The Offing by Benjamin Myers

Author:Benjamin Myers [Myers, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2019-06-29T07:13:24+00:00

I rose at first light and walked to a pool in the stream that was deep enough for me to sit in up to my waist. I scrubbed myself with a clump of moss, taking extra care to clean between my toes, and then washed my spare pair of socks.

There was no sign of Dulcie when I began to clear out the shack, moving first the pieces of furniture stacked in the corner out into the meadow and then the empty bottles, lampshades and broken picture frames. Next followed two ashtrays, the wadded rags and a palette of paints, each coloured cube cracked and arid like desert earth. There was a cardboard box containing various newspapers from the early 1930s plus a string-tied stack of photographs, theatre programmes and other printed items. I began to thumb through them and saw ticket stubs, party invitations, scribbled pages torn from notepads and many lists containing the names of people and places, errands and items, but as I rifled through I felt a pang of voyeuristic guilt. Here were lives into which I had not been entirely invited. I continued for a curious lingering moment longer, then stopped and hurriedly replaced them.

Beside the stack was a small brown suitcase, its locks turned turquoise with decay. I prised them open. Inside was a file containing a typed manuscript also tied, but this time with the pink ribbon commonly used for legal documents. It was thin in my hand.

Placed on top of the manuscript was a curious item that I lifted out. It was made from a number of drab rags that had a washed-out appearance, each tied to a circle made from a wooden rod – hazel, perhaps – and bound and tightly lagged with further strips of cloth. A string was attached to the circular frame so that it might be suspended. In amongst the ragged strands was a handmade rosette and dangling through the centre of it was a pair of white elbow-length gloves, the palms clasped together by a single stitch as if in prayer. When I lifted it up to its full length, the strips dangled the way the bladderwrack seaweed that I had seen the previous day reaches up from the rocks that it clings to, but in reverse.

The item was strange and inexplicable and it unnerved me, so I gently laid it aside and as I did the morning sun beamed into the studio, dazzling me for a moment; I turned my back to it and untied the knotted pink string of the manuscript.

On the front in typed letters it said:

The Offing

by

Romy Landau

Curious, I held it for a moment then replaced it.

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