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Authors: Jeanette Winterson
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The glittering fish were stars.
It was inevitable that the air should fight its war with the sea. Cargo and passengers alike preferred to fly and as shipping costs increased air prices dropped. My father's company, man and boy, was suffering unsustainable losses. Trident Shipping, founded 1809, was slowly going bankrupt and taking my father with it.
He had enough money. It was his life they were draining away. His friends interpreted his resentment as a normal response to a difficult situation. My mother took the simple view that a man must have his work. My father though, was not simple and he was still aware enough to turn the mask over and over in his hands and ask what it was. Uncharacteristically, he went to visit my grandmother.
'What have I made of my life?'
'David you've got everything you wanted.'
'What did I want?'
'Didn't you want to be somebody?'
'Didn't you?'
Yes. No. The clock ticking and the smell of buttered kippers. The young man out of his mother's body and wearing his father's clothes. Be someone. Be someone. Redeem history. Make our lives not an endless sacrifice but a gathering of energy, the strength to jump, but we fall, the strength to jump, but we fall, until you who leap and do not fall. Then we see what we were for, the single stuttered words gain the momentum of narrative. This is the story of a humble family who became a name. My son David whose father grandfather and great-grandfather unto the sixth generation worked the docks. My son David, rich, respected, powerful, a man. My son David whose eyes have the shine in them. My son David pulling history home.
'Mother?'
'David.'
They did not speak of it again. My father took his hat and scarf and walked down to the docks. There were men there he knew, idle like him, and they envied him his money and although he was not stupid enough to envy them their poverty, there was part of him that regretted all he had done. They drank together. He drank alone. He wanted to go with them to the filthy Admiral Arms but what right had he to sit in his cups when they would be going home to cheap rations and unpaid bills? He desperately wanted to say, 'I am unhappy.' How could he say that to them?
He didn't come home that night, nor the night after. The telephone rang each evening at six o'clock until a week had passed. My mother looked vaguer than usual and kept her light on all night. We were supposed not to notice. Now that it was winter the house was dark almost all day and the frost whitened the lawn. My sisters and I played quietly in the petrified air, our breath briefly warming the frozen spaces around us. We were waiting, waiting, watching the clock.
On the sixth day of his absence my mother appeared in the dining room, in her mink coat, carrying a small suitcase. The three of us were doing a jigsaw while the inadequate fire tried to melt the icicles that were hanging in long spears around the room.
'I have to go to your father,' she said and kissed us with her cold red mouth. 'Grandmother will be here.'
Grandmother was here, wrapped from head to foot in woollens, her face entirely obscured by a seaman's balaclava. She made us a cup of cocoa and my mother swept off in a taxi.
'Where has she gone?'
'London,' said my grandmother, pronouncing it Hell.
'There's no sea there is there?'
I felt that my father had gone to his death.
I helped Grandmother unpack her things; a week's supply of kippers and her Bible. I opened it at the marker and found that we were back at the Book of Job. This meant my grandmother was in tribulation, though on this occasion her tribulation had a kind of glittering intensity about it that heated the indifferent house and made us excited again. Very often she said, 'The horse that crieth among the trumpets Aha!' and I wondered what kind of a horse it was that would do that. Undeterred, we imitated him and soon the zero house was filled with smells and smoke and voices crying Aha!
I said,'If we were good always
The glittering fish were stars.
It was inevitable that the air should fight its war with the sea. Cargo and passengers alike preferred to fly and as shipping costs increased air prices dropped. My father's company, man and boy, was suffering unsustainable losses. Trident Shipping, founded 1809, was slowly going bankrupt and taking my father with it.
He had enough money. It was his life they were draining away. His friends interpreted his resentment as a normal response to a difficult situation. My mother took the simple view that a man must have his work. My father though, was not simple and he was still aware enough to turn the mask over and over in his hands and ask what it was. Uncharacteristically, he went to visit my grandmother.
'What have I made of my life?'
'David you've got everything you wanted.'
'What did I want?'
'Didn't you want to be somebody?'
'Didn't you?'
Yes. No. The clock ticking and the smell of buttered kippers. The young man out of his mother's body and wearing his father's clothes. Be someone. Be someone. Redeem history. Make our lives not an endless sacrifice but a gathering of energy, the strength to jump, but we fall, the strength to jump, but we fall, until you who leap and do not fall. Then we see what we were for, the single stuttered words gain the momentum of narrative. This is the story of a humble family who became a name. My son David whose father grandfather and great-grandfather unto the sixth generation worked the docks. My son David, rich, respected, powerful, a man. My son David whose eyes have the shine in them. My son David pulling history home.
'Mother?'
'David.'
They did not speak of it again. My father took his hat and scarf and walked down to the docks. There were men there he knew, idle like him, and they envied him his money and although he was not stupid enough to envy them their poverty, there was part of him that regretted all he had done. They drank together. He drank alone. He wanted to go with them to the filthy Admiral Arms but what right had he to sit in his cups when they would be going home to cheap rations and unpaid bills? He desperately wanted to say, 'I am unhappy.' How could he say that to them?
He didn't come home that night, nor the night after. The telephone rang each evening at six o'clock until a week had passed. My mother looked vaguer than usual and kept her light on all night. We were supposed not to notice. Now that it was winter the house was dark almost all day and the frost whitened the lawn. My sisters and I played quietly in the petrified air, our breath briefly warming the frozen spaces around us. We were waiting, waiting, watching the clock.
On the sixth day of his absence my mother appeared in the dining room, in her mink coat, carrying a small suitcase. The three of us were doing a jigsaw while the inadequate fire tried to melt the icicles that were hanging in long spears around the room.
'I have to go to your father,' she said and kissed us with her cold red mouth. 'Grandmother will be here.'
Grandmother was here, wrapped from head to foot in woollens, her face entirely obscured by a seaman's balaclava. She made us a cup of cocoa and my mother swept off in a taxi.
'Where has she gone?'
'London,' said my grandmother, pronouncing it Hell.
'There's no sea there is there?'
I felt that my father had gone to his death.
I helped Grandmother unpack her things; a week's supply of kippers and her Bible. I opened it at the marker and found that we were back at the Book of Job. This meant my grandmother was in tribulation, though on this occasion her tribulation had a kind of glittering intensity about it that heated the indifferent house and made us excited again. Very often she said, 'The horse that crieth among the trumpets Aha!' and I wondered what kind of a horse it was that would do that. Undeterred, we imitated him and soon the zero house was filled with smells and smoke and voices crying Aha!
I said,'If we were good always
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