ll say, sure I’ll have it again. Though next time I’ll do it slightly differently. Next time I’ll break the bugger’s backbone and do him in the pan.

Something came down the chimney fast, swerved, hit off the coal bucket. A small thing, and sharp maybe — the sound it made when it hit off the bucket suggested it was a small sharp thing. I don’t know where it landed, or if it even landed at all. I think it probably just disappeared. After hitting off the bucket I think it vanished, or was absorbed at least, withdrawn, anyhow, from all visible possibility. A little later, a long time after in fact, there was some thumping, as if inside — as if, again, there was something half-tucked inside the air perhaps. I didn’t like it very much, the thumping, but this didn’t develop into a difficulty for me because it too disappeared, or returned fully, whatever it was. I could hardly see by this time, my eyes were quite unable to focus — sort of unpractised and inept — as if they’d had no prior experience of form and perspective. They just slid around, nothing was organised — it was difficult then to locate where I was, for the reason that I just wasn’t able to establish any stable coordinates, so then I closed them. In an effort to attain some feeling akin to stillness I closed my eyes but this didn’t alter anything, it was as if, in fact, they were still wide open. Indeed, I felt them to be open and alert and searching. They went on with their palpating activity for some time, sometimes I twitched — but not because I was asleep — I wasn’t asleep. How could I have been? My blood was teeming, or ensorcelled, and my heart despised me, or wanted to divulge something, whichever either was at, the overall sensation was quite calamitous. I got that feeling again that I was some sort of funnel, for want of a better way of putting it — though a funnel isn’t accurate at all actually since the direction is wrong. I didn’t want to dwell on it anyhow, for the reason that that’s precisely what it wants you to do. As much as possible I turned away from all that — I could hear the flames turning the logs white, a kind of tinkling sound, as made by icicles and Gothic snow.