On Monday Nothing Seemed Out of Place by Antony Osgood

On Monday, the most enthusiastic girlfriend in the world had left late and rushed to work at Nicky’s. Running through a cloudburst I’d cheered her from the balcony. I was busy tidying our apartment in readiness for cleaning, after which I’d head downstairs to begin a few maintenance jobs for the building owner, when I glanced out of the floor-to-ceiling window, which my girlfriend calls ‘the French doors’ (she longs for a garden) to see the weather clearing and the sun had begun to tumble-dry the world.

The view from the fifth floor fetched inside the endless North Sea sky and Ramsgate Harbour’s jade marina – the changing cloudscape beneath which boats come and go is why we had rented the place. The infinite chimney pots, the grey slate tiles, the cry of birds and cats, the specks of bright weeds subverting roads, the sheer up-and-down of the town was why we stayed. Some evenings we opened every window to let cool air make a nest while the smell of desire evaporated, and people below searched to find the source of the music pouring like a waterfall from our balcony and onto the street. Sometimes a stranger would shimmy for a moment, later a drunk might pogo, once an old woman tangoed with sad memory and melody, turned slow circles on a corner of dance-floor pavement. We’d clapped and she bowed from the weight of longing. That Monday the owner, Mr Klima, wanted me to clear the drains at the roots of the apartment and do a little pre-emptive brickwork in the basement, so I was rushing, not really concentrating, which is why I did not understand at first what I was seeing as I walked across the living room; I doubled back on myself to check, but yes, there, heading toward the balcony, was a floating child holding a string beneath a red balloon.

I reached behind me and through my tee-shirt scratched the two patches of skin that had been irritating my shoulder-blades for the last few days–my girlfriend said there were red and raised bulges of skin–she didn’t think it was eczema–and she had been rubbing my back in the evenings, telling me this was my body’s way of protesting that it desired a tattoo. After I’d got a little relief from scuffing my back, I put the unused polish and duster on the sofa and opened the French door and watched as the slowly spinning child approached, losing altitude, as if landing on a runway, one hand keeping hair out of their eyes. A compass hung from a thread like a necklace. The child frowned in concentration. I stood back just inside the apartment to give the child some space, and the moment they landed softly on the bistro table we sit at for breakfast and at which we fed robins, and some evenings smoke cigars and listen to music, the moment the child’s feet touched the table, over it tipped, and I rushed forward to grab the child. Catching the child in my arms, I wrapped myself about them, lugged them inside, balloon and all, which is the moment I noticed my heart beating a tattoo at the thought of the child letting go of the balloon, or toppling from the table, falling out and over the balcony. My legs shook with tremors.

I’d never been good at guessing ages, but I’d say the child was four or five, wearing a blue woollen jumper–maybe crocheted, I don’t know–decorated with a white star, and they wore a long yellow scarf that reached past their knees. Their legs were bare, with nothing on their feet. They had long hair–mousey and chaotic, and a few strands looked as if they had been bleached by sun. As I held the kid tightly, I fell back on the sofa, reassured by its solidity, and the child’s balloon reverberated against the tall ceiling. The child smelled of strawberries. There we sat, breathing in rhythm, calming, and I was talking nonsense, more a song of cooing and composure, ‘I’ve got you, you’re safe,’ maybe speaking to myself more than the child, and I rubbed my shoulders against the back of the sofa, which is when the child pushed themself away from me a little, as if to examine who it had discovered, and singsong said, ‘silly, you’re not here for me,’ laughing, mashing my nose with the palm of a pink hand, sticking a whole hand in its mouth before putting a wet thumb in my ear, ‘I’m here for you.’

‘Are you now?’ I asked.

‘Are you now?’ it wondered.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I know,’ the child said, ‘you’re silly.’

The child had an accent–northern Austrian? southern Czech?–I’m as useless with inflections as I am with ages–and clearly, with gender–but the child’s deep brown eyes grew serious and announced their need to use the toilet, after all, ‘That was a long journey. Hold my balloon.’

So I sat there on an ordinary sofa holding an extraordinarily large red balloon, wondering what my girlfriend would say. The child returned after several minutes–I was beginning to fear they had fallen down the pan–and on the way back to the sofa the child selected an unripe banana from the fruit bowl, asking me to peel it. Balloon exchanged for banana.

‘Thank you,’ they said, taking back the banana.

‘Thank you,’ I replied as the child ate the banana and wrestled the balloon. Every now and again the child rose slowly from the sofa, and I put my arm across their shoulder to hold them down. The balloon was tied to the child’s waist by string that seemed too fragile. Even so, the child kept hold of the string.

‘Was that ok?’ I asked, and the child nodded, concentrating on the last of the fruit, closing its eyes with each succulent mouthful.

I stood and put the peel in the kitchen bin. On my way back, I saw the child skipping over the furniture, lofted by the balloon. From TV to table to the back of the sofa, the child turned graceful circles, their feet in seventh position, en pointe.

