Borderland by David Calcutt

In her dream she was speaking a language she did not know and had never heard before and when she woke to the half-light and strangeness of her room some words of it were still on her tongue. There was a dry and bitter taste in her mouth and her fists were clenched. Her body ached as if she were a traveller returned from some far off border of the world.

Later, with the towel wrapped around her, she sat on the stool in front of the mirror.

What language was that?

I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.

But you were speaking it. Those words.

They probably didn’t mean anything. Just gobbledygook.

She looked at the face behind the glass, the crow’s feet and the creases around the mouth, the bobbed wimple of grey hair. Still not bad for your age. The shade grinned at her.

Perhaps they were some kind of a spell.

“Ha!” she said aloud. “Silly.”

She dressed, a simple print frock just above the knee, cardigan, scarf, sandals, took her straw hat and sunglasses for when the day became warm, put her book and a bottle of water in the canvas shoulder bag, checked her purse, her keys, touched her hair in the mirror, and took herself out into the morning.

It was early enough for the green to be empty of sightseers and tourists, just a few people crossing quickly on their way to work, and she chose a bench that stood against a wall in the far corner. The cathedral stood before her, heavy and squat, dark stone and cold glass, only the top of its tower lit, its bulk in shadow still. Threads of mist hung weblike on the grass. She put her bag on the bench beside her and took out her book.

She read with the book laid open across her bare knees and soon became absorbed in her reading, vaguely aware of the brightness that was gradually spreading across the green. A warmth on her legs and arms and the side of her face, a pleasant gentle humming that made the words tremble and shift on the page. She closed her eyes and sat with her hands folded over the pages of the book, lifting her face to the brightness and she felt something inside her rise towards it and the soles of her feet tingled where they pressed lightly through her sandals into the path. Then something dark fluttered across and she opened her eyes and sat up.

There was a man standing on the green about halfway between the cathedral and where she was sitting. He was facing away from her and his arms were pressed against his sides and his legs were close together and he was leaning at an angle towards the cathedral. He wore trousers and a shirt and she could see that his feet were bare. He stood completely still. She watched him, wondering where he had come from. It was as if he’d just appeared. Dropped there onto the grass. Fanciful. People don’t just appear. He must have arrived while I was reading. But what is he doing there? She was intrigued and a little fearful in case he came across and sat next to her on the bench and started talking to her. He looked like that kind. Strangers on the bus rambling incoherently. She decided it was time to go. She closed her book and put it back into her bag and looked again up just in time to see his body sag and crumple and fall like a bundle of old clothes onto the grass.

For a while she sat without moving, leaning forward, her fists clenched. She looked around. There were a few more people walking across the green but none seemed to have noticed anything. Or were ignoring it. As you should. You can still go. It’s time for a coffee anyway. One of those early cafés. She stood, hesitant. Then she walked across the grass towards the cathedral.

He was lying on his back with his eyes open. A pale, thin face, dark hair and beard, how young or how old she could not tell. His lips were moving. He seemed in shock.

“Are you all right?”

His eyes flickered a little as if trying to focus.

“Are you all right?” she asked again.       

He raised an arm towards her. There were muttering sounds coming from between his lips but she could make nothing of them. She looked up to see if anyone else might be watching or coming over to help. When she looked back at him his eyes were fixed on hers. There was a hard, feverish light in them.

“Can you stand?”

He waved his upheld arm and pushed with the other, trying to lift himself. She leaned forward and took hold of his hand and he gripped it hard and pulled so that she lost her balance and fell heavily onto her knees beside him. She gasped with the shock of it and at the sour, heavy smell that came off him. She began to get up but she became giddy and fell back against the man’s body as he himself was beginning to sit up and found her face pressed into his shoulder and his hand on her thigh. She struggled to rise, leaning against him as he stood with his hand still gripping hers and she climbed up his arm and freed her hand then stepped quickly away from him, flustered and breathless, not daring to look up and round now for fear that she would see that people were watching them. What would they make of it? Cavorting in the grass. At her age. And in front of the cathedral.  She smoothed the front of her dress.

“There,” she said. “Now.” The man was swaying uncertainly on his feet.  “Perhaps you should sit down,” she said. “There’s a bench over there. Come on.”

She gently touched his arm and led him to the bench and helped him to sit, then sat beside him, moving her bag along to leave a decent space between them.

“How do you feel now?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

“I don’t know.”

He spoke with a rough accent that she could not place, and his words came haltingly as if they were unfamiliar in his mouth and their meaning when he spoke them was unclear.

“Would you like some water?”

She took the plastic bottle from her bag and unscrewed the top and held it out to him.

He looked at it for a moment then took the bottle and drank from it and drank again. He handed it back to her. It was nearly empty. She made sure the cap was screwed on tightly and put the bottle back into her bag.

“Better?” she asked him.

He nodded. “Yes. Better.”

He was sitting upright with his hands resting on his knees. She saw the frayed cuffs of his shirt, the shapeless trousers, the bare feet, scratched and dirty. Scratches on his hands as well. Old wounds. His nails cracked and broken. Thick, heavy fingers. She recalled their grip on hers.

There were more people on the green now, small groups beginning to gather. Cameras and phones, faces raised to appraise and appreciate. The doors were opened. Churchfolk. Workers arrived and began to climb the scaffolding erected on the far side. Two men on the roof. Stone faces, mouths agape. A couple strolling hand in hand. She felt herself now more than ever to be set apart.

