New Welsh Short Stories (20 page)

*

Eve starts to disappear from school at lunchtime. Lottie is watchful, but one minute Eve is swinging her bag at someone, and the next, poof! She's gone. Or just as everyone is struggling to get into the canteen, bang! Lottie realises she's on her own. In afternoon class, Lottie keeps stealing looks at Eve, trying to work out where she could have been. But Eve's profile tells her nothing. Her straight nose is concentrating on the teacher and without looking at the page she doodles her own favourite fern and fish shapes as usual. Once, she'd turned her strangely light eyes on Lottie and pinched her hand with an understanding look.

Lottie is so puzzled she finally decides to search everywhere. After a first sweep covering the bicycle sheds and the back of the gym, she flops down on the grass at the bottom of the football field. Why don't I just ask her, she thinks, instead of all this exhausting lurching around? But then she reminds herself what Eve is like, and decides against it. She shreds a blade of grass and watches small clouds gallop across the sky.
The truth is, Eve's not like other people, she thinks. She's a bit, well, weird and awkward sometimes. Lottie stands up, feeling guilty, and runs back up the field.

Weeks go by, and still Eve is nowhere to be seen at lunch break. Lottie has to sit by herself, and eat lunch while all around the deafening roar of the canteen makes her feel obvious and upset. Then, just as suddenly, Eve's back, complaining about her lumpy potatoes, grimly pushing her cool lake of baked beans away as usual. But definitely a little thinner, Lottie thinks. And maybe a little happier. As if something she'd wished for has come true.

*

Eve walks to town, down the long, swooping road bordered with weeds that later in summer will have moving clumps of ladybirds hanging from their branches. Over the bridge she goes, past the nursery school, its yard twitching with tiny figures, and into the underpass. Her pocket is heavy with coins. Not for a single minute was she tempted to buy even a stick of chewing gum with her lunch money. For one hour every school day, while the sun gleamed above her, or rain fell, she'd rested in the secret place she'd found, and thought of nothing. Each morning, there was her lunch money, on the table in the hall. And now she has enough.

It's quiet and almost empty in the store. Black
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clad assistants stand around, and watch themselves in floor
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length mirrors, but Eve doesn't look at them as she travels up the escalator and walks into the swimwear section. Soon she's on her way home again, the store bag pushed inside her jacket. Once or twice she slips a hand in to feel the cool fabric as it nestles against her chest.

There's the evening meal to get through. Her mother serves them food that could have come from a joke shop. Eve squints at the shiny, brightly coloured mounds of vegetables. Seriously? she says to her mother, holding up a stiff, charred chop. Can't I just have some bread and cheese? Something real? Her mother reaches across the table and tries to slap Eve's head, but she deftly swerves. Nothing for you then, her mother shouts, covering the waiting plates with a coating of thick gravy. Her brother rhythmically kicks the table leg as he eats, but Eve does nothing.
All she can think of is the tiny black bikini with silver eyelets and laces spread out on the bed, just waiting to be put on.

*

Finally a Saturday comes when her mother has arranged to go out. At breakfast it's touch and go, so Eve chills. If her mother thinks she has plans to have fun or even mooch around doing nothing, she'll make Eve go with her to some dreary meeting. What will you all be doing this fine day? she asks them at breakfast. Eve can hear her father crunching toast behind his newspaper. Cleaning the rabbit hutch, her brother answers, not meeting anybody's eye. Good boy, Eve's mother says, and pats his shoulder. I'll be doing stuff, Eve says, watching the sunlight wink on her knife. What sort of stuff? Her mother asks. Dunno, Eve answers, sipping juice. This is a crucial moment, so she acts bored. Her mother looks at her beadily, then pokes a finger into the centre crease of her husband's newspaper so it collapses. Oh, he says, neatly folding the paper. Gardening for me, I think.

It's almost midday before her mother leaves the house. Eve stands in the bathroom listening to her father's spade clink against stones. Her brother is talking quietly to his rabbits. Opening the window, she calls to them, and watches as her father straightens and wipes his forehead. Go and sit on the bench, you two, she calls. I'll bring you something to drink. Her father is wearing shorts and his legs are surprising. She glimpses his navel when he lifts the spade onto his shoulder. Sounds good to me, he says to her brother, and they both walk into the shade of the apple trees.

