Reclamation
In the last blog post for her digital residency, Hannah Persaud reflects on writing when the words won’t come… at first.
Image credit: Andrei Ciobanu
It’s November and my submission and blog were due in October. I am late delivering. After what feels like a century (but really, it’s only a year a half) of plateauing, life has been full on. Freedom has unfurled like a new bud. I find myself staring at a world that was once familiar with awe and wonder and not a small amount of trepidation.
This is my last piece of writing for Dialect and time has been scarce. In October both my teenagers caught Covid, and outside doing my paid job a friend and I have been busy launching an independent publishing press. I’ve also been writing my memoir. With the October deadline almost gone I was starting to panic so I blocked out my diary and the never-ending noise and sat down.
I stared at the page waiting for the words to come. Tapped out phrases. Brainstormed ideas in my head. I know, I thought, I’ll write a poem. The poem was not co-operating. A story, I decided. My comfort ground. I merrily tapped out 2,500 words which had a beginning, a middle and an end. I went for a walk to celebrate my success. On my return I sat down and read it through. It was not working. It was aimless and wandering and bland. Maybe all creativity had left me. Maybe I’d never write again. I sat staring at the rain hammering at the windows and felt dismay begin to saturate me.
A few days later I tried again, a new story. This felt better, had more of a beat. I could feel it gathering speed beneath my fingers. But a few hundred words shy of the end the words ran out. Without an ending it was as good as nothing. I was out of time to start something new. I was out of self-belief. I was on the verge of emailing Juliette to tell her that I couldn’t do it when my husband asked me to read the latest story to him. I did so hesitantly, waiting for his eyes to glaze over as they do when something’s not working. His eyes remained clear right through to the non-ending ending.
His reaction was enough to encourage me to return to the story with a clear head the next morning and this time the ending appeared as if it had been waiting in the wings. Next time the good words aren’t flowing I’ll remind myself that some things just take longer, that the previous poem and the story were just practice ground and that nothing, not even time, is ever wasted.
I’d like to thank Juliette Morton at Dialect for the residency she has given me this year and for holding me to account, as well as for her honest, thoughtful and insightful input during the editorial process.
Read ‘Reclamation’ below, Hannah’s story for the final month of her digital residency.
Hannah Persaud is a Dialect x Waterland Writer in Residence 2021. Hannah Persaud’s debut novel The Codes of Love was published by Muswell Press in March 2020. Hannah writes poems, flash fiction, short stories and novels. Hannah placed 2nd in the Fish Short Memoir Prize 2021 judged by Blake Morrison and has won various competitions in the past including The Fresher Writing Prize, InkTears Short Story Contest and Flash 500. Her stories have shortlisted for awards including The Cambridge SSP, the Exeter Writers Short Story Competition and The Brighton Prize. Her work has placed in the Royal Academy and Pin Drop Award and V S Pritchett Short Story Prize. Hannah lives in Stroud with her family and dogs. You can follow Hannah on Twitter @HPersaud.
RECLAMATION
You know why we are here, though I tell you again. I love you, I say, mopping your brow and placing a compress against your eyes. We are caught between a Celtic storm on one side and a tantrum of the Channel on the other. The rains draw in blotting our view of the sand-dunes though we can still hear the creak of the rusted sign.
Ex-Military Firing Range. DANGER. Do not touch any military debris it may explode and kill you.
Your skin is pallid dough, the fire in your eyes has left. You shiver endlessly, the matted bed sheets are a nest of bodily fluids. Stay, your eyes implore me, when I rise. But there is water that needs filling and containers that need emptying. Someone has to look after us, I whisper. A thistle has grown tall and thick against the back of the caravan, tapping out morse code. It must be dealt with. I’ll be back, I tell you, with the arrogance of the robust, pulling on my robe.
Dolores bounces beside me, grateful for a chance to leave. She doesn’t like being in the caravan. There was a rule here that dogs should be kept on leads but there is no-one to enforce it. I drag the dirty water disposal unit down to the drainage basin and uncap it, surveying the field as the contents glug down the hole into a sewer that hasn’t been emptied. The windows are broken on the pillaged shop and the standard issue sun-cream dispensers dotted around the site are empty. I align the water disposal unit back below the drainage pipe at the side of the van. There’s no-one here to notice if the dirty water pours first into the unit and then is emptied, or if it pours straight into the grass. The drainage basin floods its foul stink over its concrete lip and into the grass frequently, so the end result’s the same. But there’s something to be said for trying to do the right thing, just like I brought you here to keep you company with no hope of your recovery.