“It’s very pleasant here,” she said. “Especially in the early morning. It gets crowded later on. And too hot in the summer. But there are the trees for shade. I come here every day. Well, nearly every day. Sometimes I walk down by the river. I live close by.”

The man sat as before. She touched his arm.

“And you?”

He looked down at her hand and she moved it away.

“Where are you from?” she asked him.

“Where,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Where.”

He gave a sigh as if this was some question beyond his answering and sat back on the bench, lifting his head to gaze up at the sky. He squinted into the light.

“I fell,” he said.

A swift passed across his darkened vision, turning along the edge of its scream.

“You fell,” she said. “Yes, I know. I saw you.”

She wondered whether the man understood much of what she was saying. She spoke a little more slowly.

“What I meant was, where do you come from? What place? From here?”

“Not from here,” said the man and he lifted a hand from his knee in some vague gesture and let it fall again. “Far. From far.”

“But you live here now?” she said.

He shook his head.

“I don’t live. I am a stranger.”

She looked across the green towards the cathedral, a woman with a pushchair, a group gathered outside the doors, entering. Their lives lived, never touching yours.

“A stranger,” she said. “Yes. That must be…I’m a stranger myself…in a manner of speaking. I mean I’m not from here, I wasn’t born here. This place. My husband was born here, and my children of course, but they’re gone now…and though I’ve lived here for nearly thirty years, sometimes you feel, they can make you feel, some people, you don’t belong…so I know something of what it’s like…” Her voice caught in her throat and she placed her hand on his, gently pressing down, his flesh hard and rough beneath her smoothskinned palm. “You must feel very alone.”

The man’s body began to shake, she could feel it beneath her hand, a trembling that ran deep inside his body, through his flesh and into hers and she closed her fingers over his hand and edged herself closer towards him in kinship.

“There,” she said. “There. It’s all right.”

She sat beside him holding his hand as his body carried on shaking and his breathing came fast and hard in his chest. Then he pulled his hand away from beneath hers and pushed himself up from the bench.

“I must go,” he said.

She looked up at him. He was swaying as if he might fall again. She stood to catch him in case he did.

“This air,” he said. “I can’t breathe.”

“I don’t think you’re well enough…”

“I must go from here,” he said again. His voice was fierce, almost angry.

“But where?” she said. “Where will you go?”

He raised his arm as before to make a vague waving gesture.

“Back,” he said. “Home.”

And swung round and began moving unsteadily away from her across the grass and onto the path.

She stood, bewildered, watching him, felt something like panic rising in her chest and called out after him.

“Where do you mean? You said you didn’t live here. Where will you go?”

He didn’t answer her and kept on walking along the path and down towards the lane. Soon he would be gone from sight around the corner. That’s it now. Best to let him go. Wherever it is he comes from. You’ve done what you could. Get on with your day.

She took her bag from the bench and went after him. He was just turning into the lane.

“I’ll walk with you,” she said. “Some of the way. My house is just down here. If you don’t mind.”

The man glanced at her but said nothing and she walked along beside him. She felt his presence, a weight leaning over her. Somehow he seemed taller. There was a headache starting behind her eyes but she didn’t have  time to stop and put on her hat or sunglasses because she was having to walk quickly to keep up with him. Where is he going to at such a furious pace?  Far.  By the time they reached her front gate she was out of breath and the headache was stabbing at her temples.

“Here,” she said and stopped. The man walked on for a few steps then stopped as well and turned to face her.  She stood in front of her gate. “I live here.”  Then she said, very quickly, almost before she knew herself that she was saying it, “Would you like to come in?” and then went on, the words tumbling out, “Just for a little while, a cup of tea or coffee, you needn’t stay long, I can make you a sandwich, you could eat it now or take it with you.”

Her throat was dry and she realised that she was feeling excited and a little foolish too. Inviting a stranger into her house. This man who had fallen. Her skin was tingling, the hairs were stiff along her arms and on the back of her neck. Her head was throbbing now. She raised her face towards his and squinted through the blur of pain behind her eyes but she saw only the shadow of a face, the brightening light spread behind it like wings of flame. A voice, harsh and foreign, came out of the shadow.

 “No. I must go.”

And then the shadow was beginning to move away from her, to twist and dissolve and fade like smoke into the beating pulses of light and she cried out suddenly at the flash and stab of fire through her head so that she lurched forward and reached out but there was no one there to stop her from falling. She felt the shock of the hard pavement jolt through her body but it wasn’t until she was sitting with her back against the wall and saw the raw, bloody grazes on her knees and wrists that she realised she had fallen. The lane was empty, quiet. There was the wall opposite, there were the trees with the warm light in their leaves, and the plain blue sky and the ordinary morning and everything just as she had always known it.

She sat in her pyjamas in front of the mirror. The glow from the table lamp gave a softness to her features. A vagueness about her eyes, a dreaminess. Her knees and wrists were smarting from the hot water of the bath and she could feel the dull ache in her shoulders and ribs and the small of her back that she knew would give her trouble in the morning. Her face in the mirror was sympathetic.

It was a nasty fall.

It could have been worse.

You should be more careful.

She flexed her shoulders and winced.

I’ll feel it tomorrow.

You’re feeling it now.

Still, there’s no real damage done.

None that you can see.

That night she had the dream again, and this time she understood the language that was spoken, but its words were bitter and held little comfort.

David Calcutt

Image by offthelefteye from Pixabay – Oxfrod cathedral across the green. A large, ornate stone building with grass and trees in front