Quickly Eve changes and runs to get the drinks. Barefooted, she carries the tray along the path into the dappled cover of the trees. Her father is lying in just his shorts on the bench, his boots and shirt beside him. Her brother is perched on the bench arm, holding a white rabbit loosely against his chest. So, do you like me? she asks and waits. Her father and brother sit up and look at Eve's small, full breasts held neatly in the black fabric cups, her perfect brown legs, her tender, flat stomach. Well? she asks, swishing her hair, still holding the tray.
Wow, they say in unison, as the white rabbit hops into the long grass.

*

Lottie, Eve and a new friend of Lottie's called Steak are going to the beach. Steak has a very small car, but they think they can cram all their bags in it. Eve doesn't speak on the long journey; this is the first time she can remember going to the coast. Lottie is chatting, as usual. So, why are you called Steak? she asks the boy. He doesn't know. Well, do you like steak perhaps? she says. He tells her he's vegetarian. Eve smiles in the back seat as Lottie goes on and on. At last they park and walk through the dunes. The shifting bosoms of sand, the white birds like air
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blown, musical blossoms, the sound of the invisible sea, all captured inside the huge, upturned bowl of the sky, send Eve into a kind of rapt absence.

Then they're on the beach. Miles of cream and blue loveliness stretch out before Eve, and her throat bubbles with a feeling she can scarcely hold. Lottie gets into her new bikini, but Eve is still wearing her old costume. Lottie and Steak are hungry and decide to eat first. Eve wants to walk on the rocks and explore the pools with their fringes of purplish grass. Everything seems to squirt, or shrink, or liquefy when she touches it, unlike anything she's ever seen or felt before. The smell of the wrack, the tough capsules of seaweed that burst with a wet burp, the ropy plants covered in orange warts, and especially the transparent, darting pool life, Eve looks at them all.

Suddenly, she stands up and feels a flash behind her eyes; the spread, lemony sky, and the heaving disk of the sea, all blend together into one inexpressible, sparkling new idea of the world. With closed eyes she searches for her home; her mother's red face in the steamy kitchen, her own damp bedroom, the chaotic back garden, and for a moment, it's a struggle to remember.

*

Driving out of the car park, Eve gazes back until there is nothing but overhung banks and narrow lanes to look at. She carries inside her now the yelling gulls and the whipped dunes pierced by tough bristles of marram grass. More than anything else, there are miles of wind
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scooped beach stretching out, waiting for her to run over them, any time she wants to. When Steak stops the car for something to eat, Eve realises she is ravenous. The windows mist with a vinegary fug as they eat fish and chips and swig coke. The other two laugh at Eve's concentration on her food. Her lips shine as she smiles, waggling a drooping chip. I love the beach, Lottie says with her mouth full. It rocks.
And they all laugh again with their mouths full.

Soon it's quiet in the car. Eve can hear the sound of Lottie's breath as she sleeps. The back of Steak's neck is glowing and sore. When they get back and she eventually climbs out, she feels loose
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limbed; her hair so stiff it looks powdered. The idea of going into any of those tiny, warm rooms is almost impossible, but she forces herself to open her front door and step in. It's absolutely quiet, yet Eve can sense they are all there, waiting for her. In the lounge she sees her brother crouched on the carpet. He looks mutely at her, and she frowns.

Sitting either side of the empty fireplace are her parents. Her mother is tensed, her hair awry, standing up like a spiked tiara around her head. She's ready to leap from her chair. Her father is studying his hands. For a moment they all look like strangers. It's as if she's walked into the wrong house by mistake. Is something wrong here? Eve asks.
You could say that, madam, her mother answers in a smothered, furious voice, holding up the black bikini between fingers and thumbs. She waves the bits around as if they were two filthy rags. What have you to say about this disgusting thing?

*

Eve gathers up the bikini fragments strewn on the carpet and stuffs them in her pocket. Jacketless, she leaves the house, head down, oblivious to the evening, or to where she's going. Her shoes darken at the tips as she crosses a field, and a gusty wind spits and blows her salty, pale hair across her face, then changes direction, whipping it out behind her like a tattered flag. She feels as if her heart is a scrunched
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up paper bag banging against the walls of her empty chest. Almost, she can hear a breeze whistling unchecked through her ribs.

