Pond: Stories (10 page)

Remote sensations really, hardly mine at all—nothing to take personally. Whatever singular intensity there had been sheepishly drifted off and the usual way of things resumed. I felt quite chilly in fact. The cows were still there by the gate as I walked on by, down the hill. I slowed down a little and thought of Jesus, I don’t know why. Perhaps you all think I’m Jesus, I said, and then looked over at the windows of a neighbouring bungalow. A light came on. There were cactus plants in trays along the sill. Soon enough I was outside my own cottage, admiring its green door and deep-set windows. Fancy that, I thought. What a very lovely place to live. Then I arrived inside and after stepping out of my soaked boots I went across to the desk and began slowly skimming through a book of photographs by Clarence H. White.

The Gloves Are Off

When my friend who lives nearby called over I was outside again on the steps this time taking the disposable barbeque I’d bought earlier in the day up to where there’s a stone alcove—I was quite sure he wouldn’t spot me straight away and seeing oneself being looked for wrenches the heart oh ever so gently and must be one of my favourite occurrences—I thought I’d get to look at him lean his bicycle on mine, which was in the usual place, and go into my cottage, where of course he wouldn’t find me. As it was he saw me immediately—before he’d even dismounted his bike—which rather spoiled things, and since I hadn’t expected that at all I was caught somewhat off guard which I swiftly concealed by holding the disposable barbeque out vertically, right out in front of my face, a peculiar reflex which more or less pulled me together. What are you doing with that, he said—putting it somewhere, I said, and that’s what I did.

He came on up the steps then and sat down on the stone alcove, near to where I’d put the disposable barbeque—we didn’t say anything about it, perhaps because I’d already mentioned it on the phone earlier on, in which case he already knew I’d nothing yet to put on it so there was nothing much to
say. He said he was fed up, or something like that, and I said I was too—he seemed to think it had to do with how the weather had been the same for two weeks. I was inclined to believe it had more to do with how our lives had been more or less the same for much longer. I really despise having thoughts like that since I can’t ever reliably ascertain where it is exactly such ideas arise from, I didn’t feel like going into it anyway and supposed neither of us would benefit from it very much even if I were to. We looked at a massive dragonfly for a while, it was very easy to follow because of how bright and big it was and I was as good as mounted between its perfectly Edwardian wings when my friend asked me to make him some coffee, which was fine by me and down I went. He came inside to drink it and I lolled against the wall by the window rather sulkily—it was too late in the day for me to have coffee you see, so I resorted to making marks on the wall with my irked fingers and flashed him sidelong glances now and then. He asked me if my water was hot and I said I didn’t know, probably I said—his shower hadn’t been fixed, which didn’t surprise me in the least because when it stopped working before he didn’t notify the landlord and I’m not sure what would have happened if he hadn’t had an accident which meant I took care of things, including going around to his landlord and telling him about the shower and asking him to get a new sofa because the one that was there was old and lopsided and would probably be very bad for someone trying to heal a broken femur. Turn on the immersion, he said, which I did, and then I turned it off again and back on, then off, flipping the switch, on and off, on and off, on and on, and then I stopped and said now you don’t know whether it’s on or off do you, which cheered him up. It’s on, he said, and he was quite right.

While my friend was having a nice shower I took the bowl down to the compost bin and it was comforting to see just my blanket on the washing line in the shade. The compost bin is really filling up and I couldn’t get a good look at its contents like I customarily do because it’s got very lively in there. There were just way too many flies this time, and I suppose now it’ll only get busier and busier and some days I’ll hardly want to turn and lift the lid at all. On the way back I put the empty bowl on the bench near the pond and sat down beside it. I think I should probably have just kept it in my hands really and held it in my lap because sitting next to the bowl felt really peculiar and it took some effort on my part not to glance down at it and ask it how it was doing. My neighbour’s blanket was on that part of the ground nearest the pond where there is no grass just small stones, gravel I suppose, except I think gravel tends to make a noise and slide around a bit whereas this stuff is completely embedded and doesn’t make any sound at all. Evidently my neighbour’s blanket has been down on the ground for quite some time and throughout a lot of rainfall because it’s practically enmeshing the stones and in fact in places it’s difficult to tell the difference between the stones and the coarse and murky weave of the blanket, just lying there, like a flung off reptilian carapace. The sight of it gave me the shivers actually and it was soon obvious that sitting on the bench was not very helpful and would improve nothing so I picked up the bowl and went on up the path towards my cottage. It was as if there was nothing left for me to see. I looked at all the leaves from last year on the main steps which lead up to the gate where the post box perches and I don’t know how many times now I’ve heard my landlady’s sister comment upon them.

