In Another Country by David Constantine

Author:David Constantine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2015-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

The Shieling

They invented a place. It was far away from here, indeed from anywhere, high up, at the limits, like a shieling. He particularly liked the word ‘­shieling’. A bare place, as far up the valley as you could go and the house itself very simple. In reality such dwellings, the shielings, are only for habitation in the summer, the brief summer; but theirs they allowed themselves to proof almost snugly against the winter months. In winter, the long winter, this place of their invention would be needed most. So he fitted a chimney that drew remarkably well and built a hearth out of the rough stones that were lying around. There was little fuel, of course—a few almost petrified roots very hard to saw—so when they climbed to this place at the top of the valley they always carried a billet or two of firewood in their packs. He liked the word ‘billet’, in that usage.

Not that they ever did climb to it, not in the flesh. It was a place for our thoughts and dreams to go to, she said. A sort of safe house for them. Not for us in the flesh. Why the need for such a place? She asked me did I understand the word ‘dejection’? I replied that I did. Well, she said, when he saw me in my state of dejection, or more especially when he had to leave me in that state, he begged me to try to lift my spirits by imagining a place where it would be easier to breathe and where my voice, which in the dejected state seemed to sink far into my chest, might revive and come forth again. Will you be there too? she asked. Will we be quiet? He said he would, of course he would, sometimes at least they would be there together and, yes, they would be quiet. He said it would do her good to imagine herself in a high and remote place where the air was a joy to breathe and him there with her, sometimes at least, quietly. In fact he was the least restful of men, could never sit still, must always be anxiously ordering things, in a pre-emptive sort of way. You don’t trust your life, do you? she said. Which means you don’t trust us. Often, when I think of you, of your anxiety, I get so nervous, for you, for us both, I would almost rather be in the state of dejection, where I don’t feel anything much. This hurt him, like a reproach, and he answered back, to hurt her too, that whenever he dreamed of her it did him more harm than good. When he told me how he dreamed of me, she said, what night dreams and day dreams he had of me, I was very hurt. He saw me taking somebody else’s arm and turning away. He saw himself coming to my house and getting no answer and standing there on the step like any hawker.

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