Читать книгу Mirrors: Sparkling new stories from prize-winning authors - Wendy Cooling - Страница 6

Gaye Hiçyilmaz THE MIRRORED GARDEN

I first saw the mirrored garden on my way back from the beach. I hadn’t even wanted to go to the seaside last year, and I’d told them so, but they hadn’t taken any notice of that.

‘Rubbish,’ Dad had said challengingly. ‘You’ll love it.’

‘Never mind, Chris,’ Dad’s girlfriend, Lizzie, was more honest. ‘It’s only a week. It’ll pass in a flash and there’s loads to do at the sea.’

‘Like what?’ I demanded. ‘Going on donkey rides?’

Lizzie had shrugged and looked at Dad with her jelly brown eyes.

‘Or making sand castles,’ I persisted, but I didn’t remind her that I was fourteen and not into buckets and spades. She didn’t remind me that she was twenty-one and not into being anyone’s mother, let alone mine.

Lizzie and I were as careful of each other as brain surgeons confronted by an unexpected lump.

‘What’s wrong with sand castles?’ Dad asked. ‘I used to love that beach at your age. People made brilliant things with sand.’

‘Sure!’ I quipped. ‘Like concrete.’

‘That’s not what I meant. I meant sand sculptures, and…’ Dad isn’t into arty things but he tried, because he knew I was. ‘And sand pictures and…’

‘Wow.’

Dad swallowed. Lizzie shrugged again. She blinked slowly, like a lizard in the sun, then went into their room to pack their bags.

‘It’s OK,’ I shrugged as well. ‘I’m going, aren’t I?’

‘You certainly are!’ Dad was brisk although his glance was anxious.

My friend Stubby was unsympathetic too. He said that family visits were rarely fatal, and never in a week, but he did agree they were a dreadful bore.

Stubby was wrong. We all were. It was boring. It was boring like I’ve never known boring could be, but I didn’t die. I didn’t even sicken. I loved it. I sucked up each gently stretched-out minute and rolled it round my tongue. The boredom was as delicious and chewy as those 2p sweets I used to buy at the newsagent’s on my way home from school, and I wanted more.

It was years since I’d actually seen my grandparents: well, three and a half, to be exact. They mentioned this the moment I got off the train. It was awkward. I hung my head and muttered the dreaded word divorce. I always do that in tight spots. People shut up straight away. They didn’t. They shook their grey heads and laughed. It wasn’t Mum and Dad’s divorce that had stopped them from visiting. It was the dog, Jasper. Jasper had a bad heart now, and other problems.

He didn’t look like he had a bad heart, but he was big. In fact, when Gran opened the front door and we had all clambered over him, I appreciated their point of view. Jasper was gigantic. If he hadn’t found the three flights of stairs up to Dad’s flat a problem, the stairs definitely might. I’ve made them creak and I’m not huge at all.

Later, as I was edging round the bed in the tiny spare room and wondering how to unpack, Grandpa called out. I left my bag on the bed and hurried down, but Jasper had beaten me to it. He was flopped out in the sitting room, drooling chocolate on to the carpet and looking pretty satisfied with life.

The odd thing was, that I was happy too. Even after I’d noticed that the family photos on the mantelpiece were all of Jasper, I wasn’t put out. I examined them with Gran. We admired Jasper as a pup in his basket, as a young dog with a big stick, and in massive middle age, with a loud tartan collar, and I didn’t mind at all.

‘He’s done all right,’ Gran folded her arms and smiled to herself. Grandpa nodded and I nodded too. Fleetingly, I remembered Dad in his new black jeans, with Lizzie at his side.

‘Come on then, lad.’ Grandpa had suddenly got up. I jumped to my feet, expecting a walk down to the sea or at least a tour of his greenhouse, but he turned his back.

‘It’s only Jasper,’ Gran confided as the dog lumbered past. ‘He’s got to be reminded to spend a penny now.’

‘Oh.’ I was glad they hadn’t visited. Old dogs wouldn’t have been Lizzie’s thing at all.

That evening Gran turned up the TV, then fell asleep. Grandpa went in and out with Jasper and that was it. Sometimes Gran snuffled and woke up to watch a bit, and sometimes Jasper snored, but nobody spoke to me at all.

It was such a relief. Nobody noticed me and I hardly knew I was there.

I had cornflakes for breakfast then a small white egg like a stone. When I’d made my bed, I cleaned my teeth with care. I even combed my hair. As I came down Gran was at the bottom of the stairs.

‘I’ve made fish paste and jam.’ She was holding up a polythene bag of neat, white sandwiches, with the crusts cut off. Jasper sulked. ‘And I’ve put in squash. You like squash, don’t you, Chris?’

‘Actually—’

‘Good. I thought you would. Now dear, don’t hurry back. We know what young people are like.’

‘I—’

‘We don’t have supper till six. After Jasper’s had his. So ’bye dear, until then.’

I was so surprised I tripped on the step.

I didn’t head for the beach, but kept it for last, like the crispiest bite of a Chinese. Killing time, I idled along the silent, neatly gardened street and on into town. A sea breeze swung B&B signs gently to and fro. Bedroom windows opened and lace curtains and the melody of vacuums unfurled.

My heart began to beat faster and louder than before. I felt like a hero, a first traveller in an unknown land.