It’s quite true; I don’t do anything really. Any progressive
human being with access to this much land would surely set about growing an impressive selection of vegetables right away. If I wasn’t so lazy I could be enjoying delicious home-grown produce for months on end. It crosses my mind now and then of course; in spring the supermarkets have a habit of putting shelving units full of grow-your-own gardening kits right in front of the automatic doors, you can’t miss them really, but in a strange way these packages deter rather than inspire me. They frequently have a lot of excessively cheerful writing on them and look so manufactured I just can’t conceive how anything natural and enduring could possibly spring from them. Sometimes I’ve gone as far as to shove a beginner’s pack into my basket but by the time I’ve reached the dairy section I’ve zero hope left that whatever it contains will amount to anything worthwhile so I take it out and dump it among the spot-lit speciality cheeses, which is probably very bad of me.

No weeding, no trimming, very little sweeping; when it comes to external upkeep I really am a relentless little lazy bones. Though when the thatchers were here they left behind such a mess, and straw or reeds or whatever they are kept coming into the cottage, which made me so cross I had to get out there eventually and clear it up as best I could. My prolonged indolence in this case was I think quite reasonable since it mostly consisted of disappointment in fact. The thatchers arrived to do the roofs around the same time I’d begun painting over my bathroom walls which were dark green in the beginning, so dark and porous looking that sometimes at night their surfaces seemed to disappear completely and it was as if I might actually be able to glide my hands and arms and the rest of me far into the wall and enter some other place that probably requires small sharp weapons and a hunk of kick-ass cheese. However,
after a shower, when there was condensation running all over them, it was quite a different story. It was a real little squelch hole then, and I often suspected newts and frogs and big-bellied spiders were peering at my dripping nakedness from behind the clammy glistening beams. The yellow I chose in order to give the walls a more respectable dimension was very smart indeed, what I consider to be a Renaissance yellow, or, if you prefer, matador yellow. I presented a sample to my landlady and she nestled it into her new handbag so she could take it to her sister who hadn’t been feeling too well and they both agreed it was very striking. Imagine what it will look like with the grey slate floor, I said, and she agreed that it would look very stylish indeed with the grey slate floor. I got an enormous tub of it which was as well because I had to apply endless coats in order to cover up that green which just seemed hell-bent on showing through and I didn’t want so much as a trace of it remaining because of the beastly way it completely undermined the yellow and made it seem folksy and psychedelic, and of course that was not the effect I was after at all.

As might be expected I was in the bathroom all day every day for perhaps two weeks—I think I may have gone off somewhere for a few days before it was quite finished, so it could be that it was longer than two weeks even—and, naturally, given the odorous nature of my task I had the window open at all times. This meant I could keep a close eye on the thatchers, unbeknownst to them, and I often saw them gawking at one of the girls who was living in the main cottage at the time. I didn’t find their smutty high jinks the least bit surprising and thought the way my neighbours made such a fuss over the thatchers really very misplaced and naive. They seemed to be out there every five minutes, taking photographs of the thatchers and with both hands bestowing
upon them great big mugs of tea—as if they were dauntless chieftains from days of yore. I don’t know why it is that people tend to assume that artisanal tradesmen who work with natural materials according to traditional methods are wholesome souls with salt-of-the-earth sensibilities. These two, as far as I could see, were a right dirty pair and I seemed to be the only one who sensed it which was interesting for the reason that they spoke Irish all day long so I was also the only one who, strictly speaking, didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. They came to the door one day with my landlady who wanted to talk to me about the struts, there on either side, which were in very bad shape apparently and needed replacing. After a bit my landlady leaned in and asked me what my Irish was like and the thatchers looked terribly pleased with themselves and began to chuckle. Well, I said, it’s funny you should ask—it turns out I can understand quite a bit actually. Is that right, she said, and the two of them soon zipped up their triumphal tittering, needless to say. And what kind of nonsense would this pair be talking, she said. Oh I couldn’t repeat it, I said, absolutely shocking— especially this one, I said, and nodded at the shorter one who went very red and slack and I knew he was as guilty as could be. They both shuffled about in the small space and began patting the shoddy struts with their hands while looking right up at the sky, as if it were the legs of a giraffe they stood between. Overall I had no truck with the thatchers—I hope you know what you’re doing, I’d call up to them now and then, which delighted the taller one and completely mystified the shorter one. Indeed, it wasn’t the crafty demeanour and furtive buffoonery of the thatchers that was a cause of disappointment to me; it was the origin of the materials they used to replenish the thatch that was the real letdown.

