ISSN 1758-6488
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A Passion for Gardening Fiction |
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On the voyage home, she was, she could tell, a figure of interest, of speculation. Of mystery, in fact. Mainly because she hadn’t cried or even looked upset.
She felt insulted and wounded and yet it was a relief.
On the last night in Valparaiso, there was a fireworks display, to celebrate the departure of the plague in 1572 which had claimed 150,000 lives in less than two years. She decided not to watch it. She had seen fireworks before and she wanted to think. The porthole of her cabin bloomed and flickered, tarnished and brightened, like the iris of someone watching fireworks. ‘Some bearded meteor, trailing light.’ She smiled. She smiled and listened to the bombardment overhead. It lasted thirty minutes and had a surprising dynamic range. The crump of grenades, all grades of ordnance, tracer, tormented shrieks, viciously beaten bass drums, glissandos. A great orchestra of violence, deprived of visual distraction.
She was thinking about the messenger – the way he put his dark glasses over those friendly, handsome eyes, the way he went between the crates, like a pigmy. Or like a giant in Manhattan.
And she came, with a definite jerk, for the first time in her life.
Sharp, then strangely long, like an injection.
Every evening at sea, to the music of Joe Loss on a portable gramophone, she watched two sisters from Slough, in their late thirties, efficiently dancing, breast to breast, on the tiny sloping dance floor. They both worked in the exchange department of Lloyds bank. They had identical wristwatches, equally high on their freckled forearms, and they were going to marry two twin sailors from Valparaiso when they returned in six months’ time. They took turns as leader and follower.
Here she is at her kitchen table, fingering a jigsaw of thalidomide ginger, thinking about the arthritis in her hands. Her knuckles like bunions, her deviant final finger joints. In the field, beyond the barbed-wire, there are four sheep in their tea cosies that she looks at but doesn’t see. She is remembering.
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