We refill the water container next, the tap spluttering dark green liquid before it turns clear. I’ve started collecting rainwater in barrels that I dragged up from the pub as back up. As I slice through the muscley stem of the thistle my sleeve snags and falls back leaving my wrist exposed to the sun. I pull the cuff down quickly to cover it back up. Minutes is all it takes.
We used to have a house with Laura Ashley wallpaper that we pasted on with sticky fingers and a creaky floorboard that split during an indoor game of ice hockey. There was a treehouse built by you and our daughter and a rope ladder that broke the arm of our son. There was a kitchen once with a slate floor that we complained about for being too cold when we first moved in but that we were glad for later as the summers got hotter.
I check on you before heading for the shore. I’m going to walk Dolores, I tell you. A structured dog walk is not necessary but it’s a nod to a former discipline. Plus it gets us out of the van. I’m not trying to get away from you, but it’s hard for us too. I’m sure you understand.
The air is hot in our lungs as we head through the campsite where the grass is thick with rabbits and scavengers, through the long grasses of the dunes. Past the ruins of the salt house with its smugglers tunnels. Across the rockpools to the rusted army tank that I climbed on top of when we first arrived, imagining re-born soldiers emerging from the tides. Now I throw stones at the tank enjoying the rebounding metallic echo. Enjoying the act of man-made sound. The sun is molten in a bath water sea.
On the way back Dolores pauses at the edge of the sand-dunes. There’s a mist coming in. I wait for her to bound into them to reassure me, but instead she weaves between my ankles. Something’s been different lately. All this space can be disorientating.
I throw a stick to encourage her to run but she lies down on her stomach, head in paws. Beyond the dry grasses I can see the sweep of the beach and farther away where it curves towards the headland, the outline of something – or things – bunched in shallow water. A stranding maybe. Or rocks. The things that come from the sea.
Dolores and I burst through the door, wind-swept and feral. Will I survive? I hear you say. Laughter bursts out of me, uncontainable. It’s the inappropriate things that make me realise how much we’ve lost. Dolores licks tears from my eyes. You’re trying so hard. Perhaps it’s not fair of me. I cling to happier times as if I can force them to materialise. I have to believe they can come again though the evidence suggests otherwise. I know that you are fading.
I fry wild garlic and thistle and brew them into a soup but you will not eat. We are almost out of supplies. I show you photographs of the beach that I took with my polaroid camera and pin them on the wall next to the ones of the children. They should be here.
I change the bedsheets for the ones I rescued from the line before the skies opened and tuck you in tenderly, muttering sweet nothings. These things will always be parts of me; a mother, a wife. As irreversible as the slow charring of our planet. We swing between scorching and drowning. In the corner Dolores growls.
I found the caravan on the dark web. It was already sited here. The owner was moving inland. Due to the volume of bodies, all burials now happen at sea and people have become superstitious about the coastlines. The number of dead far exceed the living. We agreed to exchange keys, our house for this. There is no longer any value in currency. We always wanted to live by the sea. There’s nothing like the threat of extinction to expedite a dream. We should have been here as a family, that’s how it was supposed to be. On better days I can almost persuade myself that the kids are just off doing their own thing. The truth is agony.
The evening we arrived I was stressed, your critical eye exhausting for the 200-mile drive. I could tell that you weren’t as keen as I was on coming. I drove to where the land ended and the sea started, beyond the tiny village with its monument to fishermen who’ve drowned. The diesel ran out as we rolled to where we knew the caravan to be, right up against the sand-dunes. After making sure that you were fine Dolores and I wandered through the sand-dunes and over the rocks and discovered the sweep of a half-moon beach. The dark time is the safe time and there were people here in plenty that evening, sat warming their hands in front of fires. On and on we walked and on and on they went, one hushed huddle after another, looking out to sea like they were paying homage. Like it was the last evening of beauty. We stood out like we didn’t get the memo.
There was an announcement on the radio soon after, the crackle of everyone tuning in. Our own caravan remained silent; no radio, no phone, no news. In preservation. Their exodus was in the middle of the night, a hushed lullaby of voices and pillow silenced engines. We couldn’t have left, I told myself later when the doubt set in. There’s only so much bad news that sanity can survive. We were out of diesel and the petrol stations were dry. You were too weak to travel further. Long after they left I found a note, hastily scribbled. The waves are getting larger. Watch out.
They cleared out and abandoned their flotsam – brightly coloured kayaks, plastic sandcastle turrets, wetsuits hanging off lines. All the fun things left behind.
You are getting weaker. Please, I drip viscous rainwater between your parched lips. Your skin is almost translucent. There is an after-taste to this water now, perhaps from the wooden barrel or perhaps from the clouds.
