Read Online Yuki chan in Brontë Country by Mick Jackson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mick Jackson
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foot forward and up on the toes. Their skirts stop just above the knee. So not yet quite a mini. The girl on the left is blonde and seems to be shouting, eyes wide open. The girl on the right is dark-haired and could almost be laughing, eyes squeezed tight shut. Their arms are all tangled up with those of the policemen. There’s no apparent ill-will from either contingent, and yet the sense of suspended energy almost knocks you off your feet.
When Yuki reached the palace’s railings she saw how there were, in fact, three different gates to choose from, but by bringing the photo up on her phone and studying the various columns and wrought-iron ornaments in the background managed to work out where the girls had been. She strolled on over with the photograph still up on her phone and adjusted her position until the proportions of the columns were more or less equal and the railings stretched off in a similar way. Then she brought the phone down and stared into the space where the policemen had leaned and struggled, and the girls had struggled and screamed. Again, she wondered what had become of those girls and policemen. What their memories of that particular moment were. And, again, considered the practicalities involved in trying to trace them. In bringing them back here to have them assume the exact same pose.
The first time she saw the photograph she didn’t notice the professional stills camera held aloft in the middle of the girls, as if its owner was trying to keep it dry whilst crossing a river. Or the movie camera, just inside the frame over to the right. And it was only on a later viewing that she finally noticed the guy at the back, leaning in, with an old-fashioned pair of headphones clamped to his head, like some sort of spy from the ordinary world. So, not only were these moments being caught by several stills photographers and at least one movie camera, but someone was recording the actual sound . Because in this instance, Yuki feels, the sound is the crucial element. Themedium where the event’s real power resides. Imagine bringing each participant back and having them take up their position. Telling them to close their eyes and remember that day, fifty years ago. Maybe expose them to some sort of collective hypnosis, or just have them meditate upon the photograph. To have them reach right down and try and recover their younger selves, their teenage preoccupations. Then very slowly, on gigantic speakers, you’d bring up the original recorded sound. What would happen inside those people? What would happen to the fabric of our world?
Yukiko has seen plenty of movie footage of Beatles fans from the same sort of period. Highly strung young girls perched in their seats with the band performing off in the distance. You can see the girls winding themselves up – simultaneously a part of the overall frenzy yet disappearing into their own very personal teenage trance. They bring their fists up to their mouths … take a breath, of something overpowering … then start to scream and shake their head. It looks so pure. So beautifully pure and intense.
12
W hen she wakes almost an hour and a half later the world has grown cold and dark around her. And having slept while the last trace of daylight drained away unsettles her, as if she’s woken beneath a stone.
She pulls on her dressing gown, retrieves her things from the bathroom and mops up the water on the floor in the corridor where she fell. For a minute or two she sits on the edge of the bed, still tired and fuggy. Then she takes out her mother’s blue blouse and silk headscarf, stands before the mirror and puts them on.
In the photograph taken outside the parsonage her mother wears the same scarf knotted round her neck. The cream coat is long gone, but the blouse is from the same period, and when she has it on and can feel it soft and sleek against her Yuki imagines the warmth of her flesh somehow reinvigorating the material – putting it in mind of being
When Yuki reached the palace’s railings she saw how there were, in fact, three different gates to choose from, but by bringing the photo up on her phone and studying the various columns and wrought-iron ornaments in the background managed to work out where the girls had been. She strolled on over with the photograph still up on her phone and adjusted her position until the proportions of the columns were more or less equal and the railings stretched off in a similar way. Then she brought the phone down and stared into the space where the policemen had leaned and struggled, and the girls had struggled and screamed. Again, she wondered what had become of those girls and policemen. What their memories of that particular moment were. And, again, considered the practicalities involved in trying to trace them. In bringing them back here to have them assume the exact same pose.
The first time she saw the photograph she didn’t notice the professional stills camera held aloft in the middle of the girls, as if its owner was trying to keep it dry whilst crossing a river. Or the movie camera, just inside the frame over to the right. And it was only on a later viewing that she finally noticed the guy at the back, leaning in, with an old-fashioned pair of headphones clamped to his head, like some sort of spy from the ordinary world. So, not only were these moments being caught by several stills photographers and at least one movie camera, but someone was recording the actual sound . Because in this instance, Yuki feels, the sound is the crucial element. Themedium where the event’s real power resides. Imagine bringing each participant back and having them take up their position. Telling them to close their eyes and remember that day, fifty years ago. Maybe expose them to some sort of collective hypnosis, or just have them meditate upon the photograph. To have them reach right down and try and recover their younger selves, their teenage preoccupations. Then very slowly, on gigantic speakers, you’d bring up the original recorded sound. What would happen inside those people? What would happen to the fabric of our world?
Yukiko has seen plenty of movie footage of Beatles fans from the same sort of period. Highly strung young girls perched in their seats with the band performing off in the distance. You can see the girls winding themselves up – simultaneously a part of the overall frenzy yet disappearing into their own very personal teenage trance. They bring their fists up to their mouths … take a breath, of something overpowering … then start to scream and shake their head. It looks so pure. So beautifully pure and intense.
12
W hen she wakes almost an hour and a half later the world has grown cold and dark around her. And having slept while the last trace of daylight drained away unsettles her, as if she’s woken beneath a stone.
She pulls on her dressing gown, retrieves her things from the bathroom and mops up the water on the floor in the corridor where she fell. For a minute or two she sits on the edge of the bed, still tired and fuggy. Then she takes out her mother’s blue blouse and silk headscarf, stands before the mirror and puts them on.
In the photograph taken outside the parsonage her mother wears the same scarf knotted round her neck. The cream coat is long gone, but the blouse is from the same period, and when she has it on and can feel it soft and sleek against her Yuki imagines the warmth of her flesh somehow reinvigorating the material – putting it in mind of being
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