Time’s Up
Writer in Residence Hannah Persaud blogs about how Life in all its fullness and horror has a habit of rolling on … in spite of writing deadlines.
Read her flash fiction piece below.
Image credit: Nigel Tadyanehondo
Blog
June should have been the perfect month for my residency, the sun warming Lake 32. Lockdown was easing and as we emerged slowly from the horrors of last year it felt like life was starting to return to normal, hope almost tangible. I had planned to spend as much time as possible at the lake, making the most of my position as a writer in residence. But life had other plans. Within a few short weeks hopes for a better year clouded over as my beloved mother was diagnosed with cancer. As for so many others whose loved ones didn’t get medical attention during the peaks of the pandemic, fear spread its tendrils through our family and stuck there. As it did at the start of the pandemic my mind shut down and I panicked. How could I create something when dread hovered over my shoulder? How could I prioritise the time for writing over pouring over medical facts and statistics online? Cast uncomfortably back two decades to when I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma I found myself falling into a dark hole where mortality flashed its teeth. I’ve spent a lot of time crying, even more time staring into space. Time for me to submit my piece for the month was running out, June was halfway gone and I hadn’t been to the lake. I thought about telling Juliette that I couldn’t do it, that I’d have to let her down. The tragic and sudden death of a boy from our community the same age as my son compounded my grief.
Then one day I woke up, the sun peeking through the clouds. I had to go to the lake, I had to give myself a chance at delivering something. The lake was glass still. I waded into the water, skin chilling, heart pounding. I swam out deeper and the knot inside me loosened. My body and mind united for the first time in ages. Two herons flew above me, landing on the island nearby. How lucky was I to be capable of enjoying it, how lucky was I to be alive?
I emerged from the water rejuvenated. It was okay to be worried and it was okay to have moments of terror but I wouldn’t let myself forget the joys of daily life, the magic of a moment shared with nature, the pleasure that words bring me, as it turns out, even in the toughest of times. I went home and wrote something that wasn’t too awful. I left the lake with something else too, a hope that I hadn’t arrived with. My mother is receiving amazing care, we’ll get through this and will celebrate the hell out of doing so once we reach the other side. I’ll go back to the lake soon.
Read Hannah Persaud’s story for her June residency below.
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.
Time’s Up
2pm
A police car is parked beside the truck at Lake 32 and onlookers are gathering. A police report is drawn up. An abandoned truck, a blanket in the cabin. A cheque for £200,000 made out to YoungMinds charity, signed. The policeman checks the truck for anything else that might help them figure out what’s happened here but there’s nothing, not even a rucksack or a bag. A missing person’s report is filed and the company that owns the truck is informed. Above the lake the Autumn sun casts fretful patterns and in the distance a black and white kite in the shape of a Zebra rides the thermals.
11.30am
The lad with the clipboard returns to tell the driver that he can’t park here but the truck’s empty, the cabin door is open, an envelope on the seat. He asks in the café and a man points to the path that circles the lake. Might’ve gone that way. Further around a father is fishing with his son.
‘Have you seen a man, large, truckdriver?’ The father nods, says there was someone over there a while ago, paddling in the water. He didn’t think anything of it and now he’s gone. Why?
11.15am
Marty pushes his way from the path to the edge of the water. The sound of voices fades. Further around the lake to his right a man and a boy sit fishing in silence. There’s something about this place. The pain in his side subsides. His phone rings again, the doctor’s surgery. Silencing it, Marty removes his boots and his socks, rolls his trousers up. The water is ice pleasure. He takes a step forwards, then another. The bottom is clear and magnified, tiny plants clinging to life. Plunging his hands into the lake he feels the shock of it on his wrists, imagines the chill of it cooling his blood, washing the miles away. There’s the flash of something that vanishes, darkness and light. Crouching down, water seeps into his trousers. A tiny shoal of fish dart into the reeds. Ribbons of sunshine dance across the surface of the lake. Amongst their pattern a black and white striped fish appears from nowhere. Marty doesn’t have a name for this Zebra fish that hovers in the dappled water light beside him. He places his hand in the water and it watches him, doesn’t fright, almost as if it knows him, knows what’s inside of him. Knows what is missing. It comes closer and he watches breathless as it nudges his hand before flicking its tail and turning, then it’s gone. Marty raises his face to the sky.
11.05am
He turns the engine off, takes the envelope from his pocket and puts it on the passenger seat. Opens the glove box and removes a small pouch. Climbing down from the cabin Marty feels the earth stabilise. He squints through the sun. A glassy lake is in front of him. He rubs his eyes. An apparition or real, could be his mind playing tricks on him. It does that sometimes. Out in the water there’s a person on one of those boards.
Someone approaches him and he hopes they won’t move him on. Now he’s standing on solid land he feels sick, could do worse than grab a coffee from the café, rest a while.
‘You here for a swim?’ a young lad about the same age as Jude was approaches him holding a clipboard.
‘You having a laugh?’ Marty replies. The kid’s serious, he realises. Marty shakes his head. ‘Just a break, is that alright?’ The kid blushes and Marty curses himself. Poor kid, only doing his job.
‘I’ll check,’ the boy says, retreating. Marty sees a narrow path leading away from the main bank. He follows it.