She reruns in her head the huge, black
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handled scissors, her mother chopping haphazardly at the bikini. I'm doing this for your own good, you vain girl, she'd shouted, pulling the delicate laces from their eyelets and snipping them into finger
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length sections, unaware she was cutting her own dress at the same time. No one is looking at you, Eve! she'd shouted, her voice thick with something like misery. No one!

As Eve watched her mother, she'd felt herself shrinking to the size of a gnat. She could clearly see her brother trying to grab the bikini, and hear her father shout as he tried to get control of the scissors. She zoomed closer as they tussled. It looked as if her father would not be strong enough to wrest open her mother's hands. Eve could feel herself buzzing, circling, invisible to all of them. Then she landed, back in her old self, and the room was empty, everything just the same, but for an overturned chair and the litter of silky scraps on the carpet.

Now, on the side of the grey
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toned mountain, Eve stops walking and empties her pockets. Weightless black fragments tumble out and fly away like little bats. Suddenly, in brilliant colour, she sees first her poor mother dancing heavily in the lounge with giant scissors, then the tray in the garden with three clinking glasses, then the rabbits nibbling, and finally, she remembers her own beautiful, dappled body inclined towards the two figures on the bench. She hears, amplified, the sound of their two soft-breathed wows under the apple trees, and her heart relaxes, blooming like an entirely new kind of flower.

LIAR'S SONNET

Zillah Bethell

‘My wife did the math' Einstein

Your watch set by the tower clock at Berne

With crow of cock and parade of the bear

You shamble in, your random walk and turn

To me. Annalen der Physik, your hair

A halo. My needle quiveringly

Spins northwards. Gossamer girl that we made

You rode my elfin saddle so lightly

Your jews ears gone all red, powdered to fade

My puffball breasts. We wooed in particles

Photons. Cycling down the sunbeam with me

To brave new worlds where I write articles

On love. Its special relativity

Depending on your frame of reference

Your love appears less and I diminish

I'm Einstein's daughter. I live in a box. See very little, hear very little, think very little, feel a very lot. My heart is the only companion I have. It sits beside me in this box, feeds on fizzy motes of dust, patches of blue, snatches of perfume. Sometimes it sings. Copies the nurses. She's got skiddies, she's got skiddies. Please, Lieserl. Lieserl, please. Porridge and prune. Open wide. Come the tuneful, moonful, spoonful… Bow down the cavalry. Come the eclipse. The moon's just a pale imitation, a travesty. Like me. I'm Einstein's daughter. So are you.

Daddy's a big man. Don't fit in the box. His brain's a galaxy. Think of an ororary. He smokes a shiny briar pipe and plays the violin. His hair's in complete disarray, they say, and he don't wear socks. One day he deposit me. One day he come fetch me. No audible tick
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tock in this box. Bow down Pandora. You're just a jack in the whereas I live in the and I've been waiting longer than you.

They fucked on a bed of fungi. I was born on a carpet of alpine columbine. My mother, Mileva Maric, the smartest girl in the Zurich polytechnic. The only girl in the Zurich polytechnic. She did the math, he got the glory. They sucked peppermints, cooked liver on a bunsen burner, talked about waves. How they wave and wave forever without ever saying goodbye. Why don't they visit me? They put me here when I was two. Scarlet fever left its traces.
They don't think like a retard do. She wrote a poem, called it ‘Liar's Sonnet'. He said the stresses were in all the wrong places and he had to work for sugar cubes in the patent office. Ugly women are often jealous, sometimes vengeful. Men in nature are explosively sexual. There's no absolute truth that says I shall love you to the end. There's no absolute rest for your quaking little heart. I shall receive my three meals regularly in my room. You shall keep my laundry in good order. Forego all intimacy with yours truly and do not speak unless spoken to. When I receive the Nobel Prize (as I am bound to do) I shall hand the money over to you. Bow down the tiger. Lie down the lamb. Arise the butterflies. Go peek the sunrise like a row of sparkling steak knives. Macaroni,
zweiback
bread, gruyère cheese and a cup of tea. Open wide, you little cunt. No meat, nurse. She ain't got the wit to chew it.