We trawl the beach for signs of edible life but it’s all crusted brittle and we walk farther out towards the headland, I’m thinking of whatever it was out there in the shallow water. There is a purple welt across the breadth of the sky and it’s moving closer. Dolores barks and runs around in circles, leaping up at me, pushing me back with her paws. I adjust my visor and push my head down to block the wind that is whipping sand against it. Focus on putting one foot in front of the other. One good meal might help. Fortunes can change in an instant. We are just metres from the spot where I saw the outline of something and there is nothing but calm flat water, not a stranding or a rock in sight. Despondency hits me like nausea and I swallow it. I am not a quitter, not one for giving up.
I turn around to head back. Having complained the whole way here Dolores is now cowering against the rocks behind me. I put her on the lead and tug, her rigid front legs pushing up piles of sand. The mist is obscuring the water, edging up the beach and I’m worried about how long we’ve left you for. The wind pushes our backs, urging us on, whipping up tiny tornados behind our feet. At the edge of the sand-dunes Dolores digs her heels in further and her hackles rise. To the far right is the hunch of something taller than the grasses. There is the slope of a shoulder. The scream when it reaches us is wild and torn. So brief that it could be imagined but for the fact that Dolores hears it too and lets out a guttural cry in response, pawing the ground frantically. I unclip her and she is gone, back towards the beach where the waves are growing frantic. Grief shuffles at my shoulder, I can no longer ignore it.
Grasses claw as I run towards the caravan with my head down, robe catching at my ankles. Something is watching me, I know this with certainty. I won’t look up, have learnt the hard way that there are some things it’s better not to see. I crash through the dunes and stumble up the step to the caravan, dreading what I will find. But you are where we left you, your shadow on the mattress.
I lie by your side as I have thousands of times. I pretend that it’s that Sunday again, the good bit, filtered sun from the window lazing across your skin, the sound of the children in the garden playing unsupervised for once as we made love. It was the day that we were leaving. Desire is a distant memory, though the faint fluttering in my belly lately is a reminder.
The children didn’t know what we were planning, knowledge was a risk. Your mother called and I reminded you of this with a finger upon your lips. Movement was taboo and roadblocks were imminent. New laws would soon instruct us to stay inside permanently. We were almost out of time. We had to get out while we had the chance.
I lay my arm across your chest. What I wouldn’t give to have you back with me the way you were. Better to be cooped up inside together as a family than this slow torture.
The mist is pressed up against the windows now, the sand-dunes obliterated from view. I pile more blankets upon you and heat some water, whistle for Dolores through the window, but there’s no answering bark in reply. Heading back outside is the last thing I want to do but she is your dog and you chose her, the only one of the litter that climbed straight into your lap. She completed our pack. She misses them too.
The door is snatched from my fingers before I can close it, the wind slamming it shut. I push out into the dunes, fingers clenching the torch which serves only to cast bright white shadows over everything. I turn it off and focus on navigating by sound. I try not to think about the military debris that could explode at any moment, about how the sea drawing back over the sand sounds like the feet of the dripping damned. The squall, a child weeping. Dolores, I call over and over. I slip and sand hurls in my eyes, the hood of my robe torn back and then I’m falling from the dunes towards where I know the rocks to be, ankle torn by a piece of barbed wire and despite all my best efforts, despite everything that I have done to escape it, I am back there wrapped in the sheets with you beneath our crystalline dream as you kiss me and then slip naked from the bed to the window to look out at our children. It is the start of ever after. You running haunted down the stairs, me racing to the window. Our children in the garden, their faces bare and UV robes discarded. And then you beside them, equally fated. Tiny lesions mapping the body then spreading through the veins like tributaries. It takes minutes.
I land on the ground and there’s the dull thud of pain and a crack.
Salt-water licks my wounds. One of my eyes is stuck shut and there’s an insistent nagging pain across the base of my spine. The tide is static and the mist hovers. Daylight is coming. A cursory inventory reveals that my robe is missing and I laugh out loud at the comic side of tragedy. The sun is a splinter in the clouds. The horizon turns to froth and I remember a note that someone left behind.
My foot is stuck between rocks. Shapes gather in the shallows. A wave gathers height. Our family home is a morgue and the caravan is empty. Trying to keep you with me is exhausting. You were never really here. I give up. Take me, I shout towards the oncoming sheet of water. In the distance a dog barks or maybe it’s the wind. There’s a fluttering in my stomach.
The wave is a hurtling train towards me. I close my eyes.
Hold on, you whisper in my ear.
The dog barks again, closer. Dolores, I call, DOLORES. I open my eyes and the wave is just metres from me, three storeys high. I tug my foot harder and the sole of my shoe slips. The agony of losing the three of you and the pain of surviving and the guilt of desiring to stay alive in spite of it all tear through me in a rip current of strength and I wrench my foot free.
The End