11am
Single-track road, wild hedgerows skimming the truck’s sides. He hopes he doesn’t meet another vehicle, god knows how he’d tuck in. The satnav shouts but it’s too late now, the chance to turn around lost a mile back and now he’s committed. Flashes of turquoise splinter between green trees. The shock of the colours makes his head spin after all that grey tarmac hour after hour after hour. He peers ahead for exit points, sees a flag fluttering in the wind. Lake 32. It’ll do. It has to.
10.55am
Marty checks his clock. Seven hours fifty-five minutes since he set off through the invisible mountains of Glencoe, sleep creased in his cheeks. Don’t drive tired. The alarm beeps at him, rest time approaching. The eight hour rule. A Peugeot nips in front of him and he slams the brakes on. No self-preservation, some. He flicks his lights and brakes hard, needs to exit soon or he’ll get in trouble.
The envelope in his shirt pocket rustles. Seeing the layby up ahead he indicates, draws closer. It’s packed with people perched in open car doors and sat on stools staring at the sky, waiting for the apocalypse. Traffic slows. Seven hours fifty-six. They know when he stops now, know when he starts, no more good old fashioned log book that relied on the driver telling the truth. A graph appears on the dashboard detailing the last 24 hours. 3 hours off duty, 10 in the sleeper berth, 10.5 driving. Half an hour break pending. On duty off. His life in 3 words. It’s easier to keep moving, less painful than stopping and facing the chasm. Above him the belly of a plane thrusts him into shade. The onlookers in the layby cheer and a banner is waved. RIP Boeing 737. A funeral attendance for a metal bird. Strange things, people. He’s never even been on an airplane, this is the closest he’s come to one. He accelerates, will find somewhere to pull in soon, they can’t penalise him if he’s a few minutes late taking his break, it’s not like he can stop in the middle of the road. That pain in his chest is back, an ache that digs its fingers in, clenching.
9am
His mobile rings. He won’t answer. He doesn’t want to know.
4am
His knee aches, arthritis flaring up while his mind skits to the doctors’ appointment last week, some doctor half his age telling him where’s he gone wrong, telling him how he should have lived. They’ll call him with the results.
3am
He performs his checks without thinking, tyre pressure, oil, diesel, locks, lights. Touching the miniature Zebra charm that hangs on the rear-view mirror as he always does he pulls away from the curb.
2.35am
Reluctantly he flicks the lights on, lifts his bones from the cushions that hold his outline. This is life now, just him and the wheels, always on the move, trapped in a pinball game the shape of the United Kingdom, Fishguard to Lowestoft, Portsmouth to Aberdeen. Over and over. They used to play that game in the arcades, him and Jude. Maggie hated it, worried it’d damage the future for Jude, what if he liked the games too much, what if it ruined his prospects.
2.30am
The sleeper cab is pitch-black, he can’t see his hand in front of his face. He wonders if this is what death feels like. This is when he feels closest to Jude, when it’s silent outside and it’s just him and the dark and he can’t see the clock. Time mocks everything. The speed of it lanced them. Nine and a half months of waiting, four days of Maggie’s labour, the early years that they held tightly in their fingers before the sprint of a teenager. The loss of grip. The cleave of grief’s blade still sharp as if it were yesterday. Jude was, and then he wasn’t. One footstep between tomorrow and not. Maggie drank wilfully. She’s with Jude now. And he’s alone. There was nothing to make it better, nothing to fill the Jude shaped hole that swallowed them. He’s tried lord knows he’s tried to move forwards but it’s been hard. They didn’t see it coming, should have seen it coming. If they had they might’ve stopped it. In the darkness Marty weeps.
1am
The proceeds of the sale of his house are in an envelope in his pocket. It had started to get to him, the empty rooms, the quiet kitchen. The family home turned mausoleum overnight, all those years ago. Forty-five years he’s been waiting for the grief to shift but it’s still sitting there in his centre, the weight of stone. He tried therapy, counselling, even the church, hoping that something could reach inside of him and share the load. So he quit his desk job and started driving the truck, the motion reassuring. As if the miles could strip his shroud of darkness revealing hope nestling in the core of him. It didn’t work though. Lately he’s become convinced that Jude will send him a sign somehow from beyond the grave, tell him that it’s alright to move on at last. There’s a rucksack that Marty leaves in the truck with his clothes in just in case he decides to stop driving and sit with himself for a change.
In his glove box he keeps the Zebra kite he gave Jude the day before he died. It’s a kite for a child but Zebras were always Jude’s thing, soft toys as a baby, later posters on his wall. He hoped that he might see a real one in Africa. Wherever you are when you fly this kite son it’ll remind you that we’re under the same sky. Jude had blushed, embarrassed by this rare display of sentiment. His flight was booked the next week, he was off to see what the world had to offer. He’d seen first-hand how life could grind you down. Marty was proud of him, didn’t want the life for his son that’d he’d had, living to work. Wanted him to have the freedom he’d never had. Jude could be anything, go anywhere. Marty had spent his life savings on Jude’s ticket, it was the best chance he could give him. But the world’s not black and white.
Jude had unwrapped the kite and been kind enough not to laugh. Eighteen years old and a whole life waiting. Thanks dad, he’d replied with damp eyes. Had he already planned what he was about to do, had he thought it through? Knowing he intended it would be unthinkable. Not knowing if he intended it was unthinkable. A slip from the roof or a leap, no official verdict, but Marty knew. The help they didn’t know their son needed accuses him still.
If Marty ever finds a sign that it’s time to let go of the burden he’s been carrying he’ll fly that kite, let Jude know that he’s going to be alright.
