A white, white day
And so the Summer came.
On a Sunday May morning around 6 o’clock: a time when everything sounds soft and hollow.
Silence was falling in through the open skylight in rolls of bright static – with a suctiony pervasive thrum; cries of supercharged sun-hungry birds over everywhere already plugged in; dried out old bleating from the sheep-topped hills. And so on. I lay there, next to you, the lover, saying it all to myself, as though humming a favourite melody.
From where we lay the sun could not as yet be seen, but it would be somewhere over there, at the back of our heads and towards the left, spreading the sky warm over the earth. And as yet (too early), not at the height of its power, not delivering the full extent of its radiance – but I could tell, I knew, that this was it, a day going to be different, much different from yesterday, a day when it could all begin again.
The woodman’s hut, that’s where we were, encircled by tall flowering trees (hence all the birds). The woodman was away, and never to return. It would be just you and me, here, together, for as long as we wanted.
And yet you slept on. Maybe another hour or so before you would waken. Time enough for the bells to ring. Which they would do, as they usually did, tolling out from the church over the valley. Either they would have to wake you or I would, poking up from behind, tolling the usual rhythm.
There was no car anywhere. No Worldwide Web. No news to know. No alarms.
Safe. Becalmed.
I imagined myself as I was: lying in bed on a Sunday morning with windows open, anticipating the coming of a white white day, soon to be drinking the jasmine and listening to church bells, soon to be eating buttered toast with cunty fingers……
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