Read Online Communion Town by Sam Thompson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Sam Thompson
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on the floor and the dishes in the sink showed spots of mould. I looked in the fridge but there was nothing to eat. Outside my window, the glass tube of a streetlamp glowed against the beginnings of first light.
I snapped open the guitar case, lifted out the instrument and settled on my bed with my back against the wall, wide awake. I strummed aimlessly for a while, and then wrote a new song. It took twenty minutes and was the best I had ever written. It was still built around those same few favourite chords, more or less, but inside them and between them I discovered new kinds of longing, new kinds of sweet and bitter regret, not having to dig but finding them in plain view as you might find precious flotsam after a flood.
As I sang, my sinuses seemed to fill with a clean liquid. My voice grew thick. I could feel something twisting and tightening in my chest, and as I played – feeling for the shape of the song, making sure of the rhythm, trying out a pattern of fingerpicking, tracing the melody of verse and chorus, locating the bridge, piecing together the lyrics – the sensation grew deeper until I could have sworn that the twisting had levered my chest wide open and whatever it contained had been plundered, that she’d plunged her hands in up to the shoulders and ransacked me hollow, leaving nothing behind.
The title came last. Everything that had happened between us, I realised, had folded itself down into a single night’s walk through the city, sleepless and heartsore, and so the song must be named accordingly. It was called ‘Serelight Fair’. I played until it was perfect and broad daylight was coming in at the window. Eventually I fell asleep.
* * *
She liked to walk through the park after work, so I waited all afternoon near the gate, leaning against the railings where the joggers and dog-walkers passed. I watched for a long time, occasionally thinking that I must have missed her, or imagining that she had walked right past but I had somehow failed to recognise her. Mostly I thought about nothing at all.
But when she appeared there was no mistaking her. She was in one of the short knitted dresses she wore with coloured tights, and she looked serious, gripping her shoulder bag close against her, with eyes forward, forehead creased and mouth pursed. I could never have missed her. She was the more strikingly herself for being a stranger again, another pedestrian on her way home to a life you could only guess at.
I hurried after her, calling her name. Heads turned, and she paused and waited, but her face gave nothing away. Other homebound workers stopped to watch me approach, and a couple of the males, seemingly by instinct, moved forward a step or two as if they might need to put themselves in between us: but they weren’t sure of what they were seeing, and as we came together they turned dubiously away.
We stood still in the flow of passers-by, chilly among bright flowerbeds. She looked drawn and polite, but then all the distance drained from her face and left only a question behind. In my head I heard an old country song from her record collection. I swear that I won’t make your exit slow, But won’t you break my heart before you go … I reached for her hand and she let me take it. She gave me a tired, convalescent smile, as though she knew what it was that I wanted to say.
She was determined I should see the house where she had grown up. It was in the south, an hour’s train journey out of the city through gentle yellow hills. In the middle of a hot afternoon we alighted at a market-town railway station and climbed into a taxi. As we were driven out of the town along narrow roads banked by groves in which olive-pickers were working, my nose started running and my eyes began to itch. I blew my nose loudly into my handkerchief and was ambushed by a sneezing fit. When I looked over at her, stricken, she burst out laughing. Over his shoulder, the taxi driver said something jocular
I snapped open the guitar case, lifted out the instrument and settled on my bed with my back against the wall, wide awake. I strummed aimlessly for a while, and then wrote a new song. It took twenty minutes and was the best I had ever written. It was still built around those same few favourite chords, more or less, but inside them and between them I discovered new kinds of longing, new kinds of sweet and bitter regret, not having to dig but finding them in plain view as you might find precious flotsam after a flood.
As I sang, my sinuses seemed to fill with a clean liquid. My voice grew thick. I could feel something twisting and tightening in my chest, and as I played – feeling for the shape of the song, making sure of the rhythm, trying out a pattern of fingerpicking, tracing the melody of verse and chorus, locating the bridge, piecing together the lyrics – the sensation grew deeper until I could have sworn that the twisting had levered my chest wide open and whatever it contained had been plundered, that she’d plunged her hands in up to the shoulders and ransacked me hollow, leaving nothing behind.
The title came last. Everything that had happened between us, I realised, had folded itself down into a single night’s walk through the city, sleepless and heartsore, and so the song must be named accordingly. It was called ‘Serelight Fair’. I played until it was perfect and broad daylight was coming in at the window. Eventually I fell asleep.
* * *
She liked to walk through the park after work, so I waited all afternoon near the gate, leaning against the railings where the joggers and dog-walkers passed. I watched for a long time, occasionally thinking that I must have missed her, or imagining that she had walked right past but I had somehow failed to recognise her. Mostly I thought about nothing at all.
But when she appeared there was no mistaking her. She was in one of the short knitted dresses she wore with coloured tights, and she looked serious, gripping her shoulder bag close against her, with eyes forward, forehead creased and mouth pursed. I could never have missed her. She was the more strikingly herself for being a stranger again, another pedestrian on her way home to a life you could only guess at.
I hurried after her, calling her name. Heads turned, and she paused and waited, but her face gave nothing away. Other homebound workers stopped to watch me approach, and a couple of the males, seemingly by instinct, moved forward a step or two as if they might need to put themselves in between us: but they weren’t sure of what they were seeing, and as we came together they turned dubiously away.
We stood still in the flow of passers-by, chilly among bright flowerbeds. She looked drawn and polite, but then all the distance drained from her face and left only a question behind. In my head I heard an old country song from her record collection. I swear that I won’t make your exit slow, But won’t you break my heart before you go … I reached for her hand and she let me take it. She gave me a tired, convalescent smile, as though she knew what it was that I wanted to say.
She was determined I should see the house where she had grown up. It was in the south, an hour’s train journey out of the city through gentle yellow hills. In the middle of a hot afternoon we alighted at a market-town railway station and climbed into a taxi. As we were driven out of the town along narrow roads banked by groves in which olive-pickers were working, my nose started running and my eyes began to itch. I blew my nose loudly into my handkerchief and was ambushed by a sneezing fit. When I looked over at her, stricken, she burst out laughing. Over his shoulder, the taxi driver said something jocular
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