And nothing seemed out of place, not the floating child, their presence in the apartment, their knowing the whereabouts of the toilet, eating a banana. They made themselves at home. It was the most natural thing in the world, just an ordinary Monday, even when the child balanced on my shoulder to observe, ‘you’ve the beginnings of a tummy, Mr Baldy.’ I replied I hadn’t gone for my walk yesterday–I spent the day in bed with my enthusiastic girlfriend–what are Sundays for if not making love, snoozing, coffee and croissants, before making love a little more until you both fall deeply asleep in a mess of arms and pillowy peace to dream of one day having a child? The child tutted and their face grew serious and announced that I would not do at all, no grown-up in their care dared not look after itself–didn’t I want to be about to watch them grow?–and I was told to find my trainers immediately, no lallygagging now–given it was the perfect time go for a walk, to get some exercise of the vertical variety, and we could tour together to see the town sights, maybe pop to Nicky’s tattoo shop to meet my girlfriend–‘the enthusiastic one.’

‘I’ve only the one heart so only the one girlfriend,’ I pointed out, but all the child did was stick a tongue up my nostril, which may me heave and the child laugh. They floated away from me as they hiccoughed, for propulsion by bodily gases was their passion I discovered, and so I found a length of twine my girlfriend kept for the garden one day she would have, and I loosely tied one end to the child’s ankle and the other to the belt about my jeans, just to keep them from drifting away, and the child scratched my back in exchange.

‘To stop you wandering off,’ I said.

‘To stop you floating away.’

‘You love turning tables,’ I observed.

‘Why they’re often round,’ the child observed.

Having balanced the child on my shoulders all the way down the stairs–the child weighed hardly anything thanks to the balloon–I had to grip the child tightly about their ankles to keep them from floating away–I’m not very good at knots and did not wholly trust the twine, but my girlfriend, once she ties a knot you’re well and truly knotted–the child and I stepped into the bright morning of a clear day on top of the cliff overlooking the harbour and sea as a bright sun shone through the red balloon to make the pavement a stained-glass wonder, and I distinctly remember the balloon make my own steps lighter, and I imagined being in a Chagall painting. Having greeted bees and birds, soft clouds, and vapour trails, snails in hedges and blackbirds singing from branches, the child announced that what the world really needed was a tad more ice-cream, would I not agree? A child’s wish is akin to a law, and I wanted nothing but to please them. We walked toward the harbour where, beyond a hideous pub hides a small kiosk selling magnificent ice-cream. The child wanted Tutti-Frutti, but the owner had made only boring flavours that morning (‘the locals hate fancy!’ the kiosk woman said), and in the end the child settled for Biscuit Tortoni made with cherries and macaroons. I wasn’t allowed an ice cream–extra calories did not fit with the child’s plans–but I stole a lick. This compromise flavour that was, ‘okay,’ I was informed from on high as I walked away with the child hanging from a balloon tethered by twine to my belt, the balloon urging them up, up and away. Probably, the child suggested, when we had walked half a mile along the promenade, the flavour was, ‘good enough for your enthusiastic girlfriend,’ so we turned and marched to the kiosk where we bought a second tub of Biscuit Tortoni–with an added sprinkling of toasted almonds–and we walked to Nicky’s where my girlfriend was inking a big man’s pale and hairless buttocks with black Japanese clouds and cranes. Nicky watched the child and balloon and said, ‘Wotchya lightweight,’ then returned to decorating a girl’s face with golden tears.

‘Look who dropped in,’ I said, thumbing at the child, and my girlfriend stood up to stretch, nodded, shook hands and asked the child their name, which had never occurred to me to do–maybe I did not want to seem too demanding–and which demonstrated why being in touching distance of my girlfriend is essential–and the child replied, ‘Dorota,’ and then my girlfriend asked about the red balloon, and Dorota said not to worry, balloons needed no name.

‘Forgive me, but are you a boy or a girl?’ my girlfriend asked.

‘I like your tattoos,’ Dorota told my girlfriend, ‘let’s leave the buttock man and buy a hot chocolate to wash down the ice cream,’ and my enthusiastic girlfriend put her hair into a pink grip and asked, ‘what ice cream?’ and I had to explain how Dorota had eaten two tubs of Biscuit Tortoni.

‘My favourite,’ my girlfriend sighed.

‘He didn’t know,’ Dorota explained.

‘What can you do?’ my girlfriend asked Dorota.

‘I haven’t quite decided,’ Dorota assured my girlfriend.

‘Maybe a girl?’ the child said as we left the man with bleeding buttocks to Nicky to finish, and Nicky warned us to mind the heater above the door. It would not do to harm our buoyancy aid.