If I’d wanted to, I could have leapt from that pavement and walked upon the peaceful air. But I didn’t because later, I saw the mirrored garden and went in.

I had dawdled through the shabby high street, which smelt of vinegar from the chippies and old, unwashed clothes. Mum would have adored it: there were charity shops from end to end. I glanced at this and that, then drifted down towards the sea.

I leant over the railings and stared at families on the beach. Their white shoulders were going red, their plastic seaside stuff was piled around on the sand. No sign of Dad’s sculptures, but I saw his donkeys, waiting in a row. If I hadn’t had the sandwiches in my hand, I’d have asked how much, and climbed up.

I wandered along the promenade, biting into the warm, fishy bread and then the jam. As I tipped back my head and put Gran’s bottle of squash to my lips, I saw something flash, and for once I didn’t turn away. I walked across.

The mirrored garden was in the space between a pink bungalow and the last terraced house. Two children with sandy legs, stood on the pavement and stared.

‘Come on,’ their mother, or somebody like one, nagged. ‘You don’t want to look at that!’ But they did so she grabbed their hands, and dragged them past.

I drained the bottle and went in.

There were no flowers in the garden or anything that grew with roots and stems and fluttering green leaves. Instead, someone had gathered up the remains of all the broken and shattered things in the world: ends of green wine bottles, triangles of blue willow pattern with pagodas and stick-like trees; pebbles and shells and thick fragments of pottery soaked in an old, yellow glaze. Someone had collected these thousands and thousands of smashed and abandoned bits together and cemented them into place. Then they’d built towers and spires and houses the size of shoe boxes and paths and a mountain with tea-cup white peaks of snow above a turquoise tiled sea. Everywhere, mirrors and bits of mirrors had been set into the concrete and they sparkled and flashed and blazed.

It was ugly and beautiful and it must have taken someone years and years.

‘Oh, it did,’ said a voice at my elbow as if I had spoken aloud. ‘Twenty-eight, to be exact. And I’m not finished yet.’

I nodded. I understood what he meant.

‘Like it, do you?’ He was a small, sun-burnt man with a thin mouth and wild, wiry hair.

I nodded again. In a cracked mirror I saw myself fractured into a million pieces of light, and scattered around.

The man’s nails were broken, his hands ugly and worn. I imagined him walking with shoulders bent and eyes downcast. His pockets would bulge as he scoured the ground.

I don’t know how long I spent in the mirrored garden, but I had to run through the summer shadows to make it back in time.

‘Had a nice day, dear?’ Gran helped me to more chips.

‘Yes.’

‘Your father phoned.’

‘What did he say?’ I could barely get my breath.

‘Not much. The weather was hot.’

‘You’d expect that,’ Grandpa speared a pea, ‘in Spain.’

That night I left the flowered curtains open and imagined things in the moonlight as I lay on the narrow bed.

‘See that?’ The next afternoon the man pointed to a circle of mirrored petals around half a plastic throne. ‘That’s where I started, twenty-eight years ago.’

‘Oh.’ I hadn’t asked but it was nice to know. I scratched the skin on the back of my knee. Earlier, I’d ridden a donkey up and down the beach and now I itched. ‘It’s very…’ I stared at the little drops of reflected light which danced on a doll’s hand, and a piece of smoothed, bleached bone.

‘Isn’t it just.’ He sighed and set something straight. ‘But now I don’t really care.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No. Or not much. Or I say something back. But mainly I just keep quiet and do a bit more. Like over there. See? That’s where I’m working now.’

‘What’ll you do when it’s finished?’

‘Finished?’ He rubbed his hands together and his rough skin rustled like leaves. ‘It’ll never be that.’

Back at the house after supper, I dried while Grandpa washed up. ‘A mirrored garden?’ He paused as he steered the head of the mop round the rim of a glass. ‘On the promenade, did you say, Chris? I don’t think I’ve heard about that.’ He looked down at Jasper. ‘But we don’t go far now, do we, old boy?’

The dog didn’t move.

‘But it’s been there twenty-eight years! That’s what the man said.’

‘Has it really? Just think of that.’ Grandpa rinsed out the bowl and squeezed the mop.

That night I heard a summer storm in my dreams and when I woke in the morning, everything smelled wet. Before I left, I held up the basin of wrung-out clothes while Gran pegged out the wash. Later, I walked bare-footed on the cold, ridged sand. I ate my sandwiches and spent time with a little kid who was trying to fish off the rocks.

I heard the noise as I was walking back. It was like thunder with a car crash thrown in. When I’d belted up the littered, sandy steps I saw a cloud of dust that was as dark as smoke. A small, sunburnt workman had stopped the traffic and held back the curious crowd as the bulldozers moved in.

‘What are they doing?’ I cried out to no one in particular, so no one answered back.

In ten minutes the mirrored garden had gone and the place where it had been was flat. The workman stepped back, and the seaside traffic moved once more. The holiday crowd licked ice cream and rolled on. The workman connected up the water and began to hose down the billowing dust. As I watched, he bent down and picked up something that flashed. He rubbed it clean with his hand, then put it carefully in the pocket of his jeans.

‘Your father phoned,’ Gran was pouring custard into Jasper’s bowl. ‘They’ll be back tomorrow, like they said.’ She smiled as she tipped the rest into a jug.

I smiled as I watched Jasper lap.

And I was glad, really. I was glad.