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Authors: Stephen Gregory
Tags: Fiction
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swallow us. ‘Scary, look at the two of you. Hey Chloe, come out of there and take a look, you’re famous...’
She emerged, tousled and hot. She pawed clumsily at the photograph, without any understanding of what it was except a fragment of material which her Mummy and Daddy had crumpled on top of her. If she was going to react at all, I thought without daring to say what I was thinking, she might sneer and snidely remind us that she was famous already, she’d been in the paper before, last year, and not on page nineteen but on the front page with a big photo. ‘Hey, be careful, Chloe,’ her mother was saying, ‘don’t tear it, your Daddy’ll want to keep this and get it framed and put it up in the shop for all of his customers to read...’
The girl stopped batting at the paper, although the noise of her fists on it had seemed so crisply percussive. For a moment, she inclined her face to the photo. She fixed her eyes on it and she held her breath. And me and Rosie, as we’d done hundreds of times before, several times a day and every day for nine months, we held our breath too, in anticipation, in hope, in a state between joy and fear, that the moment had come... the moment when Chloe would emerge from her dream-like silence and speak, and be herself and be with us once more, as she had been before.
She didn’t speak. After a long, literally breathless moment, we all exhaled. Chloe smiled airily again, as if her head was full of air, as if her poor little dented brain was nothing but an airy space.
‘No, it isn’t the best photo of you I’ve ever seen,’ Rosie said, disguising her disappointment with a breezy non-sequitur. ‘Looks like you’ve seen a ghost. Is that it, behind you? Spooky... hey, you can see it, flapping around in the hallway...’
Only a shadow, even darker than the darkness which was gaping around our shoulders. Or a vagrant, an urchin, so desperate to flee the imminent deadliness of the night that it must dare the deeper darkness of an unhallowed church. It had come for something, and gone out again. Unmistakably, in the photo, the shadow of the crow was there.
T HE OTHER PIECE ? A N obituary. I read it quickly and the following afternoon I went to the crematorium at Bramcote.
Out of curiosity, maybe, wondering at the connection between me and the deceased, wondering what it might be. Rosie had asked why the old man had given me the tooth. No real reason, I supposed, on an impulse he’d handed it to me because it was a curio and I’d expressed an interest in his odd collection of books. Mr. Heap: the obituary referred to him as an antiquarian, a bibliophile, who’d had a business in the oldest part of Nottingham for more than fifty years. Indeed, he’d been active in the campaign to commission and erect the statue of Robin Hood, and he’d been present at its unveiling in 1952. Widowed years ago, he was survived by his sons and grandchildren.
The crematorium stood on an exposed hillside, overlooking the oak woods of Bramcote and the sprawling, comfortable suburbs. It was as cold as ever, but the brightness of the afternoon sunshine cast a silvery loveliness on the frosted grass. Chloe was with me, of course. We were both so bundled up in our coats and hats and scarves that no one could have recognised us, even if they’d wondered who we were. In any case, a family saying their final goodbye to a beloved father or grandfather would hardly notice me and my daughter, as we watched them arrive in a line of enormous black cars, as the coffin was brought off the hearse and wheeled on a trolley into the chapel.
We didn’t go inside. The dazzle and glitter of the sunlight was a joy. Despite the snap of ice in the air, I could feel the warmth of the sun on my shoulders. The sky was a delicate pale blue, without a wisp of cloud, it had the fragile opacity of a starling’s egg. The funeral cars kept their engines running, the drivers in their sombre uniforms sitting inside with
She emerged, tousled and hot. She pawed clumsily at the photograph, without any understanding of what it was except a fragment of material which her Mummy and Daddy had crumpled on top of her. If she was going to react at all, I thought without daring to say what I was thinking, she might sneer and snidely remind us that she was famous already, she’d been in the paper before, last year, and not on page nineteen but on the front page with a big photo. ‘Hey, be careful, Chloe,’ her mother was saying, ‘don’t tear it, your Daddy’ll want to keep this and get it framed and put it up in the shop for all of his customers to read...’
The girl stopped batting at the paper, although the noise of her fists on it had seemed so crisply percussive. For a moment, she inclined her face to the photo. She fixed her eyes on it and she held her breath. And me and Rosie, as we’d done hundreds of times before, several times a day and every day for nine months, we held our breath too, in anticipation, in hope, in a state between joy and fear, that the moment had come... the moment when Chloe would emerge from her dream-like silence and speak, and be herself and be with us once more, as she had been before.
She didn’t speak. After a long, literally breathless moment, we all exhaled. Chloe smiled airily again, as if her head was full of air, as if her poor little dented brain was nothing but an airy space.
‘No, it isn’t the best photo of you I’ve ever seen,’ Rosie said, disguising her disappointment with a breezy non-sequitur. ‘Looks like you’ve seen a ghost. Is that it, behind you? Spooky... hey, you can see it, flapping around in the hallway...’
Only a shadow, even darker than the darkness which was gaping around our shoulders. Or a vagrant, an urchin, so desperate to flee the imminent deadliness of the night that it must dare the deeper darkness of an unhallowed church. It had come for something, and gone out again. Unmistakably, in the photo, the shadow of the crow was there.
T HE OTHER PIECE ? A N obituary. I read it quickly and the following afternoon I went to the crematorium at Bramcote.
Out of curiosity, maybe, wondering at the connection between me and the deceased, wondering what it might be. Rosie had asked why the old man had given me the tooth. No real reason, I supposed, on an impulse he’d handed it to me because it was a curio and I’d expressed an interest in his odd collection of books. Mr. Heap: the obituary referred to him as an antiquarian, a bibliophile, who’d had a business in the oldest part of Nottingham for more than fifty years. Indeed, he’d been active in the campaign to commission and erect the statue of Robin Hood, and he’d been present at its unveiling in 1952. Widowed years ago, he was survived by his sons and grandchildren.
The crematorium stood on an exposed hillside, overlooking the oak woods of Bramcote and the sprawling, comfortable suburbs. It was as cold as ever, but the brightness of the afternoon sunshine cast a silvery loveliness on the frosted grass. Chloe was with me, of course. We were both so bundled up in our coats and hats and scarves that no one could have recognised us, even if they’d wondered who we were. In any case, a family saying their final goodbye to a beloved father or grandfather would hardly notice me and my daughter, as we watched them arrive in a line of enormous black cars, as the coffin was brought off the hearse and wheeled on a trolley into the chapel.
We didn’t go inside. The dazzle and glitter of the sunlight was a joy. Despite the snap of ice in the air, I could feel the warmth of the sun on my shoulders. The sky was a delicate pale blue, without a wisp of cloud, it had the fragile opacity of a starling’s egg. The funeral cars kept their engines running, the drivers in their sombre uniforms sitting inside with
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