‘How old are you?’ my girlfriend asked on the street as we climbed the hill toward the town centre, and in reply the child said of all the tattoos in all the world she liked my girlfriend’s dragon tattoo the best, the one that I found endlessly fascinating, the one on her back that each night I bent over to butterfly kiss, traced with my fingers every morning, dreamed of overnight, ‘that reaches from neck to peachy buttocks,’ as Dorota put it. And when my girlfriend offered the child her name, the child declined and announced that was no longer her name, ‘not nowadays,’ just as the name I thought I went by did not suffice. We were not to worry. Eventually we’d get used to our new names; we’d become so comfortable we’d forget our original names.

The dog-day summer lifted sweet petrichor from the pavement as we marched. Dorota scratched my back as we gave her the full tour. ‘That feels like heaven,’ I said, but the child knew differently, they said.

‘Now I trust you,’ Dorota said, ‘call me a girl.’

Ramsgate in those days was crumbling. New businesses arose eagerly as crops in dusty fields only to be scythed by landlords; chewing gum and rat-gut gutters were patrolled by grey gulls and evanescent pigeons beneath bright awnings, and Dorota said the town was beautiful as lapis lazuli beads against a milk-pearl neck. We popped into Modern Boulangerie on West Cliff Road–the red balloon bouncing against the high atrium roof–and Dorota drank hot chocolate (having ordered me sparkling water) and a seasonal Danish made of pear and raspberry (having allowed me one bite), explaining to the woman carrying our drinks, skilfully pirouetting past two laughing mothers manoeuvring prams closer into tables, whose floral dress and high heels and wisteria tattoos were greatly admired by my girlfriend and Dorota, both of whom touched everything and everyone, and who counted the piercings in my girlfriend’s face to check Dorota’s calculation, and who gave us tap water we did not order but that we seemed to be in need of, and who turned to take seriously the crying man who has been abandoned to cope on his with his mental health crisis on the streets and in bakeries, and who raised one eyebrow when trying to place Dorota’s accent when she explained that this moment here, this now, this everlasting after amid the perfume of fresh-baked buns, was an endless beginning, a never-ending happening.

After Dorota had eaten and we had laid down our old names, we paraded like a brass band back to the Klima Apartment Building, Dorota’s ankle tied with twine to my belt, and my girlfriend holding Dorota’s hand and holding her down on my shoulders, because the thing with balloons is their ability to lift you high. Back to the high-ceilinged apartment and balcony, where I apologised for not finishing the cleaning, nor, ‘even starting,’ as Dorota put it, then she patted the top of head and confessed she had distracted me, there are times cleaning simply doesn’t matter, and my enthusiastic girlfriend was not to think badly of me.

After Dorota had supervised our packing a little bag of belongings, she said, ‘I suppose we should be going,’ and she put the peel of a second banana she had been eating on the coffee table, then asked if anyone needed the lavatory before we set off, and when we said no Dorota tilted her head toward my enthusiastic girlfriend, who admitted, ‘give me a minute,’ and rushed to the toilet, before returning with damp hands to find Dorota and I standing without shoes on the sofa, with the child reaching up to rub my shoulder blades which itched something awful. When my girlfriend was shoeless, we three danced from chair to table, treating furniture as you might trampolines, and Dorota said, ‘it’s always the take-off that is tricky,’ and my girlfriend agreed that learning something is a little daunting, ‘like swimming,’ and pointed at me, ‘he still can’t swim,’ and Dorota said, ‘he’d swim like a fish if he tried,’ so I bounced the balloon into her face to make her laugh, and her hair stood on end. We practiced jumping off the sofa again and leaping through the doorway onto the cooker, then we tiptoed through the air onto the sideboard in the living room where we hung from the light, and Dorota showed us how to walk upside down on the ceiling, with the balloon hanging like an anchor below us, and she whispered, ‘I think we’re about as ready as we’ll ever be,’ but I answered, ‘I wouldn’t want to–,’ and my enthusiastic girlfriend said, ‘I’m sure if you try–’ and I said, ‘But Emma–’ and Dorota interrupted, singing, ‘No old names!’ 

We somersaulted until the floor was once again the floor and we were upright, then I thought my goodness we’re still holding hands, I’m never letting go of my enthusiastic girlfriend and this extraordinary child, which is when Dorota said, ‘let’s to it!’ and she set off, her and my girlfriend, dragging me between them toward the balcony, which is when the skin on my shoulders cracked and peeled–a clunk of bone, a shattering of shoulders–and through my tee-shirt transparent damselfly wings grew as we reached the balcony, and I became beautiful for the very first time. As we stepped upon the table the child’s balloon expanded as if heated by the sun, and my wings shimmered, and people below waved and cheered, and my girlfriend’s Chinese dragon tattoo erupted from her back beating crimson wings as together the three of us rose, kissing the bistro table goodbye with our toes, and by our efforts we lifted each other, turned circles, cartwheels, feeling cold twilight on our faces, gooseflesh hairs standing to attention as our tears became icicles, and our new names became commonplace, and though the wind made it impossible to breathe deeply we promised not to let one another down as Dorota sang, ‘Mama! Papa!’

Antony Osgood