Claire-Louise Bennett: Pond: Stories

The ratcatcher woke me, I knew he was coming, but I’d had three overflowing beers the night before and I’d slept through the rat and I wanted to go on sleeping.

Go on sleeping through the rising birds and through the horses walking up the hill and through the four cows rearranging themselves and through the dog that follows the horses on their way down the hill and through the cat here and there and through the fox stopping and starting on the driveway and through the donkey standing, but the ratcatcher woke me and down the stairs I came

and made us both coffees right away. And because I wasn’t really here I didn’t yet know how I like things, so I put two sugars and milk into my coffee, because that’s how the ratcatcher takes his.

I sat late one afternoon for a reason that resolutely refuses to come to mind in my neighbours’ house with my coat on all alone in the room between the kitchen and the parlour. I don’t know where she was, the one who had answered the door, off in the garden somewhere positioning a sign I should think because by that time they really were getting ready for the big day. I had, by then, already given them bunting so that was not the reason for my being in my neighbours’ house. It’s true that besides the bunting I also gave them a box of coloured straws that someone had in fact given me one spring around the time of my birthday perhaps — however I remember distinctly leaving the box of straws on the wall near the gate to the neighbours’ house on a beautiful afternoon when I was feeling particularly magnanimous and lithe— hence the capacity to overcome my growing apprehension and contribute something from under the sink towards the big day. Actually this turned out to be a slightly more bothersome enterprise than I had predicted due to the fact that the box of straws would not stay upright upon the wall. They didn’t look too good lying horizontally, which is understandable when you consider that a level straw is a useless straw, so I was stuck at the wall for quite a while, fumbling like a laggard, trying to find a way of propping the box up so that its final position didn’t discredit the earnestness of my gesture nor the snazzy appeal of the item it was attempting to convey. There were pink straws and blue ones and yellow ones and perhaps some green ones too. The pink straws were the nicest really because they were very bright and looked surprisingly sophisticated whereas the other colours were not quite so striking and so those straws looked like exhausted flumes that small children come shooting out of in water parks, in landlocked European countries especially. I remember the lido in Bavaria very well in fact and the way the children were very focused, tiptoeing around the wooden sun-loungers all day long collecting glass bottles to return to the dusky hatch beneath the evergreens in exchange for a few pfennigs each time, because it was in fact pfennigs then. That was also an uncannily serene day and I was alone then too, so although I swam I did not feel brave enough to go all the way to the other side for the reason that when I am alone it is practically impossible for me to gauge distance.

Not only did I still have my coat on but my rucksack was still on my shoulders too and I think I’m right in saying that it felt very consoling and perhaps I wriggled back into its padded girth. The seat I was sitting on was a kitchen chair in the old style and by that time I was quite fagged out since in all likelihood I had just come back from doing circuitous errands in town the like of which often causes my neck and shoulders to turn on me. It could be that there was something from the post box to give her. That often happens; none of them seem to check the post box as often as I do which is rather unusual when one takes into account they all seem to receive quite interesting things fairly regularly. Sometimes I take them, these small handcrafted boxes and crammed envelopes, and put them on top of the storage heater where they might well remain for up to a week before I manage to pass them on to the intended recipient. The post box gets damp you see, causing letters and so on to pucker and leak, so occasionally I am quite diligent about emptying it and other times my mind is such that I just don’t care enough about what happens to other people’s post. Of course already there were things inside the house here and there that testified to the imminence of the big day, and the reason I sat down at all was to have a look at some visual material and historical information they’d acquired from the landlady. First of all there was a rudimentary map with names written either in or next to the various plotted rectangles which denoted the different cottages that were, at the time of this particular survey, a hundred or so years ago, inhabited by various humans. It is necessary to specify humans because actually it was not always the case that the buildings provided a bolthole for people only — my own cottage, for example, was used to store hay for a while and it is likely that from time to time a pregnant cow took refuge there. Attached to this map was a census form which further elaborated on the two-legged inhabitants and the precise dates of their tenure— this was however, no matter how much I tried, of little interest to me. Names, typical names: names you’d see in any number of places around about, on signs above pharmacies and bars, across plastic packages of bacon, for example. Perhaps as often happens I’d misplaced my keys once again and was unable to get into the laundry room to turn my washing out of the machine into the basket so that it could all be carried to the line and hung there to dry.

What difference does it make anyway why I happened to be in the neighbours’ house? I don’t know why I keep going on about it or indeed why not remembering is irking me so much. What possible meaning will be advanced if I do finally ascertain what had me go over there? Perhaps it was bunting, perhaps it was straws, or to gain access to the washing machine and my laundered clothes, perhaps I was delivering mail, returning a spoon, asking for jam, enquiring as to the whereabouts of my sleeping bag which was for two months tucked unobtrusively behind the tumble dryer and is now nowhere to be seen, perhaps it was to bitch about the rotten sheepdog who comes down the driveway every morning to dispense a slapdash turd between the shed and the outbuilding, or maybe I was spotted coming down the steps and a conversation about the big day was embarked upon and I said yes of course I’d like to come in and finally see the material the landlady has provided especially.

She must have made me a cup of tea anyhow, before she went off to place a cautionary notice next to the pond — which, by the way, has absolutely no depth whatsoever. If it were left up to me I wouldn’t put a sign next to a pond saying pond, either I’d write something else, such as Pig Swill, or I wouldn’t bother at all. I know what the purpose of it is, I know it’s to prevent children from coming upon the pond too quickly and toppling in, but still I don’t quite agree with it. It’s not that I want children to fall into the pond per se, though I can’t really see what harm it would do them; it’s that I can’t help but assess the situation from the child’s perspective. And quite frankly I would be disgusted to the point of taking immediate vengeance if I was brought to a purportedly magical place one afternoon in late September and thereupon belted down to the pond, all by myself most likely, only to discover the word pond scrawled on a poxy piece of damp plywood right there beside it. Oh I’d be hopping. That sort of moronic busy-bodying happens with such galling regularity throughout childhood of course and it never ceases to be utterly vexing. One sets off to investigate you see, to develop the facility to really notice things so that, over time, and with enough practice, one becomes attuned to the earth’s embedded logos and can experience the enriching joy of moving about in deep and direct accordance with things. Yet invariably this vital process is abruptly thwarted by an idiotic overlay of literal designations and inane alerts so that the whole terrain is obscured and inaccessible until eventually it is all quite formidable. As if the earth were a colossal and elaborate deathtrap. How will I ever make myself at home here if there are always these meddlesome scaremongering signs everywhere I go.