Now That You're Back by A.L. Kennedy

Author:A.L. Kennedy [A.L. Kennedy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2005-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

THE BOY’S FAT DOG

I’VE BEEN LISTENING here all day and I can hear for miles. I told that to someone this morning and got no answer. Perhaps I muttered. People have told me I mutter from time to time and it has never been important because I have never had anything very much to say. It doesn’t matter today if no one heard me because I was mainly only speaking to myself. I know what I know and what I know is the idea that came in my head that there is a clearness up here for listening far away to dogs and motors and children which are all down there.

I’m the one who found this place so it belongs to me. I wouldn’t say that one out loud, but I know that it’s true. The decision was mine to bring us here. I could have seen the houses and let them be or I could have been less careful in looking and maybe not come this far because the boot on my left foot is uncomfortable and I would rather not walk as much as I do. Only I did come and I did look and I did see and there it all was.

These houses were waiting with the little roads and the people and those nice trees which will bear apples, I think. They have no blossom, but I think they will be apple trees and have fruit in the autumn. I couldn’t say how soon that will be. I have not needed to know for a while what time of year it is. I no longer seem to do the things that gave shape to my year, but the days are still days, just the same, whether I bother about them or not. I have no grip of time, but it holds me. The weather is often a clue, of course, but not always reliable, I personally find it very vague. Peasant people, country people, like the ones down there would be able to read the sky and the animals and know just when and where they are. They probably sniff the air and know what time of day it is precisely.

There are country people up here too, but none of us seem to remember how to be that way. We are all so cleaned by being here that such considerations seem impossible.

I have binoculars with me although I never use them much, they spoil my feel of the space. With my eyes I can watch a little coloured dab move and understand it is a boy in a coat so red it smears up into the air above him. And I can hear every word he whispers to his black barrel dog, but I can hold up one finger in front of my eyes and both of them are gone. That’s reality, that’s the way this is. Up here we see them and we know them and we know what to do with them and they are ignorant and little, hardly anything at all.

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