Issue 30: Linda Anderson

Short Story

All the doors in the house seemed to be open – Katherine Mansfield

And there they were, in her grandmother’s garden.

It was summer. The bees hummed in the rockery.

At any moment the black dog would walk past the dairy,

past the churns of milk already full, and flop down

beside her. Her mother was sitting with her grandmother

shelling peas. First one, then the other, sounded

louder then softer, nearer then faraway.

She was busy being multiple selves, making up

stories, until an uncle, slightly balding, squeezed up

beside her and asked if she knew the facts of life.

She blushed, feeling uncomfortable. He seemed pleased.

She went to where her father was sitting in the orchard

with his paints, dabbing at the leaves, letting the sky trickle

across the page. He noticed her and then he didn’t.

She tried to get back to where she was. Something

had changed. She could hear her aunt’s voice, hoarse,

her laughter crackling, then ending in a cough.

Rings sparkled on her hands as she turned and waved.

Why did the farmhouse windows open outwards? They were

obstacles she bumped up against. Was she inside

or outside? Small things seemed important.

They formed hollows where her memories were curled.

Time passed. There was no resolution.

They drove through the darkness to get home.

It began to seem so distant. Later her grandmother told them

the black dog was dead, shot by the farmer down the lane.

He’d been visiting a bitch, she said. We couldn’t stop him.

More time passed. The distance grew greater.

Death followed death. Then gently, after a lifetime of waiting,

she was able to enter the story again, everything alive, as a gift.

The Lady Vanishes

‘Nothing will happen next’

You won’t find it in a book:

how she leaps from the train, harum scarum,

nimble despite her years,

then disappears. The camera

doesn’t try to track her, beyond a sideways

glance into a hollow

but keeps on fussing in time with the train

that’s getting there, getting there,

the dénouement that will explain it all.

No memory exists of what’s not seen.

Moss touches her and it’s as close to her

as her own skin, as a bruise.

Oak leaves and beech leaves are littered

across paths that hush her motion

with mud and roots and rot.

Here aeons are gathered, leaning

against each other, the trees fiercely

guarding the light. There is no tense

but this one, meantime: its long

drawn-out note reverberating,

or its mellifluous variety welling up

from nowhere, from underneath.

We know she’ll come back to make 

another brief appearance, then fade again

into the background. Don’t look at me,

she seems to say. I’ve planted the seeds

of a conundrum elsewhere: now wait.

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