The reeds were in great big beautiful round bundles all across the driveway, and in the evening, before going home, the thatchers would cover them over so they’d stay snug and dry throughout the night. I’d inferred the reeds had been sourced from somewhere not too far away, along the River Shannon most likely, and that was something I liked to think about actually. I liked to think about all the little fishes that had nudged around and prodded at the reeds here and there. And I liked to think about the bigger fish, pike for example, that had occasionally swished past deep down and set them off nervously swaying, for miles and miles and miles perhaps. And the adrenalised coots spun out by the whirlpool of their own incessant rubbernecking and the hot-headed moorhens zigzagging to and fro. And the swans’ flotilla nests resplendent with marbled eggs. And the sly-bones heron in a world of his own. And the skaters and the midges and the boatmen and the dragonflies and the snails and the spawn, and who knows what else the susurrant reeds are raided with. Are these reeds, I said to the taller one one day. They are, he said. Where they from, I said. Turkey, he said. Turkey, I said. That’s right, he said. How come, I said. It’s cheaper, he said. Really, I said. Because to tell you the truth I couldn’t quite believe my ears and sometime later, weeks after in fact, I still wasn’t convinced so I looked into the matter and almost immediately discovered that the Shannon River and the many tributaries that flow into it had indeed been a prime source of water reed until about twenty years ago. Since then widespread use of intensive farming methods has increased the use of fertilisers and these run down from the fields with the copious rain and contaminate the waterways so that while the nitrates force the reeds to grow fast and long they grow too fast and too long and so are actually quite brittle and
pretty well useless and in fact wouldn’t last very long at all up on a roof. And that’s the reason why.

It seemed to me actually that it was high time I cleaned off the old leaves from the main steps so I went into the kitchen and got the broom and took it up to the top step. Now, I do not know if my method for clearing off the leaves was the best approach since it involved sweeping the leaves from the top step down to the next step and then sweeping both lots of leaves onto the following step, and so on. Probably it would have been better to have used a pan to collect the leaves from each step, but it wasn’t that important to me to do it the best way and I quite liked how the heap spilled and prospered like a big tumbling ogre as I made my way down the steps with the broom. I was almost at the last step when my friend came out and just stood there. Did you have a nice shower, I said. Yeah, he said. About time, I said, and then I told him to go and get a wheelbarrow, which he didn’t look altogether pleased about. Briefly I had thought that perhaps a little concerted effort might shake us out of our ennui but in this respect our natures are quite distinct and I knew he’d demonstrate no enthusiasm or initiative whatsoever so I gave up the idea that this might be an invigorating endeavour and simply continued to tell him what to do instead. I don’t like gardening, he said, we’re not gardening, I said. What are we doing then, he said. Tidying up, I said. Soon as that was done I nudged the broom over the large rock to loosen leaves caught up in a contorted tangle of grappling stems—what is this anyway, I said—it seemed dead, whatever it was, so I yanked at it until it leapt loose and the rock became completely clear and was something naked and impressive. I could tell my friend could see no point to what I was doing—I bundled what I’d ripped up into the wheelbarrow
and told him to empty it then I went off to find tools—he would be going soon and I wanted to know how it would be to go on doing what I was doing without anyone around.

I found secateurs and shears and since I was in the business of sprucing things up I was thrilled with both—particularly the secateurs because although I’d seen the shears here and there—in quite hazardous places it must be said—I hadn’t known anything about the secateurs so they were a real bonus. There were a lot of rampant brambles, and other things on the wane. It had never before occurred to me to do anything about them, it didn’t seem to be any of my business to tell you the truth—interfering is something I really loathe in almost all its applications. So, I was trimming—pruning you might call it— and pulling up weeds and patting the soil back down, and I soon felt like one of those ladies I’d see from the car window on the way to my grandparents’ house with their ample backsides and baggy gardening gloves when I was much smaller. This is mindless, I thought, and very unflattering—stop it at once. But I didn’t stop because I was so curious to find out what changed if I carried on. I had an uneasy relationship with my task, that is for sure, and I had to go on telling myself things like everything will grow back, it helps the little plants come forth, all the big stuff is almost dead anyway—you don’t ever have to do this again was the final assurance I offered myself— but if you don’t do something today, now, how will you find anything out about how you feel? I couldn’t continue with the tools so put them down and carried on with my hands, which were ungloved, and very soon they were stinging, which was fair. Come on then, I thought, and watched as my hands tore around indiscriminately. Is this kind of frenzied pulling and wrenching what happens once you begin? Perhaps I really hate
all this stuff and it is a very normal and human thing to wish to crush it. But no, not that, I wasn’t pitting myself against nature or anything as hammy as that—I was suddenly desperate to get rid of all this dishevelled foliage, it’s true, but the reason I soon realised was because I wanted to get to bare soil—I missed it—it was all covered over and I wanted so much to push everything aside and see the earth. I’d had quite enough of leaves and flowers, all that rustling and blooming and liquid light, it was time for all that to pack itself off really. Except of course it doesn’t go anywhere it just lies around like a lot of burst things and shrivels and withers and becomes very soggy and swamp-like. Oh, fuck the leaves and fuck the flowers! I want to see naked trees and hear the earth gasp and settle into a warm and tender mass of radiant darkness. I want to see the marks of hooves, not eleventh hour disposable barbeques. I want most of all to get inside there. That’s right, that’s always been true. It’s the first thing I can remember. Standing at the back window, looking at the lawn, and knowing exactly everything beneath it and wanting to get back there. You don’t know how passionate it is down there.